Vettori's Damsel in Distress

CHAPTER TWO

‘There’s nothing more cheering than a good friend when you’re in trouble—except a good friend with ice cream.’

—from Rosie’s Little Book of Ice Cream

TOO SURPRISED TO REACT, Geli didn’t move. Okay, so there had been some fairly heavy-duty flirting going on, but that was a bit arrogant—

Dante pulled out a chair and waited for her to join him.

Make that quite a lot arrogant. Did he really think she would simply follow him?

‘Angelica?’

No one used her full name, but he said it with a ‘g’ so soft that it felt like chocolate melting on her tongue and while her head was still saying, Oh, please...her body went to him as if he’d tugged a chain.

‘Give me your coat,’ he said, ‘and I’ll hang it up to dry.’

She swallowed.

It was late. She should be on her way but for that she needed directions, which was a good, practical reason to do as he said. Then again, nothing that had happened since she’d walked through the door of Café Rosa had been about the practicalities and, letting her tote slide from her shoulder onto the chair, she dropped her glove on the table and began to tug at its pair.

Warm now, the fine leather clung to her skin and as she removed her glove, one finger at a time, Geli discovered that there was more than one way of being in control.

A chain had two ends and now Dante was the one being hauled in as she slowly revealed her hand with each unintentionally provocative tug.

She dropped the glove beside its pair and everything—the heartbeat pounding in her ears, her breathing—slowed right down as, never taking her eyes off his, she lowered her hand and, one by one, began to slip the small jet buttons that nipped her coat into her waist.

There were a dozen of them and, taking her time, she started at the bottom. One, two, three... His gaze never wavered for a second until the bias cut swathes of velvet, cashmere and butter-soft suede—flaring out in layers that curved from just below her knees at the front to her heels at the back—fell open to reveal the black scoop-necked mini-dress that stopped four inches above her knees.

She waited a heartbeat and then turned and let the coat slip from her shoulders, leaving him to catch it.

An arch got you lift of an eyebrow as she thanked him should leave him in no doubt that the next move was up to him and she was more than ready for anything he had to offer, but as she glanced over her shoulder, fell into the velvet softness of his eyes, she forgot the plot.

He was so close. His breath was warm on her cheek, his mouth was inches away and her eyebrow stayed put as she imagined closing the gap and taking his delicious lower lip between hers.

Make that burned to a crisp toast. Toast about to burst into flames...

She blinked as a clatter of cutlery shattered the moment and Dante looked down at her coat as if wondering where it had come from.

‘I’ll hang this by the heater to dry,’ he said.

‘Are you mad?’ Lisa, the table swiftly laid, took it from him. ‘You don’t hang something like this over a radiator as if it’s any old chain store raincoat. This kind of quality costs a fortune and it needs tender loving care.’ She checked the label. ‘Dark Angel.’ She looked up. ‘Angel?’ she repeated and then, with a look of open admiration, ‘Is that you, Geli?’

‘What? Oh, yes,’ she said, grateful for the distraction. Falling into bed for fun with a man was one thing. Falling into anything else was definitely off the agenda... ‘Dark Angel is my label.’

‘You’re a fashion designer?’

‘Not exactly. I make one-off pieces. I studied art but I’ve been making clothes all my life and somehow I’ve ended up combining the two.’

‘Clothes as art?’ She grinned. ‘I like it.’

‘Let’s hope you’re not the only one.’

‘Not a chance. This is absolutely lush. Did you make the choker, too?’ she asked. ‘Or is that an original?’

‘If only...’ Geli touched the ornate Victorian-style lace and jet band at her throat. ‘It’s recycled from stuff in my odds and ends box. I cut my dress from something I found on the “worn once” rack at the church jumble sale and—’ if she kept talking she wouldn’t grab Dante Vettori ‘—my coat was made from stuff I’ve collected over the years.’

‘Well...wow. You are so going to fit in here. Upcycling is really big in Isola.’

‘It’s one of the reasons I’m here. I want to work with people who are doing the same kind of thing.’

‘And I suggested you might want a job behind the bar.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘If you’ve got something you want to exhibit I’m sure Dan will find space for it.’ She glanced at him, but he offered no encouragement. ‘Right, well, I’ll go and find a hanger for this,’ she said, holding the coat up so that it didn’t touch the floor. She’d only gone a couple of steps when she stopped. ‘Geli, there’s something moving... Omigod!’ She screamed and, forgetting all about its lushness, dropped the coat and leapt back. ‘It’s a rat!’

The musicians stopped playing mid-note. The patrons of the café, who had resumed chatting, laughing, eating, turned as one.

Then the kitten, confused, frightened, bolted across the floor and pandemonium broke out as men leapt to their feet and women leapt on chairs.

‘It’s all right!’ Geli yelled as she dived under a table to grab the kitten before some heavy-footed male stamped on the poor creature. Terrified, it scratched and sank its little needle teeth deep into the soft pad of her thumb before she emerged with it grasped in her hand. ‘It’s a kitten!’ Then, in desperation when that didn’t have any effect, ‘Uno kitty!’

She held it up so that everyone could see. It had dried a little in the shelter of her pocket but it was a scrawny grey scrap, not much bigger than her hand. No one looked convinced and, when a woman let loose a nervous scream, Dante hooked his arm around her waist and swept her and the kitten through the café to a door that led to the rear.

As it swung shut behind him the sudden silence was brutal.

‘Uno kitty?’ Dante demanded, looming over her. Much too close.

‘I don’t know the Italian for kitten,’ she said, shaken by the speed at which events had overtaken her.

‘It’s gattino, but Lisa is right, that wretched creature looks more like a drowned rat.’

And the one word you didn’t want to hear if you were in the catering business was rat.

‘I’m sorry but I found it shivering in a doorway. It was soaking wet. Freezing. I couldn’t leave it there.’

‘Maybe not—’ he didn’t look convinced ‘—but rats, cats, it’s all the same to the health police.’

‘I understand. My sisters are in the catering business.’ And in similar circumstances they would have killed her. ‘I only stopped to ask for directions. I didn’t mean to stay for more than a minute or two.’

Epic distraction...

She was about to repeat her apology when the door opened behind them. Dante dropped his arm from her waist as Lisa appeared with her coat and bag over one arm and trailing her suitcase, leaving a cold space.

‘Have you calmed them down?’ he asked.

‘Nothing like free drinks all round to lighten the mood. Bruno is dealing with it.’

Geli groaned. ‘It’s my fault. I’ll pay for them.’

‘No...’ Lisa and Dante spoke as one then Lisa added, ‘The first rule of catering is that if you see a rat, you don’t scream. The second is that you don’t shout, It’s a rat... Unfortunately, when I felt something move and that something was grey and furry I totally— Omigod, Geli, you’re bleeding!’

Geli glanced at the trickle of blood running down her palm. ‘It’s nothing. The poor thing panicked.’

‘A poor thing that’s been who knows where,’ Lisa replied, ‘eating who knows what filth. Come on, we’ll go upstairs and I’ll clean it up for you.’

‘It’s okay, honestly,’ Geli protested, now seriously embarrassed. ‘It’s late and Signora Franco, the woman who owns the apartment I’ve rented, will be waiting for me with the key. I would have called her to let her know my plane had been delayed but her English is even worse than my Italian.’

Geli glanced at her watch. She’d promised to let her sisters know when she was safely in her apartment and it was well past ten o’clock. She’d warned them that her plane had been delayed but if she didn’t text them soon they’d be imagining all sorts.

‘There’s no need to worry about Signora Franco,’ Dante said.

‘Oh, but—’

‘Via Pepone has been demolished to make way for an office block,’ he said, his expression grim. ‘I hoped to break it to you rather more gently, but I’m afraid the apartment you have rented no longer exists.’

It took a moment for what Dante had said to sink in. There was no Via Pepone? No apartment? ‘But I spoke to Signora Franco...’

‘Find a box for Rattino, Lis, before he does any more damage.’ Dante took her coat and bag from his cousin and ushered her towards the stairs.

Geli didn’t move. This had to be a mistake. ‘Maybe I have the name of the street wrong?’ she said, trying not to think about how the directions on the map she’d been sent had taken her to a construction site. ‘Maybe it’s a typo—’

‘Let’s get your hand cleaned up. Are your tetanus shots up to date?’ he asked.

‘What? Oh, yes...’ She stood her ground for another ten seconds but she couldn’t go back into the restaurant with the kitten and if there was a problem with the apartment she had to know. And Lisa was right—the last thing she needed was an infected hand.

Concentrate on that. And repeating her apology wouldn’t hurt.

‘I really am sorry about the rat thing,’ she said as she began to climb the stairs. ‘The kitten really would have died if I’d left it out there.’

‘So you picked it up and put it in the pocket of your beautiful coat?’ He liked her coat... ‘Do you do that often?’

‘All the time,’ she admitted. ‘Coat pockets, bags, the basket of my bicycle. My sisters did their best to discourage me, but eventually they gave it up as a lost cause.’

‘And are they always this ungrateful? Your little strays?’ As they reached the landing he took her hand in his to check the damage and Geli forgot about the kitten, her apartment, pretty much everything as the warmth of his fingers seeped beneath her skin and into the bone.

When she didn’t answer, he looked up and the temperature rose to the point where she was blushing to her toes.

Toast in flames. Smoke alarm hurting her eardrums...

‘Frightened animals lash out,’ she said quickly, waiting for him to open one of the doors, but he kept her hand in his and headed up a second flight of stairs.

There was only one door at the top. He let go of her hand, took a key from his pocket, unlocked it and pushed it open, standing back so that she could go ahead of him.

Geli wasn’t sure what she’d expected; she hadn’t actually been doing a lot of thinking since he’d turned and looked at her. Her brain had been working overtime dealing with the bombardment of her senses—new sights, new scents, a whole new level of physical response to a man.

Maybe a staff restroom...

Or maybe not.

There was a small entrance hall with hooks for coats, a rack for boots. Dante hung her coat beside a worn waxed jacket then opened an inner door to a distinctly masculine apartment.

There were tribal rugs from North Africa on the broad planks of a timber floor gleaming with the patina of age, splashes of brilliantly coloured modern art on the walls, shelves crammed with books. There was the warm glow and welcoming scent of logs burning in a wood stove and an enormous old leather sofa pulled up invitingly in front of it. The kind with big rounded arms—perfect for curling up against—and thick squashy cushions.

‘You live here,’ she said stupidly.

‘Yes.’ His face was expressionless as he tossed her bag onto the sofa. ‘I’m told that it’s very lower middle class to live over the shop but it suits me.’

‘Well, that’s just a load of tosh.’

‘Tosh?’ he repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before. Maybe he hadn’t but it hardly needed explaining. It was all there in the sound.

‘Total tosh. One day I’m going to live in a house exactly like this,’ she said, turning around so that she could take in every detail. ‘The top floor for me, workshops on the floor below me and a showroom on the ground floor—’ she came to halt, facing him ‘—and my great-grandfather was the younger son of an earl.’

‘An earl?’

Realising just how pompous that must have sounded, Geli said, ‘Of course my grandmother defied her father and married beneath her, so we’re not on His Lordship’s Christmas card list, which may very well prove the point. Not that they’re on ours,’ she added.

‘They disowned her?’

She shrugged. ‘Apparently they had other, more obedient children.’

And that was more personal information than she’d shared with anyone, ever, but she didn’t want him to think any of them gave a fig for their aristocratic relations. Even in extremis they’d never turned to them for help.

‘The family, narrow-minded and full of secrets, is the source of all our discontents,’ Dante replied, clearly quoting someone.

‘Who said that?’ she asked.

‘I just did.’

‘No, I meant...’ She shook her head. He knew exactly what she meant. ‘I have a great family.’ For years it had just been the four of them. Her sisters, Elle and Sorrel, and their grandmother. They’d been solid. A tight-knit unit standing against the world. That had all changed the day a stranger had arrived on the doorstep with an ice cream van. Now her sisters were not only successful businesswomen, but married and producing babies as if they were going out of fashion, while Great-Uncle Basil—who’d sent the van—and Grandma were warming their old bones in the south of France.

‘You are very fortunate.’

‘Yes...’ If you ignored the empty space left by her mother. By an unknown father. By the legions of aunts, uncles, cousins that she didn’t know. Who didn’t know her.

‘The bathroom is through here,’ Dante said, opening a door to an inner hall.

‘Il bagno...’ she said brightly, making an effort to think in Italian as she followed him. Making an effort to think.

His bagno would, in estate agent speak, have been described as a ‘roomy vintage-style’ bathroom. In this case she was pretty certain the fittings—a stately roll-top bath with claw feet and gleaming brass taps, a loo with a high tank and a wide, deep washbasin—were the real deal.

‘I’ll shut the door so that you can put the kitten down,’ he said, and the roominess shrank in direct proportion to the width of his shoulders as he shut the door. ‘He can’t escape.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ she said as, carefully unhooking the creature’s claws from the front of her dress, she set it down in the bath. ‘And if it went under the bagno...’ She left him to imagine what fun it would be trying to tempt him out.

Dante glanced down as the kitten, a tiny front paw resting against the steep side of the bath, protested at this indignity. ‘Smart thinking.’

‘When you’ve taken a room apart looking for a kitten that’s managed to squeeze through a crack in the skirting board,’ she told him, ‘you learn to keep them confined.’

‘You live an interesting life, Angelica Amery,’ he said, watching as she attempted to slip the buttons at her wrist without getting blood on her dress.

‘Isn’t that a curse in China?’ she asked.

‘I believe that would be “May you live in interesting times”,’ he said, ‘but you’ll forgive me if I say that you don’t dress like a woman in search of a quiet life.’

‘Well, you know what they say,’ she replied. ‘Life is short. Eat ice cream every day.’

A smile deepened the lines bracketing his mouth, fanned out from his eyes. ‘What “they” would that be?’

‘More of an “it”, actually. It’s Rosie, our vintage ice cream van. In her Little Book of Ice Cream.’ He looked confused—who wouldn’t? ‘Of course she has a vested interest.’

‘Right...’

‘It’s the sentiment that matters, Dante. You can substitute whatever lifts your spirits. Chocolate? Cherries?’ No response. ‘Cheese?’ she offered, hoping to make him laugh. Or at least smile.

‘Permesso?’ He indicated her continuing struggle with shaky fingers and fiddly buttons.

Okay, it wasn’t that funny and, giving up on the buttons, she surrendered her hand. ‘Prego.’

He carefully unfastened the loops holding the cuff together, folded the sleeve back out of the way, then, taking hold of her wrist, he pumped a little liquid soap into her palm.

Her heart rate, which was already going well over the speed limit, accelerated and, on the point of telling him that she could handle it from here, she took her own advice. Okay, it wasn’t ice cream or even chocolate, but how often was a seriously scrumptious man going to take her hand between his and—?

‘Coraggio,’ he murmured as his thumb brushed her palm and a tiny whimper escaped her lips.

‘Mmm...’

He turned to look at her, the edge of his faintly stubbled jaw an enticing whisper away from her lips. ‘Does that sting?’

‘No...’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not...stinging.’

She was feeling no pain as he gently massaged the soap between her fingers, around her thumb, wrist and into her palm. All sensation was centred much lower as he rinsed off the soap, pulled a thick white towel from a pile and carefully dried her hand.

‘Va bene?’ he asked.

‘Va bene,’ she repeated. Very, very bene indeed. He was so deliciously gentle. So very thorough.

‘Hold on. This will sting,’ he warned as he took a box of antiseptic wipes from the cupboard over the sink and opened a pouch.

‘I’ll try not to scream,’ she said but, taking no chances—her knees were in a pitifully weak state—she did as she was told and, putting her other hand on his shoulder, hung on.

She’d feel such a fool if she collapsed at his feet.

Really.

His shoulder felt wonderfully solid beneath the soft wool shirt. He was so close that she was breathing in the scent of coffee, warm male skin and, as his hair slid in a thick silky wedge over his forehead, she took a hit of the herby shampoo he used. It completely obliterated the sharp smell of antiseptic.

He opened a dressing and applied it carefully to the soft mound of flesh beneath her thumb.

‘All done.’

‘No...’

Dante looked up, a silent query buckling the space between his brows and her mouth dried. He’d been right about the need to hang on. The word had slipped through her lips while her brain was fully occupied in keeping her vertical.

‘There’s something else?’ he asked.

‘Yes... No...’ She hadn’t been criticising his first aid skills; she just hadn’t wanted him to stop. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Tell me,’ he pressed her, all concern.

What on earth could she say? The answer that instantly popped into her mind was totally outrageous but Dante was waiting and she managed a careless little shrug and waited for him to catch on.

Nothing...

For heaven’s sake, everyone knew what you did when someone hurt themselves. Did she have to spell it out for him?

‘Un bacio?’ she prompted.

‘A kiss?’ he repeated, no doubt wondering if she had the least clue what she was saying.

‘Sì...’ It was in an Italian phrasebook that her middle sister, Sorrel, had bought her. Under ‘People’, sub-section ‘Getting Intimate’, which she’d found far more engrossing than the section on buying a train ticket.

Posso baciarti?—Can I kiss you?—was there, along with other such useful phrases as Can I buy you a drink?, Let’s go somewhere quieter and Stop bothering me!

There hadn’t been a phrase for kissing it better. Perhaps it was in the ‘Health’ section.

‘This is considered beneficial?’ Dante asked.

He was regarding her with such earnestness that Geli wished the floor would just open up and swallow her. Then the flicker of a muscle at the corner of his mouth betrayed him and she knew that Dante Vettori had been teasing her. That he’d known exactly what she meant. That it was going to be all right. Better than all right—the man wasn’t just fabulous to look at; he had a sense of humour.

‘Not just beneficial,’ she assured him. ‘It’s absolutely essential.’

‘Forgive me. I couldn’t have been paying attention when this was covered in first aid,’ he said, the muscle working overtime to contain the smile fighting to break out. ‘You may have to show me.’

Show him? Excitement rippled through her at the thought. It was outrageous but a woman in search of an interesting life had to seize the day. Lick the ice cream—

Coraggio, Geli—

‘It’s very simple, Dante. You just put your lips together—’

‘Like this?’

She caught her breath as he raised her hand and, never taking his eyes from hers, touched his lips to the soft mound of her palm, just below the dressing he’d applied with such care.

‘Exactly like that,’ she managed through a throat that felt as if it had been stuffed with silk chiffon. ‘I’m not sure why it works—’

‘I imagine it’s to do with the application of heat,’ he said, his voice as soft as the second warm kiss he breathed into her palm. Her knees turned to water and her hand slid from his shoulder to clutch a handful of shirt. Beneath it, she could feel the thud of his heartbeat—a slow, steady counterpoint to her own racing pulse. ‘Is that hot enough?’

Was he still teasing? The threatened smile had never appeared but his mouth was closer. Much closer.

‘The more heat,’ she murmured, her words little more than a whisper, ‘the more effective the cure.’

‘How hot do you want it to be, Angelica?’ His voice trickled over her skin like warm honey and his eyes were asking the question that had been there since he’d turned and looked at her. Since he’d put his hand on hers and moved it across the map.

His hand was at her back now, supporting her, his breath soft against her lips and her answer was to lift the hand he’d kissed, slide her fingers through his dark silky hair. This close, she could see that the velvet dark of his irises was shot through with tiny gold sparks, sparks that arced between them, igniting some primitive part of her brain.

‘Hot,’ she murmured. ‘Molto, molto caldo...’ And she touched his luscious lower lip with her mouth, her tongue, sucking in the taste of rich dark coffee that lingered there. Maybe it was the caffeine—on her tongue on his—but, as she closed her eyes and he angled his mouth to deepen the kiss, cradled her head, she felt a zingy hyper-tingle of heat lick through her veins, seep into her skin, warming her, giving her life.

‘Hello?’ Lisa’s voice filtered through the golden mist. ‘Everything okay?’ she called, just feet from the bathroom door and, from the urgency with which she said it, Geli suspected that it wasn’t the first time she’d asked.

Geli opened her eyes as Dante raised his head, took a step back, steadying her as a cold space opened up between them where before there had been closeness, heat.

‘Don’t open the door or the kitten will escape,’ he warned sharply.

‘Right... I just meant to tell you that there are antiseptic wipes in the cabinet.’

‘I found them.’ His hand slid from her shoulder and he reached for the door handle. ‘We’re all done.’

Noooo... But he’d already opened the door and stepped through it, closing it behind him. Leaving her alone to catch her breath, put some stiffeners in her knees and recover what little dignity remained after she’d flung herself at a total stranger.

Okay, there had been some heavy-duty flirting going on, but most of it had been on her side. Dante, realising that she was in a mess, had tried to sit her down and quietly explain about the apartment while she had put on a display that wouldn’t have disgraced a burlesque dancer. One minute she’d been struggling with her glove and the next...