Vettori's Damsel in Distress

CHAPTER THREE

‘Ice cream is cheaper than therapy and you don’t need an appointment.’

—from Rosie’s Little Book of Ice Cream

DANTE WALKED INTO the kitchen, filled a glass with ice-cold water from the fridge and downed it in one. The only effect was to make him feel as if he had steam coming out of his ears and, from the way Lisa was looking at him, he very well might have.

Angelica...

Her name suggested something white and gold in a Renaissance painting, but no Renaissance angel ever had a body, legs like that. A mouth that felt like a kiss from across the room. A kiss that obliterated every thought but to possess her.

He hadn’t looked at a woman in that way, touched a woman in that way for over a year but when he’d turned, seen her crimson mouth, the one jolt of colour against the unrelieved black of her clothes, her hair, against skin that looked as if it had never seen the sun, every cell in his body had sat up and begged to go to hell.

Someone must have been listening...

Dark Angel was right.

Aware that Lisa was regarding him with undisguised amusement, brows raised a fraction, he stared right back at her, daring her to say a word. She grinned knowingly then turned away as Angelica finally joined them.

‘How did he do?’ Lisa asked. ‘Has he earned his first aid badge?’

‘Gold star,’ Angelica replied, holding out her hand for inspection. She was doing a good job of matching Lisa’s jokey tone but she wasn’t looking at him and there was a betraying pink flush across her cheekbones.

‘Did you find a box, Lis?’ he asked sharply.

‘I have this box,’ she said, ‘thoroughly lined with newspaper.’ She looked down at the deep box she was holding and then up at him, her brows a got you millimetre higher and he could have kicked himself. So much for attempting to distract her. ‘Chef gave me some minced chicken for Rattino. I assumed you’d have milk up here.’

‘I have, but it’ll be cold,’ he said, grabbing the excuse to escape. ‘I’ll put a drop in the microwave to take the chill off.’

‘Thank you. That’s very kind,’ Angelica replied quietly as she took the box from Lisa and retreated to the bathroom. He watched her walk away, trying not to think about what her legs were doing to him. What he wanted to do to her legs...

He turned abruptly, opened the fridge door, poured some milk into a saucer and put it in the microwave for a few seconds.

‘Haven’t you got something to do downstairs?’ he asked as, feeling like an idiot with Lisa watching, he put a finger in to test the temperature.

‘It’s snowing hard now. Everyone’s making a move and I’ve told the staff to go home.’ She leaned against the door frame. ‘What are you going to do about Geli?’

‘Do?’

‘If it’s true about her apartment.’

‘It’s true about Via Pepone,’ he said. ‘My father demolished it last year. He’s about to put a glass box in its place.’

‘That’s the place—?’

‘Yes,’ he said, cutting her off before she said any more.

‘Right.’ She waited a moment and then glanced towards the bathroom. ‘So?’

‘So what?’ he snapped.

‘So what are you going to do about Geli?’

‘Why should I do anything?’ he demanded. ‘My father may have demolished the street but he didn’t con her out of rent for an apartment that no longer exists.’ Lisa didn’t say anything but her body language was very loud. ‘What do you expect me to do, Lis? Pick her up and put her in my pocket like one of her strays? Have we got a cardboard box big enough?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But she’s been travelling all day, it’s late and, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s snowing out there.’

‘I’d noticed.’ Snowflakes had been clinging to Angelica’s hair and face when she’d arrived. She’d licked one off her upper lip as she’d walked towards him.

‘That’s it?’ Lisa asked. ‘That’s all you’ve got?’

‘Lis...’

‘It’s okay; don’t worry about it.’ She raised a hand in a gesture that was pure Italian. ‘I’ve got a room she can have.’

‘A room?’

‘Four walls, ceiling, bed—’

‘I wasn’t asking for a definition,’ he said, ‘I was questioning the reality. You and Baldacci live in a one-bedroom flat and Angelica’s legs would hang over the end of your sofa.’ He could picture them. Long legs, short skirt, sexy boots—

‘The sofa is a non-starter,’ she agreed, ‘but the room is here, just along the corridor. Right next to yours.’

That jolted him out of his fantasy. ‘That’s not your room!’

‘No? Whose clothes are hanging in the wardrobe? Whose book is on the bedside table? Nonnina Rosa believes that it’s my room and that, my dear cousin, makes it a fact.’

‘Nonnina Rosa is on the other side of the world.’

‘She’s just a second away in cyber space. You wouldn’t want her to discover that when I selflessly volunteered—’

‘Selflessly? Madonna!’

‘—when I selflessly volunteered to come halfway across the world to pick up the pieces and glue you back together, you did nothing to stop me from moving in with a Baldacci?’ She mimed her grandmother spitting at the mention of the hated name. ‘Would you?’

‘The only reason you’re here is because Vanni Baldacci’s father sent him to his Milan office to keep him out of the scheming clutches of a Vettori.’

‘Epic fail. The darling man has just texted me to say he’s on his way with my gumboots and a brolly.’

‘Lisa, please...’

‘Nonnina was desperately worried about you, Dan. She felt responsible—’

‘What happened had nothing to do with her. It was my choice. And you were about as much use as a chocolate teapot,’ he added before she could rerun what had happened. It was over, done with. ‘The only reason I keep you on is because no one else will employ you.’

She lifted her shoulders in a theatrical shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she said, not bothering to challenge him. ‘Of course, if you object so strongly to Geli having my room you could always invite her to share yours.’

‘Go away, Lisa, or I swear I’ll call Nonnina myself. Or maybe I should speak to Nicolo Baldacci.’

‘How long is it, exactly, since you got laid, Dan?’ she asked, not in the least bothered by a threat that they both knew he would never carry out. ‘It’s time to forget Valentina. You need to get back on the horse.’

He picked up the saucer of milk and waited for her to move.

‘I mean it. You’ve been looking at Geli like a starving man who’s been offered hot food ever since she walked through the door,’ she said, staying right where she was. ‘In fact, if I were a betting woman I’d be offering straight odds that you were taking the first mouthful when I interrupted you.’

‘I met her less than an hour ago,’ he reminded her, trying not to think about the feel of Angelica’s tongue on his lip even as he sucked it in to taste her. Coffee, honey, life...

‘An hour can be a lifetime when lightning strikes. I wanted to rip Vanni’s clothes off the minute I set eyes on him,’ she said with the kind of smile that suggested it hadn’t been much longer than that.

‘I’m not about to take advantage of a damsel in distress.’

‘Not even if she wants you to take advantage of her? She looked...interested.’

‘Not even then,’ he said, trying not to think about her crimson lips whispering ‘caldo...’, her breath against his mouth, the way she’d leaned into him, how her body fitted against his.

‘You are so damned English under that Italian exterior,’ she said. ‘Always the perfect gentleman. Never betraying so much as a quiver of emotion, even when the damsel in question is stomping all over you in her designer stilettos.’

‘Valentina knew what she wanted. I was the one who moved the goalposts.’

‘Don’t be so damned noble. You fall in love with the man, Dan, not some fancy penthouse, the villa at Lake Como, the A-list lifestyle. I’d live in a cave with Vanni.’

‘Then talk to your parents before your secret blows up in your faces.’ Dante had experienced that pain at first-hand... ‘It won’t go away, Lis.’

‘No.’ She pulled a face, muttered, ‘Stupid feud...’ Then she reached out and touched his arm. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Good luck with finding a hotel that’ll take Rattino,’ she said, heading towards the door. She didn’t get more than a couple of steps before she stopped, turned round. ‘I suppose Geli could put him back in her coat pocket and sneak him in—’

‘Are you done?’ he asked, losing patience.

‘—but it will only be a temporary solution. Tonight’s scene in the bar will be the talk of the market tomorrow.’

‘The snow will be the talk of the market tomorrow.’

She shook her head. ‘It snows every year but the combination of a head-turning woman, the rare sound of Dante Vettori laughing and a rat? Now that is something worth talking about.’

‘Lis,’ he warned.

‘Never mind. I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

‘You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.’

She grinned. ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking. You and every man in the bar when she arrived in a flurry of snowflakes. How to make an entrance! Tra-la-la...’ Lisa blew on her fingers and then shook them. ‘Seriously, Dan, I don’t know if Geli needs a job but she will need space to show her stuff and having her around will be very good for business.’

‘Are you done now?’

‘As for the other thing, my advice is to get in quickly or you’re going to be at the back of a very long queue.’ She almost made it to the door before she said, ‘You won’t forget that you offered her supper? Have you got anything up here or do you want me to look in the fridge?’

‘Just lock up and go home.’

‘Okay.’ She opened the door, looked back over her shoulder. ‘I’ve brought up Geli’s suitcase, by the way. It’s in her room.’

‘Basta! Andare!’

‘And you have lipstick—’ she pointed to the corner of her own mouth ‘—just here.’

* * *

Geli’s hands were shaking as she scooped out a tiny portion of chicken for the kitten, her whole body trembling as she sank to her knees beside the bath, resting her chin on her arms as she watched him practically inhale it. Trying to decide which was most disturbing—kissing a man she’d only just met or being told that the flat she’d paid good money to rent did not exist.

It should be the flat. Obviously.

Elle was going to be furious with her for being so careless. Her grandmother had lost everything but the roof over their heads to a con man not long after their mother died. Without their big sister putting her own life on hold to take care of them all, she and Sorrel would have ended up in care.

Fortunately, there was the width of France and Switzerland between them. Unless she told them what had happened they would never know that she’d messed up.

Which left the kiss. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if it was her first kiss—her first anything—but for a moment she’d felt as if she’d been on the brink of something rare, something life-changing.

As she leaned against the edge of the bath watching the kitten, she remembered the moment when she’d caught her sister on the point of kissing Sean McElroy. Their closeness, the intensity of their focus on each other, had terrified her. Elle was hers—surrogate mother, surrogate father, big sister, carer—but suddenly there was someone else, this man, a total stranger, getting all her attention.

For a moment, with Dante’s arm around her waist, his lips a millimetre from her own, she’d known how Elle had felt, had wanted it for herself. That was why she was shaking. For a moment she had been utterly defenceless...

‘I’m sorry I took so long to bring the milk. I was arranging with Lisa to lock up for me.’ Dante placed the saucer in the bath but, instead of joining her, he stood back, keeping his distance.

Which was a very good thing, she told herself. Just because she wanted him here, kneeling beside her, didn’t make it a good idea...

‘We’re putting you to a lot of trouble,’ she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the kitten as he stepped in the saucer and lapped clumsily at the milk.

‘He’s looking better already,’ he said, his voice as distant as his body.

‘He’s fluffed up a bit now he’s dry but he hasn’t learned to wash.’ Keep it impersonal. Talk about the cat... ‘He’s much too young to be separated from his mother. I’ll take him back to where I found him tomorrow and see if I can reunite them.’

‘How do you think that will work out?’ he asked.

‘About as well as it usually does.’ She reached out and ran a finger over the kitten’s tiny domed head. ‘About as well as my escape to Isola is working out.’

‘Escape? What are you running away from?’

She looked up. He was frowning, evidently concerned. ‘Just life in a small village,’ she said quickly before he began wondering which asylum she’d broken out of. ‘Conformity. I very nearly succumbed to the temptation to buckle down to reality and become the design director for my sisters’ ice cream parlour franchise.’ She did a little mock shiver. ‘Can you imagine? All that pink!’

He snorted with laughter.

‘You see? You only met me half an hour ago but even you can see that’s ridiculous.’

‘Let’s just say that I find it unlikely.’

‘Thank you, Dante. You couldn’t have paid me a nicer compliment.’ She hooked her hair behind her ear, stood up and faced him. Forget the kiss... ‘And thank you for trying to break the news about my apartment gently over supper.’

He shrugged. ‘I wanted more information before I leapt in with the bad news,’ he said, turning away to reach for a towel. ‘You could have made a mistake with the address.’

‘But you didn’t believe I had.’

‘No.’ He stopped looking down at the towel and looked at her. ‘The map you had was out of date. If you had followed the directions you were given, you would have ended up at a construction site.’

‘Which I did,’ she admitted. ‘Lisa was right when she said you know Isola like the back of your hand.’

‘I spent a lot of my childhood here but it’s changing fast. We’re struggling to hang on to what’s left.’

‘You’ll forgive me if I say that I wish you’d struggled a little harder.’ He didn’t exactly flinch but clearly she’d said the wrong thing. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’

‘Here, Rattino will be more comfortable on this,’ he said. ‘Bring the box through to the fire when he’s settled.’

She looked down at the towel he’d thrust into her hand and then at the space where, a moment before, Dante Vettori had been standing.

What had she said?

* * *

Everything about Dante was still except the hand holding the wooden spoon as he stirred something in a saucepan. The light glinting off the heavy steel band of his wristwatch was mesmerising and Geli could have stood in the doorway and watched him for ever.

‘Is he settled?’ he asked without looking up.

‘Asleep and dreaming he’s in heaven,’ she said. ‘Life is so simple when you’re a cat.’ She held up the lease that was currently severely complicating hers.

He turned down the heat and took it from her. ‘There’s no mistake about the address,’ he said.

‘No. I have Signora Franco’s number,’ she said, clutching the phone she’d used to tell her sisters that she’d arrived safely. Well, she’d arrived... ‘If I call her will you talk to her?’

‘Of course.’

The wait to connect seemed endless but, in the end, was nowhere near long enough.

‘No reply?’ he asked when she let the phone drop to her side.

She shook her head. ‘The message was in Italian, but “number unavailable” sounds the same in any language.’

He shook his head. ‘Tell me, Angelica, how did you learn such impressive self-control?’

She held her breath momentarily. Let it out slowly. ‘Self-control?’

‘Few women I know—few men, come to that—would have taken the news about the apartment without throwing something, even if it was just a tantrum.’

‘Oh...’ Momentarily thrown, she said, ‘I don’t do tantrums.’

‘Is there a secret to that? Anything you’re prepared to share with Lisa?’ he asked.

‘Yoga?’ she offered. ‘It’s all in the breathing.’

He turned back to the sauce without a word, stirring it very slowly.

Damn it, she didn’t know him... He might regret kissing her but he’d been kind when he didn’t have to be. He hadn’t yelled at her, or thrown her or the kitten out when they’d caused a near riot in his café.

She took one of those yoga breaths.

‘I cried a lot when my mother died. It made things difficult at school and my sisters sad because there was nothing they could do to make things better.’ This was something she never talked about and the words escaped in a soft rush of breath. ‘I wanted to stop but I didn’t know how.’

‘How old were you?’ He continued to stir the sauce, not looking at her.

‘Eight.’ Two days short of her ninth birthday.

‘Eight?’ He swung round. ‘Madre de Dio...’

‘It was cancer,’ she said before he asked. ‘The aggressive kind, where the diagnosis comes with weeks to live.’

‘Non c’è niente che posso dire,’ he said. And then, in English, ‘There are no words...’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing anyone can say. No words, not an entire river of tears... Nothing can change what happened.’

‘Is that when you stopped crying?’ he asked. ‘When you realised it made no difference?’

‘I was eight, Dante!’ So much for her self-control...

‘So?’ he prompted, ‘you were too young for philosophy but clearly something happened.’

‘What? Oh, yes... My grandmother found an old black hat in the attic. With a floppy brim,’ she said, describing in with a wavy gesture. ‘Crocheted. Very Sixties. My grandmother was something of a style icon in her day.’

‘And that helped?’ he asked, ignoring the fashion note that was meant to draw a thick black line under the subject.

‘She said that when I was sad I could hide behind the brim.’ She still remembered the moment she’d put it on. The feeling of a great burden being lifted from her shoulders. ‘It showed the world what I was feeling without the red eyes and snot and was a lot easier for everyone to live with. I wore that hat until it fell apart.’

‘And then what did you do?’

‘I found a black cloche in a charity shop. And a black dress. It was too big for me but my grandmother helped me cut it down. Then, when I was twelve, I dyed my hair.’

‘Let me guess. Black.’

‘Actually, it was nearer green but my grandmother took me to the hairdressers’ and had it sorted out and dyed properly.’ The memory of the moment when she’d looked in the mirror and seen herself still made her smile. ‘My sisters were furious.’

‘Because of the colour or because they hadn’t had the same treat?’

‘Because Grandma had blown all the housekeeping money on rescuing me from the nightmare of going to school with green hair. They thought eating was more important.’

‘Hunger has a tendency to shorten the temper,’ he agreed, turning the sauce down to minimum and pouring two glasses of wine from a bottle, dewed with moisture, that stood on the china-laden dresser that took up most of one wall.

‘Where was your father in all this?’ he asked as he handed a glass to her.

‘I don’t have one. None of us do.’

His eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘Unless there’s been a major leap forward in evolution that passed me by,’ he said, leaning back against the dresser, ‘that’s not possible.’

‘Biologically perhaps, but while my mother loved babies, she didn’t want a man underfoot, being moody when his dinner wasn’t ready.’ She turned and, glass in hand, leaned back against the dresser. It was easier being beside him than looking at him. ‘My grandparents’ marriage was not a happy one.’ She took a mouthful of the rich, fruity wine. ‘I imagine the first time she got pregnant it was an accident, but after that, whenever she was broody, she helped herself to a sperm donation from some man she took a fancy to. A travelling fair visits the village every year for the Late Spring Bank Holiday,’ she said. ‘Our fathers were setting up in the next county before the egg divided.’

‘She lived dangerously.’

‘She lived for the moment.’

‘“Take what you want,” says God, “take it and pay for it...”’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘It’s an old Spanish proverb. So? What colour is your hair?’

She picked up a strand, looked at it, then up at him. ‘Black.’

He grinned and it wasn’t just the wine that was warming her.

‘How did you find it?’ he asked. ‘The apartment.’

‘What? Oh...’ Well, that was short-lived... ‘On the internet.’ He didn’t have to say what he thought about that. A muscle tightening at the corner of his mouth wrote an entire essay on the subject. ‘It was an international agency,’ she protested, ‘affiliated to goodness knows how many associations.’ Not that she’d checked on any of them. Who did? ‘There were comments from previous tenants. Some who’d enjoyed their stay in the apartment and couldn’t wait to come back, and a few disgruntled remarks about the heat and the lack of air conditioning. Exactly what you’d expect. Look, I’ll show you,’ she said, clicking the link on her smartphone.

Like the phone line, the web link was no longer available.

Until that moment she hadn’t believed that she’d been conned, had been sure that it was all a mistake, but now the air was sucked right out of her and Dante caught her as her knees buckled, rescued her glass, turned her into his chest.

His arm was around her, her head against his shoulder and the temptation to stay there and allow him to hold her, comfort her, almost overwhelmed her. It felt so right, he was such a perfect fit, but she’d already made a fool of herself once today. She dragged in a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and stepped away.

‘Are you okay?’ he said, his hand still outstretched to steady her.

‘Fine. Really.’

He didn’t look convinced. ‘When did you last have something to eat?’

‘I don’t know. I had a sandwich at the airport when they announced that my flight had been delayed.’

‘Nothing since then?’ He looked horrified. ‘No wonder you’re trembling. Sit down while the pasta cooks.’ He tested it. ‘Another minute or two. It’s nothing fancy—pasta al funghi. Pasta with mushroom sauce,’ he added in case her Italian wasn’t up to it.

She shook her head. ‘I’m sure it’s wonderful but, honestly, I couldn’t eat a thing.’ He didn’t argue but reached for a couple of dishes. ‘The apartment looked so perfect and the rent was so reasonable...’ Stupid, stupid, stupid! ‘I assumed it was because it was the middle of winter, off-season, but it was a trap for the gullible. No, make that the cheap.’ She’d had it hammered into her by Elle that if something looked too good... But she’d been enchanted.

‘Did you give them details of your bank account?’ Dante asked.