‘He’s talking rubbish,’ Bernice interrupted, focusing pleading eyes on her silent sister. ‘You can’t trust a word he says. Don’t you know that yet?’
‘I understand now why you were so eager to keep Lucca and I apart.’ Vivien sighed heavily, for she was very hurt that her sister should have plotted and planned and lied solely in an effort to enrich herself at her expense. ‘If we reconciled, you were very unlikely to gain access to more money. You knew Lucca would tell me the truth if he found out that you were trying to persuade me into giving you a loan.’
‘Why aren’t you listening to my side of the story?’ Bernice shouted at Vivien, incredulous at the reception she was receiving. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’
Vivien winced. ‘Because you’ve always told lies,’ she responded reluctantly. ‘Quite blatant lies too. Lucca, on the other hand, tells the truth and shames the devil!’
‘You deserve a smart ass like him!’ Bernice flung in raging mortification and she flounced out of the room.
‘Yes. I think I finally do,’ Vivien agreed and she finally let herself glance at Lucca.
Lucca appeared to be in a rare state of shock and riveted to the spot.
‘Give me five minutes,’ she begged and hurried off in Bernice’s wake.
Her sister was standing in the hall in floods of tears.
‘Stay the night here,’ Vivien proffered gently. ‘I don’t want you rushing off when you’re feeling like this.’
‘I can’t stand you being nice to me after what I’ve just tried to do!’ Bernice gasped. ‘You should hate me!’
‘You’re my sister and you’re unhappy. That’s all that really matters.’
But Bernice could not face the prospect of seeing Lucca again and insisted on leaving. She planned to head straight back to the airport. Vivien made her promise to keep in touch.
Lucca watched Vivien walk back into the room and released his breath in a slow hiss. ‘You were amazing, cara mia. I was so scared you might listen to her.’
‘I knew the minute Bernice arrived that she was up to something because she was putting on such an act.’ Vivien grimaced. ‘You should have told me about the loan you’d given her. It would have been better for her if she had had to take some responsibility for failing to repay that money. Instead she went on to get herself into more debt.’
‘She is addicted to spending money she doesn’t have. She needs professional support to sort her out. But must we talk about your sister’s problems now?’
Vivien went pink. ‘No…’
‘Can you forgive me for the way I behaved last night?’ Lucca asked her then.
‘You’re a caveman under those Armani suits. I had no idea.’
Colour marked his strong cheekbones and he winced. ‘When you stood up, I thought you were about to go off and have a drink with that guy. That’s why I hit him.’
‘I wouldn’t have done something like that!’
‘When you said you wouldn’t marry me, it was like the roof fell in. I’d had a few drinks. I was jealous…’
Vivien studied him with wide-eyed fascination. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘I don’t want to lose you again,’ Lucca confessed roughly, his accent very thick.
‘Would that matter so much?’ she whispered.
He vented a rueful laugh. ‘How can you ask me that? All I have ever really cared about is you. Possibly you think I have a strange way of showing that but in my own defence…I didn’t know how much you meant to me until you walked out two years ago.’
Vivien was very still, almost afraid to move in case she spooked him into silence. ‘How did you feel?’
‘Like death for months and months and months, bella mia.’ Lucca raked a not quite steady hand through his cropped black hair and fixed strained dark golden eyes on her. ‘It was about a year until there was another woman and I had to pretend she was you…’
That gruff, low-pitched admission petered out with a look of pain and forced her to wrinkle her nose to will the hot tears back. ‘So, why didn’t you come and see me?’
‘You were right about my pride. I believed you’d come back to me. When you didn’t, you showed yourself to be strong. But once you’d demonstrated that, how could I be weak enough to chase after you?’ Lucca asked heavily, watching enlightenment cross her face closely followed by appalled regret. ‘I wouldn’t admit how miserable I was even to myself.’