after the intensity of their charade for Tyson and then that passionate, overwhelming kiss, maybe Luca had said things he regretted in the cold light of morning.
Her doubts were swept away when Luca strode into the office and, going right to her desk, pulled her towards him for a thorough kiss.
‘Good thing no one else is on this floor,’ Hannah exclaimed, her lips buzzing, when he’d finally released her. ‘What if someone saw?’
‘No one did,’ he returned before heading into his office. Hannah sat down at her desk, her lips buzzing, her heart singing with joy.
She told herself to slow down, to take one day at a time just as Luca had said, because neither of them had any idea what tomorrow could bring. But her mind and heart both went leaping ahead anyway. Seemed as soon as she’d got over the anxiety of actually starting a relationship she went tumbling in, head-and-heart-first.
Luca asked her to spend Saturday with him—the day with Jamie and the night the two of them alone. Both prospects filled Hannah with both excitement and nervousness. Introducing her son properly to Luca was a big step—and as for the night...
She just felt excitement about that.
Luca had asked her what kinds of things Jamie liked to do, and she’d told him the usual five-year-old-boy pursuits: the park, the zoo, football. ‘And he’s mad about planes,’ she’d confided. ‘We always go outside to look at them heading for Heathrow.’
Luca had typed it all into his smartphone, looking as serious as he did when conducting a million-pound business deal. Hannah’s heart had ached with love.
Yes, she was falling in love with this man, and it was happening so hard and fast it scared her. Luca might not be keeping up. In fact, she was quite sure he wasn’t. Every interaction that didn’t have his hands on her body and his mouth on hers was difficult for him, the words stilted but sincere. He was trying, but it was hard. And maybe one day, even one day soon, it would become too hard.
But in the meantime...
She would do as Luca said and enjoy each day as it came. She knew she couldn’t stop herself from falling in love with Luca, even when her mother worried about her, even when she stared at her son’s sleeping face and wondered if she was setting everyone up for a catastrophic fall. She knew what it was like to love and lose. She didn’t want that to happen again, no matter what she’d told Luca about wanting to try.
Saturday dawned sunny and warm, a perfect spring day that felt like a promise. Luca picked them up not in his usual limo, but in a flashy sports convertible that Hannah had never seen before. Jamie leapt up and down with excitement at the prospect of travelling in such a vehicle; Luca had even gone to the trouble of installing an appropriate car seat.
‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he told Hannah, even though she hadn’t said anything. ‘I can see the worry in your eyes. But this car has been crash-tested in all sorts of situations.’
‘Is it yours?’
‘Yes, although I don’t drive it as often as I could. I usually prefer to be driven, and use the time to work.’
‘You do have an admirable work ethic,’ Hannah said with a smile. She buckled Jamie into his seat. ‘So where are we going?’
Luca waggled his eyebrows. ‘You’ll see.’
She smiled, enjoying seeing this lighter side to the man she loved. ‘It’s a surprise?’
‘Yep.’
The surprise turned out to be a visit to a private airfield, with Jamie being allowed to scramble in and out of planes, from private jets to a retired fighter plane, culminating in a helicopter ride over London. Jamie’s eyes were huge as he pressed his face to the window and Luca pointed out the London Eye, Big Ben. Hannah’s heart felt so full she couldn’t keep from grinning. From squeezing Luca’s hand the whole ride, simply because she needed to show him how much he meant to her.
They had a luxurious picnic lunch that Luca had arranged on a field overlooking the planes, and as Jamie cavorted around, running off his excess energy, Hannah turned to Luca and put her hand over his.
‘Thank you. This day has been amazing. Jamie will remember it for ever.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘But, you know, the park or the zoo would have been fine, too.’
‘I know not every day can be like this,’ Luca admitted wryly. ‘But I suppose I wanted to make a good first impression.’
‘Trust me, you’d already done that with the cakes.’ She paused, her hand still over his, longing to know more about this man her heart had already yielded to. ‘How is it you grew up with so little and yet now you have so much?’
Luca shrugged. ‘Hard work, a lot of determination, and a good dose of luck.’
‘Where did you grow up?’ Hannah asked. ‘I’m ashamed to admit I don’t even know.’
‘A small village in Sicily.’ Luca’s expression closed, and Hannah knew this had to be hard for him. ‘My mother was unwed when she had me, and in that kind of remote, traditional community we both suffered badly, albeit in different ways.’
‘Oh, Luca, I’m sorry.’ Now she understood why he’d asked if she’d been married when she’d had Jamie.
‘It made me determined to escape.’
‘And foster care? Was that hard?’
He shrugged, the negligent movement belying the deep emotion she saw fermenting in his eyes. ‘It was what it was. A home for orphan boys in rural Sicily—what do you expect? But I had a good teacher and he encouraged me to apply for a scholarship. From there I went to university, and when I was twenty-two I bought my first property, a falling-down building in one of the worst districts in Naples.’
‘And what did you do with it?’ she asked, intrigued.
‘I developed it into a halfway house for homeless teens and sold it to the government.’
‘You’ve never forgotten your roots,’ Hannah said slowly. She’d known that Luca had been committed to certain principles in all of his property deals. She just hadn’t understood what had motivated him.
‘I never have,’ Luca agreed, his voice going a bit flat. ‘And I never will.’ His tone had turned ruthless, almost menacing, and it made Hannah afraid to ask any more questions. In any case, Luca asked one instead. ‘Tell me about Jamie’s father.’
Hannah tensed even though she knew he had a right to ask the question. ‘What about him?’
‘Did you love him?’
‘Yes, but it feels a long time ago now.’
‘You told me you knew what it felt like for someone to expect you to slot in his life.’
Hannah sighed. ‘Yes, that was what Ben expected, and I didn’t realise it until I stopped.’
‘What do you mean?’
She hesitated, not wanting to access all these old memories yet accepting that Luca had a right to the truth. ‘I met Ben while in college. He had dreams of travelling afterwards, seeing the world. When we’d started dating we planned this carefree life, traipsing around Europe and Asia, taking jobs as we could, living totally free.’
Luca studied her, his gaze both serious and intent. ‘And then what happened?’
‘And then I fell pregnant. Accidentally. And I realised that I wanted to keep the baby, that Ben’s dreams of travelling the world weren’t really my dreams, even though I’d convinced myself they were. I’d never been anywhere, as you know, and I liked the idea of an adventure. I just liked the idea of a bigger adventure, of being a mother, better. I couldn’t turn away from that.’
‘And how did...Ben react?’
‘He wasn’t pleased, to say the least. He was furious