frosty light. His mouth watered to taste them.
Her breath was coming in fast little trembling pants, her breasts heaving in voluptuous excitement.
Still possessing some degree of perspective of the place, he’d only intended to look, perhaps just once to feel, but her bra catch was set alluringly at the front. Barely before he was aware of what he was doing, the devil in him had unfastened the bra and allowed her breasts to spill into his hands.
Ah, that soft resilient flesh like no other. He kneaded them in his hands, then bent his head, unable to keep from kissing the scented skin. The taut nipples begged for his lips, and he tasted the delicate treasures one at a time, relishing their erotic stiffening in his mouth, his lust fanned by Lara’s moaning responses.
He was almost unbearably hard now inside the constraints of his underwear, and the possibilities of plunging inside her slick heat for release began to assume a firmer reality. Aching for her nakedness, he slipped his fingers beneath the band of her jeans and felt for the button.
The yellow flare of a passing car’s headlights swept the trees, and she froze in his arms. He covered her with his body, pleasurably tortured by the feel and fragrance of her, her face pressed into his neck, her heart thumping against his chest, the faint dew of moisture on her silken skin.
The lights disappeared, and he was ready to push her down onto the aromatic pine needles, but she stiffened in his arms.
‘What are we doing?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘This can’t happen now. It can’t happen.’
Disappointment surged through him. ‘Ah, but you want me, carissima. Don’t pretend.’
‘It can’t be like before, now, though, can it?’ she said violently, then jerked away from him and started adjusting her clothes. ‘We have to grow up.’
The unpalatable words lodged in his gut. ‘Do you think there is any other way for us?’ His voice echoed in the silent schoolyard, rough with unassuaged hunger.
He watched her tug the vest across her breasts and zip it, as though that might quell his passion for them, then he turned sharply away to wait for his pain to subside.
Too late, he could have told her. Far too late. For better or worse they had both crossed the line. There would be no going back.
The silent walk to her house was alive with a turmoil of unspoken communications. Passion simmered, unresolved, but it would find a way. Whatever she thought. Didn’t she understand? This was what they were all about.
At her gate she paused, and bit her swollen lip. ‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ she said in a low, emotional voice. ‘You’re only in town for a few days. I can’t just-be your-convenient woman.’
Despite his frustration and the dark chaos he was floundering in, he wanted to laugh. As if there had ever been anything convenient about Lara Meadows. Instead, though, he controlled himself and said gravely, ‘Well, a lot can happen in a few days, tesoro.’
He heard her sharp intake of breath. She examined him with such obvious suspicion in her narrowed gaze he had to restrain himself from seizing her again. The temptation to steal another sweet, scorching taste of her lips was overwhelming, but he resisted. Leave her hungry. It would only fan his own flames, and God knew he needed to think.
A lamp shone over the porch, and there was a faint light glowing from the upstairs rooms. Despite his reluctance to tear himself away from her, he felt relieved she didn’t invite him inside.
The truth was, he didn’t care to look inside that sleeping house.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SLEEP was a long time coming to Alessandro, and when at last it did he dreamed it was summer, not the subtle, sometimes chill, showery summer he’d come from, but an Australian summer, with blazing blue skies and shimmering noonday heat. As it had been the day he’d flown in to fulfil his promise, with his great-grandmother’s engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket.
He dreamed he was pursuing a woman down a leafy green lane, her hair floating out behind her like a cloud. Surely he’d dreamed this before. Then all at once it was dusk and the air was heavy with the fragrance of honeysuckle, and a poignant sense of longing. His longing, he realised, somehow standing outside himself in the dream.
The woman cast him a laughing glance over her shoulder, and he saw that it was Lara. Of course it was, who else? his outside self told him. He reached out to catch her, but just when he thought he had her, she slipped through his fingers, as elusive as a wraith. Then he realised with a sudden, gut-wrenching shock she was carrying a baby on her hip. He made a desperate effort to see the baby’s face, but, however hard he tried, the child always turned its face away from him.
He woke at dawn with a start, his heart hammering, bathed in sweat and confusion, and an intense sense of loss that haunted him for hours.
The trouble was, he reflected while shaving, that, despite all his precautions to hold the situation at bay, hearing his child’s name must have sparked something in his imagination. And if that hadn’t been bad enough, try as he might not to acknowledge it, he couldn’t completely eliminate an image of a small girl playing in that sandpit.
Later, showered and crisply shaven as he perused The Sydney Morning Herald over his coffee, it occurred to him that men had dealt with problems like this since the beginning of time. In Italy there’d have been no question that he should marry the woman at once. Her family would have demanded it, as would his own.
What his mother would say if she knew!
So what were his choices? Force an unwilling bride to the altar, or provide her with generous enough financial support that she could raise the child well on her own?
He wondered how much he could rely on what she’d said about the rules here. Certainly they didn’t seem as clear-cut as they were at home. Women seemed able to live as single parents quite happily, without apparent social punishment.
Or did they? Perhaps he didn’t know enough to interpret the subtleties woven beneath the easy-going surface of the Aussie way of life.
Anyway, a woman like Lara would almost certainly marry eventually. The only surprise was that some guy hadn’t caught her already. There’d be one along soon, eager to marry her. Prepared to take on her child.
Alessandro’s cup stilled in mid-air and stayed suspended there for moments, until he put it down. Replacing it, he must have used more force than he intended, for coffee splattered across the news page.
Passion shouldn’t linger in the senses like a narcotic. A night of sleep should neutralise the effect, and allow a woman to start the new day with a fresh canvas.
Or perhaps that was how it was for normal people, Lara mused at the editorial meeting as she sat drinking in Alessandro’s face.
Looked at in perspective, it hadn’t been much more than a couple of kisses and a caress, but-such kisses, and such a caress. She supposed a woman who’d banished her dreams and applied herself to being a mother and a singleton must be more susceptible to after-effects. Like tossing and turning, and restlessness. And thinking and imagining, and fantasising. And worrying about whether she’d done the right thing on behalf of Vivi. Should she have tried to insist he take an active role, for Vivi’s sake? Would she come to regret it later? Would Vivi?
But he was such an unpredictable force. Who’d have guessed he’d be exploding in wrath over the news one minute, then kissing her so passionately the next? This morning now, despite last night’s shock, he looked calm and relaxed, though in some subtle way buzzing with purpose and energy. Amazing for a man who’d sustained a serious blow.
Glancing around at her colleagues, it was pretty clear that as he talked them through the new editorial guidelines hardly anyone was looking at their page. Their eyes were all glued to his face as if they were soaking him in through their pores. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to guess that their tongues were near to hanging out.
The climate between boss and staff had warmed by at least a hundred degrees. Donatuila, on the other hand,
