‘Of course.’ Ellie kept her tone light.
‘Just as I would in any other place.
I have my living to earn.’‘Ah, yes,’ he said softly.
‘And you do—what precisely?’‘I translate from English for a publishing house called Avortino.’‘Love stories, mia bella?’ His tone teased her.
Ellie shook her head.
‘Nothing like that.
Mostly non-fiction.
Often quite technical stuff.’ She opened the top file and handed him a couple of pages.
‘You see?’He drew her to him, his arm lightly round her waist, and read, grimacing slightly.
‘You find this—interesting?’‘Not this particular assignment perhaps.
But, on the whole, it’s a job I love,’ she said.
And it demands a high level of concentration—something which has proved a lifeline in the past and may do so again.
She added quietly, ‘In future, I may go back to working in-house.
I haven’t quite decided yet.’‘No,’ he said softly.
‘In your situation, there must be so many decisions to be made.’As well as many more that will be made for me.
He drank his coffee, and put down the cup.
‘Now, I must go.’ He picked up his discarded clothes still lying with hers on the floor, mute evidence of how eagerly they’d stripped each other as soon as the front door closed behind them.
As he dropped his towel, Ellie moved closer, running a tantalising finger down the length of his strong spine.
‘Do you have to—really?’ she whispered.
He grinned at her over his shoulder.
‘Sì, carissima.
We have to eat, dopo tutto and I think even Santino would draw the line if we arrived tonight like this.’ He caught his breath as her hand strayed lower.
‘However, the sooner I leave, my little witch, the sooner I shall return.
And after we have eaten, we shall have the entire night to please each other so do not tempt me now.’‘You mean I could?’He dragged on his shorts, zipped them and turned to pull her into his arms.
‘Always,’ he muttered unevenly against her lips.
Alone, Ellie pressed a hand to the soft tingle of her mouth, aware that her entire body was aglow, singing with fulfilment.
I’m a different person, she thought wonderingly.
I’ve been re-born—and nothing will ever be the same again.
And she whispered his name, yearningly, achingly, into the silence.
But it can’t last.
That was what Ellie had to keep telling herself, over and over again as each blissful day and night slid past and a measure of sanity began to return.
It just can’t …However warm and passionate it might be, however sweet the madness, it was still only an interlude.
It had no future and when the real world intervened again, which at some point it must, she would have to learn to be alone again.
Even the mark on her finger where her wedding ring had been had now faded as if it had never existed—rather, she thought, like the marriage itself.
A few months that had involved a different lifetime and a different girl.
A place to which she could never return.
A time for her to begin her life again.
Once or twice Ellie had wished that she still had some of the designer clothes and sexy lingerie that had filled the closets at Vostranto, so that she could wow him when he arrived to pick her up each evening.
On the other hand, as she reminded herself, none of those glamorous garments had done much for her in the past, so instead she’d visited Porto Vecchio’s only boutique and bought herself a new and very inexpensive dress, in a soft and floating fabric with dark green flowers on a cream background, and watched with delight his face light up when he saw her.
‘How very lovely you are,’ he’d whispered as he kissed her, his hands sensuous as they moulded her slender shape through the thin material.
Making them, as she recalled, very late for dinner even by Italian standards.
Although they spent most of their waking hours—as well as the time they slept—together, he had never asked if he might move out of the hotel and join her at Casa Bianca as she’d half-expected, and Ellie had hesitated to suggest it herself.
After all, it was hardly a necessity, she thought, when they were so happy with life just as it was.
Also, it seemed that he had totally accepted her need to work because he never intruded on her after he’d left for the hotel each morning, generally timing his return for around noon.
It occurred to her that perhaps he also had matters to attend to in the interim period, although he never mentioned them directly.
All that, she thought, savoured too much of the real world rather than the idyll they were sharing, and maybe he thought so too.
The warm weather continued, drawing them each afternoon to the beach and the shade of their rock, usually accompanied by Poco.
The Signora was clearly intrigued by her young neighbour’s new human companion, her eyes twinkling at him in undisguised appreciation, but she nobly forbore to ask any questions.
And if she saw him leave in the early mornings, it was never mentioned.
When, at last, she did sound a note of caution, it concerned the weather rather than personal relationships.
‘No more beautiful days.’ She peered at the sky frowning.
‘Tomorrow, or perhaps tonight there will be rain.
Perhaps a storm.’‘Oh,’ Ellie said, dismayed.
‘I hope you’re wrong.’‘Never,’ the Signora exclaimed superbly.
She pressed a dramatic fist to the shelf of her bosom.
‘I know this place the whole of my life.
I know how quickly things can change.
So make the most of today, Elena, because it cannot last.’And as Ellie walked back to Casa Bianca, she heard the echo of her own inner warnings, and felt herself shiver as if the threatened rain had already begun to fall.
By evening, the clouds were already gathering and a chilly wind had sprung up making the candle-flames dance and flicker under their glass shades at the trattoria.
‘The Signora was right,’ Ellie said as they ate their chicken puttanesca.
‘All good things do come to an end.’He took her hand, and she saw him looking down at her bare wedding finger.
He said quietly, ‘But other things can take their place.’She said with faint breathlessness, ‘Perhaps I don’t want anything to change.’‘Yet I think it must.’ His voice was gentle.
‘Because we cannot continue as we are.
Surely you see that.’‘Yes.’ She withdrew her hand from his clasp.
‘Yes, I do.
I—I accept that totally.
I mean—when you came down here, you can’t have foreseen or planned for this to happen.
For us to meet as we did.’‘No,’ he said.
‘You are right.
I did not anticipate—any of it.’‘And if you’d simply stayed in your hotel like most of the other guests, it would have been entirely different.’‘I cannot deny that either.’ He picked up his glass and drank, the movement jerky.
She looked down at the table.
‘So I need you to know that I—I didn’t expect it either.’His mouth twisted.
‘As you made clear, mia cara.
You were not easy to convince.’‘Then let me make this clear too.’ She took a deep breath.
‘I don’t expect nor want anything more either.’He was silent for a moment.
‘You cannot mean that,’ he said at last.
‘Are you saying these things because of the past? Because of your marriage—the way it was?’‘I’m saying that we have our real lives—our actual commitments—far away from here.’ She lifted her chin.