‘No, they’re still holding on to each other-coming lower-lower-I can see them clearly now-they’re going to have to open up any minute-aren’t they?’

The hair-raising possibility of a last-minute disaster was there in his voice, and in the gasps from the crowd that turned to cheers as the men released each other and two parachutes opened, letting them glide gracefully earthwards.

‘They’ve landed,’ Francesco said. ‘They’re both safe.’

‘Wonderful!’ Celia rejoiced. ‘Now we’ve really got something spectacular to offer.’

Francesco pulled himself together. There would be time for his misgivings later. Just now he would concentrate on saying and doing the right things to get the business over with quickly. So he assumed a bright smile and prepared to say something suitable. But before he could do so Celia was surrounded by journalists, all hurling questions at her. She replied eagerly, leaving Francesco and Jacko to retire discreetly into the background.

‘That’s put us in our place,’ he commiserated with the dog. ‘We’re definitely not needed just now.’ He scratched the silky head. ‘I guess we both know how that feels.’

A soft grunt was his answer.

‘I wonder what your folks were like,’ he mused. ‘I guess you loved them, and then they said, “Get out!” And that was that. You’re coping somehow but-’

He stopped himself in alarm.

‘Listen to me, talking to you as if you understood. But maybe you do. She thinks so. I expect she talks to you, doesn’t she? She used to talk to Wicksy a lot. I wonder what she says about me.’

But he was only trying to distract his own attention from what had happened inside his head. As often before, the words, Get out! had acted like a malign spell, causing the universe to spin with terrifying speed before settling down into a bleak place.

‘What the devil’s the matter with me?’ he muttered. ‘Why does it happen? Why?’

They weren’t the only words Celia had hurled at him, nor the cruelest. So why? He asked himself that again and again, but there was no answer. If he could have discovered one, he felt he might have begun to find his way out of the maze.

‘Francesco?’ It was Celia’s voice, calling him back from a trance, and her hand shaking his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, of course. Where shall I take you now? Are you having dinner with your new contacts? With Sandro?’

‘No, we’ve set up meetings for next week. Let’s go home.’

There was a shout. Sandro was approaching, hailing them.

‘What a day! So many new opportunities. Not just jumping from planes, but from balloons.’

‘That’ll really be something to try!’ Celia exclaimed. ‘Just wait until we get talking next week.’

‘Fine, I’ll see you then,’ Sandro said, using the word see in the casual fashion that always startled Francesco. ‘Goodbye, cara.’

He put an arm around Celia’s shoulder, drew her close and gave her a hearty kiss. She kissed him back. To Francesco it seemed an age before they could get away, and even then she had to dash back to Sandro to say something she’d forgotten. But at last they were in the car on the way home.

‘Let’s do some shopping and I’ll cook you supper.’

The next hour was pure pleasure. This was how they’d been at their happiest-planning meals, shopping together. She would let him choose the vegetables, and sometimes the meat, although she really preferred her own judgement for meat.

‘You were always a good cook,’ he recalled as they worked out the menu, walking around the grocer’s. ‘You made a list of all my favourite dishes and practised until you could do them perfectly.’

‘But some of the Italian ones I’d never heard of,’ she remembered.

‘And you wanted me to show you how to make them. As though I knew a potato from a bean! My expertise stopped at eating them.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Do you remember how shocked you were?’

‘Yes, I thought all Italian men were great cooks.’

‘I’m part English,’ he reminded her defensively. ‘That’s the part of me that’s useless. And you actually went out and took a course in Italian cookery-’

‘What is it?’ she asked, for he had fallen silent abruptly.

‘Nothing. I just suddenly remembered how determined you are. That cooking school said you were their best pupil.’

‘When I want something I stop at nothing,’ she said lightly. ‘Ruthless and unprincipled, that’s me.’

‘I guess. Only it didn’t feel like ruthless and unprincipled. It felt like being spoiled rotten. I loved it.’

‘So did I,’ she said softly.

‘Only…’ he hesitated, then said, ‘Only I wanted to look after you, too.’

‘I know.’

‘I can’t just sit there with my feet up, being waited on by the little woman.’

‘Not unless you want the little woman to thump you over the head with a saucepan,’ she chuckled.

‘As you say. Sometimes I wanted you to put your feet up.’

‘Only sometimes?’

‘Just sometimes,’ he said hastily. ‘I’m enough of a chauvinist porker for that.’

This time they laughed together, and reached the checkout in perfect accord.

The goodwill lasted as they returned to her home and unpacked in her kitchen. In an ecstasy of helpfulness he volunteered to take Jacko out for the necessary walk.

‘Don’t worry,’ he assured his canine friend. ‘I used to do this for Wicksy. I know the drill.’

Celia was just getting ready to serve the first course when her menfolk returned.

‘The first course is cold,’ she said, ‘So that’s all right, but I wanted to wait until you were here before I put the light under the pans.’

‘Why? Is there something you want me to do?’ he asked, missing the note in her voice that would have warned him she was about to make some outrageous joke.

‘Just keep an eye on the lighted gas,’ she informed him solemnly. ‘Because-’ she moved closer and lowered her voice melodramatically ‘-I can’t see. I thought you knew that.’

For a moment her innocent manner almost fooled him, then he gave a gasp of shock.

‘Celia, you little wretch!’ he exploded. ‘When will you stop doing that?’

‘Never,’ she cried, rejoicing as his hands clasped her shoulders and gave them a little shake. ‘If anyone else said it, it would be vulgar and insensitive, but I can say what I like. Oh, darling, your face!’

‘You don’t know what my face looks like.’

‘Oh, yes, I do,’ she crowed. ‘I know exactly what it looks like. You’re thinking, How can she say a thing like that?’

‘That’s putting it very mildly. Oh, you-’

His grip tightened, pulling her against him, and the next moment she felt what she had been scheming for the last few minutes-his mouth on hers, urgent and frustrated, just as she wanted it. His whole body was shaking with the desire he’d been controlling, and she rejoiced in the sensation of having him in her hands, in her arms, almost under her control.

‘You,’ he muttered, between raining fierce kisses on her face. ‘You-you-’

‘What about me?’ she asked, kissing and laughing together.

‘Just that you’re-Come here!’

This time there was no way she could talk against the caressing pressure of his mouth. For too long she’d lived without the fulfilment that only he could give her, and now her body clamoured for him as achingly as her heart had done for months.

Two nights ago they had come so close to finding each other again, but Sandro’s call had interrupted them. Now nothing would get in the way. Just before leaving the airfield she’d warned Sandro not to call her tonight, just as she’d previously warned-or perhaps promised-Francesco, she was ruthless and unprincipled in getting what she wanted.

He was hers, and the time had come to make that clear. Her determination infused every movement of her swift fingers, finding buttons to undo, pulling his shirt out of his trousers, caressing his skin, inciting him with every skilful movement at her command while keeping her mouth against his and her tongue teasing him wickedly.

‘Celia,’ he gasped, ‘do you know what you’re doing?’

‘I do-Do you?’ she managed to gasp.

‘It’s too late to change your mind.’

‘Who’s changing her mind?’

That was it. Now nothing could have stopped him. Scooping her up with more vigour than gallantry, he strode into her room and collapsed onto the bed with her in his arms. Undressing each other was difficult while they were so intricately entangled, but they managed somehow, working through the layers, getting in each other’s way, laughing exultantly, getting it wrong, getting it right, trying to control the mounting pleasure long enough to reach their goal, and finally reaching it with long sighs of satisfaction.

‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured, half out of her mind with what she had wanted for so long and so hopelessly.

The feel of having him inside her again was so good that she wondered how she’d survived so long without it. She moved strongly against him, seeking to repeat the first, unrepeatable sensation. She wanted to touch him all over at the same time-his arms, his neck, his wide shoulders and muscular torso. Then she wanted to slide her hands down the length of him to the narrow hips and long muscular thighs. In their frenzy of action all she could manage was to wrap her own thighs around him, enclosing him, drawing him deep into her body as she wanted him deep in her heart.

They climaxed together almost at once, and continued without a pause, their desire barely touched, far from slaked. Other lovings had taught them that they could inspire each other for a long time before they were satisfied. But there had never been a loving like this.

As he lay over her afterwards, looking down into her face, Celia had one of her rare moments of wishing for sight. She longed to see his face and find in it the tenderness she’d felt in his touch. But then he kissed her gently, and she knew that she had all she needed. He moved off her while still holding her in his arms, so that she was pulled over against him, heart to heart.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked softly, as he had always done before.

Her answer was the same as then, a little sound of blissful content, for there were some emotions that no words could express. He responded by holding her closer and burying his face in her hair.

‘I was afraid I’d lost you for good,’ he said.

‘You couldn’t lose me,’ she murmured against his skin.

She went on whispering incoherent words, wondering how it was possible to be so happy.

Somewhere above her head he gave a brief laugh.

‘What is it?’ she asked at once.

‘I was remembering our first night together. I’d been trying to imagine what you wore underneath, and I’d decided it must be something practical, because you were so fiercely efficient.’

‘But it wasn’t practical at all, was it?’

‘No way. A satin thong that practically didn’t exist, and a satin and lace bra, all in brilliant scarlet.’

‘Did you disapprove?’

‘No, I loved it. I knew then that I’d underestimated you.’

‘You always did.’

‘And you’re wearing them again today.’

‘You mean, I was wearing them, don’t you?’ she teased.

‘Yes, I guess I do.’

She smiled to herself. She’d never told him that she’d bought the sexy underwear after their first evening together, when she’d spent that lonely week, longing for him to return, determined to be ready for anything if he did. And when she’d set out for Naples, determined to reclaim him, it was the first thing she’d packed.

For the moment she’d triumphed. Whatever their problems were they had faded to nothing. Perhaps she would remember them one day. Or perhaps not. It hardly seemed to matter.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘DO YOU know what we need now?’ Francesco asked sleepily.

‘What?’

‘Champagne. I don’t suppose you keep any?’

‘I might just have some,’ she said, carefully casual.

In fact, she’d laid in a store of that, too, but there was no need for him to know that.

They rose from the bed and stood for a moment leaning against each other, like two people who’d come to the end of a long and exhausting race and needed time to recover before enjoying the prize.

Afterwards she donned a satin robe, while he pulled on his trousers and followed her into the kitchen where she produced the champagne and two glasses. He poured them both a glass, and they clinked.

‘I’ve just discovered I’m tired,’ he said.

‘That’s a pity, because I’ve got plans for you later.’

‘Have mercy, woman.’

‘Slacker,’ she jeered.

‘Not at all. But let’s stretch out on the sofa first.’