Sara Craven Tribute Collection

She said between her teeth, ‘Please stop calling me “your” Flora.’

‘You wish me to call you “his” Flora—this Cristoforo’s—when it is quite clear you do not belong to him—and never have?’

She might not be firing on all cylinders, but she could recognise disdain when she heard it.

‘You know nothing about my relationship with my fiancé,’ she threw back at him, discomfited to hear her words slurring. ‘And you’re hardly the person to lecture me on how to conduct my engagement. I think it’s time you went.’

‘And I think you’re more in need of coffee than I am, signorina.’ He walked down the passage to the kitchen. Flora, setting off in pursuit with a gasp of indignation, arrived in time to see him filling the kettle and setting it to boil.

‘You have no espresso machine?’ He glanced round at her, brows lifted.

‘No,’ Flora said with heavy sarcasm. ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t realise I’d be entertaining an uninvited guest.’

‘If you think you are in the least entertaining, you delude yourself.’ He reached for the cafetière. ‘Where do you keep your coffee?’

Mute with temper, she opened a cupboard and took down a new pack of a freshly ground Colombian blend.

She said curtly, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘As you wish.’ He shrugged, and took her place in the doorway, leaning a casual shoulder against its frame.

‘You give little away,’ he remarked after a pause. ‘No pictures—no ornaments or personal touches. You are an enigma, Signorina Flora. A woman of mystery. What are you trying to conceal, I wonder?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Flora denied, spooning coffee into the cafetière. ‘But I work with colour all the time. When I get home I prefer something—more restful, that’s all.’

‘Is that the whole truth?’

She bit her lip, avoiding his quizzical gaze. ‘Well, I did plan to decorate at first—perhaps—but then I met Chris, so now I’m saving my energies for the home we’re going to share. That’s going to be a riot of colour. The showcase for my career.’

‘You say you plan to go on working after you are married?’

Flora lifted her chin. ‘Naturally. Is something wrong with that?’

‘You do not intend to have babies?’

She began to set a tray with cups, sugar bowl and cream jug. ‘Yes—probably—eventually.’

‘You do not sound too certain.’

She opened the cutlery drawer with a rattle to look for spoons. ‘Maybe I feel I should get the wedding over with before I start organising the nursery.’

‘Do you like children?’

‘Boiled or fried?’ Flora filled the cafetière and set it on the tray. ‘I don’t know a great deal about them, apart from my sort of nephew, and he’s a nightmare—spoiled rotten and badly behaved. A real tantrum king.’

‘Perhaps you should blame the parents rather than the child.’

‘I do,’ she said shortly. ‘Each time I’m forced to set eyes on him.’ She picked up the tray and turned, noting that he was still blocking the doorway. ‘Excuse me—please.’

He made no attempt to move, and she added, her tone sharpening, ‘I—I’d like to get past.’

‘Truly?’ he asked softly. ‘I wonder.’ He straightened and took the tray from her suddenly nerveless hands.

Taking a breath, Flora marched ahead of him back to the sitting room, deliberately choosing the armchair.

He placed the tray on the glass table and sat down on the sofa. ‘I am beginning to accustom myself to your unsullied environment.’ His tone was silky. ‘But I find it odd that there are no photographs anywhere—none of your Cristoforo—or of your parents either. Are you an orphan, perhaps? Is your past as unrevealing as your walls?’

‘Of course not,’ she said coolly. ‘I have plenty of family pictures, but I keep them in an album. I don’t like—clutter.’

His brows lifted mockingly. ‘Is that how you regard the image of your beloved?’

‘No, of course not.’ She bit her lip. ‘You like to deliberately misunderstand.’

‘On the contrary, I am trying to make sense of it all.’ He paused. ‘Of you.’

‘Then please don’t bother,’ Flora said swiftly. ‘Our acquaintance has been brief, and it ends tonight.’

‘Ah,’ he said softly. ‘But the night is not yet over. So I am permitted a little speculation.’

‘If you want to waste your time.’ Flora reached for the cafetière and filled the cups, controlling a little flurry of unease.

‘My time is my own. I can spend it as I wish.’ He paused. ‘So—are you going to show me these photographs of yours—if only to prove they really exist?’

For a moment she hesitated, then reluctantly opened the door of one of the concealed cupboards beside the fireplace and extracted a heavy album.

She took it across to him and held it out. ‘Here. I have nothing to hide.’ She gave him a taut smile. ‘My whole history in a big black book.’

He opened the album and began to turn the pages, his face expressionless as he studied the pictures.

Flora picked up her coffee cup and sipped with apparent unconcern.

He said, ‘Your parents are alive and in good health?’

She paused, chewing her lip again. ‘My father died several years ago,’ she said at last. ‘And my mother remarried—a widower with a daughter about my own age.’

‘Ah,’ he said softly. ‘The mother of the tantrum king. Is that why you don’t like her?’

‘I have no reason to dislike her,’ Flora said evenly. ‘We haven’t a great deal in common, that’s all.’

He turned another page and paused, the green eyes narrowing. He said, ‘And this, of course, must be Cristoforo. How strange.’

She stiffened. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because he is the only man to feature here.’ His voice was level. ‘Were there no previous men in your life, Flora mia? No minor indiscretions of any kind? Or have they been whitewashed away too?’

‘I’ve had other boyfriends,’ she said coldly. ‘But no one who mattered. All right?’

He looked down again at the photograph, his mouth twisting. ‘And he means the world to you—as you do to him?’