In a Storm of Scandal

‘She was always k-kind to me.’

The kindness had been a stark contrast to the attitude of his parents, who had acted as though she had a contagious disease when she had attended a birthday tea in a posh London hotel for Luca’s grandmother.

It had been Luca who found her crying in the cloakroom.

‘So my mum gets married a lot and is sometimes photographed without many clothes—she’s never killed anyone! I think your family are mean and horrible!’

‘Did I ever tell you about the time that my mum came out of the ladies’ room with her skirt tucked into her knickers? Or the dinner where my father thought the host was the wine waiter and told him the wine was corked?’

He had continued to tell her scandalous and probably untrue stories that made his parents look ridiculous until she had laughed.

‘Poppy …?’ Concern roughened the edges of his velvet voice.

Poppy’s eyes lifted. She blinked twice to clear her swimming vision and reminded herself she was a competent twenty-first-century woman, not some wimpy heroine in a Victorian melodrama, and even if she had needed a masculine chest to bury her face in Luca’s was already spoken for.

‘This doesn’t look good, does it?’ she said, directing a ‘give it to me straight I can take it’ look at his dark lean face.

She could hide a lot, but not the fear in her luminous eyes. Gianluca studied the emerald stare directed his way and felt something twist hard in his gut.

‘Do not jump to conclusions,’ he cautioned. ‘You always did have a tendency to be over-emotional.’ And outspoken, sentimental, not to mention extremely stubborn, but most of all Poppy had always been herself more so than any person he had ever met.

‘We all move on, Luca.’ She didn’t bother trying to make the message subtle. ‘But cross my heart I’ll do my level best not to have hysterics,’ she promised. ‘So what next?’

‘Next I dry off.’

‘You’re wet …?’ As Poppy made the belated observation her gaze travelled upwards from his feet. Hard …

the word popped into her head and stayed there; greyhound lean and tough, there was no vestige of anything approaching softness in Luca.

‘Top marks for observation.’

Poppy dragged her eyes to his face. ‘But what I don’t understand … How did you get out here, with the storm …?’ Her voice trailed away as her glance shifted to the mullioned window that was being battered by a shower of freakishly large hailstones.

The ferry wasn’t running and the only person willing to ferry her here from Ullapool had refused to wait a moment after she disembarked, so anxious—with good reason as it turned out—had he been not to get caught out in open sea when the storm hit.

‘I bought a boat.’

Poppy stared. He said it the same way someone might say, ‘I bought a bar of chocolate.’ He obviously didn’t have a clue that he had said anything out of the ordinary.

‘Of course you did.’

There were plus sides to his extravagance: at least they were no longer stranded when the storm abated; at least they had an exit route that did not involve SOS signals or swimming.

‘I can’t believe you made it here in this,’ she mused, watching, her stomach performing helpless flips of appreciation, as he walked long-legged and effortlessly elegant like some jungle cat towards the fire.

‘I did. The boat didn’t.’

Poppy, her thoughts still very much involved with thoughts of his feral grace, was still joining the mental dots when he added, ‘It sank.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘SANK!’ The images crowding into her head made her feel physically sick.

As Poppy estimated her chances of getting to the bathroom before she threw up Luca calmly threw a log on the smouldering fire and tossed an almost absent look over his shoulder before he reached for the poker she had dropped.

‘Not my finest moment. I almost made it.’ The almost continued to irritate. ‘But the undertow and the rocks …’ He shrugged his magnificent shoulders and began to prod the reluctant flames.

She regarded him incredulously. Could anyone sane be this casual about a near-death experience?

‘The boat smashed on the rocks?’ she said tightly.

He nodded.

‘You could have drowned.’ And Luca was acting as if the possibility had not even occurred to him. Her indignation grew. It was nothing to her if he decided to kill himself but he had a wife and family responsibilities.

And I once found his reckless streak exciting!

It was reassuring to recognise how much she had changed. There was nothing exciting about the graphic images playing in her head that involved the grey waves closing over a dark head, sucking him down.

The look Luca slung over his shoulder was tinged with impatience. ‘But I did not.’ It was not his habit to expend energy on what if scenarios, in theory at least.

There were exceptions to this rule.

What if he had not chosen duty ahead of personal happiness? What if he hadn’t caved into parental pressure? Seven years and that question had never completely gone away.

He accepted that no choice came without a price, what he could not accept or forgive himself for was others paying the price for his choices.

And for what?

He had kept the family name clear of scandal, he had discovered a talent for making money and found out that he did not have a talent for being a husband.

If he had learnt anything he now knew that marriage was not for him—he was simply not husband material; he was never again going to take on the responsibility for another human being’s happiness.

Poppy, though she hadn’t known it at the time, had actually had a lucky escape.

His meditative stare lingered on her face. And now here she was, in this place where they had met, and he was free. Was Poppy alone or in a relationship … maybe long term—the man he had seen her emerge from the theatre with? His eyes brushed her bare fingers—or maybe it was all new and exciting with a new lover?

‘I am a very good swimmer.’

Poppy’s eyes glazed when without warning his words caused a less traumatic but equally disturbing picture to form in her head—Luca, his sleek brown streamlined body cutting through the blue water before he stopped and, treading water, gestured for her to join him.

She rejected the random memory the same way she had rejected his invitation.

He had nearly died and he was acting as if it didn’t matter. Was he too cool to care or just plain stupid?

‘You know I feel sorry for the people that care about you.’ Her eyes flashed wide as a previously unconsidered possibility occurred to her. ‘I’m assuming that you were alone in the boat?’

‘I’m alone and, as you see, alive.’