‘Bill who?’ She frowned queryingly.

‘Bill. Your MD.’

‘Oh, Bill.’ In spite of her discomfort she broke into a laugh, thinking of poor Bill, with his wife of twenty years and brood of unruly children. ‘Yes, yes, he’s a definite possibility.’ She frowned and tilted her head in mock consideration. ‘All right, Sandro, you’ve talked me into it. I’ll marry Bill. Get him on the phone. Ask him if he likes kids.’

His thick black brows twitched. ‘If you take my advice you won’t jump into anything. I did that once and it was a shocking mistake.’ He reached out and took one of her hands. ‘But I’m glad to have this chance to be with you before you settle down with some guy, tesoro.’

She smiled, though it cost her an effort. The backs of her eyes were dangerously close to pricking and her poor stupid heart was being squeezed in a vice. She said a little hoarsely, ‘And I must say I’m glad to have caught you between marriages.’

He leaned over and kissed her lips. Just a gentle little sexy kiss, but it was enough to reignite last night’s wildfire, and send her blood coursing to her breasts.

It was only a gentle taunt, but so confusing. Why couldn’t he be serious? Whatever happened to the Italian belief that marriage was an imperative for women with children?

Their first courses arrived. Her soup was rich and fragrant, delicately spiced with nutmeg, perhaps a trace of ginger, with tiny green flecks of spinach floating in it.

In between mouthfuls she did her best to steer the conversation into useful channels. His work kept him in London for the moment, he told her, though he’d spent time in Zurich, Stockholm and Brussels, and had lived in New York for a couple of years. Not a good lifestyle for a parent. Or a husband, come to that.

‘Do you enjoy this work for the company? Never settling in one place?’

He shrugged, and heaped some of his abalone salad onto his fork. ‘It’s the work I’ve chosen.’

‘And is that…?’ She probably wouldn’t have asked if she hadn’t finished her champagne and been halfway through the Margaret River blanc. But beneath her flirty surface, questions were boiling up in her, things she had to know, even if they cut her to ribbons.

She raised her eyes to his. ‘Is that why your marriage didn’t work? All the travelling you do?’

He was still a second, his face impassive. Then he said coolly, ‘It didn’t continue because of a lack of passion.’

‘Oh.’ She flushed. ‘Then why-?’ She stopped herself in time. For heaven’s sake, did she want him to think she cared? In fact, she didn’t want to know anything about how they’d been together. It was ages ago now, anyway, ancient history. Still, she couldn’t prevent herself from reaching one step further, even though she realised she was advancing into dangerous territory. His razor sharp brain could pick up any veiled intention, however carefully she concealed it.

She took a casual sip of her wine, met his sharp gaze, then quickly glanced away. ‘So…you and Giulia didn’t consider having children?’

The thick black brows made a twitch, then he lowered his lashes, shaking his head at some private irony. ‘Never.’

‘Was that because you-you didn’t want children, or Giulia didn’t?’

He gave an amused shrug, but his eyes were glinting in that alert way that warned her to take care. ‘Does any man want children, tesoro? Men want women, and they move heaven and earth to win the ones they desire. Children are the inevitable baggage that goes along with them. Most men accept the price if the prize is worth it.’ He smiled, and it crept into his eyes and made tiny little charm lines fan out from the corners. ‘So I’m told.’

She returned the smile, but her insides plunged into a seething chaos.

So he’d put up with children if he wanted the mother enough, would he? For the sake of passion with the object of his desire, that woman he’d move heaven and earth for.

She wasn’t the jealous type, but those words throbbed like a stab-wound. She was afraid of the outcome if he should want Vivi, but she realised all at once she couldn’t bear him to not want her. Obviously she didn’t want him to take her baby away, but what if Vivi needed him some time?

And she was bound to. Call it the wine, or the music, but now he was here in the flesh, the gorgeous, irresistible flesh, the truth was shouting at her from every angle. Greta was absolutely right. Vivi needed her father.

Maybe she shouldn’t have let him off the marriage hook so easily. Did he seriously think she should look for some other man? Some imposter?

If he was basing his advice on his own experience, then she didn’t think much of it. Certainly, he might have gone to extraordinary lengths to win Giulia. But if he’d wanted the beautiful socialite so much, how could he then have dallied in Sydney, making love to her?

It made her wonder, though. Why hadn’t their passion lasted? Had they burned themselves out? Had he been so hot for Giulia, hotter than he’d been for her? How was that even possible?

She was torturing herself with the images just as the waiter glided in bearing their next courses.

When they’d been served she watched Alessandro speak to the young man with the charming civility that always made people twist themselves inside out to fulfil his lightest whim. The boy floated away, a glow in his eyes, ready to juggle plates on his head if it would make the Italian man’s dining experience the richer.

Six years ago, she’d been one of those people. Perhaps that had been her downfall. She’d been so unsophisticated, she’d had no skill in subterfuge, no way of concealing how overwhelmed she was. How deeply she’d fallen.

And she could see that Giulia was the sort of woman men would regard as a prize. She had that lush Mediterranean beauty, she was glam and glitzy and socially connected. From what Lara had gleaned, she was the sort to be found in the thick of the celeb crowd, the Milano fashion week, ski-ing at San Moritz. Perhaps she was one of those flirty signorinas who laughed a lot in a vivacious, sexy way and played an elusive game that drove natural-born hunters like Alessandro mad with lust.

Whatever the reason for the marriage’s failure, one depressing truth lingered on, in Lara’s mind at least.

She stared down at her chargrilled baby snapper, balancing on its elegant little plinth of asparagus. Even when she’d been fresh and unspoilt at twenty-one, good in a bikini, with the bloom of youth in her cheek-at her peak, some might have said-she’d still been no match for the prize that glittered from Italy.

‘Salad?’

She looked up and met Alessandro’s faint, questioning smile.

‘Please.’ She allowed him to help her to some pretty coloured leaves masquerading as lettuce. She said in a casual, conversational tone, ‘I saw some pictures of your wedding in a magazine once while I was waiting in a doctor’s surgery. Giulia is a very beautiful woman.’

The salad servers halted infinitesimally on their way back to the bowl. Alessandro’s black lashes momentarily screened his eyes, then flicked up to reveal a gaze darker and more fathomless than the most inaccessible chasm in the Bindinong Range.

He took time, as if choosing his words very carefully. ‘I didn’t marry her for the usual reasons. It was not something I planned.’ She gave him time to expand on his answer, gazing expectantly at him, and he said at last, a faint exasperation in his voice, ‘It was a marriage of convenience. Almost at once it became very inconvenient. It was annulled even before all the wedding gifts had been opened.’

‘Annulled!’ Her eyes widened.

Alert to the minefield he was traversing, Alessandro watched her process the implications, concealing his surge of sardonic amusement. Did it make his marriage less of a crime if there’d been no sex? He made a small grimace. If a woman rejected a man, for whatever reasons, why should she resent his finding solace elsewhere?