The Man Who Risked It All

It was a challenge and a smoothly delivered threat at the same time. And, strangely, there was something about him—the way he looked and the way he was moving—that told her this was the real Franco, the cool, decisive one who thought on his feet and did not waste time explaining himself. He wasn’t crazy—just determined.

‘If I come with you, you’d better not be losing your mind again, because I won’t like it!’ she launched at him stressfully.

‘I am not crazy,’ he delivered incisively. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Of course I’m coming.’ She made a dash for the stairs.

‘Ten minutes, Lexi,’ he called after her.

‘Damn you, Franco,’ she

snapped right back.

But she still arrived back in the hall within the ten minutes, wearing jeans and sandals, her weekend bag hastily packed, to find that he had changed into similar clothes and was already waiting for her. A set of car keys jangled impatiently in his hand and a bag sat on the floor beside him along with a soft-sided cool bag. The moment Lexi arrived at his side he picked the bags up and walked outside.

She stepped outside and saw his red Ferrari glinting in the sunlight and she knew they were about to indulge in yet another spat.

‘You’re not allowed to drive for another week,’ she said. ‘It’s on the “dos and don’ts” list the hospital sent home with you!’

Simmering in silence at the rebuke, he just tossed her the car keys, removed her bag from her grasp, then strode off to put the bags in the boot.

He had to be really eager to leave here, Lexi thought nervously. Trembling now—she had not expected this response from him—Lexi could only stare as he opened the passenger door and climbed into the car. His quickly changing moods were beginning to get to her, and on top of that she had never, ever, driven a car like this one.

Sucking in a deep breath, she got in behind the wheel.

Next he tossed a pair of sunglasses at her. They wanted to fall off her nose, because the frames were too big, but she didn’t dare say anything because she knew why he had done it. He wanted her to protect her eyes from the flickering sun between the trees when she drove down the lane.

He had to instruct her as to how she moved the seat forward, and even how to start the great beast of a thing. Moving off as if she was driving an army tank, she was surprised to discover the controls were actually quite sweet. As they passed the place where she’d ditched her own car three and a half years ago anyone could have plucked tunes on the tension between them.

‘Now you are back, I’m will have a hedge laid in those gaps,’ he muttered. ‘And the next car I buy you will be a bloody great land cruiser, not some flimsy cute baby sedan.’

She dared to glance at him and saw that he was pale. ‘I didn’t lose the baby because I crashed into a ditch, you know,’ she told him gently.

‘We will never know that for sure.’

‘Yes, we do,’ she insisted. ‘I lost the baby because there had been a problem with the placenta. It happens, caro …’

The caro brought his face round. It was the first time she’d used the endearment, and his darkened eyes held onto hers so intensely she had to ease her foot down on the brake to slow them right down or risk another accident.

‘We still get the hedge,’ he husked—and it was really a very silly conversation, because right at that moment neither of them was thinking about hedges or the size of a car or even her doomed pregnancy.

Dragging her eyes free from his, she concentrated on the road ahead again, wondering if sexual tension could be bad for you—because she was feeling decidedly light-headed right now.

Lexi negotiated the narrow bridge with care, a troubled frown creasing her smooth brow. ‘You keep talking about us as if we’re really back together, but that’s not what I agreed to,’ she reminded him, pleased with herself that she hadn’t scraped the car’s shiny red paint.

‘So I am still on trial? Is that what you’re saying?’

Was she? Lexi thought about that for a minute. ‘Our marriage is on trial,’ she revised. It had to be—at least until she knew what that ‘something’ he was still holding back from telling her was.

They reached the junction that met with the main highway. ‘Which way?’ she asked.

‘We go to Livorno.’

‘To your apartment?’

‘We are going to the Tolle docks,’ he enlightened her.

As if he’d lit the litmus on her self-control, Lexi exploded. ‘We are not going anywhere near the wreck of your bloody stupid powerboat, Francesco!’