‘It will be good, come the spring,’ he said, nodding. He looked down at her. ‘And in the summer, with the baby...’ something changed in his face ‘...it will be ideal for you.’
She said nothing, moving to turn away instead. But her hand was caught. She tried to draw it back, but Luca would not let go.
‘Ariana...’
His voice was different again. He spoke in the way he’d said her name upstairs, when he was fussing over her. He caught her other hand, holding them both together in his so that she had to turn towards him. She tugged to free them.
A frown formed on his brow. ‘You pull away from me all the time,’ he said. ‘But I only want to reassure you—’
‘I don’t want you touching me!’ The words broke from her. Sharp. Insistent. ‘It was you who said it, Luca—that we should be civilised. But there’s too much...too much anger...hatred...for there to be anything else.’ She looked at him, unflinching now. ‘You said it yourself—we can never be close.’
She saw his expression change. ‘I should not have said that.’
‘Why not? It’s true.’ She took a breath. Felt emotion building in her. Finding its way to the surface. ‘I know, Luca, that any concern you have is not for me. It is for the baby. I know it—and I understand it. I know that if I hadn’t got pregnant I would never have set eyes on you again. I’d have let you take my business from me as punishment for what I did to you and gone off to starve in a gutter. And I would have been glad to do so if it got you out of my life! I curse the night I met you in New York! Curse that I ever let myself have anything to do with you! But now I have to. Because, as you said, we have to think not of ourselves and what we want—which for my part is to run like hell as far away from you as my legs will carry me!—but what this poor, poor baby is going to need...’
Her hand closed instinctively, protectively over her abdomen, which was starting to round now, to betray the presence of the living being within, who alone in all this mess was innocent of everything.
She would not cry, would not weep, even though she was cracking up inside, breaking into pieces. Numbly, she walked back inside, letting her torn and ragged emotions slowly subside, gaining mastery over herself again.
Indoors, she turned. He was standing in the open doorway to the terrace, looking at her, a troubled expression on his face.
She lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders. ‘I’ve shown you everything,’ she said, ‘and now I’m hungry. Can we go and get lunch?’
Her voice was back to normal. The ‘normal’ she presented him with. The normal of being neutral and civil and civilised. The normal that had nothing to do with passion and hatred and destruction. Let alone anything else...
What cannot exist between us—what never will...
She walked out to his car, which was pulled up on the driveway, leaving him to lock up. Then waited for him to join her, staring at nothing.
Luca secured the villa’s front door with Ariana’s words echoing in his head. Rearranging things inside it. Though how, he did not know. He knew only that...
That I didn’t want to hear them.
His frown deepened. Hearing that sharp, repudiating rejection—I don’t want you touching me!—had circled like a shark biting. It washewho did not want anything to do withher. He who had walked away from her that morning in New York. He who had told her, that ugly night in Lucca, that he would never sully himself on her again. He who had said they could never be close. That any ‘us’ was only because of the baby.
He heard her words:‘I curse the night I met you.’
They bit into him, but why should they? He was the one with regrets over that night.
Because I was already committed to Mia.
His eyes went to Ariana as he walked slowly towards the car, his thoughts rearranging themselves in his head, a frown still on his face.
What if Mia had not been in my life then?
He stopped. Motionless. What if he’d been free in New York? Free to stay with Ariana after their night together—their searing, unforgettable night?
I didn’t want to want her.
His expression darkened. No, he hadn’t wanted to want Ariana—and he still didn’t want to want her.
Not because of Mia—Mia, he knew, with a kind of haunting sadness, was gone from him for ever, faded back into his boyhood dreams of what the ideal woman should be like.
Did she ever really exist for me or did I just invent her for myself? Place upon her all that I thought I yearned for in my ideal woman. Did I ever know her?
She had spoken so little, given away so little of herself—he hadn’t even known she would have hated the villa by the lake...
Did I just conjure her from my dreams?