As he got out of the car a piercing wolf whistle had her looking around, and him looking too, to hunt the perpetrator down.
He knew he hadn’t stopped thinking about her since she’d walked back into his life. He knew he would never forget her as she had been last night, wearing the string of pretty stones—wearing only the pretty stones—in his bed.
Even before she’d accepted them, as he’d held them up against her pale throat in the jeweller’s, watched her breasts below her clavicles rise and fall, he’d seen them draped on her naked.
He’d also seen the tremble in her hand as she took the string from him, and the vexation that had sent her dark brows together as she wrestled with her conscience.
There could be a hundred and one reasons why a woman would not accept a gift from a man. Ava’s reason had been as transparent as those green eyes of hers. The gift meant something to her.
As you wanted it to, idiota.
He shifted uneasily on his feet. It wasn’t a pledge...it wasn’t a ring. It was just a token—no, more than that. It was a gesture—a sign of his esteem...his affection.
And why shouldn’t he feel affectionate towards her? It was easy to stumble into putting labels on things, on feelings—and, yes, he did have feelings for her. Fairly strong feelings.
Perhaps he always had.
It didn’t mean this was anything beyond his experience...although it was.
She was.
He watched Ava bending down to pet a small dog. She was speaking to the owner, her face turned up like a sunflower.
What would she think about his plan?
If she said no, if she insisted on continuing with this ridiculous excursion to Ragusa...
She stood up and turned her head.
Her smile made his heart turn over in his chest.
It crashed through him as he stood on a pavement in Positano, amidst scooters and tourists eating gelato and a hundred other peripherals that had never touched his everyday life—until this woman stepped into it and brought it into his world.
The simple happiness of being with this woman.
The way she made him feel.
‘Ava.’
She turned to him, oblivious to what had just occurred in his world, and said, ‘Luca, this gentleman breeds Lhasa Apsos—’
He framed her face with his big hands.
‘Come back to Rome with me.’
Her mouth opened. No sound. But her eyes went soft and round and a little soulful.
‘No family. No Ragusa. No pretence, Ava. Just you and me. Say yes, innamorata.’
She didn’t hesitate.
‘Yes,’ she said.
* * *
He flew them back to Rome.
A small jet from Naples, in deference to Ava’s needs.
They shot down the highway in his beloved Lamborghini Aventador roadster at dusk. He dropped the speed as they hit the drowsy late afternoon streets of the city he loved and everything became larger than life—the crumbling façades of old buildings, the ruins among the new that was Rome.
It was the old that hung like a millstone around his neck.
But this was new. This surging feeling—this certainty of purpose about a woman.
He didn’t want to share her with his family. He didn’t want her to have to deal with her brother.
To this end he’d arranged for two hundred red roses to land on his mother’s lap tomorrow morning by way of apology, and Ava had phoned her brother.
‘He asked me to put in a good word with you,’ she’d said in a bemused fashion when she had emerged from the bedroom with her phone.
‘You told him we were together?’
Even now he couldn’t believe he’d been tactless enough to say it.
Ava’s expression had neutralised in an instant. ‘I didn’t know it was a secret.’
No, not a secret—but how to explain that in the past the women in his fishbowl world had appreciated his discretion?
This wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a liaison. It wasn’t anything either of them should be ashamed of.
He didn’t intend to hide her away in the palazzo. He hadn’t exactly formulated a plan, but he wanted to show her Rome, and naturally that would include meeting people—people who mattered to him—introducing her as...as...
He looked over at her now. She was scrolling through her phone, checking the e-mails from her business.
He cleared his throat. ‘Ava—’
Ava said a rude word.
‘Cara...?’
‘Stop the car.’
When he continued to drive she wailed, ‘Please, Benedetti!’
It was the please that worked. Braking and pulling over, he barely had the car to a standstill before she sprang out.
Swearing fairly colourfully himself Gianluca leapt out after her, stalking around to where she stood with one hand on her hip, the other waving her phone at him.
‘Guess who spotted us on a celebrity gossip site on the internet? Guess?’