‘Maybe for each of us,’ he said slowly, his gaze turning inward now, ‘our childhoods help to...to explain the adults we’ve become.’ He paused, his gaze intent. ‘You grew up without parents who cared about you, jealous of your cousin, wanting what she had. Not just your grandfather’s affection...you were also driven to want—’
He broke off, but Ariana knew what he had been about to say.
To want the man she had. The man who wanted her, but not you.
She felt it burn in her throat, the bitterness of it all, but he was speaking again.
‘As for me—’ He broke off once more. Reached for his coffee, swallowed it. Set the cup down again. Looked back at her. He was different again.
‘We have to go forward, Ariana, and deal with the reality of what has happened to us. We will never be close but we can be...civilised.’
He took a breath, his expression changing. Without realising his intent, she watched as he reached his hand forward, closing it over hers as it lay inert on the tablecloth, knife handle still in its grip. He patted it, as if reassuringly, then drew back, glanced at his watch.
He got to his feet. ‘And now I must be on my way,’ he said, in a brisk, upbeat tone. ‘I have a meeting I can’t miss. I leave the villa in your capable hands—keep me updated.’ He raised a hand in farewell—a casual gesture. ‘Until next weekend...’
He turned, striding from the breakfast room, and was gone without even looking back.
At the table, Ariana closed her eyes. They were shimmering with diamond dewdrops. Tears there was no point in shedding. No point at all.
Luca set down his phone. His expression was taut. The necessary arrangements were all made, the paperwork complete. Now all he needed was Ariana herself. He would be fetching her from Como that morning, and by the afternoon the deed would be done.
The deed that had to be done.
For a long moment he simply stared out of his office window, wondering what it was he felt. Realising he still felt nothing. The thing it was the safest to feel. Still the safest...
The words he had said to Ariana over a month ago circled in his head.
‘We can be civilised.’
Because what else was possible between them?
And what was more civilised between two people who should never have had anything to do with each than doing what had to be done for a baby that should never have existed?
And what we feel or want does not matter. Cannot matter. Can never matter.
He got to his feet, strode through into the outer office and gave his PA his instructions for the rest of the day.
He was not thinking, not letting himself think, about what the rest of the day would bring.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ARIANAWASSHOWINGLuca the newly installed kitchen.
‘A distinct improvement,’ was his dry judgement, before she went on to show him the rest of the villa. Its refurbishment was almost complete, done in record time—weeks instead of months. She had worked assiduously, chivvying the workmen, taking up paints and paintbrush herself in some of the rooms, because it kept her busy, kept her going, kept her from thinking or feeling.
Outwardly she was brisk, businesslike. Dealing with things on a day-by-day basis. Nothing more than that. Keeping everything else at bay.
Keeping Luca at bay.
They seemed to have settled into some kind of truce, for want of a better word. They were civil to each other—civilised, indeed, just as he had said they should be—as if all the dark, dark waters just below the surface did not exist. Yet she was conscious all the time of their existence. How could she not be?
It was why she had to keep Luca at bay. She knew why she was doing it. To protect herself.
Not from his anger, as she had once said to him. But from something that was even more hurtful, even more wounding.
She heard his words to her that breakfast-time a month ago, carved into her.
‘We can never be close.’