Swept Away!: Accidentally Expecting! / Salzano's Captive Bride / Hawaiian Sunset, Dream Proposal. Lucy GordonЧитать онлайн книгу.
‘Good morning,’ she murmured.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Mmm!’ She hid her face against him.
‘Me too,’ he agreed. ‘Very much all right.’
After a while she opened her eyes again to find him sunk in thought.
‘What are we going to do now?’ he wondered.
‘Leave this place behind,’ she said at once. ‘Sandor will throw us out anyway.’
‘A pity. Part of me wants to stay around for a while just to poke him in the eye. He had his turn making me jealous. Now it’s my turn to pay him back.’
‘Jealous? You?’
‘Don’t play the innocent. You knew exactly what you were doing to me. You loved seeing me on hot coals.’
‘I’ll admit it had its entertaining moments,’ she mused. ‘But that was because you were trying to play hard to get. Not always successfully, mind you, but you tried.’
‘Of course,’ he said, sounding shocked. ‘Don’t forget that I promised “just friendly”, and a gentleman always keeps his word.’
‘Gentleman? Huh!’
‘Let’s have that discussion later,’ he said hastily. ‘The point is, I couldn’t break my word, so I had to get you to break it for me. You forced me into retreat, so I’m innocent.’
‘Oh, please!’ she jeered. ‘The one thing I can’t imagine is you being innocent. You are a scheming, manipulative, double-dealing, tricky—Oh, the hell with it! Who cares if you’re a bad character? What are you doing?’
‘What does it feel as if I’m doing? Hush now, while I prove what a bad character I am.’
Laughing, he proceeded to do exactly that with such vigour that she was left breathless.
‘I suppose I ought to be grateful to Sandor,’ Ferne said when they had recovered. ‘He might be a clumsy oaf, but he did us a favour. Do you know, he actually wanted me to take some more pictures of him?’
‘What, after you…?’
‘Yes, apparently my photographs flattered him as nobody else’s did. Heavens, how did I ever fancy myself in love with that twerp?’
He suspected another reason why Sandor had tried to seduce Ferne. Such was the man’s vanity that he wanted to believe that he could reclaim her whenever he liked. But about this Dante stayed tactfully silent.
‘I suppose we should get up,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a beautiful day.’
Gino was waiting for them downstairs, clearly on hot coals.
‘Sandor had a restless night and he’s gone for a walk in the grounds. He says he doesn’t feel up to seeing anyone.’
‘I wonder what could have brought that on?’ Dante said sympathetically.
‘Artistic sensibility,’ Gino sighed.
‘I understand,’ Dante said solemnly. ‘A true artist sometimes needs to be alone to commune with the universe. Did you speak?’ This was to Ferne, who was displaying alarming symptoms of choking. She managed to shake her head and he continued. ‘We’ll leave at once. Give me a call when the filming has finished and I’ll come back then.’
They didn’t even stay for breakfast. Tossing their things into bags, they fled the Palazzo Tirelli like children making a dash for freedom.
As the car swung out of the gates Ferne caught a glimpse of a tragically noble figure standing on a hill, watching their departure with a look of passionate yearning. Not that she could see his expression at this distance, but she would have bet money on it.
‘It’s like your Shakespeare said,’ Dante observed. ‘Some men are born twerps, others achieve twerphood, and some have it thrust upon them. Well, something like that, anyway.’
‘You’ve really got your knife in to Sandor, haven’t you?’ she chuckled.
Dante grinned. ‘I did once. Not any more.’
Ferne leaned back in her seat, smiling. The jokey note of the conversation suited her exactly. This was a man to have fun with, nothing more. The gleam of danger was still far off on the horizon, but she knew it was there, throwing its harsh light over everything in anticipation. The only answer was to look away.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked after a while.
‘Anywhere away from here.’
Safely out of Rome, he turned south and hugged the coast for about a hundred miles. There they found another beach, quiet, simple and delightfully unglamorous. The town was the same, a good place for strolling and buying toothpaste before retreating to their modest hotel and the room they shared.
‘Thank goodness Sandor wasn’t able to organise our accommodation this time,’ Dante chuckled as they lay together in a cosy embrace late that night. ‘It wasn’t an accident that we were put miles apart.’
‘Yes, I kind of worked that out. Low cunning.’
‘Fatal mistake. I’m the master of low cunning. Someone should have warned him.’
‘You’re also an old-fashioned male chauvinist, now I come to think of it.’
‘It took you long enough to find that out. When did you see the light?’
‘You said that if I’d welcomed Sandor into my room you’d have come in and thumped him.’
‘Good ‘n’ hard.’
‘But who gave you the right to veto my lovers? What about my right to make my own choice?’
‘My darling, you have an absolute right to choose any man you want.’
‘Good.’
‘As long as the one you choose is me.’
‘And you think I’m going to put up with that nineteenth-century attitude?’
In the darkness she heard him give the rich chuckle of the triumphant male.
‘Yes, because I’m not going to give you any option. Now, come here and let me make the matter plain to you.’
So she did. And he did. And after that they slept in perfect harmony.
Ferne had known from the first evening that there was more to Dante than met the eye. How many men discussed The Divine Comedy with a woman they’d known only a couple of hours, even if they were named after the poet?
Hope had mentioned that he had three academic degrees, and from odd remarks he dropped in their conversations she realised that this was no idle boast. His brain was agile and well-informed, and she could easily guess his horror at the thought of losing his high-powered skills.
Since she’d learned the truth about the threat to Dante’s life, she’d come to see him as two men—one always standing behind the other, a permanent warning. When he was at his funniest, she was most conscious of the other man, silently threatening in the shadows, never allowing Dante to forget that he was there.
Sometimes it broke her heart that he must face his nemesis alone, and she longed to take him in her arms, not in the light-hearted passion that they usually shared, but with tender comfort. Then she remembered that he had chosen his isolation, however bitter it might be, and he wanted no comfort. Without her help, without anyone’s help, he was complete and whole.
One evening he was unusually quiet, but he seemed absorbed in a book, so she’d put it down to that. Later that night she woke suddenly to find him sitting by the window, his head buried in his hands. He was completely still and silent, in such contrast to his normal liveliness that she knew a twinge of alarm.
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