She just could not stand another twelve or twenty-four hours’, or even, knowing Matteo, several weeks’ delay in proceedings.
Abby ran him a bath and he stripped off as easily as he always did and got in and then she sat on the edge in her gown.
‘Why are you still wearing it?’ Matteo asked.
‘I fell asleep with it on.’
‘That’s very un-Abby.’
‘Yes, lately I am.’
He had the loveliest body and she got a very nice view of the best of it as he lay back and ducked his head under the water for a moment and then came up again.
‘I know you don’t want to hear it,’ Matteo said, ‘but I am going to explain my version of things.’
‘I do want to hear it.’
‘Then get my jacket.’
She did and he half drenched it as he went through the pockets and took out the necklace and then dropped his jacket back on the floor.
‘You know my grandfather brought us up?’
Abby nodded.
‘And I told you about the fight. How, since then, we’ve worked at things. We don’t talk about much, but we do talk. I take him out and I care very much for him. In April he asked me to come and see him and told me that he was very ill.’
She knew that much from his conversation with Allegra.
‘When we were growing up he used to tell us this tale about the Lost Mistresses. I never really paid much attention. He’d just say it all the time...’
‘Tell me.’
‘Oh, no...’ Matteo rolled his eyes and put on an old man’s voice. ‘“Don’t ask me how I came by them...an old man must have his secrets...”’
Abby laughed.
‘Well, he started going on about his Lost Mistresses again. He said he wanted me to find one of them for him. At first I thought he was a bit confused. But no, he showed me a photo of the necklace and said he wanted to go to his grave in peace and he begged me to find the necklace. I tracked it down to your father and I made him an offer, which he refused. Your father said that if I wanted the necklace I had to get you to come to his fundraiser, looking like a woman for once and wearing it.’ He looked over to Abby. ‘I should have said no then. It was wrong of me, I accept that. I told him that I wasn’t going to seduce you or anything. He suggested that I go in as an investor.’
It hurt to hear.
She couldn’t polish his words up like a stone.
The very first time they met he had lied to her.
‘I thought you were interested in the team,’ Abby said...and it sounded so pathetic, but not as pathetic as admitting, she had hoped, almost from the start, that he had wanted her. ‘You said...’
‘Abby, I hated cars. And you know why.’ She nodded. ‘But I didn’t by the time we went to dinner.’
Still, she recalled him saying how great she looked in those awful jeans and the ease he had put her at.
To know it had all been a lie hurt like hell.
‘Abby, I thought you were the rudest woman I’d ever met. I had a hangover, and your attitude made it very easy to walk away. I was going to tell my grandfather there was no chance, or make your father a better offer. But the moment we started talking, I mean, really talking, I was in. I wasn’t pretending any more.’
‘Yet you still didn’t tell me,’ Abby said, and she wasn’t cross, just confused.
‘When?’ Matteo demanded. ‘When was I supposed to tell you?’ And then he told her something about himself. ‘I’m a good liar, Abby, and I don’t usually have much of a conscience. I say what I have to to get what I want and I’m very good at avoiding things. When my parents would fight I’d just go off into my own world. When my grandfather tells me he’s dying, I suggest we go out for a drink. When the woman I’m crazy about tells me all that’s happened to her and then comes down, so shy and nervous and wearing that necklace...should I have told you that night?’ he asked. ‘Would you have taken it well then?’
‘No.’
‘On Sunday night, as soon as I landed back in New York, I went and spoke with my grandfather,’ Matteo said. ‘I told him that he wasn’t getting the necklace, that I wouldn’t do it to you.’ He handed it to her. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Technically it’s yours,’ she said. ‘Gentleman’s agreement and that.’
‘Your father’s no gentleman, so that nulls that. It’s yours.’
Abby took it. ‘What did your grandfather say when he found out he wasn’t getting it back?’
‘He was upset, I guess, but he’ll live.’ Matteo closed his eyes. ‘Actually, he won’t.’ He gave her a half smile. ‘He asked if he could see it one more time—is that okay?’
‘I think we could manage that.’ Abby stood.
‘Do you get now why I didn’t tell you?’
Abby didn’t answer him; instead she stood and walked to the bathroom door.
‘You’re going?’ Matteo said.
‘Yep.’
Matteo lay back in the water and closed his eyes again.
Of course she was.
ABBY WENT INTO her bedroom and the same tree that filled the view from her lounge was there in her bedroom window.
They could never end on a row.
In a few days the bruises would be gone, that gleaming smile would be back in place and Matteo would be off to pastures new.
Now though, even if he had lied to get past the locked door to her heart, she was very glad that he had.
In the past few weeks she had opened up and become more trusting, less wary. Matteo was right—had he told her then she would have walked away.
She had changed.
Everything had changed.
Right down to the fact that she took off her dress and she put on the necklace and then naked, save for the Lost Mistress, she walked back into the bathroom.
She loved him.
He had stood up for her, fought for her, and completely he accepted her and she accepted him.
Not quite perfect.
She wouldn’t have him any other way.
For however long they had.
Abby didn’t want to change him, nor for Matteo to change for her. She just hoped that one day he might lose his dark self-image and know the amazing man he was.
He was lying, dozing in the steamy water, but he opened his eyes when she walked in.
Yes, that shy nervous beauty had gone, as had that guarded woman, yet her eyes were a bit wary, no doubt wondering as to her reception as, for the first time, she initiated things.
‘Do you be naked, Miss Abby?’ Matteo said in a servant’s voice and he held out a hand and helped her into the bath.
‘Enough of that talk, young Matteo,’ Abby said and any trace of awkwardness evaporated like the steam from the water as they made each other laugh. She sat between his big long legs as he eased himself up and she just wished they could stay in the bath for ever and that he would never have