Melanie Milburne - The Scandalous Sabbatinis

Luca straightened his tie and shook down his shirt cuffs, freeing them of his dinner jacket. He had had meetings all day and his head was buzzing with all the things he had to do over the next month. This trip to Melbourne was proving to be one of the best decisions of his career in the family corporation. He had begun the negotiation for plans for a boutique hotel development in the city as well as two more commercial property investments: a large office block in the CBD and a parking lot with the potential for expansion.

And then there was Bronte. He had found it hard to sleep last night once she had left. He still couldn’t believe he had let her leave. He had been so close to pulling her back towards his bed and solving the issues over the past by doing what they had always done best. The trouble was he wanted her to come to him willingly. Seduction was easy; working on a relationship was harder. He didn’t want to end up like his brother Giorgio with a bitter estrangement from his wife and very likely a costly and acrimonious divorce pending. Luca wanted to get it right this time. He wanted to start again, put the past aside and work on his future—the future he hadn’t been sure he would have. Life for him now was about living. Taking each day as a blessing and moving forward with renewed purpose. Bronte was his stumbling block to moving on. He had to know if he had a chance to make things right with her. To see if what they’d had was still there.

The issue of her child was something he found challenging but it wasn’t the child’s fault and he knew he would learn to love her as his own once he spent some time with her. His family might not see it quite that way but he would deal with them if and when the time came. The pressure for the acquisition of a Sabbatini heir had already caused the breakdown of his brother’s marriage. Giorgio and Maya, in spite of several gruelling IVF attempts, had failed to produce the grandchild and great-grandchild his mother and rapidly ageing grandfather longed for.

There was a tentative knock at the door and Luca gave his hair one last finger-comb before he went to answer it. He had wanted to pick Bronte up but she had insisted on meeting him here. The restaurant was only a short walk along the Southbank complex so he had agreed, knowing that pressuring her too much would only bring her back up. It wasn’t his intention to antagonise her. His intention was to get her back into his life and into his bed as quickly as possible, to reawaken the feelings he hoped she still had for him. It was a gamble but he couldn’t rest until he knew for sure. He saw the way her eyes flared when they met his, and the way she sent the tip of her tongue out over her lips as if anticipating his next kiss. He felt the tension in the air, the way the invisible current of energy drew them together, as it had always done in the past. She might have slept with another man since, but he felt sure she still wanted him.

He opened the door and she was standing there in a cocktail dress of an intriguing shade of blue. The colour made the dark blue of her eyes look like fathomless lakes. She smelt divine: a mixture of orange blossom and ginger this time, spicy and fragrant and intensely alluring. Her straight dark brown hair was loose about her shoulders, glossy as silk, held back from her face with a slim black headband. Teamed with the cocktail dress, it gave her a child-woman look that was amazingly sexy. She was wearing heels but she still had to crane her neck to meet his eyes. Her mouth was soft and shiny with lipgloss, but in those first few moments he noticed how her teeth nibbled at the inside of her mouth, as if she was nervous.

‘Bronte,’ he said, leading her into the suite. ‘How do you manage to always look so beautiful and elegant?’

She gave him a tentative smile but it was so fleeting he wondered if he had imagined it. ‘I picked this up at a second-hand clothing store. At ten dollars it was a steal. I don’t have too many fancy clothes.’

Luca wondered if she was deliberately reminding him of the different worlds they lived in. He had always found it amazing how money had never impressed her. She found pleasure in the simplest things. He had learned a lot from the short time he had been with her. He had learned that money could bring comfort to your life and privileges but it didn’t necessarily bring happiness and fulfilment and it certainly didn’t guarantee good health.

He led the way to the lounge area and, once she was seated, he handed her a gift-wrapped package.

She looked up at him with rounded eyes. ‘What is this for?’

‘Open it,’ he said. ‘I thought after last night it might come in useful.’

She unpeeled the satin ribbon tied around the package and then carefully peeled back the layers of tissue to reveal the designer clutch purse he had bought in between meetings earlier that day. He watched as she ran her index finger over the designer emblem, before lifting her gaze to his. ‘It’s beautiful… thank you… but you shouldn’t have spent so much money.’

‘You’d better check to see if the catch works,’ he said with a wry smile.

She bit down on her lip and she opened and closed the purse with a snap that sounded like a gunshot. He saw her slim throat rise and fall over a tight swallow and the way her fingers trembled slightly as she refolded the tissue around the purse. A small frown had lined her smooth forehead and when she looked up at him again he saw a shadow of uncertainty in her eyes. ‘Luca…’ She moistened her lips and started again. ‘There’s something we need to discuss… I should have told you last night but there didn’t seem to be—’

Luca moved to where she was sitting and placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘If you’re going to make a fuss about me buying you things, then don’t,’ he said. ‘I know you can’t be bought with money. I shouldn’t have pulled that stunt over the rent. I admire your independence. But this time just accept this in the spirit in which it is given.’

She rolled her lips together and looked down at the purse lying on her lap. ‘It’s very kind of you. I really needed a new purse. Thank you.’

He held out a hand. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get going to the restaurant. I made an early booking as I figured you would probably need to get home at a reasonable hour to your little girl.’

Her eyes darted away from his. ‘Yes… yes, I will.’

Luca took her hand as they walked down to the restaurant. Her small fingers interlaced with his, but he sensed tension in them, a fluttering nervousness that made him wonder if she was having second thoughts about this evening. He had told her no strings, just dinner, but the pulse of electricity that already charged between their bodies was a heady reminder of all they had experienced together in the past. Was she thinking of how many times dinner together had led to mind-blowing sex soon after? His body twitched in memory, his blood surging to his groin as he walked his mind back through the images he had stored of them together. He had clung to those memories during his darkest hours. They had been a powerful motivation for him to fight his demons, to wrestle them to the ground so he could finally reclaim his life.

The restaurant overlooked the Yarra River and the city beyond. There were clouds in the night sky, brooding clusters of tension that crackled in the eerily still air.

‘Do you think there is going to be a storm?’ Luca asked, pointing to a particularly furious-looking cloud bank in the distance. ‘It certainly feels like it, don’t you think?’

‘I heard something about it in the weather report in the taxi,’ she said.

Luca stopped to frown down at her. ‘I thought you were going to drive in. I would have picked you up. Why didn’t you call me and tell me you’d changed your mind?’