The Riccioni Pregnancy. Daphne Clair
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UNCONSCIOUSLY Roxane’s lips curved in a wistful, reminiscent smile.
He’d had no need to prove his sexual orientation to her. It had been blatantly obvious from the first time she’d looked into his eyes. Despite her inexperience Roxane had recognised with a small starburst of excitement the quickly controlled but unmistakable flame of sexual desire. A flame that had ultimately consumed her, leaving behind the ashes of a marriage and a troublesome, glowing ember of reciprocal hunger.
An ember, she admitted with inward dismay, that removing herself from his dangerously flammable orbit, settling in another country, rebuilding her life without him, had failed to destroy. The sound of his voice, his breath warming her temple, the touch of his lips on the vulnerable skin of her wrist, had been enough to bring it flaring back to instant life.
‘You had a bottle of Te Awa Farm Boundary in that cabinet in the other room,’ Zito said, lowering a handful of spaghetti into a pot.
Roxane mentally shook herself, irrationally glad that she needn’t be ashamed of her choice of that increasingly less rare commodity, a good New Zealand red. Zito had taught her to recognise decent wines. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘No, stay there.’ His hand pressed her back into the chair as he passed her on his way to the door.
But she got up all the same, needing to do something to banish the bittersweet memories. By the time Zito came back carrying an already opened bottle and two glasses, she had spread a cotton cloth on the table and set two places. And was standing staring at them, thinking, Why am I doing this? If I had any guts I’d have shown him the door and told him not to come back.
He poured wine into glasses, handing one to Roxane. ‘Sit.’
She sat.
Habit, she told herself, watching a knife flash through an onion. During their marriage she’d become accustomed to letting him tell her what to do, and it had taken her less than sixty minutes to slip back into the mould he’d shaped for her.
Zito picked up a tomato and cut easily through the shiny red skin. Always buy good knives. That was something else he’d taught her. On moving into the cottage she’d treated herself to the best German stainless steel, although she could ill afford it.
Subconsciously she had still been under the spell he’d woven about her.
This mood of stunned acquiescence was due to shock. When they’d eaten she would assert herself, thank him politely and then tell him to go.
She shifted her gaze from his lean, strong fingers pinching tips of fragrant thyme from the collection of herbs on the window ledge, and reached for the luminous ruby wine, letting it slide down her throat like liquid satin.
Zito poured wine from the bottle into the concoction he was stirring on the cooker, intensifying the tantalising aroma that was making Roxane’s taste buds come alive.
Soon he set before her a plate of spaghetti coils dressed with butter and herbs, topped by a mouth-watering garlic-scented sauce and garnished with fresh basil.
Then he sat opposite her, lifting his wineglass in a silent toast before picking up a fork and expertly winding spaghetti around the tines.
Instead of eating it he offered it to her, leaning across the small table, and automatically Roxane opened her lips and accepted the delicious mouthful.
Nobody cooked spaghetti sauce like Zito. Involuntarily she closed her eyes to better appreciate the taste. This too was a remembered ritual, and behind her tightly shut lids tears pricked.
She swallowed, licked a residue of sauce from her lower lip, then dared to open her eyes, hoping Zito would be concentrating on his meal.
He was smiling at her, his gaze alert and quizzical and a deliberate sexual challenge as it moved from her mouth to her eyes.
‘It’s…’ Roxane cleared her throat. ‘It’s great, as always.’
He never made exactly the same sauce twice, varying the ingredients and the amounts according to his mood and what was available—or according to his assessment of her mood of the moment. But each variation was a masterpiece, and tonight’s was no exception.
‘Good.’ As if he’d needed her seal of approval, he applied himself to his plate. ‘It would have been better if I’d made the spaghetti myself, but this is not bad.’
‘It’s made on the premises I buy it from.’ He’d spoiled her for the ordinary supermarket kind.
Roxane had never mastered the tricky business of twirling spaghetti round a fork without some strands trailing all the way back to the plate, or having the whole lot perversely slide off just as she lifted it to her mouth.
Zito let his fork rest several times as he watched her efforts, a quirk of amusement on his mouth.
‘Don’t laugh,’ she said finally, exasperated. ‘You know I’m no good at this.’
He did laugh then, openly. ‘Look—like this.’ His hand came over hers, his fingers manipulating the fork, lifting it to her mouth with every strand neatly rolled.
She pulled her hand from his as she swallowed the proffered morsel. Dozens of times he’d tried to teach her, yet she’d failed to learn, maintaining it was in his genes, that he’d been born with a silver spaghetti fork in his mouth.
‘I’m out of practice.’ And with him critically studying her technique, she was clumsier than usual. ‘I hardly ever eat pasta now.’ What they were having was left over from a recent dinner she’d made for a couple of friends.
‘No wonder you’ve got thinner.’ His penetrating glance at her figure disapproved.
‘I’m not thin!’
‘Thinner, I said,’ he corrected. ‘You’re as lovely as ever—’
‘Thank you.’ Her voice was brittle.
‘—but you’ve lost weight.’
‘I’m getting more exercise than I used to. It’s healthy.’ She’d begun walking to work to save the bus fare when she’d been living in rental accommodation and her casual job wasn’t paying much. But she’d enjoyed the early morning exercise, except when Auckland’s fickle weather turned nasty. Her present job being largely desk-bound, walking to the office was a good way of keeping fit. ‘Do you still play squash?’
‘Yes.’
At one time he’d been a state champion; trophies lined the bookcase in his study where he sometimes worked at home. But after he turned twenty-five the business had gradually absorbed more of his energies. His grandfather had retired and his father had been anxious to groom the heir to take his place in the family firm.
‘How is your family?’ Roxane inquired.
‘Do you care?’
There it was again, that flash of acrimony like a searing flame darting through the steely armour of politeness.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said steadily. ‘I like your parents, and I miss your sisters, they were fun and very good to me. And your grandfather is a darling.’
‘But not his grandson.’
Roxane stopped trying to persuade a stubborn strand of spaghetti onto her fork and looked up. ‘I told you, Zito, it wasn’t—’
His closed fist thumped on the table, making the glasses jump, the wine shiver and sparkle in the light from overhead. ‘You told me nothing! Nothing that made any sense!’
Roxane had jumped too, and she felt her face go taut and wary.
He said immediately, wearily, ‘I didn’t intend to scare you again. This can wait.’
Zito had never believed in mixing food and argument, maintaining it spoiled both of them, that each deserved to be enjoyed in its own way. Nine times out of ten, he