A Deal with Di Capua

by Cathy Williams

  “What sort of problems? Talk to me, Rosie.”

  “He broke into my house a week ago,” she said flatly. “It’s why I was so keen to leave London. Okay?”

  “When you say sitting outside your house, what do you mean? Sitting on the pavement outside your house?”

  Rosie laughed shortly. “Ian wouldn’t be caught dead sitting on a pavement. Especially not in the driving rain. It might ruin his suit. He’s a lawyer earning a lot of money; a good suit means a lot to him. So do appearances and lawyers earning lots of money don’t sit on pavements. No, he’s in his car. A bright red sports car which makes me think that...that...”

  “That he wants to be conspicuous?” Angelo had hit the basement of his offices and was striding towards his car. Normally, he would be driven home, but his driver would not be expecting an early exit from the office and Angelo was going to do the driving himself. The address would be programmed into the sat nav although he had an excellent sense of direction and would probably have been able to find her place even after only one trip there in the dark.

  “I’m probably being ridiculous.” Rosie tried to be level-headed and adult.

  “Why didn’t you call the police? Were you just going to sit there until someone happened to pick the phone up and call you?” He was suddenly weirdly angry at her. She didn’t spook easily. “Forget I said that,” he gritted. “Sit tight and I’ll be with you in half an hour.”

  “There’s no need...” But then why else had she chosen to confide in him? She had slipped back into old ways and she hated herself for it whilst feeling strangely relieved that he was on his way. Confused, she remained silent, clutching the phone to her ear and resisting the urge to sneak back to the window and take a little peek just to see if that red car was still there or if she had imagined the whole thing.

  “You can tell me that to my face when I get there,” Angelo said drily. “Out of interest, what company does the man work for?”

  She told him. It was one of the bigger practices in the city. Angelo nodded to himself; he knew a few people there. He would get the full story from her later but for the moment he knew what he was going to do. It was a bit of a shame that he would have to resist the satisfying desire to knock a little sense into the guy. His hand curled around the steering wheel as he cruised out of the car park and into the predictable chaos of the city.

  “I’m going to hang up now, Rosie. Don’t be tempted to go outside to confront him, to take any calls if he has your number and phones or even to spy on the car. Just wait for me.” He knew the roads and streets of London like the back of his hand. He quickly manoeuvred the car out of the traffic and down a small street that hooked up to a series of back roads mostly used by wily taxi drivers. His body was adrenaline-charged. He could picture her cowering somewhere. He knew that she was a hell of a lot more scared than she was trying to let on because, had she not been, she would have handled the man herself. She certainly wouldn’t have confided in someone she now considered her arch-enemy.

  His hand tightened on the steering wheel. He was doing nothing more or less than he would do for anyone. The fact that it was Rosie was nothing that should bother him unduly. Still, something inside him felt sick at the thought of her being terrorised. He wondered whether he should have prodded a little harder when she had been vague on the subject of running away from someone, escaping to the country. His mouth tightened. He couldn’t wait to cover the distance between himself and the loser sitting in the car outside her house.

  * * *

  Rosie sat and wondered what Angelo was going to do. An out-and-out brawl on the pavement? No. Angelo was a billionaire businessman. Billionaire businessmen didn’t do stuff like that. And yet, she could easily imagine him getting into a fight with someone. He was incredibly physical. The temptation to sneak to the window and peer outside was overwhelming, and for the first time that day the business of trying to work out how she was going to afford to live in the country was not sufficient a distraction.

  One and a half cups of coffee had been consumed before she heard the buzz of the doorbell, and when she glanced at the clock it was to discover that almost forty-five minutes had gone by. Where? Thinking of Angelo? It had always been so easy to waste time thinking about Angelo. Was she falling right back into that habit? No. Special circumstances. But she leapt to her feet and was at the front door within seconds, yanking it open to an Angelo who looked as cool as a cucumber as he lounged indolently against the doorframe.

  “What happened to the chain lock?” He straightened and stood back as she pulled open the door to let him in. When she poked her head past him to where there was no longer a red car parked on the opposite side of the road, he said casually, “What possessed you to hook up with a loser like that? At any rate, he’s gone and he won’t be back.”

  Rosie didn’t know which of those statements to respond to first. “What did you do?”

  Angelo looked down at her questioning, relieved expression and felt a surge of extreme satisfaction. The knight in shining armour. What man wouldn’t feel on top of the world at such an uplifting sensation? Helping a little old woman cross the road would have induced a similar high. Possibly. Of course, this was not a woman for whom he should be doing favours, and yet...

  As he strolled into the house, already feeling claustrophobic at its size and shabbiness, he still couldn’t shift the feeling of pleasant satisfaction that had settled in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t remember having felt so good in a long time. It certainly made a change from the uniformly grim bitterness that had been coursing through his system for the past three years. Would he have obtained some release from that darkness if he had just done one or two little favours for passing strangers?

  “I’m sorry I dragged you out here,” Rosie mumbled, following him through into the kitchen where he proceeded to sit at the poky table on a chair that appeared to be a couple of sizes too miniature for his big, powerful body. “You’ve come straight from work. There was really no need. Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Coffee? It’s just that you called only a few seconds after I’d spotted Ian’s car...”

  She was babbling. She couldn’t seem to help herself. Now that he was here, the feelings of relief were replaced by that uncomfortable scary awareness of him, the same scary awareness that had led to her crazily reaching out to touch him. She stuck her hands behind her back and pressed herself against the kitchen sink, but she was all too conscious of those sexy, lazy eyes on her. It made her pulse race, her heart jump and scrambled her brains.

  “You’ve already mentioned that there was no need for me to come,” Angelo pointed out. “I’ll have a glass of wine, if you’ve got some. Red.”

  Relieved to be able to busy herself, Rosie bustled about, fetching them both a glass of red wine. When she thought about what the outcome might have been had Angelo not called at that precise moment in time, she felt tearful, shaky and quite unlike herself. With her back to him, she took a few deep breaths to steady her nerves, before turning round to hand him his glass of wine and then dropping into the chair facing him.

  “Are you all right?” Angelo asked gruffly. “I promise you, he’s gone for good. How did you manage to get involved with that creep?”

  In automatic defence-mode, Rosie opened her mouth to argue the point, but how could she? “A friend of a friend.” She sighed, staring at the glass and fiddling with the stem. “Amy thought that it was time I got a boyfriend. All work and no play and all that, and I guess I agreed with her. I needed to get out a little more, so I agreed to meet her friend’s work colleague.”

  Angelo frowned. He wanted to tell her that she could have any man she wanted at the snap of her fingers. Why the hell go on a blind date? Didn’t she read of all those times when women got into trouble meeting men they didn’t know in places they weren’t familiar with? He recalled that that was the way she had met him, and
maintained a steady silence on the subject.

  “And?” he prompted, when she looked as though she had come to a grinding halt.

  “And I met Ian. At first...at first, he seemed okay—chatty, you know? Interested. But halfway through the evening I began to feel a little pressured. I could see that he was pretty intense. Very intense, in fact. It wasn’t going to work but he didn’t share that opinion.” Rosie looked up quickly at Angelo’s closed expression. Like it or not, he was due an explanation. Like it or not, she remembered what it once felt like to talk to him, to be the focus of his undivided attention.

  “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 mi
nd 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.