And now she was here.
He stood up from his desk and moved to the window and looked down below to the London street. It was the middle of summer—not that he usually noticed. His life was spent in air-conditioned comfort and he dressed in the same dark suits whatever the month.
It was ironic, Luka thought, that he and Sophie, after all these years, should meet in London—the place of their far younger dreams.
Until recently he had always assumed that if they did come face to face again it would be in Roma, perhaps on one of his regular visits there. Or even back in Bordo Del Cielo—the coastal town on Sicily’s west coast where they had grown up. He had only returned once, for his father’s funeral last year, but he had been wondering whether he might go back one final time if Sophie’s father decided he wanted to be buried there.
Luka still hadn’t made up his mind if, when that day came, he would attend the funeral.
He knew that that day was coming soon.
And that, he also knew, was the reason that Sophie was here.
His hand reached into his jacket and he took out not a photo, not a memory; instead, it was a brutal reminder as to why they could never be.
He stared at the thin gold chain that wrapped around his long fingers and then he looked at the simple gold cross that lay in his palm. Yes, he would go to her father’s funeral, for this necklace belonged in that grave.
It took only a few moments for Sophie to make her way from the foyer to his suite yet it felt like for ever as he awaited her arrival, but then came the knock at the door that he recognised from yesteryear.
How much easier might his life have been had he not answered the door that long-ago day? Perhaps, Luka thought, he should not respond to it now.
He pocketed the necklace and cleared his throat. ‘Come in.’ He managed a deep summons but, as the door opened, he did not turn around.
‘Your assistant asked me to pass on the message that she’s just resigned. Apparently I’m the final straw.’
The sound of her voice, though a touch stilted and measured, still held, for Luka, the same caress.
For a man who feared little, he was nervous to turn around.
Luka rather hoped that the years that had passed since they’d last met had not treated her kindly—he fleetingly hoped that a nice little drug habit might have aged her terribly, or that she was pregnant with triplets perhaps...anything that might douse the eternal flame.
He turned and found out that time had indeed been cruel, to him at least, for perfection greeted his navy eyes.
Sophie Durante stood before him again.
She was wearing a simple dress in the palest ivory that showed her curvaceous figure. Her glossy, long black hair was worn neatly up in a French roll when he remembered it spilling over naked shoulders.
Her neutral-coloured high-heeled shoes enhanced her toned olive legs.
He forced his gaze up but only made it as far as her mouth. Her full lips were pressed tightly together when he remembered them once laughing and smiling. Then he remembered them somewhere else, which was a rather inconvenient image to have sprung to mind, so he forced himself to meet those dark brown eyes again.
She was just as beautiful as he remembered and, just as they had at their parting, her eyes showed she abhorred him.
Luka stared back with mutual loathing.
‘Sophie.’ He gave her a curt nod.
He did not know how he should greet her—shake her hand, or kiss both cheeks perhaps?
Instead, he gestured for her to take a seat.
She did so; placing her designer bag by the seat, she neatly crossed her legs at the ankles.
‘You look well,’ Luka said, and hoped she might miss that he then cleared his throat—for those first delicate traces of her scent had now reached him and his mind was firing taunting glimpses of memory.
‘I am well,’ she responded, and gave him a tight smile. ‘I am very busy, of course.’
‘Are you working?’ Luka asked. ‘Did you ever get to work on the ships?’
‘No.’ Sophie shook her head. ‘I am an events planner.’
‘Really?’ He didn’t even attempt to hide his surprise. ‘You were always running late for everything.’
He glanced at the ring on her finger—a ruby stone set in Italian gold. It was very old-fashioned and far from what he would have chosen for her. ‘I have terrible taste in rings, it would seem,’ Luka said.
‘Don’t!’ she warned abruptly. ‘You will never insult me again.’
He looked up and into the eyes of the only woman he had ever made love to as she asked him a question.
‘Aren’t you going to ask why I am here?’
‘I presume you’re about to tell me.’ Luka shrugged. He knew damn well why she was here but he’d make her say it just for the pleasure of watching her squirm.
‘My father may be released from prison this Friday on compassionate grounds.’
‘I know that.’
‘How?’
‘I do occasionally glance at the news.’ Luka’s sarcasm didn’t garner a response, though his voice was kinder when he asked her a question. ‘How is he doing?’
‘Don’t pretend that you care.’
‘And don’t dare assume that I don’t!’ he snapped, and he watched her rapid blink as he continued speaking.
Seeing her, he had been momentarily sideswiped but now he took back control and made a vow never to lose his control with her again.
‘But, then, that’s you all over, Sophie. Your mind was always made up even before the jury had been chosen. I’ll ask you again. How is your father?’
‘He is fading, he is a little confused at times.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Isn’t that what prison does to an innocent man?’
Luka stared back and for now said nothing.
Paulo was not as innocent as Sophie made out.
‘Not that a Cavaliere would know about prison,’ she added.
‘I spent six months in prison awaiting trial, two of them in solitary,’ Luka pointed out. ‘Or were you referring to my father being found not guilty?’
‘I have no wish to discuss that man.’ She couldn’t, Luka noted, even bring herself to say his father’s name. How much worse would this conversation be if she knew the truth? he wondered. He could almost feel the heat from the necklace in his pocket. He was actually tempted to toss it across the desk to her, to end them once and for all.
‘Just what are you doing here, Sophie? I thought we ended our engagement a long time ago.’
‘Firstly, I don’t want you to think, for even a moment, that I am here for any romantic reasons.’
‘Good, because it would be an extremely wasted journey if that were the case.’
‘However,’ she continued, ‘my father believes that you upheld your promise. He thinks we got engaged and that we now live together in Rome.’
‘Why would Paulo think that?’
‘It was kinder to lie and let him think that you upheld your commitment to me. I never thought he would be let out and now that he might be I need to keep up the pretence. I told him that the terrible things you said in court about me were in an attempt