‘I’m trying to hang on to my inner child,’ she teased. ‘And so should you. I mean, you’re not exactly the old man of the sea as yet. You have plenty of time to start thinking about making money.’
If only you knew. He felt a twinge of discomfort at his deception.
‘I mean…’ she licked her fingers before dipping them into the bowl of water with the lemon bobbing in it ‘…you’re a free spirit. Somehow it’s hard to picture you behind a desk with a mound of paperwork in front of you, and the telephone ringing and the boss yapping at you to bring him that report you should have done three days ago.’
Riccardo couldn’t help it. He laughed at the comical picture she presented.
‘Maybe,’ he said smoothly, lowering his eyes. ‘I will be the boss yapping orders.’
‘Oh no, please don’t be one of those boring office people. Promise me!’
‘Okay. I promise. Now, shall we enjoy this meal? The last before I head off to visit my dear mother.’
Charlie wondered about his mother. He had let slip precious little about his personal life. Oh yes, she knew what turned him on, she knew his thoughts on politics and politicians and what his favourite foods were, and all the places he had been to, but his family background was a dark area.
‘Tell me about her.’ Their second course was brought and, as Charlie watched the waiter deposit large white plates laden with their heavenly dishes, she missed the sudden shutter that snapped down over Riccardo’s eyes. When she next looked across at him, he was back to his normal, teasing self.
‘She is a typical Italian mama, very protective of her little boy.’ That much was true. Riccardo dug into his piece of rare steak, a pleasant change from his recent diet of pasta and pizzas, and told her just enough to sate her curiosity without having to indulge in any out-and-out lying. Only when she asked where exactly his mother lived did he grow more circumspect.
Charlie knew why. There was no shame in having to admit to a parent living in reduced circumstances, but sometimes it could hit hard. Hadn’t she once felt that very same thing herself? She had won an assisted scholarship to a private girls’ school when she was eleven, and between the ages of eleven and sixteen, before she had left for a sixth form college, she too had sometimes found herself ashamed about her own comparative lack of money, loath to draw attention to the fact that she wasn’t a member of the ‘two-car, three-times-a-year-holiday-abroad’ club. She tactfully and sympathetically changed the subject but it gnawed away at her, that little window into a wealth of information that would make their relationship so much deeper, that would set it on a course she was so desperate for it to follow.
Much later she was to think that love and desperation were a fatal combination.
For now, though, bitterness was an emotion with which she had never had contact. For now, she just appreciated the exquisite food and drank the exquisite wine, and wondered how she could manoeuvre the conversation back to the more fertile ground about him.
But he was an adept conversationalist. He didn’t want to talk about himself, and so he didn’t. He only had a couple more hours in her delectable company, he thought, and he wasn’t going to waste it trying to dodge questions about himself. In fact, he could think of something far more profitable they could be doing…
Riccardo liked that thought. Less acceptable to him was the suspicion that he would miss more than just her willing body. Involvement with a woman, any woman, was not at this point in time part of his game plan.