‘Desert nights are chilly once the sun goes down.’ On the floor above, he walked her out onto a giant roof terrace that contained a gleaming swimming pool, plants in massive colourful urns and loads of outside seating. ‘In summer we lived mostly outdoors here.’
‘It sounds idyllic...and the view is out of this world,’ Lara remarked as she leant on the retaining wall, gazing out at the snow-capped Atlas Mountain range backing the seemingly endless expanse of dense date palms. ‘Much more lush and green than I was expecting.’
‘When are you planning to tell me what’s wrong?’ Gaetano shot at her with an unexpectedness that jolted her.
Lara spun round, clashing with scorching dark eyes that seared her, and she lost colour. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking—’
‘Quit while you’re ahead. You can’t act for peanuts. For the past two days you have been treating me like the invisible man when we’re out of bed and a potential degenerate when we’re in it!’
Taken aback by that full-frontal attack and his anger, Lara stared back at him, her cheeks red with heat and her chest heaving as she sucked in oxygen to fill her compressed lungs. For a moment she couldn’t find her voice.
‘Did Olivier say something about me that annoyed or offended you?’ Gaetano prompted in a low intense tone. ‘I noticed that your attitude to me changed afterhisvisit...and if you don’t come clean right now, Lara, I intend to phone him.’
‘Don’t youdare!’ Lara snapped back at him in dismay. ‘It’s nothing to do with Olivier. He said not one word out of place about you.’
His lean, strikingly handsome face merely tightened. ‘That is good to know, because he’s a close friend. But it annoys me that you feel that you cannot speak freely to me. Am I so intimidating? So untrustworthy that you can’t simply be frank with me?’
Shame and regret filled Lara and an uneasy silence stretched as a tray of refreshments was brought out to the terrace by a member of the staff.
Gaetano thanked the older woman in French and introduced her to Lara. ‘This is our housekeeper, Maryam. Her husband, Ahmed, is our cook.’
The mint tea was poured, and tiny pastries offered. Lara was too overwrought to be capable of eating anything. She sipped the sweet herbal tea and nibbled at the edge of a pastry to pass herself below Maryam’s anxious scrutiny while wondering if the older woman had heard their raised voices. Inside herself she was dying a thousand deaths of embarrassment.
‘I’m not very good at confrontation, but that doesn’t matter because you haven’t doneanythingwrong,’ she stressed uncomfortably as soon as Maryam had vanished indoors again.
‘Then what on earth has caused this change in you?’ Gaetano demanded rawly.
‘Something Antonella let drop,’ she muttered reluctantly.
‘Antonella?’ Gaetano’s mouth took on a sardonic curve and his dark golden eyes hardened. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’
Lara sank down on a cushioned seat because her legs felt weak. ‘I was a bit shocked because she mentioned that you and she had been datingbeforeyou had your fall that Christmas with me two years ago.’
‘Dating?That’s news to me,’ Gaetano countered thinly, incensed colour lining his hard cheekbones. ‘Her father brought us together on a trip to the opera house, and then on another occasion I was invited to a dinner by a friend and discovered that I was expected to partner Antonella. Neither event was a date and, in any case, in my position, I would have to be pretty stupid to get involved with the daughter of a politician. I have always given the daughters of our local dignitaries a wide berth. In fact, I have never had an affair with a woman in Mosvakia. Since I was a teenager, it was easier and safer to enjoy such freedoms abroad.’
‘That’s quite a speech.’
‘Evidently a necessary one,’ Gaetano condemned. ‘Do you honestly think that I would allow an ex to work in the palace and work closely with my wife? I’m more sensible than that, although I have to say that you seem to be less than sensible on the same topic. What else did Antonella tell you?’
‘Well...’ Lara floundered. ‘It wasn’t so much what she said as the impression she gave me...that you and she had been very close.’
‘Nonsense,’ he dismissed without hesitation. ‘I’m skilled at being courteous and nothing more to women keen to attract my attention when I have no intention of reciprocating. That’s been an element of my life since school. You’re too trusting, Lara. You should have brought this concern straight to me. I’ll put Dario onto finding another location for Antonella.’
‘Oh, don’t do that—not if it’s likely to cause offence to her family.’
‘I don’t like troublemakers,bambola...or the streak of spite Antonella has revealed. She lied to you. We weren’t dating. There has never been any physical contact between us. What other stories might she weave? There was nootherwoman in my life when I first met you. Plainly, Antonella hit out at you becauseIhad injured her ego. I won’t have her anywhere near you now that she’s shown her true colours.’
A slow smile curved Lara’s formerly tense mouth. He was so protective that he made her toes curl. Even two years ago, clueless about his identity, Gaetano had been driven by that same compassionate strength. Not since her father’s death had she been able to rely on a man and her experiences as a teen, forced to live with the ever-changing turmoil of her mother’s love life, had made her wary and distrustful of men before she met him.
‘I should’ve trusted you, at least given you the benefit of the doubt,’ she conceded, pained that she had believed every word that fell from the other woman’s lips. ‘I’ve wasted two days fretting about something that never happened.’
Gaetano reached for her hands and held fast to them. ‘I don’t like it when you close me out.’
‘I’m not used to having anyone I can talk to in a crisis,’ Lara confided. ‘I was never free to honestly talk to Alice about us because she’s hopeless at keeping secrets.’
Shimmering dark golden eyes held hers. Her mouth ran dry, and her tummy flipped with the force of her sexual awareness. He wound long fingers slowly into several strands of wavy strawberry hair, watching how the fading sunlight lit it up to a peach shade. ‘I’m used to keeping my own counsel, so I have to admit talking is a challenge for me as well.’
Her hand tugged free of his to curve to one lean cheekbone, her fingertips stroking his olive skin. ‘In other words, we are both useless at communication.’ She sighed.