‘I don’t think that. I—I just wanted us to be...honest with each other. You’re acting as if—’
‘As if what, Ava?’
‘As if I mean something to you—and how can I when we’ve only known one another a few days?’ She brought out the big guns. ‘What about Donatella?’
It took Gianluca a moment to work out who the hell Donatella was, and when he did it made even less sense. Apparently it made sense to Ava. She was glaring at him. He made a manful effort not to laugh.
‘Ava, I have never been intimate with Donatella. She was a—how you say?—a prop.’
‘Prop?’
‘Some women—they go out, they take a man with them to hold their handbag, si?’
Ava looked at him suspiciously. ‘I don’t know any women like that.’
‘Donatella carried my drink,’ he supplied dryly.
‘You made a woman follow you round a nightclub carrying your drink?’
‘It’s a euphemism, Ava. I did not want to be hassled by anyone, so I chose the lesser of the evils—Donatella.’
Ava was clearly considering this. Gianluca watched several emotions cross her face. Felt himself relax as she sank back onto the pillow.
At last. Progress.
‘You must think I’m a complete idiot!’
She shot up out of the bed, dragging the sheet with her, but he wasn’t having that. He grabbed it with one hand and she was left naked beside the bed. She did what he thought of as the classic pose—one arm strapped across her breasts, the other across the sweet little mop of curls at the juncture of her thighs—and backed away from the bed.
‘Cara...’ he said, making a placatory gesture.
‘Don’t you darling me, you liar!’
He stiffened and toyed with the idea of just picking her up and rolling her back into bed. But he told himself she was overwrought, and that if he wasn’t careful she might hurt herself. Or him. He tried not to smile as he bounded out of bed.
She had backed herself into the wall, but not before spotting her robe. She had it on in a trice.
‘How stupid do you think I am?’ she snapped, securing the belt with a violent yank. ‘She was beautiful. She was wearing nothing.’ Her voice trembled. ‘She wasn’t a handbag!’
‘Prop,’ Gianluca amended under his breath, advancing cautiously on her.
‘She wasn’t that either. Is that how you’re going to describe me to the next fool woman you kidnap and hold hostage? A prop?’
Ava was holding herself so rigidly it was a shock to her system when he threw back his head and laughed. The rich, raw, edgy sound of it hemmed her in. They stood much as they had when they begun this dance earlier.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Ava, if I don’t laugh I’ll throttle you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, more to herself than to him.
‘I know, cara.’ He rested one hand on the wall beside her head. Big, naked, magnificent, he made her feel entirely too girly for her own comfort. He was looking at her as if she were something he was making alterations to, and perhaps he was—cutting her right out of the picture.
Ava braced herself. This was the fall-out of giving in to the fantasy, of letting one’s emotions rule. It always brought about bad things. This was what she had lectured Josh about—leading with his head, not his heart, taking only considered risks, not coming to Italy and marrying an Italian girl from an old family and ruining his life.
But who had ruined her life?
She was a woman who had thrown it all away seven years ago with this man, and up until a blissful five minutes ago she had been lying in his arms—only to find herself once more in the process of dismantling the tiny scrap of wonderful she’d scraped back.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I shouldn’t have lashed out at you.’
Gianluca wasn’t really listening. He was distracted. No man would blame him. He could feel her warmth, smell the vanilla scent on her skin. He knew intimately now the softness of that skin. All women had soft skin—it was what made them wonderfully different—but with Ava it felt...she felt...softer...more pliant.
She just felt better.
He was so hard it was a special kind of torture.
He’d come back to the room and his idea had been to pull on soft old jeans and a T-shirt and do some work while he waited for Ava to wake up. He’d planned to order food. They’d eat, talk. He’d apologise for bringing her here without consulting her, she’d apologise for being a shrew and foolishly reckless, and perhaps something could be salvaged from the wreckage that was today. Perhaps he had been marginally high-handed with her, but he wasn’t accustomed to women who made his life difficult.