She told him so, and he laughed.
‘Tonight we’re on the same side,’ he said. ‘No challenge necessary.’ They strolled through the streets hand in hand. Like friends. Like lovers.
The gold of the miraculous sunset slowly died away, as if someone had pulled a cloth of gold out towards the sea. That left the lights that were set by people. Windows and streetlamps and little lanterns on the prows of the gondolas.
‘They look slightly dangerous,’ said Zoe, as a gondola swept up to some steps and some laughing passengers climbed out.
He was surprised. ‘Do you think so? They’re perfectly safe. The gondoliers are incredibly expert. It runs in the family, you know.’
‘Not dangerous like that. I suppose I mean sinister. As if they’re full of clever men plotting.’
He hugged her, laughing.
‘I shall have to bring you here during carnival. The masks can be very beautiful, but they are unsettling.’
Zoe loved him hugging her. She rubbed her cheek against the peacock silk shoulder. She felt proud and mischievous at the same time.
His arm tightened. ‘Venice has made sinister an art form. You know they used to have a Signori di Notte? It was specially set up to keep the peace at night.’ His voice dropped thrillingly. ‘The time of assassins, thieves and spies.’
Zoe wrinkled her nose at the assassins. ‘And lovers,’ she pointed out.
His arm was suddenly a steel bar.
‘And lovers,’ he agreed in a still voice.
That was when the trembling started. A slow, sweet, deep trembling that she had never felt before.
And suddenly she thought—Could he be right? Could it be that she had never wanted to make love to anyone because she had never been in love? It was not the fashionable answer. Not even the rational one, in some way. And yet she felt in her bones that no one before had been possible. And Jay was more than possible. He was the only one.
Nonsense, she told herself. It was the night and Venice and all the hocus pocus of gondolas and streets that weren’t streets, but treacherous, shifting, mysterious water. This was fantasy, pure and simple.
But his arm round her wasn’t fantasy. Nor was the account of his childhood. She was sure that nobody else in Culp and Christopher knew about that.
And nor was the look in his eyes.
She had seen Jay’s up-and-under, sex-is-a-state-of-mind look. She had had the benefit of the sexy stare straight into her eyes. She had seen him challenging and she had seen him shameless. In all the weeks she had known him she had never seen him look at anyone like this.
Steady. Slightly questioning. Sumove is minere.
She thought—I’m the one to make him sure. The next move is mine.
She waited for the alarm to hit her. After all, only last night in her mother’s room she had been all but falling apart with panic. It did not come. It felt right that the next move was hers. And when the time was right she would make it.
Jay took her to a candlelit restaurant. The tables were covered in heavy damask and an array of crystal, and the conversation was the low hum of people who took their food seriously. He was obviously known there, too.
The waiter led them to a secluded table, murmuring confidentially. Jay nodded. ‘Two Bellinis to start with, Carlo.’
Jay held the deeply red cushioned chair for her. The table was by a floor-to-ceiling window, open to the shifting murmurous night.
‘Fit for lovers?’ he murmured in her ear.
Zoe bit back a naughty smile.
‘Very appropriate,’ she assured him gravely.
His eyes were warm hazel and very close as he smiled down at her. It was like a kiss.
‘I’m relieved.’
He sat in his own seat and took her hand proprietorially. Just as if that was what he always did.
Zoe’s heart fluttered. She was not alarmed—but this was new. And new took dealing with.
Still, she could deal with it. She could deal with anything. She swallowed and summoned up all her hot babe repartee.
‘Do you do a lot of this sort of thing?’ she asked chattily.
Jay’s smile did not change. ‘No. You’re my first,’ he told her.
And watched with pleasure as she choked.
Two drinks arrived. They were the colour of sunrise and they hissed.
‘Our Bellinis,’ said Jay. ‘Local invention. Champagne and peach juice. And probably a secret ingredient, though no Venetian barman will tell.’