Her First-Date Honeymoon

‘I’ll get Andreina.’

Her hand shot out and her fingers encased his wrist. She gave it a tug to halt him. ‘Not Andreina. Please will you help me untie the bodice?’

Why was she so adamant about Andreina?

He untied the clasps of the bodice, saw her shoulder blades contract into a shrug above the bodice.

‘All the dresses are stunning. I would be very proud to wear them. I just need to get used to the idea.’

Her voice shook just like her body.

More than ever he needed to get away.

‘Let’s talk about it outside.’

He walked out of the fitting room, wanting to get away.

Wanting to go back and take her into his arms.

Five minutes later she joined him outside the store.

Instead of guiding her back to his boat, he led her towards Campo di San Moisè. At the footbridge that led to the square and the baroque façade of Chiesa di San Moisè he found what he was looking for—a street vendor selling frittelle, the Venetian-style doughnuts only available during Carnival. He ordered a mixed cone.

They stopped at the centre of the footbridge and he offered Emma a frittella before biting into a frittella veneziana. The raisins and pine nuts mixed into the dough were the sugar hit he badly needed.

* * *

Emma bit into her frittella crema pasticcera, filled with thick custard cream, and gave a little squeal. The custard escaped from the doughnut and dripped down her chin.

Desire, thick and desperate, powered through his body.

They stood in silence, eating the frittelle, and he wanted nothing more than to kiss away the grains of sugar glittering on her lips.

The deep upset in her eyes was easing.

He needed to get this over and done with.

‘This isn’t going to work. I should never have agreed to it.’

She touched her fingers to her mouth and brushed the granules away, heat turning her pale cheeks a hot pink. ‘I’m really embarrassed...about getting lost and about what happened in the store. It was unprofessional of me. I promise it won’t happen again.’

‘You need time to recover from what you have gone through; you shouldn’t be working.’

She drank in his words with consternation in her eyes. ‘But I need to work—I want to work.’

Why couldn’t she see that he was doing her a favour? That this attraction between them was perilous.

‘Why?’

She crumpled the empty frittella cone in her hands. ‘Because I need the money. Because I want to focus on my career and forget the past year.’

Her jaw arced sideways, as if she were easing a painful tension in her jawline.

‘He really hurt you, didn’t he?’

Her thick dark eyelashes blinked rapidly, her mouth tensing. She angled away from him to face the canal.

She turned back before she spoke. ‘Because of his lies and deception, yes. Because of how he hurt other people.’

How had she not known what he was like? Why had she allowed herself to get hurt like this?

Anger swept through him. Together with the recognition that everything she was going through represented every reason why he would never marry, never give his heart and trust to another person. People always let you down, ultimately.

He had trusted, loved, hero-worshipped Francesco, Marco, Simone, Arnaud, Stefano... All his mother’s boyfriends. And they had all walked away from him. Showing just how little significance he’d held in their lives. Blood, family—that was all you could trust in. Nobody else.

‘Why were you marrying him?’

She jammed her left heel against the bottom of the bridge rail and rotated her foot. ‘You mean why didn’t I realise what he was really like? I met him last summer. It was a whirlwind romance. We got engaged after four months. He was charming and outgoing. He seemed to care for me a lot. He worked crazy hours and sometimes he didn’t turn up for dates... He always had a plausible excuse and I’d eventually forgive him. When we were together he was kind, if a little distracted...but I never saw the other side to him—the lying, the fraud.’

‘Four months isn’t a long time to get to know one another.’

Behind them a group of tourists walked by, their guide speaking loudly. Suddenly they all laughed in unison. The guide looked pleased with his joke.

Emma looked at them, taken aback. The tips of her ears were pink from the cold. For a moment he considered giving her his hat. Why did he keep forgetting she was his employee? Was it because they had already lain together in a bed? Even if it had been only for a few crazy minutes of misunderstanding?

She went to speak, but stopped. Her mouth quivered and she looked at him uncertainly. Her chest rose on a deep inhalation. ‘I wanted a family of my own...to belong.’

She spoke with such loneliness.

He stamped his feet on the ground. The cold was already stiffening his back. ‘Did you love him?’