His eyes roved almost reluctantly over her, observing how the butter-cream silk clung faintly to every undulation of her body. ‘It hints rather than broadcasts, tantalises rather than emblazons,’ he murmured. ‘I find that infinitely more attractive than the kind of dress which threatens the wearer with being hauled up on an indecency charge.’
‘Oh,’ said Lola rather indistinctly, feeling ridiculously cheered by his obvious approval.
She was then rather nonplussed to see him lean forward and start speaking to the driver in rapid Italian. ‘You’re fluent!’ she observed in surprise.
He gave a half-smile. ‘You find that so remarkable?’
‘Yes, I do. Most Englishmen—’
‘Ah! But I’m not English, Lola—I’m Welsh.’
‘Oh, I see.’ So that explained the faint, almost musical lilt which made the deep voice so distinctive. And the tar-black tousled hair—its wildness only contained by the superb way he had had it cut.
She shot a covert glance at his impressive frame, at the broad shoulders and the rock-hard muscle of his thighs, visualising him on a ploughed-up field, blocking the other players’ every attempt to pass him. ‘And d-did you play rugby?’ she managed as she made a feeble attempt to squash the lustful vision of Geraint in a pair of mud-spattered shorts.
‘So you’re stereotyping me now, are you?’ he mocked her softly. “The man is Welsh, therefore he must play rugby and sing in an all-male choir! Right?’
‘No! I’m not stereotyping you!’ she protested, but she saw the hint of dark humour in his eyes and shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m only trying to be pleasant!’
‘Pleasant is fine,’ he teased. ‘But a little dull, surely, Lola?’
Lola sighed. If only he didn’t have the ability to make her tremble just by the seductive way he pronounced her name! ‘I don’t see how we can have a halfway decent evening if you block my every attempt at conversation with some smart remark like that!’ she objected.
‘You don’t have to make conversation with me, you know, sweetheart,’ he told her with an air of lazy containment.
‘Really?’ she enquired archly. ‘Then what else do you propose I do? And please don’t come out with something crass and obvious!’
He gave a low laugh. ‘I have no intention of being either of those.’
‘Good.’ She looked at him questioningly, her heart thumping very loudly in her ears.
He smiled. ‘Well, I rather like the way you look at me, when you’re trying your best not to. So why don’t you carry on gazing at me adoringly for now and we can save the life-stories for during dinner?’
Lola was outraged. What arrogance! Carry on gazing at him, indeed! And adoringly, too! Had she been? Oh, if only she had the strength of character to force him to turn the cab round and take her straight back to the hotel where she could spend the evening with Marnie.
Except that by now Marnie would have decamped with the rest of the crew to one of Rome’s noisiest discos and Lola would either have to eat a solitary meal in the hotel dining room or have something delivered up to her room.
And she didn’t want to. She wanted to be here. And with him. That was the trouble.
Surreptitiously sliding along the seat as far away from him as possible, Lola stared fixedly out of the window at the passing city with the sinking realisation that it didn’t seem to matter what kind of outrageous statements he came out with. Or how much he put her back up. Because she wanted him with all the fierce intensity of a woman who had just discovered desire for the first time in her life.
And because it hadn’t happened until she had reached the comparatively ripe old age of twenty-five it seemed to have hit her with the most overwhelming force.
She found herself at the mercy of new and rather frightening feelings, found that she wanted to do all those things she had previously thought were the province of the emotionally unstable—to tremble, and to weep, to reach out and touch him. . .
And didn’t all those things sound suspiciously like the symptoms of love?
She gave her head a tiny shake of denial—you simply did not fall in love with people you hardly knew!
‘Stop sulking,’ he urged softly.
‘I am not sulking. I’m enjoying the view.’
The Mimosa was easily recognisable with its hundreds of tiny white lights threaded into the still bare branches of the trees outside. Lola spotted people queuing around the block in an attempt to secure a table.
‘We’re here!’ she exclaimed, inadvertently tugging the sleeve of Geraint’s jacket in her excitement. ‘And just look at all the fairy lights—it’s absolutely beautiful!’
Her enthusiasm produced a look from Geraint which was half-indulgent and half-perplexed, as if he wasn’t used to such exuberant behaviour. But he said nothing before they were led through the restaurant and seated at what was, quite simply, the best table in the room.
‘So how did you manage to swing this?’ Lola asked as she broke a bread stick in half and crunched on it.
‘What? A date with you?’
‘The table,’ she told him.
‘Oh, that bit wasn’t difficult. Certainly not as difficult as securing the date.’
‘No?’ She studied him in disbelief. ‘That’s why all those people outside are virtually trying to break the door down to get in, is it?’
He shrugged. ‘I speak Italian. I do a lot of business here. I adore the country—the food, the wine and the culture. Given all those things, finding a table in a good restaurant doesn’t pose much of a problem.’
He made it sound as easy as ABC! Lola finished chomping on her bread stick and picked up another, to find him looking at her with reluctant approval. He obviously did like women who enjoyed their food, she thought in amazement, but that did not mean that she had to go over the top and completely pig out!
She put the bread stick carefully back down in front of her. ‘I don’t want to spoil my appetite,’ she explained.
‘Maybe we’d better order?’ he suggested with a smile, and he must have elevated an eyebrow or moved a broad shoulder or something, Lola decided, since the waiter appeared as if on cue.
The next couple of minutes were spent discussing the wine list and the recommended dishes and Lola tried to appear interested in her choices, but she might as well have ordered bread and sawdust—for the normal pleasure she took in anticipating her meal had been totally eclipsed by Geraint’s presence.
She felt as gauche as a teenager out on a first date, which was absolutely ridiculous! She had enjoyed lots of dates, and what she had thought was going to be a fairly heavy love-affair with a pilot, not long after she had started at Atalanta Airlines. But she had been far too young to cope with a smooth operator who seemed to be out of the country more often than he was in it.
The memory of that relationship still had the power to make her ask herself incredulously how she could have been such a fool.
The affair had ended before it had even begun—very painfully—with Lola’s shocked discovery that the pilot she had been planning to spend a romantic weekend with already had a fiancée tucked away.
Lola had had her fingers badly burned by the experience. She would never forget the misery she had experienced afterwards—because of his callous deceit more than anything else. And it had managed to put her off serious involvement, though that had been easy to avoid—there hadn’t been anyone else she had remotely fancied enough to contemplate plunging headlong into an affair