A Dangerous Solace

She spotted the sports car in the traffic and waved a bag at him.

Even an hour away from him and she felt her heart expand when she dived into the car. He was looking at her as if checking she was in one piece.

‘Shopping? I should have guessed.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked uneasily as she strapped herself in.

‘Women and shopping.’

She relaxed. ‘Oh, yes. That old chestnut. You know, studies have shown—’

He leaned over and kissed her.

‘Oh.’ She gazed back at him. ‘That was nice.’

‘You look beautiful,’ he said, and he wasn’t looking at her new capris.

‘I just picked up a few things more suited to the coast,’ she wittered.

He was looking at her and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. A horn blasted at them from the road but Gianluca continued to stare.

‘What?’ she asked self-consciously.

‘I was thinking,’ he said slowly, ‘I was in a hurry the other day. I almost didn’t stop in at Nero’s.’

‘Nero’s?’

‘The coffee bar in Rome. I would have missed you—this.’ He reached out and stroked the line of her cheek, down around the curve of her jaw.

Unaccountably Ava’s eyes filled with tears. ‘But you didn’t miss me,’ she said huskily.

‘Then why are you crying, tesoro?’

Ava gave a self-conscious little laugh. ‘I don’t know.’

But she did. Her heart felt full to overflowing. He wasn’t anything like the way she’d made him in her head—the self-defensive picture she’d created of a spoiled, privileged aristocrat who didn’t care about the women he slept with, only the conquests he made. He wasn’t arrogant either. He just possessed confidence in who he was, what he could do. Travelling with him, she felt incredibly safe and also relaxed.

All of her life she had been the one to take charge.

It was nice knowing she didn’t have to.

He would take care of it.

The fact he expected to take care of it should have lifted her hackles, but it was difficult to begrudge him a role he assumed so naturally.

‘Where will we go now?’ she asked.

He gave her a supremely masculine smile. ‘My turn to surprise you.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘NO, I COULDN’T—I can’t. It’s too much, Gianluca.’

‘On the contrary. It’s perfect.’ He held the necklace, with its tiny tourmalines, green beryls, amethysts, pink sapphires and diamonds delicately wrought through a white gold chain, against her throat.

The jeweller in the exclusive little shop hovered discreetly in the background.

Ava was all too conscious of their audience—until Gianluca’s shoulders blocked them out and he bent his head close to hers.

‘Let me spoil you, tesoro,’ he said, his eyes intent on hers.

‘But I don’t need you to buy things for me,’ she answered. ‘I have my own money.’

His mouth twitched. ‘It is not the cost, Ava, it is the sentiment.’

She looked anxiously at the divine glittering string he hung before her and the thought flittered through her mind that it was a very expensive piece of rope she might easily hang herself on.

‘Then it is a no?’ he said, with that infinitesimal Latin shrug.

She wanted it so badly. Not because it was beautiful—although it was—but because he wanted her to have it. And he was being so sweet in letting her have her way although it disappointed him. He wasn’t pushing it on her, and he could have no idea how good that made her feel.

Gianluca always gave her a choice, and after a lifetime of struggling and fighting to make her own choices, to have her voice heard, it was a true gift well beyond the glitter of an obscenely priced piece of jewellery.

‘No.’ She laid her hand on his arm. When he gave her a quizzical look she smiled and blurted out. ‘I mean, yes. Yes, I want you to spoil me. If you want to.’

She’d officially handed in her Miss Independent, Miss Stand Alone card in at that moment, but Gianluca didn’t seem to see the significance. He merely placed the necklace back in its box and with a barely discernible nod of his head had the jeweller and three members of his staff transferring the tiny purchase to an exquisite box.

As they emerged into the bright day after the hushed, strategically lit environs of the jeweller’s Ava said, a little haplessly, ‘But we left it behind.’

‘No, cara, it will be delivered to the hotel. I didn’t think you would want to carry it around all day in your handbag. Am I right?’

‘No, of course not,’ she muttered, feeling a little foolish. Why didn’t she know these things? And now Gianluca knew she didn’t have a clue.