Why was it that men were so quick to assume that when a woman was in tears it was caused by hormones?
He put out a hand to touch her but she flinched away from him and he frowned, clearly puzzled.
‘Cara.’
‘Don’t call me that!’ Her eyes filled again as she glared up at him. ‘Our whole relationship is a total farce, Luca!’
He stilled, his expression shocked. ‘Tia, you don’t—’
&
nbsp; ‘I am such a stupid fool,’ she muttered, interrupting him without thought, rubbing the tears away from her cheeks with the palm of her hand. ‘For a brief, totally deluded time, I really thought it could work between us.’
He frowned. ‘Tia—’
‘I was waiting for you to tell me, Luca.’ She stared at him accusingly and reached for a tissue from the box by her bed. ‘I wanted to see whether you were the same sort of man as my father.’
He was very still. ‘Your father?’
‘I told you that he had affairs,’ Tia said hoarsely, ‘but I never told you how my mother found out, did I? She fell down some stairs backstage and was unconscious in hospital for a week. My father really thought she was going to die so do you know what he did?’ Her eyes were bright with tears of outrage as she looked at him. ‘He chose that moment to confess everything. My mother was lying unconscious and he told her everything. All about the other women he’d been seeing—that their whole relationship had been a sham. He thought that she couldn’t hear him, but she could.’
Luca’s expression was grim. ‘Tia, you don’t—’
‘She trusted him, you see,’ Tia went on, her heart beating so fast she thought it would burst. ‘And to find out that he had this secret life was just too much for her. When I heard your mother talking to Luisa the day of our wedding, it was like history repeating itself.’
There was a long silence and when he spoke his voice was soft. ‘You heard my mother and Luisa talking?’
‘That’s right.’ Tia nodded miserably, the words etched in her memory. ‘Your mother said that it was a very sad day. That you were marrying the wrong woman for the wrong reasons and that you should have been marrying Luisa.’ The tears started to trickle down her cheeks again and this time she did nothing to stop them. ‘And then Luisa said that you’d told her that you would always love her. Which was all news to me, of course. Bad news. I was crazy about you, Luca. I really thought you were Mr Right.’
Luca’s breathing was rapid and his face was dark with anger. ‘Wait there,’ he growled, turning on his heel and leaving the room, to return only minutes later, dragging Luisa by the arm.
He pushed her none too gently into the room and spoke to her rapidly in Italian, his expression grim.
Luisa listened and then glanced nervously at Tia. ‘This is all my fault. Luca wants me to explain.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Tia mumbled, reaching for another tissue and blowing her nose hard. ‘I really don’t want to hear it. I should have ended it the day of the wedding when I found out that that the pair of you were involved.’
Luisa’s face blanched. ‘That was why you refused to marry him? Because you thought that I, that we—?’ She broke off and said something in Italian to Luca who shrugged, his eyes as hard as granite.
Strange, Tia thought dully as she tucked the scrunched tissue up her sleeve. For a man in love, he didn’t look too happy.
‘Tia…’ Luisa’s voice was suddenly shaking with nerves and she looked pleadingly at Luca who was totally unsympathetic. The Italian girl took a deep breath. ‘I think… It seems as though you may have misunderstood—’
Luca growled something and she flinched slightly.
‘I mean…’ She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘I was— I’m not involved with Luca. I never have been. Not in the way you imagined. But I wanted to be. I had a huge crush on him.’
She hung her head and Tia stared at her, uncomprehending. A crush?
‘But I heard you and his mother talking. She said that he should be marrying you. You said that he’d promised to love you for ever.’
Luisa nodded. ‘It’s true that Luca’s mother always wanted him to marry me, but it wasn’t a realistic wish and it wasn’t Luca’s wish.’ She bit her lip. ‘The truth is that Luca was kind to me, always, and I—I wished it would be something more.’
‘But it never was,’ Luca said, speaking in English for the first time since he’d strode into the room, dragging Luisa with him. ‘Luisa was a childhood friend of my sister’s. My mother, who doesn’t have enough to occupy her mind, weaved all sorts of plans for bringing us together. But they didn’t work.’
Hope started to flicker in the back of Tia’s mind. ‘They didn’t?’
‘No.’ Luca looked at Luisa and gave her a crooked smile, the sort that a brother might have given to a sister. ‘Whenever Luisa and I went out, it was always with the family. We were never involved in a romantic sense.’