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There was no time to fuss with her hair, so she simply brushed it and settled for wearing it down.
The dress needed no heels, but it certainly required lipstick.
Antonietta had no make-up of her own, and so, promising herself she would replenish it, she opened Aurora’s Christmas present and painted her mouth crimson.
No, she would not save the dress for her coffin—and yet she felt like a liar as she stared in the mirror, for truly she was not the woman her reflection portrayed. She was not sexy, nor beautiful, Antonietta told herself, even if the dress said that she was.
Oh, but to Rafe she was.
Antonietta could not know the breath of fresh air that she was to him.
‘I lied to you,’ Rafe said as she approached.
‘Youaremarried...’
She knew it! He was simply too good to be true.
‘No,’ Rafe said, ‘but thisisa date, Antonietta.’
Her breath hitched and that flame spread warmth in her chest and down to her stomach.
‘This can go nowhere...’ he was very direct in telling her there could be no future for them ‘...but that doesn’t change the fact that tonight I would love to get to know you some more.’
Before she responded, Antonietta knew she had to make something very clear. She did not know his motives, and she would not spend the whole night worrying about them, and so she would be upfront.
‘I won’t sleep with you, Rafe.’
‘You would be a very boring dinner companion if you did.’
‘I meant—’
‘I know what you meant.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry.Iwouldn’t sleep with me either—there’s far too much paperwork involved.’
‘Paperwork?’
‘Come on,’ he said, without clarifying what he meant, but she was glad she had told him the night would not end in bed, all the same.
He took her hand and led her to the waiting car, and it made her just a little dizzy that part of her didn’t want to know that tomorrow she might wake up and think this had all been just a dream. Perhaps it was.
His driver took them through the village, and Antonietta was grateful for the blacked-out windows because of the number of people who turned and looked at the luxurious vehicle. But as they passed the tiny church—the one she failed to turn up to on her wedding day—Rafe must have felt her ripple of tension.
He turned and looked at her. ‘Are you okay?’ he checked.
‘Of course.’
Except she wasn’t. Because a short while later they passed her parents’ property and she wondered what they would make of her going out on a date with a guest.
‘Don’t worry about your parents now.’
‘How did you know I was thinking of them?’
‘You pointed out where they live,’ he reminded her. ‘Forget about everything,’ he told her. ‘Tonight we escape.’
Only not quite.
They drove up the winding hillside and then down into the valley, and there was a certain exhilaration that swept through her at leaving the village she knew so well. But when she glanced behind them, the same car that had followed them out of the Old Monastery was still there.
‘Are they following us?’ Antonietta asked.
