English Rose for the Sicilian Doc

by Annie Claydon

  Meanwhile, he was taking an insulated food container out of his briefcase. ‘I drove as fast as I could...’

  Kissing him right then and there did seem like an option. ‘Matteo, you didn’t...’ Clearly he had. ‘Bring it outside, this is a no-food contamination area...’

  She hustled him out of the lab and then outside to the fold-up chairs that stood in the shade of a canvas awning. Matteo handed her a cardboard container, the kind you got from a street vendor, and then dug into his briefcase again for the spoon.

  ‘Mmm... This is...heaven. Thank you.’ Just enough sugar to take the tartness of the lemon away. Cold as ice and much more refreshing. ‘You want some?’ She held out the spoon to him.

  ‘No, thanks.’ He leaned back in his chair, grinning. ‘I’ll just watch.’

  ‘I’d forgotten you were a food voyeur.’

  ‘I bring you lemon sorbet, and you’d deny me the pleasure of seeing you eat it?’ The slight twitch of his lips made it all seem far less innocent than it was. Matteo was a man who liked giving pleasure, and she’d be willing to bet that he had other ways of doing it than with lemon sorbet.

  ‘So how’s everything going?’ He let her finish the tub, and asked the question that she’d been dreading.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Ah. Not so good, then.’ He always seemed to know when she was trying to divert him from something. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s nothing, really. I got one of the students to do a reconstruction of Aemilia’s face. He’s done some before and he’s really quite talented.’

  ‘You have it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s on my tablet. Inside.’

  ‘So are we going inside, or will you bring it out here?’

  ‘It’s... It isn’t that it’s no good, because it is. Very good. Just not quite the way I saw her.’

  He leaned back in his seat, the wood and canvas creaking slightly under his weight. ‘Are you going to show it to me before or after I beg?’

  After might be interesting... Rose gave herself a mental slap for thinking such a thing, and jumped to her feet.

  She fetched the tablet, switched it on and pulled up the reconstruction. Maybe he wouldn’t see what she saw. Maybe she was just being stupid about it all.

  He was silent for a long time, just looking.

  ‘Can I turn this image?’

  She nodded. ‘Just swipe your finger to the right or the left. It goes round three hundred and sixty degrees.’

  When he finally spoke, his voice was thoughtful. ‘This is very well executed. The shape of her face looks right to me... I don’t want to question the skills of whoever’s done this...’

  He looked up at her, doubt and dismay on his face. It occurred to Rose that maybe this was what she really wanted to see. Her own emotions, mirrored in Matteo’s face.

  ‘It’s not a matter of questioning skills. Remo’s done a very good job of reconstructing her facial features and I’ve told him so. Modelling is always subjective because there’s only so much information you can get from a skull, and any model is what the person might have looked like.’

  Matteo shook his head. ‘It’s not right, is it? This isn’t the face of someone who’s been loved.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ As usual, he’d broken the problem down immediately. The eyes of the girl in the image were blank and staring, and the face devoid of any emotion. Her hair was scraped back and messy, a young girl who’d hidden in a cave all her life and had never known anything beautiful.

  His gaze caught hers, and the shared silence between them was everything she could have wanted. An acknowledgement of how she felt, a defence of Aemilia’s right to have been happy. Even though this was quite literally ancient history that somehow mattered.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose there’s a possibility that she really did look like that.’

  ‘You don’t believe that any more than I do. The people around her went out of their way to bury Aemilia with much love and care. They sent a message to us, saying what she was like, and it’s up to us...you, actually...to respond to that.’

  ‘I guess...when I document everything I could make that point.’ It seemed like a paltry response to a message that would have taken time and thought to prepare, and which had somehow survived through the ages, only to be disregarded now.

  ‘Do you do this kind of work?’ Matteo switched the tablet off, giving it back to her.

  ‘Not computer graphics. I prefer clay, it’s more tactile, but I haven’t done this sort of thing for years.’ The idea had occurred to Rose, but she’d dismissed it. It was out of the question.

  ‘Don’t you want to think about trying it again?’ There was a subtle challenge in his voice.

  ‘I used to do modelling as part of my work with the police.’ Her mouth suddenly went dry. ‘As I said, it’s not something I do any more.’

  ‘Because it’s too difficult?’

  ‘Yes, if you must know. The last model I made was for a police case. There was a lot of pressure to get the woman identified, and my ex-husband and I had a weekend away planned. I did an all-nighter and finished the model, but when I got home on the Saturday morning...’ Rose shrugged. Alec had said some things that she couldn’t forget. ‘I was pregnant. I couldn’t work all night without crashing out the following day.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t. So...what? The model broke your marriage up.’

  ‘No, I broke my marriage up. We needed the money, and I took on too much and couldn’t cope with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry that happened to you, Rose. But surely this is different.’

  ‘No, it’s not!’ She realised she’d raised her voice and softened her tone. ‘When I had William, I promised him that I’d be there for him. That I wouldn’t take on too much work and that the work I did wouldn’t be so stressful that I couldn’t let it go at the end of the day.’

  ‘I can understand that. It’s entirely your decision.’

  That was what Alec had always said. Entirely your decision. But whenever she’d made the decision, either way, he’d sulked about the consequences. Rose couldn’t imagine Matteo sulking for more than about five seconds but, still, he’d said the words. It was her decision and she’d make it the only way she knew how.

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’ She wondered whether he heard the note of irony, but it seemed not because he didn’t react to it.

  ‘I’m sorry the reconstruction has been a disappointment. We’ll work it out, though.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Rose took a deep breath. ‘Look, thanks for coming. I’m sorry I shouted.’

  He shot her one of his delicious, melting smiles. ‘You didn’t shout. If that’s the best you can do, I know a very good ENT specialist.’

  She couldn’t help but smile. ‘Thanks. But I really should be getting going.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too. I’m meeting Isabella and her husband for dinner later on. I think it’s entrapment, and that Isabella’s got something for me to do.’

  ‘Which, of course, you’ll say no to?’ Rose doubted that somehow.

  ‘Of course I will. I’m going to insist on at least three weeks’ grace before we even whisper the words “health centre”.’

  ‘Good luck with it, then.’

  Matteo chuckled. ‘I’ll need it. Catch you later?’

  ‘Yes. For sure.’

  * * *

  He’d swallowed down his rage that Rose should have been so badly let down by her ex-husband, and had tried to respond rationally for fear of hurting her. But it hadn’t worked. All that had happened was that the tables had turned and her fire had been met with his tepid attempts at reassurance. In the end they’d both backed off and declared an uneasy truce.

  And it seemed that Rose was still backing o
ff. She didn’t call him the next day, or the day after that, and Matteo decided to give her some space. It wasn’t as if she owed him any explanations.

  But on Thursday the nagging feeling that maybe she wouldn’t call got the better of him, and he called her to see what time he should pick her up for the market on Saturday. She hesitated, then apologised a couple of times and said she couldn’t come.

  Matteo laid his phone down on his desk. The feeling that she’d shut him out and that he wouldn’t see her or William again was depressingly familiar. He’d thought she was different from Angela, and she was, but the ending was just the same. He should have backed off a little sooner, before he’d got too close to either of them.

  He drove home, throwing his keys down on the coffee table and himself into a chair. He didn’t feel like swimming, and he didn’t feel like eating either. Pulling his wallet out of his pocket, he opened it, feeling in the small, hidden compartment behind his credit cards for the photograph. Rebecca and Joe, Angela’s two children. Rebecca would be almost sixteen now, and this image was just a memory. He’d known Rose just a few weeks, but somehow the ache of the past seemed so much sharper in the face of her rejection.

  His phone rang, and when he looked at the caller display he almost didn’t answer. But even now he couldn’t help himself...

  ‘Rose. What’s up?’

  There was a small pause at the end of the line. ‘I was wondering... William asked if we were seeing you on Saturday and...’

  ‘Yeah?’ Why was she telling him this? Surely she was quite capable of saying no to the child, and leaving it at that.

  He heard her take a breath. ‘It was wrong of me to make a decision about Saturday without taking what you both wanted into account. It’s up to you, of course, but if you’re passing and you’d like to drop in for coffee, I know he’d like to see you. And you’d be very welcome.’

  Matteo almost dropped the phone. Rose had remembered what he’d told her, and was trying to do this differently, giving him an opportunity to see William if he wanted to.

  He’d made up his mind to go up to the vineyard for the weekend, but suddenly he didn’t want to miss this chance. ‘I can drop by on Saturday morning...’

  ‘Yes, of course. I might be working but Elena will be here with the children.’

  ‘Tell William that I promise—’

  She cut him short. ‘I’ll go and fetch him. You can tell him yourself.’ He heard her footsteps and then the sound of her calling her son.

  Matteo repeated the words shakily to the boy, who seemed a lot less tongue-tied than he was, asking him if he’d play football with him and only letting his mother have the phone back when he promised he would. Then Rose’s voice came again.

  ‘Thank you. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy. It’s my pleasure. Give me a call next week.’ Matteo ended the call and put the phone down on the table, before either of them got the chance to say anything else.

  She could so easily have let her child get caught up in the fall-out from their relationship. But she hadn’t. If Rose was backing off, then she seemed to have resolved to do it differently from the way that Angela had.

  He did what he’d done a thousand times before. Wished Rebecca and Joe well and sent that out onto the breeze, wondering if they’d ever know. Hoping that they’d forgotten all about him, and that they were happy. Then he put the photograph back into his wallet, to lie undisturbed until the next time.

  * * *

  Rose wasn’t answering her phone, so he called the house and spoke with Elena. She told him that Rose was working late tonight, but that William was looking forward to seeing him in the morning.

  Suddenly he knew. Matteo stared out over the sea, his toes digging into the wet sand as he allowed the idea to form in his head. He turned it, examined it, and found that it made sense.

  ‘Why, Rose?’ That was the only thing he couldn’t fathom. But he was going to find out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DARKNESS WAS FALLING as he drove up to the site, parking his car next to Rose’s. The offices looked as if they were empty, the windows shuttered and locked, and when Matteo tried the door, it didn’t budge. Walking back over to her car, he leaned on the front wing, rocking it, and the alarm obligingly started to screech.

  Almost immediately a light showed inside, and a door opened and then closed again. Then the shutters moved at one of the windows, and Rose peered out. Matteo waved at her and heard the sharp snap of the shutters closing again.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She came running down the steps, pointing her remote at the car, and the alarm cut off suddenly, leaving only the rustle of night creatures that had been disturbed by all the commotion.

  ‘I came to see you.’ Hanging back wasn’t going to get Matteo anywhere, she would just smile and tactfully send him back the way he’d come, and he strode to the door of the office and walked inside.

  He could feel Rose getting more and more agitated as he walked through the darkened main office and through to the corridor beyond, aiming for the strip of light shining beneath the door at the far end. He opened it, wondering what he’d do if it turned out that he was wrong.

  But he wasn’t wrong. Sitting on a stand, next to an array of modelling knives and a chunk of modelling clay, sat a model of Aemilia’s skull, obviously produced by a 3D printer from the CT scans. Rose had already started the model, and blobs of clay were positioned around the skull to show the depth of the soft tissue that would have encased it.

  ‘So you decided to do it.’

  ‘Yes. But I’m about to go home.’ She bit her lip nervously, and when Matteo turned to look at her it seemed as if she’d been crying. His heart almost burst at the thought of her here alone, weeping over a task that was too hard for her.

  ‘That’s a shame. I’d have liked to see how this is done.’

  She stared at him for a moment. ‘Matteo, what are you doing here?’

  He almost relented. Almost told her that he’d just come to see whether she wanted a nightcap, and would she like to go to one of the cafés in town for half an hour, before she went home. But that would have been a wasted journey.

  ‘I just want to know...’ He took a step towards her and she almost flinched. ‘I’d really like to know why you think that you couldn’t share this with me.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  He laid his fingers lightly on her arms. She was trembling.

  ‘Rose, this is hard for you, I can see that. But we’ve done this together up till now—won’t you let me give you a little support?’

  ‘I don’t need...’ Suddenly one tear rolled from her eye and she brushed it away almost guiltily.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Rose.’ It was just a little lie, the kind that people told every day. I’m okay. I don’t need you to help me. But with Rose they’d become a smiling mantra, which seemed to douse the delicious spark in her eyes.

  ‘I’m not lying.’ Outrage shone from her face. That was better than nothing. ‘I’m just... I get tied up with my work, and I get tired and...well, I’m not that great to be with.’

  ‘Ah. Tired and snappy, eh?’

  She frowned at him. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s give snappy a go, then. See if I can take it.’

  Her eyes widened in shock, then she took a deep breath, obviously making an effort to get herself under control. Control was the last thing that Matteo wanted right now.

  ‘Don’t be facetious, Matteo.’

  ‘Why not? You’re the one who’s playing games here, pretending you’re made of stainless steel and that nothing touches you.’

  Fire flashed in her eyes as she looked up at him. That was better. Rose was ready to turn and fight him, and the thought made the muscles around his heart clench.


  ‘You’d like me to just crumple under pressure, would you? Is that how you like your women?’

  ‘I like my women unafraid.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she flared back at him. In that moment he could believe that Rose wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone.

  ‘It means that if you want to cry, then cry. If you want to laugh...’ He gestured his frustration, spreading his arms wide. ‘But then if you don’t cry, you can’t really laugh either. All that pain just gets bottled up, and it stops you from living.’

  ‘Oh, so I’m bottled up now, am I?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yes, go on. Since you seem to know everything else about me.’

  ‘Fine.’ Matteo felt his exasperation rise to meet the taunt. ‘You’re very brave, and very beautiful. Only you’re not brave enough, Rose. You’re afraid of letting it all go.’

  For a moment he thought she was going to either slap him or walk away from him. But she took an altogether more radical step, one that delivered a knock-out blow and silenced everything.

  Her kiss was like fire, nothing like a hesitant first kiss but one that took full advantage of his gasp of surprise, invading his senses like a cyclone. There was passion, anger and hurt on her lips, and it flooded through his veins, shocking him into submission. This had to be the first time in his life that a beautiful woman had kissed him full on the lips, and he’d been unable to make a suitable response.

  When she drew back, her eyes were bright. She knew just what she’d done to him, she had to have felt his body’s response, the pump of his heart and the way he was battling for breath. His head was swimming in the best way possible, caught in the excitement of having her close.

  ‘Bottled up?’

  ‘I stand corrected...’ That’s if he could stand at all. Matteo felt as if he was about to fall to his knees.

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’