Not wanting to appear too eager, she pretended to give the matter some thought. “All right. Now that you mention it, I am rather hungry.”
“Eccellente. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll let the cook know there’ll be two of us dining tonight.”
“Of course.” She waited until he’d disappeared then, weak at the knees from his departing smile, she tottered to a pair of sun lounges upholstered in blue-and-whitestriped cotton, and practically fell onto the one nearest.
The view spread out in front of her was breathtaking. A big oval infinity pool, strategically placed for maximum dramatic effect, appeared to cling to the very rim of the cliff. An illusion, of course, brought about by the sort of complicated engineering feat only the very rich and famous could afford. But the profusion of bougainvillea framing the picture was nature’s handiwork alone.
Dario returned in a matter of minutes with two slender tulip-shaped flutes and a silver ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne. He poured the wine, sat down beside her and touched the rim of his glass to hers. “Salute!”
“Salute! And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For everything you’ve done since I’ve been ill. They told me at the hospital that you’re the one who sent me flowers every day and who took care of all my expenses.”
“What else would you have had me do, Maeve? I’m your husband.”
“Yes, well…about that…”
“Relax, cara,” he advised her gently. “I didn’t mention our relationship as a prelude to demanding my conjugal rights.”
“Oh,” she said, swallowing a wave of disappointment along with a sip of champagne. Not that she was raring to make love to a man she didn’t know, but that he presumably knew her very well indeed, yet was so willing to keep his distance, wasn’t exactly flattering. On the other hand, what else did she expect? “Under the circumstances, it never occurred to me that you were.”
He turned his head sharply and fixed her in a probing stare. “What do you mean by that?”
“I might not remember marrying you, Dario, but I’ve still got twenty-twenty vision. I know I look more like a scarecrow than a woman.”
“You’re still recovering from an accident that almost cost you your life. You can’t expect to look the same as you did before.”
“Even so, my hair…” She tugged self-consciously at the pathetic remains of what had once been her crowning glory, as if doing so might persuade it to sprout another few inches.
Reaching across the space separating them, he stilled her hand and brought it down to rest beneath his. It was the kind of thing a parent might do to stop a child picking at a scab, but however he might have intended it, his touch electrified her in places not referred to in polite society. Involuntarily she clamped her knees together as primly as a virgin defending her innocence.
Fortunately, he couldn’t read her mind. Or if he could, he didn’t like the direction it had taken, because he let go of her hand as quickly as he’d grasped it. “You have beautiful hair,” he said. “It reminds me of sunshine on satin.”
“It’s too short.”
“I like it short. It shows more of your face, which, like the rest of you, is also quite beautiful, regardless of how you might view it.”
Even though he delivered it as matter-of-factly as a Kennel Club judge might appraise a freshly trimmed poodle, his compliment was more than she’d hoped for or deserved. After her bath, she’d done her best to find something flattering to wear among the clothes she’d discovered in the small dressing room connecting her bedroom to the bathroom, and heaven knew there was quite a bit to choose from.
Layers of lingerie in glass-fronted drawers filled one side, with a shelf of shoes below, and another holding several big floppy sun hats above. Opposite was a row of loose-fitting day dresses, skirts and tops, with two or three more elegant dinner outfits on padded hangers arranged at one end. Nothing too formal, though. Judging by the plethora of beach and patio wear, and the pairs of straw sandals and flip-flops encrusted with crystals, Pantelleria was not the social center of the world.
The quality of the clothes, however, was unmistakable. She’d fingered the expensive fabrics, admiring the cut and color of the various garments. Fashion was in her blood and whatever else might have slipped her mind, her eye for style had not. That most items appeared at least two sizes too large might have proved something of a challenge to a person of lesser experience, but she was on familiar territory when it came to making a woman look her best. Bypassing silky lace-trimmed bras and panties, she’d chosen cotton knit underwear that forgave her diminished curves, and topped it with a loose-flowing caftan in vibrant purple that whispered over her body like a breeze and softened the sharp jut of her hip bones.
Regarding her efforts in the full-length mirror, she’d felt a woman a little more in charge of herself again. But although it had given her the courage to seek out Dario and try to worm more information out of him, now that he was inspecting her so thoroughly, she almost cowered.
“You’re embarrassing me,” she protested.
“Why?” he countered mildly. “You’re lovely, and I can’t possibly be the first man to tell you so.”
“No. My father used to say the same thing, but he was prejudiced. In truth, I was an ugly duckling, especially as a teenager.”
“I quite believe it.”
Her jaw dropped. “You do?”
“Certainly. How else could you have turned into such an elegant swan?”
He was laughing at her, and suddenly she was laughing, too.
It had been so long since she’d done that, and the result was startling, as if she’d opened an inner door and set free a hard, dark knot of misery. For the first time in weeks, she felt light and could breathe again. “Thank you for saying that. You’re very kind.”
“And you’re your own worst critic.” He touched her again, stroking the back of her hand, his fingers warm and strong. “What happened to make you that way, Maeve?”
“I’d have thought I told you that already, seeing that we’re married.”
“Perhaps you did,” he said, “but since we’re starting out all over again, tell me a second time.”
“Well, I was always shy, but never more than when I entered my teens. I’d become paralyzed with self-consciousness in a crowd, and had a miserable adolescence as a result.”
“Didn’t most of us at that age, at one time or another?”
“I suppose, but mine was made worse because, when I turned thirteen, my parents sent me to a very prestigious girls-only private academy, light-years removed from the kind of school I was used to and the few friends I had. Not that I came from the wrong side of the tracks or anything, but the day I walked into that elite establishment sitting across town on its high-priced five acres of prime real estate, I entered a different world, one in which I was a definite outsider.”
“You made no new friends?”
“Not really. Teenage girls can be very cruel, even if they don’t always mean to be. At best I was tolerated. At worst, ignored. I wasn’t entirely blameless, either. I compensated by withdrawing and trying to make myself invisible, which isn’t easy when you’re taller than everyone else, and painfully awkward to boot. I suppose that’s when I became fixated on long hair. I used to hide behind it all the time.”
She took another sip of champagne and stared at the empty sea, for the second time in one day harking back to that awful, unhappy era. “I wanted to be different.