The Italians: Luca, Marco and Alessandro. Natalie Anderson

to give it a nip, then sucking again. Oh, yes, he was definitely good enough to eat.

      He stood frozen, so she did it again, stepping in closer to invade all his space.

      His hands smoothed over the curve of her bottom, and as her teeth nipped the second time his fingers curled into her softness and he pulled her right into his hips.

      She smiled as she felt his body harden. This was the tension she liked to see in him. She held his jaw in her hands, fingers fluttering over the freshly shaved skin, and kissed him some more, teased him some more, tortured him some more. And he, rock-hard, let her. Until he groaned and his hands pushed while his pelvis thrust. One hand went to her dress, lifting the hem.

      It was the sound of the door opening downstairs that stopped her. She listened to Micaela greeting the guests, then whispered, ‘We can’t. They’ve arrived.’

      ‘We can,’ he growled, breathing harsh, grinding his hips against hers. ‘They’ll wait.’

      ‘You are so arrogant. We can’t be rude. They’re here already.’

      ‘We can. We only need ten, twenty seconds, tops.’

      She laughed against his lips. ‘Not enough.’

      Groaning, he pushed her away. ‘Damn it, it’ll take me longer to calm down than it would have to follow through on that.’

      Giggling, she did a final fuss in the mirror for damage control.

      ‘It’s not funny.’ He turned his back on her and stalked to the door. She followed him down to the foyer, watching from a distance as he pressed a kiss on the woman’s cheek, shook the hand of the older man.

      ‘What’s that perfume you’re wearing, Luca? So lovely and floral.’ She was as stylish as to be expected. Slim, sophisticated and coyly sharp. ‘It really suits you.’

      Pascal’s sharp eyes flew from Luca’s slightly forced smile to Emily’s own on-fire face. Emily saw him swap a smile of amusement with the woman and was confused. Surely if Pascal wanted Luca and her to get together he wouldn’t be looking so pleasantly surprised about Emily’s presence? And as for the unsubtle question mark hanging over her involvement with him…

      But Luca was downplaying it. ‘Francine, Pascal, meet Emily. She’s a friend who’s just arrived from New Zealand.’

      Unfortunately, the way he was avoiding her eyes pretty much denied the ‘friend’ status, but Pascal and Francine both smiled and said hello. Emily managed to murmur a similar response.

      ‘How’s Madeline?’ Luca asked.

      ‘Beautiful as ever,’ Pascal replied. ‘She sends her love.’

      Luca nodded. ‘Come through. Micaela has been slaving all afternoon just for you.’

      He sent Emily a look then. She refused to bite at it, after all, if she were Micaela, she’d slave too. They went straight to the intimate table in the dining room and caught up on news as their appetiser was served. It seemed Francine was soon heading off to a business school just outside Paris.

      ‘You were at Oxford, weren’t you, Luca?’ Francine asked.

      ‘For my undergraduate degree, yes, but post-graduate was Harvard.’

      Of course. He was elite all over whereas Emily was…

      Francine turned to her. ‘Where did you study, Emily?’

      ‘I didn’t,’ she answered, battling the inferior feeling and failing. ‘I left school and went straight into work. Retail.’

      ‘Retail?’ Francine-the-sophisticated delicately speared a piece of tomato with her fork.

      Oh, God, this was a nightmare.

      ‘Yes, you know, a shop assistant. Standing on your feet for hours, dusting, displaying stock, that sort of thing.’

      She sensed Luca’s posture tighten. What, shouldn’t she admit to her working-class history?

      ‘Oh.’ Francine brightened. ‘I like shopping. What was your speciality? Fashion? Perfume?’

      ‘Sadly no.’ Emily smiled sweetly. ‘At first it was the hardware department of a bargain outlet store. Cheap power tools, drill bits and gardening implements. Then I moved around departments—footwear, toys, furniture… and I worked in a CD and DVD store at night.’

      There, she’d let them know it. She was nothing on their education, their sophistication, their elitism. But she was all about hard work, and prioritising and getting things done. She’d had to. Three loads of washing on before she left the house, making Kate’s lunch, leaving something for her father. Racing home to get the washing in off the line in her lunch break and get the next load out there, all the while having dinner slowly cooking in a crockpot. She’d had it all mastered. For years she’d done it all. And now, when she was finally free of it, she felt so empty and so vacant and so out of place.

      Pascal was chuckling, but with a kindly twinkle. ‘A DVD store? You must know your movies.’

      ‘And music, yes.’

      ‘I love movies.’ Francine smiled. ‘What’s your favourite ever?’

      Emily blinked. She hadn’t expected them to accept her bald recitation of her utter averageness—or actually be interested.

      ‘If you could have studied, what subject would it have been?’ Pascal asked, seeming to understand that it was because she hadn’t been able to, not because she had chosen not to.

      Emily let a genuine smile out then and decided to sharpen up her act. She’d been verging on rude and that wasn’t her. Her defence mechanism was set unnecessarily on high. ‘Music and movies, I guess.’

      They laughed and fractionally the atmosphere lightened. They discussed the current films on release—half of which Emily had seen on the plane over. She would have relaxed, settled into the swing of it, but for the ominously quiet presence on the other side of her. Each time she glanced in his direction she encountered the frown in his eyes, it made her too adrenalin-charged and aware to truly enjoy the conversation.

      She forced attention onto the beautiful Francine—asking her about her upcoming MBA course and then about city life in London. Which shops were the best, which were the tourist spots she shouldn’t fail to see…

      Francine’s coy look resurfaced at that. ‘Surely Luca is showing you the best on offer?’

      She couldn’t have known the significance those words would have. The best. Emily turned to look at Luca then, staring him out as he lifted his glass and took more than a decent sip of wine.

      ‘He’s trying, I guess,’ Emily answered calmly, ‘but some things he just doesn’t have a clue about.’

      His eyes flashed at hers and she felt his knee under the table, pressing hard into hers. A warning if ever there was one.

      ‘Don’t worry, Luca.’ Pascal laughed. ‘You can’t be brilliant at everything.’

      She could feel his fire crackling. After that she resorted to not looking in his direction at all. She carried the conversation completely with Francine and Pascal while he sat, the almost-silent observer.

      Micaela served dessert and Luca insisted she then head home.

      ‘I hope you like it.’ Micaela smiled as she said goodbye, but it seemed the smile was directed most pointedly at Emily.

      Wondering why, Emily glanced into the bowl. It was the creamy confection that Luca had spooned into her that day in the Giardino.

      Emily paused, spoon in hand. Not sure she wanted to taste it again for fear it wouldn’t be as sublime as it had been that day. Not wanting to ruin the memory.

      ‘Try it, Emily.’ It was the first time he’d addressed her directly all evening and she knew then that he’d ordered