“The traffic? It’s a Sunday…”
“No sense in sitting around here.”
“Oh.” She fought the disappointment. “Well, actually, I have a surprise for you.”
“Do you?” Was that impatience in his words? Worry gnawed at her gut.
“Uh huh,” she ploughed on, telling herself she was imagining the coldness. “I got the most perfect tomatoes and bread; I’m going to make us bruschetta. And champagne. And also,” she reached into the basket and pulled out a gold packet. “Really,really good coffee. I could see you weren’t happy with the instant yesterday.”
He refused to let the kind gesture touch him. Though itwaskind. It was thoughtful. But it all spoke of an attachment that was impossible to indulge. “That will all keep. I have packed up the house. It’s time to go.”
At her look of obvious disappointment he strengthened his resolve. “It’s time to get back to reality.”
Kate nodded, but in her mind she was screaming,This is reality! It’s the only reality I’ve ever wanted.
“And what is reality?” She said, doing her best to sound unemotional. But inside, her heart was cracking into tiny pieces.
“The lives we had before this,” he responded as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
She nodded, and handed the bag of groceries to him with more force than was necessary. Her eyes didn’t meet his. “I just have to go and get my …”
“Your dress and shoes are in the car.”
“Oh, right.” She swallowed. “You’ve thought of everything.”
“I need to get back to Roma,cara,” he responded tautly. The word,cara,sat like a heavy indictment between them. She was not his dear one. She was not his sweetness. She was nothing to him.
He opened the front passenger door for her. She paused in the apex he’d created. Her eyes sought his, searching for any sign of the man she’d fallen completely and totally under a spell of.
But he was gone. In his place was the most deliciously handsome stranger she’d ever known, but a stranger nonetheless.
* * *
Augustine was getting too old for this. He jammed his phone into his pocket with a sense of fury that he was finding increasingly difficult to curb. The closer he got to his bitch of a daughter, the more it became a ground swell, threatening to engulf him.
So she’d fallen into bed – literally – with Arnaud. Did she know that he was using her?
Was she trying to hurt him, too?
His fist clenched involuntarily by his side.
He had looked for her for years. He had searched and he had waited, certain that one day she would use her credit card or otherwise stumble.
How she had evaded him he could not have said. But she would not evade him for much longer. The doors to the airport swished open automatically as he approached and he scanned the row of uniformed drivers waiting to meet their human cargo. His own name was emblazoned on a board. He moved towards it with purpose.
His long wait was about to be rewarded.
CHAPTER FIVE
“You live here?” He pulled up outside the grimy building, the disdain obvious on his features.
She might have been offended, but she was too numb to feel anything but disbelief that this was ending. They had both agreed on two days and yet at some point, somewhere – perhaps even from that first wild evening when he whisked her away into the hills of Tuscany – she’d come to believe it would be so much more.
“Kate?” His word was inflected with raw cynicism. For he knew where she’d come from. He had been to the manor she’d grown up in; he’d seen photographs of the apartments in London. He knew that her first car was an Aston Martin.
“Yes. Thank you for the lift.” She pushed a smile to her face and lifted her eyes somewhere in his direction. But if she stared at him properly she knew she would cry. She felt for the door handle and pushed it open, stepping so hastily onto the street that she banged her knee on the car as she did so.
To her chagrin, he was beside her in a second. He didn’t touch her, nor did he attempt to check her knee for damage. But he stared at her, and it was apparent he was weighing his words.
