don’t you want them, if you like them? Most people do.’
Luca was silent for a long moment, his gaze hooded, his jaw bunched tight. Hannah held her breath as she waited; she realised she really wanted to know the answer.
‘I told you it wasn’t worth it,’ he finally said.
‘But what does that even mean—?’
‘Since you partially agreed with me, what do you think it meant?’ he shot back, his eyes glittering.
Hannah considered the question for a moment. ‘It means that you’re scared of getting hurt,’ she said quietly. ‘Afraid of someone leaving you, or stopping to love you. Of loving someone causing you pain rather than joy.’
She held Luca’s gaze, willing him to answer, to admit the truth. ‘Well, then,’ he said, breaking their locked gazes as he looked out of the window. ‘Then you know why.’
Hannah was silent, struggling with her own emotions as well as Luca’s. ‘It sounds very lonely,’ she said finally.
Luca shrugged, his gaze still averted. ‘I’m used to being alone.’
She remembered what he’d said on the beach, how he’d felt alone all the time. ‘You don’t even want to try?’ she asked, her voice squeezed from her throat. She didn’t know when the conversation had gone from the abstract to the personal, but she knew she was asking him more—and revealing more herself—than just what he thought about relationships in general. She was asking him what he thought about her.
‘I don’t know if I can,’ Luca said in a voice so low Hannah had to strain to hear it.
‘You’ll never find out if you don’t,’ Hannah answered and he turned to look at her, his eyes like burning black holes in his tense face.
‘That’s a very pat answer, and the reality is more complex when there are people involved,’ he said. ‘Children involved.’
Hannah’s breath hitched. She wasn’t the only one who had made this conversation intensely personal. ‘Luca...’
‘If you want to know why I want to help Jamie, it’s because I know how he feels,’ Luca continued, and her world, which had tilted on its axis for one glorious moment, righted itself with a thud. ‘As a child. My mother wasn’t often capable of being there for me. Not,’ he cut across any protest she’d been going to make, ‘that I’m equating you to her. I’m not. I’m quite sure you’re a very good mother to your son.’
‘Thank you,’ Hannah said uncertainly.
‘But it doesn’t feel good, being the only kid in your class who doesn’t have the right kit for PE, or who can’t pay for the school dinner. Not that those things happened to Jamie—’
‘They happened to you,’ Hannah said softly.
‘Yes.’ Luca’s gaze shuttered. ‘After my mother died, I had a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school, but it didn’t cover everything. I might as well have had “charity orphan” tattooed on my forehead.’ He sighed, rolling his shoulders to excise the tension. ‘I can relate to feeling left out.’
And the fact that he was doing something about it, trying to make it better for her son, made Hannah’s heart feel as if it could burst. Luca was making it very difficult to stop caring about him. One more little act of kindness and she’d be halfway to falling in love with him. More than halfway; she was almost there.
She gave the driver directions to Jamie’s school, and the limo pulled up outside the gates while the children were at playtime. They all ran up to the fence, eyes rounded at the sight of the stretch limo. When she and Luca got out, Hannah could hear the whispers running through the huddle of children.
‘Isn’t that Jamie’s mummy—?’
‘What is she doing in that fancy car—?’
‘That man is so big.’
‘He’s got cakes!’
The whispers turned into excited jabbers as Luca proffered the huge white cake box. ‘These are for Jamie Stewart,’ he announced in a voice that managed to be both commanding and friendly. ‘I heard he needed some cakes for the school bake sale.’
And as the children clambered excitedly around him, Hannah realised that Luca had needed to do this for his sake as much as Jamie’s. The knowledge was enough to bring tears to her eyes. After a childhood that had been far too sad and neglected, and an adolescence that hadn’t been much better, Luca was finally able to be the boy who had the cakes. Who could make things better.
Jamie beamed at both of them as Luca handed the box into Reception. ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ he whispered, and threw his arms around her waist, squeezing tight.
Hannah ruffled his baby-soft hair. ‘Thank Mr Moretti,’ she answered with a smile. ‘He was the one who insisted we bring the cakes.’
Jamie turned the full wattage of his smile onto Luca. ‘Thank you, Mr Moretti!’
Luca looked startled, and then moved. He nodded once. ‘It was my pleasure,’ he said gruffly.
They didn’t speak as they got back into the limo. Luca looked lost in thought, and Hannah felt as if she might burst into tears. Finally she managed, ‘You’re a good man, Luca Moretti.’
He turned his startled gaze on her, his expression ironing out to a familiar and heart-sinking blandness. ‘You might not think that in a moment.’
‘Why not?’ Hannah asked, her heart now nearing her toes.
‘Because Andrew Tyson emailed me this morning. He wants to have dinner with us tomorrow night.’
HANNAH GAZED AT herself in the mirror, frowning at her pale cheeks and sparkling eyes. She felt both terrified and elated at the thought of the evening ahead, posing once again as Luca’s loving fiancée, and it showed in her face. She had no idea what to expect of this evening, of Luca. Her hopes careened wildly, and it was impossible to keep a leash on them.
Her mother’s eyebrows rose as Hannah appeared in the sitting room. ‘This is a business dinner?’ she asked sceptically, because the emerald-green satin dress hugged her slender curves lovingly and was a far cry from her usual pencil skirt and silk blouse ensemble. She’d bought it on her lunch break, spending far more on a single garment than she ever had before, and she couldn’t make herself regret it.
‘It’s more of a social occasion,’ Hannah hedged.
Her mother’s eyebrows rose higher. ‘A date?’
‘Maybe,’ Hannah admitted, and then added hastily, before her mother got completely carried away, ‘But probably not.’
Almost certainly not, she reminded herself sternly. No matter how much her stubborn heart couldn’t help hoping since she’d seen a softer side of Luca yesterday, Hannah knew tonight was about donning the pretence once more. If Luca acted lovingly
