‘It’s shaped the man you are and it’s in your blood. I can’t imagine you living anywhere else.’
‘Neither can I. Can you imagine living anywhere other than London?’
Yes. She could imagine living here. With him. All too easily. But, despite what she’d thought last night, addled with emotions, this wasn’t for forever. ‘No,’ she said, because it was the only answer she could give and anything else was simply not possible. ‘As you pointed out, it’s my home. I can’t wait to get back.’
‘Tomorrow’s your last day,’ he said, his eyes fixed on hers but curiously devoid of anything. ‘What would you like to do?’
‘I think I’d like to learn to pilot a gondola,’ she said, struggling to ignore the tightening of her chest at the thought of leaving, determined instead to make the most of what little time she had left.
‘Your wish is my command.’
* * *
But if only her wish was his command, thought Carla wistfully the next day, perching on the padded bench seat as Rico steered the batela through the busy and choppy canals and out into the relative calm of a more placid section of the lagoon. Because she was beginning to wish she hadn’t been quite so sensible in booking a flight for tomorrow morning. She didn’t need a whole day and a half to prepare to go back to work. She’d only been on leave for a week. What had she been thinking?
‘I thought I was going to be learning to pilot a gondola,’ she said, looking up at him, so breathtakingly gorgeous her heart turned over.
‘Patience,’ he said with the arch of one dark eyebrow. ‘A gondola is a very technical boat. Tourists start on these.’
‘And is that what I am? A tourist?’
‘What else would you be?’
It was a question to which she didn’t have an answer, even after an hour’s tuition that took two, since shortly after it had begun there’d been a rocky moment during which she’d needed close contact support and her concentration had fled.
She was none the wiser when he handed her the oar and murmured, ‘Your turn now,’ or when she arched an eyebrow, gave him a wide grin from her position at the front of the boat and asked, ‘Do you trust me?’
It was only when he replied, ‘You already know I do,’ with a smile so blinding, so real, that it lit up his face and stole her breath, which weakened her knees, robbed her of her balance and promptly toppled her headlong into the lagoon, that she realised she was head over heels in love with him.
* * *
Rico had dived straight in after her. By the time he’d hauled himself back onto the boat and then pulled her up too, the coastguard had arrived. An hour later, with the paperwork completed and tetanus shots administered, they’d been delivered back to his island, where they’d got out of their wet things and taken a scalding shower.
Carla had been unusually quiet for the rest of the evening. No doubt, she was still in shock. He knew he was. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the moment she’d fallen into the water. Time had slowed right down, but the sheer terror that had ripped through him, wilder than any tide, had been swift and immense. She’d gone under for the briefest of seconds, but to him it had felt like a lifetime. He hadn’t thought twice about diving in to rescue her. The only thought screaming through his head was that he couldn’t lose her.
And that was equally terrifying.
She wasn’t his to lose. Or keep. She never would be. She was leaving in the morning and going home. He was going to wave her off with no regrets, and reclaim the life he’d led before the accident had blown it apart. That was the plan and it was a good one, a necessary one.
N
evertheless, when he held her in his arms in bed that night he did so a little more tightly. He found himself noting every sound she uttered, every move she made, and storing them somewhere safe. And when he moved inside her, he realised he was trembling.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked softly, once the sweat had cooled on their skin and their harsh, heavy breathing had faded.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, but he wasn’t. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. All he knew was that he wasn’t fine at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON THE MORNING of her departure, while Rico was in the shower Carla was methodically folding and putting clothes into the suitcase she’d had to buy to accommodate her recent purchases. But if anyone had asked her to itemise those clothes, she’d have merely blinked in bewilderment.
The drenching she’d had yesterday afternoon had been an almighty shock but not nearly as great as the one that had led to it. Ever since, she’d been able to think of nothing but the stunning realisation she was in love with Rico.
Which couldn’t possibly be.
She’d known him for less than a week. She didn’t know what love was. Not this kind of love. She loved Georgie, of course, and even her parents, despite all their flaws, but this was entirely different. This was...well, she didn’t know what this was.
And yet all these feelings, which had been rushing around inside her for a while but now flooded her like a tsunami, had to mean something. Why else would her heart tighten every time she thought of what he’d been through? Why else would she overflow with admiration and respect at what he’d achieved? He was the only person she wanted to talk to. The only person alive she wanted to tell everything to and find out everything about. He’d become her world. He’d even saved her from sinking.