‘So much for the playboy of Rome,’ she sneered as she headed for her room, embarrassed that he clearly did not want her.
No wonder, Ariana thought as she stood in the bathroom and looked at her blotchy tear-streaked face.
She cleansed her skin and then ran a brush listlessly through her hair. She pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt and then climbed into bed. Sulking, she pulled the covers up to her chin.
‘Do you want milk or something?’ Gian called.
‘I’m not ten!’ she shouted through the darkness. It was worse having him here like this than being alone. Except, as she lay in the dark, Ariana knew that wasn’t strictly true. She loathed the dark and the night, especially since her father died, and now it did not seem quite as dark and the place not quite so lonely.
In fact, there was comfort just knowing that Gian was near.
Finally, whatever it was that had possessed her, that had had her angrily demanding sex, left her.
Oh, Papà!
Gian listened to her cry, and knew that for once it was not for attention. Though it killed him not to go to her, Gian knew they were necessary tears.
He opened the drapes and looked for something to read. Some might call it snooping, but really he was looking for somewhere to charge his phone when a cupboard fell open and he could see that this was where Ariana had been hiding. It was rather chaotic and piled high with photos, wads and wads of them, and dated boxes too. Ah, so she must have been knee-deep in photos, Gian realised, trying to choose some favourites for the funeral montage. As well as that, there were fashion magazines and blockbusters and recipe books...
An awful lot of them!
Gian selected one and tried to block out her tears by reading. He just stared at the method for tempering white chocolate until finally she fell into silence.
He was reading how to make cannelloni when he heard her again.
It was almost hourly, like some tragic cuckoo clock, but Gian kept the door between them closed for he would not sleep with her on the night of her father’s funeral. Surely only foolish decisions were made then...
Gian was completely matter-of-fact about sex. To him it was as necessary as breathing. Perhaps it was an exaggeration, but he felt he would not have lived to the age of twenty-five without the escape of it, and he knew he could give her that, but only when her head was clear.
To know she trusted him was significant, for the thought of her misplacing her trust in someone else left him cold.
He watched the black sky turn to a steel grey and, even though Gian knew his logic was flawed, when the silver mist of a new day dawned and he heard her little cry, Gian went through and sat on the bed.
Ariana was far from a temptress at dawn. She covered her face with one hand as he came in, and little bits of last night played like taunting movies.
‘Did I make a complete fool of myself?’ she asked in a pained voice.
‘Of course not,’ he said magnanimously, then teased her with a slow smile. ‘You just pleaded with me to make love to you.’
‘Perhaps it was the cognac,’ she said hopefully, but they both knew it had been a small sip and that had been back in Luctano. There had been a lot of walking and talking since then and she could hardly blame the chestnuts! ‘I’m sorry for my behaviour. I don’t actually fancy you, Gian.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, sometimes a bit, but then I remind myself that you are just a hunk of good-looking...’ She liked his slow smile. ‘I remind myself how mean you can be...’
‘Mean?’
‘One glass of champagne at my interview!’
He smiled for he thought she hadn’t noticed the absence of a bottle.
‘Ah, that.’
‘A meal at your bar instead of your restaurant...’
‘You make it sound like the local dive.’
‘Perhaps, but even so I deserved five stars last night. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘when I do find myself fancying you, I remind myself how remote you can be and how humourless you are.’
‘Well, it’s good you’ve come to your senses,’ Gian said, ‘especially as I don’t have condoms with me. I tend not to keep them in my funeral suit.’
She stared back and resisted smiling, determined to prove her humourless point.
‘Except we wouldn’t need them.’ He held up a purple foil packet of contraceptive pills. ‘What are these for?’
‘You’ve been snooping.’
‘Not really, I wanted toothpaste. I just wondered what you were doing on the Pill if you’re not sleeping with anyone...’
‘Yet!’
His jaw was set in a grim line. He had this vision of Ariana chasing some bastard who sensed her fragility, yet she was not fragile now. Ariana was looking right at him and there was none of last night’s desperate need for comfort, just the desire that had always been beneath it.
‘So?’ he asked. She looked at the purple Pill packet and was about to lie, as she so often did, and say she was on the Pill for her skin, or so that it made her cycle more predictable, or whatever she would say if her mother found them.
But Gian was certainly not her mother.
And with Gian there was no reason she could see to lie.
‘I went on it because I feel like the only person in the world without a sex life, and when I go away with friends I don’t want them to know I’m the only one...’ She shrugged. ‘Pathetic, huh...’
‘No more pathetic than when I was younger and would have condoms on me, just to have them on me...’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
They shared a smile in the thin dawn light but then hers wavered. ‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve made things even more awkward between us. I should
