A Passionate Reunion In Fiji / Cinderella's Scandalous Secret

It was a sound that speared him.

Firmly dragging his mind away from that fateful first meeting, he confiscated the card but then found he couldn’t stop his own burst of laughter when, barely a minute later, Livia stood to use the bathroom for the fourth time and two high-value cards slipped out of her top.

‘Shameless,’ he chided with a stern shake of his head.

‘All’s fair in love and war,’ she replied, a gleam in her eye he hadn’t seen for so long that suddenly he could fight the swelling emotions no more, body blows of longing and pain ravaging him.

He couldn’t tear his gaze from her.

In the beat of a moment her amusement vanished and her dark brown eyes were swirling with more emotion than there were stars in the sky.

Hardly single-digit seconds passed as their stares remained fixed on each other but those seconds contained so much weight he felt its compression on his chest. He knew with a bone-deep certainty that she was thinking about their first meeting too and that the memory lanced her as deeply as it did him.

Then Livia turned her gaze from him.

‘I really do need to use the bathroom,’ she murmured, reaching down to pick up the illicit cards and placing them on the table.

In the plush ladies’ room, Livia put her hands on the sink and dragged air into her lungs.

For a moment there her heart had felt so full of so many emotions that it had felt as if it could burst out of her chest.

Teaming up with Sera against their husbands had been so wickedly joyful that for a while she had forgotten that she and Massimo were estranged and preparing for a divorce.

For a short, glorious time, it had been like slipping on a pair of shoes that transported them to their early days when there had been as much fun in their marriage as there had been desire and love.

She had adored making Massimo laugh. He was such a serious person that to see his face light up had brought her more joy than anything. Laughter had been in short supply in her childhood so to discover this side of herself with him had been joyful in its own right.

Like the smiles she’d been unable to form in the four months since she’d left him, laughter had become a distant memory too. Until tonight.

Back outside in the warm evening air, she found the cards had been put away and the glasses empty. Sera and Gianni got to their feet as she approached the table and both apologised for having to call it a night. They were tired and needed to get some sleep.

Kissing them both goodnight, Livia poured herself another bourbon and watched them walk away.

The silence they left behind was stark. Apart from the white noise in her ears.

‘I suppose we should go to our chalet too,’ she said, avoiding Massimo’s stare.

They’d spent a whole day travelling between time zones quickly followed by a day out at sea. All of this, when added to her frazzled nerves brought about by being with him again, was a recipe for exhaustion. Yet she felt anything but tired.

When he didn’t answer, she stared up at the sky. The stars were in abundance that night, twinkling like gold diamonds in the vast blackness. She’d thought the sky in LA was big but here, on this island, it seemed to stretch for ever.

‘I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ she added into the silence.

‘No. You take the bed.’ She felt his eyes on her. ‘I’ve work I need to get on with.’

‘The sofa’s too small for you, and you can’t work all night.’ But he could. She knew that. He’d worked through the night on many occasions.

‘I’ll work for a few hours then sleep on the hammock.’

‘We have a hammock?’ That was the first she’d heard of it.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice it earlier. It’s on the veranda by the outside table.’

‘I probably didn’t register it,’ she murmured, taking a hasty sip of her bourbon.

She wouldn’t have noticed any hammock because when she’d stepped out onto the veranda her eyes had been too consumed by Massimo to register anything else.

They finished their drinks and, as silently as they’d made the walk from their chalet to the lodge, walked the return journey together. The incoming tide now lapped the beach noisily, so deep beneath the bridge that if this had been her first sight of the island she would never have believed it could ebb back far enough for a sandy pathway to open up between the main island and their private peninsula.

But as much as she tried to distract herself with their surroundings she couldn’t block out Massimo’s lean frame striding beside her.

When they reached their chalet, he picked up the briefcase he’d left on their dining table.

Everything about this chalet was supposed to be theirs. Everything had been designed to their exact instructions; a love nest they’d imagined themselves escaping to whenever time allowed, designed and dreamed up before Livia had realised time would never allow it. For Massimo, time existed only for work.

He stared at her for a moment before his chest rose sharply. ‘I’ll work on the veranda. Sleep well.’

Her goodnight to him came out as a whisper.

He closed the door quietly behind him.

Massimo powered his laptop but, other than reply to a few urgent emails, found he didn’t have the concentration to work.

Sighing heavily, he ran his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes.

It felt as if he’d slipped into a time loop, taken back to the days when he’d worked from the sprawling building that homed Briatore Technologies and found his concentration fighting a war with himself. Livia had taken back possession of his mind. She’d been all he could think of then. She was all he could think of now.

It didn’t matter, he told himself grimly. One more full day and night and then that would be it for them. She would live her life in Italy and he would live his in LA.

Thinking he could do with another drink before attempting to sleep in the hammock he’d instructed be erected when he’d remembered the chalet he would share with his estranged wife had only one bed, he padded quietly back inside. Before he could switch the light on and head to the bar, he noticed a slant of light coming from beneath the closed bedroom door.

His heart fisted.

He’d left her over an hour ago, plenty of time for her to do her night-time beauty routine and fall asleep. Was she reading?

Was she wearing the cream pyjamas that managed to be both modest and yet revealing…?

He stepped closer to the bedroom door, his ears craning when he heard her voice. She was talking to someone.

A lover?

Hating himself yet unable to stop, he put his ear to the door. The wooden barrier muffled her words.

She laughed. It sounded pained. And then she said something distinguishable even through the muffling.

‘Please. I love you.’

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