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By the time the phone call had ended, a time had been arranged for her to collect the key. Having made her mind up, she couldn’t wait to go.
“I’m going to do it.” She called Jack on her mobile to tell him as she locked the front door behind her and stuck out her hand for a cab. “Long story, but I don’t feel safe in the house any more. I know Ian’s harmless, but it’s still a little scary to think...well...”
Jack did as she expected him to, spoke to her in that soothing voice of his, told her that it was a good idea and that she shouldn’t feel guilty about accepting Mandy’s gift because it was the least she could have done.
“She wrecked your life,” he said, indignant, and as always fiercely loyal.
“Or else made me see Angelo for what he really was. Just a ship passing in the night. He never loved me, Jack, or else he wouldn’t have been unfaithful behind my back with my best friend.” Yet, seeing him again, he still got to her, still fired her up and made every pore and nerve-ending in her body rush into immediate red-alert mode.
There was nothing Jack could say to that, nothing that he had ever been able to say to that. They had talked about it endlessly in the weeks after the relationship had crashed and burned, until Rosie had become aware that she was boring her friend to death. At which point she stopped, and the only conversations she had on the subject were in her head.
“She did me a favour.” Rosie thought of the glittering hatred in Angelo’s eyes, those fabulous moss-green eyes that were so sexy and so unusual in someone of his exotically dark colouring.
“He should have heard you out about those pawn tickets, Rosie baby.”
“Why would he? He didn’t care enough to hear my side of the story. He was already moving on. No, he had already moved on.” She was ashamed when she remembered how willing she would have been to force Angelo to hear her out, how happily she would have sacrificed her self-respect and begged for him to believe her. But in the end there had been no point, because he had married Amanda.
She felt drained and exhausted just thinking about it. She couldn’t believe that he was now back in her life, determined to make her suffer in whatever way he could.
Forty minutes later, with the key to the cottage in her purse, Rosie wondered whether she had the strength to fight Angelo for a cottage she hadn’t even seen and might well hate on sight. Of the three of them, Mandy had always been the one most determined to blank out the past and recreate it as something it had never been. The second she had met Angelo and sussed his wealth, she had hissed to Rosie that she should keep their background under wraps.
“A guy like that who could have anyone, literally anyone, would dump you in a heartbeat if he ever found out that you, me and Jack are refugees from a disgusting council estate up north. Can you imagine what he’d think if he knew that your dad died a drunk? That your best friend’s mum was a junkie doing time? You wouldn’t see him for dust.”
Rosie had laughed. She wasn’t ashamed of her background, even though she had wanted to escape it as badly as the other two. But, in all events, Angelo hadn’t been the sort of guy who had wanted to quiz her about where she had grown up, nor had he confided in her about his own background, save to say that he had no brothers or sisters and came from a little village in Italy. They had laughed and made love and lived purely for the moment, and she had forgotten that they came from two different worlds because he had made her feel like a princess.
She splashed out on her train ticket and felt the thud of excitement as the train slowly lurched out of Paddington station. She’d had to wait a couple of hours at the station, not having booked her ticket in advance, but she hadn’t minded. She had enjoyed sitting in one of the cafés, sipping coffee and watching the world go by.
The key in her bag felt like a good-luck charm and she had to resist the temptation to wrap her fingers around it.
She had to stop herself from grinning. She didn’t care if Angelo loathed her and wanted to buy her out of this inheritance. This was her wonderful adventure and it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. She would grab it with both hands. Jack was right—why shouldn’t she? Amanda had taken a shotgun to her life and blown it apart so maybe James Foreman was right. Maybe this was her way of making amends.
She felt a shadow of apprehension when she remembered that Angelo owned the grounds alongside it, but she would just have to work out how that might affect her. They had nothing to say to one another. Once he had accepted that he couldn’t fling her off her own premises or buy her off, he would wash his hands of her. Hadn’t he said something about wanting to develop the place anyway? He could develop his own land, turn it into whatever he wanted, and when that happened he would once again disappear from her life. It wasn’t as though he would be finding excuses to show up on her doorstep. The opposite.
She sat back, closed her eyes and did her utmost to block the image of Angelo burning into her retina, tall, dark, dangerous and seeking some sort of revenge.
CHAPTER THREE
NOTHING COULD HAVE prepared Rosie for the picture-postcard cottage she walked into.
She had alternately dozed on the journey and speculated on what would be waiting for her at the end of it. She hadn’t realised how stressed out she had been for the past few months, how accustomed she had become to looking over her shoulder, but the more distance she put between herself and London the more relaxed she became.
Her hours at the restaurant were insane. Eager to pack in as much experience as she possibly could, she worked like a demon and, on weekends, would obsessively try out variations on some of the dishes she had been taught to prepare, always trying to tweak them into something else, something that would give her the confidence to break away and do her own thing.
Her social life was practically nonexistent. She had become so used to it that it was only as she was travelling away from it that she could see how unhealthy a lifestyle it had become.
And then there was Ian, always hovering in the background like a bad dream. She had trained herself to ignore his invisible presence in her life and, at least until he had found a way into her house, she had firmly believed she had succeeded. Yet, as the train had eaten up the miles between London and Plymouth, she realised that she had been kidding herself. He had been just one more thing weighing her down and stressing her out.
But the second she stood in front of that cottage, all her problems seemed to magically disappear.
It wasn’t a large cottage, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in charm. Rosie had wondered how far away it would be from Angelo’s house. She had wondered whether she would be able to see whatever mansion he owned towering in the distance, imposing an aura of permanent threat. She had known that, should that be the case, then she would never have been able to occupy it.
In fact, it was impossible even to guess that the cottage was anywhere near any other residence. It was set back from the main road, which was little more than a quiet country lane, and bordered by a white picket fence. Rosie had always imagined that white picket fences were things only found in kids’ books. She was charmed by the reality of actually seeing one in the flesh and before even entering the cottage she spent a few minutes tracing the outline of it with her hand.
She imagined that in summer the little front garden would be a riot of colour and the apple trees on either side would be heavy with fruit. Behind the cottage, the land stretched away into fields and a copse.
It was idyllic. No wonder Angelo had reacted with rage and horror at the thought of her occupying it. Having fancied himself conned out of thousands by a conniving opportunist, he would have been seething at the prospect of her descending on what must be a very valuable slice of real estate which he considered belonged to him.
With a little sigh, Rosie let herself into the cottage. She didn’t want to think about Angelo. She didn’t want to think of him storming down to Cornwall and blazing a furious trail through her flimsy defences. She was still trying to recover from the blistering effect he had had on her two weeks ago when she had encountered him at the funeral. Now, she just wanted to luxuriate in the tranquillity of her surroundings and determine the direction of her life.
Inside the cottage was perfectly proportioned, but what captivated Rosie were the small touches that were all Amanda’s: the choice of curtain, the choice of big and squashy sofas and the colour of the paint on the walls, rose-pinks and yellows.
She had wondered whether she would be spooked at walking into a house owned by her one-time friend, but she wasn’t. She strolled from room to room and reflected that, whatever the outcome of Amanda’s relationship with Angelo, she had managed to get what she had always dreamed of—a place close to the sea, decorated just the way she wanted, which was a style pinched from the occasional house magazine they used to drool over in their poky boxed houses on the council estate.
She didn’t realise how long she had spent wandering through the cottage until her stomach began to rumble with hunger.
Of course, she hadn’t thought to bring anything to eat with her. Fortunately, the fridge was completely empty. She didn’t think she would have coped had there been proof of her friend there. Had the place been cleaned after Amanda had died? Rosie thought it might have been. Perhaps James Foreman had seen to that. He hadn’t mentioned it, but he was just the sort of thoughtful, warm person who would have made sure the task was done in anticipation of her visiting.
