One Night In…. Оливия Гейтс

himself brought the food and poured the wine, and Meghan could feel herself relaxing, enjoying. Laughing. Flirting.

      ‘Try this.’ Antonio had laid a sumptuous-looking rolled pastry on the table between them, and now Alessandro lifted a forkful to Meghan’s lips.

      Closing her eyes, she opened her mouth, and Alessandro slid a forkful of heaven inside.

      The taste of chocolate, raisins and walnut melted onto Meghan’s tongue. It was delicious. It felt like a sin. ‘Mmm … what is this?’

      ‘Attorta … a speciality of Umbria.’

      Meghan opened her eyes to find Alessandro smiling at her, his gaze heavy-lidded, languorous. Sensual.

      The pastry turned tasteless in her mouth, her throat so dry she could barely swallow.

      Desire pulsated between them, coiled around Meghan’s heart, her lungs, until she found she couldn’t breathe. When she finally managed to drag air in, her breath came out in a shudder.

      Alessandro smiled. ‘Have another bite.’

      Obediently, Meghan opened her mouth, and Alessandro slid in another forkful. She could feel a drip of chocolate on the corner of her mouth and, mesmerised, watched as Alessandro wiped it before licking it off his own finger.

      ‘Mmm.’

      She closed her eyes briefly. ‘What’s going on here?’ she whispered.

      ‘We’re eating dessert.’

      ‘Alessandro, you know what I mean.’

      He shrugged, though his eyes blazed into hers. ‘I want you. You want me.’

      ‘It’s not that simple.’

      ‘Isn’t it?’

      Meghan shook her head. ‘I wish it were.’ She gazed down at the crumbled remnants of their shared feast, delicious while it lasted but gone so quickly. She’d travelled that route before.

      She would not do it again.

      She looked up, her eyes wide and bleak. ‘I won’t sleep with you.’

      ‘So you’ve said.’ Alessandro took a sip of wine, looking amused.

      Meghan sighed wearily. ‘I know you think you’ll wear me down eventually, and in truth you might get close. You might even win.’

      ‘Is this a battle?’ he murmured.

      ‘You know it is. If I sleep with you I’ll lose my self-respect, my dignity. I’ll have given into desire, and I’ll hate myself for it.’

      ‘Why couch it in those terms? Why can’t we love each other as two responsible, mature adults?’

      Meghan laughed without humour. ‘Because it’s not about love.’

      ‘You said you didn’t believe in love.’

      There was no mistaking the look of surprise on Alessandro’s face, the heavy-lidded languor replaced with a wary tension.

      ‘I don’t. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give myself to every— any—man I’m attracted to. I don’t operate that way. Sorry.’

      ‘So. You don’t believe in love, but you won’t make love with someone out of simple desire. What are you going to do? Become a nun?’

      Meghan gave a shaky laugh. ‘At times that prospect is appealing.’ She twirled her fork between her fingers. ‘I don’t know what is going to happen in the future.’ Her tone and face were bleak as she considered the prospect. The future was something she avoided thinking about. Sometimes it didn’t seem as if she had one at all. ‘I just can’t ever see myself falling in love again. If that means being alone, then I guess I’ll just have to get used to that.’

      ‘It’s not easy, being alone,’ Alessandro said after a moment.

      Meghan glanced at him, surprised by the guarded note in his voice, the vulnerability in his eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s safer.’

      He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Safety is important to you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘This man you were with—you loved him? And he made you feel unsafe?’

      ‘Of course he did,’ Meghan replied shortly. ‘Stephen was married. I didn’t know it—’

      ‘Stephen?’ Alessandro’s eyes darkened. He reached across the table to pluck the fork from her hand. He took her fingers in his, stroking her wrist with soft, tender movements. ‘This Stephen— he was an ass. Even I can see that. But you can’t let one man— one experience—spoil the rest of us for ever.’

      ‘I’m sure,’ Meghan said with a little smile, struggling to hold onto her composure as the fluttery little movements on her wrist went straight to her heart, ‘you’d like to be the man to break the pattern.’

      ‘One man, one relationship, is not a pattern.’

      ‘Well, no.’ Meghan glanced down, her eyes suddenly blurred with tears as memories rushed to the surface—memories she had firmly stamped down when she’d fled Stephen’s apartment, fled the memories and the tears and kept running.

      She still hadn’t stopped.

      ‘Meghan? Gattina?’ Alessandro lifted her chin with his fingertips. ‘What is wrong? What did I say?’

      ‘Nothing.’ Meghan blinked back the tears and smiled. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘No, I am sorry. We’ve wasted enough time indoors. We can walk through the town, up to the old fortress. There is a beautiful view from its walls.’

      And as easily as that, he dispelled the tension, the sorrow. Meghan let herself be led, her hand in his, out into the Umbrian sunshine.

      The last thing she wanted to think about was Stephen, or the night she’d finally had the courage to walk away.

      That was a memory she had locked deep into her soul. Something she never, never wanted to talk about. Certainly not to Alessandro. Not to anyone. Ever.

      The fortress was built into the hill, overlooking the tumbled buildings of the town, and Meghan could imagine how it had once been formidable, impenetrable.

      Now its walls were crumbling, mellow in the sunshine, and children played in the street below. Meghan let Alessandro lead her up the steps onto the top of the crenellated wall, the Umbrian countryside spread out before them in a peaceful patchwork of earthen colours.

      A teasing wind blew her hair around her face and she breathed in the clean, pine-scented air, as pure and satisfying as a drink of water.

      Alessandro and Meghan silently surveyed the panorama of tumbled hills and olives groves, taking in the majesty of an unchanged landscape.

      ‘Did you grow up here?’ Meghan asked after a long moment.

      ‘Yes and no. As I told you, I went to school in England. My parents’ main house of residence is in Milan. And yet …’ He smiled with wry honesty. ‘This was home.’

      ‘Your brother’s villa?’

      ‘Yes. It was my father’s before that.’

      But not yours, Meghan realised silently, wondering what lay behind his careful choice of words.

      ‘Well, it’s beautiful,’ she said with a smile. ‘I happened on Spoleto by chance, but I’m glad I came.’

      ‘So am I,’ Alessandro murmured, and sudden expectant tension thrummed between them, heavy with meaning, with possibility.

      Meghan stared out at the countryside, blind now to its charms.

      ‘I should take you back to Spoleto tonight,’ Alessandro said suddenly. His face looked hard.

      Meghan’s