Chapter Six #3
‘Actually, I wanted to thank you,’ he said after another beat of silence.
‘For what?’
‘I lost the thread earlier with Checco and my uncle. You had my back.’
She shrugged. ‘Your back is my back.’
‘You kept your head. I’m grateful.’
‘How did we do? Did we pass? I couldn’t tell.’
‘I think so.’
He looked tired, but then it must have been as stressful for him as it was for her. Maybe more so.
‘You passed anyway. You were more than a match for them. Even though they were incredibly provoking, particularly Checco, you didn’t let them get under your skin.’
She remembered the edge to Ettore’s voice as he’d warned his cousin. The memory of how he had turned and silenced the other man scraped over her skin.
‘You did,’ she said softly.
His expression didn’t alter but she felt something shift between them.
‘It’s complicated.’
She thought about Oscar and his bouts of despair and drunkenness. ‘Families are like that.’
‘What shall I do with these?’
He was holding out the pins and she forced herself to take them.
As her fingers brushed against the palm of his hand, her pulse surged forward with a whumping sound like a tide curving under a cliff and she was so sure that he could hear it and understand what he was hearing that, instead of picking the pins up, she managed to knock several of them onto the grass.
‘Sorry.’
He crouched down, his fingers rifling through the dense blades, and she was almost tempted to help him.
But she had watched enough romcoms to know that dropping-things-and-picking-them-up was a classic meet-cute scenario and, after what had happened in London, she didn’t want him getting the wrong idea.
Or her?
‘You didn’t drop them,’ she said as calmly as she could with that question repeating inside her head. ‘I did.’
‘I wasn’t apologising for that. I was apologising for yesterday. For how I acted. How I overreacted. I said things I didn’t mean.’
He was apologising. She felt oddly fragile.
‘And I said things I did. I wasn’t pretending. You were bleeding. I was worried.’
‘I know.’ His gaze moved past her as if he was searching for something in the darkness. Or maybe seeing it.
‘I know,’ he said again. ‘I was worried about you, too. I thought…’ He hesitated. ‘It reminded me of what happened with Edoardo. He was the heir, before me,’ he said simply. ‘And then he wasn’t.’
Wasn’t. Small words, big meaning.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He was killed on the estate. Riding one of the dirt bikes. He lost control and the bike hit a tree. I was with him when it happened. I can still hear the noise in my head…’
She felt him flinch inside, heard the splintering sound again. And she had been simply messing about. No wonder he’d overreacted.
‘Were you on the bike too?’ The thought appalled her.
Ettore shook his head. ‘We were on different bikes. I came off as well, but I wasn’t as badly hurt. We were both taken to hospital but only one of us woke up.’
Her relief was instant and profound and absolute. And then she felt guilty for being so relieved that Ettore was the one to wake up.
‘I’m so sorry, Ettore.’
‘I am too. You would have liked him. Everyone liked Edo. He was funny and charming and a bit of a rogue.’
‘How were you hurt?’
He lifted up his shirt and she saw that his stomach was dappled with patches of paler skin.
Scar tissue. ‘I was lucky. I got dragged along by the bike so there was a lot of superficial grazing.’ He turned, and she saw similar patches on his back.
‘I had minor concussion, and I broke my arm, but other than that I was fine. But then I was wearing a helmet.’
She reached out to touch the scar on his stomach and this time he didn’t jerk away. ‘When did it happen?’
‘The September after we split up.’
Just a month after they had split up, to be precise.
She felt suddenly queasy. She had hated him then as you hated someone you loved still.
Now that love had faded to indifference and yet, of course it hurt to picture him lying injured in a hospital or standing, pale and dark suited with his arm in a sling, at his brother’s funeral.
He looked pale now, and there was a tension in his shoulders that looked painful and, without thinking, she stepped forward and slid her arms around his back.
‘I’m so sorry, Ettore. For you and your family.’
She felt him hesitate and then his arms tightened around her.
‘It was a terrible shock for everyone. My mother had a stroke after the funeral; she died three weeks later and that’s when my sister decided to go travelling. I think it was all too much for her. When she left, my dad just stayed in his room.’
So he had been alone with his grief.
‘It must have been so awful for you.’
‘It was hard. The estate still needed to be managed. We employ sixty people. I couldn’t just take a step back.’
‘And you didn’t. You kept it all going.’
Loosening his arms, he stepped back and stared down at her, his eyes lingering on her mouth before rising to meet hers. She could feel the heat of his skin, see the faint trace of stubble along his jawline.
‘Just about. But I think that’s probably enough about my family for one day. I know you want to decompress so I’ll leave you in peace. Don’t stay out too late, I think it’s going to rain.’
But he didn’t move. Instead he just stood there, his eyes locked on hers, his dark lashes shielding his thoughts. But she could read them anyway. Could feel them pulling her in as his eyes slid back to her mouth.
‘You don’t have to go…’
Her heart thudded against her ribs as she spoke and she felt his pulse still.
Everything stilled. There was a tension in the air like an intake of breath.
The sun had long since set, but there was enough light from the crescent moon to see his face and she could see the hunger in the taut skin over his cheekbones.
Her breasts tingled.
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said again, and now her voice was scratchy.
There was a beat of silence, then another as she struggled to put together a coherent sentence, one that would express what she was feeling.
What she wanted.
What he wanted?
The question hovered unspoken between them and then as one they answered it. The pins fell from his hands, and he was reaching for her as she stepped towards him.
Their bodies collided, hands gripping and clenching at whatever they could reach, their mouths slotting together just as they had in London. But this was a different kind of kiss. That had been a challenge issued and met. It had been performative and destabilising.
This was a wordless admission of need.
That fine gold thread of hunger between them pulling tight, pulling them closer with powerful, unstoppable magnetic force.
His hand was tight around her waist, the other grasped her head, fingers biting into her scalp. He was kissing her hungrily, hard, hot, open-mouthed kisses that made her grind her hips against his groin.
She moaned. She could feel how hard he was, and she shifted, pushing hard against him, trying to soothe the pulse hammering between her thighs. He made a rough noise in the back of his throat and then he was pushing up her dress, his hands lifting her up and—
‘Wait.’
He had jerked his head back and he was staring at her, breathing raggedly, his eyes unfocused.
Not understanding, thinking he wanted to move more into the darkness, she reached for him,
‘No, Dulcie, stop.’
And then slowly, inexorably, he stepped backwards, and her body swayed a little as he let her go.
‘Ettore?’
He took a deep breath, pressing his hands together as though in prayer.
‘Go back inside.’
She stared at him in confusion. There was a coolness in his voice, and she felt it wind over her skin even as her face burned.
‘What do you mean? Are you serious?’ Her heart banged inside her chest, and she was suddenly conscious of her bare feet and her shaking hands and how the neckline of her dress was lower than her nipples.
‘Intensely.’
A drop of rain splashed on her face. Then another and there was a faint, warning rumble from overhead.
‘Go back inside, Dulcie,’ he repeated and then he turned and walked into the darkness as the rain started to fall, smashing against the leaves with the same force as the hail that had fallen in Paris.
She made it back to her bedroom, and she stood by the window for a long time. But she didn’t see Ettore come back, and after an hour, when her dress was dry, she stripped off and got into bed.
Her body was taut and twitchy with frustration, and her head kept replaying the moment when Ettore had pulled away, so it was impossible to fall asleep. Which was why she heard the click of his door about an hour later.
And as she lay in the darkness, her body rigid, her mouth still trembling from his kisses, she didn’t think she had ever felt more alone. Or more unhappy.