‘Stop,’ Emily said. ‘Go back.’ She took a sip of her icy cocktail and smiled. ‘That’s Dianne.’
Dianne was scowling into the camera, her hair dripping. With really nothing to report, they were heading over to the correct lake now.
‘This is the woman you hate?’ Anton asked.
‘Hate?’ Emily laughed. ‘I don’t hate her, I just don’t like her. Fattispecie.’ Emily smiled.
‘You’re a bad girl.’
‘I know.’ She slipped onto his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and said sorry with her eyes. ‘And I know what happens to bad girls.’ She shocked herself, but what happened then shocked Anton even more.
He heard the sound of laughter and it came from him. A sound he had not heard since the morning his life was blown apart. He was younger, lighter, and it was with Emily in his arms. He had not felt like this since... He stopped laughing then, buried his face in her hair and remembered that morning, lying there hearing the wonderful news his wife had shared, and he thought the pain might actually choke him.
‘Anton?’
‘Come.’ He tried for normal. He went to the window and looked out on the dark streets but the crowds were dispersing. Only the press were still there, waiting for a morning that would be here soon.
‘We should get some sleep.’
* * *
Both tried.
He lay, for once not consumed with the pain of the past, just knowing there was fresh grief to come, for in a few hours she would be gone.
Emily lay there watching the moon gliding across the night sky as if someone had their finger on the fast-forward button and was speeding them towards dawn.
‘If we close the shutters, can we stop the morning?’ Emily asked in the fading darkness.
He fought for a glib comment to shut out not the morning but the woman in bed beside him, to disengage before dawn, as Anton always did, except his hands were stroking her down her waist, his arms pulling her right into him, his lips deep-kissing her shoulder.
She could feel his erection stirring between her thighs, and his hand brushed her stomach and moved down and stroked her clitoris before her mind even had a chance to wish it there. It was as if he knew her body; it was as if he were made for her. He was nudging her entrance when he should have been stretching over for a condom. Another assumption, another principle dissolved in his presence. She could not fight her want, her need, for the man stealing inside her. She was trying not to cry as he filled her, except she couldn’t hold on to a single emotion with Anton around.
‘Emily...’ He knew he should withdraw, only this wasn’t just sex, even if he tried to deny it. He rocked deeper within her. He could feel her sobbing, feel her orgasm building to meet his, and he wanted to feel. For so long he hadn’t, and it actually hurt to feel good.
Intimately she gripped him, pressed herself back into him as his mouth found her cheek. Emily’s neck craned for his mouth, for his tongue, for the close of his eyes as she throbbed to her first intimate spill on the inside, and she knew, she just knew, they belonged together.
They lay in silence, still locked together, as unspoken, reckless possibilities were entertained. It was Emily who voiced them. ‘Anton.’ She did not turn to him. Instead she felt him tense at her tentative suggestion. ‘I’ve got some annual leave....’
‘You need to get back.’
‘I know that but maybe in a couple of weeks...’ He was pulling away. ‘You spoke about the Corretti Cup. Maybe I could come back—’
She was interrupted by his phone, but she felt the relief from Anton at the reprieve, and he spoke for a few moments in Italian, his back to her, not wanting to turn around because he knew that he had gotten too close.
‘Maybe you could visit again,’ was his response to her offer, ‘but don’t come back for me.’ Only then did he turn to her. ‘That was a colleague. Alessandro has been arrested. I know the station. You could go there and get the scoop.’
‘Poor guy.’ Emily shook her head. ‘Just leave him alone.’
‘You’re not tough enough.’ Anton’s words were terse.
She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling. ‘So people tell me whenever they’re about to break up with me.’
‘Break up?’ he said. ‘It was a weekend.’
Absolutely she wasn’t tough enough, because Emily started to cry.
‘For God’s sake,’ he shouted. ‘It’s been two nights.’
It had been the most amazing two nights of her life. She should be more sophisticated, Emily knew that.
She tried. She got out of the bed and dressed, and he lay there, hand behind his head, not watching, but as she went to leave the room, he halted her.
‘What happened before...’ Anton said. ‘We need to discuss...’
‘Am I to stop off at the farmacia?’ Emily asked. ‘How very thoughtful of you. Don’t worry, Anton, I’m on the pill. The condoms were only necessary in case I had an urge to shag a stranger the whole weekend.’ She just looked at him and couldn’t hide the hurt from her eyes. ‘It would seem that I did.’ She stared at his guarded, closed-off face and she saw the stranger he chose to be.
‘You’re right, it is time for me to leave.’
‘Then go.’
She took off the ring, but she would have her say.
‘It’s not your love for your wife that’s holding you back, Anton. It’s your hate for them.’ He just lay there and she knew she was right. ‘I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be around a man who spends his time booking restaurants in advance and looking for vantage points, who’s no doubt got pole position booked for the Corretti Cup.’ Tears did not make her weak, Emily realised, though she fought them. ‘That kiss on the stairs...’ She could see it all now. ‘You were turned on by revenge, when you should have been turned on by me.’
‘I lost my family.’
‘So you think you have nothing more to lose.’ Emily could be tough when it was called for. ‘That’s a dangerous place to be, Anton.’
She closed the door on him.
He waited for relief.
She was gone.
He could get back to...
To what?
He did not want to think. He flicked on the television. He met Dianne’s cold eyes as she reported on the most recent findings, as she barely blinked as she read the latest news.
Tough, jaded, bitter.
No, Anton corrected, Dianne was focused, determined.
And then his own words haunted him.
A little naive, a little sweet.
What would you choose?
EMILY STEPPED into her hotel room. One that she had been in for all of an hour. She changed quickly and threw her clothes into the suitcase and was out of the hotel in moments.
She jumped into a taxi ahead of a couple of tourists, and if she was rude, if she wrong, it was better than relenting, way better than charging back to his room.
As if