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He was glowering at her now. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in, Lina?’
There was a pause. ‘I wasn’t intending to, no.’ He appeared to be waiting for an answer and so she gave him one, even though every pore of her body objected to sending him away. ‘I can’t see the point,’ she said in a low voice. ‘There’s really nothing left to say, is there?’
Salvatore felt the painful punch of his heart as he looked at his soft Madonna and noted the unusually stubborn set of her chin. He thought how incredible she looked in that short cotton dress, her thick hair dangling over one shoulder, and he thought how unbelievably stupid he’d been. He felt a jolt of rage and pain which stirred somewhere deep inside him. ‘Can we please go inside?’ he said. ‘Because I don’t want to have this conversation on the doorstep.’
There was a split second of a pause when he actually thought she was going to refuse him entry, before she gave an ungracious nod. ‘You’d better come in.’
‘Thanks.’ Quickly, he stepped inside and shut the door before she could change her mind, following her up a scratched wooden staircase and into a small, untidy kitchen. A take-away cup of coffee was cooling on the side, next to a sickly-looking croissant.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
‘No. But please don’t let me stop you eating breakfast.’
‘I’m not hungry either. Not any more. Look, why don’t you just tell me why you’re here, and then let me get on with my work?’
Salvatore had spent the whole night and all the journey here working out exactly what he planned to say, but suddenly his breath caught in his throat as a dark wave of fear washed over him. A fear like nothing he’d ever felt before, and he had only himself to blame. Because what if it was already too late? What if he’d blown it with his arrogance and his control-freakery and his inability to really let go of the past?
That was a chance he had to take. A chance all men took when they put their feelings on the line. When they met a woman they were willing to take a risk for, and when they’d behaved like a fool. But even so...this was pretty scary stuff. ‘I’ve been a fool, Lina,’ he said, and looked at her.
‘You won’t hear me denying it,’ she said.
Had he thought that would be enough? That she’d open her arms and forgive him with the minimum of fuss? Yes. He had. But it was not enough, he could see that now. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to continue but it wasn’t easy to express himself. Hell, he’d never had to express himself like this before. ‘You made me look at the past and realise that I was in danger of ruining the rest of my life if I wasn’t careful.’
‘I’m pleased for you,’ she said primly.
Did she want more? It seemed she did. ‘The house feels empty without you and so does my bed. I miss your soft smile and your laugh and the way you sometimes lose your temper,’ he said and then, when she didn’t speak, he sucked in another breath and said the words very carefully, just to make sure there could be no mistake. ‘The thing is, that I love you, Lina Vitale. I didn’t want to. I didn’t plan to, but I do.’
If he had been expecting laughter, or tears, or gratitude, he got none of those. Just a faintly hostile expression which radiated from the depths of her bourbon eyes.
‘Did you say that to one of the women you were with last night?’ she asked, in a voice he’d never heard her use before.
‘What women? Oh!’ He clapped the flat of his hand against his brow. ‘You’re talking about the women outside the nightclub?’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘You mean there are more?’
‘None. None at all. They spent the night following us round the club like detectives and were as devious as a pair of foxes—we only managed to shake them off once our car had arrived. Listen to me, Lina. Hear me out—that’s all I ask.’ His throat felt as if someone had attacked it with a blowtorch but somehow he managed to fire the words out. ‘I’ve spent the past few weeks telling myself I’m no good for you, that you’d be better off without me, and, yes,’ he admitted, ‘that I’d be better off without you.’
She was silent for a moment, then turned and stared out of the window, as if she’d rather look at a mosaic of Jimi Hendrix than at him.
‘Go on,’ she said, in a small voice.
‘An old friend of mine flew into town yesterday and we decided to...’
‘To what, Salvatore?’ she quizzed, whirling round to face him as his words tailed off. ‘What did you decide?’
He sighed. He’d wanted to go to the nightclub to see what effect it had on him. He’d hoped to find an easy solution to his ongoing heartache in the form of one of the women who regularly swarmed over him. He’d thought he might be able to forget about Lina and the way she made him feel. But he couldn’t forget. What was more, he didn’t want to. The glitzy women who had tried to come onto him had meant nothing. They never had done. Only this woman had got close to him, despite him doing his level best to push her away. And that was when he’d realised how hard he’d tried to protect himself from emotional pain. That, for all his towering success, he could rightly be accused of being a coward. That with his charitable work he had attempted to help people who’d been deserted and never known love—he had just neglected to help himself in the process.
‘I decided I needed to come and tell you the truth,’ he bit out. ‘Which is breathtakingly simple. That I love you. You and only you.’
‘Salvatore,’ she said, a little desperately, and now her face had become a twisting conflict of emotions, so that for a minute it looked as if she was about to cry. ‘Don’t say any more.’
‘I have to. Listen to me, Lina. Please.’ His plea was heartfelt and maybe she guessed that, for she grew silent again. ‘I fell for you the first time I saw you, in a way I’d never done before. It’s why I broke the rule of a lifetime and had a one-night stand. You blew me away with your freshness and sweet charm and made me feel as if you wanted me for the man I really was. But it suited me to disregard that simple fact, because you also made me feel like I was losing control, and that was the one thing I had relied on in my life, in order to survive.’ He paused. ‘The only thing.’
‘That was why one minute you pushed me away and the next, you were pulling me back again,’ she said slowly. ‘Why you kept saying about how you liked me to look. That’s why you liked to dictate how I wore my hair.’
‘It’s true I prefer it down,’ he admitted.
‘To be honest, so do I.’
