‘But it’s so empty without love to sustain it,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see that?’
‘You claim to love me. Perhaps, in time, I will learn to love you again.’
‘There is no guarantee you will though, is there?’
‘Life does not come with a whole list of guarantees, Keira,’ he said. ‘No one can predict the future. If anyone had told me even five weeks ago that I would be standing in front of you tonight, desperate to make love to you, I would have laughed in their face, but here I am, fighting not to drag you into my arms and have you right here on the floor at our feet.’
Keira felt her chin give a little wobble. ‘You really mean that?’
He smiled and pulled her into his arms, burying his head into her wavy hair. ‘I have been thinking of nothing else for the last seven days,’ he said. ‘I have missed you so much, tesoro mio.’
‘I’ve missed you too,’ she said into his chest. ‘I was hoping you would make it back for my exhibition but…’ She let out a despondent sigh.
He looked down at her. ‘I intended to get back in time, in spite of the message I left with Marietta, but at the last minute one of the accountants found a slight discrepancy in the figures in the report we were looking over so I had to see to it right then and there. I am sorry I wasn’t back in time but I sent someone on my behalf, did he not tell you?’
Keira blinked up at him once or twice. ‘No…should he have?’
‘I instructed him to buy everything you had painted,’ he said. ‘The very least he could have done was to tell you so.’
‘Oh…so it was you…’
‘Of course it was me, cara,’ he said. ‘I have a lot of luxury homes to decorate, no? I thought it would be a good way to get your name out there.’
‘It was very good of you, considering how you feel about me…’
He brought up her chin with one finger. ‘And do you know how I feel about you?’ he asked.
She let out a shaky sigh. ‘I’m not sure I want
to even think about it in case I’m disappointed.’
‘I feel like holding you in my arms for as long as I can,’ he said. ‘I want to breathe in your scent, to taste you, to feel you convulsing around me. I have been thinking about it the whole time I was away. No one completes me the way you do.’
But you don’t love me, Keira thought as she gave herself up to his kiss. But then she recalled the housekeeper’s words: Love him. Love him to bits.
That would be the easy part.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘HOW do you think your last exam went?’ Keira asked Jamie at the end of the following week.
‘I’m just glad they’re all over,’ he said, rotating his straw in his milkshake.
‘How are things with Bruno?’ she asked.
‘He’s been really good the last few days,’ he said, still looking at the movements of the straw. ‘As soon as he heard you were pregnant, he kind of figured things must be on the level with you and Patrizio.’
‘That’s a relief,’ she said. ‘But I still can’t work out why you didn’t say something earlier about what was going on between you both. Why didn’t you?’
He gave her a shamefaced look and twirled his straw again. ‘We-ll…’
Keira gave him a probing glance. ‘What’s going on, Jamie?’
‘I’m not supposed to tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
Jamie met her gaze, a rueful smile twisting his mouth. ‘It’s true Bruno and I had a bit of a cooling off when you and Patrizio first broke up. Bruno said some pretty horrible things about you but then so did I about his uncle. But we sorted it out after a while. We weren’t as good mates as before, I guess, because we both felt a conflict of loyalties but we were never really feuding, or at least not enough to get expelled.’