Giovanni sent her a package which she dared not put beneath her parents’ Christmas tree, imagining more of the exquisite lacy undergarments he had made a habit of buying for her—and she could just imagine what her father would say about that.
But he surprised her with a Sicilian-English dictionary with a mocking foreword written in his distinctive hand: ‘Learn something new each day, cara—and then teach me what you have learned.’
She devoured it during the holiday—oblivious to the sounds of carols or the lure of mince-pies and turkey—memorising as many words as she thought might be appropriate to relate when next she saw him…and resolutely casting aside the word ‘love’.
‘You’re still crazy about him, aren’t you?’ asked Lucy one morning in late January, when she and Kate had been going through her expenses.
Kate had flown in from New York the evening before, still glowing from Giovanni’s lovemaking, a box of matching yellow lace underwear hidden away inside her suitcase.
‘Not more?’ she had asked him, her mouth curving into a slow smile as she had taken another outrageous wisp of nothing from the box. ‘You’ve bought me enough already, surely?’
He had shaken his head as she began to pull the camiknickers up her long, long legs, knowing that very soon he would be pulling them off her again. ‘Never enough, cara,’ he told her huskily. ‘You should have something different for every day of the year.’
And Kate found herself working out how many weekends she would have with him to enable him to be able to provide that.
She had taken a Thursday and Friday off work and had flown into Kennedy Airport on Thursday evening, to find Giovanni looking tense and strained, and she had teased him about it.
‘You don’t want me here?’
‘I couldn’t wait for you to arrive,’ he admitted huskily and took her into his arms and kissed her with an urgency which thrilled her.
‘Then why the long face?’ she asked in the cab on the way to their hotel.
‘Oh, some—’ He said some vehement word in Sicilian. ‘Some mix-up over a big consignment which was meant to arrive from Sicily last week, but didn’t.’
She crossed one leg over the other, hearing him draw in an unsteady breath as he was treated to the briefest glimpse of lacy stocking-top beneath a creamy-white thigh. ‘Shame,’ she murmured.
And he laughed. What the hell did it matter—what did any of it matter—when he had her here, like this? ‘A terrible shame,’ he agreed gravely, as he reached for her in the darkened intimacy of the car.
They spent the next morning in bed and then travelled to Liberty Island, where the queues for the statue seemed to go on forever.
Giovanni’s mouth tightened. ‘Let’s skip it for today,’ he said roughly, thinking that all he wanted was to be alone with her again.
But Kate shook her head. ‘Queuing will do you good,’ she said firmly.
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes. Really! We’ll people-watch and then over dinner we can see if we agree or disagree.’
‘On what?’ he asked, mystified.
‘Oh, who’s brought their wife. Who’s brought their mistress—that kind of thing!’
‘Mistress is a very old-fashioned word,’ he growled, inexplicably offended by the term.
She batted her eyelashes at him. ‘It’s a very old-fashioned occupation, darling—didn’t you know?’ But inside she was on a high. In these cities—foreign to both of them—she could be exactly what she wanted to be, and, more than anything else, she felt as if they were on equal terms.
That weekend—like all the others which had preceded it—passed all too quickly, and Giovanni seemed reluctant to let her go.
‘I’m sick of departure lounges!’ he declared vehemently, sliding his hands around her waist, and locking them possessively in the small of her back.
Well, so was she—but she was determined that his last memory of her would be a sunny smile.
‘I’m not overfond of them, myself,’ she whispered. ‘But there you go! Now, Giovanni, that’s the third and final call, so will you please let me go?’
He had complied, reluctantly, but stood watching her retreating back until long after she had disappeared from view.
’Aren’t you?’ asked Lucy.