‘I have none,’ Ariana happily admitted. Her world had been turned upside down since the death of her father, and anyway she tended to eat out. ‘Well, I have some ice cream.’
‘Ice cream?’
‘A lot of ice cream!’ Making it was her hobby, her absolute guilty pleasure. Wearing a small wrap, she padded to the kitchen. There she defrosted two croissants and filled them with ice-cream in flavours of cardamom and pistachio and a dark chocolate one too while she waited for the mocha pot to boil and wondered how best to take back her heart.
How to accept his terms and conditions and somehow let him go with grace.
Gian lay there breathing in the scent of brewing coffee, trying to pinpoint the moment he had started wanting her.
On the day of her farcical interview, when he’d first noticed the true colour of her eyes? No, a more honest examination told him it had been before that, and even Ariana herself had voiced it: the night of the silver ball.
Or had it been when she’d swept into the planning meeting and said she wanted silver as a theme?
Instead of gritting his teeth, he had found himself smiling, at least on the inside, for Gian rarely showed how he truly felt.
But, no, whileitmight have started then, for Gian things had really changed the night she had worn silver. Rafael had not been there, and Gian had stood by Ariana’s side as she played host. He’d been in awe of how long she’d smiled with the guests and carried on with grace.
He’d wanted to take her aside and tell her that he knew how hard this was, and how proud of her he felt. Instead, they had danced their duty dance and he had held her back from him with rigid arms so she would not feel how turned on he was and how he had ached to drop a kiss on her mouth, on her bare shoulder.
And he was hard for her again.
‘Colazione!’Ariana announced breakfast as she came into the room and blinked at his obvious arousal. ‘Good grief,’ she said. ‘I’m far too sore for that.’
‘Sore?’
She nodded. ‘Nicely sore, the best sore ever.’ Oh, God, she wanted him again, but then the ice cream would melt and her phone had already pinged in several messages. She had Nicki coming roundandshe had to do this without starting to cry. ‘Eat,’ she told him. ‘You can have the chocolate one.’
It sounded like she was making a concession, but Gian could tell when she was lying. ‘I want the other one.’
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I’llletyou have the chocolate one.’
‘But I want the pistachio.’
‘And cardamom.’ Ariana sighed and handed the one she really wanted to him. ‘I put in extra when I made it.’
Gian, though used to breakfast in bed, was not used to this—just sitting in bed, eating and tasting food with a woman, and taking bites of each other’s.
Bites so big she nearly lost her fingers to his mouth, and they laughed as they fought over food. ‘You really made this?’ he checked.
‘Not the croissant, just the ice cream. I’m going to make salted roast chestnut next, and I shall get them from the same vendor. They were the best I’ve tasted...’
‘They’re just chestnuts.’
‘No,’ she said, and then she gave him the speech she had prepared in her kitchen. ‘They kept me warm.Youkept me warm last night, Gian, even if you did not share my bed. You cared for me last night and then again this morning and I thank you.’
She had surprised him, and then she surprised him further when, with breakfast done, it was Ariana herself who suggested he leave. ‘You’d better go. Mamma might drop in.’
‘Doesn’t she call first?’ Gian asked.
‘No,’ Ariana said. ‘I always ask her to but then she reminds me that she’s my mother and shouldn’t need an appointment...’
‘I’ll get dressed then.’
‘Have a shower,’ she offered.
He declined, or he would be trailing a floral boutique all day if he used her scents. ‘I’ll have one back at the hotel.’
It was odd, Ariana thought as she lay watching him dress, that he did not call La Fiordelise home.