The Italian's Rightful Bride - By Lucy Gordon Page 0,22

to succumb easily to the sweet, dangerous magic. If she was wise she would escape this place while she could. A few days away would help her get everything in perspective.

‘I think I’d like to go back to the house after all,’ she said, joining him. ‘I need a proper meal.’

‘Of course,’ he said politely. ‘Let me drive you.’

On the way she began talking about indifferent things, and by the time they reached the house she had almost persuaded herself that she’d imagined it.

Over the next few days she wavered about whether to go back to England for the wedding. She told herself that she was needed here, although she knew her expert team could manage without her for a week, as they had done many times before.

Gustavo began spending more and more time at the dig, watching details emerge, as intently as though his salvation depended on it. Which in some ways it did, Joanna realised. It hurt her to see the tension in him, and to know that his dearest hopes were unlikely to be realised. To her this place was rich with history, but it was unlikely to bring him the hard cash he needed.

‘It’s not really like you read in books, is it?’ he said to her one day. ‘You dig up a brooch and it’s worth a fortune.’

‘We aren’t likely to be finding things like that,’ she told him gently. ‘This is tiles and bricks.’

‘Dull stuff.’

‘To outsiders, yes.’

‘No ancient remains? No valuable coins?’

‘I’d find them for you if I could, but mostly it doesn’t work like that.’

‘I guess not. I’m sorry, Joanna. Take no notice of me. You have your job to do, and I’m not making it any easier.’

If she could only put her arms around him, and promise to find something that would make everything all right. The longing to do that swept over her with startling force, showing her the dangerous knife edge on which she was walking.

Abruptly she got up and walked away.

But almost at once there was a blinding flash.

‘Was that lightning?’ Hal asked, realising how sharply the temperature had dropped.

‘I think it was,’ Joanna said, her words almost drowned out by a crash of thunder.

‘We get violent summer storms sometimes,’ Gustavo said. ‘Best get out of here quickly.’

But it was already too late. The next moment the heavens opened and rain poured down in sheets, soaking everyone at once, turning the soft ground into mud. After the heat there was a certain pleasure in simply standing there, pounded by cool rain. Joanna looked up to the sky, raising her arms in almost ecstatic welcome.

People were trying to reach the edge of the dig and make for the refuge of the cars, but they slipped and slid around, clinging on to each other, laughing.

With their hair plastered to their heads nobody looked like themselves any more. Sodden clothes became transparent, revealing that some of the women were naked beneath their shirts. They clutched their arms across their chests while the young men competed to assist them.

‘Are you all right?’ Gustavo called to Joanna.

‘It’s in my eyes; I can’t see. Oh, heavens!’

She reached out and he took hold of her arm, shouting through the din, ‘Hold on to me.’

She clutched wildly and felt his arms go around her just as her foot gave way in the mud. Floundering, she seized him, but her hands slipped on his sodden shirt and she had to grasp hard.

She had the sensation of a hard, muscular body beneath her palms. It belonged to a stranger. The young Gustavo had kissed her with restraint and she’d forced herself to respond in kind, her arms demurely about his neck. She hadn’t dared yield to the impulse to run her hands over him, the way she seemed to be doing now.

It was a startling discovery, almost like touching him for the very first time. This was a man who concealed power beneath expensive clothes.

‘Are you all right?’ came his voice in her ear.

‘I think so,’ she said through the pounding water.

With one hand she was holding on to his arm, while her other was about his neck. And he was laughing. She could feel it along his arm, then her arms, and deep in his chest, pressed against hers. It seemed to go through her again and again, and she answered it with her own laughter, melting into his, so that there was no knowing where he ended and she began. And all the time she couldn’t see