Her throat thickened and tears rushed into her eyes. Even if all that miraculously happened and she hadn’t absolutely blown her chances by telling him straight off that she wouldn’t marry him, could she do it simply because he wanted Vivi? Wouldn’t the old betrayal always be there, undermining their happiness?

And how likely was the Marquis of the Venetian Isles to give up his sophisticated globe-trotting lifestyle for domestic bliss?

She cancelled the fantasy, reached for a tissue and gave her eyes a good wipe.

As usual, Vivi was up and about, probably since first light like a little bird. Lara could hear her voice from her playroom, singing to Kylie Minogie one minute, ordering her to sit up straight and pay attention or march to the time-out room the next.

She roused herself and drifted in to greet her darling, then wandered into her bathroom.

There was so much to consider, she mused, surrendering her nakedness to the soothing stream. So what if he’d had his marriage annulled? Did she seriously think he might not have had other girlfriends since that time? Did she care about all of them?

Of course she didn’t. She only cared about the Giulia affair.

Bathed, semi-dressed and wrapped in her towelling robe, she ironed her blouse, then Vivi’s school dress, while Vivi gouged a hole in the Vegemite with a knife and inexpertly smeared the massive lump on her toast. Lara paused to watch her take a bite, and winced in sympathy when her little elfin face screwed up in horror. Ugh.

At work Lara was faced with a heavier than usual pile of manuscripts submitted by aspiring authors. She grimaced. Fantastic.

Her worries kept intruding. Despite her feelings about Alessandro’s marriage to that woman, could she seriously contemplate just letting him walk away? She knew she wasn’t up to another airport scene. The last one had nearly killed her, and then she’d been sure he was coming back.

She forced herself back to the manuscript she was reading, and realised she was on page two without having taken in a word. Something about a possum and a tree house. Hopeless, she realised, and airlifted it to the waste basket.

But how could she stop him? Other women seemed able to dig their claws in and hold onto men. Her lack of ability to do so had already been clearly demonstrated to the world.

She opened another masterpiece, her heart sinking in misgiving when she thought of his face when he’d left last night. He’d looked so stern and remote, so closed off from her. If only she could get some inkling of how he was feeling today. She really needed to see him. Find out how he looked.

It was agony, knowing he was just a short walk away down the corridor, yet out of her reach. She supposed she could hardly mosey along and interrupt the interviews going on in there for the new MD’s position. Not to mention that Donatuila was forever present, guarding him like a mastiff.

She drummed her fingers on the pages spread before her on the desk. Soon he would be leaving.

Panic seized her. Her time was running out. Once he got on that plane it would be the end of everything. Her absolute joy. The excitement of not knowing what he would do next, the sheer thrill of being with him, the passion. He’d fly out of their lives and she’d be back to her nun-like existence.

Anguish speared through her at the thought of losing him again. How would she ever bear it?

She turned a page and puzzled over a strange sentence for a while, then gave up and aimed it for the bin. Another slam dunk. Why couldn’t people learn to punctuate?

She was reaching for the next one on the pile just as the phone rang on her desk. She started, and her heart jumped into a nervy racketing.

‘Lara?’ It was Alessandro’s deep voice. ‘Can I see you for a few minutes?’

‘Certainly,’ she said. Calmly, she hoped.

She didn’t feel calm. She replaced the phone with shaking hands, realising this was it. The verdict. After a few seconds, avoiding Josh’s interested glance, she stood up, straightened her blouse and soft blue jacket, and brushed down her pencil skirt.

Alessandro was waiting for her at the door of his office. She tried to read his expression, but he looked controlled and inscrutable. He closed the door behind her when she walked in, then bent to brush her cheek with lips that were cool.

‘Good morning, Lara.’

Lara. Not Larissa, or carissima, or tesoro. After being lovers last night, they were back to being formal.

Some expensive, tangy aftershave lingered on his lean, smooth-shaven jaw. He looked so tall, dark and delicious in his charcoal suit and crisp blue shirt, on another, less nerve-racking occasion, she might have kissed his beautiful, stern mouth. It was easy to believe he was the Marquis of the Venetian Isles, though impossible to credit that such a gorgeous, sophisticated example of masculinity had ever desired her.

Maybe she’d dreamed last night and those things he’d said. Maybe, when he’d left her afterwards with that remote, closed expression, it was because at heart he was repelled by the modest domesticity of her and her child.

She managed to stay upright on her legs, but her entire being was a vessel of nervous flutterings.

‘So?’ she queried in a low voice, her heart on a cliff’s edge, last night’s scene with Vivi vivid in her mind. ‘What-what is it?’

His brilliant gaze scoured her face in careful assessment, then he lowered his lashes. Choosing his words, she realised, her heart plunging in fear.

‘I have been thinking. I want to meet Vivi.’

‘Oh.’ The shock roiled through her. She felt her heart rev into a painful pounding rhythm. The moisture dried from her throat. ‘Oh, good, good,’ she somehow said, knowing she had to behave like an adult, her dry voice as husky as a crow’s. ‘But…are you sure? Where are you going with this, Sandro? Are you aware…? I-I mean, have you considered this will be deeply-emotional and significant to her?’

Her voice cracked on ‘emotional’, and there was no concealing her feelings.

‘I am doing what I must do, carissa.’ He frowned. ‘Why are you so afraid? Last night was deeply emotional and significant to me. All of it.’

‘Oh.’ Her eyes filled with tears, and she dashed them away with the backs of her hands. ‘All right, then,’ she said, when she could. She moistened her lips. ‘So what happens after you meet her? You fly off to the other side of the globe and we never see you again?’

‘That’s not how it will be.’

‘How will it be, then?’ Her hands twisted in tune with her churning heart. ‘Can you see this-that if you meet her, then leave her and never come back, she will be more destroyed by it than if you never meet her?’

Shock flickered in his dark eyes, and he grabbed her shoulders. ‘Why do you have such a poor opinion of me, Lara? Why would I do that? Do you think I would just forget her?’

‘I don’t know. You forgot me.’

His eyes widened. ‘Cosa?’

There was a knock. Alessandro released her just as the door opened and Donatuila swished in.

‘Your next guy is here, boss.’ She came to a surprised halt, her pencilled brows flying up. ‘Oh, hey. Sorry. Am I interrupting?’

‘Oh, no, no,’ Lara said, whipping blindly around and managing to make the door without knocking her sideways. ‘I’m just leaving.’

She walked briskly to the ladies’ room, grateful not to meet any other curious eyes along the way, and sat in a cubicle until the tears had properly dried up and she’d stopped the shaking.

How ironic, to have been interrupted in the middle of what might have been the most important conversation of her life.

After a while, she got up and checked her mascara, though there wasn’t much she could do without make-up. She’d just have to wait for her eyes to return to normal. Why was it that some tears did more damage than others?

Back at her desk, she reached for the next manuscript on the pile and kept her eyes lowered to it. There may have been a charged silence in the room, but if any of her friends noticed anything, they didn’t say a word.