A Venetian Affair. Lucy Gordon

know my family,’ he said simply, as though that explained it. ‘Alessa comes from a long line of aristocrats with very little money, and she has two younger sisters. As soon as Alessa left school she was pushed into marriage with someone suitable able to provide for her.’

      ‘Did you know she was being pushed?’

      His mouth twisted. ‘Of course not. In my arrogance I believed she was madly in love with me. She was very sweet, very pretty. Not long after our first meeting we became engaged, and her parents arranged the wedding.’

      ‘Couldn’t they have gone through with it with a different bridegroom?’ asked Laura.

      Domenico looked amused. ‘A practical idea, but not possible. Alessa and Mario were already married by the time they returned to Venice. Their first son was born seven months later,’ he added, shrugging.

      ‘Ah. But in that case surely you must have wondered if the child—’ She stopped dead. ‘Sorry! Forget I said that.’

      His lashes came down like shutters. ‘The child could not have been mine. Alessa had insisted that we must be married before we made love.’

      Laura’s eyes widened. ‘And you went along with that?’

      He shrugged. ‘She was so young and shy and—I believed—inexperienced, that I respected her wish.’

      ‘Yet all the time she was sleeping with your best friend. No wonder you were angry.’ She eyed him curiously. ‘But this was a long time ago. And there must have been other women in your life since then.’

      ‘Of course. I am wary of marriage, not women.’ He waved a hand at the room. ‘I have this apartment, I enjoy my work, I travel, and in winter I indulge my passion for skiing. My life suits me very well.’

      ‘So does mine now,’ she told him. ‘Since the fiasco with Edward I’m keeping men out of my social life for a while. I get quite enough of them during the day. Part of my job involves collating reports to pass on to the likely lads on the trading floor at the bank, and to a man they believe they’re irresistible to women!’

      Domenico smiled. ‘But not to you?’

      ‘Not in the slightest.’

      ‘You dislike them all?’

      Laura shook her head. ‘Actually, I like some of them well enough. But if I said yes to so much as sharing a pizza with any one of them I’d be asking for trouble.’

      He frowned. ‘You mean they would also expect to share your bed?’

      ‘From the way they talk, yes. So I say no. Behind my back,’ she added tartly, ‘they call me the Ice Maiden.’

      Domenico nodded sagely. ‘And all of them burn to melt the ice!’

      She gave a scornful sniff. ‘No chance of that.’

      ‘The proposal in the restaurant—this was recent?’

      ‘Very recent. I should have been on holiday in Tuscany with Edward this week, in a villa with some of his college friends and their partners. He sent my share of the cost back to me the day after the quarrel, so because I’d already arranged the time off my mother asked Fen to sort something out for me in Venice. If you work for the Forlis,’ she added, ‘maybe you know her. Lorenzo Forli is married to her sister Jess.’

      ‘I have met Fenella, yes,’ said Domenico. ‘What time shall we meet this evening, Laura?’

      She looked at him steadily. ‘Are we doing something this evening?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall take you to a favourite restaurant of mine.’

      Secretly delighted with the idea, Laura gave him a militant look. ‘I’d like that very much, but on one condition.’

      ‘That I do not kiss you,’ he said, resigned.

      ‘That I pay for the meal!’

      Domenico held up his hands in laughing surrender, and gave her his phone number. ‘Now give me yours.’ And although Laura assured him she could find her way back alone, he insisted on walking back with her to the Locanda Verona. ‘Sleep for a while,’ he advised. ‘I shall call for you at seven-thirty.’ He speared her with a look of glittering blue command as he left her at the familiar bridge. ‘And this time I insist that you wait for me!’

      Laura turned suddenly when she was halfway across. ‘Domenico! I forgot my shopping.’

      He smiled indulgently. ‘Non importa. I shall bring it this evening. Ciao!’

      Laura smiled her thanks and went into the hotel, her spirits high at the prospect of another evening with Domenico—her third in his company if she added the brief encounter at Florian’s. Her eyes narrowed as she went up to her room. Perhaps she was enjoying his company rather more than was sensible in the circumstances. Holiday romances rarely translated well into everyday life. Not that she could call this a romance, exactly, nor would this man ever be part of her life. Once she left Venice she would never see him again.

      With this in mind Laura took longer to get ready than usual. While she was eyeing the limited choice in the wardrobe a flash of lightning preceded a clap of thunder, and she ran to close the open doors on the rain hammering down outside. Choice made, she thought irritably. It had to be the black dress again, but at least she could wear it with the white cotton trench coat packed for just this kind of emergency—very Audrey Hepburn, according to Fen.

      Laura had been ready and waiting for several minutes before Domenico rang to say he was in the foyer. When she hurried down to meet him he gave her the now familiar double kiss of greeting and brandished a tall black umbrella.

      ‘You see, Laura? It is not always moonlight in Venice!’

      ‘And when it rains it certainly rains,’ she agreed.

      In the doorway Domenico put up the umbrella, then with his usual ‘Permesso’ slid an arm round her waist. ‘If you wish to stay dry we must walk close together. Which makes me very happy,’ he added in her ear.

      Laura chuckled, feeling quite happy about it herself. ‘Do we walk very far?’

      ‘No. The restaurant is so near I thought you would not mind a walk in the rain.’

      Held close against Domenico, she didn’t mind at all. All too soon for Laura they entered an alley so narrow they had to keep very close together indeed before he ushered her into the large, luxurious interior of a restaurant divided into two parts, one very sleek and cosmopolitan, the other more rustic, with a stone fireplace and windows looking out onto a courtyard.

      ‘I thought you would prefer the room with the true Italian atmosphere,’ said Domenico as a waiter hurried to relieve him of Laura’s raincoat.

      ‘You were right, I do,’ she assured him, thanking her lucky stars as she took in her surroundings that she could rely on her credit card to pay the bill. Because whatever it cost she was going to pay for their meal.

      ‘It is not crowded yet as early as this,’ he told her, and looked at her in silence for a moment, something new in his eyes as they moved over her face.

      ‘What is it?’ she asked.

      ‘You glow tonight, Laura.’

      ‘You look pretty good yourself,’ she said, smiling.

      ‘Grazie!’ Domenico pushed the menus aside. ‘Allora, tonight the choice is simple if you like fish.’

      ‘I love it.’

      ‘Good. This restaurant is famous for its frittura mista dipesce, a platter of many varieties of fish,’ he added. ‘You will like it.’

      He was right. But though the meal was delicious, and the surroundings elegant, Laura knew very well that most of her pleasure was down to the man who made it so flatteringly plain he delighted in her company.