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‘I am not,’ she said icily, ‘holding out for anything! My life is not a game show, Giovanni—even though sometimes it’s felt weird enough to be one during the last couple of weeks—’
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’ Now it was his turn to sound icy.
How could she tell him that whatever he gave her, it was never enough? That she wanted more, and more still. She needed to go deeper with him than the great sex and the lunches and dinners and trips around London. She wanted more than a surface relationship, and she could not have it, she realised. Not with him.
‘Nothing, Giovanni.’ She gave a weary sigh as she raked her fingers to pull the fall of hair back from her face, and looked at him sadly. ‘I knew it had to end, and so did you. I just don’t want it to end on a bad note.’ She hesitated. ‘But neither do I want to try to sustain something we both know isn’t sustainable.’
‘So that’s it?’
‘It doesn’t have to be this way. We can say goodbye, and enjoy the memories of what we had.’
His face grew even more shuttered. ‘As you wish.’ He walked across the room and picked up his bags. ‘But you’ll forgive me if I don’t hang around.’
‘Of course,’ she said stiffly, but she followed him out to the front door all the same, opening it for him and praying that he would kiss her. One last kiss to remember him by.
And, looking down at her, he knew what she wanted. Oh, yes. They had kept areas of their lives out of bounds for necessary reasons of survival. They had not discussed Anna, or the man she herself had been briefly engaged to. Those topics would have caused pain and jealousy and recriminations.
But her physical needs he knew inside out. He knew her body and her desires almost better than he knew his own. Not to kiss her would be to punish her, and a cruel and ruthless streak badly wanted to punish her for her rejection of him. Except that he needed that kiss just as badly as she did.
Something to remember her by.
He dropped the bags and drew her into his arms, and her eyes closed as though she could not bear to read what was in his face.
He kissed her. Softly at first, and then with a growing ardour which he knew he must quell, and when he pulled away from her, almost violently, they both gave ragged little sighs of regret.
As her eyelids fluttered open she was unsurprised by the hard and uncompromising set of his features, knowing that he could offer her nothing more than the very bare essentials.
She heard her lips framing a question she had not intended to ask. ‘And will you see…Anna?’
She wanted a reassurance that he was unwilling or unable to give her. What the hell did she expect him to do? Renounce all others out of some inappropriate loyalty to a woman who had just said she didn’t want to see him again?
‘Of course,’ he said, quietly and truthfully, and saw how she tried not to let her pain show. ‘Sicily is a small island. We share many friends—it is inevitable that I shall see her.’
She wanted to ask him whether he would rekindle his engagement, whether absence had changed his feelings about Anna, but she didn’t dare. She was afraid of what the answer might be. She nodded instead. ‘Goodbye, Giovanni,’ she whispered.
‘Ciao
, bella,’ he gritted and swung out of the door before he could change his mind.
He fumed all the way to the airport, and thought how ironic it was that he remained angry, when he had sought her out precisely to rid himself of that emotion. And for two weeks he had existed in a state which had pushed that anger to the recesses of his mind, but now it was back, and with a brand-new focus.
So why was he angry now? Because she had told him that she had no wish to continue the affair? Wasn’t his Sicilian pride wounded more than his heart?
Very probably.
It was purely physical, he told himself grimly as he returned his car to the hire company and picked up his bags. All it ever was and all it ever could be.
He followed the signs to the departure lounge, telling himself that he would fly home and forget all about her.
‘Can I get you anything, sir?’
‘Mmm?’ He looked up absently.
‘Some coffee perhaps? Or something else?’
The stewardess flashed him the kind of smile which told him that there was more than coffee on offer, should he so desire.
Enjoy your freedom, he told himself. Enjoy it!
