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“He insisted on driving me home. He was very proud of his car, and I knew that I wasn’t going to see him again, so I agreed. What harm could it do? But halfway through the trip, I realised that he wasn’t going in the right direction. He said he wanted to show me where he lived, that it was a fantastic warehouse conversion in Docklands. I told him no and things got a little unpleasant. He found a quiet spot to stop the car. It was late. Well, there was a bit of a struggle, but I managed to get out in one piece.
“After that I began getting text messages from him. Phone calls. I knew there were times when he was following me but there was nothing the police could do. Then, last week, he managed to get into the house, which was really scary. That was why the cottage, coming at the time it did, was like a stroke of good luck.”
She was surprised to find that she had drunk the glass of wine. She looked at Angelo but she couldn’t read the expression on his face. Embarrassment flooded her all over again. He had dashed out here to help her because she had asked. She had put him in the awkward position of having little or no choice. Coming on top of her last show of recklessness, what would he be thinking of her? Might he imagine that she was trying to manipulate him into something?
He already had a low opinion of her. When he had seen her at the funeral, his first response had been one of suspicion. He would never stop thinking that she was after something. Did he now think that her plea for help was part of some plan to net him, especially when she had already made it clear that she was still attracted to him—against all odds and despite the bitterness and disillusionment that had been the legacy of how their relationship had ended?
“You haven’t told me what you said to him.” Rosie tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible.
“I told him that I knew the movers and shakers in his company. I told him that if he ever came near you again, or contacted you in any way, I would make sure he no longer had a job to go to. I told him that I would go further than that. I would ensure that every door was slammed in his face. In short, he was left in no doubt that if he didn’t do exactly what I told him career-wise he would be buried.”
“You could do that?” Two bright patches of colour appeared in her cheeks. She wanted to grin. The relief of having this slice of her life sorted was immense, and for a few seconds she stopped analysing the details.
“I could do that.”
“I was worried that you might get physical...”
“Not that stupid,” Angelo told her wryly. “A man like that would cower and then run crying to the nearest police station. Not that it wasn’t tempting. At any rate, your ordeal is now at an end. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man upped sticks and disappeared to another part of the country. In fact, it wouldn’t take much for me to pull a few strings and turn that into actuality.”
“As long as I never have to see him again.”
“There’s no chance of that happening. Have you eaten?”
Rosie looked at him in surprise and then remembered that he had wanted to talk to her about boundary lines, about the wretched cottage. It brought her back down to earth.
“No, but...”
“Get dressed. You need dinner. I need dinner.” He shrugged.
“Plus you want to talk to me about the land around the cottage,” Rosie suggested absently.
Angelo had forgotten about that when it should have been at the forefront of his thoughts. He frowned. He didn’t want to get sucked into her personal dramas. This would be the exception, because this was a drama that could have been harmful to her, and at the end of the day he wouldn’t wish physical harm on his worst enemy.
“Right.”
“Okay; if you give me five minutes, I’ll get dressed.”
Rosie was speedy when it came to getting ready. She barely wore make-up. Her wardrobe was limited, so there was little opportunity for her to stand in front of it for hours, agonising over a choice of clothing. When she had been dating Angelo, she had accumulated loads of clothes because they had gone to loads of fancy places. In the wake of their break-up she had given the lot away, and working behind the scenes in a bustling kitchen didn’t require much imagination when it came to a dress code: jeans and comfortable clothes. Flat shoes.
However, she found herself dithering. She wasn’t going on a date! Yet she told herself that that was no reason to look drab. What was wrong in throwing on a little make-up? And wasn’t it about time she took those shoes with heels out for an airing? And that black dress? She couldn’t remember the last time she had flung it on. And besides, she argued with herself, how often did she actually get to eat out? It was ironic, considering she worked in a restaurant.
When she next looked at her reflection, she was alarmed at the warm flush in her cheeks and the dress...the heels... Too late to think about changing. She grabbed a scarf to tone down the plunging neckline of the dress and hurried out of the bedroom to find Angelo waiting for her in the lounge, inspecting all the little bits she had gathered over time and which she had interspersed in the room to try and camouflage its drabness: posters of old movie stars; a picture of her smiling when she had graduated from her catering course; various vases she had picked up in boot sales and which she had arranged on the book shelf along with her selection of books, not that she ever seemed to have much time to do any reading.
“I’m ready.” In the act of putting on her black coat, she missed the look in his eyes as he took her in.
Why kid himself that this rescue mission didn’t have a powerful personal edge to it? Angelo thought. Looking at her now, he could feel his whole body stirring into heated arousal. The dress showed every inch of her body; hugged her small, rounded breasts, even though she was wearing a fairly hideous scarf in a vain attempt to conceal them. Like it or not, he was on a high, because the damsel in distress was Rosie. Clearly his body hadn’t eliminated the memory of her, even though his mind surely had.
“I expect you know all the restaurants around here?” He began moving towards the door, putting on his jacket as he walked towards her.
She laughed and Angelo inhaled sharply as once again he reacted to the infectious sound. “You’d be surprised. I never eat out. For a start, I can’t afford to go anywhere nice, and then I’m working all the time.”
“Hence why you felt compelled to go on a blind date with that creep?”
“I didn’t know he was a creep when I went. There’s supposed to be a very good Italian about ten minutes away.” Having dressed up, she squashed the moment of deflation when he failed to comment. Why would he?
There was no reason to feel all fluttery and girlish, yet she did. It was a relief to be out of the close confines of his car and in the busy warmth of the restaurant which, as it was still quite early, was relatively empty.
“Thank you for this,” Rosie said brightly once they were seated and menus had been placed in front of them with all the usual attendant Italian flamboyance. “I expect you must be really annoyed at having to spend a Friday evening like this—dragged away from your work to deal with problems that have nothing to do with you.”
“If this is leading up to another gratitude speech, then skip it, Rosie. I’m not a hero for dealing with the wimp who was pestering you.” Except it was more than just pestering and Angelo wouldn’t allow his mind to go there.
“Okay.” Her bright smile faltered. “Well, you said on the phone that you wanted to talk about boundaries?” She sat back to allow some wine to be poured for them and waited as their orders were taken. She could feel Angelo’s eyes on her and she knew that she had to maintain a bland, cheerful front which would make things so much easier.
“It’s a bit messy.”
Rosie sighed and leant back in the chair. All the energy seemed to rush out of her in a whoosh.
“Before all of this, I was at home trying to do the sums, Angelo.” She half-closed her eyes and folded her arms tightly around her. Then she leant forwards slightly and looked at him before dropping her eyes to the checked table cloth. “None of it works out,” she said bluntly. “My boss can’t really help me. I would have to go through a million hoops before I could really start to get anything off the ground. I hadn’t really stopped and considered all the fine details. I was so desperate to get away from London.”
Angelo flushed darkly as he remembered his option of getting some sort of revenge by allowing her to fail. He didn’t say anything but he noticed, as food was placed in front of them, that she seemed to have no appetite.
For a while, she gave him the basics of why she would never be able to make a go of any catering business. It was nothing he hadn’t previously pointed out to her, yet it didn’t give him the expected kick of satisfaction. His mind kept coming back to the creep who had stalked her. The woman he had been happy to dismiss at the funeral as history—and bad history at that—was now doing all sorts of things to his equilibrium. Or maybe she had never stopped doing things to his equilibrium? He impatiently shoved that notion aside.
“I thought about going to see my bank manager,” Rosie was now saying, having exhausted the topic of all the things that would be required for her to launch her own catering business. She suspected that she was boring him to death, because he wasn’t saying a word. She felt that any minute now he would surreptitiously glance at his watch. Lord knew, he probably had things to do on a Friday evening. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed staying in and chilling on his own.
