Ava moistened her lips. ‘That’s why you never came for me.’
‘Came for you?’
‘When I left that morning I thought you knew who I was.’
‘But how, cara? You only gave me your given name, and even that I got wrong.’
She lifted her head, blinked at him. ‘Wrong?’
‘I thought you said Evie.’
‘Excuse me.’ She began to roll off the bed.
He caught her hand. ‘Where are you going?’
Ava pulled her hand away. She grabbed her silk robe from the chair and pulled it around her nakedness.
‘To get a drink.’
* * *
Gianluca had a nice range of spirits in his study, but Ava reached straight for the sherry.
He might not have known her name, but she was the one who’d got everything wrong! Making believe that night was special only to her, holding on to it in her hot little hand as if it belonged to her. Cutting him out of the picture completely.
Life had taught her to keep her feelings locked up. Her father leaving. The upheaval her mother’s illness had wrought as she and Josh were farmed out to friends and neighbours.
She remembered all too well as a small girl believing her mother’s assurance that their father would come back to them. As she’d grown older she had learned to rely only on what she could quantify, and she had worked hard to pull herself up out of the poverty cycle their mother’s illness had put them in.
But that need to guard herself and shred reality of all illusion had done her no favours when it came to her personal relationships. Josh had fled the country to get away from her, she’d wasted two years of her life in a relationship with a man she would never love, and as for her one chance at having something truly magical—she’d destroyed it simply through fear.
She’d run when she should have stood her ground.
Cowardly Ava.
She splashed a little sherry on the sideboard.
‘Ava.’ His deep voice cut through the shadows.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in a voice she barely recognised as her own because it was so deep with the weight of emotions she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in so long—perhaps ever. She tried to think of something else to say, but what came out again was, ‘I’m sorry.’
She almost dropped the glass as he came up to her.
He took it out of her hand, lifted it to his nose. ‘This won’t do, Ava. Sherry?’
He put the glass on the sideboard and drew her into his arms.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said yet again.
‘For what, innamorata?’ He seemed bewildered.
‘What do you think? Everything—everything you went through.’
‘It’s life. These things make us stronger, make us appreciate what we have in the now, don’t you think?’
He wasn’t only talking about his father. He was talking about them.
Not love, sex. Sex was what they had. Love might have had a chance once—but she had thrown it away without knowing what she’d almost had.
All her life she’d picked her battles and won them. But this battle she hadn’t chosen. It had come along and taken her on and she didn’t know how to fight it. Then or now. So she’d lost without even knowing she’d once had a chance with her magnificent, proud lion in their own personal Colosseum.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE BALLROOM WAS ALIGHT with thousands of tiny candles and four hundred people who had all paid a premium price to be here.
Ava’s heart was like a trapped bird inside her, fluttering desperately to get out. She had needed help tonight to get into the dress. A hairdresser had been flown in from Paris to style her hair, and a make-up artist from Milan. The fragrance mingling with her skin had been mixed for her by a perfumer here in Rome, based on details Gianluca had provided. Nothing about tonight was natural.
‘Relax, Ava,’ Gianluca said softly, whirling her in his arms. ‘You are the most beautiful woman they have ever seen. It is taking people time to become accustomed.’
But there was nothing reassuring in his voice. It was edged with that same tension she was feeling. Had been feeling since that explosion among the ruins and the fallout.
Yet with her hair swept up in an elaborate configuration, drop sapphire earrings hanging low, and a large sapphire framed in tiny white diamonds nestling just above her cleavage, it was true she looked a million dollars.
And no doubt was wearing that sum.
She had felt a little awkward wearing jewellery that had belonged to his grandmother, but Gianluca had assured her the pieces were so rarely worn it was almost a service to give them a showing.
As she spotted Maria Benedetti through the crowd it suddenly felt more like theft.
It was on loan. Everything was on loan.