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He shrugged. ‘It was a new experience—and experience is always useful.’
She gave him a frozen smile. ‘And is that how you categorise me, Giovanni? As a useful experience?’
He gave her question a moment’s consideration. ‘Not just as a useful experience, no.’ His eyes mocked her as he lifted his glass in a toast. ‘More as a rather beautiful and enjoyable one. Wouldn’t you agree?’
But it sounded more of a boast than a tribute, and Kate was glad that their food arrived at that precise moment, and that the ladling out of rice and chicken and lentils occupied their hands as well as meaning that she could drop her eyes from that unsettling gaze.
She wanted to ask him more about his life in order to find out more about the man, but she was scared of what it might reveal. His history would inevitably include details of his engagement, now broken—which instinct told her he bitterly regretted and blamed her for, at least in part. Because, despite his outwardly relaxed air, there was an unmistakable tension about him, a repressed kind of anger which he was only just managing to conceal.
She forced herself to eat a mouthful of curry, while he seemed to have no such reservations, eating his food with a sensual enjoyment, which was a pleasure to watch. And she found herself wishing that she had not been so compliant from the outset, wondering if she had applied her usual brakes something more enduring than a two-week affair might have come of it.
He glanced up to find her looking at him. She had barely touched a thing. ‘You’re not hungry?’
She made a play of eating a piece of chicken, then put her fork down. ‘Not really.’
‘You want to leave?’
‘When you’ve finished.’
He ate a last mouthful of rice, his blue eyes fixed thoughtfully on hers. Then he put his own fork down and reached his hand across the table to take hers. ‘You’re not having second thoughts, are you, Kate?’ he questioned softly, unprepared for the sudden jolt of disappointment as he imagined her saying yes.
Of course she was. But even third or fourth thoughts wouldn’t make her change her mind. Not now. She gave her head a little shake, even managing a little smile. ‘Of course not,’ she told him serenely as he raised his hand to call for the bill. It was a little late for that!
Outside, he took her hand as they walked slowly back to the flat, stopping off at the pharmacy on the way.
And Giovanni looked at her with an expression of bemusement lighting his blue eyes when he had seen her rise in colour as he had taken his wallet out to pay for his purchase.
‘Why, Kate,’ he observed softly, running a fingertip across her hot cheek, ‘you’re blushing.’
She wanted to tell him that this wasn’t the kind of thing she normally did—but what was normal any more? He probably wouldn’t believe a word of it, and why should he? ‘They know me in this shop,’ she said drily, by way of explanation.
‘Then they will know that you choose your lovers wisely,’ he returned with an irresistible glitter of his eyes.
And all her doubts were driven away at the first hungry touch of his lips once the door of her flat had closed behind them.
‘I want you,’ he told her unsteadily.
‘I’m right here,’ she whispered back.
The next morning Kate rang downstairs and had Lucy clear her diary for the next two weeks, and launched wholeheartedly into a fairy-tale, unreal romance.
It was her first experience of living with a man—though the term ‘living’ had a sort of permanence about it which didn’t quite ring true in this case.
She set aside a shelf in the bathroom for him, and cleared a space in her wardrobe for his suits. She learned that he liked nothing more than black coffee for breakfast, that opera pleased him more than any other kind of music and that whatever emotions he had—and sometimes she wondered—he kept them firmly locked away on the inside. For Kate had only ever seen him angry—or passionate when he took her in his arms. The cool Giovanni who accompanied her to restaurants and art galleries—he gave nothing away.
Two days after he had first moved in, he met Lucy.
Kate had been dreading the meeting, without really knowing why, but one look at the disapproval which Lucy iced at him was enough to tell her that her fears had been justified.
‘Your sister doesn’t like me,’ he observed after Lucy had said a stilted hello and refused coffee.
‘She doesn’t know you,’ answered Kate brightly.
‘OK, she doesn’t approve of me, then.’ He paused and looked at her. ‘And why should that be, Kate?’
She supposed that there was no point in lying. She sighed. ‘She knows about you, and the fact that you were engaged when we first met,’ she added, in answer to the questioning look in his eyes.
‘And your sister, being such a paragon of virtue, naturally disapproved, did she? What does she do for a living, just out of interest—other than glare at your houseguests?’
