Under the Italian's Command (13 page)

‘Aren’t you glad?’

‘I’m not complaining,’
Carly
assured him, ‘merely offering an observation…’ And now it was impossible to speak. Lorenzo had one arm braced against the wall, while the other held her bottom in place. The contrast between icy water and the heat inside her was incredible. ‘You’re amazing,’ she groaned as he thrust into her.

‘I can’t fault your
judgement
,’ he agreed.

‘Shall we have macaroons in bed, as well as the champagne?’ Lorenzo suggested when they were dry.

‘When we’ve just had a shower?’

‘Half the fun is getting dirty.’

‘And the other half is getting clean?’

‘You guessed it,’ he said dryly with a grin.

He padded naked to the door, and as he turned back to her she thought again how beautiful he was.

‘Or shall I just bring you chocolate and champagne?’ he asked.

‘You really do know the way to a woman’s heart, Lorenzo.’

‘As long as I can find my way to yours…’

Did he mean it?
Carly
turned her face into the pillow when Lorenzo left the room. Of course not! Words, like kisses, came so easily to him.

When he returned with a loaded tray she switched on her bright face. The truth was all that activity had given her quite an appetite. Lorenzo had brought champagne and chocolate, as well as a plateful of dainty
multicoloured
macaroons.

‘From
Ladurée
, the best tea shop in Paris,’ he told her. ‘I had them flown in especially for you.’

‘Of course you did.’

‘No, I really did,’ he insisted, ‘as a reward for arranging the party—and that was before I knew how good it was going to be. Now as this is something of an experiment for me I shall expect your full concentration…’

Carly
tried to hide her smile as they gazed at each other, and failed. ‘You’ve got it,’ she said. Lorenzo could do that to you—however many times she warned herself to hold back on the emotion he could obliterate common sense with a look.

Carly
soon discovered that one tiny chocolate macaroon could go a long way when it was crumbled. ‘Oh, that’s bad,’ she gasped in the throes of recovery as Lorenzo finally came up for air. ‘I’m going to make sure you go down for a very long time indeed.’

‘I sincerely hope you do,’ he said, smiling wickedly as he reached for another macaroon.

His good intentions were shot to hell, Lorenzo accepted as
Carly
lay sleeping in his arms. This was supposed to be emotion-free sex, no ties, no long-term repercussions for either of them. His
judgement
had always been flawless in the past, and now this! He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to think straight again. The only thing he was sure about was no more female pupils ever! The best thing he could do was find an order of monks and hope they needed legal representation—

‘Lorenzo…’

She’d sensed his restlessness and woken up. He sensed her need for reassurance. Kissing her, he brought her back into his arms. ‘What is it,
cara
mia
?’ As he stared down into her trusting face he wanted to tell her everything he had decided, but how could he do that when it would shake the foundations of her life?

‘What is it?’ she said, sensing the shadow passing over him.

‘Not now, baby…’ Drawing her close, he kissed her again. Having seen her confidence blossom while they’d been together, he couldn’t bring himself to destroy it now.

CARLY WENT INTO chambers early one morning the following week to clear up some papers before facing her final interview for the Unicorn scholarship that same afternoon. It was due to take place in front of a panel of senior lawyers chaired by Lorenzo. She hadn’t really seen him since the night of the party but she felt confident, if anxious. She was going incommunicado until it was over, she decided, switching off her phone.

Now she wanted to be anywhere but here. She had never felt this apprehensive about an interview before, maybe because this time there had been vibes coming off Lorenzo, telling her however well prepared she was it wouldn’t be straightforward.

She
bodged
the interview. And not just
bodged
it; by the time she left the room she was suffused in waves of uncertainty as to whether law was even the direction in which she wanted to go. Scrunching her mother’s letter into a tiny ball, she braced herself to make the call.

What made it all the harder was that Lorenzo had let her down. He hadn’t appeared on the panel. He hadn’t even bothered to turn up and wish her luck. And okay, her phone was off, so he couldn’t reach her that way, but surely he could have sent her a message somehow? She’d known all along her love affair with Lorenzo was one-sided: she was in love with Lorenzo; he was in love with sex. She’d had her eyes wide open from the start, but surely common human decency demanded some explanation for his absence?

Her mother picked up the phone, stemming her train of thought. She couldn’t get a word in as her mother explained excitedly that everyone was waiting at the house for her news…

‘I didn’t get it—’

‘Your father’s poised to open the champagne—’

‘Mum, please listen to me. Can’t you tell him to hold the champagne?’ Too late! She heard the cork pop. She waited for the cheers and the laughter to die down. ‘Mum, I didn’t get it…’

‘What did you say?’ Her mother’s strangled whisper silenced the excited chatter in the background.

‘I didn’t get it,’
Carly
repeated dully, knowing how badly she’d let everyone down.

Her mother turned shrill as all the wasted dreams spilled out of her. ‘How could it go so wrong?’ she finished.

‘It was my fault,’
Carly
confessed. ‘I made a mess of the interview.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’ Her mother’s voice had dropped to a driven whisper. ‘Don’t you care what this means to us?’

‘I’m sorry…I don’t know what else to say.’

‘There must be a mistake,’ her mother insisted, rallying. ‘You’d never make a mess of the interview. You’re overreacting,
Carly
. Why are you doing this to me?’

‘I’m really sorry—can I speak to Dad?’

‘You know what this is going to do to him, don’t you? You read my letter, I hope! I told you about his stress levels—what do you think this is going to do to him?’

‘Would it be better if I came home to break it to him myself?’

‘No,’ her mother shot back. ‘I think you’d better stay away and lay low for a while until everything’s died down.’

‘Okay…’
Carly
bit down on her lip as the line went dead. Covering her head with her arms she let out a shuddering sigh. It was no use thinking the bottom had just fallen out of her world, even though it had; she had to pick herself up and carry on however much it hurt. And this time it really hurt. The panel had told her that her pupil master had absented himself from the panel.

Deserted a sinking ship, more like!

Lorenzo walked briskly round the luxury store with a personal shopper in tow. He knew how much winning the scholarship had meant to
Carly
and he was determined to soften the blow for her. He had resigned from the panel with immediate effect. He couldn’t bring himself to endorse something that could never make her happy. At the end of the day he hadn’t needed to say as much to the panel; they had come to the same conclusion he had—that her heart wasn’t in it. She had talked a lot about her parents during her interview, apparently, but very little about herself. They assured him that although she was an outstanding candidate it wasn’t what she really wanted in life, but she just hadn’t seen that yet.

He’d seen her type before, Lorenzo reflected as he paid the bill and thanked the personal shopper—ambitious young lawyers on the threshold of life, following a route map laid out for them by their parents.
Carly
was so much more than that, she deserved so much more than that. He’d tried to ring her, but he could understand she must want some time alone.

The flat was empty when she got back. Louisa had already left for the Home Counties, and Lorenzo was…

Practically moved out!

Carly’s
stomach contracted painfully as she scanned his room again just to make sure. She knew his apartment was ready for him to move back into, but she hadn’t realized he’d leave so abruptly—and so soon. She sat down on his bed to get over the shock of his desertion, but then she sprang up right away. She didn’t want to touch, see or think about Lorenzo’s bed. She didn’t want to remember anything that had happened there.

The sound as she slammed the door echoed round the empty apartment, mocking her. Leaning back against a wall, she wrapped her arms around her waist and expelled a shuddering sigh. What a bright spark she’d turned out to be! She had slept with a man who held her fate in his hands, a man who didn’t care, and now she’d lost the scholarship.

The scholarship…Closing her eyes as she thought about it, she relived the moment in the interview room when she had
realised
she didn’t want it. What she had wanted was to please her parents. The scholarship meant nothing to her. What she wanted was Lorenzo and a working life where she could feel a real sense of achievement as she had after the Christmas party. Closing her eyes, she wished violently that Lorenzo were out of her head and she could identify the route she really wanted to take in life.

The clerks, the backroom boys at chambers who managed the barristers’ diaries, had been kind to her when she had told them she’d flunked the interview. ‘Why don’t you plan some more parties?’ they’d chorused. ‘You’re good at that.’

She had laughed with them, and then
realised
they were serious.

An event planner?

She shook her head, dismissing the idea at once. Her Northern night had been a one-off. Like Lorenzo.

And, like Lorenzo, never to be repeated,
Carly
told herself, switching on her phone.

She waited for it to
initialise
, and then saw that there were seven missed calls from Lorenzo. Frowning, she tried returning them, but he didn’t pick up. Leave a message? She couldn’t think of one—not one polite enough to write down, that was.

Determined to have it out with him face to face, she went to his new apartment where the smell of fresh paint caught her throat the moment the elevator doors opened. He hadn’t been kidding about the flood; everything had been recently decorated. It must have been bad.

The elevator she’d travelled up in was private and reserved for the exclusive use of the owner of the penthouse in a prestigious block, one Lorenzo
Domenico
. It was all very impressive, even by Lorenzo’s exacting standards. The concierge had greeted her in the lobby and had checked her credentials carefully before allowing her upstairs.
Mr
Domenico
was out, he’d told her, but there was a mailbox outside his apartment in which she could leave her package of important documents.

Important documents? She had collected together as many A4 sheets of paper as she could find and had tied them ostentatiously with bright pink barristers’ tape. The bundle was her passport up to Lorenzo’s apartment, and nothing more. The hallway was impressive enough; Lorenzo’s apartment, which took up most of the top floor overlooking London, must be sumptuous,
Carly
concluded, ringing the bell.

He wasn’t in. She’d known that right away; his energy was missing.

She looked around as she waited, uncertain as to what to do next. For all its luxury the entrance to Lorenzo’s palace lacked the patina of a home. It was just a new apartment in a new apartment block. There were no cooking aromas seeping under the door to suggest the gorgeous Italian-American who loved to cook, no scratches or stains, no finger smudges on the walls, everything was pristine, and completely soulless. Quite suddenly she missed the trappings of a home, somewhere filled with love and warmth. Love and warmth, she mused, those were the elusive magic ingredients, like the seasoning in Lorenzo’s sauce. But perhaps this was enough for him, this gilded cage. Men measured success in terms of money and possessions, while women lusted after nests to feather, homes to clutter with memories…

Hefting the papers she’d brought with her into the waste shoot, she returned to Lorenzo’s mailbox and posted the small gift-wrapped parcel she had bought for him before everything went wrong. She didn’t want it hanging around and she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. It wasn’t much in the monetary sense, even though she thought it special, and she would have bought her pupil master something for Christmas anyway, she had managed to persuade herself.

Lifting her chin, she started back to her flat. Bypassing the elevator she chose the stairs. Why hurry when she had almost two weeks to kill before the courts reconvened?

Lorenzo hit the button to the top floor. He considered an elevator essential. Shopping had to reach the penthouse somehow, and experience had taught him that if he didn’t have a fast, reliable means of reaching the top floor, any grocery service he selected would complain.

The smell of newness hit him the moment he opened the front door. Tossing his jacket aside, he opened all the windows. He had thought about ordering flowers, and then
realised
it would have to wait until after Christmas. The best he could do for now was brew coffee and start cooking.

There was only one thing, one person, missing: his sparring partner,
Carly
Tate. He missed their verbal jousts as well as their tangles in the bedroom. But he wouldn’t chase. He knew she’d probably be angry and she needed time to consider the suggestions he’d made in his letter. She might not take them well at first; she might not take them well ever, but he’d had to say what was on his mind.

She turned back when she was halfway home. She wasn’t going to take this on the chin. She was fed up with doing that. Lorenzo couldn’t just walk out on her. If she put this down to experience she would never forgive herself. She would sit on his doorstep if she had to and wait until he got back. A lack of self-confidence didn’t mean you were a coward; it just meant you had to work harder at persuading yourself that a man hadn’t bought you a fabulous dress as incentive to have sex with him.

And who needed an incentive to sleep with Lorenzo?

So had it been pay-off time?

No. Lorenzo had far more style than that.

Another woman, then? Madeline flashed into her mind.