He glanced at his watch and then back towards the bedroom where Gabriella still lay sleeping and probably would for hours. Half of him yearned to rejoin her in bed, to be there when she woke up, make love to her warm, willing body and blot everything out—the deathbed promise, the past, Garbas. Blot it all out with the glories of her body and the passion of their love-making.
But he could not afford to think that way. Making love to her was a means to an end, nothing more. He could not afford to let it be more.
So he would leave for Paris now, talk to his contacts and find out what had gone wrong with the police case. And meanwhile Natania could take Gabriella on the promised trip to Murano.
She might be disappointed he would not be taking her, but he would make up for it tonight.
‘I don’t know whether to stay in Venice or go home.’
On the other end of the call, Gabriella heard Phillipa’s soft expression of concern. ‘Do you really have a choice?’
That was exactly Gabriella’s problem—she didn’t know. She’d woken deliciously warm cocooned in the bed clothes, wondering if last night’s love-making had been a dream, being told by the protest and creak of unfamilar muscles that it was not. She’d woken with a smile on her face and with joy in her heart.
And if Raoul had been there to hold her close and make love to her again there would have been no question in her mind. There was no place she would rather be.
But she had woken up after the most wondrous night of her life alone.
And Natania’s explanation that Raoul had apologised but had promised to be back in time for dinner went no way to diminishing this overwhelming sense of abandonment.
Hadn’t last night meant anything to him? All night his body had told her he loved her. All night she’d waited for him to say the words, expecting him to say the words she had found herself so close to saying every time she looked at him.
Yet this morning he had gone without a word.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head, trying to clear her muddied thoughts. ‘I guess I really should go home and sort out the estate some time, and then I have to do something about returning to work. And Consuelo finally texted this morning and wants to catch up …’ Then she thought about leaving Raoul, the man who had blown her world apart. ‘But …’
‘But what? Is it Raoul?’
‘He makes me feel so good, Phillipa. He makes me feel so alive.’
‘Ah.’ There was a pause. ‘Do you love him?’
Gabriella breathed out in a rush, ‘I think so.’
‘And does Raoul feel the same way about you?’
That was where Gabriella came unstuck. What did a man feel for you, if he could make love to you all night and then disappear with the morning without so much as a sweet kiss to remember him by—a man who told you nothing of how he felt?
Unless he was deliberately trying to give her the message that their love-making didn’t mean anything. But that made no sense when she thought of how he had almost worshipped her body. Surely he could not be that callous?
‘I don’t know, Phillipa. It’s driving me crazy, but I just don’t know.’
‘Then it’s easy, Gabriella. Everything has happened so quickly, it’s no wonder you’re confused. So, go home. Sort out the estate, go back to work and catch up with Consuelo if you must. But just take some time to clear your head. And, if he’s the one for you, if he truly loves you, you will know.’
‘How will I know?’
‘Because he won’t be able to live without you.’
When Phillipa put it like that, it all made such sense. She was too close to him here, in this fantasy palazzo in one of the most romantic cities in the world, it was no wonder she couldn’t think straight.
She would tell him tonight at dinner.
The decision made, her flight home booked for the next day, Gabriella spent the afternoon with Natania. They wandered the fascinating shops and factories of Murano, shop after shop filled with the beautiful, the most stunning and even the most whimsical expressions of the glass-makers’ art in colours of brilliant blues and reds, some laced with gold.
Cabinet after cabinet was filled with intricate bottles, glasses and ornaments, while chandeliers, hung from every ceiling ranging from the traditional to the ultramodern.
The two women prowled the shops, stopping here and there to admire something beautiful, Gabriella found herself enjoying the day out much more than she had expected, maybe because she’d made her decision and it felt like she was taking back control of her life; maybe because Natania was such good company. One of her cousins worked on the island and her knowledge of the various glass-making techniques and styles was better than any guided tour.
Gabriella took the opportunity to buy an intricate perfume-bottle for Phillipa. And, while Natania was busy talking to her cousin, purchased a necklace that simply begged to be around Natania’s neck—a glass heart, a brilliant red with splashes of gold, wild and sensual like the woman herself. It would be her thank-you gift.
She was just paying for her purchases when Natania said farewell to her cousin and they moved onto the next store—the last one, she had promised herself, before they caught the water taxi home so she could pack.
‘Why must you leave so soon?’ asked Natania beside her.
‘I can hardly stay here for ever. I have a job I have to get back to in Paris some time. And a house waiting that is being neglected in my absence. Plus, there are the friends I want to visit.’
Natania nodded to her long list of reasons and asked, ‘So, do you love him?’
Gabriella simply blinked. Natania was the second person to ask that question today. Was it so obvious? She sighed, conceding the point, knowing there was no point beating around the bush with her. ‘I think I have always loved him, Natania—as a friend. But lately, that love has changed …’
The other woman nodded, as if satisfied. ‘He is not an easy man to love. He has a dark past that colours his world.’ Almost immediately she moved away to investigate another table of ornaments. Gabriella followed, intrigued. ‘How long exactly have you worked for Raoul?’
She shrugged, setting the gold hoops in her ears bouncing while her eyes searched the past. ‘Ten years, maybe eleven. I am not so good with numbers.’
‘Did you ever meet his wife?’
She threw a glance over her shoulder. ‘That was not a good time for him.’
‘So you met her?’
‘No. But I saw what it did to him. I saw what it cost. It was an ugly time.’
Gabriella wanted to ask why, and what else she wasn’t telling her, except then she found it—what she had been looking for all the time she had been on Murano and hadn’t even realised.
A gift for Raoul.
It was sitting amidst a sea of pretty ornaments, so many, too many to choose from, but this one was different. This one spoke to her. A paperweight. And at its base it swirled with darkness, clouds of purple to black, like the dark, dank sea. As it rose, the colours shifted and turned, still complex and rich in density but with the promise of light captured in the darkness. At the very top it was the clearest, sparkling crystal while at its heart sat a brilliant splash of red.
It was Raoul, she realised as she picked it up and held it in her hand. It was Raoul and all his complexities, all his moods. And his heart, locked away somewhere deep inside it all, the heart he had shown her these last few days—the heart he had all but given her last night.