‘To the airport with Ja—’
‘Airport!’ Cesare launched his stinging attack before the woman had time to deliver her explanation. Stabbing his fingers into his hair in a gesture of extreme frustration, he began to pace the floor like a caged panther.
He paused and flung the woman another scathing look. ‘You let her go to the airport?’
‘It was hardly my place to stop her.’
He stopped pacing and thought, No, it was mine.
And had he been able or willing to say what she wanted to hear, say what he had been too stubborn to admit he wanted to, he would have been here to prevent her running away.
All she had said was—‘I miss you so much when you’re not here.’ And he had panicked.
He made a conscious effort to slow his breathing, recognising this situation was one of his own making. This was the result of his inability to accept that in a few short weeks she had become a part of his life. As he had searched for Anna, his home, the place he felt an almost physical connection with and which, like his ancestors, he would have done anything to preserve, had felt like a series of empty rooms. The reason had not hit him until Mrs Mack had delivered her killing blow—Anna was not in them—and it wasn’t just the house her absence affected. He was empty without her.
But of course he would bring her back.
He had sent her away with his talk of just sex. She had given him herself totally, held nothing back and he had said it was just sex. He had seen he was killing her with his coldness and then he had crowned the insult with the damned bracelet, which she had thrown back in his face. The muscles in his face relaxed enough to allow the corners of his mouth to lift as he recalled her fiery reaction.
Anna was the least avaricious person he had ever met. He loved that about her. Had he ever really thought she would do anything but throw it at him? Had he unconsciously been trying to push her away, make her reject him?
He’d been trying to put barriers between them from the moment they met, and why? Because he knew she was different, he knew she was not someone he could eject from his bed in the middle of the night, not someone he could walk away from. She made him feel everything he had never wanted to feel, everything he thought would make him weak.
Cesare’s mouth twisted in a sneer of self-disgust before he took a deep calming breath and tipped his head, offering a stiff smile of apology to his housekeeper. ‘Where was she flying to?’
‘Miss Angel arranged that side of things. I believe she is meeting them at the airport.’
He had not been expecting that! ‘Angel?’ When had his little sister got involved? ‘Anna doesn’t even like sunbathing!’ he yelled, thinking of her lying on a white-sanded tropical beach being lusted after by a bunch of lecherous creeps who were fascinated by her creamy skin.
He closed his eyes and swore at length, only remembering his audience when he opened them again and saw the tight-lipped disapproval on the face of the woman who had known him since he was a boy.
‘I’m quite sure that Miss Henderson will use sun block. She is extremely capable.’
Cesare was already pulling out his mobile phone and punching in numbers.
* * *
Anna felt her throat tighten as Jas, her nose pressed to the window of the Jeep her mother drove, waved goodbye. She stayed where she was until the Jeep vanished, then, blinking away emotional tears, walked back towards the terminal building and its air conditioning.
The heat had hit her the moment she stepped onto the tarmac. It had felt like walking into a solid wall. Jas, on the other hand, had revived the moment she disembarked. In seconds she had gone from looking like a wan little ghost to literally bouncing good health.
Anna envied her her youthful powers of recovery. She felt a hundred! When Angel had said Jas was not a good traveller, in her naivety Anna had felt quite confident about coping with a nauseous and possibly fretful child. How wrong had she been!
It had broken her heart to see the little girl so distressed and the journey had taken on a nightmare quality, not least because of the dirty looks they had received from a certain section of passengers. Now, after standing out in the sun for a few minutes, she felt like a wilted flower. Given time she might acclimatise to this sort of environment, but Anna knew she would never acquire a golden glowing tan like Angel.
Besides she liked the variety of living somewhere where you could experience every weather known to man in the space of twenty-four hours. Her smile faded as it hit her, the finality of it. She wasn’t going back to Scotland. Her return ticket was for the far more temperate capital.