In his mind’s eye Marco could see his eighteen-year-old self, humiliated and shamed. He would not be endure that kind of humiliation again.
Turning his back on the scene being played out beyond the interior of the café, Marco continued to wait to pay their bill.
‘Ah, poor Lily—still so afraid of me. How delicious and erotic … even more so now than when you were younger. There is nothing quite like a little bit of fear to add spice to … things.’
Something snapped inside Lily. Instinct and need pushed aside the rules of modern-day life that told her it was her duty to herself and others not to make a nuisance of herself, not to ask anything of anyone, not to expect others to help her or to forge an emotional bond with her that meant she could turn to them in need. In a last despairing surge she turned towards the interior of the café. She could see Marco now. He was paying their bill.
‘Marco …’
The anguished, almost sobbed sound of Lily’s voice calling his name drew Marco’s gaze in her direction. She was looking at him—looking for him. Her free arm—the arm her companion was not holding—was stretched out toward him. She needed him. Lily needed him!
Throwing down a note over twice the value of the coffees they had just had, Marco ran towards the door.
Lily exhaled in relief. Marco had heard her. He was going to help her.
He reached her, grasping her free hand, holding it safe.
‘Make him go away, Marco,’ she begged him wildly, unable to control her distress. ‘Please make him go away.’
‘You heard Lily,’ Marco told Anton, confronting her persecutor and impaling him with a coldly hostile look of warning.
Anton didn’t move, saying mockingly instead, ‘Naughty Lily. You never told me that you have a new … protector.’
Whilst Lily flinched Marco didn’t shift his concentration from the other man’s face. No matter what the relationship between Lily and this man might have been before, it was to him that she was now appealing for rescue and refuge, and Marco’s nature and upbringing would not allow him to deny her either.
‘Any decent man would consider it his duty to protect a woman from your sort,’ Marco told Anton curtly. ‘And let me warn you that my protection of Lily will extend beyond this incident. You would be well advised to keep away from her in future. In fact, I’d advise you to leave Italy today.”
The smirking self-confidence with which Anton had greeted Marco’s arrival had evaporated now into blustering protest as he complained, ‘You can’t make that kind of threat.’
‘I’m not threatening you,’ Marco assured him. ‘I’m simply giving you some advice as a result of your own behaviour.’
Lily listened to their exchange with gratitude and awe. Marco was being magnificent. He was so completely in control, so completely the master of the situation, completely demolishing Anton who, having released her when Marco arrived on the scene, was now backing off, eventually turning his back on them to disappear into the crowd. She looked at Marco. He was standing rather stiffly to one side of her, looking away from her.
Marco knew something had happened to him. Something that threatened his defences. His throat felt raw and tight—with tension, nothing else, he assured himself. He looked back at Lily. She looked stricken, but she didn’t say anything. Her face was paper-white as she turned away from him, dignified in defeat, her manner that of a weary combatant struggling to pick up her weapons and continue to fight on alone. She looked alone. He knew all about how that felt—how it hurt, how the heart hardened around that hurt.
She was trembling violently, her manner that of someone too traumatised to be able to behave rationally. Whatever had happened between her and her ex whilst Marco had been paying their bill had plainly affected her very badly. He stepped towards her, and then checked himself and stepped back. He wanted to cross the chasm that separated him from obeying his instincts but years of denying those instincts, had laid down rules inside him that had to be obeyed. The voices of his inner rebellion were growing stronger, urging him to join them, but he couldn’t. Because he was too afraid. Afraid of being deceived and betrayed. Out of nowhere, out of nothing he could understand, something inside him rejected that possibility, stating clearly and firmly that Lily wouldn’t do that to him.