‘Well, I must speak to Coral about it,’ she said. ‘But thank you for the offer,’ she added, knowing full well that her friend would be ecstatic at the thought of spending the evening with Giovanni.
He tilted his head to one side in acknowledgement of her words. ‘You’ve got my card,’ he reminded her, ‘and my mobile number is on that. Give me a ring after you’ve mulled things over, and if you decide to accept my invitation I could pick you up at, say, eight-thirty or nine and take you to a place you’d probably never come across on your own—but which I can guarantee you’d like. But—’ he touched her arm briefly ‘—don’t worry if you decide to have an early night instead.’ He paused. ‘There’ll be other occasions.’ His lips parted in a brief knowing smile.
As soon as Emily got back to the room, she was almost bowled over by Coral’s excited welcome. ‘Oh—hi, Ellie!’ the girl exclaimed. ‘Had a good day?’ And, without waiting for a reply, she went on, ‘You’ll never guess what—I’ve pulled! We’re going out tonight!’
Emily sat down on the edge of the bed for a second and looked up at Coral—who had obviously fully recovered, her eyes shining with girlish excitement. ‘Go on—enlighten me. What have you been up to?’ she asked, a faint note of resignation in her voice.
‘Honestly, I haven’t been up to anything!’ Coral exclaimed. ‘But this afternoon I was feeling so much better that I went down to Reception to order a tray of tea and that gorgeous guy—Nico—was on duty. You know, the one we’ve spoken to a couple of times?’
‘Yes, of course I know who you mean,’ Emily said. Yet another dashing and attentive Italian, she thought.
‘Well, we sort of got chatting,’ Coral went on, ‘and I said I didn’t know Rome very well and guess what—he wants to take us out to show us the sights. He’s off duty at eight o’clock! What do you think of that?’ She looked at Emily searchingly. ‘It might be fun, Emily—and it is our last night.’
Emily got up and went over to put her laptop in the wardrobe, then turned to Coral. ‘Strangely enough, I’ve had an invitation for us as well,’ she said lightly, before going on to explain how Giovanni had arrived and had escorted her to the hotels on her list. ‘And he’s asked if we’d like to have dinner with him tonight,’ she added.
Coral was speechless—but only for a second. ‘How weird—that he should have turned up at just the right moment,’ she said. ‘But—now we’ve got two invites! Choices, choices!’ She paused, thinking it over for a moment. ‘But—it’ll work perfectly, Ellie. I mean, I wouldn’t want to turn Nico down—not after he was so sweet to me this afternoon—and you can’t possibly disappoint Giovanni. That wouldn’t be fair, since he’s obviously been so wonderful to you today. So there you are—we’ll go our separate ways tonight…and compare notes later!’ she added darkly.
Emily smiled, shaking her head briefly at Coral’s excitement. Her friend was obviously going to make the most of this final bit of her holiday—and what better way to end it than to be escorted around town by the handsome Nico?
Presently, as she washed away the day’s dust under a cool shower, Emily couldn’t help feeling pleased for Coral. Having an unexpected date was just the sort of thing to add a little sparkle to a holiday, she thought, and her friend was quite old enough—and sensible enough—to treat it as the light-hearted, inconsequential thing it was. And Emily had to admit that the thought of spending her last evening with Giovanni—just the two of them—held a little sparkle of its own! And why not? The occasional fleeting evening spent with an attractive man was the sort of thing which pleased her these days…No expectations, nothing heavy, which might threaten to cloud the long-term plan for her life. Go with the flow, but keep things cool—that was the best way.
Later, dressed in her white slim-leg cotton trousers and ocean-green low-necked top, Emily tripped lightly down the steps of the hotel to find Giovanni standing at the bottom waiting for her. Looking up, he grinned slowly, taking in every detail of her appearance and making no secret of his admiration.
‘You are a very beautiful woman, Emily,’ he murmured, and although Emily knew very well that easy compliments flew from the lips of amorous Italians like flocks of migrating birds, coming from Giovanni it seemed different. It seemed genuine, and she accepted it graciously.
‘Thank you…Giovanni…’ she said, lingering over his name for a second. He was so obviously a ‘Giovanni’ rather than a ‘Joe’, she thought briefly. That rather blunt derivative of his name could only be thanks to one of his English friends and somehow, to her, it didn’t suit him. And tonight she could have added that he, too, was worth more than one glance. His black, well-fitting designer trousers were teamed with an ivory cotton shirt, casually open, showing off his golden chest. He obviously liked dressing well, Emily thought.
She glanced across at him as he drove them into town. ‘Coral asked me to thank you again, for including her in tonight,’ she said. ‘As I explained on the phone, she’d already accepted an invitation which she didn’t feel able to change.’
He looked back at her, his dark eyes glinting in the reflection from the brightly lit dials of the dashboard. ‘No worries,’ he said easily, thinking that, with another woman, he might have said that he was very happy to have her all to himself, so that he could treat her to the undivided attention that was his norm with alluring females. But he decided not to say that, happy to relax in the comfortable silence that seemed to exist between them. He frowned briefly. He had known so many women in his life—had always regarded the female sex as treasures to be valued. But would he ever meet a woman who didn’t have an ulterior motive in wanting to belong to his family? That was what haunted him.
Feeling annoyed at his thoughts, he leaned forward to adjust something in front of him. The evening ahead was one to enjoy, for heaven’s sake! And he was determined to do just that—and to make sure that Emily had a good time, too. When he’d first seen her yesterday—was it only yesterday? he asked himself—she’d had the usual instant effect on him, arousing an animal instinct of wanting to get close, even to possess. But there was this elusiveness about her which continued to intrigue him. And he had to penetrate it somehow, if only to convince himself that he could find out what it was, what lay behind the rather enigmatic expression he’d noted on her fine, perfect features.
Realizing that they’d not exchanged a word for the last few minutes, Emily said, without looking across at him, ‘I hope today hasn’t been too boring for you, Giovanni. I’m sure there were far more interesting things for you to do than transporting me around and hanging about…’
He interrupted her at once. ‘I’m seldom bored, Emily. And I certainly wasn’t today. I’m only too pleased that I was able to be of some use to you.’
‘That’s what you seem to do quite a lot of—being of use to people,’ Emily said. ‘Your friend who owns the shop and the restaurant seems to make good use of you when you’re in Rome.’ Now she did look across at him, chiding herself for the sensuous pleasure she was experiencing at being close to him, of seeing the strong brown hands on the steering wheel, his taut, muscular thighs visible beneath the fine fabric of his trousers. She swallowed, trying to think of Coral, and where Nico might be taking her tonight.
‘Oh, well, my friends are good to me too, when I need them,’ he said. Then, ‘Are you hungry, Emily—would you like dinner straight away, or shall we go for a walk first?’
‘I’d like to eat now-then maybe walk off my meal later!’ Emily replied. ‘Lunch does seem quite a long time ago.’
‘Good. That suits me, too.’ He smiled at her with that certain, gentle smile which had the effect of making Emily’s pulse quicken. It was true, she thought—that Italian men had that certain something which could melt a woman’s