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‘Because you haven’t seen it yet.’ He studied her face. ‘True love is selfless and yet the emotion you saw was greedy and selfish. They allowed you to fall and they weren’t there to catch you.’
Instinctively she knew he wasn’t just talking about the incident on the climbing frame.
She lifted her glass. ‘So, if you believe in love, Dr Moretti, why aren’t you married with eight children?’ Her eyes challenged him over the rim of her glass and he smiled.
‘Because you don’t choose when to love. Or even who to love. You can’t just go out and find it in the way that you can find friendship or sex. Love chooses you. And chooses the time. For some people it’s early in life. For others…’ he gave a shrug that showed his Latin heritage ‘…it’s later.’
She frowned. ‘So you’re waiting for Signorina Right to just bang on your door?’ Her tone had a hint of sarcasm and he smiled.
‘No. She gave me a key.’ Something in his gaze made her heart stop.
Surely he wasn’t saying…
He couldn’t be suggesting…
She put her glass down. ‘Gio—’
‘Go to bed, tesoro,’ he said softly. ‘The other thing about love is that it can’t be controlled. Not the emotion and not the timing. It happens when it happens.’
She stared at him. ‘But—’
He rose to his feet and smiled. ‘Sleep well, Alice.’
Gio left via the back door, knowing that if he didn’t leave the house, he’d join her in her bedroom.
It had taken every ounce of willpower to let her walk away from him.
But he knew instinctively that they’d taken enough steps forward for one night. She’d talked—really talked—perhaps for the first time in her life and he could tell that she was starting to relax around him.
Which was how he wanted it to be.
They’d come a long way in a short time.
He breathed in the warm, evening air and strolled down towards the sea, enjoying the comfort of the semi-darkness.
It felt strange, he thought to himself as he walked, to have fallen in love with a woman who didn’t even believe that love existed.
After that night, the evenings developed a pattern and, almost a month after he’d arrived in the surgery, Alice sat staring out of the window of her consulting room, wondering what Gio would be cooking for dinner.
It was so unlike her to dream about food, but since he’d taken over the cooking she found herself looking forward to the evenings.
Sometimes they ate in the dining room, sometimes they ate in her garden and once he’d made a picnic and they’d taken it down to the beach.
Thinking, dreaming, she missed the tap on the door.
It was friendship, she decided, and she liked it.
She could really talk to him and he was an excellent listener. And she enjoyed working with him. He was an excellent doctor.
And, of course, there was sexual chemistry. She wasn’t so naïve that she couldn’t recognise it. She’d even experienced it before, to a lesser degree, with a man she’d dated a few times at university. Not love, but a chemical reaction between a man and a woman. And it was there, between her and Gio.
But since the incident on the beach, he hadn’t kissed her again.
Hadn’t made any attempt to touch her.
The door behind her opened. ‘Alice?’
Why hadn’t he touched her since?
