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‘You can call me Tina, you know,’ she whispered, desperately needing a change of subject, her words almost crackling in the heated air of his proximity. ‘You don’t have to do the whole Valentina thing every time. Tina works for me just fine.’
He blinked. Slowly. Purposefully. ‘Why would I call you something short and sharp, when your full name is so lush and sensual? When your full name holds as many seductive hills and valleys as your perfect body?’
She couldn’t answer. There were no words to answer. Not when instead of counteracting his intensity, she had inadvertently ramped it up tenfold.
‘No,’ he stated, with an air of authority that both infuriated her and rocked her to the soles of her feet as he pulled her close for his kiss, ‘Tina does not work for me at all.’
They dined in that night, but only after they’d made love late into the night. She couldn’t tell whether it was anger or relief that tinged his love-making but, whatever it was, it gave yet another nuance to the act of sex. Worst of all, it gave her reason for not hating the fact she had to be here.
Later, when still she couldn’t sleep worrying about it, she slipped from the bed to stand in the big salone and look out through the set of four windows overlooking the Grand Canal, watching the reflection of light onto water. Watching the seemingly endless activity of a water-borne society while her mind wandered and wondered.
What was happening to her?
She’d spent one night with him three years ago and she hadn’t seen him since. After what had happened, she hadn’t wanted to see him again. But sex with Luca was like an addiction that had been suppressed, a drug refused, and one taste had sent her back to that feverish place where need was paramount and hunger would not be denied.
And maybe, if she was honest with herself, she hadn’t lived those three years at all.
Maybe she’d only existed in the shadow of one perfect night, one perfect night that had all too rapidly turned toxic.
Maybe she’d only barely survived.
* * *
Despite her misgivings, they seemed to slip into a routine after that. Tina would go and help her mother sort her belongings in preparation for the upcoming move. Some days Lily would be more receptive to her help than others, but she felt that finally they were building some kind of fragile rapport as they worked room by room through the maze of glass.
She still couldn’t forgive her mother entirely for landing her in Luca’s bed, but neither could she honestly say she wasn’t enjoying the experience—at least a little.
Well, maybe more than just a little.
There was something about being with Luca that made her feel alive and sexy, vibrant and feminine, and all at the same time. It was no hardship to be seen on his arm, to feel the envy from other women, envy she enjoyed all the more because she knew it would be short-lived. It was no hardship to feel his heated glances and know what was on his mind.
And the sex was good too.
Just sex, she’d remind herself, putting the lid back on that imaginary box and tucking it under the bed when Luca went to work in the mornings.
Just sex. And in a few short weeks she would return home and it would all be a distant memory. Why shouldn’t she enjoy it while it lasted?
* * *
A week after she’d arrived in Venice, she turned up at her mother’s house. She heard Lily the moment she entered the rapidly emptying palazzo. The echoing torrent of French coming from upstairs almost had her turning her back and fleeing, until she realised from the few impassioned words she could understand that it wasn’t fury her mother was radiating, but delight.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked Carmela, peering suspiciously up the stairs as she peeled off her jacket.
The housekeeper took it to slide over a hanger. ‘She’s talking to the gallery owner, the one who has agreed to take her glass on consignment. There must be good news.’
Lily came bounding down the stairs a minute later, her eyes bright, looking more like a schoolgirl than a fifty-something woman. But then she’d changed her hair too, Tina realised, so that now it framed her face more softly, stripping years from her face.
‘What is it?’ Tina asked.
‘You’ll never guess. Antonio has a contact in London. They’re doing a display of Venetian glass and they want everything I can send. Antonio thinks it will make a fortune!’
‘Antonio?’
Her mother actually looked coy, her hands tangling in front of her. ‘Signore Brunelli, of course, from the gallery handling the sale.’
