A faint sound made her head fly up from the menu she was studying. She froze. Vito was standing on the bleached boards of the sagging veranda. He was unnaturally still, his pallor pronounced. One brown hand was fiercely clenched in the cream jacket he had discarded. A white shirt was carelessly open at his throat, his thick black hair damp and tousled, and a most uncharacteristic black shadow of stubble marked his tense jaw line. Slowly he swallowed, incredibly intent dark eyes clinging to her startled face. 'I thought you were dead,' he breathed roughly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

VITO tossed back a large glass of arrack brought by their bustling host before he spoke again. The fiery liquid seemed to revive him. The harsh lines of strain engraved between his nose and mouth smoothed out. The natural colour gradually returned to reanimate his dark, taut features.

'Priya woke me up to tell me that a car carrying a European woman had gone off the road last night. Then she informed me that you were gone-'

Ashley paled. 'I'm sorry.'

'When I saw the car, I knew nobody could have come out of that alive.' He continued to stare at her as if he still couldn't quite accept the evidence of his own eyes. 'I came in here to find out if they knew where… where you had been taken-' His uneven tone cut off harshly.

'Kumar and I got out before the car went off the road.

He forgot to put the handbrake on.' An uneasy laugh bubbled in her throat but she didn't let it escape. 'The accident wasn't his fault.'

'Like hell it wasn't!' Vito ground out. 'He has no driving licence. He could have killed you!'

'He can't drive?' Ashley was shattered and then she thought back to the previous night's conversation. Kumar had offered to get Bandu and she had asked him to take her instead. He had been both flattered and excited by the request. 'That didn't occur to me. I was very pushy,' she added hurriedly. 'I insisted that he take me. You can't blame him. He was only trying to please me.'

Vito contrived to look both unconvinced and uninterested at one and the same time. 'I'll leave him to Priya. He's her nephew. And she's a holy terror when she's roused.'

'He won't lose his job?' she persisted.

'You're alive. I'm in a forgiving mood.'

She took a deep breath. 'Are you? When my brother was at fault, you were ready to send him to prison.' 'Kumar doesn't have a sister I wish to marry,' Vito quipped humourlessly. 'I shall choose to forgive instead.'

'You're probably wondering what I'm doing here-'

He signalled their hovering host. 'I was depending on you to make our wedding night a little out of the ordinary,' he incised in a smooth aside. 'Let's have breakfast. You haven't lived until you've sampled hoppers.'

The cup-shaped pancakes made from a batter of rice flour, palm toddy and coconut milk came with a variety of delicious fillings. Ashley was surprised to realise that she was really hungry. They finished up with guava and passion fruit and beautifully fragrant tea.

Vito's silence troubled her. After all that had happened, the last thing she had expected him to do was sit down and eat a good meal. Awkwardly she cleared her throat. 'I expect you think I'm really a cheat now. We had an agreement-'

'But I haven't been fulfilling my part of it,' he cut in flatly.

'It's been an emotional time for us both,' she muttered unhappily.

'But I haven't been making it any easier. I had no right to pry into your past last night and no excuse to taunt you.' He surveyed her with grave, measured emphasis but a betraying tautness edged his sensual mouth, revealing that he didn't find it easy to make that admission. 'After all, I'm no celibate myself.'

'It was understandable.' Suddenly, now that he was giving ground, she found herself pathetically willing to forgive. She gritted her teeth on the discovery, reminding herself of the need to be cautious. The last thing she needed right now was for Vito to guess how she felt about him. The only thing she had left was her pride.

'I've had a mistress for the past eighteen months.' The announcement paralysed her. She bit her tongue and tasted blood. Vito released his breath audibly. 'I finished it a few months ago, but do you know what attracted me to her?'

Nausea stirred in her stomach. Vito was not of the confessing variety. She really didn't know why he was doing this and she desperately wanted him to shut up, because she did not want to be forced to think of him making love to another woman.

'She had hair the same shade as yours,' he proffered in a raw offering of deep self-contempt. 'But she wasn't you.'

'No. She wouldn't have gone charging off down a mountainside in the middle of the night and crashed your car, I guess,' she muttered tightly.

'Nobody but you would do that,' he pointed out in an almost gentle tone, and in a gesture that was curiously clumsy for one of his grace he narrowly missed toppling a cup as he reached for her hand.

The heat of his fingers engulfed her smaller ones and she bent her head. She wanted to tell him that she had never had another lover. She focused instead on the tumbling gush of the waterfall, shining with blinding brilliance in the bright sunlight. Not only did he not require that information from her, he would also very probably refuse to believe her, and every time he refused to believe it hurt just that little bit more deeply.

'I'm five days late with this but I still need to say it,' he breathed. 'The night of the party you hit me hard with what you called the view from your side of the fence-'

'I don't want to talk about that.' It was her turn to interrupt and deny him the opportunity to have her listen. The baby… that subject was too painful in the light of his disbelief.

'Ashley… '

'No!' she said fiercely, sharply withdrawing her hand from his.

'We have to talk about it.'

'But I don't want to!' Snatching in oxygen, she rose unsteadily upright, ready to run if he persisted.

'Maybe it's too soon,' he conceded with surprising generosity.

Perhaps not so surprising, she allowed when she thought about it. He had been badly shaken by the sight of that crashed car and the conviction that, if she had not been killed she was at the very least severely injured. But for how long would this greater gentleness and understanding last?

Ten days later, she stood on the heights of the ramparts of the Dambulla Cave Temples, her bare toes heated by the sun warmed ground, and conceded that Vito was making a very real effort to be well-mannered, entertaining and non-controversial. She was beginning to learn that in some ways she had not known Vito at all four years ago. That annoyed her but it was true. For a start the charm wasn't switched on, it was entirely natural. The tension that had once underscored their every moment was gone now that all sources of possible confrontation were banned. He was far more conservative than she had ever appreciated. The way he had swept her off her feet the night they met had distorted her image of him, much as it had distorted his image of her. She could see now that in the past she might well have put Vito and his traditional values through one hell of an emotional wringer. She had gone out to well and truly shock him every time he roused her temper-a pattern learned in defiance of her father. But that pattern had been highly destructive. If Vito had been guilty of a desire to dominate and control, she had been equally guilty of replying with provocation. It had only inflamed the situation.

She stared out at the panoramic view of the citadel of Sigiriya, the giant monolith of red stone that rose hundreds of feet into the sky from a flat plane of scrub jungle. Lord, she was hot, despite the straw sunhat Vito had insisted she wore. She rubbed at the perspiration beading her face and suddenly realised that she felt pretty sick and giddy. It had been an incredible climb up to the temple and then their guide had spent so long giving them a tour of the astonishing wall and roof paintings.

'Do you think I could get a drink of water?' she whispered.

Vito stopped midstream in his conversation with the tiny wizened Buddhist priest in his saffron robes, reminding her of yet another unknown facet of his character that had lately been revealed. He was not the crashing snob she had once assumed, nor was he a workaholic with nothing on his mind but his next big deal – although four years ago he had seemed very much that way.

'You look terrible,' he murmured, pinning a supportive arm to her bowing spine.

'The heat…'

He took her over to the shadows by the wall. 'I shouldn't have brought you up here.'

'I'll be OK in a minute.' She was embarrassed by her own physical frailty. Until she had come to Sri Lanka she had truly believed that she had the constitution of an ox. But this wasn't the first time she had felt that she had overdone it. The day before yesterday and the day before that she had had a similar episode of wobbly knees and nausea, although on both those occasions she had contrived to conceal her weakness from Vito.

He was taking charge, fussing over her. Having sat her down on a step, he reappeared with a paper fan and proceeded to wield it most efficiently. He looked in his element, she thought wryly: big, masterful, rudely healthy male reviving poor weak little woman. He liked to be needed, and she had never allowed herself to need him before. She thought of Elena with her deliberately fluffy manner in his radius, his sister, Giulia, guilelessly fluttery, and decided that experience hadn't prepared him very well for a woman of independence.

They made the descent in easy stages. He took her into the shabby little cafe in the village and bought cold drinks. 'We'll sit here for a while before we get back in the car,' he decided.