What if he still wanted to pull the financial rug from under her feet? ‘The rent thing…’ she said. ‘I don’t have that sort of money. I think you know that.’
‘Forget about the rent,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you in my bed because you have no choice in the matter. I know you will come to me, Bronte. It is inevitable. I knew that as soon as I walked into the studio.’
Had she been that transparent? Bronte wondered. ‘You are deluding yourself, Luca,’ she said with a proud hitch of her chin. ‘You mistook surprise for something else.’
His knowing half-smile travelled all the way to his eyes. ‘So beautiful,’ he said, trailing a slow-moving finger down the curve of her cheek. ‘So very beautiful.’
Bronte flinched in case she betrayed herself completely. His touch was like a feather and yet it set every nerve screaming for more. ‘What’s going on, Luca?’ she asked, rubbing at her cheek as if he had tainted her.
His expression was like a blank stone wall. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This…’ She waved her arm to encompass the suite. ‘You. Me. Us. I’m not sure what’s really going on. I get the feeling there is far more to this than you’re telling me.’
He gave her a small twisted smile. ‘Is it so hard for you to understand I wanted to see you again? Would it not have seemed strange for me to travel all this way, knowing you lived in the same city where I would be based and not at least try and make contact with you?’
Bronte’s mouth tightened with cynicism. ‘Do you make contact with all your ex-lovers wherever you travel in the world? If so, I am sure by now your little black book would be classified as overweight luggage.’
His smile lingered for a moment as if he found the thought amusing. ‘There have not been as many lovers as you might think,’ he said. ‘I have been busy with… other things.’
Bronte wondered what other things had taken up his time. She knew he worked hard in the family business but he had found plenty of time in the past to play hard too. If he wasn’t squiring yet another wannabe model or Hollywood starlet like his equally single younger brother Nicoló, what had he been doing?
‘Did you drive here or catch a cab?’ Luca asked.
‘I caught a cab,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to have to worry about parking.’
He reached for a set of car keys on a nearby sideboard. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
Bronte felt a frisson of fear run through her like a trickle of ice-cold water. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean… it’s no trouble getting a cab. I would prefer it, actually…’
His eyes narrowed just a fraction. ‘What is the problem, Bronte? You surely trust me to get you home safely? I do know which side of the road to drive on here.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I would prefer to make my own arrangements.’
‘Is there someone waiting for you at home?’ he asked.
‘My private life has nothing to do with you, Luca,’ she said. ‘Not any more.’
He continued to watch her, his eyes dark and inscrutable. He didn’t speak, which made the silence open up like a chasm between them.
‘Look,’ Bronte finally said, moving from foot to foot with impatience, ‘I have to work tomorrow. And I don’t want my mother to worry.’
‘Your mother?’ A deep frown appeared between his brows. ‘You live with your mother?’
She straightened her spine. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she asked. ‘Property is horrendously expensive in Melbourne. I can’t afford the studio rent and a mortgage. I’m just starting out.’
‘How long have you been teaching at the studio?’ he asked, still frowning.
‘About a year,’ Bronte said. ‘Rachel and I trained at the same academy together. She broke her ankle in a car accident a couple of years ago and had to give up dancing. We decided to set up our own ballet school.’
Another silence passed but to Bronte it felt like hours. Each second seemed weighted; even the air seemed heavy and too thick for her to breathe.
‘The audition you said you missed,’ he said, watching her steadily. ‘Did that by any chance have anything to do with me?’
Bronte felt her heart trip and carefully avoided his gaze. ‘W… why do you ask that?’
‘We broke up, what, about four weeks before you were due to audition, right?’
She gave a could-mean-anything shrug and fiddled with the catch on her clutch purse. ‘I didn’t see the point in trying for the company when my heart wasn’t in staying in London,’ she said. She brought her gaze back up to his. ‘It was time for me to go home, Luca. There was nothing in London for me. The competition was tough, in any case. I didn’t have a hope of making the shortlist. The audition would have been yet another rejection I just wasn’t up to facing.’
‘So you preferred to not show up at all rather than to fail.’ It was not a question but a rather good summation of what she had been feeling at the time.
Bronte hadn’t realised he had known her quite so well. She hadn’t spoken to him of her doubts about making the grade. Their relationship hadn’t been the sort for heart-to-heart confessions. She had always felt as if he was holding himself at a distance, not just physically but emotionally, so she had done the same. ‘Yes,’ she said, deliberately holding his gaze. ‘I did, however, speak to the head of auditions in person and explain I was withdrawing my application. I had at least the common decency to do that.’
There was another long drawn-out silence.
‘I know you took it hard, Bronte,’ he said in a husky tone. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you but I am afraid it was unavoidable. I had to end it. I had no other choice.’
Bronte blinked back the smarting of tears. She was not going to cry in front of him. She had cried all the tears she was ever going to cry over him two years ago. ‘Was there someone else the whole time?’ she asked in a cool crisp tone. ‘You can be honest with me, Luca. I am a big girl now. I can take it. I wasn’t enough to satisfy you, was I? I wasn’t worldly enough for your sophisticated tastes.’
He gave her a brooding frown. ‘Is that what you thought?’
She flattened her mouth. ‘It’s what I know,’ she said. ‘I was a novelty for you at first but it must have become annoying after a while. I was good enough to have sex with but not good enough for you to take on any of your trips abroad. But no doubt you had plenty of women to step into my place.’
He continued to frown at her. ‘That is not the way it was, Bronte.’ He raked one of his hands through his hair, making it look as if he had just tumbled out of bed. ‘I’ve always preferred to travel alone. It’s less complicated.’
Bronte bit the inside of her mouth to control her spiralling emotions. Why hadn’t she left five minutes ago before it had got to this? ‘We went out for close to six months,’ she said. ‘Not once did you spend
