just didn’t feel as if she was.
As the phone in the room started ringing Bella gave a wry, hollow laugh.
‘They’ll be wanting to know why you’re not back down there—you should be finished with me by now.’
Matteo went in to answer and as he picked up the phone Bella closed her eyes when he told Gina that he was here for the night and to pass on the message to Malvolio. What he said was crude but it clearly appeased Malvolio because from the open French windows she heard the cheer go up from the bar below as undoubtedly the message was relayed.
‘Come inside,’ Matteo said.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘So that we can eat the free nuts and drink the cheap wine? It doesn’t change the outcome, Matteo. You only delay the inevitable. Don’t you get it that you’re not saving me here? I’m not Talia with my children all gathered up by the back door and ready to get out.’
‘How do you know about that?’ Matteo frowned. ‘Talia would never tell anyone.’
‘Except perhaps her husband,’ Bella said, and then she smiled at Matteo’s frown. ‘My mother knows everyone’s business. Men tell her things that they would not dare speak of when they are in the bar.’ The smile slid from her face then. ‘Tomorrow night I’ll be back working, and guess what? It’s going to hurt a whole lot more than it would have with you.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It’s the truth.’ He opened his mouth to argue but she spoke over him. ‘Please, don’t suggest again that I leave. If you want to help me then...’
‘Then what?’
Bella stared out at the dark Mediterranean, to the escape route that she had always deep down known was an impossible one but at least it had kept hope alive. Tonight, though, she could have a part of that dream. Tonight, even if it was just a little while, one of her wishes could come true.
‘You could make love to me. I don’t want my first time to be rough...’ she said, and he closed his eyes and shook his head but she persisted. ‘I know what my future is going to be but I would like it to be different for my first time.’
‘You want me to break you in for others?’ Matteo sneered.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I also want you to show me how good it could be.’
‘Should be.’
‘Not for the likes of me,’ she said, and she was not playing the martyr, she just knew how it was. ‘Are you a considerate lover, then?’ She smiled and so did Matteo, because his own ‘should be’ response had caught him by surprise.
‘No.’
‘It’s really not my lucky night, then, is it?’ Bella shrugged.
Why, he wondered, did she make him smile? There was something about her openness, born perhaps from colourful discussions with her mother, yet the tease to her voice was still somehow sweet.
‘Hey,’ Bella said, ‘maybe I could be like Gina—available just for you.’
Matteo looked at her with his near-black eyes and he was on the edge of telling her the truth—that in the morning he would be gone.
It was too dangerous to do that, though.
He didn’t really know Bella at all.
‘That’s not going to happen,’ he said instead.
‘So we just have tonight?’ she checked, and he nodded. ‘We could rewrite history, then.’
‘How?’
‘Perhaps you did come to the Natalia party after all. We could dance as we might have danced that night...’
‘I don’t dance,’ he said.
‘Neither do I.’ Bella shrugged but then she put down her glass and walked over and wrapped her arms around his neck, and for Matteo it was his last night on the edge of heaven, with Tunisia but a dream away. Maybe tonight he could dance, could make love, could give her the one night they suddenly both wanted.
‘Come inside, then,’ he said, and unwrapped her arms from him, and this time they were holding hands as they walked into the bedroom.
He closed the French windows behind them and he put on some music to drown out the sounds of the bar below, but he opened the drapes so the moon would later bathe them.
She had dreamt of this moment for ever, the moment that Matteo Santini took her nervous but wanting into his arms.
His fingermarks were still there on her cheek and it was a little bit swollen, and he hated how badly he had scared her. His hand was back on her cheek but gentle now. ‘You’re going to bruise...’
‘It was worth it for him to believe us,’ she said.
Malvolio would not believe this, though, she thought as his lips grazed hers.
No one would believe that the brooding, silent man could kiss so gently. The touch of his lips was so feather-light at first that even the scratch of his jaw felt soft to her.
It was, Bella decided, her first kiss because the rough one in the hall and elevator would never count. He was gentle and tender and there was barely any pressure on her mouth, just the soft caress of his lips, and when he pulled away his lips were as red as hers.
‘You’re wearing lipstick,’ Bella said, and he kissed her again, till their faces were smeared red and their tongues were hot.
The hows and whys that had brought them to this point no longer mattered as they danced their first dance, as they kissed first kisses, as they turned each other on slowly and made believe it was two years ago.
And so it was Christmas, and she pretended that she was sixteen and he had come to the street party and wasn’t out on the dark streets, looking to escape.
‘The street looked beautiful. The trees were all dressed in lights...’ She told him about all he had missed. Her voice was a little breathless and her breasts felt as if they had grown for they ached in her tight bra, and he seemed to know that because his hand took the strain of one of them.
‘What were you wearing that night?’ Matteo asked, as she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes to the soft caress of his hand.
‘I had made a dress that was the colour ginger,’ Bella said.
‘You made it?’ he checked.
‘I made it with you in mind,’ she said. ‘You have no idea how beautiful that dress was. I tried make-up for the first time that night and when I went to go out my mother made me wash it off.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I told her that that was rich, coming from her.’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘That if he liked me there would be no need for make-up and perfume.’ She moved from his shoulder to meet his gaze.
