‘It wasn’t. It felt scary,’ she muttered, half under her breath. ‘It probably has nothing to do with my memory at all. What do you think?’
‘I think you’re talking too much.’ Rolling over, he carried her with him on to a cool spot on the bed. ‘And I would much rather make love, bella mia.’ He nipped teasingly at the velvet-soft lobe of her ear and forged an erotic path along the slender arch of her throat as she involuntarily extended it for his pleasure. Her hair splayed out across the pillow and he studied the chopped ends wryly and looked down at her. ‘You’ve been using scissors to hack at your hair again.’
‘I can’t think why,’ she confessed with a slight frown. ‘I’ll go and get it cut tomorrow.’
‘Someone can come here to take care of it,’ he countered.
‘I want to see Rome.’
‘Bumper-to-bumper traffic and unbelievable heat and noise and pollution. Not to mention the tourists.’ He extracted a long lingering kiss before she could protest, and then he started to make love to her again. This time he was incredibly gentle and seductive, utilising every art to enthrall her. Pleasure piled on pleasure in layers of ever-deepening delight. Incredibly, it was even more exciting than the first time.
A single white rose lay on the pillow when she opened her eyes. She discovered it by accident, her hand feeling blindly across the bed in automatic search for Luc. Instead she found a thorn and, with a yelp, she reared up, sucking her pricked finger. And there it was. The rose. She wanted to cry, but that was soppy. The dew still dampened the petals. She tried to picture her supremely elegant Luc clambering through a rosebed and failed utterly. A gardener had undoubtedly done the clambering. Luc wouldn’t be caught dead in a flowerbed. All the same, it was the thought which counted and, for an unromantic guy, he really was trying very hard to please. In the end, it was that reflection rather than the rose that flooded her eyes with tears.
CHAPTER SIX
THE heat had reduced Catherine to a somnolent languor. She heard footsteps, recognised them. The cool of a large parasol blocked out the sun and shadowed her. She turned her head, rested her chin on her elbow and watched Luc sink down on the edge of the lounger beside her. In an open-necked short-sleeved white shirt and fitting black jeans that accentuated slim hips and long, lean thighs, he looked stunning enough to stop an avalanche in its tracks. A sun-dazed smile tilted her soft lips. He also looked distinctly short-tempered.
Since wedding fervour had hit Castelleone, the peace, the privacy and the perfect organisation which Luc took for granted had been swept away by a chattering tidal wave of caterers and florists and constantly shrilling phones. Luc’s enthusiasm had waned with almost comical speed once he’d realised what throwing a reception for several hundred people entailed.
r /> ‘I feel like throwing them all out,’ he admitted grimly.
‘You wanted a big splash,’ she reminded him with more truth than tact.
‘I thought it was what you expected!’ he condemned.
‘A couple of witnesses and a bunch of flowers would have done me,’ she confided, feeling too warm and lazy to choose her words.
He threw up expressive hands. ‘Now she tells me!’
The rattle of ice in glasses interrupted them. Luc leapt up and carefully intercepted Bernardo before he could come any closer. Catherine absorbed this defensive exercise with hidden amusement. Anyone would have been forgiven for thinking that her bare back was the equivalent of indecent exposure. Yesterday, a low-flying light plane had provoked an embargo on topless sunbathing and a no doubt fierce complaint to the local airfield. She wondered why it had taken her all this time to notice just how shockingly old-fashioned Luc could be about some things.
He cast her a sardonic glance. ‘I love the way you lie out here as though there’s nothing happening.’
‘Bernardo knows exactly what he’s doing.’ With an excess of tact, she did not add that if Luc stopped wading in to interfere and organise, imbuing everyone with the feeling that their very best wasn’t good enough, the last-minute arrangements would be proceeding a lot more smoothly. Having given the intimidating impression that he intended to supervise and criticise every little detail, he was not receiving a moment’s peace.
Tomorrow, she reflected blissfully. Tomorrow, she would be Luc’s wife. The ‘died and gone to heaven’ sensation embraced her again. Whole days had slid away in a haze of hedonistic pleasure since her arrival in Italy. Never had she enjoyed such utter relaxation and self-indulgence. Her sole contribution to the wedding had been two dress-fittings. Her gown, fashioned of exquisite handmade lace, was gorgeous. It was wonderful what could be achieved at short notice if you had as much money as Luc had.
‘Tomorrow, I’ll be rich,’ she mused absently.
After an arrested pause, Luc flung back his gleaming dark head and roared with laughter. ‘You’re probably the only woman in the world who would dare to say that to me before the wedding.’
She gave him an abstracted smile. Luc? Luc was wonderful, fantastic, beautiful, incredible, divine…With unwittingly expressive eyes pinned to him, she ran out of superlatives, and he sent her a glittering look that made her toes curl. That detachment which had once frozen her out when she got too close was steadily becoming a feature of the past.
Last night, Luc had actually talked about his family. And he never talked about them. The death of his parents and sister in that plane crash had shattered him but he had never actually come close to admitting that fact before. And she was quite certain that he would never admit the guilt he had suppressed when they died. On the rise to the top, Luc had left his family behind.
He had given them luxury, but not the luxury of himself. Business had always come first. He had sent them off on an expensive vacation in apology for yet another cancelled visit and he had never seen them alive again. When he had talked about them last night, it had been one of those confiding conversations that he could only bring himself to share with forced casualness in the cloaking darkness of the bedroom. Until now, she had never understood just how very difficult it was for Luc to express anything which touched him deeply.
Sliding up on her knees, she lifted her bikini top. His dark eyes travelled in exactly the direction she had known they would, lingering on the unbound curves briefly revealed. A heady pink fired her cheeks but, as she arched her back to do up the fastener, the all-male intensity of his appraisal roused an entirely feminine satisfaction as old as Eve within her.
‘You like me looking at you,’ he commented, lazily amused.
She bent her head, losing face and confidence. ‘You’re not supposed to notice that.’
‘I can’t help noticing it when you look so smug.’
Leaning lithely forward, he scooped her bodily across the divide between the loungers with that easy strength of his that melted her somewhere deep down inside. He laced an idle hand into her hair and claimed her mouth in a provocative sensual exploration. The world lurched violently on its axis and went into a spin, leaving her light-headed and weak. It didn’t matter how often he touched her, it was always the same. There had always been this between them, this shatteringly physical bond.
And once it had scared her. In her innocence, she had believed it one-sided, had assumed that Luc could, if he wanted, discover the same pleasure with any other woman. She was not so quick to make that assumption now. In the long passion-drenched hours which had turned night into day and day into night, the depth of Luc’s hunger had driven her again and again to the brink of exhaustion.