a man who could lay down roots and be there for her. One who didn’t immerse himself in his work for a limited time and then pack bags and leave without looking back. Not like him. ‘But not the father of your Annie?’
She shrugged. ‘His family were wealthy. Too good for me. Once the scandal broke he was packed off. We never saw him again.’
He could not comprehend this. ‘Never?’ Then no doubt she was too good for him. Bastardo. ‘He has never seen his daughter?’
‘Never.’ She broke her bread roll, picked up her knife and stabbed the butter. He flinched. She looked up and grinned at his expression.
‘I got over his lack of interest years ago. Though for Annie’s sake I’d have liked him to have made some contact. His parents send money every year on her birthday and I put it in trust. When she’s twenty-one she can do what she likes with it.’
She spread her butter and took a bite with her tiny white teeth just as the entrée arrived. He thought with amusement it was good she’d put the knife down or the sailor could have been frightened.
‘Ooh. Calamari. I love calamari. What’s the Italian word for calamari?’ She made short work of her few pieces and he held back his smile. He liked a woman who didn’t play with her food.
‘I’m sorry.’ He grinned. ‘The same. Calamari.’ He glanced down at his tiny fillets of fish on the bed of lettuce. ‘But the word for fish is pesce.’
‘Pesce,’ she repeated. ‘It almost sounds like fishee.’ She grinned and watched him put the last one in his mouth and he was very conscious of the direction of her eyes. ‘Your English is very good. Much better than my Italian.’
He swallowed the delicious fillet in his mouth without tasting it, his appetite elsewhere. ‘I have spent a lot of time out of Italy.’ He changed the subject back to her. ‘So you went into nursing after your Annie was born?’
She patted her coral lips with her napkin and his attention, again, was caught. It took him a moment to catch up when she spoke. ‘Annie was in Neonatal Intensive Care. She was four weeks early. A prem that took a long time to feed.’
She glanced up at him. ‘I never missed a feed in the three weeks she was there and I fell in love with the midwives. With the special-care nursery. With tiny babies. I’d found what I wanted to do. And Gran, not my parents, supported me.’
He could see her. A vigilant young teen mum with her tiny baby. Turning up, night and day, to be there for her daughter. Incredible. The more he found out, the more she intrigued him.
‘Enough about me.’ So Emily didn’t want to think of the early years. Perhaps what she’d missed out on in her younger days.
She glanced around the ship. ‘They must have engines as well because I don’t think they have enough sail on to make it move this fast. Can we walk around? Check out the other side of the ship?’ She glanced towards the thick mast. ‘Touch things?’
She could touch him. ‘You wish to touch something?’ She picked up on his double meaning and flicked him a warning glance. He was glad the knife was on her plate. She amused him.
‘Si. Of course.’ He stood and helped pull out her chair. Then he crooked his arm and to his delight she slid her hand through and he savoured the feel of her fingers against his skin.
They strolled the deck and the magic of the night fell over them like the soft wrap she wore around her shoulders.
The lights of the harbour twinkled and shone across the water, ferries and paddle-wheel dinner cruisers floated past, and occasionally the sound of a band floated across from a party barge filled with revellers.
This was so much better, to have Emily quietly beside him. Few couples were walking, and the awareness between them grew with the unexpected privacy a bulkhead or a thick mast could provide.
Always the Sydney Harbour Bridge dominated the skyline, they passed under it, the soaring iron structure a thing of great beauty lit like a golden arch, and it receded and became even more magical with distance.
He wished he could hold onto this moment so that he could pack it away in his suitcase when he left here. Perhaps to remove and examine one lonely night in a hotel room on the other side of the world. Stupido.
This would all be over too quickly.
TWO hours later Emily held his hand as they stepped off the gangplank of the tall ship and sighed as she stepped back onto terra firma. ‘A wonderful dinner. Thank you.’
‘The night does not have to be over yet.’ He squeezed her fingers.
They watched a ferry come in and there was something vibrant about the noisy reverse of the engines that churned up the water and the delayed slap of heavier waves on the pier as the deckhand jumped off and secured the vessel to a wharfside cleat.
‘That’s my ferry,’ Emily pointed. ‘It docks two minutes from my door and goes on to Luna Park jetty. You could have taken the ferry and walked up the hill to your apartment.’
He glanced across the water as other ferries did their business. ‘Would you like to take it now? I can return for my car tomorrow. It is safe. We could have more time on the water. Perhaps stroll around your Luna Park, eat an ice cream?’
‘Or fairy floss?’
He squeezed her hand. ‘Fairy floss?’
‘Pink balls of spun sugar. A dreadfully evil sweet.’
A wicked look. ‘Dreadfully evil is good.’
It would be silly to leave his car in the car park. Mad to jump on a ferry just because of a whim and walk around an amusement park at nine at night. She so wanted to do that.
She gave in to the child within. ‘Let’s.’
So they did. She explained how the vending machines spat out the ferry tickets, dragged him up to the front of the boat so they could get blown to pieces on the deserted bow, and they lifted their faces to the spray. ‘This is much faster than our sailing boat.’
She looked back at their beautiful three-masted vessel. ‘Not quite as romantic.’
His arm slipped around her shoulders and he turned her to face him. ‘We could change that?’
She stood on tiptoe as he bent. Met his smiling mouth with hers with a light-hearted press of lips that never intended to be anything else—except for that second farewell light press that deepened just a touch and invited a third quick kiss, which deepened just a little more …
What magic was this? What spell had she cast? Lust slammed into him like their ferry had hit a solid wave and it was Marco who stepped back. If he didn’t stop he’d have crushed Emily into him and who knew what might have happened?
Always he had control, was the master of his own desires, but this Emily’s sweet innocence gripped him with more power than the most experienced woman and forced him to pull back while he still could.
He wrapped her in his arms and stared over her head at the lights on the edge of the harbour. What was he doing?
He would leave in three weeks. Began to realise she might not know the rules by which he played and did not need the complication he offered. A darker voice within disagreed. Perhaps she did?
Emily snuggled into the warmth of solid muscle. Lo-o-ovely kisses. Mmmmmm. Shame he’d stopped but that was good. She needed to be sensible. She could remember her mother’s cold voice very clearly even after all these years. ‘Your father and I don’t deserve this shame. You’re a tramp!’ Though how one fumbled night and a broken condom made her a tramp she didn’t know. And Gran had shooshed her and said it wasn’t true.
Well,