?s just not like you!’
‘I know it isn’t.’
‘You’re the kind of woman who plays safe, Kate. Gosh, I remember when you were going out with Pete—he used to say that you’d virtually interviewed him on at least the first four dates before you would even let him kiss you!’
Kate nodded. ‘Yep. That’s me. Safe, sensible Kate.’
Lucy knotted her fingers together. ‘So what happened? What was so different?’
‘He was,’ said Kate quietly. She walked over to the window and stared unseeingly at the river before she turned round to face the soft consternation in her sister’s eyes and tried to explain the inexplicable. ‘It was an attraction like no other I’d ever felt. Ever.’
‘And he must have felt the same way too, presumably?’
‘That’s what I thought,’ agreed Kate tonelessly, and realised that she couldn’t give Lucy only half the story. Didn’t want to, either. And who would she be protecting if she kept the horrible, hurtful truth to herself? Only a man who didn’t deserve one vestige of protection. ‘But he disappeared in the middle of the night.’
Lucy’s face fell. ‘He did a runner?’
‘He certainly did.’
Lucy thought for a moment, then she shrugged awkwardly. ‘Maybe he had a good reason—’
‘Oh, a very good reason!’ Kate gave a hollow laugh. ‘Like the fact that he’s engaged to be married—that’s reason enough!’
Lucy winced. ‘You are joking?’
Their eyes met.
‘I’m sorry, Kate, I didn’t mean to be flippant. As if you’d joke about something like that. But how do you know? I mean, you surely didn’t—’
‘You think I went to bed with him knowing that he was going to be married to someone else?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Of course I didn’t!’
‘He should have told me,’ whispered Kate. ‘He should have told me that he was promised to someone else!’
‘How on earth did you find out?’
This was the humiliating part. Kate swallowed. ‘I was angry—angry with him for having left without even so much as a goodbye, and angry with myself for having behaved so outrageously. I decided that he needed to be told he just couldn’t do something like that—if not for my sake, then maybe he might just think about it with the next poor girl he bowls over with his charm!’
‘So you rang him?’
Kate nodded. ‘In Sicily. I got some snotty secretary who told me smugly that he had gone off to see his fiancée—’
‘Maybe she was lying,’ said Lucy hopefully.
Kate put her head to one side as she looked at her sister. ‘Oh, sure! Why would she do a thing like that?’
‘Because some secretaries are madly in love with their bosses themselves, and so they take it on themselves to be as beastly as possible to other women!’
‘Nice try, Lucy, but I don’t believe she was lying.’ There had been other clues, too. She should have given them more thought. The way that the attraction he had undoubtedly felt towards her had held the unmistakable trace of antipathy. His reluctance to stay once he had dropped off her Filofax. His offensive arrogance in assuming that she had left it behind deliberately. Believing that she wanted to lure him. And her behaviour towards him had probably seemed as though she had wanted to lure him here.
What man would pass up on an offer like that?
‘So what will you do?’ Lucy’s face crumpled. ‘Oh, God— Kate, you couldn’t be…pregnant, could you?’
Kate shook her head, because even that hurt to tell. ‘Oh, no,’ she said bitterly. ‘No chance of that. Signor Calverri conveniently had a packet of condoms on him! No doubt always prepared for the unexpected!’
‘It’s a rather good thing, under the circumstances,’ observed Lucy drily. ‘The last thing you need in a situation like this is an unwanted pregnancy.’