Massimo was who he was, just as Livia was who she was. They’d tried. They’d failed.
She just wished she could find a way to stop her heart from hurting so much.
‘Thank you.’ Swallowing hard to dislodge the lump in her throat, she got to her feet. ‘I’ll leave you to get changed. I’m going to make myself a coffee—would you like one?’
‘That would be great, thank you.’
She smiled and left the bedroom and kept smiling as she made the coffee, smiling so hard that eventually the tears sucked themselves dry and her cheeks ached miserably in their place.
It didn’t occur to her until she was standing under the shower an hour later that this was the first real conversation she and Massimo had had that hadn’t descended to insults and recriminations in over a year.
The cloudless sky had turned deep blue, the sun a deep orange shimmering on the horizon when Livia ventured out of the chalet in search of Massimo. She found him on the wrap-around veranda drinking a bottle of beer and looking at his phone, wearing a pair of old battered jeans and a crisp white shirt, a booted foot hooked casually on his thigh.
It was the first time she’d been at the rear of their chalet and she tried hard not to let sadness fill her as she recalled poring over the architect’s designs for it, imagining all the happy times she and Massimo would spend here. This chalet had been the only part of the complex Massimo had taken a real interest in. They’d chosen to build it high on the jutting mound of earth that, when the tide was low, could be walked to along a sandy pathway created by nature at its finest. This was supposed to be their own private hideaway in their private paradise. Their horseshoe swimming pool, garden and veranda were entirely hidden from prying eyes.
She hadn’t been able to bring herself to think about the sleeping arrangements that night. Their chalet only had one bed. It was a huge bed but, still, it was only the one bed. She supposed she could sleep on the sofa. Massimo’s long frame would never fit on it.
His eyes widened slightly when he looked up as she approached and he unhooked his foot and straightened.
The vain part of her bloomed to see his response. Although it was only a family meal they were going to have, she’d applied her make-up and done her hair with care. She’d been mortified to look in the mirror and see a huge smudge of mascara under her left eye.
But it wasn’t vanity that had propelled her to make an effort. It was armoury. When she looked her best it had the effect of boosting her morale and for all the unspoken truce they’d forged, her emotions were all over the place. She needed every piece of armour she could find to hold herself together.
Massimo turned his phone off and tried hard to temper the emotions crashing through him. Livia had dressed casually in a pair of tight white three-quarter-length trousers and a shimmering red strappy top that stopped at her midriff. On her feet were high, white strappy sandals that elongated her frame but did nothing to diminish her natural curves.
A lifetime ago he would have beckoned her over, put his hands on her hips and pulled her to him.
The instant awakening of his loins proved, as if it needed proving, that nothing had changed. He still wanted her with an ache he felt deep in his marrow.
Inhaling deeply through his nose, he willed the thudding of his heart to steady.
‘You’re ready?’ he asked.
She nodded.
He finished his beer and got to his feet.
In silence they walked the veranda to the front of the chalet and headed to the lodge. The tide had risen in the past two hours, the sandy path now mostly submerged beneath the powerful ocean and the colourful, tropical fish that swam in it. Its gentle rhythm was soothing.
His family had beaten them to the lodge and were all sitting around a set dining table chatting noisily. One of his grandfather’s carers sat discreetly in a far corner of the lodge reading a book.
The meal passed quickly. His grandfather was tired and, fed by Massimo’s mother, ate only his soup before retiring for the night. Madeline and Raul quickly followed, taking an increasingly fractious Elizabeth, who’d turned her nose up at all the offerings they’d tried to tempt her with. Considering it looked like mushed vomit, Massimo didn’t blame her for smacking the plastic spoon out of her mother’s hand. When his brother-in-law attempted to feed her, her little face turned bright red with fury. If Massimo had been offered that excuse for food, he’d have been tempted to screw his face up and bawl too.
He was about to rise and retire to the chalet to check in on work, when his father’s suggestion of a game of Scopa, the traditional Italian game played with an Italian forty-card deck, gave him pause.
His mother’s hopeful gaze made his ready refusal stick on his tongue before he could vocalise it.
He didn’t need to look at Livia to know she was beseeching him with her eyes to accept too. Her earlier insistence that his family wanted only to spend time with him kept ringing in his ears.
He stretched his mouth into the semblance of a smile. ‘Sure.’
The beaming grins made his chest tighten.
He signalled to the barman. Soon, a bottle of bourbon, a bucket of ice and four glasses had been taken to the outside table they now sat around. Massimo and his father formed a team and sat opposite each other, the ladies playing as the opposing team. Livia sat beside his father, his mother beside Massimo. He shuffled the cards, dealt them three each and four face up on the table. The first game of Scopa began.
What began as a sop to please his parents turned into a couple of hours’ mindless fun under the warm starry sky. His parents were the most laid-back, easy-going people on the planet but when it came to card games, they became ultra-competitive.
And Livia’s competitive streak came out too. His wife and mother were both determined to beat their spouses and were not above cheating to achieve this. When the women were two nil down, suddenly they both found it necessary to halt the game for frequent bathroom breaks.
Soon after this mysterious onset of bladder issues, he spotted his mother furtively pulling something out of her handbag, which, when she was challenged, turned out to be a king with a value of ten points. Rather than display any shame, his mother giggled. Livia though…her throaty cackle of laughter filled his ears and suddenly he was thrown back to his sister’s wedding and the first time he’d heard it.
It was a sound that speared him.
Firmly dragging his mind away from that fateful first meeting, he confiscated the card but then found he couldn’t stop his own burst of laughter when, barely a minute later, Livia stood to use the bathroom for the fourth time and two high-value cards slipped out of her top.
‘Shameless,’ he chided with a stern shake of his head.
‘All’s fair in love and war,’ she replied, a gleam in her eye he hadn’t seen for so long that suddenly he could fight the swelling emotions no more, body blows of longing and pain ravaging him.
He couldn’t tear his gaze from her.
In the beat of a moment her amusement vanished and her dark brown eyes were swirling with more emotion than there were stars in the sky.
Hardly single-digit seconds passed as their stares remained fixed on each other but those seconds contained so much weight he felt its compression on his chest. He knew with a bone-deep certainty that she was thinking about their first meeting too and that the memory lanced her as deeply as it did him.
Then Livia turned her gaze from him.
‘I really do need to use the bathroom,’ she murmured, reaching down to pick up the illicit cards and placing them on the table.
In the plush ladies’ room, Livia put her hands on the sink and dragged