CHAPTER SIX
HEDIDN’TREACT, but inwardly his cells were reverberating with exquisite anticipation. ‘No.’ He tried to put a stop to the conversation before it went any further. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Hear me out,’ she murmured softly. ‘Nothing else between us needs to change. I know what you want from me, and you know what I need from you. In twenty-nine nights, we’ll separate and, as soon as legally viable, apply for a divorce. I know you were worried that being married might make me develop feelings for you, but I promise, Luca, that’s not going to happen.’
‘How do you know?’ he demanded bullishly.
‘Another time, remind me to ask you about the string of broken hearts you’ve clearly left behind.’
He ground his teeth together. ‘I leave women before their hearts can become involved. I’m very strict about it. That is the point.’
‘Because of your divorce?’
‘Because of my first marriage. Because I have no interest in repeating that mistake,’ he contradicted flatly.
‘Don’t you get it?’ She breathed out excitedly. ‘We’re on the same page with this stuff. Marriage—a genuine marriage—is my idea of torture, one I saw enacted every single day with my parents, and I would rather die before getting involved in that, for real. Believe me when I tell you that the only thing I want in life is my independence. Falling in love would jeopardise that—I’m not stupid.’
His eyes narrowed at the logic of her argument. He knew there were still risks, but her sincerity was obvious. It was easy for Luca to be persuaded by her words. And yet...
‘You don’t know you’ll still feel that way after we’ve slept together.’
A single finely shaped brow quirked in cynical amusement. ‘You think you’re so good in bed I won’t ever want to leave you?’
He laughed. ‘I’ve never had any complaints.’
‘Good,’ she responded enthusiastically. ‘That’s what I want. I’m a twenty-four-year-old virgin, Luca. I want my first experience of sex to be out of this world. Can you give me that?’
‘Olivia.’ He fought her suggestion with every fibre of his being, even when he definitely didn’t want to fight her. He wanted to scrape his chair back and throw her over his shoulder, drag her right back upstairs and bolt the door shut for at least the next forty-eight hours. How many times since meeting her had he had that fantasy? And now she was serving herself up to him...
‘This would still be a business deal,’ she said after a beat. ‘We’re both laying our cards on the table, explaining our expectations. I promise, I won’t ask you for anything else.’
He balled his hands into fists where they rested on his knees and absent-mindedly wondered what he’d done in a past life to deserve the experience of a woman like Olivia Giovanardi begging him to make love to her.
Still, he clung to sanity and reason, even when the alternative was so appealing. ‘You can’t say that with certainty.’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘How do you know?’
She toyed with the linen napkin to her right, then fixed him with a direct stare. ‘Because my father was a complete bastard to my mother. Because I saw him eviscerate and humiliate her every day of my life. Because I saw her beg him to love her, and he delighted in withholding that. It is complete anathema to me to give a man that kind of power. To love someone so completely you will tolerate that behaviour—’ Out of nowhere, the sting of tears swelled in her throat and behind her eyes, so she tilted her face away, looking towards the Grand Canal while she composed herself.
The waiter arrived at the table to take their order—which Luca placed, handing the menus back then waiting quietly, braced in his chair, eyes tracing the delicate outline of her face in profile. Finally, when Olivia’s emotions were under control, she turned back to face him.
‘I will never love you, or anyone, and I will never ask you to love me. I promise.’
He felt the honesty of her confession, and it reached right inside him, like a tentacle of ice. He’d never met anyone who’d spoken so calmly about love, and their aversion to it, but her words relaxed him, because it was exactly as Luca felt. Having loved once before, and then suffered through the devastation of that break-up, he had no intention of being so stupid ever again. Could he really trust this was a safe course of action?
‘Why did your mother stay married to your father, if his actions were so terrible?’
Olivia’s face blanched, in contrast to the fire in her eyes. ‘Because she loved him.’ The words were said with arctic disdain. ‘We all did. It was only after his death that I began to see things with more perspective.’
‘You were still just a girl. How were you to know that the way they lived wasn’t normal?’
She pleated her napkin in her lap.
A strange sensation gripped Luca’s gut, an unpleasant question formed in his mind and, at first, he resisted asking it. But he was Luca Giovanardi, afraid of nothing and no one, and he wanted all of the facts. ‘Did he hit her?’
Olivia’s eyes went round. She shook her head.