Shock warred with indignation. She blurted, ‘I’m not a quitter! Life hasn’t exactly cosseted me. I’ve learned to deal with it.’

His eyes narrowed challengingly. ‘Then why take one look at my ex and run away?’

Heat burned her cheeks. She paused to give her pulse time to settle into its usual rhythm. Did he have a point? When she’d seen Nicoletta watching them, she’d obeyed her flight instinct just as she’d whirled and fled the room when she’d discovered Brendon in flagrante. Had that shock and humiliation catalysed a new behaviour in her? She frowned, not enjoying that view of herself.

His thumbs stroked her fingers. ‘Exes have a special ability to unsettle us, I think. When you stopped trusting your own ex, you stopped trusting all men. Your instincts make you attempt to avoid situations where a man can hurt you ensuring you automatically think the worst of me. In the same way, when Nicoletta thought she could force commitment on me she made me commitment shy.’

‘Oh,’ breathed Zia, wrong-footed by such raw honesty. Her brain calmed and began to work logically. ‘So, Nicoletta’s spoilt you for any but casual relationships?’

His forehead puckered with surprise. The area in front of the cottages near the gazebo was lit at intervals for the convenience of the guests and one side of his face was in sharp relief, making his brow and eye socket blacker. ‘I’d hate to think so.’ He paused before adding honestly, ‘But I have been avoiding involvements.’ His voice became husky. ‘Until I met you, that is. I feel something for you, Zia. I don’t know what it is or if it can go anywhere but I want you. I think about you all the time.’

A warm feeling uncurled in the pit of Zia’s stomach. Fairly, she admitted, ‘I think about you too.’ A smile blazed across his face so quickly that she added, ‘But I think we should take things slowly.’

The squeeze he gave her fingers before he let them go was like a retreat. ‘If that’s what you want.’

Unsure if she’d wanted him to agree quite that readily, she went on, ‘I’m going to drive myself to the airport tomorrow. With Lucia and Durante’s ailments and your two jobs, I don’t want to be worried whether there will be anyone around to pick me up when I get back.’

‘You want to feel in control,’ he amended calmly in a come on, admit it voice.

She felt a flicker of surprise that he’d read her so accurately. ‘OK. Maybe I do. And I think we need to remember I have to be looking for a job by September.’

He leaned in close. ‘But in which country?’