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And if he didn't?
That was the risk she ran—and anyway, it was too late to back out now, because the car was squeezing through a narrow stone arch o
ver a track which seemed to bump upwards for ages. But there were the lights of habitation in the distance, and Sorcha's heart was in her mouth as the cab drew to a halt.
'Quanto e esso, per favore?' she asked.
The driver gave her a price, and it was expensive—but then the journey had taken close to two hours.
Sorcha remembered the other word she had learned on the plane. 'Per favore...attesa?' Because she needed him to wait in case Cesare wasn't there—or in case the unthinkable happened and he didn't want to see her. Or he was with another woman.
'Si, signorina.'
The air was heavy and close, and Sorcha thought she heard the distant rumble of thunder. Tiny beads of sweat sprang up on her forehead and her hands were literally shaking as she walked across the soft grass towards the villa, where she could make out splashes of light which shone through an abundance of trees.
What was she going to say?
The door was open, and she stepped inside and heard voices and laughter and chatter and, incongruously, a baby crying. Her eyes opened in alarm.
What had she done? For a moment she almost imagined that Cesare had been living some kind of bizarre double life—that he had been conducting an affair with her while secretly flying back here to see his wife and child.
But she knew that he would never do that—in her heart she knew that Cesare was a man of principle and integrity, and that such a double betrayal would be alien to his nature.
So did this mean he was having some kind of party? It certainly sounded like it.
She felt like someone in a film as she walked silently along the long corridor towards the sounds of merriment. As if she would find... What?
The sound was coming from outside, on the far side of the house, and Sorcha walked through a vast kitchen and open-plan dining room to where she could see candles guttering on a table on the terrace.
Ignoring the small shout of consternation from a chef who was swirling flames around in a frying pan, Sorcha stepped onto the terrace to see a table set for dinner and four adults seated around it, plus a small child.
Five faces turned towards her, and the conversation dried up as if some celestial director had muted the sound. Only the child gurgled.
Sorcha barely registered the faces of the others—only distantly noting that one was male and two were female. How neat. How tidy.
Cesare was staring at her with an expression she didn't recognise. There was no smile. No word of welcome. Nothing but the cold glitter of disbelief in his black eyes.
'Madre di Dio' he ground out beneath his breath, and rose to his feet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cesare stared at her and felt the great slam of his heart against his ribcage, its sudden powerful pounding as it leapt into life. "Sorcha? ' he demanded.”What are you doing here? '
It was the greeting from hell—or at least from her very worst nightmare. Keep calm, Sorcha, she told herself as she felt herself sway a little. You have a get-out clause for just this eventuality—remember?
There's a taxi waiting for me/ she said calmly, as if women just arrived from England at any old time and then turned straight back again. 'I'll...I'll go back to the airport. '
'Don't be so absurd,' said Cesare, but the coolness in his voice remained. 'I will go and dismiss him. Sit down—you look terrible. Luca will pour you some wine. This is Sorcha, everyone.'
He spoke in rapid Italian and the other man immediately stood up to pull out an available chair for her—at the end of the table, naturally, as far from Cesare as it was possible to be.
Sorcha didn't want to sit down. She wanted some giant hand to magic her away from here, from the bemused and frankly unwelcoming expressions of the people around the table.
But she was feeling distinctly shaky, and she also recognised that it would look utterly ridiculous if she just disappeared again.
'Here. ’ Luca pressed a glass of red wine into her hand and Sorcha sipped it gratefully, nodding a kind of greeting at their collective faces, as if trying to resurrect a little bit of social grace in a situation which certainly didn't feature in any etiquette book.
They were all Italian—and why would they be anything else? One of the women said, 'You have travelled far?'
