Luca gritted something that didn't sound terribly reas¬suring in his own language.
'I'll get you a glass of water,' Darcy proffered, full of genuine remorse. 'It was an accident...honestly, it was—'
'Bitch...' Luca ground out with agonised effort.
Darcy withdrew a step. The silence thundered.
'I'll see you later,' she muttered curtly. 'Right now, I've got work to do.'
'We're flying to Venice!' Luca shot at her rawly.
Only then did Darcy also recall the appointment she had made at the bank. Checking her watch, she emitted a stran¬gled groan and took flight.
Half an hour later, having mucked out Nero's stable, Darcy mustered the courage to enter the poultry coop. Henrietta the hen, who regarded every human invasion as a hostile act, gave her a mean look of anticipation.
'Please, Henrietta, not today,' Darcy pleaded as she hur¬riedly filled a bowl with eggs, her thoughts straying help¬lessly back to Luca and the excruciating awareness that he could still rip away her defences and make her agonisingly vulnerable.
She was so desperately confused by the emotions flailing her. She knew now that prior to the revelation of Luca's real identity she had grown to trust him, like him, even. She had revelled in his sophisticated cool at Margo's party, his seeming protectiveness, even the envious looks of other women. Dear God, how pathetic she had been, and now she felt gutted, absolutely gutted by the most savage sense of loss and bewilderment, and quite incapable of compre-hending what was going on inside her own head.
And as for her wretched body... ? Recalling that kiss on the bed, reliving the shameless and eager anticipation which had flamed through her, Darcy hated herself. Luca had been taunting her, humiliating her with her own weakness. The tables had been turned with a vengeance, she acknowledged painfully. For hadn't she foolishly believed for the space of one night three years ago that she, too, could treat sex as a casual experience for which pleasure would be the only price?
Hadn't she been bitterly conscious that night in Venice that she was still a virgin? Hadn't she been rebelling against her own image? Hadn't she longed to taste the power of being a sexually aware and sexually appealing woman?
And hadn't the idea of throwing off her inhibitions far from home been tempting? And hadn't she known the same mo¬ment Luca melted her bones with one passionate kiss that she wanted to go to bed with him and forever banish the demeaning memory of her sterile, sexless relationship with Richard?
And, worse, hadn't she thrown herself at Luca at every opportunity, stubbornly evading his every attempt to slow the pace of their intimacy? All that champagne on top of her medication had left her bereft of every inhibition. For so long she had used the alcohol in her veins as an excuse. But the imagery that now assailed Darcy in split-second shattering Technicolor frames, the undeniably shocking memories of how she had treated Luca that night, now filled her with choking shame.
She had never once allowed herself to remember exactly what she had done to Luca in that bedroom. She had been in the grip of a wanton hunger, a hunger fanned to white-hot heat by the knowledge that this beautiful, gorgeous, sophisticated guy was weak with lust for her. She hadn't wanted him to suspect that he was her first lover...and she had gone to indecent lengths not to give him the smallest grounds for that suspicion.
As a pained moan of mortification escaped Darcy under the assault of those memories, Henrietta jabbed a vicious beak into her extended hand.
With a startled yelp of pain, Darcy exited backwards from the coop, her dogs barking frantically at her heels.
'Sta zitto!' That command slashed through the air like a whip.
Darcy twisted round in dismay. In the light of her recent thoughts she was truly appalled to see Luca poised on the path several feet away. Her face flamed. There he was, six feet four inches of staggeringly attractive, sleek and pow¬erful masculinity, luxuriant black hair smooth, charcoal-grey suit shrieking class and expensive tailoring. But, dis¬concertingly, Darcy's defiant subconscious threw up a much more disturbing image of Luca. Luca sprawled glo¬riously naked across white sheets, a magnificent vision of golden-skinned male perfection, a life-sized fantasy toy en¬tirely at her mercy.
Far, far too late had she learnt that Luca had inspired her with something infinitely more dangerous than desire. He would laugh longest and loudest if he ever realised that truth.
Suddenly sick with pain and regret at her own stupidity, Darcy twisted her bright head away under the onslaught of those fiercely intelligent dark eyes.
As Humpf and Bert grovelled ingratiatingly round his feet, Luca scanned Darcy's bedraggled appearance. Her jeans were streaked with dirt, her sweater liberally adorned with pieces of straw.
Dawning disbelief in his grim ap¬praisal, he breathed with admirable restraint, 'You have ex¬actly ten minutes to change and board the helicopter.'