EPILOGUE
‘NOWPUTYOUR foot on the accelerator until you hear the bite.’
Something deep below Clara rumbled and roared.
‘I said until you hear the bite,’ Marcelo said with barely concealed impatience.
‘But you didn’t say I had to stop,’ she countered, although she didn’t really blame him. This was their second driving lesson in as many days, and everything he’d shown her and told her to do seemed to go through one ear and out the other.
‘Not stop, hold your foot exactly where it is.’
‘You should have said. I’ll try again.’
This time, when she heard the bite, she smiled and said, ‘What now?’
‘Take your foot—slowly—off the clutch. The car will...’
The car lurched forward, cutting his instructions from his tongue.
She looked at him and grinned. ‘Oops.’
He just stared at her before his face creased into a grin. And then his eyes narrowed in that expression he got when a thought occurred to him. ‘Do you have any paper on you?’
‘Of course not. You’re lucky I’m wearing any knickers.’
That made him kiss her. Which was what she’d wanted.
He pulled back, still grinning, opened his window and shouted out at one of his protection officers. As they were at the Ceres national racetrack, a full complement of their protection were there to witness Clara’s driving ineptitude.
In no time at all, a notebook and pen were being handed to him.
Curious, Clara watched as he wrote a list, admiring his penmanship. Her writing was atrocious.
Then he handed the notebook to her. ‘Written instructions for you.’
She read what he’d written. A step-by-step guide to driving a car.
‘Why didn’t you explain it like this?’ she asked.
‘I did.’
‘Didn’t.’
He fixed her with a look. She scowled then read the instructions a couple more times before handing the notebook back to him.
Two minutes later she was happily cruising at twenty miles an hour, well aware of the smug smile on Marcelo’s face.
When she’d brought the car to a stop she turned to him. ‘How did you know?’
‘It was a guess. I just thought you might take instructions visually better than you do verbally.’
Amazed, she found she’d lost her ability to speak.
It constantly surprised her how well her husband knew her, so well that he sensed things about her that even she didn’t know.
He knew her. And, far from repelling him, he loved her.
Just as she loved him.