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Because something had happened during that brief, blissful stay. He had been reluctant to leave, and had shown it this morning, and she wanted to treasure his reluctance for the rest of her life. Surely she must have touched a tiny part of him, for him to have behaved like that?
But she knew that a long-term affair with a man like Giovanni would eventually end, and end bitterly, too—of that she was certain. And she would have her heart broken completely—whilst at the moment it felt only slightly wounded.
Her emerald eyes were brimming with fresh tears as she looked at her sister. ‘The affair just wouldn’t have been enough,’ she told her simply, and Lucy nodded in comprehension.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said slowly. ‘Now I do see.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘But you were wrong, you know, Kate.’
Kate stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘There is a word in the dictionary to describe the way you’re feeling about him.’
Kate’s look remained blank.
‘It’s called love, my darling,’ she said gently.
CHAPTER TEN
THE envelope was waiting for her when she arrived home from work, the writing on it unfamiliar, but with a lurch of her heart Kate guessed exactly who it was from. The elegant, lazy script could only have been penned by one person. She stared at it as if it were an unexploded bomb.
Open it, a voice inside her said. Or would a more self-protective woman simply have hurled it into the bin?
She picked it up and slit it open with trembling fingers, and saw that she had been right. Inside was an airline ticket to Barcelona, and a brief, almost insultingly curt note.
—Have three months been enough to change your mind, cara? Why not join me in Spain—and we can take up where we left off?
It was signed, ‘G’.
She slammed the note down on the table, resisting the stupid urge to read and reread it, to run her eyes hungrily over the two stark sentences again and again.
“Take up where we left off, indeed!” And where was that? In bed? Swallowing down her anger and her temptation, she told herself that
she would telephone him and tell him exactly what he could do with his ticket.
No. She would ignore it completely—that would be far more effective a refusal. His honour would be outraged! And she wouldn’t be susceptible to the honeyed persuasion of his voice.
She kicked her shoes across the sitting room as the telephone started ringing and her heart began to pound uncomfortably. Don’t be crazy, she told herself. It could be absolutely anyone.
But it wasn’t.
She seemed to sense that it was him even before he spoke. There was an infinitesimal, irresistible pause, before she heard him murmur, ‘Cara?’
Sweat broke out in icy pinpricks on her brow. ‘I am not your darling!’ she snapped.
‘No. Not my anything. Not any more,’ he agreed mockingly. ‘When you will not see me.’
The hardest decision she had ever had to make, but she had stuck by it. ‘I meant what I said, Giovanni.’
He sighed. ‘I know you did.’
‘So why send me a ticket to join you?’
‘You know exactly why.’ A pause. ‘I want to see you.’
‘And you’re a man who is used to getting what he wants,’ she observed.
He didn’t answer that. ‘Have you missed me?’
‘Like a hole in the head!’
