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Crazy to feel so disappointed, but she did. She’d spent her lunch hour buying ingredients, and as soon as she’d finished work at the charity office she’d rushed back to start cooking.
And now she felt ridiculous—because wasn’t this such a cliché? The little woman at home, cooking dinner for her man and getting all bent out of shape because it was spoiled?
Mortified at the thought of what Luca’s reaction would have been to see this attempt at creating some kind of domestic idyll, and losing any appetite herself, Serena took the chicken stew off the cooker. When it had cooled sufficiently she resisted the urge to throw it away and put it into a bowl to store in the fridge.
Feeling antsy, she headed outside to the terrace. The stunning view soothed her in a way that Athens had never done, even though she now called it home.
‘Maledire,’ she cursed softly in Italian. And then she cursed Luca, for making her fall for him.
The weekend had been...amazing. She remembered Luca kissing the tattoo on her shoulder. He’d murmured to her, ‘You know the swallow represents resurrection?’
Serena had nodded her head, feeling absurdly emotional that he got it.
When they’d woken late on Sunday Luca had told her that he had to visit a local favela and she’d asked to go with him. She had seen first-hand his commitment to his own city. The amazing Fonseca Community Centre that provided literacy classes, language classes, business classes and a crèche so that everyone in the community could learn.
When she’d gone wandering, left alone briefly, she’d found Luca in the middle of a ring of men, doing capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial arts. He’d been stripped to the waist, his torso gleaming with exertion, making graceful and unbelievably agile movements to the beat of a drum played by a young boy.
She hadn’t been the only woman ogling his spectacular form. By the time he’d finished, a gaggle of women and girls had been giggling and blushing. But a trickle of foreboding had skated over her skin... That had been the moment when he’d caught her eye and she’d seen something indecipherable cross his face. By the time he’d caught up with her again there had been something different about him. He’d shut down.
He’d brought her back here, to this apartment, and even though he’d stayed the night and made love to her, something had been off. When she’d woken he’d been gone, and she hadn’t seen him again until late that evening, when he’d arrived and, with an almost feral look on his face, had kissed her so passionately that all tendrils of concern had fled, to be replaced with heat, distracting her from the fact that he clearly hadn’t been interested in anything else.
The truth was that every moment she spent with Luca was ripping her apart internally. Especially when he looked at her as if she were some kind of unexploded device, yet kissed her as if his life depended on it. Clearly he was conflicted about her. He’d admitted that it was hard for him to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t what he’d believed her to be. And Serena had the gut-wrenching feeling that Luca would have almost preferred it if she had been the debauched, spoilt princess he’d expected.
She had to face the fact that her confession, while liberating for her, had not proved to be so cataclysmic for Luca.
And of course it wouldn’t have been, Serena chided herself. For Luca this was just...an affair. A slaking of desire. The fact that it had brought about her own personal epiphany was all Serena would have to comfort her when it was over, and that would have to be enough.
* * *
When Luca walked into the apartment it was after midnight. He felt guilty. He knew Serena had been making dinner because she’d told him earlier, when he’d seen her on a visit to the charity offices. It was a visit that had had his employees looking at him in surprise, because he usually conducted meetings in his own office and had little cause to visit them.
The apartment was silent, but he could smell the faint scent of something delicious in the air. When he went into the kitchen it was pristine, but he opened the fridge and saw the earthenware bowl containing dinner. The thought that perhaps she hadn’t eaten because he hadn’t been there made him feel guiltier. He hadn’t even known that Serena could cook until she’d told him she’d taken lessons in Athens.
And he hadn’t known how deeply enmeshed he was becoming wi
th her until he’d looked at her in the favela and the enormity of it all had hit him. It had taken seeing her against that dusty backdrop—Serena DePiero, ex-socialite and wild child, looking as comfortable in the incongruous surroundings as if she’d been born into them like a native. In spite of the white-blonde beauty that had set her apart. He’d certainly been aware of the men looking at her, and the same black emotion that had gripped him at the beach had caught him again.
Jealousy. For the first time.
It was in that moment that a very belated sense of exposure had come over him and made him pull back from a dangerous brink. Luca knew better than anyone how fickle people were—how you couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t just pull your world out from under your feet within seconds.
His own parents had done it to him and his brother—setting them on different paths of fate almost as idly as if they were Greek gods, playing with hapless mortals. For years he’d had nightmares about his parents pulling them limb from limb, until their body parts were so mixed up that they didn’t even know who was who any more.
Serena was getting too close—under his skin. Everything kept coming back to how badly he’d misjudged her—and never more so than now. He’d just had a conversation with his brother, who was in Rio on business.
And yet as he stood in the doorway of her bedroom now and saw the shape of her under the covers, the bright splash of white-blonde hair, he was taking off his clothes before he even realised what he was doing, sliding in behind her, wrapping himself around her and trying desperately to ignore the way his soul felt inexplicably soothed.
Even as she woke and turned towards him, her seeking sleepy mouth finding his, Luca was steeling himself inside—because this would all be over as soon as she knew what his brother had just told him. Because then everything that had bound them from the past would be gone.
But just...not yet.
* * *
When Serena woke in the dawn light, the bed was empty. But the hum in her body and the pleasurable ache between her legs told her she hadn’t dreamt that Luca had come into her bed last night. Or dreamt the mindless passion he’d driven her to, taking her over the edge again and again, until she’d been spent, exhausted, begging for mercy.
It was as if Luca had been driven by something desperate.
She blinked, slowly coming awake. And even though her body was sated and lethargic from passion, her heart was heavy. She loved Luca, and she knew with cold certainty that he didn’t love her. But he wanted her.
