to him than anything else could be,’ Marco responded.
Lily could feel her face burning from the heat Marco’s words had aroused inside her. The heat and the desire. She was glad to be able to sit down at the table to which the waiter had shown them, glad of the room’s soft lighting and the large menu she had been handed to conceal her hot face.
Behind his own menu Marco was cursing himself for the rawly sensual images their exchange had produced inside his head. His imagination was laying them out before him in loving detail, as though answering a need within him that had demanded them. Lily lying naked against the silk coverlet of his bed, watching him, wanting him. Her skin would be all shimmering translucent perfection, fine and delicate, her nipples a deep rose-pink, her sex covered by soft blonde hair. Her legs would be long and slender, supple enough to wrap tightly around him…
Marco cursed himself silently again—and her. If this had been any other woman—if he had not known what she really was—then he could have dealt with the situation by taking her to bed. She was not, after all, the first woman to arouse him, and nor had he ever been short of eager partners to share his bed, but he had never desired any of them with this kind of intensity. What was happening to him? Why couldn’t he control and banish the sensual hunger she aroused in him?
The discovery that he wasn’t able to do so was like having a deep, unbridgeable chasm open up at his feet, leaving him vulnerable and desperately trying to cling on to what he had believed to be a perfectly safe landscape. The discovery was demanding answers to questions for which there was no logical answer, stirring up things within him he had not even known were there. And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it. Marco liked being able to control his responses, not have them controlling him. He liked dealing in facts and logic, not being forced to endure the uncertainty of illogical emotions. Most of all he hated the fact that Lily confused him by refusing to a stay true to type. He knew what she was, and yet she kept on exhibiting behaviour that suggested she was something else. Or that he had been wrong about her. That was impossible. Wasn’t it?
The only reason he was even being polite to her was for professional reasons—because of the commitment he had made to the trust’s venture. The last thing he wanted to do was spend time in her company. His pride wouldn’t let him back out of accompanying her, though. That would be tantamount to admitting that he was afraid of the way she made him feel.
He put down his menu, meaning to ignore her, but against his will his gaze was drawn to her. The restaurant was full, and there were many beautiful, expensively dressed women amongst the diners, but it seemed to him that Lily had a pure elegance about her that made her stand out head and shoulders above the other women. From out of nowhere the thought formed inside his head that a man would be proud to have such a wife—educated, intelligent, beautiful and elegant. Proud? To be married to a woman he couldn’t trust? A woman who hid what she really was beneath an outward image?
The waiter was hovering, waiting for Lily to give him her order.
‘I’ll have the missoltini to start with,’ she told him, referring to the Lake Como speciality of small sundried fish, ‘and then the risotto.’ Rice had been grown in Northern Italy for centuries, and risotto was very much a dish of the area.
‘I’ll have the same,’ Marco agreed.
When the wine waiter arrived, hot on the heels of the waiter who had taken their food order, Marco glanced at the list and asked Lily, ‘How do you feel about the Valtellina? I know it’s a red, and we’re starting with fish, but…’
Lily laughed a natural trill of laughter for the first time since they had met, unable to conceal her amusement. She liked the fact that Marco was consulting her rather than telling her what he thought they should drink, and she knew perfectly well why he had suggested the Valtellina.
‘Leonardo drank Valtellina. If it was good enough for him then it’s good enough for me,’ she told him.
Marco had suspected that would be her response, which was in part why he had suggested the Valtellina in the first place.
Was that actually a small smile she could see on Marco’s face, as though he was enjoying a private joke? Lily wondered. He had a good smile, warm and masculine, revealing a tantalising hint of a manly cleft in his jaw and strong white teeth. Her heart missed a beat of female appreciation of his maleness, followed by a dull, hollow feeling inside her chest. Because his smile was not for her?
She was glad of the arrival of their wine to distract her from the possible meaning behind her emotional reaction to him.
‘So that’s the itinerary. We’ll start off tomorrow morning with a visit to Villa Balbiannello. I’ve arranged a private tour for you. Most of the villas we’ll be visiting are not fully open to the public, as you know.’
Lily nodded her head. Marco was discussing the arrangements for the morning with her over coffee after their meal, and now he added, ‘Since we’ve got an early start in the morning, and I’ve got some work to do, I’d like to call it a night—unless you want more coffee.’
Was that a stab of disappointment she felt? Of course not. Lily forced herself to shake her head and tell him firmly, ‘I won’t sleep if I have any more coffee.’
She ought to be tired, not strung so tightly with nervous energy. It had been a long and far from easy day, to put it mildly. The truth was that she felt as though she’d been travelling on an alien emotional rollercoaster from the first moment she had set eyes on Marco.
They had dined relatively early, the restaurant was still full and busy as they left. As they drew level with one table the stunning-looking brunette seated there with several other people, called out to Marco in a very pleased voice. ‘Marco, ciao.’
Lily wasn’t surprised to see him stop as the woman stood up to reveal a perfect hourglass figure in a cream designer dress that showed off her figure to perfection. Politely she left them to it after murmuring a brief ‘goodnight’, sensing that the other woman’s delight at seeing Marco did not extend to her. She removed from her evening bag the plastic keycard to her suite, ready to make her way there.
In the ante-room to the restaurant a large group of people were heading towards the restaurant—fashion people from Milan’s fashion week, Lily guessed expertly, easily recognising the mix of expensively suited older men, bone-thin young models, and a handful of very smart women who looked like magazine editors. She had never been comfortable around such people, reminding her as they did of her past. Her stomach was churning anxiously already, her face starting to heat up with nervous dread.
Desperate to get past them as quickly as she could, she started to skirt the group—only to be brought to shocked halt when one of the men stepped out in front of her, blocking her way. Anger, disgust and most shamingly of all stomach-gripping fear washed over her in a nauseating spine-chilling surge. He put his hand on her arm as he smiled his cruel crocodile smile at her, the familiar sour smell of his breath closing her throat against the retching movement of loathing tightening it. Anton Gillman. A man she had every reason to loathe and fear. She wanted to turn and run but she couldn’t.
‘Lily, what a delicious surprise—and looking so grown up as well. It’s been so long. It must be—what? —twelve years?’
It was surely deliberate that he was talking to her in that adult-to-child manner she remembered so well. Because he knew what hearing it would do to her.
The temptation to correct him and tell him that it was thirteen years was dangerously strong. She must not let him know that she even remembered,
