Page 40 of Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal
It was long, which was reassuring. But it was tight, which most definitely was not.
And then there were the shoes. Several inches of nude into which her feet would have to be squeezed.
‘I’m going to look like a clown,’ she muttered.
Luca raked his fingers through his hair and half smiled. This was what he liked, this connection that ran like a current between them. It felt, suddenly, as though a signpost that had been there all along was staring him in the face, pointing him in a direction, and he frowned, in the grip of something he couldn’t quite grasp even though, deep inside, he felt that he would be able to if he thought a bit harder about it.
All he knew was that he missed her easy laugh when it wasn’t there and the way she would look at him, those slanting glances that always turned him on as no one else had ever been able to. He missed the way he occasionally felt taken for granted and didn’t seem to mind all that much. He missed the essence of her, although he wasn’t really too sure what that essencewas. He just knew that in some low-level way, he missed it.
Hearing the uncertainty in her voice relaxed him now because she sounded more normal, more like the girl he’d so quickly become reacquainted with ever since she had appeared on his doorstep with her bombshell revelation.
‘You could never look like a clown.’ Luca strolled towards her, a slow smile transforming the harsh contours of his beautiful, lean face.
‘I can’t tell you the last time I wore a dress.’ Annoyingly, Cordelia was finding it hard to hang onto what she had meant to say to him. He was so close now that she could smell the late summer warmth on his skin and see the ripple of muscle in his chest and shoulders. He always knew that the rough edges could be smoothed like this, with a touch.
The second he got just a little too near her, she couldn’t seem to help herself. She could be cross, angry, dejected or plain frustrated to within an inch of her life, and her body would still do its own thing, would still curve towards him like a plant turning towards the sun, searching for nourishment.
‘What about those dances you tell me you used to go to...?’
‘Dances?’
‘Where all the local talent would strut their stuff once a month in the village hall.’
‘A lot of people found the love of their lives at those dances,’ she pointed out. ‘Maybe if I’d worn dresses instead of trousers, I might have been one of the lucky ones.’
Luca lowered his eyes. He didn’t say a word and she had a sudden urge to prod him into something more than tactful silence, but what would be the point of that? They were where they were.
‘Before you distracted me with the whole dress thing,’ she said, although impetus had been lost, ‘I was going to tell you that you just don’t know anything about Dad.’
Temporarily lost, Luca looked at her with bewilderment. She wasn’t going to clarify. She was going to wait until he clocked on with where she was going with this and woe betide if he missed the turning.
He felt something shift inside him, some illogical feeling that made him vaguely uncomfortable even though it was a feeling that he perversely liked.
‘You mean,’ he said slowly, thinking on his feet, ‘the bit about him not being as nervous about being here at the gala this evening as you think he might be?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
Luca breathed a sigh of relief. He cupped the side of her face with his hand and looked at her solemnly. ‘I meant every word of it,cara mia.You’ve clung to one another over the years and I am sure he has built up a dependency on you because of that, has been fearful of you striking out because past experience has taught him that striking out can end in tragedy, but you have cut that tie and don’t be surprised to find that he’s more resilient than you think he will be. I mean, did he express any hesitation about making the trip over here?’
‘Not as such.’ She shrugged.
‘There you go. Point proven.’
‘Because he felt badly about complaining down the end of a telephone doesn’t mean that he actually wants to be over here. He’s going to be gutted when I tell him...what I have to tell him.’
‘We could break the news together,’ Luca suggested and she laughed shortly.
‘You mean like the happily loved-up couple we’re not?’ She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. She’d made it sound as though this were a black-and-white situation. Her voice had been tart and sarcastic and bitter.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered indistinctly, and Luca looked at her with suddenly cool eyes.
‘I don’t know what’s going on with you, Cordelia, but, whatever it is, you need to put it on hold, at least for the duration of this gala. Do you think you could do that?’
Cordelia wanted the ground to open up and swallow her because what had he done but try and deal with what had landed on his lap in the most gentlemanly way possible? He was right when he said that that had been an unnecessary outburst. More to the point, it wasn’t true. He might not be in love with her, but what they had was certainly not the cold, emotionless relationship of two people forced into an arrangement against their will.
They talked, they laughed, they made love and there was sufficient affection there for her to really believe that he would do his utmost to be a good father and a good husband.
‘I’m just nervous.’ She lowered her eyes, hating the drop in temperature between them. She needed his support and driving a wedge between them just at this moment seemed an incredibly stupid thing to have done.
