Italian Attraction: The Italian Tycoon's Bride / An Italian Engagement / One Summer in Italy...

Unlike some of these sophisticated career women he had spoken about, no doubt. She supposed they could down a bottle without blinking. They could probably do a lot of things without blinking. Frequently. With him. ‘I don’t drink much,’ she said airily, ‘if that’s what you mean.’ On her salary she hadn’t been able to afford to. And quite often when she and Jeff had gone out to dinner or eaten a meal at his very nice flat in central London, he’d been on call, so they’d shared nothing more exciting than a bottle of fizzy water. She briefly wondered how the perfect Camellia would react to his disappearing at the drop of a hat in the middle of a date. Badly, she hoped. She was completely over him but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t like him to get a bit of grief.

‘The prawns will take about ten minutes so I’ll get cooking.’

‘Can I come and watch?’ This sitting in splendid isolation was all very well and the view was undoubtedly stupendous, but compared to observing Blaine under the guise of watching him cook it couldn’t even begin to compare. Sad. Maisie mentally nodded. She was turning into one sad female.

‘Of course.’ he nodded to her glass. ‘Bring your wine.’

Once in the kitchen, she had to admit she was more than a little impressed by how organised and efficient he was. When she cooked anything other than a casserole, where she could sling everything in together and bung it in the oven, it tended to be something of a hit and miss affair, and she knew she was a messy cook. Blaine, on the other hand, was definitely a pro. She said as much once he had finished browning the sesame seeds and put them to one side, using the same pan with new oil to start cooking the prawns, garlic, chilli and green pepper.

‘I am Italian,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘It is in the genes, you know? Whenever Liliana visits her sister in Tuscany my father always cooks at home. My mother is not particularly domesticated.’

There you see, they would be absolutely perfect together. He could cook and she could watch him every night. Bliss. Maisie silently warned herself to stop. He didn’t want her. Well, he did want her but not enough. End of story.

After Blaine had added the ginger cordial and sesame seeds to the pan and cooked for a further minute or so, he divided the contents between two plates on which nestled a green salad. They carried their plates and wine out to the courtyard and ate under the blue Italian sky. Maisie thought she had never understood how something could be bitter-sweet until tonight.

She didn’t accompany him back to the kitchen for the second course but sat sipping her wine as she watched the sun go down. The shadow-blotched courtyard was still as warm as toast, even when the sky became streaked with tumescent crimson and enriched with bands of gold.

A violet dusk was settling when Blaine brought out the plates, and the tortelloni and lobster was every bit as delicious as the first course had been. He set out to be amusing and entertaining while they ate, the perfect host, and in spite of how Maisie was feeling inside she found herself giggling and enjoying herself. Probably the three glasses of red wine she had consumed by the time her plate was empty helped.

‘And now for dessert.’ Blaine’s teeth were very white as he smiled at her in the indigo shadows. ‘I cannot take the credit for these. There is an excellent little patisserie in Positano. You can choose from Sicilian lemon tart or pistachio cake.’

Maisie groaned. ‘I can’t eat another thing. I thought I’d lost some weight before I came here tonight but I’m sure I’ve put it all on again. I shall go back to England looking like the Michelin woman.’

‘I do not think so,’ he said softly. ‘Just beautiful.’

That was the wrong tone of voice for friends, besides which it wasn’t fair to say she was beautiful. Friends wouldn’t say that. Jackie or Sue would have agreed with her and put in their own suggestions, like one of the Roly-Polys or a jelly on a plate. Maisie frowned, her sense of being misused aided and abetted by the fact that he hadn’t the grace to even pretend to look devastated at the thought of her going back to England. ‘No dessert for me, thank you,’ she said firmly. ‘Really. Just coffee.’

Blaine ate a gargantuan piece of lemon tart along with his coffee and although Maisie’s mouth was watering she restrained herself from saying she’d changed her mind. The moon was out now, shedding a thin hollow light over the face of the ocean far below. The night was very still; even the light breeze of an hour or so ago had died away, leaving a sense of enduring timelessness in its place. They sipped their coffee without talking and then Blaine said quietly, ‘We have eaten and now it is time, sì?’

Maisie glanced at him quickly. She knew he was talking about the explanation she had asked for. She also knew he was reluctant to give it. The evidence was there in the sudden tautness to the handsome features and the stiff line of his body. ‘It’s not necessary,’ she said, equally quietly. Not now. ‘I thought it was, but it really isn’t.’

It was almost as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘Her name was Francesca,’ he said flatly. ‘She was my wife. We married when I graduated from university and took my place in the family business. We had been promised to each other from childhood.’ He shrugged. ‘It is the way things are done sometimes and I had no complaints. I had grown up loving her.’

Maisie was as still as a mouse. His wife? Stupid, but she had never expected that he had been married, somehow.

‘She was twenty-two years old when we married. Within the year she was expecting our child and this triggered the mental condition which ran in her family. Of course this was not mentioned before the wedding.’ He smiled grimly. ‘My parents later admitted they had wondered why Francesca’s parents had left Florence and settled in Sorrento, and why they never visited their respective families or had them to stay. It was the stigma, you see. Her father’s mother had had the condition and her mother before her. It was suggested that because her father was a boy this condition had not affected him.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not know if this was so, only that Francesca became a different person almost overnight.’

‘Blaine, you don’t have to go on.’ Maisie felt awful. If she had known, if she had even suspected just the slightest she wouldn’t have pressed him for an explanation.

‘At first I didn’t know what I was dealing with,’ he said painfully. ‘I thought it was a kind of normal depression, if there is such a thing. I imagined with help she would snap out of it. Then her parents told her the truth. They had always said that all their family was dead and Francesca had grown up believing this. When they told her she became convinced there was no hope for her.’

He raked back his hair, moving restlessly in his chair before going on. ‘My parents and I brought in the best doctors;they were optimistic that once the child was born and she could receive certain medication she would be a different woman. Not cured exactly, but if she stayed on the medication she would cope.’

He sat forward in his chair, his arms resting on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. Somewhere close by a dog barked and then all was still again.

‘She lost the baby at four months. Perhaps it was for the best, I don’t know. We began the medication. Sometimes for long periods she was fine. Other times … she wasn’t.’

The pause said much more than words could have done. Maisie could not see his face clearly in the shadowed darkness but she didn’t have to. She knew it would be etched with pain. She sat stiff and still, scarcely breathing.

‘And gradually over a period of time my feelings began to change. Oh, she did not know this—at least I think she did not know—but even in the early days of our marriage, before she became ill, I knew I had made a mistake. Francesca … she did not like the physical side of marriage. She would do her duty as she saw it but that was all. Maybe I should have recognised the signs before we married; she was always happy to cuddle and kiss a little but anything else and I was gently rebuffed. But she was a good Italian girl and I had been brought up to respect this. I did not expect more. After she lost the baby we lived virtually as brother and sister.’

How could any woman not want Blaine to make love to her? Maisie stared at his profile, wondering what that must have done to him.

‘To all intents and purposes ours seemed a loving marriage to the outside world. Even, perhaps, to Francesca. She had the kudos of being married, which was important to her, having been raised by parents who believed in the old way. She had a nice home close to her parents—we lived in Sorrento—and she had me to take her out and look after her. She wanted nothing more, she made that very clear. Even in her good times any advances I made were not well received. And so life went on. Maybe if she had not been ill, things would have been different. I might have insisted she try to change. As it was, I realised I had made my bed and I had to lie on it. Alone, of course.’ He smiled bitterly.

‘You … couldn’t have asked for a divorce?’ Maisie said tentatively.

‘Francesca was a staunch Catholic, like her parents, besides which I could not abandon her and cast her aside. It would have finished her. Again, if she had not been ill it would have been different.’

‘She was lucky to have you.’

He looked up and into her eyes. ‘Do not think of me as a saint, Maisie,’ he said quietly. ‘I am not proud of it, but by the time she became ill with leukaemia I think I almost hated her. She used her illness as a weapon and we both knew it. I resented her more than words can say; I longed for my freedom. Not in the way it happened—never that—but I wanted to be rid of her. My only comfort is that she did not know. I acted the part of the loving husband to the end.’

She stared at him, chilled in spite of the warm air. ‘Was the leukaemia connected with her other illness?’

‘No, just a fluke. But with hindsight I think it saved my sanity. I had lived a lie for almost a decade and it had taken a toll I was not aware of. I stood at her graveside and looked round at the weeping women and sombre-faced men and wondered what they would think if they knew how I was really feeling.’

‘How did you feel?’ she whispered.

‘Like a bird released from a cage must feel.’ He shook his head. ‘As I said, I am not proud of it but it is the truth. I have not spoken of this before,’ he added, his eyes moving to the ocean.

‘Not to anyone?’

‘When Francesca was alive it would have seemed like a betrayal. Afterwards …’ He shrugged. ‘It was no longer important.’

No longer important? It had changed him radically by his own admission, shaped him into the man he was now. A man who wanted complete and absolute autonomy, who would fight against any emotional commitment or ties single-mindedly. Of course it was important. She sucked in a breath, wondering how she could say what she was thinking. In the end, she murmured, ‘I think it was a mistake not to at least share the truth with your parents. They could have helped you. And what about the future? What about a family one day, children? Don’t you want that?’

‘Once, but not now.’ He turned to look at her again, his eyes glittering in the shadows. ‘I never again want to be responsible for another human being.’

It was unequivocal. Maisie experienced a sensation akin to an elephant sitting on her heart and squeezing all the life out of it. She nodded in what she hoped was an understanding way. ‘I can appreciate that, with what you’ve been through.’

‘That’s why I keep my relationships pretty simple these days.’

Hmm. Well, that was one way to put it.

‘Of course Liliana would love to see me arrive with someone on my arm one day but it’s not going to happen.’

OK, she had actually already got the message. ‘So your life is a series of one-night stands?’ she asked bluntly.

He blinked. ‘Not exactly.’

Exactly what would he call it then? Maisie raised enquiring eyebrows. ‘No?’

‘I’ve told you, I date women who feel the same way as me.’

‘But only for one night.’

‘I’m not some kind of male stud, Maisie.’ He was frowning now but she found she didn’t care. ‘They’re mostly business colleagues, and of that nature, and as it happens I haven’t been out with a woman for some months. I saw the last one a few times and then she moved to Sardinia with her job.’