‘Today has been good, hasn’t it?’ He gestured around him expansively. ‘Basic this place might be, but what more do we need?’ He lifted his beer bottle again, tilting it towards her. ‘Let’s drink to this place, shall we—because it’s doing us both good?’
It was impossible to disagree with anything he’d said.
We do get on well—whether we’re at the palazzo, or out sightseeing, or just chillaxing here in this uber-peaceful spot...
She wondered whether she should worry at it—but didn’t. She just accepted it instead. It seemed the natural thing to do.
She made a wry face, tapping her beer bottle against his and taking a mouthful as he did, returning his ‘Saluti!’ with a more British ‘Cheers!’
Then the aroma from the barbecue distracted them, and Salvatore was standing up, removing the now nicely crisped fish and roasted peppers, plating them up. Then scooping up the soft-baked potatoes, putting one each on their plates.
Lana cut hers open, dropping a generous helping of butter into the steaming centre. Appetite speared within her. They settled down to eat companionably, both heartily tucking in to the simple but highly tasty supper.
We do get on well...he’s right. And for people with such different backgrounds, we have more in common than one might suppose.
Her eyes rested on him as he reached for another beer, flicking open the top with practised ease, before taking a swallow straight from the bottle. In the dusk, and in the soft light from the storm lantern hanging from the balustrade over the veranda, the planes of his face were accentuated by the shadows cast on it. Enhancing—if enhancement were possible at all, she thought, giving an unconscious inner sigh—the sculpted perfection that was his.
He lowered his bottle, catching her gaze on him, slanting a smile at her. Something flickered in his eyes—something that seemed to quicken her pulse—but then his long lashes swept down, veiling it from her. But she had seen enough. He might be sticking to what he’d promised her that night after Florence, but she could not deny—however much she might wish to do so—the other searing and undeniable truth about what they shared in common...
The fact that, for all the complications between them, all the impossibility of what he wanted, their desire was as undeniable as it was unsuppressed.
She gave another sigh, inwardly this time. Knowing, as she dropped her gaze, that it was tinged with regret...
Regret for what surely was too impossible, too complicated to yield to...
‘Ever rowed a boat before?’ Salvatore was asking. ‘No? Okay, so I’ll teach you.’
He got her seated on the bench, an oar in either hand, and pushed the little craft out into deeper water before vaulting lightly in himself. Then he focussed on getting Lana to angle the oars correctly, before attempting to head off.
‘Not bad,’ he said approvingly as she did as he bade her. ‘Shall we see if we can make it to the far side of the lake? See what’s over there?’
They did, and beached beside a rocky promontory which afforded them a perch on which to eat the picnic lunch they’d made after breakfast. Then they strolled off along another lakeside footpath, meandering along its gentle contours.
The day was passing easily, companionably. Salvatore was glad of it. Glad of a great deal.
Glad of that covert look she threw me last night, brief though it was.
But he would not—could not—rush her. Or pressurise her. It must come from her, the decision that he so wanted her to make. It must be right for her—completely right.
So that she can accept what is between us.
His eyes went to her as they settled themselves back in the rowing boat, with Salvatore doing the rowing this time. She sat back, hands resting widely on the gunwale on either side of her, lifting her beautiful face to the sunshine streaming down out of a cloudless sky, warm after the cool of the forest.
He felt something move within him, something he did not recognise.
How beautiful she is! How perfect—
Dimly, he knew that surely his desire for her would eventually pall, as all his affairs palled.
Just as my father’s did.
No, he would not think about his father—about the serial womanising he’d spent his life pursuing. Never wanting to fall in love with anyone. While the one woman who’d loved him he ignored. Left to pine, hopelessly, for him. A man who never loved her.
He pulled his thoughts away from that, too. It was too painful. He’d witnessed his mother’s pain at her husband’s rejection of her, his indifference to her.
His gaze refocussed on Lana, drinking in her loveliness as he rowed her back to the simple chalet he’d brought her to. Would its peaceful remoteness, these peaceful days he was spending with her, far away from the world that had pressed upon them, bring him what he longed for?
He did not know. He could only hope.
And hope, for now, would have to do.