She’d arrived back at the villa ten minutes ago. Luca had called his mother, and Eva had been waiting, a worried look pleating her brow. They’d hugged, and Annah had assured Eva she was okay before heading upstairs.
She took a deep breath and slowly released it, but her heart still beat a crazy tattoo in her chest. Adrenaline. That was all it was. Wasn’t it normal to feel jittery after a scare?
But deep down she knew it was more than that.
I love him.
She squeezed her eyes shut as if she could will away the knowledge.
On her way back to the villa, alone in the back of the SUV, she’d tried telling herself she was mistaken. That her heightened emotions in the midst of the drama had made her mistake fear and concern for love.
But she was lying to herself, afraid to acknowledge the truth. She had fallen in love with Luca—in a little over half a month.
Was that possible? To fall in love so quickly?
Yet hadn’t she fallen in love, just a tiny bit, on that night in London five years ago? Hadn’t a part of her clung to the memory of him as a tender, passionate lover even after she’d convinced herself he’d cruelly abandoned her?
She shivered, the weight of a grim realisation pressing on her chest.
Luca didn’t believe in love.
Which meant Annah had made the one mistake of her mother’s she’d sworn she would never make.
She’d fallen in love with a man who would never love her back.
* * *
‘Mummy!’
Annah jolted awake.
‘You slept in your dress!’
‘What?’ She blinked and sat up so fast her head spun. A giggle drew her attention to Ethan, who knelt beside her on the bed. She glanced around, saw the sunlight poking through the gaps in the curtains.
It was morning?
She looked down at her crumpled dress. In an instant, everything rushed back: the restaurant; the young man with the gun; her unsettling revelation.
A soft throw was draped over her legs. Someone must have put it over her during the night. Luca?
An urgent desire to see him—to check with her own eyes that he was okay—gripped her chest.
She looked at Ethan, put her arms around him, and hugged him tight. ‘Morning, kiddo. How ’bout we get dressed and go have some breakfast?’
‘Yes!’
A short while later, they made their way downstairs to the sunlit breakfast room where their days had routinely commenced over the last couple of weeks. Luca was already seated at the table, and Annah’s heart leapt at the sight of him. Clean-shaven and wearing an open-necked white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, he looked as handsome and vital as ever.
Annah wanted to launch into his arms, but Ethan beat her to it.
Luca’s eyes met hers above Ethan’s head, dark and questioning, and she sent him a sturdy smile: I’m fine.
He set Ethan down, then dropped a chaste kiss on her cheek and murmured, ‘We need to talk.’
‘We do,’ Annah agreed. She sat at the table and poured herself a coffee. She couldn’t manage food. Her stomach quivered too much with nerves. But she was aware of something else, too. A small flicker of hope she knew she should extinguish yet couldn’t.
Eva turned up soon afterwards, and when she suggested to Ethan they walk the puppy—who he’d named Timmy—after breakfast, Annah wanted to hug the older woman.