Chapter Four
DULCIE FELT HER phone vibrate as she was standing in the queue of people for passport control at Brindisi airport.
Oscar.
Her muscles clenched around the knot in her stomach.
But as she stared down at the screen, she saw that it was just her phone updating, and she felt the same churning mix of relief and guilt as she had back in England when she watched Oscar walk off with Elaine O’Neill, the director of the Dymphna Clinic.
He had turned and waved to her and smiled encouragingly. And she knew that it was where he needed to be. But she’d still had to curl her toes into her shoes to stop herself from running after him, and she had driven away with tears blurring her eyes.
After that, she’d spent what felt like the remainder of the day staring into her wardrobe and hating all the contents. She was going to Italy, so it would be warm. But what exactly did you pack for a fake second-chance romance?
If this reunion were real, she would probably be packing barely there lingerie, but it wasn’t. As for outerwear, the last time she and Ettore had been together she had still been a student.
Back then, her clothes were jeans and tees and hoodies and the occasional sexy dress.
She had smartened it up for work but then she’d lost her real job, and now she was back to being a part-time student with two jobs.
But nobody cared what she wore under her lab coat.
And the cleaning company provided a uniform.
But she could hardly wear either of those to meet Ettore’s family and so she’d ended up rushing to the shops and panic-buying some summery dresses and shorts and the sandals that were currently rubbing her feet to ribbons.
‘It’s your turn.’
She looked up from her phone, frowning.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered to the woman standing behind her, and then she stepped up to the glass-fronted booth and held out her passport to the uniformed border control officer.
The woman glanced at her photo and then her face, her own face inscrutable. ‘What is your purpose in visiting Italy?’
Her purpose?
Dulcie cleared her throat. ‘Well, up until a week ago my husband and I were estranged. But his father is old, and his health is failing, and my husband wants to make him happy, so he came to find me, and he’s going to pay for my brother to go into rehab and in exchange I’m going to pretend that we’ve got back together. ’
The woman didn’t so much as blink.
Unsurprisingly, given that Dulcie had only spoken those words inside her head.
Out loud, she said, ‘I’m meeting my husband’s family for the first time. They live in Puglia.’
The woman still didn’t blink but her expression thawed a fraction. ‘Have a pleasant trip.’
That seemed unlikely, Dulcie thought, her fingers tightening around the handle of her suitcase as she trundled towards the arrivals area. It would be a miracle if she and Ettore managed to pull off this charade. Two years ago, it would have been a breeze. But then two years ago it was real.
For her, anyway.
A pulse of panic skimmed across her skin as she glanced at the crowd of people hovering around the arrivals gate. Most were eagerly scanning the passengers and there was a sprinkling of men holding up white boards but none with her name.
Ettore had texted to say he would meet her at the airport, so where was he?
He had left London before her so that he could tell his father the ‘happy news’ in person.
Which made a sort of sense. Edoardo Marchesi might desperately want to see his son married, but if Ettore turned up with a wife out of the blue obviously it would be something of a shock.
And it seemed likely that Ettore would want to avoid playing marital charades on a plane for three hours.
And for once, she completely understood his point of view.
She heard a noise somewhere between a sob and a gasp and she turned as a woman sidestepped past her to embrace an identical woman. Both were crying. Moments later a young, dark-haired man was spinning his girlfriend off her feet as their mouths fitted together hungrily.
Dulcie kept walking.
She could remember that hunger, those unanchored days when just seeing Ettore would make her senses grow muddied.
It was like running a permanent fever. She felt shivery and urgent and there was that burning thing in her chest that she couldn’t allow herself to name at first because she was too scared to do so.
Love was a choice. A dangerous choice but then all choices were inherently dangerous in her experience.
Except with Ettore, there was no choice.
She’d been attracted to men in the past. Not many, not enough perhaps to generalise.
But maybe it was enough because, with all of them, it had felt as if she was making a conscious decision.
That what she’d felt was generic. A basic sexual need, a woman responding to a man.
They hadn’t been unique. And there had been no feeling of breathlessness, of losing control of herself.
Always there had been that voice warning her, cautioning her to stay remote.
With Ettore, it had been like a rogue wave rising up and sweeping her out to sea. It had been fast and unstoppable, and it should have been frightening. She should have been scared. But she’d felt no fear and instead of fighting to get back to shore, she’d let herself be pulled under.
Like in his hotel room in London.
Her face felt scalded. No, that wasn’t the same, was it? Lips tingling, she replayed the moment when Ettore had kissed her gently at first, then more deeply, drawing her against his body.
And she had kissed him back, her hands winding around his neck, slipping effortlessly, eagerly back into the taste and the heat of him.
It had obviously been just a performance. A rehearsal, almost. They had been alone. There had been nobody there to convince, and yet—
‘Signora Shaw?’
‘Yes.’ She blinked, her feet stuttering to a sudden stop as a thickset man in a dark suit stepped forward.
He wasn’t holding a board, but he smiled stiffly and made a small bow, which seemed a little formal, but then, like most Europeans, Italians had specific language for informal and formal ways of greetings. Maybe the formal kind came with a bow.
‘Buongiorno. Welcome to Apulia. My name is Carmine. There is a car waiting for you. May I take your bag?’
‘Oh, yes. Thank you.’
Was Ettore not meeting her? Had he sent a car instead? She felt a flash of annoyance, and then a disappointment that confused and annoyed her even more.
‘If you would like to come this way.’
She followed Carmine, not, as she expected, towards the front of the terminal building, but to a discreet door at the far edge of the concourse.
He flashed some kind of security clearance to a bored-looking man in a uniform and now they were in another building.
It was cool and quiet like the foyer of an upmarket hotel.
It reminded her of the entrance to the Conisbrough, and she felt her feet falter and then she was blinking into the bright Italian sunshine—
And that was when she saw him.
He was leaning against a dark blue car. It was almost the same colour as her own car back in Cambridge. But this was a very different vehicle. It was muscular yet elegant with a strong, distinctive silhouette and a powerful stance that exuded a kind of understated strength and refined athleticism.
A bit like its owner.
Ettore shifted position, his head tilting back to acknowledge her, his gaze hidden beneath his sunglasses, but she felt his focus as she walked slowly towards him, trying to channel a convincing facsimile of wife-reuniting-with-her-husband energy.
Except that, to her overstressed brain, it felt more like a scene from a film where someone was being released from prison.
So why did it feel as if she were walking towards her jailer?
At that moment he pushed away from the car and her whole body stiffened with awareness as he took off his sunglasses.
As she met his speculative gaze, she saw herself through his eyes.
Blonde hair swept in a loose bun. No make-up.
A simple summer dress that she’d thought would be cool in the Italian heat but now looked hopelessly crumpled.
‘I missed you, cara.’
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes and for a few half-seconds she forgot that they were only pretending.
For a few half-seconds she believed him.
And then she saw the coolness in his gaze, and she hated herself for being so stupid.
Hated him for turning her back, even momentarily, into the woman she’d been two years ago.
Ettore reached out and took her hand and his touch snapped against her skin like an elastic band, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to jerk it away as he pulled her closer.
‘Thank you, Carmine. I’ve got it from here.’
She heard the boot of the car click shut and then, behind her, she felt Carmine melt away. And they were alone in the bright, cheerful Italian sunshine that seemed glaringly at odds with the disquiet in her stomach.
He released her hand, and she stepped backwards quickly, her fingers curling into a fist, trying to quell the tingling sensation in her fingers.
‘Did you have a good flight?’
She nodded. Ettore had stumped up for business class, so it had been very civilised.
More civilised than that kiss they’d shared back in London.
The thought popped into her head uninvited and to distract herself she said, ‘When you weren’t at the gate, I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about meeting me. ’
His gaze rested on her face, light yet intent. ‘On the contrary, the drive will give us time to get our stories straight and get reacquainted.’
Reacquainted.
There were so many possible interpretations of that word that she couldn’t fix on one. But they were all equally daunting. Hadn’t they done that back in England via email?