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‘Hmm,’ she said.
It was all she said. Swishing her hair over her shoulder, she turned to look out over the water.
Just hmm?
Inferno, what was that supposed to mean? He didn’t have to explain himself. It was a long, boring story—Dio, he’d told it to himself so many times even he was bored with it! But perhaps Ava should hear it so that she understood, so that she didn’t make any plans involving him...
‘This is magical. I can see why people turn out in the evening to promenade,’ she said unexpectedly, turning up eyes made soft by the light. ‘We should go out on the water tomorrow.’
Tomorrow he had planned on meeting with some investors.
‘Unless you’ve planned something else?’
Could a woman look more guileless? All her anticipation and uncertainty flickered in those few words.
What could he say?
‘Anything you desire, Ava mio.’
* * *
The next day he took her out in a motorboat along the coast, around the Galli Islands. The day after they drove into the Lattari Mountains cradling the Amalfi Coast.
A light rain began to fall and, hand in hand, they ran to shelter in a local church. In the dim incense-scented light he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He didn’t know what it was—perhaps it was the coastal light—but she seemed to shimmer in the gloom. Her dark shoulder-length cloak of hair, her pearly skin, the deep pink of her mouth—all hot colours on a rainy day. She rested against him, looking out at the rain, with his hands hooked around her waist, his head resting against hers.
The weight of her was perfect.
She smelled like vanilla and cloves.
She smelled like Ava.
‘Do you see that hill?’ She pointed dead ahead. ‘It looks like a rabbit’s head.’
He couldn’t see the rabbit.
‘Si, innamorata. A fluffy little bunny.’
She eyed him wryly.
‘And over there—the forest. That’s a boot.’
‘Si, a boot.’
‘I made that one up to see if you were humouring me! And it’s not a forest—it’s a wood.’
She shoved her shoulder into his chest playfully and then gave a little cry of delight.
‘Oh, look—is that a fox?’
The whisk of red across the pasture was indeed a fox.
He felt her thrill and realised that although he knew this area like the back of his hand, from boyhood summers with his maternal grandparents, looking at it through her eyes made him feel as if he was seeing this place for the first time.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that the fox was probably on its way to gobble up any real rabbits foolish enough to be darting around in the rain. She was a true city girl. She was...
Making him crazy. Pazzo. Why was he discussing furry animals, in a church in a little village no one had ever heard of, when he had a hotel suite waiting for them? He wasn’t a tour guide, and he sure as hell didn’t think foxes were something to be delighted over rather than thought of as the vermin they were.
He’d tell her that in a minute. He’d drag her out of here and they’d make a run for the car, rain or no rain, and drive all the way back to Positano at speed. And when they got to the hotel he’d strip her clothes off her and do what a sensible man would be doing with a beautiful woman—not hunkering down in churches on a day custom-made for more adult indoor activity.
Then he’d get around to organising their transport south, because tomorrow was D-Day and all he’d been doing was dragging his feet round these tourist traps for days.
She turned in his arms and looked up, her eyes shining. ‘I’ve never seen a fox before—at least not so close.’
‘Si, they’re shy little animals,’ he found himself saying. ‘You have to play your hand carefully around them...no sudden moves.’
Which was when, instead of whisking her off for some debauchery, as he had done a hundred times before with other women, he bent his head and kissed her soft, delicious mouth. He forgot about D-Day and tourist traps and the idiocy of delighting in foxes and accepted he was possibly the luckiest bastardo in the world.
* * *
In town, he let her out to run another one of her mysterious errands, idling the car above the waterfront. He caught sight of her coming across the grass, the sun as bright here as it had been banished by cloud cover in the hills, shining on her chocolate hair.
She looked Italian—there was no other word for it—in her simple button-front sundress. She even wore it sliding slightly over one shoulder, with the top two buttons undone over her cleavage and the bottom three buttons undone to reveal a portion of her long thighs with each step as the skirt opened over her knees. She looked happy and earthy and incredibly sexy, and Gianluca became aware his wasn’t the only pair of eyes on her.
