‘You do? A good
-
different light or a bad
-
different light?’
She sat back. Holy cow! She’d let him take back the lead and turn the spotlight on to her again. She must get the conversation back to him as quickly as possible
. H
e was
the specimen on the petri dish
,
not her.
‘Put it this way, Evie
–
a few minutes ago, you listed pecorino cheese, melon, tomatoes, peaches, and so on, as the things you most liked in the world. I can believe that they topped Santa’s wish list for the Evie of last week, but I doubt that anything gastronomic tops Santa’s wish list for the Evie of this week. Or wouldn’t you agree?’
Huh
.
Where was he going with this?
Her mind raced. She watched him pick up the bottle and pour the last of the wine into their plastic glasses. She took a sip of her drink
;
she neede
d time to think. I
t looked as if he was trying to take their conversation down a very interesting path, one that she hadn’t bargained upon
–
or certainly not so early in the week
–
and she needed to play things very, very carefully.
‘No, I’m not sure that I do agree,’ she said, after giving herself as long a time to think as she thought she could get away with. ‘I can’t imagine any sort of Evie rating anything above a perfectly ripe
,
juicy peach. Surely there isn’t anything in the world that could score higher than that. Or is there?’
She stared at him above the rim of the plastic glass, her face a picture of innocence. Fingers c
rossed that he was into clichés.
‘Are you challenging me to come up with something, Evie?’
Spot on! And she liked the almost seductive tone of his voice.
On second thought
, she wasn’t sure there was any
‘
almost
’
about it.
‘Because if you are, you should know there’s nothing I like better than a challenge, as many courtroom opponents have found to their cost.’
‘Oh, I do believe you.’
And she did. She finished her wine in double quick time, lay back on the grass and waited.
Don’t do it, his inner voice screamed at him.
He was furious with himself: it was entirely his own fault that he’d got himself into the situation he was in. She’d picked up the baton
that
he should
never
have dropped, and now she was teasing him
with it. Worse still,
he seemed to b
e letting himself take the bait
.
He glanced across at her. Her skin was creamy smooth in the afternoon sun
, and he
r
lips
were
parted in an inviting sort of way
. It would be very easy to lean over and kiss her, and probably quite pleasant – all in all, it could be a diverting way of killing time
. A
nd what harm could it do?
He found himself turning slightly towards her and lower
ing
his head towards
her mouth
.
The inner voice screamed at him again, louder this time, more insistent.
It was a voice that he’d first heard years before, a voice that he’d then ignored, and had regretted doing so ever since. He’d turned a deaf ear the first time
that
he’d heard it and
he wasn’t going to ignore it a
second
time. Only fools failed to learn from the lessons
that life threw at them. H
e wasn’t a fool and he wasn’t giving in to temptation. Not this time.
Abruptly, he straightened up.
Making a move on Evie was fraught with potential disaster. He didn’t get i
nvolved with people like her. T
o have a casual dalliance with her would be both unprofessional and foolhardy. Theirs was a friendly working relationship, and that was the way it had to stay. He scrambled to his feet.
‘We’ll tidy up now, and then get off to Massa. Up you get, Evie.’
Turning round, h
e walked away from her.
Chapter Seven
Help!
T
h
ere
’s a spanner in the works
From her table in the corner of the
piazza
in Todi,
Evie watched Tom stroll across the square and start to climb the stone steps leading to the
cathedral.
The
weathered marble walls
of the cathedral
shimmered pink in the light of the dying sun. She helped herself to
a handful of
nuts from the
small bowl in the centre of the table. Why had Tom ch
anged towards her
?
B
ecause change he certainly had.
It wasn’t that he was
act
ing
coldly towards her or anything like that
;
it was little things she couldn’t really put her finger on. She’d been certain – absolutely certain – that he’d been about to kiss her the day before when they’d been
mucking
around on the grass after lunch, but he’d suddenly pulled back and things hadn’t been the same
ever
since.
They’d
ended the afternoon by ordering
the beds and bedside tables as planned and had arranged for them to be delivered to the house on the Thursday morning, and then they’d had a nice dinner at
Il Poggio
,
b
ut at the end of the meal he’d made it clear that he didn’t want to hang around and they’d gone off to their
separate
rooms as soon as they’d finished their coffee.
She’d had a burst of hope when there
’d been
a knock on her door soon after they’d parted. She’d rushed to the door,
pulled it
open and found him standing there
,
a can of insect spray in his hand. H
er h
ope had faded fast. The pre-picnic-lunch Tom would have cracked a joke as he
’d
handed her the can; the post-picnic-lunch Tom
had
made do with, ‘In case there are any problems. Good night.’
The day in Città di Castello had gone well and they’
d ordered everything Tom needed
.
He’d seemed quite relaxed all day, and hadn’t even appeared to be the least bit put out when he’d learnt that the furniture would be delivered over a
period of a
couple of weeks
–
he’d just told Eduardo that he could
get
someone to stay in the house during that
time
if it made things easier for him.
Nevertheless,
he’d
kept
firmly
to
his side of
an
invisible wall all day
.
This had been even more obvious
after
Eduardo had
returned them
to the hotel
once
all
the furniture had been ordered
and
had gone
home to change
.
T
rue
,
before
Tom had
disappeared into his room
to have a shower
he’d
suggested
leaving early and
stop
ping
for
a drink
in Todi
before they met up with
Eduardo at Cas
i
gli
ano
for a celebratory dinner
,
but
as she’d stood on the terrace and
stared after
his departing back,
s
he
hadn’
t seen any sign
of a
real
thaw
.
This was a mega big headache. If she didn’t know what had caused the change in him, she couldn’t work on getting things back to the way they were. She didn’t have long in which to act
–
the week was flying by at a scary speed – so she had to
come up with something
fast.
Inspiration struck
–
she’d call Rachel and ask her advice. Rachel always knew what to do in every situation. She pulled her mobile phone out of her bag and flicked it open. It was high time she called her friends, anyway.
‘It really is a perfect evening, isn’t it?’
She looked up. The focus of her frantic concern was standing next to the table. She snapped her phone shut.
‘Don’t let me interrupt you,’ h
e
said,
signall
ing
to the waiter a
s he
sat down on the chair opposite her.
‘You’re not. I was only going to phone Rachel and Jess – they’re the girls I share a house with
–
but it can wait. I wasn’t really in the mood, anyway.’
‘Feel free to phone them, if you want to. I promise not to listen.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘As you wish. Ah, here’s the waiter.
Una birra
,
per favore
. And what would you like, Evie?’
‘
Un bellini, per favore
,’ she said, and the waiter moved off. ‘I think it’s my favourite drink of all. Sparkling white wine and peach purée is a marriage made in heaven.’
‘Aha, something else to add to your list of favourites. And what’s more, it’s made with one of the items already on your list. A double whammy, one
might
almost say.’ He grinned at her and reached across to the nuts.
‘Why, so one could.’ She gave a little laugh.
A frisson of excitement ran through
her;
he hadn’t forgotten their conversation of the day before. She hadn’t a clue why he’d suddenly referred to it after the way he’d been acting all da
y,
but it was one hell of a gift horse and no way was sh
e going to look it in the mouth.
But s
low and cautious would be her watchwords – she mustn’t send him scurrying back into his shell by jumping in too quickly.
‘I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. I thought you were going to look round the cathedral.’
‘And s
o I was. However, if I may quote you, I wasn’t really in the mood. I’ll go another time
,
there’s no urgency.’
‘So what are you in the mood for?’
Shit
e!
That was hardly slow and cautious. One swallow didn’t make a summer, and one reference to her list of favourites didn’t mean
that
they were back at the
ir
pre-picnic stage. God, would she ever learn to think before she spoke!
‘It’d probably be easier if I told you what I was
not
in the mood for,’ he said as the waiter put their drinks in front of them
, along with a small dish of black and green olives
. ‘I’m not in the mood for Eduardo t
his evening. Don’t get me wrong,
Eduardo was a great help today and I’m very grateful to him for everything he’s done – you were absolutely right to insist that he come along with us – however, a little Latin bowing and scraping goes a long, long way, and I could
do
without any more of it this evening.’
She smiled at him. ‘I know just what you mean. But he’s good company, all the same.’
‘Which he’d also say about you, I’m sure
–
only he’d put it more strongly than that and each word would be accompanied by a low bow and some suction on the back of your hands.’
She burst out laughing and took an olive.
‘He’s obviously fallen for you in a big way
. T
he man positively drools every time he sees you, and you love every slu
shy minute of it. And why not?
He’s perfect for you. He’s a good-looking fellow, wealthy, artistic. Divine
–
wasn’t that how you described him?’
She took another olive.
So Tom thought she fancied Eduardo, and the
underlying
vibes she was picking up suggested that he wasn’t about to give them his blessing. Could
he
simply be pissed off with her for getting involved with Eduardo when she was
in Italy
to do a job for him? That would certainly account for his change
in
behaviour towards her.