A Deal with Di Capua

by Cathy Williams

  Rosie watched him withdraw from her, saw the ice settle over his features. She almost wished that she had never found that wretched little picture, even though the better part of her knew that it was always best to face the truth, which was something she had been dodging ever since she had jumped into bed with him. Like a fool, she was now in a position where he had had to spell things out for her: I owe you nothing because you mean nothing to me...

  How delusional had she been ever to imagine that he would crack and open up his heart to her, give her the opportunity to defend herself? Had she ever really thought that that would happen? Or had she continued to feed her own love and addiction to him because she had secretly believed and hoped that, if they carried on with what they had, he would one day discover that he had fallen in love with her? That she had somehow become indispensable? Had she, deep down, been prepared to blank out their history if there was the promise of a future dangling in front of her? Had she imagined that he would ever be able to do the same? That somehow she could convince him to feel the same way about her as she felt about him?

  “Did she take to drink because she lost the baby?” Rosie asked painfully.

  “Repeat—I’m not going to discuss this.” He began walking towards the door. “I have a party to get back to.”

  “You’re just going to go?”

  “What more ground is there to cover?”

  “You’re right. None.” She stood up, but her legs felt wobbly. “I think we should call it a day on this. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.” She was ashamed of the fleeting pause that followed this statement because she knew that, like a coward, she was giving him one last chance to jump in and somehow save the day. “I’m very sorry that I can’t see the job through to the finish—but tomorrow,” she said quickly, “I shall go up to the house to finish off the cleaning.”

  “Forget it. I’ll get my people to sort it out.”

  “You paid me to do it.”

  “I said forget it.”

  “In that case, would you like me to return the car to you? Because that was part of the payment for ensuring that your house was returned to its pristine condition.”

  “Consider it a parting gift for services rendered—and I must say, you’re a much cheaper option this time round.”

  Rosie didn’t think before she raised her hand and whipped it against the side of his face. She hit him so hard that her palm stung, but it still felt good to release the rage bubbling up inside her. If she could have hit him again, she would have. She had never been prone to violence but she felt that that could change in a heartbeat, right here, right now.

  Angelo rubbed the side of his face but didn’t bat an eye. He supposed he deserved that.

  “The next time you hear from me,” he said coolly, “It’ll be through my lawyer. I intend to sell my house as quickly as possible. I will suggest the necessary boundary lines, and I’ll get that certified as fast as I can. Provided you don’t contest my decision, it can be settled in a matter of weeks.”

  “Good.” She was already missing him, already wondering how the weekends would be without him around. She wanted to reach out and grab him as he swung around, heading to the front door.

  She didn’t. Instead, she held herself in rigid silence as he strode through the door, slamming it behind him, and she remained that way until she heard the deep-throated growl of his car as it disappeared back up to his house.

  Then, and only then, did she collapse, like a puppet whose strings have been cut suddenly. She sank to the ground and cried until she didn’t think it was possible to have any tears left in her to shed.

  In the larder, the ground was still strewn with all the stuff that had fallen off the shelf as she had scrabbled for the chocolates and biscuits. The tins and boxes, she stuffed into a bin bag. There was a coal shed at the side of the cottage; she would put it all there and maybe, just maybe, she would forget about it.

  And the toxic jewellery box with its contents... It would be destined for a more permanent resting place. She put all of it in a separate bin bag and trundled the lot out to the bins at the side where they would be collected the following Monday by the bin men. In the distance, she could just about make out the sounds of revelry at Angelo’s house.

  It was easier not to think while she tidied and, although it was late, she cleaned the entirety of the larder, rearranging everything and wondering whether she would ever really be able to go in there without remembering the effects of tonight.

  It was three in the morning by the time she finally got to sleep, after a shower. Beth had texted to ask how she was feeling and told her that the chocolate and biscuits had done the job. Rosie had read the text and had wanted to text back asking what Angelo was doing. Was he back out on the patio with the small blonde lawyer? Had he decided that sleeping with someone who didn’t come with complications, baggage and a murky shared past would be blessed relief?

  She still couldn’t come to terms with the way he had refused to talk to her, the finality with which he had walked out of the front door without looking back. Lying in bed when she closed her eyes she still had his image in her head as he had stood in front of her and told her that he owed her nothing because she didn’t matter, because he didn’t care about her.

  The prospect of picking up the pieces and getting on with her own life struck her as the most terrifying thing she could contemplate doing. She had tried that once and had ended up with a stalker. What was going to happen next time round? Would she land herself a serial killer?

  How much poorer was her judgement going to be, because she felt as though her love for Angelo, despite all the unforgiving odds, had deepened this time round. He had been so adamant about just being in it for the sex, yet there were things they had done together that had been curiously intimate and quite unrelated to sex.

  She knew that he would sell the house as fast as he could. He barely used it and he wouldn’t care whether it fetched a good price or not. He didn’t need the money. He would just want speed so that he could break off all connections with his past, and that included both her and Amanda.

  She awoke the following morning, groggy and disoriented, and she remained in bed for an hour, letting all the memories of the night before slowly seep back into her head. When she finally began moving around, her joints felt stiff.

  By mid-morning, she decided that there was only one thing to do and that was to call Jack, her confidante. He had been up to the cottage twice with his partner, mid-week when she knew that Angelo wasn’t going to be around.

  She could have kicked herself now for effectively putting her life on hold while she had conducted a pointless affair that had never been destined to go anywhere. She hated herself for hoping, when he had not once given her any grounds for hope, when he had repeatedly reminded her that she was just good sex and unfinished business that needed to be put to rest. Thinking back to all the conversations they’d had, she wondered how she could ever have thought that it was a brilliant idea to sleep with a man who had dumped her once, believed the worst about her, refused to hear her side of the story and had made it patently clear that he was only in it for the sex. She marvelled at the ingenuity of the human brain which could grasp incidentals—the odd kind word and tender gesture—and turn them into something meaningful. But then that was love, wasn’t it? Blind to the obvious and ever willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

  Jack picked up on the first ring and knew immediately that there was something wrong.

  “It’s Sunday,” he said bluntly, cutting through the false cheer she had tried to inject in her voice. “Shouldn’t you be in bed eating croissants with the Italian hunk?”

  “It’s over.”

  Rosie told him everything. She spared no details. In between her sniffling, she apologised for being a bore.

  “You’ve been down this ro
ad before.” She struggled to keep her voice even. “The last thing you need is to go down it again.”

  “I’m thinking the same could be said for you,” Jack sympathised.

  He would come the following weekend. On his own. They would have a talk and she would feel much better. Time was a great healer, he assured her with confidence, and she was ready to believe him. Maybe it was better that it ended this way because she would never now look back on the relationship with nostalgia. Anger could be a good friend when it came to forgetting things.

  She was pleased for all the clichés, although they didn’t make her feel any better. She was just glad that she had a friend who was willing to drop everything and travel to stay with her, where he would be obliged to listen to all her outpourings whilst insisting that he wasn’t bored or tired.

  * * *

  Angelo stared indifferently at his mobile phone which was buzzing. He knew who it was on the other end because he had her number programmed into his address book: Eleanor French. A week ago, the day after he had slammed the door for good on his relationship with Rosie, he had made the mistake of allowing the blonde to believe that she stood a chance with him. It had been a mistake. They had been out just once and he had fought to not look at his watch, not to count the minutes, to not compare her with Rosie. The harder he had tried, the guiltier he had felt and the more he had tried to paper over his irritation by smiling. Wrong tactic. She had been calling and leaving text messages since Tuesday.

  And now there was something else—the boundary lines. He had told his lawyers to draw something up and make it fast. He didn’t care how much land they saw fit to sign over to Rosie. He just wanted out and he wanted to sell the house as quickly as he could.

  True to their word, they had thrown the full force of their considerable combined talent into the project and the finished article was staring him in the face. On his desk. With his vibrating phone right next to it.

  It was Friday. It was seven-thirty. The choice was to look over a legal document on a property he no longer wanted and certainly didn’t need, which would forever cut the ties between him and a woman he likewise no longer wanted and certainly didn’t need, or subject himself to another date with the piranha blonde.

  He made his excuses to the blonde, this time without room for leeway or any other dates, and he began to read the legal document.

  * * *

  Jack’s visit was good. He was cheerful and optimistic. He said all the right things and took her side without question. As he had three years before. He had shown a great deal of willingness to slag Angelo off without making any effort to see the complete picture.

  In fact, she was the one who miserably pointed out that she only had herself to blame. She gloomily realised that she couldn’t focus on all the bad things about Angelo because she was too busy thinking of all the brilliant things about him.

  She discovered that it was remarkably easy to turn all his failings into endearing idiosyncrasies. He was a pig for having used her, yet hadn’t she allowed herself to be used? He had never failed to remind her that there were no long-term prospects to what they had, yet couldn’t you just call that honesty? He refused point-blank to indulge in anything he considered too domestic with her, yet wasn’t it appealing the way he still managed to do so without even realising it? He was the most fascinating, complex and utterly infuriating man she had ever met and he was without compare.

  As Jack sat in his little car on the Sunday afternoon, revving the engine, getting ready to go, she just wanted to pull him back out through the car door and make him promise not to leave her, at least not until she was able to get her act together.

  “So you’ve got jobs lined up?”

  Rosie nodded. She couldn’t have hoped for better networking opportunities than at the party Angelo had thrown. She had a list of people who were interested in commissioning her, from things as small as children’s parties to an end-of-summer event to be held at the town hall.

  “And we’ve finally finished planting up your little vegetable plot.”

  Yes, they had. Cultivating it would give her something to do when the nights started to draw in and winter approached.

  “Plus you’ve joined that book club.”

  Something else to occupy herself now and again in the evenings.

  “Not to mention volunteering to teach cookery classes at that local school.”

  Yep. How many more activities could one person get involved with? Jack had been great at chivvying her along, just as she had once chivvied him along.

  “So I’ll be up again on Friday. Okay?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I need to make sure you keep on top of those vegetables.”

  “You wouldn’t know whether I was or wasn’t, Jack.”

  “I can spot a weed as well as the next man.”

  He left with a great deal of horn-blowing and waving and Rosie retired back into the cottage.

  Further up the lane, his car about to turn left into the long avenue that wound its way up to his mansion, Angelo couldn’t fail to hear the blowing of the car horn. He slowed his car. The car hurtling towards him could only be coming from the cottage. Curiosity made him look at the driver of the car and he saw that face—the dirty-blond hair tied back in a pony tail, blue eyes squinting into the glare of late-afternoon sun.

  A tide of rage swept over him. So the past wasn’t as dead and buried as she would have liked to pretend! Had he really expected otherwise? Hadn’t it always preyed somewhere at the back of his mind? Hadn’t he wondered what had happened to the guy with the dirty-blond hair and the bright blue eyes?

  Hell, he should never have made this trip. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. With the boundary lines roughly drawn up and only her consent needed to seal the deal and rid himself of her once and for all, Angelo knew that he could leave it to his lawyers to fine-tune the detail, to arrange all the necessary paperwork and documentation. But no, he had taken it upon himself to jump into his car and head down to ascertain for himself where the lines would be.

  What exactly had he hoped to gain from the exercise—aside from wasting a great deal of petrol?

  He certainly hadn’t expected to find himself sitting behind the steering wheel of his car, consumed with such white-hot anger that he felt himself on the point of combustion.

  And, even so, there was no place for his anger to go! What he should do, he thought grimly... No, what he was going to do...was to steer his car calmly up the avenue, have a last look around his house so that he could evaluate what priceless paintings and ornaments would be reshuffled to other properties he owned, have a quick tour of the land to confirm that he was in agreement with the boundary lines proposed in the deeds that were currently residing in his briefcase, and then leave. Nothing could be simpler.

  He certainly would not head to the cottage and resume any sort of debate with a woman he was well rid of. A woman to whom he owed nothing. A woman who had manoeuvred him three years ago and, as was evident, had continued to manoeuvre him. A woman who schemed and lied and did it all in a way that had managed to get to him. Again!

  When he looked in his rear-view mirror, it was to find that the other man’s car had long since disappeared from the horizon.

  Angelo swung his car away from his drive and headed towards the cottage.

  He screeched to a stop in front of the cottage in a blaze of spitting gravel.

  Inside, and about to begin the task of unloading the dishwasher, Rosie felt a surge of guilty relief that Jack was back, probably having forgotten something. Yet again, she was finding it difficult to be alone. The second there was no distraction, her thoughts took flight, and they always flew in the same direction.

  It wasn’t going to do. She knew that. She just needed her brain to start paying attention to what it surely knew it must
do.

  She was half-smiling as she opened the front door before the doorbell had even been rung.

  More than anything else, her smile infuriated Angelo. It didn’t take a genius to work out who that smile was for! In the space of the minute or so it had taken him to drive to the cottage, his mood had reached rock-bottom. Common sense had flown through the window. He seemed to have lost all sense of perspective.

  “So I see old habits die hard,” he gritted.

  “Angelo.” Rosie shrank back at the ferocious expression on his face. “What...what are you doing here?”

  “You wanted to talk?” His voice was lethally cold, matching the look on his face. “Then let’s do it, Rosie. Let’s talk!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “WE’VE SAID ALL there is to say to one another.” Rosie found that she was shaking like a leaf and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his beautiful face. But she was determined not to be weak, not to just go along for the ride. He hadn’t wanted to talk before. No, he had wanted to do anything but talk! And now here he was, looking as though he wanted to punch things, telling her that he suddenly wanted to talk. How was she ever going to get her life back on track if she remained vulnerable like this? If she allowed him to keep imagining that he could just show up and that she would let him in?

  Besides, if he was angry over something, then she could figure out what it was. Something to do with the cottage or the land or both.

  “We agreed that whatever we needed to discuss about the land would go through a lawyer.” She stood in front of the doorway and folded her arms.

  “I couldn’t give a damn about the land. Now stand aside. I want to come in.”