‘By the way,’ he called, half turning as she was about to firmly close the door, ‘don’t forget about that meeting. The one I want to arrange with all the members of your team. I’ll get the secretary to telephone you tomorrow to fix up an appropriate date.’
At which point Amy slammed the door. Her lips still stung from that kiss and her body was only now beginning feel like her body instead of candlewax that had undergone a process of meltdown, and there he was, calmly focusing on work, probably already planning out what was lined up for the day ahead.
But then proving a point didn’t have any lasting side effects.
By the time she had crawled under the covers half an hour later, she had convinced herself that she would be a side-effect-free zone as well, and, despite her misgivings, she managed to sink into a blissful, dreamless sleep for the next six hours.
She only wished it could have been a little bit longer when she was abruptly dragged to consciousness by the phone ringing by her bed at six-fifteen. It was Sam. Her head was so full of pictures of the odious Rocco that it took her a few seconds to switch the connections and focus on the man asking her down the end of the line how things had gone with the big, bad wolf and whether she could meet up with him later, after work.
‘I was going to try and get you later today on your mobile, but I’m on a one-day course and you know what those things are like.’
Yes, she did. Dull affairs with mediocre finger foods for lunch, which Sam would eat with gusto, while basking in the enjoyment of being surrounded by dozens of fellow colleagues with the same blinkered intolerance that he had.
Amy, dismayed by that rush of uncharitable feeling, sat up and took a more focused interest in what he was saying, agreeing to meet him at seven at their usual pizza place, even though she would have preferred to catch up on her paperwork.
She kept expecting him to launch into her for Rocco’s presence in her house after the witching hour, but he didn’t. He was tetchy on the point of her asking him back to the house for coffee but then explained it away without intervention from her by saying that he understood, if that was what was needed to persuade him into changing his mind, while quickly reminding her that it really wasn’t the end of the world if he didn’t.
By the time she hung up, she was wide awake and oddly deflated by the phone call.
‘Fits of jealousy,’ she told herself as she got ready for work, ‘bad. Calm and soothing trust…good.’ She repeated it at frequent intervals to herself throughout the course of the day and was only jogged out of the mantra and the glum feeling that went with it when, at four-thirty, the telephone rang on her desk and a sexy, low drawl made her heartbeat begin to race.
The man who kissed to prove a point.
The man who wanted a meeting with the team so that he could tell them what he had already told her.
‘I’m busy for the remainder of the week,’ he informed her and she had a very graphic image of him sitting back in the chair, his brilliant eyes half looking at a computer screen while his brilliant mind half listened to her.
‘Then it’ll have to be next week, won’t it?’ She flicked through her diary, absent-mindedly registering her own handwriting on the pages and thinking of that wretched kiss that had knocked her for six.
‘But I have a free slot this afternoon.’
‘This afternoon? In case you hadn’t checked your watch, the afternoon is already in full swing and about to come to a close.’
‘Oh, is it? I should be able to get over to your office by six, once I’m through with some business here.’
‘That’s…that’s a little difficult…’ Amy said tactfully, wondering whether Sam’s patience would stretch to another cancelled date, then deciding that she had no option but to meet him, whatever. The relationship was going nowhere, yet another one of those, and she would have to tell him because there was no point in stringing him along and giving him time to nurture unrealistic ideas about where they were heading, which was definitely not up an aisle.
‘Oh, yes. Enlighten me as to why.’
‘Half the team are out and about…’
‘Call them on their mobiles, let them know that they have to be at the office by six for a meeting. I should think they’d have been all too happy to oblige considering their futures will be under discussion.’
‘Under discussion? Isn’t that a bit of an understatement?’
‘Let’s not get into semantics, Amy. Just call them and tell them I’ll be there between six and six-thirty. I’ll take you all out to dinner afterwards.’
‘To soften the blow?’
‘Stop treating me like the enemy,’ Rocco grated down the end of the line. Something had happened last night. He wasn’t too sure what but he knew that she was already retreating back into the categories she had established and he was damned if he was going to let her do that. On some level, he threatened her safety, and not just the safety of her job, but running away wasn’t going to help. In the normal course of things, he was more than happy to let people get on with screwing up their lives. In this instance, though, he felt an irrational desire to personally throttle her into facing facts and working with them. Where, he wondered irritably, had this rogue interfering gene come from? And why was he giving it houseroom when there were a dozen important things to be done, deals to be sewn up via conference calls that would net him substantial sums of money, at least two business trips to plan that would go some way to making his name a global byword?
‘Oh, OK. You’re right.’ Amy capitulated with the sudden, easy grace of someone who had other plans in mind. She would assemble the team and she, herself, would let them get on with it so that she could go and get this meeting with Sam over and done with. It wasn’t, after all, as if Rocco Losi would have anything new to say to her. She’d heard it all before and she could sum it up in a few succinct phrases. The man was a money-making machine with a heart of stone who was determined to close their subsidiary, however loudly they protested. And he would do it with a sadistic smile on his face.
‘So I will expect you to be there…’ He found that he was looking forward to seeing her and wondered, restlessly, whether her do-gooding tendencies were somehow getting into his system by some cunning process of osmosis. Why else would he give one damn whether he laid eyes on the girl again, were it not for his newly discovered charitable concern that she sort herself out, job, men, the lot?
Amy brushed past the question with alacrity. ‘I’ll make sure we’re well stocked with coffee! Can’t say the team is going to be bowled over at the prospect of hanging around for a meeting, but, as you say, it’s important for them to hear the cold facts from the horse’s mouth rather than second hand from me. Chinese whispers, you know…’
‘What are you talking about?’
Good question, Amy thought. She was rambling. His disembodied voice on the telephone was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat. ‘Can you give me a definite time for when you’ll be arriving? I wouldn’t want them to be hanging around until all hours of the night. Marcy has commitments at home. She’ll have to arrange a babysitter.’
‘No later than six-thirty.’
By which time, Amy was in her house, getting ready to meet Sam. She had gathered her troops together, explained that the Big Boss wanted to see them, which had ignited a round of jeering, assured them that her presence was not essential because she had already heard everything there was to say on the subject of their non-profit-making organisation. Her time, she had confided to her five friends and workmates, would be better spent meeting Sam at the pizza place so that she could break off their relationship.
And that had been the end of any business discussion. The remaining half an hour had been spent fending off various opinions on Sam and the nature of relationships in general. Those five people, she now thought, staring at her reflection in the mirror, were like family to her. The only family she had, now that Antonio was soon to go to Italy and would be incommunicado except via telephone or e
-mail. Was it any wonder that she was so protective about them and so desperate to see that they all kept their jobs? Something Rocco Losi, with his clear-cut, black-and-white image of life, would never understand. The hard, dynamic face superimposed itself over hers in the mirror and she had a moment of deep nervousness as she wondered whether he had arrived at the office and what his reaction would be when he discovered that she wasn’t there.
Then more worrying thoughts took over as she contemplated a difficult time ahead with Sam. He had always been the soul of kindness and understanding…but…underneath the kindness was a certain amount of truculence and a sort of pettiness that she had only recently become aware of. Pettiness and truculence, she thought as she stepped out of the house and headed for her car, could be the enemies of a peaceful finale.
Sam was at the pizza place, waiting for her when she arrived after being stuck in traffic for fifteen minutes. Temporary traffic lights had been erected one block away from her house and bollards strategically placed to indicate an area in which no visible work appeared to be taking place. For one disorienting second, Amy was struck by the stark comparison between Sam and Rocco, then she moved towards him, nervously smiling and with a sinking heart.
‘You’re…’ he looked at his watch humorously ‘…twenty minutes late.’
‘Traffic.’ She had never noticed how tired this place was before. It had probably possessed a winning formula ten years ago when it had been built, but since then it had been overtaken by fast-food restaurants with even more winning formulas. Now it looked jaded and worn down.
‘You look exhausted.’ Having stood up to greet her, he subsided back into his chair and looked at her frowningly. ‘Guess things are not going quite as you wanted them to with the Italian?’
‘His name’s Rocco, Sam.’ When he beamed at her and winked, as if involving her in a private joke, and then stretched out his hand to cover hers, she tactfully pulled back and tucked both her hands firmly on her lap.
How was she going to get through this? she wondered. He barely seemed to notice that, while he spoke for twenty minutes about his course and the various soul mates he had met there, waving aside the waitress because he was still too wrapped up in his conversation for food, she had scarcely uttered a word.
‘Look,’ she said, when finally there was a lapse in the monologue. She leant forward, drawing him towards her, and placed her hands over his. ‘I’ve given this a lot of thought, and there’s something I need to say to you…’
CHAPTER SIX
ROCCO had had no trouble in either locating the pizza place, which was just off the main drag of the high street, or in locating Sam and Amy, mainly because the restaurant was half empty. Two waitresses, who looked young enough to still be in high school, were lounging by the cash register and chatting in a desultory manner, and the rest of the diners, all eight of them, were talking in such low voices that, were it not for the décor, anyone would be forgiven for thinking that they had walked into a slightly odd library.
There was a little flurry of animation by the cash register at his arrival, which he noticed out of the corner of his eye, but by the time the blonder of the two waitresses had surfaced sufficiently to head towards him he was already striding towards the table where its two occupants were conversing with heads close together.
He was just in time to catch the tail-end of Amy’s sentence and as the implications of it struck home he was assaulted by such a rage of jealousy that for a split second he was virtually paralysed. Then a lifetime of self-control took over, and he was himself again.
Neither occupant of the table had seen him. They were absorbed in each other. As they would be, he thought acidly, interrupting the loving little scenario by imposing himself between them, hands placed squarely on the small table. Accepting a proposal of marriage, which had been undoubtedly on her lips, required concentration. It wasn’t the sort of thing you casually let slip over a mouthful of half-chewed pizza.
‘Am I interrupting anything?’ Rocco looked lazily between them, and before either could answer he had pulled out a chair and sat down.
Amy was the first to break the thick silence and she realised that, underneath all the anxiousness over her meeting with Sam, she had been worried stiff about what Rocco would do when he discovered her absence from his prearranged meeting. Now she knew.
‘What are you doing here? How did you find me?’
‘Ever full of questions, isn’t she?’ Rocco sat back in his chair and turned to look at Sam. Just as he had expected. A man without vigour, a man who had earnest acceptance written all over his face as well as that peculiarly defensive thrust of his jaw that indicated someone who saw himself as having been dealt an unfair blow in life. Rocco had met many like him before. Always vociferous on the Evils of Wealth, never daring to push themselves towards such a target for fear of failing in the process. Complaint and inaction were always so much more comfortable than aiming for the stars.
He turned back towards her, looked at her angry face, noted the speedy removal of her hands from her fiancé’s, and felt another burst of dark, incomprehensible emotion that left in its wake a grim determination to yank her back from the abyss she was clearly hurtling towards. Sorting out the personal lives of his employees was not in his job specification, but he would make an exception in this instance and little did she know how grateful she would be in the long run.
‘I am Rocco Losi and you must be Sam,’ he said, introducing himself but declining the regulatory handshake.
‘You still haven’t answered my questions.’
‘I will in a minute. First, some wine, I think.’ He flicked a glance at the waitress, who scurried across breathlessly, smoothing her uniform as she approached, and Rocco ordered a bottle of the house white, ignoring Sam’s interjection that he was not a drinker. ‘Everyone drinks,’ he said with such sweeping arrogance that Amy glared ferociously but fruitlessly at his averted profile. ‘Except those who see some virtue in resisting temptation. I have always thought that succumbing to a little temptation is very good for the soul, as a matter of fact.’
‘And we’re both thrilled to hear that piece of wisdom, but would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’ She hadn’t even got around to telling Sam what she had to say and her chances now appeared blown to the four winds.
‘There was a certain little meeting…?’
‘Which was scheduled out of working hours,’ Sam interjected huffily. ‘Amy is not obliged to work beyond five o’clock in the afternoon. Nine to five. Those are her statutory working hours.’
Rocco glanced at him as though he had suddenly started speaking in tongues and then ignored him.
‘I was a little surprised to find you absent, especially when you know my feelings on members of staff who are not prepared to go the full distance.’
Please don’t say anything, Sam, she pleaded silently. One more sanctimonious interjection about working hours and she had a gut feeling that Rocco would make mincemeat of him.
‘I didn’t think you would have anything new to add to the equation,’ Amy explained calmly, apologetically, just wanting to get rid of him so that she could bid her farewells to Sam and not have that lingering over her head any longer. ‘I didn’t think my presence would be missed.’
And of course, Rocco completed to himself, rushing over to start wedding plans was so much more exciting than the so-called fulfilling career she had been harping on about relentlessly ever since she’d found out his intentions. He looked at her coldly.
‘Your members of staff might disagree on that.’ He watched as her shoulders tensed. ‘Which, incidentally, is why they agreed to let me know where I might find you.’ The wine had arrived. It tasted awful and drinking on his own while two lovers waited politely for him to leave suddenly seemed very sad somehow.
He had never felt sad in his life before, dammit. He was the most bloody fulfilled person he knew. He worked relentlessly, made enough money to keep him in apartments the world
over if he so chose, was respected, admired, fawned upon and enjoyed the pleasure of women without the grinding monotony of commitment. He repelled the inner voice that chattered in his head about his relationship with his father, as he did the image of this woman next to him reaching out to hold her lover’s hands the minute his back was turned.
He stood up abruptly, pushing the chair back, and looked down at them.
‘Maybe you could see your way to getting to my office tomorrow. If you can find a window in your busy personal life.’
‘That’s unfair!’ Amy protested, blushing furiously.
‘Amy works considerable hours, Mr Losi,’ Sam said, annoyed to be relegated to the sidelines by an intruder. ‘Your father has never had a problem with her dedication—’
‘I am capable of defending myself, Sam!’ There was sharp irritation in her voice, which Rocco picked up on and found quite satisfying, but his face was perfectly bland when he turned to Sam, head inclined to one side, a picture of polite interest.
‘Oh, no. I welcome your input…Sam…always interesting to hear viewpoints from a third party…’
‘I can be with you first thing in the morning, if that’s convenient,’ Amy blurted out, desperate to interrupt this unfolding scenario in which Rocco was definitely the stalking predator with eyes firmly fixed on his bewildered, innocent prey.
‘Well,’ Sam huffed, more than happy to expand on his train of thought, ‘I’m certainly very glad to hear that, Mr Losi. All too often, people in your position, and I use the term people because women play a powerful role in our society these days, don’t feel that they need to hear what the ordinary folk are saying…’
The Italian Tycoon's Mistress Page 9
