CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
After a long and immensely satisfying session in the studio, Imogen wanted company. No, she wanted Luca’s company, she admitted to herself, in a way that she knew she should resist. And yet, she approached the terrace, where Luca stood, but she hesitated before stepping out onto it.
In London, they’d established a rhythm that worked for them. A sort of truce that made it possible to juggle the complexity of their arrangement. But here, in Tuscany, it was different. He was different and she was different; even Aurora was different.
It was a special place, the kind of home that invited magic to dance in the air around them, so a sense of awe and awkwardness swirled through Imogen as she stood just inside the villa, looking out at Luca’s back. But he was still the same Luca. Even when she glimpsed something vulnerable in him, even when he said something that made her wonder about him on a deeply human level, she knew what he was capable of. And it didn’t much matter what had caused him to be the way he was. He’d always be capable of repeating the callous way he’d treated her before. He’d always be capable of hurting her. She’d be stupid to let her guard down, even somewhere like this that invited true, heartfelt intimacy.
That wasn’t what she wanted from him. It wasn’t something they could ever achieve—not after their past.
So when she stepped onto the terrace, it was with a grim expression and a certainty that despite the beauty of their surroundings, the relationship between them was rotten at its core.
Perhaps to remind them both of that, she asked him something she’d wondered for a long time, though hadn’t ever really planned to bring up. ‘How soon after I left did you replace me anyway, Luca?’
It certainly set the tone for their conversation. Just like that, she’d wiped away the pleasant day and evening they’d spent and had plunged them back into the sparkling animosity of three years, or even two weeks, ago.
He turned to face her, his expression giving nothing away. The moon was high and full, shining and white, and it cast his symmetrical face into a shadow.
‘It’s not a tough question,’ she said when he didn’t respond.
‘No, it’s not. And yet I doubt you want the answer.’
Her stomach dropped to her toes. She turned towards the view, sucking in a sharp breath. He hadn’t answered, and yet he had. He’d basically confirmed what she’d feared and hated most at the time. He’d moved on straightaway. He’d replaced her straightaway. She had been dispensable to him. Replaceable .
Her heart hurt.
Not because she still cared for him, but because she had then. She’d cared for him, loved him in an open and innocent way, and he’d discarded her like a nobody. She forced herself to be strong, to keep her back straight when she felt like slumping, to keep her features expressionless when she halfway wanted to cry.
‘I’m interested as to why you would ask.’
‘I’ve wondered about it over the years, that’s all.’
Silence fell, staticky and sharp. Imogen curled her hands around the railing, her throat hurting with the emotions she was containing.
‘Did you truly not realise that I thought I was falling in love with you?’
More silence. ‘I saw what I wanted to see,’ he admitted.
‘Which was?’
‘Us being on the same page.’
‘We weren’t.’
‘I know that now.’
She swallowed. ‘I can’t be the first woman who’s claimed to love you.’
She glanced at him to see him frown thoughtfully. ‘You were.’
‘But not the first woman to feel it. Or to think she felt it,’ she corrected quickly, the distinction an important one for her pride.
‘Believe me, Imogen, what happened between us was a one off. I don’t sleep with virgins. I don’t sleep with anyone for weeks on end.’
‘Then why me?’ she pushed, his revelation doing something funny to her stomach, making it twist and loop.
‘You know the answer to that,’ he responded, a tone in his voice that spoke of repressed anger and impatience.
‘Spell it out for me,’ she demanded.
He glared at her and then moved quickly, his mouth seeking hers, taking it, crushing it, demanding her submission. A submission she gave all too willingly, her body pliant against his, the emotions of the last few days, of the last few weeks, building up to an enormous fountain of need that was erupting between them both.
‘This is your answer,’ he groaned, moving his hand to her back and pushing her towards him. ‘I don’t know why, but from the first moment we met, I haven’t been able to resist you. I had to have you then, and God, I want to have you now. I want to have you always, Imogen. Do you understand that? You are a fire in my blood, a need that overtakes all of my senses. You are a drug to which I am addicted, and I hate you for that, even when I know I would give my life for yours.’
She was breathless from passion and confusion. His words almost sounded like a declaration of love, but they weren’t. There was a darkness to them, an anger, a resentment and bitterness, as though wanting her was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
She pulled back to look at him, needing to see, to understand, but he kissed her again, and this time, he lifted her, bringing her with him back inside the villa, to the rug by the unlit fire, laying her down and kissing her while his knee wedged between her legs and his body lay heavily on hers, moving just enough to awaken every single one of her senses. Except common sense, which had deserted her the moment their lips connected.
‘Do you understand what you do to me?’ he ground out, pushing her shirt up to reveal her bra and then lifting her breast over the cup, exposing her nipple to his hungry gaze and then his desperate mouth, which ravaged her until she was moaning and arching her back on spasm after spasm of pleasure—pleasure so intense it was a form of torture in and of itself.
His hand curved around her bottom, lifting her to meet his arousal, and she whimpered, fully convinced that if he didn’t take her now she might crumble and die. ‘Please,’ she moaned, over and over, her hands pushing at his clothes impatiently while he reached for protection and unfurled it over his length. She wore a skirt, and he reached underneath it to find her underwear, sliding them down her legs and pushing the skirt up, entering her without even undressing her; such was their need, mutual and hungry.
She whimpered with gladness as he filled her and her muscles squeezed around him, her whole body trembling with the gift of her first release. She curled her legs around his waist as he began to move once more, and again and again she rode a wave of ecstasy, until finally he joined her, his voice thick and dark in the room, his convulsions echoing her own tidal euphoria.
He pressed his head into the curve of her neck and then pushed up onto his elbows so he could see her properly.
‘Listen, Imogen.’ His voice was hoarse, his breath still coming in fits from their exertions. ‘I need to talk to you.’
Her heart stammered; dread filled her veins with ice. ‘What about?’
‘This.’
Her lips parted. She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘Us?’
His brows knit together. If he denied there was an ‘us,’ she was scared she might slap him. He was still atop her, inside her, filling her senses and body with his presence; she wouldn’t let him sideline her again.
‘I like you.’
Her heart stammered. It was an underwhelming declaration, especially after the need he’d professed to feel for her moments earlier, and yet it was doing something strange to her insides, churning them up and making them unrecognisable.
‘I respect you.’
Her pulse rushed.
‘And I think you are a very good mother.’
Warmth slid through her. She bit into her lip, fighting a strange urge to cry. Her hand lifted up and pressed to his chest, connecting with the solid wall of his pectoral muscles and the heavy thudding of his heart.
‘I do not want to hurt you again, Imogen.’
Her eyes fluttered shut. It was an admission that came close to being an apology. It was an acceptance of what he’d done to her that she’d badly needed to hear.
‘You won’t. I’m different now.’
‘I can see that.’ There was a strange heaviness to his tone. Guilt? Well, that would make sense. Imogen had become cautious because of him. It was his treatment of her that had driven her to view people with mistrust, to overcome her natural instincts and be wary wherever possible.
‘I don’t love you.’
She gasped. It was one of the most hurtful things she’d ever been told, and that was saying something. They’d just made love, after all.
‘I am not saying that to be cruel—I am, in fact, trying to protect you.’
‘To protect me from what?’ she demanded with hauteur.
‘From misunderstanding me.’
‘You’re being pretty damned clear,’ she muttered.
‘I would like us to get married.’
It was the very last thing she’d expected him to say. Her whole body trembled and her skin lifted in goose bumps. It was a proposal she’d dreamed of, over countless nights, because her sleeping thoughts were well beyond her control. Everything stopped. The ticking clock above the mantel, the shimmering moon, the rolling waves of the ocean, the rustling grape vines, the night birds flapping their wings, the earth spinning in its place. Everything stopped and fell silent.
‘What did you say?’
‘Aurora deserves that from us. She deserves the certainty of a real family.’
‘I can’t… I—’
But he pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her with the intensity of his stare. ‘Our marriage would be for Aurora, but that’s not to say we would not find a silver lining to it,’ he promised. And he moved his hips a little, reminding her that he was still a part of her, and damn it, her body flushed with ready, all-encompassing heat. ‘Be my wife, Imogen. Sleep in my bed, night after night. Be mine.’ And he kissed her in a way that almost made her think he meant it, that he wanted her to be his wife, even when he’d just told her, in no uncertain terms, that none of this was about her. Not really.
‘Stop. Just stop.’
Now she found the strength to push him away, or maybe he simply accepted her need in that moment for space, and acquiesced to it. Luca pulled back, standing, disappearing briefly before returning while still in the process of straightening his clothes.
Imogen sat where she was on the floor, her nerves rioting. ‘Did you actually just suggest we get married, after everything we’ve been through?’
He put his hands into his pockets, looking down at her with a face that was carefully wiped of expression. And she hated that! How easily he could conceal his feelings—if he even had any.
‘It makes sense.’
‘About as much sense as a polar bear in the Sahara,’ she disputed passionately. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because—because—look at us!’ she spat. ‘Besides sex, tell me one good thing about our relationship.’
‘Aurora.’
Imogen rolled her eyes. ‘I’m her mum, you’re her dad. We don’t have to get married to keep performing those functions.’
‘You grew up with the security of two parents who loved one another very much, who doted on you and left you no room for doubt about your place in the world. Tell me that didn’t help shape who you are as a person.’
‘But it was also their love for one another. Their obvious respect and openness. Seeing their relationship made me want, for myself, a fraction of their happiness.’ Her chin jutted defiantly. ‘I will never have that with you, and I’m not marrying for anything less.’
For just a flash, she saw his reaction. A visible expression of some dark emotion she couldn’t fathom and then he was Luca again, impenetrable, confident, assured. ‘We are her parents, and we should be with her. Both of us.’
Imogen pressed her fingers to her temples, shaking her head a little. ‘That’s crazy. It makes literally no sense.’
‘On the contrary, it’s the only sensible option.’ He moved across to Imogen and crouched down, so their eyes were level. ‘I want to make this work, for both of us. Tell me what you would need to consider this.’
Her gut twisted. The answer to that was oh-so-simple and oh-so-terrifying: love. But she didn’t love Luca and never would, so why would she want him to love her? Because she wanted her parents’ happiness? Or because it was how she’d been raised—to believe that marriage was the ultimate expression of romantic love? It didn’t have to be, though. It could be an expression of a parent’s love for their child—such as in this instance. Marrying to give the baby stability and the permanence of a family home.
‘Lots of people raise children in shared homes,’ she said, fighting herself now. ‘It’s old-fashioned to think we need to be married to do this right.’
‘Lots of people do, and I commend them,’ he agreed. ‘But you and I both want the same version of a family for our daughter. I know that is true.’
She scanned his face. ‘Why do you want it, Luca?’
‘I’ve told you—’
‘No,’ she interrupted quickly, shaking her head with impatience. ‘I know what you’re saying , but that’s not the whole answer. It’s not the complete truth. What makes you think marriage is such a worthy institution?’
He was silent.
‘You never speak about your parents,’ she insisted. ‘And yet you know all about mine. You know how happy they are, how much that influenced me, because I told you, years ago. But I don’t know anything about your parents’ relationship and how that shaped you. If I had to go off your reaction to me, though, I would guess something happened to turn you off the whole idea of love and romance at some point in your life. So why this about-face?’
‘Our marriage isn’t about either of those things.’
‘Then it’s not a marriage,’ she responded, pulling away a little and moving to stand, glad to stretch her legs and gain some space. ‘Were they unhappy, Luca? Is that why you were so cruel to me three years ago?’
‘That had nothing to do with them,’ he responded, but his hand slashed through the air in a way that made her think she was getting to the heart of something. Some truth he wanted, desperately, to keep from her.
‘Did they fight?’
‘I was a thirty-year-old man when we met, more than old enough to have had my own experiences to take into account.’
‘So, it was a woman then? Someone who broke your heart and made you swear off relationships?’
A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘I am not here to be psychoanalysed. We’re discussing the prospect of our marriage.’
‘There is no prospect of our marriage,’ she replied instantly. ‘Not when you’re so intractable. You can’t even tell me the most basic information about yourself. You keep everything locked up, hidden away. If I agreed to your proposal, I’d wake up one day and find that I had married a stranger. I’m not going to be surprised by you twice, Luca.’
Silence arced between them. He strode towards her and she held her ground, staring up into his face, daring him to keep arguing with her. He stopped short a few inches away, his eyes holding hers, his features a tight mask of control.
When he spoke, it was with a voice she barely recognised. Low and throaty, his accent thicker than usual. ‘My mother and father were, like your parents, very happy. They laughed and loved with total abandon. I knew myself to be their ultimate pride. When I was nine, my mother discovered she was pregnant—it had not been planned, but was a welcome surprise. To all of us. We adored Angelica. Our angel. She was the most beautiful little girl.’ His lips twisted into a ghost-like smile. ‘So like Aurora.’
He shook his head, the memory clearly painful. She resisted the temptation to reach out and console him by touching his arm. It was a strange barrier after the intimacy they’d just shared, but something held her immobile.
‘For my twelfth birthday, we went away together, as a family, to a cabin in the Italian Alps. My parents felt they’d been neglecting me, since Angelica’s arrival. They wanted to make a fuss. My father took me out one on one; we hiked, played cards.’
Imogen blinked up at Luca, struggling to reconcile this image of him with the man she knew. The man who’d cut her heart into a thousand little pieces as though it were nothing.
‘On the night of my birthday, we had dinner together. I went to my room afterwards—I’d been given some new football trading cards and wanted to sort them.’ Another smile, less grim this time. Nostalgic and sad. Her fingers itched to touch him. ‘I fell asleep, but awoke sometime later to a loud crash.’
Even if she spoke, she suspected he wouldn’t hear. He wasn’t really talking to her now, but rather replaying events like a film in his mind, recounting things exactly as they’d happened. And Imogen braced, because it was abundantly clear this wasn’t going anywhere happy.
‘It was a beam in the lounge room. The fire had not been fully extinguished, and a spark leapt from it to the rug and quickly caught fire. It didn’t take long for the whole cabin to be alight. I was down the other end to my parents and Angelica—she was not a good sleeper. They wanted to spare me from that. I tried to get to them, but a beam fell on me.’ He ran his fingers over his side distractedly.
Even with his shirt on, she could see the scars there. The delicate bunching of his otherwise perfect skin, the ripples that had always fascinated her. She’d asked about them once; he’d demurred, and she’d let it be.
‘I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was being dragged from the cabin by neighbours. They saved me. I was hurt but alive. I wanted to go back in, to save my parents and sister. I could see how badly their section of the house was burning. I needed to get to them. I cried out, I pushed, but the neighbours held me back.’
Tears slipped down Imogen’s cheeks.
‘I was weak.’
‘Weak,’ she whispered, askance. ‘How?’
His eyes lanced hers. ‘I should have been able to reach them. Do you have any idea how many times I have replayed that moment in my mind? There is no force on earth that should have held me where I was. My father had spent the whole trip teaching me to be a man, talking to me about responsibilities and courage, and yet, in that moment of truth, I failed him. I failed them all.’
She gasped, her heart hurting for him now, and not herself. ‘No, Luca, no. How can you say that? You were a boy of twelve, you’d been injured, there was a raging fire, and you were being physically restrained.’
‘I was afraid,’ he muttered, clearly disgusted with himself. ‘I fought to go to them, but I was simultaneously terrified. Maybe that’s why I let them restrain me? Maybe if I hadn’t been afraid, I would have been able to free myself and run back in?’
‘And then what? Do you think there’s any possibility you would have survived?’ A muscle jerked in his cheek. ‘Do you think your parents would have wanted you to die trying to save them?’
‘I should have saved them.’ His eyes showed such awful torment. Imogen acted then, putting a hand on his chest, where his heart thumped hard against her palm.
‘You couldn’t have. You were pinned by a beam. The fire had reached their bedrooms. What happened was a terrible tragedy, but it was not your fault.’
‘Do you know what else my father did on that trip, to encourage me to become a man? A man he could be proud of?’ Luca said, the words ice-cold.
Imogen shook her head a little.
‘He gave me tasks. Responsibilities. “Every person in a family carries their weight, my boy.”’
A shiver of presentiment ran the length of Imogen’s spine.
‘One of my duties —’ he almost spat the word ‘—was to extinguish the fire each night. But I was too excited by my football cards to do it properly. I rushed. I didn’t check. I just wanted to sort through the damned things.’
Imogen’s face scrunched up. ‘That’s not your fault.’
‘Are you kidding? It’s the definition of “my fault.”’
‘Listen to me, Luca. Listen to me properly a moment. If your father was anything like mine, he was always there, a shadow, like training wheels, guiding you when I needed it, but always, always checking on you. There is no way, absolutely none, that your father would have given you a task as important as that and not checked you had done it. Particularly not on your birthday, when it’s entirely predictable that you would be distracted by your gifts.’
Luca’s eyes closed. It was clear that while he’d heard her words, he didn’t want to take them on.
‘You knew him. Am I wrong?’
A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘There is no defence for what I did, and then failed to do. None.’
She felt as though she were being handed the keys to something important—she just couldn’t quite work out what. It didn’t matter, though. This was about him, not her understanding of him.
She stroked his chest gently, letting her fingers move to his sides. ‘You were just a boy.’
His Adam’s apple shifted as he swallowed, visibly regrouping. ‘After that night, the lights went out for me. But before that, my life was… I saw what you saw. My parents were in love, yes, and more than that, Angelica and I were their reasons for being. Nothing made them prouder or happier than when we simply walked into the room.’
Her heart was thumping into her ribs.
‘I would like our daughter to know that feeling.’
Imogen groaned softly.
She wanted that too. She wanted them to raise Aurora together, to be able to make this work. She was far from believing marriage to be a prerequisite for raising a child together. She’d been doing it alone for more than two years, and she’d met heaps of single mum and dads, and couples of all sorts of configurations—married, engaged, never planning to marry, gay, straight. She had no preconceptions about what a modern family looked like. All that mattered to Imogen was what was right for them —for their family, and for them as individuals.
For the briefest fraction of time, she was tempted to simply say yes and work out the details later. The old Imogen would have. The Imogen he’d first met, three years ago, who’d taken everyone on faith, who’d loved without boundaries, who’d believed the best about people and life. But she’d learned her lesson, she’d taken it to heart, and it was wrapped around her now, protecting her even when her old nature wanted to reassert itself.
‘I understand why you’ve suggested this, and I’m not going to lie and say I’m not open to considering it.’ His eyes probed hers, his face back to a blank mask of control. ‘But I need to think about it, about everything.’ She lowered her hand further, to catch his with hers. ‘Just give me some time.’