had seen him use it with the secretaries, but never with her. Never with her.
‘The company is doing just fine,’ he continued. ‘The new factory is up and running—in fact, the relaunch has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.’
He spoke in the gentle tone of a doctor who was delivering a horrendous prognosis to a patient—a mixture of kindness and resignation. She wanted to grab hold of his broad, strong shoulders and yell, I don’t care about the company—what about us?
But something in his eyes stopped her. Was it a warning? That they could do this in one of two ways—and if they chose the dignified way to end it, then they needed the assistance of their old friend.
Pride.
‘You’re leaving, aren’t you, Cesare?’ she questioned, using every effort of will to prevent her voice from breaking.
‘You knew I had to leave some time.’
Of course she had. ‘And…what will you do?’
‘I’ll go home to Panicale. I don’t want to miss the harvest this year.’
Something in the way he said it made her heart heavy. Her lips framed the question she hardly dared ask, and yet some masochistic urge compelled her to. ‘You sound like a man who has a yearning to settle down.’
‘Well, of course I do, Sorcha—doesn’t everyone? One day I want a family of my own, as I imagine you do, too.’
She saw a glimpse of his future and saw that she had no place in it. So this really was the end. Sorcha swallowed down an impending sense of terrible loss.
She thought about the tips Maceo had given her when he’d been taking her photo. That if you pretended you felt something hard enough, then it would look real to the outside world. And if that was what Cesare really thought of her, then railing against it wasn’t going to change his mind.
‘What time’s your flight?’ she asked.
Cesare’s face did not betray one flicker of reaction, and indeed he convinced himself that the brief twist of his heart was merely surprise at her response. Why, he should applaud her poise and her cool control. How many times had he told a lover that he was leaving only to have her sobbing and begging and pleading with him not to go, or to take her with him?
His mouth curved into a mocking smile. For once, he had met his match—and the irony was that what made them so alike was the very thing which would ensure they had no future together.
‘At eight.’ He lifted his arm to glance at his watch. ‘I want to go and say goodbye to the staff at the factory.’
‘Do you…?’ She gave him a tentative smile, but she wasn’t going to put him in the awkward position of having to reject her. She injected her question with just the right amount of levity. ‘Do you want me to come and do the waving hankie thing?’
It occurred to Cesare that Sorcha Whittaker really must be his nemesis if she could make such a flippant comment when he was walking out of her life for good. Did he really mean so little to her that her beautiful mouth could curve into that cool and unfeeling smile? Damn her…damn her!
He hadn’t intended this, but he knew that he had to do it one last time. Reaching for her, he snaked his arm round her waist and very deliberately brought her up close, so that she could feel the hot, hard heat of his new erection, and he saw her pupils dilate with surprise and pleasure.
‘No need for that,’ he murmured. He unzipped himself and sheathed himself in protection for one last time. ‘Because when I remember you, I want to remember you just like…this.’
Sorcha was glad that he entered her with that great powerful thrust, and glad when he began to move inside her, so that she could pretend her stifled cry was one of pleasure rather than pain.
Maybe it was better this way.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘IS SOMETHING the matter, dear?’
Sorcha put the post down on the breakfast table and looked at her mother with a smile which felt as heavy as her heart. ‘Wrong? No, of course not. Why should there be?’
Virginia Whittaker poured Earl Grey tea into bonechina cups and added a sliver of lemon. ‘You just seem a little…out of sorts?’ she observed delicately.
One sure-fire way of getting over something was not keeping it alive by talking about it, so Sorcha took the cup of tea with a bland smile.
‘Oh, it’s probably all the excitement of my shortlived career as a sauce bottle model,’ she said airily.
‘And nothing to do with the fact that Cesare di Arcangelo has gone back, I suppose?’ questioned her mother shrewdly.
Just the mention of his name brought his dark, mocking face back into her mind with heartbreaking clarity, and yet their farewell seemed to mock her with its cold lack of passion. Two cool kisses on either cheek, followed by an equally cool look in his black eyes.
He had climbed into his sports car with all his stuff—including the brand-new silver beer tankard with his name inscribed on it, which everyone in the factory had clubbed together for and presented to him.
‘Cesare’s been very popular with the workforce,’ Rupert had confided.
Sorcha had ached, and hearing things like that hadn’t helped. The fact that everyone else thought Cesare was Mr Wonderful made her wonder what she had done wrong. She felt as if she had missed out—as if she had played it all wrong with Cesare. Except that relationships weren’t supposed to be a game, were they?
And added to her sense of loss was the certainty that the factory was too small for more than one boss. This was Rupert’s niche, not hers—and now it was too full of memories of Cesare for her to ever be able to settle. She certainly couldn’t carry on living at home like this, but her flat was let out for the whole year. They had offered her a post in the new factory, but she didn’t want to uproot herself and go and live in a part of the country where she knew no one—because that would surely only increase her isolation.
Her mother’s voice broke into Sorcha’s thoughts. ‘And I suppose you must be missing your affair with him?’
The bone-china cup very nearly met an untimely end, and Sorcha put it down with a hand which was trembling.
‘You…you knew? You knew I was having an affair with Cesare?’
Virginia sighed. ‘Oh, Sorcha—of course I knew. Everyone knew. It was as obvious as the nose on your face—even though you did everything you could to try to hide it.’
So all that effort had been for nothing! Her attempts to make it seem as if it were not happening had been totally transparent—and in so doing she had lost the opportunity to spend a whole night with him.
‘Maybe I’m not such a good liar as I thought I was,’ she said, swallowing down the sudden salty taste of tears which tainted her mouth.
‘Are you in love with him?’
‘No.’
