The voice of the Duchessa pierced her thoughts—thoughts she did not want to have.
‘But I am sure there is no need. Salvatore has eyes only for you!’
Lana’s eyes veiled.
For now, yes.
For now, Salvatore was ardent in his attentions, his desires. But they had a shelf life—a time limit.
This time next year it will all be over. I shall be back in England, processing our divorce. Our pre-planned divorce.
How would that go down with his friends? His circle here in Rome? She didn’t know. It was not her concern. Her only concern would be what she made of her life after Salvatore Luchesi had left it.
A sense of sudden bleakness filled her.
The Duchessa was changing the subject, saying something about an opera gala that was in the offing, and Lana was grateful. She could not take any more close examination of her marriage, her relationship with Salvatore, nor of her reactions to such examination.
Least of all any examination of those reactions...
‘Have you been to New York often?’ Salvatore asked, turning to Lana, sitting beside him in First Class, with an enquiring smile.
‘Fashion Week—twice a year. So more often than I can count!’ she answered.
She was glad to be accompanying Salvatore on a business trip. Glad to be out of Rome, where she was under constant surveillance, or so she uncomfortably felt, with everyone treating her as if she truly were the woman Salvatore Luchesi had chosen to be his wife—to make his life with—when she was no such thing at all.
It would be much easier being on her own with him, as they had been at the lakeside chalet. Far more honest. And after New York they would be flying down to the Bahamas.
‘I want you all to myself again,’ Salvatore had told her, his gaze warm and possessive.
‘Me too,’ she’d said, and smiled.
They got exactly that.
Their cabana at the exclusive resort opened onto a tiny secluded cove, private and for their own use, sheltered from the world by the palm trees waving in the cooling breeze. Their days were lazy, with their butler arriving on call with drinks, with gourmet meals, with anything they wanted.
But their wants were simple.
Each other.
Making love under the palm-thatched roof of their cabana. Making love in the plunge pool. Making love on the silver sand at midnight. Making love whenever desire swept over them and brought them into each other’s arms, leaving them sated and fulfilled, still in each other’s arms...
For Lana it was an ecstasy she had never thought possible. Had never thought existed. Malcolm, she now realised, had been incredibly selfish, pleasing only himself. Whereas Salvatore—
Sweet memory and eager anticipation mingled inside her like honey and cream...
In Salvatore’s arms it was as if only they existed—nothing and no one else. Only the desire he aroused in her with the soft caresses of his hands, the skilled exploration of his fingertips, the velvet of his mouth, the lean strength of his body moving over hers...
Their limbs would mingle, her hands clutching his shoulders, her thighs winding around his, her spine arching. And then would come the low, pleading moans in her throat as he brought her ever nearer to that incredible, unbelievable moment when her blood would rush in her veins, her heart pounding as her body convulsed around his, and a tide of pleasure so exquisite she cried out would lift her to a heaven that she had never known existed—that could only exist in Salvatore’s arms, in his strong embrace, in the passion of his desire for her. Of hers for him...
When she was lying in his arms, time stopped. All time. The sun rose and set and the days passed, slipping one by one into a past that existed as little as did the future.
She would not let there be a future. Not yet. Not when she wanted to embrace only the simplicity of what she had with Salvatore now, to embrace the bliss that came in his arms, the sense of ease and companionship that came just by being with him. The happiness...
They stood with their arms wound about each other on the silvered sand, still warm from the day’s heat, watching the sun slip into the shallow turquoise sea, content to do nothing more than watch it set on another day of happiness.
And on their return to the palazzo they watched it set from the little stone gazebo at the far side of the garden, where once Lana had sat with her paperback, Salvatore still a stranger to her. He was a stranger no longer.
And they watched it set from halfway up a Swiss alp, when Salvatore took her with him on a business trip to Zurich. And then again from the penthouse suite of a high-rise hotel in Frankfurt... They watched as it bathed the Île de la Cité in Paris in golden light...watched it shine on the canals of Amsterdam and the lake of Geneva—wherever his business affairs took him.