that was where the plane was going.
Lisa frowned suspiciously. ‘Why are you going to Rome?’
Will’s eyes twinkled with devilment and her stomach fell. No, please no.
‘Giovanni invited me.’
Her stomach contracted, like a balloon deflating, and for a minute she thought she might be sick before the longing to punch Will really, really hard in the solar plexus took over, leaving the knuckles of her cramped fists twitching with desire.
She’d been worried enough about spending time with Giovanni and keeping things cool, but tossing Will into the mix gave her palpitations. That was a balancing act she didn’t want to be involved with.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got no intention of playing gooseberry. I’ll be doing some serious business. Sourcing some suppliers. Giovanni having a spare room was too good an opportunity to miss. The timing was perfect.’
‘Perfect?’ her voice pitched upwards in disbelief. Surely Will couldn’t believe that. Was he that thick-skinned? ‘What and you just happened to be on my flight?’
‘It made sense. Means Giovanni only needs to make one trip out to the airport.’
‘And when did you decide this?’ And why hadn’t Giovanni mentioned it?
‘Was a last-minute thing. I managed to set up a few appointments in Italy. As I said, the opportunity was too good.’ Like the slippery toad he was, she noticed he slid out of answering the question.
‘Appointments?’ Lisa looked at him, innocence and nonchalance written all over his carefully posed face. Ha! She didn’t think so. But she wasn’t big headed enough to think he’d done it purely to wind her up. Clearly he was so bloody self-centred, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he might be intruding.
‘Yep, while you two love birds are taking in the city, I’ll be out doing business and in the evenings, while you’re romantically dining a deux, I’ll be wining and dining local restaurateurs, picking their brains.’ Why did he have to sound so damn patronising? Like he was her elderly bloody aunt or something.
Superior sod was only two years older than her and she’d known him since she was eight. He ought to remember that she had memories of him as a schoolboy with gangly legs in regulation uniform grey shorts. Nan had worked for his family as their daily, so Lisa had spent many a school holiday in the big farmhouse kitchen at his parents’ home. When they were older they used to walk to the bus stop, on their way to school together, although he’d gone to a very different school. And despite the best efforts of the pretty, posh girls from the other school, he still sat with the cleaner’s granddaughter. When she was sixteen, he went off to university and not long after that Nan had decided to move out of the village when she stopped driving.
‘Yes, I’m looking forward to having a wonderful time.’ She deliberately added a touch of huskiness to her voice. Let him think what he liked. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that she and Giovanni were just friends.
The plane turned, a slow, wide swing, and she saw the runway stretching out, before it completed its turn to face the long expanse of tarmac. Her knees turned to jelly and she gripped her armrest, her fingers cramping.
‘I’m quite surprised you took Giovanni up on his offer,’ said Will, in a conversational tone.
‘Why?’ she asked sharply, taking a quick breath as she registered the engines revving up.
Will shrugged, an amused look on his face that had her itching to wipe it off. Arrogant git.
‘It’s quite a commitment, going on holiday with someone. You’re not exactly the committing type.’
‘Says who?’ she asked, her head snapping towards him, half an ear on the increasing roar of the engine and conscious of that horrible sensation of being on the back of racehorse about to charge into action and unable to stop it.
‘You, I seem to recall. You told me you weren’t on the market for that sort of relationship.’
She pursed her lips, wishing she’d said a lot less to him that night nine months ago. Her words had been fuelled by a healthy dose of self-preservation. If only she’d had the sense to stick to them.
The plane picked up pace. She cast a fleeting glance out of the window at the trees speeding past. She leaned harder into her seat, bracing herself.
‘You seemed quite adamant,’ added Will, with a perverse grin, his voice filled with teasing challenge. Women chased him all the time, but she wanted to be different. And she didn’t want to depend on anyone. She thought that perhaps they’d found common ground, because he didn’t do commitment either. Boy, did he not do commitment. She’d lost count of the women he’d seen in the last seven months. No, that was a humungous lie. There’d been Izzie, the vet’s assistant, Cordelia, the interior designer, two Charlottes, Eva, Olivia, Thea, Martina, Ella and Dora, short for Isadora, which exactly summed up the sort of well-bred, well-educated and well-connected women Will associated with. She had been an anomaly. Although, to be fair, he’d treated her equally badly.
She shouldn’t complain. Everyone knew what he was like. She should have stuck to her guns and not given in to the beguiling undercurrent of chemistry that crackled between them. At fifteen they’d been friends. At twenty, when he came back from university, something had changed, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that he wasn’t a boy any more. Luckily he’d gone off to do something in the City, like his dad. Then he came back again.
It was when she started work at the pub that something had reared its head. After managing to resist for six months, she’d given in, tired and fed up after a horrendously long week at work, going home to solitary meals. After the late-night shift at the pub, against all her better judgement, when one too many brushes up against him had ignited her hormone levels to combustion, she’d foolishly let them do the talking. She might have even made the first move. She was still furious with herself for letting down her guard.
Memories slid through like tendrils of mist, snaking, damn them, through the barriers she usually managed to keep in place, before building into full-blown images, bringing with them the heat and taste of him. They exploded in her head, sending a rush of adrenaline punching into her system, making her pulse surge with fevered heat.
She clenched her fists tight beneath her legs, but it was no use, she couldn’t get him out of her stupid head. Heat gathered between her thighs as she tried to dispel what had become an indelible vision of his body gliding over hers, the remembrance of heated skin to skin and his hands tenderly cupping her face as he kissed her with a passionate thoroughness, as if scouring every other emotion out of her.
No wonder he was such a success with women; he had a brilliant routine. He’d successfully made her feel as if she were the only woman who had ever mattered to him. Or had she fooled herself because she was lonely? Whichever it had been, all the defences she’d so carefully constructed to protect herself from ever falling in love had gone up in smoke.
She should have stuck to her guns. Being independent was the best way to be. That way you couldn’t be let down by anyone. And hadn’t he shown her the truth of that?
She scowled, scrunching up her face, as if there were a nasty smell in the vicinity, which there might as well have been. Will was bad news. A womaniser, who moved on to the next woman as soon as he’d made a conquest. She’d been a challenge, like an unclimbed
