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“Better?” he drawled. “Or do I need to remove some more?”
Rosie furiously dug away at the weeds and tried to ignore that sexy rhetorical question. Their unfinished conversation hung in the air between them and she didn’t know what to do about it. Should she launch into the speech she had spent the past month rehearsing? Should she tell him in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t up for grabs, that she didn’t need him doing her any favours? That whatever attraction she felt for him was just not strong enough for her even to contemplate doing something about it?
“Your jacket will be ruined,” she pointed out.
“There are plenty more where that came from.”
Rosie resentfully brushed her hands clean against her dungarees, neatly folded the jacket and rested it on the other deck chair occupying the patio space.
“No need for you to do that,” Angelo drawled, tilting his head to watch her as she resumed her weeding. “But then I guess old habits die hard.”
“I’m disappointed that you’re still a slob.” She was annoyed that he was perfectly right. When they had been together, he had found her annoyance with his sloppy habits amusing. He left things lying around, told her that there was no need to pick them up, that he had a daily housekeeper who did that, and she ignored him and complained that expensive clothes should be treated properly.
Angelo laughed, relaxed. “I’ve never told you this, but it’s one of the upsides of having made a lot of money. I don’t like tidying up behind myself and I can now afford to pay someone to do it for me.”
“You’ve always had a lot of money.” Rosie sat back on her haunches and shielded her eyes against the evening sun to look at him narrowly. She knew that it was dangerous, allowing herself to enter into a dialogue with him, but she was curious. Their affair had been fast, furious and blissfully intense. It had never had time to morph into the calmer stage where questions were asked and small personal details were unearthed. It had suited her. The longer he didn’t know about her past—not that she had deliberately tried to conceal it—the better. He had likewise avoided mentioning his and she had simply assumed that his wealth was far-reaching and hereditary. Who cared? It had all been peripheral to everything else: the passion, the fun, the mad, wonderful heady feeling of being on a rollercoaster ride with a guy she had fallen deeply in love with.
“My mother worked two jobs,” Angelo said drily. “One of which was cleaning. My father wasn’t on the scene. So, you see, maybe there’s a psychological link there? Maybe having the ability to afford to pay someone to tidy up the mess I make is a permanent reminder of how far I’ve come?” Angelo wasn’t sure why he had suddenly decided to share that with her. Hell, did it matter? Yet, sharing confidences had never been his thing. Transported from poverty in Italy to all the trappings of privilege associated with a top private school, he had learnt quickly that the less said the better.
“You never said.” Rosie furiously uprooted some weeds and rocked back to inspect her handiwork but her mind was one-hundred-percent focused on Angelo. She retired to the deck chair, shifting the neatly folded jacket to the wrought-iron table, recently bought at auction for next to nothing. “When did you come over here?”
Having initiated the conversation, Angelo was now compelled to prolong it even though he really didn’t want to. Chatting wasn’t the purpose of his visit. He frowned at her and clicked his tongue impatiently when she continued to look at him with that disingenuous, appealing curiosity that he now knew better than to trust.
“I was thirteen.” He shrugged. “I won a scholarship to come here to board. The local council had initiated a programme of trying to generate interest in education by promising to pay for the top three students in various deprived schools to study in the UK. It was a joint deal with three boarding schools.”
“And you won.”
Angelo grinned wryly. “My mother persuaded me that it was a good idea. I think she predicted gloom and doom and a general descent into all sorts of untold horrors if I stayed where I was. At the age of thirteen the doom and gloom prediction held a lot of appeal, but I came over and never looked back.”
“Could you speak any English?”
“How much Italian did you speak when you were thirteen?”
“It must have been terrifying.” It sent a weird frisson through her to think how much they had in common, had they but known it. Two people from disadvantaged backgrounds doing their best to escape, the difference being that his escape was conclusively a million times more successful than hers had been.
“Do you feel sorry for me?” Angelo murmured, injecting just the right note of cynicism in his voice to deter her from going down the “bleeding heart” road. The route from A to B didn’t include tea and sympathy.
Rosie stiffened. He was very politely pointing out the chasm between them, warning her to pay attention to it just in case she got it into her silly little head to think that any conversation between them could ever be really and truly amicable. She was reminded that he hadn’t come here to chat. He had come here because he had an agenda and she would have to deal with that.
“I need to go and have a shower, Angelo.” She stood up and flexed her muscles which had stiffened up. “I take it you’re going to be staying up at your house? Wherever that is?” How she had been tempted to have a wander and take a look but she had fought down the temptation. “So, if you haven’t come here for a reason, then you should leave now.”
How long, he thought, could they dance round the main event, pretending it wasn’t there?
He looked at her slowly, taking his time, and when his eyes were back on her face it was to find that her colour was several shades brighter.
“I’ll just sit here for a short while longer and appreciate the scenery. I’m keen to find out how you’re progressing with your plans.” He knew how she was progressing. In fact, thanks to him, she had just received her first order and he predicted it wouldn’t be the last. Watching her fall flat on her face was no longer his objective, if it ever really had been. How receptive would she be if she was agonising over money and counting ways to avoid the poor house?
Rosie hesitated. Maybe this was the right time to tell him that she wasn’t interested, that he was crazy to imagine that she would ever, ever go anywhere near a bed with him again.
In her head, she had a vivid image of a boy of thirteen, speaking no English, arriving at an exclusive boarding school with a suitcase of second-hand clothes and cheap shoes. She had known what it felt like to be stared at by upper class kids her own age. There had been one of those schools on the outskirts of the town where she had lived and the shopping mall had been the meeting ground for all teenagers, rich and poor alike. Every weekend, the boys had ogled and assumed that she would jump at the chance of nabbing one of them. The girls had smirked and looked her up and down because of her striking good looks, clutching shopping bags from stores Rosie could only dream of ever entering. Her heart went out to the kid who had had to fight his way past that to get where he was.
She had to yank herself back to the reality of the man in front of her, the man who had dumped her for her friend and now wanted to manipulate her into sleeping with him because he still happened to fancy her. As if that counted for anything.
“My plans are going really well, as it happens,” she told him coolly.
“Really? I’m all ears.” He stood up, reached for his folded jacket and the shoes he had earlier kicked off.
It hardly seemed fair that despite the rolled-up suit trousers, the bare feet and the shirt half-untucked from the waistband of his trousers, he still managed to look rakishly, dangerously sexy. How many men could pull off that look? Rosie wondered irritably.
“I’ll follow you in,” he said, gesturing for her to lead the way.
Rosie hesitated for a few seconds then packed up a few things and headed for the back door.
“Should I leave my muddy shoes out here?” he asked with such innocence that Rosie turned to glare at him. Angelo held up the shoes, the soles of which were covered in a thin layer of top soil. She had kicked hers off at the door and was now in her thick socks.
“Your house looks very clean,” he expanded, “And I know you’ve always found my messiness a little annoying.”
“Yet somehow you never bothered to change your ways,” Rosie found herself retorting.
“It’s not my fault that you were always such a vision of sexiness when you were bending down to pick up my jackets.”
Rosie inhaled sharply. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to remember the way he would sometimes grab her, reduce her to breathless giggles as he peeled her clothes off and flung them to the four corners of whatever room they happened to be in, pretending to bribe her into making passionate love by promising to pick up all the scattered clothes himself.
“We need to talk, Angelo.”
“You were going to tell me all about your move and how you’ve been doing with your new career.”
“I know why you’ve come here. You want to talk about what you said the last time we met.” She folded her arms and stayed her ground.
