‘You think sleeping with hundreds of women makes you such a man, when really all it makes you is cheap.’
He had been watching her with a slight smile, his big shoulders relaxed, as if she were providing some form of impromptu entertainment, but her last words had hit their mark, because the smile got lost and his jaw hardened.
Right—good. Ava realised she had unconsciously balled up her hands into fists.
‘Yes, cheap—to be had by anyone if she hitches up her skirt and bats her eyelashes at you.’
He closed the space between them and Ava had to force herself to hold her ground. The scent of him took up an assault on her hormones, making her a little dizzy.
‘As I recall you did both those things last night,’ he said in a low voice, his eyes moving over her face, ‘and yet still I refused you.’
His words went through her like an Italian stiletto knife, right under the ribs.
‘Well, lucky me,’ she forced out airlessly. ‘What a near miss.’
He bent his head just slightly, because he was already worryingly close, and his breath feathered her ear.
‘Nowhere near, cara,’ he said.
Three little words and everything—her stomach, her anger and her somehow connected fizz of arousal—all dropped away with a clang.
He turned around and unlocked the gate, giving it a good shove. He seemed angry all of a sudden. He had no right to be. She was the one being pushed around, insulted.
Yet suddenly all she felt was shut out.
The gate creaked and the door broke open onto a brightly lit road outside. He walked through and waited for her on the other side.
Ava came blinking out into the bright southern light. It was hot, but she felt cold, and her attention wasn’t on her surroundings. It was on his words.
Feeling a little lost, she found herself blurting out her uncertainties.
‘I did not come on to you. I did not bat my eyes and—and lift up my skirt.’
‘As you say.’
‘I might have been drunk last night, but I’d remember that.’
‘Si, you were.’
‘Were what?’
‘Drunk.’
Ava tried to shake off the feeling that she had lost something she’d almost had her hand on for a moment in that garden.
‘Oh, and you were such a gentleman!’
‘Yes, I was.’
He said it with such lethal quiet that she shivered and really didn’t want to hear what came next. She watched him walk ahead of her down the winding road. A vista of pine treetops and a glimpse of blue sea lay before them. It was so incredibly lovely, but all Ava wanted to do was grab him and shake him and...and prove to him there was something between them.
The realisation brought her up short.
Was that what this was all about? Was he right? Was she here because she did want to spend more time with him?
‘I did not take advantage of you,’ he repeated, ‘and yet you harp on about it as if you are disappointed, cara. You can’t have it both ways. Either you attempted to avail yourself of this reputation of mine you speak of, or you drank so much alcohol last night you no longer cared. I can’t say that either of those scenarios reflect well on you, but go ahead and choose and we will abide by that version.’
Ava gaped at him. The sun suddenly felt harsh and unbearable, beating down on the back of her vulnerable neck.
She began to jog a little to keep up with him.
‘It wasn’t like that at all. You’ve just twisted everything!’
He shrugged, boredom implicit in the gesture. ‘I am no longer interested in any of this, Ava. If you want to justify your own behaviour go and talk it out with a therapist—isn’t that what women like you do?’
‘Women like me?’ she parroted.
‘Highly strung, too much time on your hands, with sexual needs that obviously aren’t being met.’
Ava absorbed the impact of his opinion of her. It was wrong. It was so wrong. He had it all wrong.
But somehow in that moment she thought he might be right.
* * *
Playboy. Lothario. User of women. Slave to his libido.
Where did she get this from?
He unlocked the doors and shoved them open, waiting for the dust to settle before he moved inside.
Anyone who hitches up her skirt and bats her eyelashes...
Yet he’d heard those words before, hadn’t he? And from thinner, far harsher lips.
His father, yelling so hard his face had turned puce. Spittle hitting the wall. Himself, seven years younger—a lifetime ago, it seemed now, shoving his broad young shoulders back and, for the first time in their disastrous relationship, giving back as good as he got. Better. He was signing a second contract with the Italian team, he had no intention of doing military service, and as for his social life if he wanted to screw every last woman in Rome he’d give it his best shot.