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She was so buoyed up by her sudden burst of optimism that she couldn’t wait for Angelo to call so that she could set him straight and was unreasonably put out when he failed to get in touch.
“He probably got the message loud and clear and has decided to back off,” she told Jack, two weeks later as she prepared for her final trip to the cottage, the one that would sever her ties with London.
She had made various journeys down, taking her possessions with her in stages. It had been a costly exercise, and she had had to dip into her meagre savings, but the light at the end of the tunnel was a terrific motivator. She had also had business cards printed and fliers done. Hundreds of them. She had already begun targeting various companies. Jack had done a website.
“Or maybe,” Jack pointed out, “he’s found someone else. After all, he’s a free man now. Maybe he’s decided that he’s better off with someone who doesn’t have anything to do with his past.”
“Let’s hope so.” Rosie realised that that had not occurred to her. Whilst she had been busily hating him and rehearsing her contemptuous, disdainful speeches that would show him just how mistaken he had been in thinking that she might actually fall into bed with him because he wanted to tie up loose ends—while all that had been going on in her head, playing over and over like a stuck record—she actually had not considered the possibility that he had just become bored with the whole proposition and decided to shrug his shoulders and walk away.
She had not considered the possibility that she actually might not see him again. She really hadn’t thought that he might have decided that pursuing a reluctant ex was more trouble than it was worth.
She chatted to Jack for a short while longer. He promised to visit once she had settled in. They spent ten minutes rehashing Angelo’s dramatic success in dispatching Ian. All the time, Rosie was aware of a hollowness inside her at the thought of Angelo disappearing without a backward glance, and she told herself that it was simply frustration born from having concocted a wonderfully sarcastic speech in her head and having been denied the opportunity to deliver it.
She was overjoyed that Angelo had backed off. She couldn’t wait to get started on this new phase of her life and it would be a distinct advantage not having him lurking in the background, bitter and vengeful and a constant hateful reminder of a past she had struggled to put behind her.
At least, that was what she told herself over the next fortnight, during which she discovered just how inadequate her savings were as she saw them being nibbled away in the purchase of plants, essential kitchen equipment, paint so that she could brighten up some of the walls, and food. There was no money coming in. Her phone remained silent.
By week three, just as desperation was beginning to take the gloss off her upbeat mood, she received a call for her first job—but not until she had provided a comprehensive list of dishes she had cooked, the restaurant in which she had been an apprentice and her experience of cooking for crowds.
Rosie was over the moon and she was beaming when, that evening, the doorbell rang and she pulled open the door to see Angelo standing on the doorstep. She hadn’t known whom to expect. She hadn’t wasted a single second wondering if her visitor might be unwelcome, or even wondering who on earth could be ringing her doorbell when she had as yet to make any friends in the area. Swept away by the euphoria of having her first client, she just hadn’t been thinking at all.
All over again, she was bombarded by conflicting emotions: disappointment, dismay, alarm. None of those featured even though she tried to get her mind into the place she had spent the past few weeks carefully training it to go. Instead, she felt a horrible swoop of dizzying excitement coupled with a charge of high-voltage anticipation that made her feel as though her body had suddenly been plugged into an electric socket.
“Village life seems to suit you,” Angelo murmured. “Your eyes are gleaming. You look relaxed.”
His absence for the past month had been intentional. He had put his cards on the table. He would back away, give her time for his proposal to sink in. Hot pursuit was not going to be his style. He had done that once and she hadn’t been worth the effort, as it turned out. No, he intended to have her, and he would make sure that he was in control every step of the way.
“What are you doing here?” Rosie scrambled to get her wits together.
“Did you miss me?”
Rosie went bright red. “No. I did not miss you, Angelo. I’ve been busy settling in. Why are you here?”
“You’ve painted the walls. Why that colour blue?”
“You still haven’t told me why you’ve come here,” Rosie said bluntly. “I’m very busy.”
“Doing what?” Angelo was enjoying himself. He liked the tinge of pink staining her cheeks and the furious downturn of her perfectly shaped mouth. She was wearing a pair of denim-blue overalls. One of the shoulder straps was buckled, the other wasn’t, so that her cream vest, snugly outlining her breasts, was exposed. She had obviously been doing some gardening at some point during the day. The weather was lovely, with blue skies, and there was a cool, pleasant nip in the air.
“No, don’t answer that,” he drawled. “You’ve been out in the garden.” He reached out to pluck a couple of dried twigs that had been caught on the thick fabric and Rosie stepped back quickly.
“Just a twig,” he said, holding it up between his fingers. “Proof positive that you’ve been getting down and dirty with Mother Nature. It’s a far cry from the girl I used to go out with.”
“The girl you used to go out with worked in a cocktail bar,” Rosie retorted, body still humming from where he had casually and briefly touched it.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in? This seems to be the question I’m forced to ask every time I show up on your doorstep.”
“That probably means that you shouldn’t show up on my doorstep.”
“Except you weren’t complaining last time, were you, Rosie?” Angelo murmured softly, just in case she conveniently decided to forget his sterling performance as her knight in shining armour. He had done little but think about seeing her again over the past month. His powers of concentration had been lamentably creaky. Now that she was standing in front of him, he intended to use every weapon in his arsenal to get her exactly where he wanted her. He had a powerful flashback to Amanda’s revelations and felt a cold, hard streak of rage and undiluted determination to get Rosie back into his bed and begin the process of clearing her out of his system.
Rosie pulled back the door and stood aside as he once again invaded her space. Her heart was beating like a jackhammer. She struggled to remember the confident way she told Jack that she was relieved that Angelo hadn’t been in touch. He was as graceful and as dangerous as a panther and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him as he stood in the small flagstoned hall, rocking back slightly on the balls of his feet as he nodded approval at her choice of colour for the walls.
“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life being grateful to you because you got rid of Ian,” she told him evenly.
“Eternal gratitude is something I could live without.”
“But you still think that it’s necessary to remind me of what you did.”
“Tell me what you’ve been up to while I’ve been away.” Angelo smoothly diverted the conversation. When he looked at her, he made sure to keep his eyes firmly focused on her face, yet he was taking her all in, every delectable inch of her, tallying the reality with the image that had haunted him for the past weeks. Never had he had so many cold showers.
“Mr Foreman said that the business with the land and the boundary lines could take for ever.” She managed to galvanise her body into some kind of movement and walked past him, through the kitchen and out to the back of the cottage where she had begun working on the garden, dividing the fertile earth into separate plots so that she could cultivate the herbs and vegetables she knew would be useful when more catering jobs hopefully began rolling in.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as he sat on the deck chair she had bought cheap at one of the garden centres. He wasn’t dressed for the great outdoors. His highly polished handmade shoes had already garnered some mud. His jacket looked out of place, as did his white shirt, even though he had removed his tie, probably stuffed it into his trouser pocket, a habit she was familiar with.
“What are you sniggering at?” Angelo asked, stretching out his long legs and tilting back in the chair so that the spring sun warmed his face.
“I suppose you’re out of your comfort zone sitting here, aren’t you? Your shoes are going to be muddy. You need to be in an office in those clothes, not out here.” They had only ever enjoyed London when she had been with him, enjoyed all the sophisticated restaurants, expensive theatres and dark, intimate clubs. They hadn’t taken trips out to the countryside. The memory had the fuzzy quality of a dream.
By way of response, Angelo kicked off his shoes, removed his socks, rolled up the trousers to the knees and tossed his jacket over the handle of the wheelbarrow into which a mound of weeds was steadily accumulating.
