Before he could respond to her unconvincing claim, his phone began to ring, he glanced at the screen and swore. ‘Sorry. I need to take this.’
Of course you do, she thought.Welcome to the rest of your life, Tilda—or at least the next six months.
Jogging down the steps, Sam paused beside her as Ezio stepped out into the drizzle.
‘Are you changing your name?’
‘I haven’t even thought about it,’ she admitted but now she thought it was hardly worth the bother for six months.
‘I don’t mind if you do, you know...it makes sense he’s famous and you’re not.’
Well, that was inarguable.
The damp had already penetrated the thin fabric of her dress halfway to the limo when someone appeared carrying a massive umbrella. Under its shelter she reached the kerb, where the open-doored limo waited.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that Ezio still had his phone at his ear. He lifted it away briefly to respond to something Sam had said with a nod of assent.
‘I’m riding upfront, I don’t want to be a gooseberry!’ Sam yelled, jogging past her and around the limo.
‘You don’t have to—’ Her words were lost in the slamming of the door.
She slid in, adjusting her dress before the door was closed, immediately muffling the noise of the traffic which, despite the early hour, had built up to rush hour level. Smoothing the skirt over her thighs, the ring on her finger caught the light. She paused and looked at the gold band that lay snugly against the big square-cut emerald.
She was still staring at it when Ezio slid in beside her. ‘You’re trying to figure out if they’re real. You’ve found me out.’ He held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘They’re paste. I’m a cheapskate.’
‘I wish they were! I don’t feel comfortable walking around with a fortune on my finger.’
He stared at her for a moment and loosed a laugh. ‘You are a very unusual woman, you know that?’
It was hard to tell from his expression if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
‘What are you doing?’ She nodded towards his phone.
‘Switching it off... Oh, the storm has shifted its path, so there’s no issue with the flight—got the news update just before we went in.’
‘Good about the storm... Actually, I didn’t know there was a storm.’ Though, now that she thought about it, Saul had mentioned something about the weather during the phone call last night.
Saul was actually being extremely helpful. He’d looked over her mission statement, suggested a couple of tweaks and given her the names of some potential trustees.
‘It’s been on every news bulletin for the last forty-eight hours. The phone...’ He hesitated before volunteering, ‘My father has been ringing me non-stop since last night.’
‘Your father?’
‘You sound surprised,’ he observed, tucking the phone in his pocket. The gesture was an empty one. He might want to take a break from his father, but it was not practical to cut himself off entirely. His fantasy version of a desert island was a week with his phone switched off—the desert island scenario stood more chance of actually happening.
Tilda conceded the point with a faint shrug. ‘I suppose I had the impression that you weren’t particularly close.’ It wasn’t so much what he’d said about his father but the fact he rarely mentioned him at all.
‘You had the right impression, so don’t worry, there will be no dutiful visit for you to endure,’ he drawled. ‘We do the yearly dinner, though my mother and I do meet up through the year.’
Tilda, who remembered the dates being in his diary, didn’t say anything. ‘I wasn’t thinking about that. I... Oh...’ His meaning suddenly hit her and she felt stupid for being so slow. ‘You mean that by then we will be divorced,’ she said tonelessly.
In the act of sliding one arm along the back of the seat, he paused, something flickering in his dark eyes. ‘I suppose we will be.’
‘Has your father found out about the wedding? Was he angry?’
‘My father does not have the right to be angry. If he knows we are married, I haven’t told him.’ She sensed a tension in his steely posture underneath his languid pose. ‘Actually, my mother has left him...about thirty years too late, in my opinion, but she has.’ He cast a knowing look over her face. ‘Yes, it was an affair, or rather the last in a long list of affairs... As it turns out, one too many.’
‘Oh.’