‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Do you want another towel?’ she asked and then bit her lip. What sort of a thing was that to say?
‘I am dripping a bit, aren’t she?’
‘Oh! I didn’t mean -’
‘It’s okay. No, I’d love another towel. Thank you.’
At least that had given her something to do - some temporary distraction from his half-naked godliness. It wasn’t every day that she got to meet such attractive men, and without even having to leave the apartment. The men she usually got to meet were overweight, overpaid businessmen with great, fat hands and stomachs that bulged up against their easels. She couldn’t help feeling just a little bit envious of Elena.
Rosanna peeped at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and he caught her eye. She felt herself blushing. This was ridiculous. What was she thinking of? This was her sister’s fiancé and here she was having all sorts of impure thoughts about him! About how masculine his arms looked, and how his waist was so slim, how long his fingers were and...
She shook her head and bit her lip. She wasn’t going to go there; she refused to let her mind wander into realms it had no business wandering in. And then she remembered her manners.
‘I believe congratulations are in order,’ she said, the fact that this was her future brother-in-law standing before her dawning on her at last.
A beautiful smile crossed his face and his dark eyes glittered. ‘Oh! Elena’s told you already?’
‘Yes!’ she said, pulling a white towel out for him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, roughly drying his hair before brushing the towel over his chest and arms.
‘Have you set a date yet?’ she dared to ask.
‘Er - no. Not yet. That’s kind of why I’ve come out here,’ he said, suddenly looking quite shy.
‘Oh? Are you thinking of getting married in Venice?’
He smiled. ‘I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s a great idea.’
She smiled back at him, trying to picture him in a gondola with Elena. ‘It would be very romantic,’ she said, a wave of jealousy engulfing her. Corrado hadn’t once talked about getting engaged let alone setting a date for a wedding but she couldn’t really blame him. She hadn’t exactly been the most loving of girlfriends of late. Still, it was strange to think of Elena getting married. Rosanna had always known she would, of course, but this was all happening so fast. Hadn’t she just met this man?
‘You work at the same college as her, don’t you?’ she asked, trying to steer the conversation back to small talk.
He frowned, his dark eyes seeming darker all of a sudden. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m an artist.’
‘Really? Oh!’ she blinked in surprise. She’d obviously got confused somewhere along the line. She’d thought Elena’s fiancé was a teacher - like her. ‘So you teach art at the college?’ she asked, taking his wet towel from him and walking back through to the living room.
There was a pause before he answered. ‘No! I’m an artist,’ he said again.
She stared at him and she could feel her mouth dropping open once more. ‘But you’re Mark, no?’
‘NO!’ he shouted. ‘I’m Reuben.’
‘Reuben?’
‘Yes!’ he said, his hands firm on his hips and his face set rigid.
‘Oh!’ she said. What else could she say? It was one of those moments when you wish to become instantly invisible, when you’d give anything to take back what you’d just said. But there was no getting out of this now. Her words were out and this Reuben guy, whom she’d thought was Mark, was expecting some kind of explanation from her and she didn’t have one.
‘What the hell’s going on? I thought you said Elena told you we were engaged?’
Rosanna’s heartrate accelerated. Something was terribly wrong here. Had she made a huge mistake? Was she confused? She looked around the apartment, wondering where on earth Elena was, and it was at that moment that she waltzed down from the bedroom. It got a bit confusing then because, for a few minutes, they were all shouting at each other at once.
‘Elena! Who the hell is Mark?’
‘Mark? What have you been saying, Rosanna?’
‘Don’t blame me! What am I meant to think when I come back to find a stranger in the apartment wearing nothing but a towel?’
‘Is this Mark someone you work with? Is that why you never let me meet you at the school?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Reuben! Mark has got nothing to do with-’
‘Your sister seems to think that you’re engaged to him!’
And on it went: questions, threats, recriminations until:
‘QUIET!’ Elena suddenly yelled.
Rosanna bit back what she was about to say next and decided it was probably better to say no more until this was sorted out - one way or another.
‘Listen!’ Elena began. ‘There’s been a dreadful misunderstanding here. Reuben - please don’t look so serious. I told Rosanna about our engagement this morning.’
‘So, what’s all this about some bloke called Mark?’ he interrupted.
It was exactly the question Rosanna wanted to ask her.
‘He’s just someone I work with. I don’t know, we were just talking about my job and he came up. But that’s it.’
Rosanna glared at Elena but she fired back a look which warned her away from their discussion of that morning.
‘How come Rosanna thought you were engaged to this Mark, then?’
Elena shrugged. ‘Rosanna?’
Great! It was pass the buck time. Rosanna might have guessed. She felt so angry. How was she meant to know that the half-naked man in the middle of Sandro’s apartment wasn’t Mark, her sister’s fiancé? One minute, Elena was telling her about this man she’d met at work and, after what seemed to her to be an extraordinarily short space of time, got engaged to. She’d shown her the ring too - a beautiful diamond solitaire. A little smaller than she’d imagined Elena ending up with but lovely all the same. Then, after chiding her for her behaviour, she went out for a few brief moments and came back to find a semi-naked man padding around the apartment. A man called Reuben to whom her sister was engaged. Was she going mad?
For a few tense moments, she let them stew whilst her mind tumbled. Half of her wanted to expose and embarrass Elena - to flush out her lies and find out exactly what was going on; the other half - the sisterly half - got the better of her and, like a fool, she heard herself backing her sister’s ridiculous story.
‘I’m sorry,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I must have got confused. We had a few drinks last night and, what with not getting enough sleep, I had the most horrendous headache this morning. I’ve obviously got everything muddled.’
Reuben nodded sagely. Rosanna was an appalling actress but her lie was obviously what he wanted to believe.
‘You see?’ Elena said, her tone jovial but jarring to Rosanna’s ears. ‘You can be so silly and jealous sometimes,’ she said, hugging Reuben and kissing his cheek.
Rosanna couldn’t quite believe what she was witnessing and she had an uncontrollable urge to slap her sister. She didn’t know what was going on but she’d wager Elena was up to no good.
Chapter 12
Mark wasn’t savouring his flight to Venice. There weren’t many people in the world that could get him on a plane and, even though it was only a two-hour flight, he couldn’t help wishing that Elena had a sister in Norfolk instead of Italy.
Barney’s girlfriend had come good with his three hundred pounds but he wasn’t likely to see much change from it if he had to find a hotel. He was really hoping that Elena would let him stay in the apartment. He smiled to himself. Venice was meant to be one of the most romantic cities in the world. He had visions of them walking through the streets as if they were honeymooners. They might even want to go back for their honeymoon, he thought, trying not to think how many thousands of feet in the air he was at that precise moment and also refusing to think about how much this wedding and honeymoon were going to cost. It
would mean taking out a loan and the thought of that made his stomach flip. But Elena deserved nothing but the best. For a moment, he tried to imagine her in a wedding dress – something floaty yet elegant – like Liv Tyler in Lord of the Rings. Yes, he liked that idea. He’d already been checking out venues for the reception and had found a perfect coaching inn in the Thames Valley with the prettiest garden looking out over the river. Well, if you were going to get into debt, you might as well do it with style, he reckoned.
They hadn’t talked much about where they were going to live but it was pretty obvious that his grim flat wasn’t in the running. He’d never been to Elena’s. She’d assured him that her flat was worse than his and that it wouldn’t do at all as a marital home so he guessed they’d be looking for something else over the summer.
Mark had wondered about asking Tomi about a pay rise but he’d thought better of it when he was told by another of the teachers that the last person to do that had been ‘let go’ and replaced by someone half his age for, presumably, half the salary. They’d have to come up with something else. Maybe they could teach some private lessons. He’d always been rather keen on the idea but couldn’t possibly think to do it in his present accommodation.
He closed his eyes and tried to picture the kind of apartment he imagined them living in: a light, spacious loft conversion with pale wooden floors, white walls and windows looking out over more expensive suburbs than his present flat did. Three or four bedrooms would be nice: one for them, a spare for friends and family, a study, and one for – he grinned – the future.
Maybe they could use the study as a classroom – setting up their very own school in miniature. They could charge a better hourly rate and there wouldn’t be the hassle of early mornings on the tube and the stress of actually getting Tomi to pay them at the end of each month. They could stumble out of bed after an early session under Egyptian cotton sheets, share a shower, cook breakfast in the sleek steel kitchen and then greet the students who’d all be incredibly well-behaved and stinking rich.
Mark fidgeted in his seat as he began to get excited about his dream future with Elena. That was the great thing about dreams – you could have the most expensive taste in the world and it wouldn’t cost you a penny. He dreaded to think what the reality would be but he wasn’t going to think about that now. Instead, he focussed on the next few days ahead and what he was hoping to achieve.
It was only over the last couple of weeks that he’d become aware of Elena’s multiple persona. He didn’t really know how to explain it but he got the feeling that she was many different people all at once. He knew everybody could be like that: who didn’t become the downtrodden child when talking to a parent, or a sycophantic sop when speaking to a bank manager? But it was more than that with Elena.
For the most part, he got the vibrant vixen who was so full of energy that it practically spilled out of her but there were times when somebody else would flash from her eyes – a distant, more thoughtful person – somebody she tried to keep hidden but who, nevertheless, kept trying to escape.
‘What’s the matter?’ he’d asked her the first time he’d seen her with a look in her eyes of such mournful proportions that it had almost made him cry.
‘Nothing!’ she’d said, and her mouth had heaved into a huge smile again and the look was gone. He’d caught her off-guard but she refused to acknowledge it, and that wouldn’t do. If they were going to be married, if they were planning a future together, then he needed to know all about her.
There was nothing about his mundane life she needed to know. An only child with divorced parents who’d both gone on to marry perfect replicas of their exes, he’d spent all his life in West London with a quick detour to Edinburgh University before becoming a teacher. He felt dull, dull, dull, and he wondered what somebody as vibrant as Elena was doing with someone like him. They said opposites attracted but he felt as if he were a bungalow next to her palace. But this palace obviously had hidden hallways – maybe even a prison or two – and it was up to him to find out exactly what she was hiding behind so perfect a façade.
Chapter 13
Reuben had to admit that Elena argued a convincing case as to why Rosanna thought she was engaged to some teacher called Mark rather than an artist called Reuben, but he still had his suspicions. After all, she hadn’t exactly greeted him with open arms. He thought he could’ve at least expected a warmer welcome from her after having travelled such a long way - or at least a welcome somewhere above tepid - but no - she’d been suspicious and, unless he was becoming really paranoid, she’d looked guilty. She’d kept looking over his shoulder as if she’d expected him to have brought somebody with him and, when he’d kissed her, it had felt tense and awkward.
As they left the apartment, he confronted her.
‘I don’t think you’re telling me the truth, Elena,’ he said, kicking his suitcase which was also behaving badly.
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘You can think what you like but I am telling you the truth. I’m engaged to you!’
‘Me and me alone?’ he asked. Was it his imagination or did he see a very pronounced swallow when he asked her that question?
‘Of course you alone! What do you take me for?’
‘Then where’s my ring? Why aren’t you wearing my ring? he asked, noticing the missing rubies.
‘It’s my ring,’ she corrected. ‘And I never wear rings when travelling. You don’t know who might be eyeing up your valuables.’
Reuben supposed that was a fairly reasonable argument and yet he couldn’t help feeling that she was hiding something.
‘I’ve got the ring upstairs,’ she said. ‘I can go and put it on – right now – if you want me to,’ she said, turning around and making to return to the apartment.
Of course, he shook his head. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘But make sure you have it on tomorrow’
‘I will!’ she replied and her eyes flickered with sudden mischief. ‘I’ll be wearing your ring and nothing else if you manage to find yourself a hotel.’
He smiled. Elena always knew exactly what to say and he felt his suspicion ebbing away. He even let her persuade him to book into the Hotel Danieli which was extravagant even by his standards. The Venetian-red palazzo seemed to glow in the rich afternoon light and he had to admit that it was beautiful.
‘It’s so romantic,’ she cooed as they entered through the revolving doors and took in the sumptuous splendour of the foyer. So he booked a double room with a view out across the lagoon. As he took in the Murano glass chandeliers, the antiques, the pink marble and the gold leaf columns, he knew that he’d be able to knock out a few pictures during his stay and thus recoup any money spent.
Once in the room overlooking the Bacino di San Marco, they had sex. He couldn’t use the phrase ‘making love’ because that, to him, implied something long and luxurious, and what Elena and he had was fast and furious; it left them breathing heavily and sweating profusely.
As he was gazing up at the ornate ceiling, Elena propped herself up on an elbow and, stroking an idle finger through his hair, asked, ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’
‘What?’ Reuben was still lost in the land of lust.
‘That you’re my one and only.’
‘Yes,’ he said but, quite frankly, at that moment in time, he would have said anything she’d wanted him to say.
They kissed and fell asleep and, after she left, he showered, towelling himself dry for the third time that day. Despite the sumptuous surroundings, he felt uneasy and restless and there was only one way out of that. Picking up his sketchbook, he began to draw. Black, silken hair. Soft, dark eyes. Gentle curves of shoulders and breasts. He drew them quickly and confidently because he’d been paying them so much attention.
He filled page after page until the light in the room turned into the rich amber of early evening and then he flicked back through the pages. She was beautiful, he thought, as he looked at the images he’d caught with a few brief strokes o
f charcoal.
Finally, he closed the sketchbook before closing his eyes but it wasn’t any good because the images were burned into his brain. She was beautiful. It was the only word he could think of to describe her, and, at that moment, he felt as if he couldn’t live without her.
He sighed a long and weary sigh as he whispered her name under his breath.
‘Rosanna!’
Chapter 14
Elena had to admit that she was shocked and shaken by Reuben’s unexpected visit and felt sure she had betrayed herself terribly. Normally, her life was beautifully orchestrated; with three fiancés, you couldn’t live any other way. Of course, she could never fully predict what Reuben, Mark and Prof were going to request from day to day but she was always the master of control. A quick: I’m sorry, I can’t see you today – something’s come up at work, usually did the trick. She’d never really found herself in any sticky situations, which was lucky, she knew. Maybe she’d subconsciously chosen three very understanding men but, with Reuben’s arrival, it seemed that things were beginning to unravel and that her past might be about to catch up with her. It was something that certainly seemed to preoccupy Rosanna.
‘What the hell is going on here?’ she’d hissed under her breath as soon as Reuben had disappeared to get dressed.
‘Shush! He’ll hear you!’
‘I don’t care. I think he should be made aware of what’s going on here - whatever it is!’
Elena pushed Rosanna to the far end of the living room and they sat down on one of the enormous sofas.
Irresistible You Page 6
