Ignoring her drumming heart, she flashed him a glimpse of the scar running down her nape to her shoulder.
He gave a sharp exclamation. She risked a glance at him, and saw that his dark eyes looked stricken. Though perhaps not with the horror she’d dreaded. And not revulsion either, apparently, to her extreme relief. It seemed to be more concern and sympathy he was feeling, because he put his arms around her and kissed her forehead, then her cheeks, then her lips with the most fervent tenderness.
‘Oh, Lara,’ he said thickly. ‘My poor Larissa. If only I had known this. If only…’ His arms tightened around her and she responded in kind, hugging him, pressing her lips to his strong neck, enjoying the wonderful masculine scents of him and the feel of his powerful heartbeat, thundering away next to hers. ‘How long were you in the hospital, tesoro?’
‘A couple of weeks. It took me a few days to wake up.’
‘Per carita. You could have died.’
‘Oh, no. Heavens, I was lucky. Look, this is nothing,’ she said when he finally released her, to her intense regret. Well, he had to. They were in a public restaurant, and after last night there were definite risks. Even under such teary conditions she felt pleasantly stimulated by the contact with his big, warm body.
‘A little scarring, is all,’ she went on, dismissing it with an airy gesture. ‘Compared to what some people suffered it’s-minuscule. A bagatelle.’ He reached to lift her hair for another inspection, but she moved sharply aside. ‘No, don’t. Please.’
Comprehension gleamed in his dark eyes, and he grew contrite. ‘I’m-sorry.’ Then he added, his face a little stiff, ‘I am-I am devastated by all of this, tesoro, but in some way so relieved to know.’ His hands lifted as if he needed to touch her, grab her, but he put them down again. ‘It changes everything. To know that at least you tried to…’ He bunched his fists. ‘If only I had known sooner.’ He sat back against the banquette, shaking his head and exclaiming in Italian. After a few seconds he glanced enquiringly at her. ‘You mentioned that fire the other night, but I never connected it. You should have explained.’
‘Should I?’ She made a slight grimace. ‘You hadn’t been so very pleased to see me earlier, though, had you? I guess I felt-wary of saying too much.’
‘Ah.’ He looked remorseful and lifted his shoulders in acknowledgement. ‘When I saw your name on that list the first day, I admit it was a shock. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about seeing you. But…’ he exhaled a long breath ‘…I understand now.’ He turned sharply to rake her with a serious gaze. ‘And-when did you find out you were pregnant?’
She grimaced. ‘In the hospital.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Oh. How it must have been for you. What you have suffered…You and your mother. Losing your poor father…’
‘I admit it was hard at first.’ She gave a rueful shrug. ‘But we’re over it now, and we’re fine. Really.’ She met his gaze fleetingly, conscious of his intent scrutiny. ‘The first year or two were pretty challenging, but, you know, life goes on. Even the worst grief softens. We made it through the bad time.’ She glanced at him and said softly, ‘Well, you know, we had Vivi to live for.’
He met her gaze, a warm shimmer lighting his eyes.
The waiter appeared again and swooped down with the selection of small dishes of fragrant, steaming delicacies.
Alessandro dealt with him with his usual courtesy, but his expression was serious and distracted. As soon as the man was out of earshot, he turned to her with more avid questions, about that time in hospital, her recovery, her ability to communicate.
‘Everything the Meadows family owned was lost,’ she explained. ‘My phone, et cetera, with your number in it.’ She shook her head in wry remembrance. ‘You’d have thought yours would be one number I’d remember, but for weeks after the event it was as if my brain was paralysed. I could hardly remember my own name. It was the trauma of the blow mixed with the shock, they said.’
‘Well, that certainly explains why I couldn’t make any connection when I phoned you. Dio, how frustrated I was.’ He took up the servers and spooned some truffled tortellini with lobster sauce onto her plate. ‘Would I be right in guessing that later on when you’d recovered enough to try you couldn’t find me?’
She nodded. ‘When I phoned Harvard, the university refused to release any information. Finally, after about the tenth call, someone told me you were no longer a student there. I felt so…I didn’t know where you were in the world. Where to look.’ She grimaced. ‘And I really needed to find you, of course…’
She paused and, drawing another preparatory breath, heard Alessandro cursing softly to himself.
‘Oh, fool that I was. And then you learned of my marriage.’
She shrugged and smiled at him through her mist. ‘I might as well admit that back then, I was-in love with you, I suppose. Well…’ She cast him a sidelong glance. ‘I was much younger then, I’d had no experience of sophisticated affairs with citizens of the world. So when I saw about your-your wedding…in that magazine…’ Her throat swelled at the remembered pain.
He sighed. ‘If I had only known this. I could have…’ could have-Everything would have been different.’
‘Would it?’ She swallowed. ‘Oh, well. It’s all water under the bridge now.’ She shrugged and raised rueful eyes to his. ‘Call it Fate, or whatever. And when I think of what you must have gone through when you came to meet me and I wasn’t there…Oh, poor Sandro, I’m so, so sorry. What you must have thought…And all these years I’ve been thinking such harsh things about you.’
He looked rueful, and in the muted light of the restaurant she thought she could detect a faint flush under his olive tan. He made a small grimace. ‘You have thought harsh things.’
With a stab of remorse she bit her lip, reaching to take his hand again. ‘Oh, of course you must have felt like that, of course. Flying all that way and thinking I’d let you down. Oh, that ridiculous pact. I’m so ashamed to have insisted on it. Why did you ever agree?’ She caught his darkening gaze and quickly moved the conversation on. ‘And I understand now.’ She looked at him through her lashes. ‘This is why you were so hostile the other day. No wonder. Who could ever blame you?’
He took immediate issue with her reading. ‘I wouldn’t say hostile. I may have been-reserved. I needed to- consider the situation.’
A silence fell while she considered the implications of everything. All her misconceptions had suddenly turned themselves around to stand the right way up.
She glanced at him. ‘Is-that why you said you had nothing to lose? When you-married Giulia? Because you felt-let down?’
He frowned, then lifted his shoulders and said in a gruff voice, ‘There may have been-some sort of rebound response in my thinking at the time.’
She looked wonderingly at him, her over-full heart fluttering in her chest like a cricket. ‘So-you did want me, back then?’
He gazed at her for a long intense moment, while her pulse rushed faster than a white-water torrent, and said very quietly, ‘I think I must have.’ Then his mouth relaxed and his eyes lit with an ironic gleam. ‘Well, I was quite young.’
Her heart skipped a few bars and she put her trembling hands to her cheeks. ‘It’s all so unbelievable, I can hardly think straight. I think we’ll both need time to process it all.’
Despite his gently mocking response, the air felt suddenly charged with questions. If he’d truly wanted her then, did that mean he would now? One thing was certain. Despite his reserve she could sense a burning turbulence behind his lean, intelligent face, as though her revelation had detonated a major realignment of his ideas. Maybe it was as cataclysmic as the one she was experiencing herself.
His dark eyes scanned her face, then he leaned across and kissed her lips. ‘What you need now is to eat some of this delicious little supper, and then I think we should walk.’
She smiled. ‘Walk where?’
‘To the Seasons,’ he said firmly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IN A few short days, the world had changed, Alessandro marvelled to himself as he hustled Lara the few tree-
