A Moment on the Lips - By Kate Hardy Page 0,50

people would see it as frittering my money away. So I might buy myself flowers, or some music, or some luxury chocolate.’ She smiled. ‘Or I’d save it all up for ages and ages and blow the lot on a piece like that one.’

‘It looks almost like a slice of a rainbow,’ he mused, ‘except there aren’t quite enough colours.’

‘The blue and purple bands are sky—a midnight sky, I’d say—the green band in the middle’s the sea, and the orange and red bands are the beach,’ she explained. ‘Look at the way they blend into each other. It’s gorgeous.’

To him, it was simply five bands of colour; but he liked the effect it had on her, the way it had made her face glow. Now she’d explained it to him, he could see what she meant. Though it still wasn’t something he’d choose to hang on his wall.

‘Come on, let’s go and get a coffee,’ she said.

They stopped at a café where they could watch the fountain splashing in the centre and children playing on the grass in the autumn sunshine. ‘Did you know that loads of cavaliers duelled here?’ she asked.

‘I can imagine it,’ he said. ‘Is this where you’d settle if you lived in Paris?’

‘I’d love to,’ she admitted. Then she grinned. ‘Just think, we could take over a whole corner of the square between us. A branch of Dante’s, a branch of Tonielli’s, and an art gallery sandwiched between them.’ She laughed. ‘But there’s a slight problem. We’d have to sell everything we owned between us, and we still wouldn’t be able to afford three shops here, let alone a flat.’

‘A branch of Dante’s.’ He gave her a thoughtful look.

‘No, no, I was kidding—’ she held both hands up in a gesture of surrender ‘—and this isn’t a business trip.’ She finished her coffee and wrinkled her nose. ‘Sorry, I need the ladies’. I won’t be a minute.’

‘No problem.’

Did he have enough time to go back to the gallery where she’d fallen in love with that painting? he wondered. Even assuming that there were the usual queues for the ladies’ toilets, he probably didn’t. But there was another way to get what he wanted. He whipped out his mobile phone, flicked into the Internet, found the gallery’s website, and rang them. It didn’t take long to close the deal. The painting would be wrapped securely and sent by international express delivery to Naples, and it would be there at his office on Friday morning.

Perfect.

He was just putting his phone away when Carenza walked back over to him.

‘I saw that. You were making a business call, weren’t you?’ she accused.

He had no intention of telling her what he’d really been doing. The whole point was for it to be a surprise. And it was sort of a business call. ‘Busted,’ he said lightly.

‘You’re impossible.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I guess we’d better be heading back. It’ll take us a good half an hour to get from here to the Champs Elysées, and the taxi’s booked to take us to the airport in an hour.’

To Carenza’s relief, everything ran smoothly on the way back. They collected their luggage from the hotel, and the taxi got them back to the airport in more than enough time to check in.

Dante held her close. ‘Thank you. These past couple of days have been really special.’

He held her hand all the way back to Naples, and she found herself hoping that those whispered words hadn’t been her imagination or wishful thinking. A man like Dante, so used to keeping himself aloof from people, would find it hard to say those words. So he’d say them when he thought she was asleep, wouldn’t he?

Maybe she was hoping for too much, but the way his fingers were laced through hers gave her confidence. He cared. He just wasn’t used to saying it. With her help, he’d learn.

From the airport, they took a taxi back to her flat. Dante insisted on seeing her to the door.

‘Stay here tonight?’ she asked.

Though she could see in his face that he was remembering last night, how they’d made love in the middle of the night. Riskily. Without a condom. For a man so in control as Dante, that was a nightmare. And she knew even before he spoke what his answer would be.

‘Best not,’ he said gently, ‘but thank you. You made it the most memorable birthday of my life.’

And I could make every day like that for