‘Why?’ She sipped her wine automatically and found it to be delicious. Fruity without being cloying, and refreshing.
He angled his face to hers. ‘There wasn’t time to explore.’
‘Are you being deliberately evasive?’
He sipped his wine, his eyes locked to hers over the rim. ‘No.’
‘So...?’
He expelled a sigh. ‘I have spent a lifetime not discussing this.’
Her interest doubled. She waited, holding her breath, for him to continue.
‘There is something about you...’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I inherited the island,’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘A little over a month ago.’
‘Oh.’ Sympathy clouded her expression. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘Well, if someone left you a whole island, you must have meant a lot to them.’
His smile was brief: a flicker of disagreement disguised as a polite acknowledgement. ‘I don’t want it.’
She mulled over that for a moment. ‘Because of Arketà?’
‘Because it r
eminds me of things I would rather forget,’ he corrected.
A sound alerted them to someone’s approach. Rio straightened, and his air of confiding drifted away.
The waiter placed two plates on their table. One held an assortment of seafood—calamari, prawns, vongole and oysters. The other had slices of tomato, white spheres of cheese and marinated artichoke hearts.
Her stomach gave an anticipatory lurch. She was impatient to taste the flavours. But her mind was even more impatient. She wanted to know everything about him.
Apparently she was not alone in her curiosity.
‘I misjudged you completely,’ he said slowly, thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair and waving a hand over the plates, indicating that she should help herself. ‘I thought you would be selfish and boring. Vapid and vain.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ she snapped, fluttering her lashes to look down at the food. She reached for some calamari and a few pieces of tomato, simply to disguise the guilt on her face.
‘I have apologised for this,’ he said seriously, his voice deep. ‘I meant it. You are not the woman I thought. So who are you?’
She swallowed. Despair was a chasm beneath her, trying its hardest to suck her in. What could she tell him? Not a lot. At least not without breaking the promise she’d made to Cressida.
She met his gaze, but her eyes were hesitant. ‘What do you want to know?’
He was thoughtful, as though she’d suggested he write a blank cheque and he was appraising how much to make it out for. ‘I was under the impression that you were...how should I put this? Liberal with your affections?’
She smothered a laugh of indignation. ‘Is that a euphemism for being easy to get into bed?’
He shook his head, a rueful smile on his lips. ‘I make no judgements. I enjoy sex as much as anyone. I do not care how many partners my lovers have had before me.’
She squeezed her eyes shut. Just the idea of being grouped in with his lovers made her blood simmer painfully inside her. ‘How enlightened of you.’
‘It is this that fascinates me. This coy embarrassment, your prudish disapproval. As though you have never slept with a man.’
Her lips formed an ‘oh’ of surprise. ‘Just because this morning I said I wasn’t in the habit of having sex with random men?’