The Man Who Risked It All

Reaching up, she touched he hand to his pale cheek. ‘You don’t feel hot. You feel quite cool.’

‘Inside hot,’ he enlightened her. ‘How much longer do you think we have to stay?’

He was asking her that question? Lexi lowered her hand and looked out across the garden to where the Clemente vines marched in regimented lines towards the horizon.

Throughout the whole long day he had barely spoken to her. He’d kind of worn her like a side arm, kept tucked in close to him and hidden almost out of sight. If it had not been for the way he’d tightened his grip if she so much as tried to move away from him she would have thought he’d forgotten she was even there. Twice she’d actually got away from him. Once to say a private farewell to Marco before they’d left his flower bedecked graveside, and the other time when they’d first arrived here and she’d made a quick visit to the cloakroom. When she’d turned away from Marco’s grave Franco had been standing just a few yards away waiting for her to go to him. The next time he’d been waiting for her right outside the cloakroom door. Both times he’d said nothing, his expression as impenetrable as the self-control he’d been exerting. He’d just caught her hand and drawn her back to his side, then returned them to the throng.

It was an absolute no-brainer that he’d meant what he’d said about her not straying from his side. It was also a no-brainer that he had no intention of allowing her the chance to talk to anyone on her own.

‘You’re the boss,’ she therefore responded, a trifle satirically. ‘I’m just your mute sidekick.’

He melted her bones with a slow grin. ‘You are the bossy one in this partnership,’ he threw at her lazily. ‘You threw my friends off my boat when you’d had enough of them. You dragged me out of clubs and restaurants without bothering to ask me if I was ready to leave. You even flirted with any man in your vicinity then told me off if I dared to complain.’

Flushing when she realised he was only telling it as it had been back in that golden summer, Lexi grimaced. ‘It’s no wonder your friends didn’t like me much.’

‘That’s a joke.’ He laughed. ‘The guys, at least, were fascinated by you and jealous of me. They used to wish it was them you were dragging away.’

Lexi looked at the stone floor beneath her shoes. ‘I didn’t want them to myself.’

‘I know,’ Franco murmured.

‘And if I was bossy with you, I don’t recall you putting up much resistance.’

‘That is because I didn’t want to resist,’ he told her dryly. ‘I like it that you made all the decisions and trailed me around like your sidekick, bella mia.’

He was just teasing her when he said that, Lexi decided, and responded with a rueful smile. ‘So today you’re getting your own back on me?’

Said lightly as a tease-back, she did not expect all hint of humour to suddenly drain away from him. ‘No, today is about respecting Marco’s death and getting through this without—’ He stopped, swallowed, then made a gesture with one of his hands before deciding roughly, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Giving her barely a chance to register his meaning, he was grabbing hold of her hand and pulling her further along the terrace, so fast she had a struggle to keep up with him.

‘But where are we going?’ she demanded breathlessly.

‘Around the house to the front. Pietro will take us home.’

‘But we can’t just leave without telling anyone! It would be rude—and what about your father? Franco!’ She sighed when he just kept on going. ‘Will you just stop and listen to me?’

But he didn’t stop and listen. Within minutes they were in the back of his father’s Mercedes and driving away from the Clemente estate, with a bewildered Pietro at the wheel.

‘Pietro will come back for my father,’ he said, before Lexi could repeat the question. ‘We are only half an hour away.’

‘But … you just walked out on Marco’s wake,’ she gasped, because she was still struggling to believe he had done it.

He made no comment, and if Lexi had believed he could block out everything he didn’t want to talk about before this moment, she soon learned during the half-hour drive back to Monfalcone that he could put up a solid brick wall against any argument she attempted to make.

He didn’t speak a single word. He just sat there beside her, pale and still, with a brooding frown strapped to his face. His mood disturbed her—it was disturbing Pietro too, because she kept seeing him taking quick frowning glances at Franco through the rearview mirror as he drove.

The car came to a stop at the front doors and then he was climbing out and coming round to open her door for her, placing a hand on her arm to help her out.

‘OK, this is what’s going to happen.’ He spoke at last as they walked into the house to the sound of Pietro taking off back to the Clemente estate to collect Salvatore. ‘You are going to pack a bag—casual things—while I find Zeta. I will see you back here in fifteen minutes.’

‘But—where am I going now?’ Lexi cried out as he strode off towards the kitchens.

‘We are going away for a few days,’ he said. ‘Fifteen minutes, Lexi, or you come as you are!’

Staring after him, Lexi worried that the day been just too much for him to deal with. Had he flipped again? Was that it? Cursing herself for forgetting that only a week ago Dr Cavelli had been warning her of his concerns about Franco’s mental health, she was seriously considering ringing the hospital to ask the doctor’s advice when Franco came striding back, to find her still standing in the hall, as pale a ghost and as anxious as hell.

He must have known what she was thinking because he pulled to a stop, letting out a sigh. But all he said was, ‘You have decided to come with me as you are?’