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‘We’ll have cocktails to take the edge off.’
‘Being drunk is not a good first impression.’ She turned. ‘This fountain is beautiful.’
‘Fontana Diana...’ he said. ‘The goddess of hunting. See? She carries a bow...’
‘The goddess of childbirth too,’ Alicia said, because she loved all the myths and knew them well.
‘Then let’s not get too close.’
But they were like iron filings to magnets as they stood there side by side.
If only it were just about attraction...
There was all this history clinging to them and all these secrets dragging at them, fighting each other silently.
She looked up at the stunning structure of mermaids and babies and though it was heavenly, she was choking down sudden tears.
He stopped playing tour guide then, because something had obviously upset her and there was nothing about that day to regret.
‘She’s the goddess of virginity too,’ Dante said and turned her to face him. ‘Arethusa took off her clothes and bathed in the waters, and when Alpheus saw her beauty the river was full of desire. Like us...’
‘She was clearly not wearing awful knickers, then.’
God, he hated what he had said about her underwear the other day. How what she had been wearing a decade ago still upset her.
‘Alicia,’ he said, ‘I don’t even remember them.’
‘How nice of you to say that you don’t recall.’
‘Hey!’ He was sharp. ‘I meant I wasn’t really concerned with your underwear that afternoon. Why do you do that to yourself?’ He sighed. ‘You don’t know how to let things go, do you?’
She breathed out and thought that perhaps he was right. She had sullied that memory too much with the bits she hated when there was so many nicer parts to it.
‘You really don’t remember it?’ she asked.
His eyes narrowed as they gazed deep into hers, inciting a dangerous, deep recall between them, and she felt her heart hammer, as he drew the memories to mind. ‘I remember that if you hadn’t been wearing it in the water... I wanted to remove your bra...you wouldn’t let me...’
‘It was pointed, like an old lady’s...’
‘You have a mole just above your left breast.’ He held her hips. ‘I remember that very well.’
‘And?’ She swallowed.
‘This isn’t boding well for a sex-free weekend.’
‘I say things I regret sometimes.’
‘I know.’
‘In haste.’
‘You can repent at leisure,’ Dante said. ‘But I shall tell you what I recall is that your knickers were see-through when they got wet—I do remember that—and then pink from the rain...’
Alicia wanted to pull away, except her body held its ground as he kissed her. It was not the frantic kind of kiss that had unfolded in the hotel, and neither the younger kiss of discovery. This was slow, and far, far more dangerous, because it gave her a glimpse of another Dante.
She was kissing him back, and when she grew too urgent he slowed her with his mouth, taught her the kiss of lovers who had waited all day with the certainty of night—at least until she heard someone call his name.
‘Dante!’
