she had blindly trusted and believed it would be exactly as he’d said it would be.
The lift came to a halt and jolted Vivien back to the present and the noise and bustle of the busy ground floor. On the street, she caught a glimpse of her own ghostly reflection in a shop window and a laugh that was no laugh at all was torn from her.
Typically, it had not even occurred to her to think about her own appearance. When she had left Lucca, she had decided that such frivolous considerations were no longer necessary. But now she was aghast at her pale, plain reflection and the deeply unsexy baggy silhouette of her linen top and skirt. She should have dressed up for Lucca’s benefit. Perhaps he would have listened then. An Italian to the backbone, from the skin out he exuded designer elegance.
Someone collided with her and cannoned away again. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ an angry woman demanded, pushing past with the toddler who had smeared his ice-cream cone across Vivien’s skirt.
‘Signora Saracino…?’
Vivien looked across the pavement in surprise. Lucca’s chauffeur, Roberto, was holding open the passenger door of a long, gleaming limousine parked by the kerb. People walking past were looking at her. Colouring, she wondered just how long she had been standing staring at herself in the window and if indeed she was behaving as oddly as she felt. The suspicion was sufficient to persuade her that accepting a lift was the lesser of two evils.
Our marriage is over, dead, buried so deep it will never see the light of day again.
For goodness’ sake, why couldn’t she get those words out of her head? A sense of deep humiliation drenched her. Bernice had been aghast when Vivien had announced that she needed to see Lucca. Now it was obvious that she should have taken heed of her worldlier sibling’s opinion. Lucca had been cold, derisive and hostile. He had not shown the smallest interest in anything she’d had to say but had been reasonably enthusiastic about encouraging her departure. He had accused her of embarrassing them both. Anyone would think she had burst through his office door shouting that she still loved him and wanted him back! As if… Mouth tight to stop it quivering, pained eyes burning, Vivien snatched in a jagged breath.
It was almost impossible to recall that little more than three years ago. Lucca had acted as though she were a glittering prize to be won. Back then, he had seemed far from indifferent and it had taken him weeks just to persuade her to give him a chance…
The first Vivien had known of Lucca’s earthly existence was when he’d pinched her reserved parking space while she’d been painstakingly lining up her car to reverse into it. Having read about people who died in road rage attacks, she’d fumed in silence while she’d searched the busy campus for another place to park. Walking past that stolen space, she’d glowered unimpressed at the opulent scarlet Ferrari, which had already gathered a clutch of youthful male admirers.
Her bad day had not improved. Before she’d even got her coat off, a colleague had informed her that a visiting VIP was using her office to make his phone calls.
‘So what am I supposed to do?’ Vivien groaned because she had work to do and wanted to get on with it. ‘Who is it?’
‘Lucca Saracino…probably the most influential businessman who ever graduated from this institution,’ the older man explained. ‘He is so rich that that Ferrari parked out there could be fuelled on liquid gold and he’s thinking about endowing the faculty with a new research facility. We’re lucky he wasn’t offered the whole building for his private use!’
‘Saracino…’ Vivien repeated, for the name was vaguely familiar. ‘I have a student called Serafina Saracino—’
‘His kid sister is here on a year’s exchange,’ her companion confirmed.
Vivien defrosted a little and waited outside her own office with greater patience. At the start of term, Serafina had been extremely homesick and had tearfully confided in Vivien, who had become fond of the younger woman.
‘Why?’ a male drawl queried with a definable foreign accent, making Vivien peer at the door of her office, which stood ajar. ‘There is no reason why, Elaine. We’ve had fun together but time moves on and so must I. I’m not into fidelity or the long-term factor.’
Vivien flinched. Some poor woman was getting dumped by an arrogant louse with a lump of concrete where his heart should be. She was about to move out of hearing distance when the head of her department, Professor Anstey, appeared with a very bored-looking blonde by his side. Three things then happened simultaneously. A very tall dark male emerged from Vivien’s office. Suddenly energised, the blonde surged forward to cling possessively to his arm and whisper in a breathy intimate undertone. At the same time, the professor stepped forward to introduce Vivien.
‘Dr Dillon…’ Lucca Saracino murmured after a perceptible pause, his accent very pronounced.
‘Mr Saracino…’ Vivien looked up into a face of such breathtaking male beauty that momentarily all thought was suspended. The long-lashed brilliance of his black eyes seemed to reach inside her and cut off her ability to breathe at source. For a shameful instant, she was unaware of anything but him.
But then his lovely lady friend literally stepped between them. Vivien recognised her own brief lapse in concentration with a shock of recoil that made her freeze. Lucca Saracino was a very rich and very arrogant womaniser, in every way the sort of male she avoided. He attempted to extend their dialogue but her eyes would no longer meet his and her responses were as discouraging as her stance. With a harried reference to the time, she escaped into her office.
Two days later, she was giving a lecture based on the textbook she had written on ferns while she was still a student and she almost succumbed to nervous panic when she saw Lucca Saracino in the back row. Afterwards, he was waiting with his sister Serafina to invite her out to lunch and Vivien tried to make a gracious refusal.
‘Please…’ the bubbly brunette pressed with determination. ‘Everybody knows how shy you are but Lucca only wants to thank you for letting me wail all over you when I was so unhappy.’
‘Untrue. I would like to enjoy the simple pleasure of your company, Dr Dillon,’ Lucca contradicted, stunning dark eyes making her mouth run dry and her tummy flip.
Reluctant to hurt his sister’s feelings, Vivien acquiesced. Over the meal, she barely touched her food while Lucca planted subtle personal questions that she did not have the conversational dexterity to avoid answering.
Afterwards, Serafina rushed off to a lecture and, when Vivien attempted to imitate that fast exit, Lucca said with a mixture of amusement and faint annoyance, ‘Why have you decided not to like me?’
‘Where on earth did you get that idea?’ Vivien protested, writhing in embarrassment at the depth of his insight.
Yet in truth she did not know what to say to him or even what she was feeling. There was no way she would have confessed to a living soul and least of all him that from the moment she first saw him she had not existed a minute without thinking of him in some way. He was a stranger and yet he was not. In that initial fleeting meeting some connection had been forged that she could not shake off.
He asked her out to dinner, the date to be of her choosing so that she could not fall back on the excuse of pleading a prior engagement. She was astonished by that expression of personal interest on his part because she had simply assumed that the wicked attraction he exuded for her was a one-sided thing.
‘I think you are very beautiful,’ Lucca informed her with the enjoyment of a male who could read her mind.
‘I’m not at all beautiful!’ Vivien argued, defiant in her conviction that she was being fed a nonsensical line. Assuring him quite truthfully that she didn’t date and less truthfully that there was nothing personal in her lack of interest, she fled.
Every day after that, for two entire weeks, he sent her the most beautiful flowers, wonderful imaginative offerings that went far beyond standard bouquets. On the third weekend, Lucca arrived at her small apartment with dinner in a picnic basket.