‘Is that better?’
‘Much… Thank you.’
‘So what did you think of our little town, hmm?’
‘I thought it was quite delightful. I got the feeling that there was a real sense of community amongst the inhabitants that’s very appealing to a city girl like me! The passeggiata was fascinating too!’
‘We are a very traditional culture, as you probably know, and that is more often reflected in the smaller towns and villages. But Italy is also very modern… more so in places like Milan or Rome.’
‘They always seem such impossibly glamorous destinations, hearing about them back in England! And although I would definitely like to visit them, I think I might just prefer your small town…even though it might not be so modern.’
‘So you are a traditionalist? The type of woman who would prefer home and family to a career and a glamorous social life?’
‘A glamorous social life has certainly never been on my personal agenda, but the conflict between bearing children and having a career doesn’t seem to get any easier for most women. However, I do think that the decision to have a child is such a momentous one that the child’s needs and welfare should definitely come before the demands of a career—you only get one chance at a childhood. But in an equal partnership that could equally apply to a man making that decision. If that view makes me a traditionalist, then I suppose I must be!’
For a few moments Fabian didn’t reply. Withdrawing his gaze only very briefly from the winding road, he examined Laura’s impassioned expression in the semi-dark, wearing a seriously thoughtful one of his own. ‘It is good to know that there are still young women who care so deeply about the welfare of children that choosing to stay home to take care of them over pursuing a career is not seen as such a sacrifice,’ he commented. ‘When what values we have left in western culture have been so cheapened by television and the media it is reassuring to learn that not everyone is so enamoured of or fooled by them.’
As if by mutual agreement they fell silent after that—as though both of them were privately surprised that they had found some unexpected common ground—and it seemed almost no time had passed before they were travelling the final road to their destination.
‘See?’ Fabian said softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners with a suggestion of pleasure. ‘There are the lights of the villa up ahead. We are almost home.’
Home… Laura wished her dream of what that entailed could be a reality…the reality her heart sorely longed for.
‘Fabian has asked us to join him for lunch,’ Carmela announced absent-mindedly as she breezed into the office midway through the morning. She picked up the master plan for the concert from her desk and glanced down at it with a small frown between her perfectly arched brows.
‘He has?’ On her knees in the middle of the sumptuously carpeted floor, unpacking yet another box of champagne flutes and checking that none was broken, Laura glanced up in shock and surprise.
The heat had descended like a tropical blanket, and the fans dotted round the room were rendered practically useless against such deadening temperatures. Her sleeveless pink linen dress clung stickily to her too-warm skin, yet Carmela looked as fresh and cool as an exotic water lily in comparison.
‘I know I was meant to be leaving at midday, but he insisted I stay for lunch and I agreed.’ Glancing up from her clipboard, the Italian girl rested her lovely gaze on Laura. ‘When Fabian insists on anything, one cannot really argue! Besides…he has been very good to me, and I do not like to disappoint him. He is a considerate, generous man…not a tyrant like some bosses you hear of!’
‘Yes, but why would he invite me too?’ Her brows drawn together in genuine puzzlement, Laura brushed a drifting strand of pale hair away from her face. ‘I’m only here temporarily, and there’s so much to do I really should just crack on. I can eat something later.’
‘That will not do at all!’ Carmela was aghast. ‘I told you. Fabian was most insistent that we both join him. He likes to entertain when he is at home— which is not very often because he travels so much. It helps him unwind, and a lunch like this is also an opportunity for him to get to know you a little before you start to work together, Laura.’
‘Well…in that case I suppose I should go.’
Summoning a smile, Laura silently reflected on the challenge of being driven home by her new employer last night—and now contemplating eating lunch with him today! The intimate arrangement of the seating inside his luxurious sedan, with its attendant and somehow sexy smells of leather and burnished wood, had made her far too aware of the man sitting beside her. So much so that every molecule of air around him had throbbed with the sheer force of his presence, and made it impossible for Laura to feel completely at ease. The conversation they had shared had worked its magic on her too. And even though Fabian had initially been driving too fast for her comfort, it had been a long time since she had felt so safe on a car journey.
The recollection of all this left a far too vivid impression on her already overloaded senses which was hard to dispel. But it was perfectly true what she’d said to Carmela. There was still so much to do, what with the concert scheduled to take place in just four days’ time, and as confident as the Italian girl appeared to be in Laura’s abilities, she had yet to earn that confidence.
Allowing himself the faintest of private smiles as he glanced round the elegantly laid luncheon table, Fabian started to relax. Surrounded by three very beautiful women, he had no argument about not being in his element.
As Aurelia Visconti—a vivacious raven-haired opera star from Verona—chatted to Carmela about her upcoming Caribbean honeymoon, Fabian found his gaze settling on the young Englishwoman. She looked a little flushed from the heat as they sat beneath the luxurious awning outside the orangerie, where they were dining, and her fine blonde hair kept descending in gentle drifts of diaphanous silk around her heart-shaped face…
He realised he was staring. ‘You are a little uncomfortable with our climate, I think, Signorina Greenwood?’ he commented, watching her pale eyes widen, as though she were startled from a dream.
Her fingers moved a little restlessly over the white linen tablecloth. ‘I’ll get used to it. Believe it or not, it was almost as hot in the UK before I left! Climates are changing all over the world, I think.’
‘That certainly seems to be the case.’
‘Still…when you look at the history of the world, the earth always seems to right itself again somehow. I don’t mean to say we can’t take steps to improve things, or admit our part in it, but at the end of the day it’s out of our hands, isn’t it?’
‘Another indication, perhaps, that we are not the ones in charge?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not an entirely comfortable thought for those who like to map out their lives down to the finest detail,’ he remarked with droll humour, leaning back a little in his chair. ‘So…you are not one of those people, Signorina Greenwood—if you believe that our fate is pretty much out of our hands?’
‘No. These days I neither plan nor look too far ahead. Life has a nasty habit of intervening whenever I try to control anything, I find.’
A cloud seemed to pass before her eyes, and Fabian intuited that her mind had visited a dark place for a moment. She was thoughtful and quiet, and seemingly without guile—it struck him how different she was from most women he got into conversation with. For a start there was not the slightest hint of flirtation in her eyes and—without being conceited—he had