to whether she was messing up his five fingered prose. ‘It really shocked me what I’d thrown in my case in London because I was in a hurry. I mean, what can a girl do with one pair of jeans, no spare tops, no fresh underwear and no shoes?’
He caught the shoes before they landed, his long fingers closing around the pair of strappy flats.
‘Oh, and these.’ Dipping into a bag, she came out with a clutch of cosmetics and a hairbrush.
‘Don’t,’ he warned softly, when she went to drop them onto his laptop too.
‘OK, so you’re not impressed with girly necessities. How about this, then … ?’ Her next dip produced a stuffed pearl-grey floppy-eared rabbit, which she ever so gently laid against his chest. ‘Present for you,’ she told him sweetly.
Still squatting there, she watched his lean, hard and handsome face as he stared down at the furry rabbit. A tingling sensation caught hold of her solar plexus as she watched the tension relax from his lips so they could shift into a reluctant smile, and at last he looked at her. What she saw glinting in his eyes made her so glad she’d taken the flippancy route.
‘I thought you’d done another runner,’ he admitted.
It took Lexi a second or two to work out why he’d said another runner—until she remembered how she’d run back to England three years ago. No note, not even a spitting I hate you note. She’d just walked out of this very hospital, climbed into a taxi, and left.
‘Nope.’ Still she kept it light. ‘I went shopping.’ She waved a hand at the rabbit. ‘Well, at least say hello to him.’
Silently he passed her back the shoes, then picked the rabbit off his chest and looked at it. ‘He’s wearing a pink bow round his neck.’
‘They didn’t have a blue one.’
‘Does he have a name?’
‘Yes. William,’ she announced decisively. ‘William Wabbit—because the young man that served me couldn’t sound his “r” and his wabbit sounded kind of cute.’
‘Rabbit in Italian is coniglio.’
‘Ah, yes, but the guy was trying out his best English to impress me,’ Lexi explained.
‘Flirting with you?’
‘Of course.’ She put the shoes back in the bag. ‘He was Italian.’
Instead of plucking all her other purchases off his lap, Franco caught hold of her hand. Even as she glanced up and saw the darkening look in his eyes she sort of knew what was coming next and tried to pull against it. But by then he’d already set her moving forward, her soft gasp the barest protest before her lips made contact with his. Warmth flooded her senses, and the feel of their mouths fused together was so natural already that she almost sank more deeply into the kiss—until she realised what she was doing and pulled back.
‘Grazie,’ he husked. ‘For the wabbit.’
Dragging her gaze down to where the rabbit rested against his chest, she murmured, ‘You’re welcome,’ a bit too huskily for her liking, and quickly returned her attention to jumbling her purchases back into the bags.
‘How did you know what time I left the hotel?’ she asked curiously, fighting to keep her tone light.
This kissing thing had to stop, she was telling herself. OK, so she’d started it. And the kiss just now had only been a typical Italian thank you kiss … But it still had to stop.
She was unaware that Franco was watching her narrowly.
‘Pietro arrived to collect you five minutes after you left.’
It was only when he picked it up that she saw his Blackberry had been lying next to the laptop. He handed it to her. ‘Put your number in it.’
‘So you can keep tabs on me?’
‘It’s a communication tool not a tracker.’
Pulling a face, she took the phone from him and did as he asked without further comment. While spending the last three hours shopping, she had also been contemplating the current situation she had committed herself to with Franco, and decided that, his having lost the closest friend a man could ever have, she would try her best to fill a small part of the gap Marco had left in Franco’s life until he was ready to face up to his loss.
A friend—but not a kissing friend, she determined with a frown as she handed the phone back, aware that her lips still wore the warm impression of his against them.
As he took back the phone, Franco wished he knew what was going on inside her head. Her frown was pensive, the complacent way she had been treating him told him she’d come to some decisions over the night about how she was going to treat being back in his life. The rabbit spoke volumes. The summer they were together she used to produce all kinds of cheap and wacky gifts for him, like the tiny plastic camel on a plinth that gyrated when you pressed the bottom, which she’d insisted looked just like him when he danced. And the set of three little yellow ducks she’d dropped into his bathwater then laughed herself double when they started paddling towards a certain part of his body with a speed that made him stand up fast. Then there was the whole row of frogs in all different sizes and materials, she’d lined up on the shelf above their bed and insisted on kissing each one every night because, she told him, she was convinced at least one of them was going to turn into her handsome Prince.
He had never met anyone like her. She’d been part child and part extraordinarily passionate and deeply sensual woman. And she’d trusted him so totally she did not hold anything back. She’d pinched his clothes, used his toothbrush, and thrown his friends off the Miranda when she’d had enough of their company without bothering to ask him if it was OK. If they went out clubbing she would ignore him to dance the night away in the middle of the heaving crush of bodies, laughing, flirting, completely uninhibited, but when she tired of dancing she would locate him like a homing pigeon and drag him away from whatever he was doing, whoever he was with, without apology or even a scant goodnight.
It had never occurred to her that he might tire of her. She’d refused to listen to sly comments about his staying power in a relationship. She’d simply loved him, and believed without question that he was in love with her, so when it had all gone sour she’d been left floundering in a sea of hurt disillusionment that had turned so cold and bitter she’d become a tragically lost stranger to him almost overnight.
He picked up the rabbit and looked at it, grimacing, because he did not doubt that this was Lexi’s way of turning back the clock—but only in as far as she was attempting to ease his pain over Marco by reminding him of the time they had spent together without Marco around, he discerned. That kiss, that brief coming together of their mouths, was still burning on his lips; but all he’d seen on Lexi’s lips was their faint downturn, and her face showed withdrawal—as if she’d been embarrassed but was valiantly determined to keep the atmosphere light.
Not so for last night’s kiss, though, Franco reminded himself grimly. Last night’s kiss had been the other Lexi bursting out from behind this one—urgent, passionate and compassionate. That was the woman he was determined to get back again.
Glancing up from the rabbit when she stood with her bags and moved over to his bed, he watched as she proceeded to tip everything back out again so she
