I don’t have any brothers to carry on the family name.’ She knew she was babbling but it was preferable to an awkward silence, when Lanzo might hear the loud thudding of her heart. She took a deep breath and prayed that her usual calm nature would reassert itself. ‘Are you staying in Poole for long, Signor di Cosimo?’
‘Lanzo,’ he corrected her. ‘Regrettably, this is only a short trip as I have other business commitments, but I hope to return soon.’ He studied her flushed face and smiled. ‘Perhaps sooner than I had planned,’ he drawled.
Gina felt trapped by a powerful force that would not allow her to tear her eyes from Lanzo’s face. They were alone in a room full of people, bound together by a powerful chemistry that held them both in its thrall.
Lanzo watched her pupils widen until her eyes were deep, dark pools, and his body tautened as heat surged through his veins. She had intrigued him from the moment he had glanced across the room and discovered her watching him. It happened to him all the time. Women had stared at him since he was a teenager. But never before had he felt such a strong urge to respond to the desire that darkened her eyes to the colour of midnight.
The loud smash of glass shattering on the tiled floor hurtled Gina back to reality, and she looked around to see that one of the waitresses had dropped a tray of glasses. She was shocked to realise how close she was standing to Lanzo and she jerked back from him, her face burning when she caught the hard gleam in his eyes. How long had she been staring at him like an over-awed teenager? she wondered, feeling hot with embarrassment. She had no recollection of either of them moving, but their bodies had been so close that her pelvis had almost brushed against his.
Tearing her gaze from him, she saw that the waitress was trying to gather up the shards of glass with her hands. ‘I’ll get a broom,’ she muttered, and hurried across the restaurant, grateful for the chance to escape Lanzo’s intent stare.
He watched her walk away from him, feeling himself harden as he studied the gentle sway of her bottom beneath its covering of tight navy silk.
Oh, Gina! What a transformation time had wrought, he mused, for he had suddenly solved the puzzle of why she seemed familiar. He remembered her now—although she looked very different from the shy waitress who had followed him around with puppy-dog devotion and been so sweetly anxious to please him that summer he had spent in England.
He had not known that her proper name was Ginevra. It suited the sophisticated woman she had become. And really it was not surprising that he had initially failed to recognise her, he assured himself, because this elegant woman, with her toned figure and her mane of glossy chestnut hair, bore scant resemblance to the slightly plump, awkward girl who had delighted him with her unexpectedly passionate nature when she had been his lover for a few weeks one summer, a long time ago.
Was the grown-up Gina still the sensual, uniquely generous lover who had appeared in his dreams for several months after he had returned to Italy? Lanzo brooded. Events in his life had taught him to live for the present and never revisit the past. But he was prepared to make an exception in this instance, he mused, watching her until she disappeared into the kitchens with a determined gleam in his eyes that would have worried her had she seen it.
CHAPTER TWO
IT STILL wasn’t completely dark, even though it was almost eleven o’clock, Gina noted when she emerged from the restaurant and glanced up at the indigo sky which was studded with a few faint stars. The water in the harbour was flat and calm, and the salt tang carried on the breeze was a welcome contrast to the stifling atmosphere of the restaurant.
She loved the long days and balmy evenings of June, and she paused for a moment, enjoying the fresh air which was cool but did not require her to slip on her jacket, before she turned and began to stroll along the quay.
‘I did not realise that you still lived in Poole.’ A tall figure stepped out of the shadows, and Gina’s heart skittered when Lanzo fell in step beside her. ‘I visit several times a year and I’m surprised I haven’t seen you around.’
Gina gave him a startled glance, her heart thudding with the realisation that he had finally recognised her. The expression in his eyes made her pulse quicken. It was the intense, predatory look of a panther stalking its prey, she thought, and then gave herself a mental shake. He was just a man, she reminded herself irritably. But the soft night air carried the spicy drift of his aftershave, and as her senses quivered she ruefully acknowledged that Lanzo would never be ‘just’ anything.
‘Perhaps you did see me on one of your previous visits, but you didn’t remember me,’ she said tartly, still feeling faintly chagrined that he had not realised her identity back at the restaurant.
‘Oh, I remember you, Gina,’ he said softly. ‘Although I admit I did not immediately recognise you tonight. You’ve changed a lot since I knew you.’
He wanted to run his fingers through her long silky hair, but he had noticed how she had tensed the moment she had seen him outside the restaurant. The flash of awareness in her deep blue eyes when she had first spotted him had told him that she was as conscious of the fierce sexual chemistry between them as he, but for some reason she seemed determined to ignore it.
‘Your hair especially is different from the style you wore ten years ago,’ he commented.
‘Don’t remind me,’ Gina groaned, utterly mortified by the memory of the curly perm she had believed would make her look older and more sophisticated than the ponytail she’d had since she was six. The perm had been a disaster, which had transformed her hair into an untameable bush with the texture of wire wool, and rather than looking sexy and sophisticated she had resembled a chubby poodle. As if the perm hadn’t been bad enough, she had been a few pounds overweight, she remembered grimly. ‘I can’t imagine why you ever noticed me,’ she muttered.
In all honesty he had not taken much notice of her when he had first arrived in Poole to oversee the launch of the Di Cosimo restaurant here all those years ago, Lanzo remembered. Gina had simply been one of the staff—a part-time waitress who helped out with the washing up on nights when the restaurant was especially busy.
She had been a shy, mousy girl, with an annoying habit of looking at the floor whenever he spoke to her—until on one occasion he had been so irritated by her studious inspection of the carpet that he had cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face upwards and had found himself staring into the bluest eyes he had ever seen.
The unremarkable waitress was not so ordinary after all, he had been amazed to discover, as he had studied her flawless peaches-and-cream complexion and her wide, surprisingly kissable mouth. He could not remember their conversation—it had probably been something inconsequential, like asking her to fill the salt-cellars—but after that he had noticed her more often, and had invariably found her watching him. Although she had blushed scarlet and hastily looked away whenever he had met her gaze.
That summer ten years ago had been a dark period in his life, Lanzo reflected grimly. Alfredo had died in the spring, and he had been struggling to come to terms with the loss of the man he had regarded as a second father—the man who would have been his father-in-law had it not been for the devastating fire that had swept through the di Cosimo family home and taken the lives of Lanzo’s parents and his fiancée five years before that.
Cristina’s face was a distant memory now—like a slightly out of focus photograph—and the pain of her loss no longer felt like a knife being thrust through his heart. But he remembered her; he would always remember the gentle girl he had fallen in love with all those years ago.
Widower Alfredo
