were cleared to take off for the second leg of their mammoth journey to Fiji.
Livia had returned to the plane before Massimo. She guessed he’d gone to the private executive lounge in the airport to work. She’d taken herself for a walk, keeping her phone in her hand for the alert that the plane had refuelled and she could get back on, and tried to get hold of Gianluca, her youngest sibling. He hadn’t answered and hadn’t called her back either. She’d had no wish to go sightseeing or do any of the things most visitors with a short layover at LAX would do. Just breathing the air brought back the awful feelings that had lived in her the last dying months of their marriage.
She hated Los Angeles. She hated California. She’d loathed living there. For a place known as the Golden State, her life there had been devoid of sunshine.
At first, she’d enjoyed the novelty of it all. Compared to Naples and Rome it was huge. Everything was so much bigger. Even the sky and the sun that shone in it appeared greater and brighter. But then loneliness had seeped its way in. She had no friends there and no means to make them. Unlike Massimo, who spoke fluent English, her own English was barely passable. The glass home they’d shared was forty kilometres from downtown LA. An intensely private man, Massimo had deliberately chosen a home far from prying eyes. There were no neighbours. The household staff spoke only English and Spanish.
She’d become sick with longing for home.
Massimo hadn’t understood. He hadn’t even tried.
But there hadn’t been any sunshine since she’d left him and returned to her home in Italy either.
It was strange to experience taking off in her second sunset of the day. She should have slept during the first leg of the journey but sleep had been the last thing on her mind, the last thing she’d been capable of. The sun putting itself to sleep now in LA would soon be awakening in Rome.
She yawned and cast her eyes in Massimo’s direction. His partition was raised again but she could still hear the tapping of his fingers on the keypad. So much for talking. Silence for them truly had become golden.
A member of the cabin crew brought her pillows and a duvet and turned her seat into a bed while Livia used the bathroom to change into pyjamas, remove her make-up and brush her teeth.
She thought of the plane’s bedroom and its comfortable king-sized bed. An ache formed in the pit of her stomach to remember the glorious hours they had spent sharing it. Massimo would never begrudge her sleeping in it now but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sleep in a bed they had shared knowing that when she woke the pillow beside her would be unused. That had been hard enough to deal with when they’d been together.
Massimo was on his feet stretching his aching back when Livia returned to the cabin clutching her washbag. It was the same washbag she’d used when they’d been married and his heart tugged to see it.
She looked younger with her face free from make-up and plain cream pyjamas on. More vulnerable too.
The threads tugging at his heart tightened.
‘I’m going to have a nightcap. Do you want one?’
Surprise lit her dark brown eyes before they fixed on his own freshly made-up bed. ‘You’re finished?’
He nodded. ‘My apologies for it taking so long. I didn’t factor in falling asleep.’
Her plump lips curved into the tiniest of smiles. ‘I would have woken you but you looked exhausted.’
She looked exhausted. Her seat had been made up into a bed for her too but, however comfortable it was, it was not the same as sleeping in a proper bed. ‘Why don’t you sleep in our bed?’
Now the tiniest of winces flashed over her face. ‘I’ll be fine here, thank you. You should use it—you only napped for a couple of hours.’
The only time he’d been in the jet’s bedroom since she’d left him was to use the en-suite shower. Sleeping in the bed he’d shared with her…the thought alone had been enough to make his guts twist tightly.
To see the same reluctance reflected in her eyes twisted them even harder.
He removed a bottle of his favourite bourbon and two glasses from the bar as the stewardess came into the cabin with a bucket of ice. Massimo took it from her and arched an eyebrow in question at Livia.
She hesitated for a moment before nodding.
As the stewardess dimmed the lights and left the cabin, he poured them both a measure and handed a glass to Livia.
She took it with a murmured thanks, avoiding direct eye contact, carefully avoiding his touch. He could smell the mintiness of her toothpaste and caught a whiff of the delicately scented cream she used to remove her make-up and the moisturiser she finished her night-time routine with. The two combined into a scent that had always delighted his senses far more than her perfume, which in itself was beautiful. The perfume she sprayed herself with by day could be enjoyed by anyone who got close enough. Her night-time scent had always been for him alone.
Had any other man been lucky enough to smell it since they’d parted?
She sat on her bed and took a small sip of her bourbon. As she moved he couldn’t help but notice the light sway of her naked breasts beneath the silk pyjama top.
Her nightwear was functional and obviously selected to cover every inch but the curves that had driven him to such madness were clearly delineated beneath the fabric and it took all his willpower to keep his gaze fixed on her face.
But her face had driven him to madness as much as the body had. With Livia it had always been the whole package. Everything about her. Madness.
After a few moments of stilted silence she said, ‘Are you going to get some sleep too?’
Massimo knew what Livia was thinking: that having his own seat made into a bed was no indication that he actually intended to get any rest.
He shrugged and took a large sip of his bourbon, willing the smooth burn it made in his throat to flow through his veins and burn away the awareness searing his loins.
‘If I can.’ He raised his glass. ‘This should help.’ Enough of it would allow him a few precious hours of oblivion to the firecracker who would be sleeping at such close quarters to him.
‘How long do we have until we reach Fiji?’
He checked his watch. ‘Nine hours until we land at Nadi.’
‘We get another flight from there?’ Livia already knew the answer to this but the dimming of the lights seemed to have shrunk the generously proportioned cabin and given it an air of dangerous intimacy.
What was it about darkness that could change an atmosphere so acutely? Livia had grown up scared of the dark. The Secondigliano was a dangerous place in daylight. At night, all the monsters came out.
The dangers now were as different as night and day compared to her childhood and adolescence but she felt them as keenly. With Massimo’s face in shadows his handsome features took on a devilish quality that set her stomach loose with butterflies and her skin vibrating with awareness.
‘I’ve chartered a Cessna to fly us to Seibua Island.’
