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ARRIVING in Venice, Tina thought, was like leaving real life and entering a fairy tale. The bustling Piazzale Roma where she waited for her bag to be unloaded from the airport bus was the full stop on the real world she was about to leave behind, a world where buildings were built on solid ground and transport moved on wheels; while the bridges that spanned out from the Piazzale crossing the waterways were the ‘once upon a time’ leading to a fairy tale world that hovered unnaturally over the inky waters of the lagoon and where boats were king.
Beautiful, it was true, but as she glanced at the rows of windows looking out over the canals, right now it almost felt brooding too, and full of mystery and secrets and dark intent...
She shivered, already nervous, feeling suddenly vulnerable. Why had she thought that?
Because he was out there, she reasoned, her eyes scanning the buildings that lined the winding canal. Luca was out there behind a window somewhere in this ancient city.
Waiting for her.
Damn. She was so tired that she was imagining things.
Except she’d felt it on the plane too, waking from a restless sleep filled with images of him. Woken up feeling almost as if he’d been watching her.
Just thinking about it made her skin crawl all over again.
She pushed her fringe back from her eyes and sucked in air too rich with the scent of diesel fumes to clear her head. God, she was tired! She grunted a weary protest as she hauled her backpack over her shoulder.
Forget about bad dreams, she told herself. Forget about fairy tales that started with once upon a time. Just think about getting on that return plane as soon as possible. That would be happy ending enough for her.
She lined up at the vaporetto station to buy a ticket for the water buses that throbbed their way along the busy canals. A three-day pass should be more than adequate to sort out whatever it was her mother couldn’t handle on her own. She’d made a deal with her father that she’d only come to Venice on the basis she’d be back at the farm as soon as the crisis was over. She wasn’t planning on staying any longer. It wasn’t as if this was a holiday after all.
And with any luck, she’d sort out her mother’s money worries and be back on a plane to Australia before Luca Barbarigo even knew she was here.
She gave a snort, the sound lost in the crush of tourists laden with cameras and luggage piling onto the rocking water bus. Yeah, well, maybe that was wishful thinking, but the less she had to do with him, the better. And no matter what her frazzled nerves conjured up in her dreams to frighten her, Luca Barbarigo probably felt the same way. She recalled the vivid slash of her palm across his jaw. They hadn’t exactly parted on friendly terms after all.
Tourists jockeyed and squirmed to get on the outer edge of the vessel, cameras and videos at the ready to record this trip along the most famous of Venice’s great waterways, and she let herself be jostled out of the way, unmoved by the passing vista except to be reminded she was on Luca Barbarigo’s patch; happy to hide in the centre of the boat under cover where she couldn’t be observed. Crazy, she knew, to feel this way, but she’d found there were times that logic didn’t rule her emotions.
Like the time she’d spent the night with Luca Barbarigo.
Clearly logic had played no part in that decision.
And now once again logic seemed to have abandoned her. She’d felt so strong back home at the kitchen sink, deciding she could face Luca again. She’d felt so sure in her determination to stand up to him.
But here, in Venice, where every second man, it seemed, had dark hair or dark eyes and reminded her of him, all she wanted to do was hide.
She shivered and zipped her jacket, the combined heat from a press of bodies in the warm September air nowhere near enough to prevent the sudden chill descending her spine.
Oh God, she needed to sleep. That was all. Stopovers in Kuala Lumpur and then Amsterdam had turned a twenty-two hour journey into more like thirty-six. She would feel so much better after a shower and a decent meal. And in a few short hours she could give in to the urge to sleep and hopefully by morning she’d feel halfway to normal again.
The vaporetto pulled into a station, rocking sideways on its own wash before thumping against the floating platform and setting passengers lurching on their straps. Then the vessel was secured and the gate slid open and one mass of people departed as another lot rushed in, and air laced with the sour smell of sweat and diesel and churned canal water filled her lungs.
Three days, she told herself, as the vessel throbbed into life and set course for the centre of the canal again, missing an oncoming barge seemingly with inches to spare. She could handle seeing Luca again because soon she would be going home.
