He’d once laughed a lot. They’d both laughed a lot.
She missed him, she realised. Rather dangerously realised. The Luca who laughed. And the one who had so often moaned her name. Quivered beneath her touch. Seven years she’d been telling herself she didn’t miss him and here, now, in their old flat, she had to face the fact that she’d been lying to herself.
Her tired brain searched for something to say, to regain control. She couldn’t afford to let thoughts of yesteryear sweep her away into an alternate reality. They were over. There was no going back.
‘I can’t believe you came back and didn’t even bother to inform me.’ She didn’t want to get into this with him tonight but her confusion over his motives at least kept him at a distance.
Luca heard the soft accusation in her voice and was pierced by the uncertainty simmering in her amber gaze. Her chest rose and fell in an agitated rhythm, straining the buttons of her shirt. Her dark hair tumbled to her shoulders and two spots of colour stained her cheeks.
How could he still want her after all these years?
Luca sighed and sat beside her on the sofa, throwing his head back into the soft cushion of fabric. Her perfume invaded his personal space and he shut his eyes. ‘I knew your father would tell you,’ he murmured.
Rilla swivelled her head to look at him. With his eyes closed he looked as weary as she felt. She shut her eyes too, allowing the quiet of the house to drift her away for a moment.
‘I’m sorry. I should have told you.’
Rilla opened her eyes, unsure whether she’d imagined the whispered apology. Luca was staring at her, his dark gaze sleepy and sexy all at once. It was too much and she fluttered her eyes closed again for a few more moments.
She should get up and have a shower. Remove herself from the temptation of his nearness. But it was nice to snuggle into a comfortable sofa and rest her eyes in peace. A thought rose in her foggy brain and she voiced it before it floated away.
‘Why did you come back, Luca? To the General? Why not just sign the divorce papers and put an end to something we should never have started in the first place?’
Luca opened his eyes again. Her sleepy gaze was startlingly honest. He shrugged, struggling through the fog of fatigue and lust to remember exactly why he’d been so crazy. ‘The divorce papers arrived and I saw the job advertised the next day and I thought, Why not?’
Rilla felt her pulse leap at the mention of the papers. So he had received them.
‘Time to come back and put the past to rest,’ Luca continued. ‘And, anyway, it’s what I always wanted. We always wanted … remember?’
She did. Vividly. All those hours in bed, spinning their dreams, weaving their futures together. Him, the medical director of the emergency department at the Brisbane General. Her as the NUM. Colleagues and lovers. Partners at work and in life.
‘I remember,’ she whispered.
His heavy-lidded gaze was mesmerising and Rilla could barely breathe as the air between them was sucked away. She remembered everything about their life together as if it had been yesterday. The laughter, the excitement, the plans, the love. The way everything but them had ceased to exist. They’d been so good together.
Until they’d imploded.
The sinister thought and the memories of that terrible time forced Rilla to sit up straighter. How had they got so close?
‘It was a mistake to come.’ She rose from the sofa as if she’d been poked with an electric cattle prod. She moved away another step, trying to evade the innate lure that demanded she go closer.
What was the matter with her? Sure, she was emotionally vulnerable and physically overwrought. But it was no excuse. She wanted to scream at the power he still had over her seven years down the track. But how could she want to scream and feel him inside her at the same time?
She could feel the familiar itch under her skin and the prickle in her veins and didn’t trust what would happen if she didn’t leave immediately.
Theirs had always been a passionate relationship. Desire and lust had kept them enthralled, oblivious to all else. A fact that had been driven home to them as the cruel jolt of her miscarriage had woken them from their haze of lust to discover they hadn’t had the wherewithal, the history to make it work.
A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since then and she was damned if she’d walk that road again. Rilla didn’t explain but simply turned around and walked out.
Luca blinked, taking a second to realise she’d gone. Damn it! ‘Wait,’ he called, stalking into the darkened hallway, catching her as she put her hand on the doorknob.
‘No,’ Rilla threw over her shoulder as she wrenched the door open. She was tired and she wasn’t going to do something stupid because neither of them was alert enough to resist. Damn her for her sexual vulnerability and damn him for this insane pull he still had over her.
Luca covered the distance to the doorway in four long strides, placing his hand against the door above her head and pushing it shut, keeping it there, sealing her escape route. ‘Stay,’ he murmured.
His chest, pressed to her back, crowded her against the doorframe. His other hand automatically went to her hip. They were so close. His breath heaved in his chest. He could smell her perfume and her shampoo. Hear her husky breathing. Her hair was temptingly close, the curve of her neck and the slope of her shoulder visible through the thick chocolate strands.
‘Please, cara, you said you were going to stay,’ he whispered huskily, as his pulse thrilled faster. He moved the hand from her hip to her shoulder and turned her round, pushing against the frame to step back a little, remove himself from the intoxication of her nearness.
Rilla shook her head. ‘I haven’t got the energy to fight tonight, Luca. To go back over this stuff. I’m tired.’
Their gazes locked for a heat-infused moment. He was too close. Rilla swallowed. The temptation to reach out and touch his jaw was overwhelming. ‘Goodbye, Luca,’ she said, as she turned away, her voice aching with an unspoken and totally inappropriate hunger.
Luca caught a whiff of her scent as her movement swirled and parted the air between them. He moved closer for a second infusion, placing his hand back up high on the doorframe. ‘You don’t wear your ring any more,’ he said to her back. He had noticed it in the bush and it had bugged him ever since.
‘No.’ Her voice trembled and she swallowed.
Luca inched closer, his control hanging by a thread. ‘We’re still married,’ he said huskily. ‘Why did you take off?’
Rilla didn’t turn round. Luca’s presence loomed from behind, so very close, and she knew if she looked at him she’d be lost. ‘It was time.’
She turned the knob but his hand prevented the door from opening. Blocking her freedom.
‘Let me out.’ Her voice sounded cracked and thready and she hated the naked streak of arousal so blatantly evident. There was an unbearable heat down low and her nipples were painfully tight.
Luca’s heart drummed frantically as her smell worked its way past his diminishing resistance. It was Rilla’s essence and he wanted to bite into her neck, slip his arms around her waist and reacquaint himself with every inch of it.
Rilla couldn’t stand the tension any longer. ‘Please, Luca,’ she half groaned, half whispered, her lips and body pressed against the wood of the door trying to escape the flare of his body heat behind her.
Luca was drawn like a moth to flame as he moved closer, pushing against the length of her. ‘That’s what you used to say,’ he whispered, his lips in her hair. ‘I missed it,