He knew she was about to turn and walk away and he wasn’t ready for that.
“What do you do when you aren’t helping people come to terms with their mortality?”
Her hands were very fine, he observed, as she placed one on the railing of the staircase and began to walk downstairs. Her nails weren’t painted, and they were cut low, forming neat ovals that spoke of a life of practicality rather than glamour.
“Do?” She frowned, like the idea had never occurred to her.
“For pleasure. Fun.” Her quizzical look drew a smile from him. “You know, what people do to blow off steam?”
Her cupid’s bow lips tipped downwards. They reached the foyer of Villa Fortune and he waited to see which way she went. “I work a lot.”
“All the time?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you were telling me my lifestyle isn’t healthy?”
Her eyes, when they met his, were so full of emotions his breath momentarily stilled. She was beautiful, confident, cold and…lost somehow.
“I –,”
He waited, surprised by his instinct to comfort her.
But she shook her head, lifting a hand to her hair and pushing it back from her brow. “I don’t know.”
Outside, birds sang their morning song, and the sky was a bright, deep blue, the colour of spilled paint. He looked towards the door, onto the terrace and beyond it to the pool. “Do you swim?”
She shook her head. “Not often.”
“You don’t like it?”
She laughed but stopped herself almost immediately, as though laughing were a sign of weakness. “On a hot day, it’s quite nice, but I grew up in England...It wasn’t exactly part of my daily routine.”
“Ah.” His grin was designed to relax. He saw though that it had the opposite effect on her. “But here it could be.”
She shook her head and looked away, as though physically distancing herself from him. “I’m not here to socialise.”
“You can’t do both?”
Uncertainty was in her enormous blue eyes as she looked up at him.
“You can’t work and play?”
He saw recognition in her features and then a look of perturbation. “No. I’m just here to work.”
The words lay between them as both a warning and a challenge. Whether it was hiking in Argentina, surfing in Mexico or free diving in the Black Sea, Raf had never met a challenge and not been determined to conquer it. Success was part of his DNA and as he watched Lauren walk away, he knew this would be no different.
Chapter Three
GOD, HE WAS WAY too handsome. She stalked off with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, a feeling that spread to her fingertips and toes, a feeling that made her blood rush too fast and her cheeks feel too hot. She turned a corner, not looking where she was going, and bumped into Vittoria, the housekeeper.
“I’m so sorry.” She muttered, continuing on her way. She paused in the kitchen only long enough to grab a glass of orange juice and then kept walking, through the ancient villa perched on the edge of Tuscany with its rolling hills and hues of summer green.
Too handsome, too sexy, too sure of himself, too charming, too interested. She thought the word with a grimace, shaking her head and taking a large gulp of orange juice, reaching for her wedding ring and spinning it absentmindedly. She’d moved it to her right hand some years ago, after an argument with her mother. You have to put Thom behind you, Lauren. Do you think he’d want you to live your life like this - as some kind of living shrine to his death?
It had felt wrong at first, like a betrayal of their wedding vows, but she was used to it now. Besides it was still the same ring, a modest strip of gold with a single, tiny diamond pressed into the centre of the band. The same ring he’d surprised her with the day before their wedding, the same ring he’d slipped onto her finger, the same ring she’d looked at as they’d said their vows, promising to love each other for as long as they both shall live. They knew even as they made that promise that their time together wouldn’t be long. She’d hoped for a year and had been blessed with three, though the last was taxing and difficult, as Thom’s disease progressed and he went through long periods of unconsciousness.
She’d been single ever since. Single by choice, and happy with that decision, even when her family tried to convince her to open up to love again. Lauren was determined that would never happen. How could she ever love someone after what she’d been through with Thom? It was too hard to imagine opening herself to that risk, and not only that, it would feel like the ultimate betrayal to what they’d shared.