Chartered. So it wasn’t his. That made him more approachable, somehow and, if it was possible, even more attractive. As did the fact that he was a farmer. She knew about farming, about aiming for a niche market and going for quality rather than quantity. It was how she’d been brought up. She relaxed, hitched one foot up under her and hugged her knee under the voluminous skirt.
‘So, these samples—do you have any on the plane that I could try?’
‘Sorry, we’re out of wine,’ he said, but then she laughed and shook her head.
‘That’s not what I meant, although I’m sure it’s very good. I was talking about the olive oil. Professional interest.’
‘You grow olives on your farm in England?’ he asked incredulously, and she laughed again, tightening his gut and sending need arrowing south. It shocked him slightly, and he forced himself to concentrate.
‘No. Of course not. I’ve been living in a flat with a pot of basil on the window sill until recently! But I love food.’
‘You mentioned a professional interest.’
She nodded. ‘I’m a—’ She was going to say chef, but could you be a chef if you didn’t have a restaurant? If your kitchen had been taken away from you and you had nothing left of your promising career? ‘I cook,’ she said, and he got up and went to the rear of the plane and returned with a bottle of oil.
‘Here.’
He opened it and held it out to her, and she sniffed it slowly, drawing the sharp, fruity scent down into her lungs. ‘Oh, that’s gorgeous. May I?’
And taking it from him, she tipped a tiny pool into her hand and dipped her finger into it, sucking the tip and making an appreciative noise. Heat slammed through him, and he recorked the bottle and put it away to give him something to do while he reassembled his brain.
He never, never reacted to a woman like this! What on earth was he thinking of? Apart from the obvious, but he didn’t want to think about that. He hadn’t looked at a woman in that way for years, hadn’t thought about sex in he didn’t know how long. So why now, why this woman?
She wiped up the last drop, sucking her finger again and then licking her palm, leaving a fine sheen of oil on her lips that he really, really badly want to kiss away.
‘Oh, that is so good,’ she said, rubbing her hands together to remove the last trace. ‘It’s a shame we don’t have any bread or balsamic vinegar for dunking.’
He pulled a business card out of his top pocket and handed it to her, pulling his mind back into order and his eyes out of her cleavage. ‘Email me your address when you get home, I’ll send you some of our wine and oil, and also a traditional aceto balsamico made by my cousin in Modena. They only make a little, but it’s the best I’ve ever tasted. We took some with us, but I haven’t got any of that left, either.’
‘Wow. Well, if it’s as good as the olive oil, it must be fabulous!’
‘It is. We’re really proud of it in the family. It’s nearly as good as our olive oil and wine.’
She laughed, as she was meant to, tucking the card into her bag, then she tipped her head on one side. ‘Is it a family business?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, most definitely. We’ve been there for more than three hundred years. We’re very lucky. The soil is perfect, the slopes are all in the right direction, and if we can’t grow one thing on any particular slope, we grow another, or use it for pasture. And then there are the chestnut woods. We export a lot of canned chestnuts, both whole and puréed.’
‘And your wife?’ she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. ‘Does she help with the business, or do you keep her too busy producing children for you?’
There was a heartbeat of silence before his eyes clouded, and his smile twisted a little as he looked away. ‘Angelina died five years ago,’ he said softly, and she felt a wave of regret that she’d blundered in and brought his grief to life when they’d been having a sensible and intelligent conversation about something she was genuinely interested in.
She reached across the aisle and touched his arm gently. ‘I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have brought it up if …’
‘Don’t apologise. It’s not your fault. Anyway, five years is a long time.’
Long enough that, when confronted by a vivacious, dynamic and delightful woman with beautiful, generous curves and a low-cut dress that gave him a more than adequate view of those curves, he’d almost forgotten his wife …
Guilt lanced through him, and he pulled out his wallet and showed her the photos—him and Angelina on their wedding day, and one with the girls clustered around her and the baby in her arms, all of them laughing. He loved that one. It was the last photograph he had of her, and one of the best. He carried it everywhere.
She looked at them, her lips slightly parted, and he could see the sheen of tears in her eyes.
‘You must miss her so much. Your poor children.’
‘It’s not so bad now, but they missed her at first,’ he said gruffly. And he’d missed her. He’d missed her every single day, but missing her didn’t bring her back, and he’d buried himself in work.
He was still burying himself in work.
Wasn’t he?
Not effectively. Not any more, apparently, because suddenly he was beginning to think about things he hadn’t thought about for years, and he wasn’t ready for that. He couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t think about it. Not now. He had work to do, work that couldn’t wait. Work he should be doing now.
He put the wallet away and excused himself, moving to sit with the others and discuss how to follow up the contacts they’d made and where they went from here with their marketing strategy, with his back firmly to Lydia and that ridiculous wedding dress that was threatening to tip him over the brink.
Lydia stared at his back, regret forming a lump in her throat.
She’d done it again. Opened her mouth and jumped in with both feet. She was good at that, gifted almost. And now he’d pulled away from her, and must be regretting the impulse that had made him offer her and Claire a lift to Italy.
She wanted to apologise, to take back her stupid and trite and intrusive question about his wife—Angelina, she thought, remembering the way he’d said her name, the way he’d almost tasted it as he said it, no doubt savouring the precious memories. But life didn’t work like that.
Like feathers from a burst cushion, it simply wasn’t possible to gather the words up and stuff them back in without trace. She just needed to move on from the embarrassing lapse, to keep out of his personal life and take his offer of a lift at face value.
And stop thinking about those incredible, warm chocolate eyes …
‘I can’t believe he’s taking us right to Siena!’ Claire said quietly, her eyes sparkling with delight. ‘Jo will be so miffed when we get there first, she was so confident!’
Lydia dredged up her smile again, not hard when she thought about Jen and how deliriously happy she’d be to have her Tuscan wedding. ‘I can’t believe it, either. Amazing.’
Claire tilted her head on one side. ‘What was he showing you? He looked sort of sad.’
She felt her smile slip. ‘Photos of his wife. She died five years ago. They’ve got three little children—ten, seven and five, I think he said. Something like that.’
‘Gosh. So the little one must have been tiny—did she die giving birth?’
‘No. No, she can’t have done. There was a photo of her with two little girls and a baby in her arms, so no.