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Before she could say any more, Luciano closed his hand over hers. ‘I just want to be with you…’
Warmth enclosed her, squeezed out her fears and insecurity. He had said enough to soothe her. She told him about Misty’s phone call. ‘I expect she’ll stay in touch. Do you mind?’
A stark little silence fell.
His strong jawline clenched. ‘Why would I?’
Luciano had already spent a day and a half ring-fencing his companies from potential threats. After all, come hell or high water, he had no intention of selling Ballybawn to her sisters but he saw no reason to worry Kerry with that announcement. Her desire to communicate with her siblings and satisfy her curiosity was natural. Rationally he knew and accepted that but he was not happy about it. He was already convinced that her sisters would do everything within their power to destroy his relationship with her.
‘Why do you never mention the case you’re still pursuing to clear your name?’ Kerry asked him then.
His keen gaze hardened. ‘What’s to mention? To have the case retried, I need new evidence. I have investigators working on it but it is five years since that money was syphoned out of the accounts. It was a neat and clever scam and the culprits have had a long time to cover their tracks. It will be difficult to find a fresh lead—’
‘You think there was more than one person involved?’
‘It’s possible.’ Aware that she was still very much in contact with Miles, Luciano regretted even saying that much.
‘You know, Miles suspects my cousin, Steven,’ Kerry confided.
Thinking about wimpy Steven, Luciano almost laughed out loud, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. An honest, straightforward woman was a pearl beyond price and that was Kerry, for she could not recognise cunning in others. Without hesitation she had repeated what Miles had undoubtedly primed her to repeat. How could he ever have believed that Kerry could have been involved in framing him for his prison term? Now he could only smile at the very idea. But Miles had severely underestimated Luciano’s intelligence when he had used Kerry as a vehicle for his misinformation campaign.
Luciano plucked yet another ripe cherry from the neglected tree and crouched down to dangle the succulent fruit just within reach of Kerry’s juice-stained lips. ‘I’m sure you can manage one more, bella mia.’
Stretching up, Kerry swiped the cherry from his lean, elegant fingers with her mouth. ‘You tempt me…’
‘Temptation is the spice of life.’ Luciano flung himself back down on the rug spread in the shade and leant over her, slumberous golden eyes pinned to her with mockery. ‘Don’t you dare fall asleep on me again. I could set a clock by your naps. At midday, off again late afternoon, dead to the world before midnight. What happened to the livewire who used to get by on a few hours a night?’
‘Obviously endless sunshine makes even livewires sleepy.’ Kerry blamed the summer heat for her unusual tiredness.
For three glorious weeks, day after sun-drenched day at the Villa Contarini had dawned fresher and brighter than the last. The sky above would seem a more heavenly blue and the sun would drench the fertile earth with ever more golden warmth. She was wonderfully, wildly happy just to be with Luciano. That lean dark-angel face of his made her very heart lurch with longing and as he was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes in the morning and the last at night, how could she be anything other than blissfully content?
The Villa Contarini had shaken off all the gloom that she had once found daunting. Curtains had been thrown back to let the light flood in, windows flung wide and all the doors lay open on to the terraces. Informality ruled. Cushions were often tumbled on the floor, for lovers had no interest in sitting on antique sofas twenty feet apart, and meals were eaten at odd hours and most often in the fresh air.
By day, Luciano had shown Kerry all the places he remembered from his childhood. He had begun by taking her to see his former home and he had been disconcerted to find the old farmhouse lying in ruins. That he and his mother should have been evicted all those years ago only for the house to lie empty and unused angered him. On their return to the villa, he had had his father’s portrait taken down from the wall.
‘Santo cielo. I thought in time I might be able to look at him, at least acknowledge who he was,’ Luciano had confessed in a ravaged undertone that night. ‘But I can’t even do that. We had so little but even that he took from us to prot
ect his name from gossip and he got away with it because we were powerless.’
‘Don’t even think about him.’ Kerry had curved round his lean, muscular frame in sympathy, hurting for him, wondering why she had never appreciated that anyone who felt anything as deeply as he did had to be much more vulnerable than he might seem on the surface.
Exploring the extensive Contarini estate often on foot had been very enjoyable. She had not cared where they went or what they did as long as he was with her, and he was very energetic. The designer clothes he had bought her got laughably dirty, torn and stained while they roamed through the woods, climbed over fences and tumbledown walls and picnicked in fields. In the evening, however, they often ate out in exclusive restaurants in Siena. Then she would see other women look at his bold, bronzed profile and lithe, powerful physique with a frank appreciation and sexual avidity that scared her. For Luciano never mentioned love, the future or even the past that they had once shared, and she soon realised that without even one of those important elements insecurity was to be her lot in life with him.
Most mornings he dragged her out of bed early to tour the vineyard with him. She thought all wine tasted like nasty medicine and had never been interested in how the grapes made it from the vines into the bottles, but she was really pleased that he should want to share his interest with her. Shamefully, however, what lingered longest in Kerry’s memory was the passionate excitement of making love with him in a dusty cellar below the winery, her wild cries of pleasure silenced by his marauding mouth.
Occasionally he would leave her alone for an hour or two while he caught up with business. When they were apart, Kerry spent virtually every minute on the phone. If she wasn’t chatting to Miles, she was chatting to one of her sisters. That first call from Misty had soon been followed by others from Freddy and Ione. Kerry was getting acquainted with her siblings through their daily phone conversations. But she found herself trying to conceal from Luciano the sheer frequency of the calls they exchanged, for she could not help feeling that, in getting on like a house on fire with them, she was being disloyal to him.
‘Will this keep you awake long enough for me to have my wicked way with you?’
Dredged from her last uncomfortable thought back to the present, Kerry blinked and muttered, ‘Sorry?’
With a husky laugh, Luciano lifted her hand so that the sunlight drew a rainbow glitter from the sapphire and diamond bracelet he had clasped round her wrist while she lay drowsing by his side.
Kerry’s eyes widened to their fullest extent and she sat up. ‘Oh, my goodness…it’s…it’s amazing!’ She watched the jewels flash and catch the light. ‘Are they real?’
‘Of course they are!’ Luciano was insulted.
The gift made her feel uneasy. ‘You shouldn’t have bought me something so expensive—’
