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‘It is very beautiful. I’ll keep it safe for you,’ she promised.
‘Keep it safe?’
‘It was a family heirloom...the setting looks antique.’
‘It is antique but not an heirloom. But I thought it would match your eyes...’
As their glances connected, Tilda experienced a spike of panicky excitement which she fought to subdue. There was no subtext; there was nothing to read into his voice, baring the obvious fact he could have made an ingredient label on a soup can sound sexy.
‘Sam and I inherited Mum’s eyes, but she was a redhead,’ Tilda murmured as her gaze moved beyond him as though she had discovered some fascinating architectural details in the still-closed art deco building. ‘Are we early?’ she said, frowning as she heard the over-bright, perky note in her voice.
‘Not much. They agreed to open early for us, so we will not be seeing our photos posted online,’ he observed with a degree of grim satisfaction. ‘It should be a quick in and out.’
‘Quick in and out...?’ She wasn’t looking for romance, but it was hard not to supress a tiny grimace.
She saw his glance sharpen and added quickly, ‘Oh, that’s good. Perfect.’ Escaping his stare, she turned her gaze to the trio of men standing on the steps of the registry office across the road. ‘Are they with us?’
Ezio, who had pulled his phone from his pocket and was glaring at it, was still frowning when he looked at her.
‘They are our witnesses.’ He offered the explanation readily enough but she could see his mind was elsewhere.
She assumed he was talking about two of the three men waiting on the steps of the building, the two in suits. It was the third she was curious about. It was hard to see how he fitted in. In faded torn denims and a tee shirt, with shaggy white-blond hair, it was easy to imagine him carrying a surf board, but actually he was carrying a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, so there remained a bit of a question mark over his role.
She waited until Ezio put his phone away and moved towards her.
‘Legal department?’ she asked, nodding without looking to the two suits.
‘Thought I’d keep it in-house.’
‘A need-to-know basis,’ she mocked gently, wondering if she had broken his rules by telling Mrs Lowther earlier. ‘Lawyers always look like lawyers,’ she added, making an unashamedly untrue generalisation as she stared curiously at the third man.
‘Our official photographer.’ As if he’d heard, the guy pulled a camera out of the bulging bag and began fiddling with dials in what seemed like an expert way.
‘Come say hello.’
Very conscious of the hand on the middle of her back as they crossed the road side by side, her thoughts skittered around in her head... How many couples had made this walk before them up these steps? Couples who’d loved one another so much it hurt.
The sadness that settled over her was so energy-sapping that she went through the introduction process on auto-pilot, not realising until they had moved a little apart from the two men that she had not retained their names.
‘Is that your phone?’ she asked when Ezio’s phone rang, thinking,for God’s sake answer it,as the trill went on and on.
‘Yes, it is,’ Ezio said, making no effort to take it out.
‘It’s stopped.’ Realising she sounded relieved, she added politely, ‘Perhaps they will ring back.’
‘Oh,theywill,’ he intoned grimly.
‘You said there would be no press,’ she reminded him in a hushed undertone as they approached the third man.
‘He isn’t press. Jake is here at my request.’
‘So you have your own personal photographer?’ she joked, then thought the joke could be on her. Plenty of people in his position did like to present a carefully contrived image of their perfect personal life. But for starters she’d have known it, and secondly, to give the devil his due, Ezio did not number vanity among his many faults. And it wasn’t as if he could be worried about anyone taking an unflattering photo of him because he had no bad side or bad angle—whichever way you looked at him, he was pretty perfect.Boringly so, she told herself without much conviction.
‘Jake is doing me a favour.’
‘He doesn’t look like a friend of yours...but then I don’t look like...’
One sable brow lifted to an interrogative angle. ‘You don’t look like...?’
