stairs, holding up the top of her dress with one hand, her hair in a tangle.
Ciro had let her go, even though he’d wanted to carry her straight to his bedroom and to his bed. The only thing that had stopped him was the awful suspicion that he’d just exposed himself spectacularly.
Just an hour before he’d been talking with one of Europe’s heads of state, and within minutes of getting into a car with Lara he’d been all over her like a hormone-fuelled teenager.
He splashed cold water on his face, as if that might dilute the heat raging in his body. After a moment he went into his bedroom, restless and edgy. He looked at the interconnecting door between his and Lara’s rooms for a long moment before going over and opening it quietly.
She was in bed. Curled up on one side in a curiously childlike pose, her hair spread out on the pillow. Her breaths were deep and even.
Something about the fact that she could find the equilibrium of sleep so easily made him feel even more exposed.
He went back into his bedroom and closed the door. And then he did the only thing he could do to try and dilute the sexual frustration in his body. He headed for the gym.
* * *
As soon as Lara was sure that Ciro had left her room she turned on her back and sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. She looked up at the ceiling.
She was in her underwear under the covers. She’d heard Ciro moving about next door, and after coming so spectacularly undone in the back of his car had felt far too raw to be able to deal with seeing him again. So she’d dived under the covers and feigned sleep even as her body had mocked her, aching for Ciro’s touch. For him to finish what he’d started.
This evening had been a salutary lesson in the reality of how this marriage would work. Ciro had used her with a ruthless and clinical precision to seek out meetings with the various people he was interested in talking to. She had to remember that was the focal point of the marriage—her desire to make amends to Ciro for what her uncle had done to him.
What she had done to him.
And the other stuff? The physical chemistry? The aching desire he’d awoken in her body?
A man of his extensive experience would surely lose interest soon. Wouldn’t he? And when he did she’d have to live with that. She’d lived with far worse, so she would cope. She’d have to.
* * *
The following days brought a reprieve of sorts for Lara. Ciro was out at meetings all day, and each evening he had a business dinner to attend, where she wasn’t required.
Like a coward, she’d taken the opportunity to make sure she was in bed by the time Ciro came home, pretending to be asleep if he came into her room.
She’d got used to her surroundings—just a stone’s throw from the old apartment she’d shared with Henry Winterborne—but she deliberately made sure to avoid that street if she was out of the house, and she knew the security men must think she was mad, taking such a long way round to go to the shops.
Ciro had issued her with a credit card, and Lara had swallowed her pride and taken it. After two years of feeling trapped, due to her lack of personal finances, she was embarrassed at being beholden to someone else. More than ever she wanted to make her own money. Be independent.
And yet there was something about Ciro handing her some economic freedom that made her feel emotional. A man who had a lot less reason to trust her than her previous husband was trusting her with this.
She’d also got to know the staff who worked in the house: the housekeeper was called Dominique, and there was a groundsman/handyman called Nigel. Dominique hired in staff as and when it was required for entertaining or cleaning, she’d told Lara. But as yet Ciro hadn’t actually ever entertained in the house.
Fleetingly Lara wondered again at the coincidence that had Ciro’s new house right around the corner from where she’d been living.
One evening it was Dominique’s night off—she lived close by, so didn’t stay over at the townhouse—and Lara went into the kitchen, feeling restless.
She’d always loved to cook, so when Henry Winterborne had maliciously turned her from wife into housekeeper she’d welcomed it, far preferring to be in the kitchen than to share space in his presence.
She’d learnt to cook in the first instance from her parents’ housekeeper—a lovely warm woman called Margaret, who had been more like a member of the family than staff. And then over the years she’d continued to cook...usually surreptitiously, because her uncle hadn’t approved of her doing such a menial thing.
‘You were not born to cook and serve, Lara,’ he’d said sharply.
No, she thought bitterly, she’d been born so he could exploit her for his own ends.
She shook her head to get rid of the memory and looked around the gleaming kitchen, instinctively pulling out ingredients from the well-stocked cupboards and shelves.
As she cooked from memory she felt a peace she hadn’t experienced in weeks descend over her. She tuned the radio to a pop station and hummed along tunelessly.
In a brief moment of optimism she thought that if things continued as they were going, and if she could maintain her distance from Ciro, she might actually survive this marriage...
* * *
Ciro had returned home early, to change for a dinner event. He was irritable and frustrated—which had a lot to do with the workload he’d taken on and the fact that he’d barely seen Lara since that first night in London.
Somehow she was always conveniently in bed when he got home, and he was not about to reveal how much he wanted her by waking her up like some kind of rabid animal to demand his conjugal rights.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see on his arrival this afternoon, but it involved an image along the lines of Lara being ready and waiting for him to take her to his bed when he got in.
He set down his briefcase in the hall and loosened his tie. For the first time in his life a woman wasn’t throwing herself at Ciro.
He scowled. The second time in his life.
The first time had also been with Lara. She’d been like a skittish foal around him when they’d first met. It had taken him weeks of seducing her on a level that he hadn’t had to employ for years. If ever.
After she’d revealed herself so spectacularly, and walked out of his hospital room, he’d put it down to being part of her act, but now he had to acknowledge that she had been a virgin. She hadn’t lied about that. At least.
He was about to head up the stairs when a smell caught at his nostrils. A very distinctive smell. Delicious. Mouth-watering. Evocative of his childhood.
He went towards the kitchen, expecting to find Dominique cooking, but when he opened the door it took a second for his eyes to take in the scene.
Lara was bent down at the open oven door, taking something out. She was dressed in jeans and a loose shirt. Bare feet. Her hair was up in a messy knot, and as she turned around with the dish in her hands he saw how the buttons of the shirt were fastened low enough to give a tantalising glimpse of cleavage.
Tendrils of hair framed her face and flushed cheeks. He heard the music. Some silly pop tune. Then realised that Lara was smiling, bending down to sniff the food in the dish. Lasagne, he guessed. It reminded him of the famous lasagne his nonna used to make when he was small, hurtling him back in time.
Ciro was rendered mute and frozen, because he couldn’t deny the appeal of the scene, nor that it had already existed in the deepest recesses of his psyche, even as he would have denied ever wanting such a domestic scenario in his life. At least until he’d met Lara that first time around and suddenly his perspective had shifted to allow such things to exist.
She’d cooked for him one evening;