CHAPTER TWO

      ‘SO WHAT sort of impression did Lucas make on you?’ Karen demanded, minutes later.

      ‘It’s not Lucas, it’s Luca... My impression?’ Darcy studied her friend with a frowning air of abstraction. ‘That’s the odd thing. I didn’t really get a proper impression—at least not one I could hang onto for longer than five seconds,’ she found herself admitting in belated recognition of the fact. ‘One minute I thought he was all brawn and no brain, and then the next he would come out with something razor-sharp. And towards the end he was as informative as a brick wall.’

      ‘He didn’t accuse you of dragging him down here on false pretences? He didn’t laugh like a drain? Or even ask if you were pulling his leg?’ It was Karen’s turn to look confused.

      Darcy shook her head reflectively. ‘He was very low-key in his reactions, businesslike in spite of the way he was dressed. That made it easier for me. I didn’t get half as embarrassed as I thought I would.’

      ‘Only you could conduct such a weird and loaded interview with a male that gorgeous and not respond on any more personal a level.’

      ‘That kind of man leaves me cold.’ But Darcy’s cheeks warmed as she recalled that humiliating moment when she had reacted all too personally to the sheer male magnetism of those dark good looks.

      Karen’s keen gaze gleamed. ‘He didn’t leave you stone-cold... did he?’

      Cursing her betrayingly fair skin, Darcy strove to continue meeting her friend’s eyes levelly. ‘Karen—’

      ‘Forget it... I can tell a mile off when you’re about to lie through your teeth!’

      Darcy winced. ‘OK...I noticed that Luca was reasonably fanciable—’

      ‘Reasonably fanciable?’ her friend carolled with extravagant incredulity.

      ‘All right.’ Darcy sighed in rueful surrender. ‘He was spectacular...are you satisfied now?’

      ‘Yes. Your indifference to men seriously worries me. Now at least I know that you’re still in the land of the living.’

      Darcy pulled a wry face. ‘With my level of looks and appeal, indifference is by far the safest bet, believe me.’

      Karen compressed her lips and thought with real loathing of all the people responsible for ensuring Darcy had such a low opinion of her own attractions. Her cold and critical father, her vain and sarcastic stepmother, not to mention the rejections her unlucky friend had suffered from the opposite sex during her awkward and vulnerable teen years. Being jilted at the altar and left to raise her child alone had completed the damage.

      And these days Darcy dressed like a scarecrow and made little effort to socialise. Slowly and surely she was turning into a recluse, although the hours she slaved over that wretched house meant that she didn’t know what free time was, Karen conceded grimly. Anyone else confronted with such an immense and thankless challenge would’ve given up and at least sold the furniture by now, but not Darcy. Darcy would starve sooner than see any more of the Folly’s treasures go to auction.

      ‘I get really annoyed with you when you talk like that,’ Karen said truthfully. ‘If you would only buy some decent clothes and take a little more interest in—’

      ‘Why bother when I’m quite happy as I am?’ Visibly agitated by the turn the conversation had taken, Darcy glanced hurriedly at her watch and added with a relief she couldn’t hide, ‘It’s time I picked up Zia from the play-group.’

      As Darcy left the gate lodge, however, that final dialogue travelled with her. Demeaning memories had been roused to fill her thoughts and unsettle her stomach. All over again she saw her one-time fiancé, Richard, gawping at her chief bridesmaid like a moonsick calf and finally admitting at the eleventh hour that he couldn’t go through with the wedding because he had fallen in love with Maxie. And the ultimate insult had to be that her former friend, Maxie, who was so beautiful she could stop traffic, hadn’t even wanted Richard!

      That devastatingly public rejection had been followed by the Venetian episode, Darcy recalled wretchedly. That, too, had ended in severe humiliation. She had got to play Cinderella for a night. And then she had got to stand on the Ponte della Guerra and be stood up like a dumb teenager the following day. She had waited for ages too, and had hit complete rock-bottom when she finally appreciated that Prince Charming was not going to turn up.

      Of course another woman, a more experienced and less credulous woman, would have known that that so casually voiced yet so romantic suggestion had been the equivalent of a guy saying he would phone you when he hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so, only she hadn’t recognised the reality. No, Darcy reflected with a stark shudder of remembrance, she had been much happier since she had given up on all that ghastly embarrassing and confusing man-woman stuff.

      And if Luca, whoever he was, decided to go ahead and accept her proposition, she would soon be able to tune him and his macho motorbike leathers out entirely...

      Perspiration beading her brow, Darcy wielded the heavy power-saw with the driven energy of necessity. The ancient kitchen range had an insatiable appetite for wood. Breathing heavily, she stopped to take a break. Even after switching off the saw, her ears still rang with the shattering roar of the petrol-driven motor. With a weary sigh, she bent and began laboriously stacking the logs into the waiting wheelbarrow.

      ‘Darcy...?’

      At the sound of that purring, accented drawl, Darcy almost leapt out of her skin, and she jerked round with a muttered exclamation. Luca stood several feet away. Her startled green eyes