was standing at one of the tall windows, looking down on the busy waterway, when Domenico came in with a tray. She turned to him with a smile. ‘What a priceless view!’
‘I am often told I would make much money if I rented my apartment to visitors.’
‘You don’t like the idea?’
He shook his head as he poured coffee. ‘I am constantly surrounded by people at the hotel, therefore I have much need of my private retreat when time allows. Which is not often enough, alas.’
Laura sat down and took the cup he offered her. ‘Domenico?’
‘Sì?’
‘Tell me to mind my own business, if you like, but I can’t help feeling curious. When we were discussing my love life—or lack of it—you kept pretty quiet about your own.’
‘Because it is embarrassing.’ He shrugged, and sat down beside her. ‘It is no secret. I was engaged to be married while still young, but my fidanzata changed her mind.’
‘How did you feel about that?’
‘Angry.’
Laura looked at him curiously. ‘Only angry?’
His face hardened. ‘A week before our wedding day Alessa ran away with my oldest friend.’
‘Oh, bad luck,’ she said with sympathy, and to her relief Domenico let out a crow of laughter.
‘That is so British!’ He shook his head. ‘My fidanzata deserts me for another man and all you can say is bad luck?’
‘What would you like me to say?’
‘You say, ‘‘Domenico, my heart bleeds for you’’,’ he said promptly. ‘Then you comfort me with many kisses.’
‘Oh, right—that’s going to happen!’
He smiled at her soulfully. ‘I wish so much that it would!’
‘When was this, by the way?’
‘Ten years ago.’
‘Then your heart can’t still be bleeding! Have you seen the lady since?’
‘Many times. Since her marriage Alessa has gained three children and several kilos in weight.’ Domenico gave her a wicked grin. ‘And I have received a little comfort from other ladies over the years to assuage my sorrow.’
‘I bet! Anyway, I thought you were angry, not sorrowful.’
He was suddenly serious. ‘Mario was my friend. He should have faced me with the truth instead of running away with Alessa like a criminal.’
‘Probably they both felt like criminals for hurting you.’
He shrugged. ‘Those hurt most were Alessa’s parents. They wanted the marriage very much.’
‘Because you were a good catch for their daughter?’
‘They know my family,’ he said simply, as though that explained it. ‘Alessa comes from a long line of aristocrats with very little money, and she has two younger sisters. As soon as Alessa left school she was pushed into marriage with someone suitable able to provide for her.’
‘Did you know she was being pushed?’
His mouth twisted. ‘Of course not. In my arrogance I believed she was madly in love with me. She was very sweet, very pretty. Not long after our first meeting we became engaged, and her parents arranged the wedding.’
‘Couldn’t they have gone through with it with a different bridegroom?’ asked Laura.
Domenico looked amused. ‘A practical idea, but not possible. Alessa and Mario were already married by the time they returned to Venice. Their first son was born seven months later,’ he added, shrugging.
‘Ah. But in that case surely you must have wondered if the child—’ She stopped dead. ‘Sorry! Forget I said that.’
His lashes came down like shutters. ‘The child could not have been mine. Alessa had insisted that we must be married before we made love.’
Laura’s eyes widened. ‘And you went along with that?’
He shrugged. ‘She was so young and shy and—I believed—inexperienced, that I respected her wish.’
‘Yet all the time she was sleeping with your best friend. No wonder you were angry.’ She eyed him curiously. ‘But this was a long time ago. And there must have been other women in your life since then.’
‘Of course. I am wary of marriage, not women.’ He waved a hand at the room. ‘I have this apartment, I enjoy my work, I travel, and in winter I indulge my passion for skiing. My life suits me very well.’
‘So does mine now,’ she told him. ‘Since the fiasco with Edward I’m keeping men out of my social life for a while. I get quite enough of them during the day. Part of my job involves collating reports to pass on to the likely lads on the trading floor at the bank, and to a man they believe they’re irresistible to women!’
Domenico smiled. ‘But not to you?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘You dislike them all?’
Laura shook her head. ‘Actually, I like some of them well enough. But if I said yes to so much as sharing a pizza with any one of them I’d be asking for trouble.’
He frowned. ‘You mean they would also expect to share your bed?’
‘From the way they talk, yes. So I say no. Behind my back,’ she added tartly, ‘they call me the Ice Maiden.’
Domenico nodded sagely. ‘And all of them burn to melt the ice!’
She gave a scornful sniff. ‘No chance of that.’
‘The proposal in the restaurant—this was recent?’
‘Very recent. I should have been on holiday in Tuscany with Edward this week, in a villa with some of his college friends and their partners. He sent my share of the cost back to me the day after the quarrel, so because I’d already arranged the time off my mother asked Fen to sort something out for me in Venice. If you work for the Forlis,’ she added, ‘maybe you know her. Lorenzo Forli is married to her sister Jess.’
‘I have met Fenella, yes,’ said Domenico. ‘What time shall we meet this evening, Laura?’
She looked at him steadily. ‘Are we doing something this evening?’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall take you to a favourite restaurant of mine.’
Secretly delighted with the idea, Laura gave him a militant look. ‘I’d like that very much, but on one condition.’
‘That I do not kiss you,’ he
