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He swore softly under his breath but in the next moment she was free, and like a bird seeing its escape from the cat that was tormenting it she flew across the hall and up the stairs to her room, opening the door with trembling fingers and then turning the catch to lock it once she was safely inside.
Her legs giving way, she slid down on to the carpet and put her face in her hands, wondering if he would follow her and try to speak to her.
But there was only silence.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHERRY spent a wretched sleepless night in endless postmortems, and as a warm, peachy dawn banished the last of the shadows she was forced to acknowledge that she had played right into Caterina’s hands. She shouldn’t have reacted as she had, she admitted painfully. She had let the Italian woman’s poison get under her skin and into her veins. And why? Because already she was far too involved with the enigmatic master of the Carella estate. Vittorio’s relationship—past or present—with Caterina, or any other woman for that matter, was nothing to do with her. They weren’t a couple. She wasn’t going out with him. She had no rights whatsoever.
She watched the sun begin to rise in a cloudlessly brilliant blue Italian sky and faced the unpalatable fact that this fledgling feeling she felt for Vittorio was already aeons stronger than anything she’d felt before. Which meant… Here she faltered. The hard lessons of her childhood and youth and her parents’ division—her mother and Angela, she and her father—coupled with Angela’s obsessional demands to subjugate and belittle her, and the most recent episode with Liam, had made her shrink from trusting anyone or admitting her feelings. When her father had died she had been inconsolable for a time, knowing the one person in all the world who really loved her was gone, but no one would have guessed.
She cared for Vittorio. No—more than that. She had fallen in love with him in a way that showed her the emotion she’d felt for Liam was puppy love in comparison.
It was the biggest mistake of her life, she admitted soberly, but it had happened, so she might as well face it and get through the next few weeks without burying her head in the sand. And this morning she felt strong enough to mention the altercation with Caterina without the indignity of tears or temper. She would merely say, without going into details, that Caterina had been hurtful and it had upset her, and she hadn’t felt able to talk about it last night—hence her behaviour, which she now realised was unacceptable.
Her stomach turning cartwheels at the thought of the conversation ahead of her, she showered and dressed, applying sun protection cream, which was an essential make-up item, but not bothering with anything else, before looping her hair into a shiny ponytail. She was ready long before it was time for breakfast, and went to sit on the sweetly scented balcony, taking a book she didn’t even bother to open.
The Carella gardens were ablaze with colour, and for some minutes she simply drank in the beauty stretching in front of her, easing her troubled mind. The brilliant hues of the flowers and bushes and trees against the vivid blue backdrop of sky, the limpid green of bowling-green-smooth lawns surrounded by luxuriant foliage, the warm sun which at this time of the morning was comfortably pleasant, the twitter of birds in the cypress trees which flanked the villa all worked a magic which was bittersweet.
And then the soothing work was abruptly undone as the tall, muscled figure of Vittorio came into view. He was clearly on his way to take an early-morning dip in the pool and was wearing next to nothing—just the minuscule trunks he favoured.
He walked briskly, not looking back at the house, and she felt safe to feast her eyes on the virile male beauty, her breathing becoming quick and shallow. She saw him stop and talk to Francesco, the gardener, for a few moments, and then he continued to the pool, dropping the towel he was carrying on the tiled surround before diving straight in. Unable to tear her eyes away, she watched him cut through the blue water at Olympic speed, covering length after length in the shimmering depths. It was a punishing pace and she sat mesmerised—until she realised he was hauling himself out of the water, at which point she ducked back into the bedroom, feeling as guilty as a voyeur at a peepshow.
It took a minute or two of splashing her hot face with cool water before her colour began to subside, but even then when she looked into the bathroom mirror the lingering sexual awareness in her eyes made her groan. It was acutely humiliating to accept she’d been ogling him like a sex-starved teenager; before she had met Vittorio she wouldn’t have said her sex drive was particularly high, but now…
Groaning again, she resumed the splashing for another few moments, comforting herself with the fact Vittorio had been unaware of her lechery. One thing was for sure, she thought desperately once her hot flushes were under control, she didn’t know herself any more and she certainly wasn’t the woman she’d imagined herself to be. She had expected to fall in love with Italy—everything she’d read or seen about the country, including its exquisitely beautiful language, had told her it would be breathtakingly memorable—but to fall in love with an individual… No. That had never been on the cards. And someone like Vittorio—a man who could have any woman he wanted, a man from a different culture, a man who was out of her league in every way.
By the time she went down to breakfast she was in control again. At least on the outside. She’d made a promise to Sophia and she wouldn’t break her word, so that was that.
Vittorio was alone in the breakfast room, as she’d expected, and without even sitting down Cherry launched into the speech she’d been practising for the last hour. ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said quickly, before she lost her nerve. ‘I know I spoilt a pleasant evening, but I’d had a few words with Caterina in the ladies’ cloakroom and it threw me a bit, I think. But that’s no excuse, and—’
He’d risen and come to her side. Now he put a finger to her lips and drew her across the room to the chair next to his. ‘Sit,’ he said softly, before pouring her a glass of freshly squeezed juice from the jug on the table. ‘Drink. Then we talk.’
She took a few sips, her nerves jangling as much at his presence as the conversation they were about to have. He looked better than any man had the right to look first thing in the morning, and again the sheer hopelessness of the situation threatened to overwhelm her.
‘Now.’ He took the glass from her nerveless fingers and placed it on the table, then looked at her seriously. ‘Tell me what Caterina said to you, mia piccola.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She was definitely not about to repeat it. It was too embarrassing and degrading—besides which, it might put the idea in his head that she was trying to ensnare him in some way, as Caterina had intimated. ‘Suffice to say she doesn’t like me staying here and helping Sophia. I think she takes it as some kind of personal insult because I’m not Italian.’
He tilted her chin with one finger. ‘Tell me exactly what she said,’ he repeated.
She’d rather be hung, drawn and quartered. She stared straight back at him. ‘No,’ she said, very firmly.
‘It clearly upset you a great deal, so I insist,’ he said with equal firmness.
She jerked her chin free and leaned back, away from him. ‘I’ve told you the gist of it. I can’t remember word for word.’
He must have realised this was one battle he wasn’t going to win because he stared at her for one more moment before swearing under his breath. ‘You are the most exasperating woman I have ever met, do you know this?’ he grated irritably. ‘You look all of sixteen years old this morning, with the horse tail, and yet you are formidable.’
‘It’s a ponytail,’ she corrected, ignoring the rest of what he’d said. She wasn’t sure if she liked being called formidable, but she could live with exasperating—although sixteen? For a moment Caterina’s lush, ripe curves were on the screen of her mind and she inwardly winced. Still, she’d never pretended to be a femme fatale.
‘Ponytail, horse tail, it is the same.’ He stared at her before standing up and taking her hand, and in answer to her surprised look he said, ‘We will walk in the garden for a few moments before we eat. I want to talk to you about Caterina in private,’ he added, pulling her to her feet.
‘You don’t have to—’ she began, but he wasn’t listening.
Once out in the scented sunshine he still
held her fingers, and, her heart thudding fit to burst, she glanced up at the hard profile as he began to speak. ‘Caterina is the wife of my friend, and for that reason it would be disrespectful to Lorenzo if we were overheard,’ he said, sounding very Italian. ‘It is not a happy union. I do not think Caterina is capable of making any man happy, and I know that I, myself, had a fortunate escape many years ago when we parted. It did not take me long to realise that what I’d felt for her was not love but something altogether more earthy. When one is young the desires of the body are paramount. And also, perhaps, when one is not so young. This understanding was timely. It has governed my life since. Do you understand what I am saying?’
