The Passionate Italian Read online

  A wolf whistle rent the air. “Drunk too much, girlie?”

  The man spoke Italian with a heavy unidentifiable accent. She looked up to see that he was part of a group of men, beer bottles in hand, who was watching her, assessingly.

  She shook her head. Still numb by her recent discovery, she felt no threat or danger from the group. What pain could anyone inflict on her now that she hadn’t already experienced? She deserved it anyway.

  “No. I’m fine.” She made to step forward but found her way blocked. “I said I’m fine.”

  “I don’t think you are. I think you need some help.”

  “And I think you should listen to the lady and walk away while you still can.”

  She closed her eyes tightly at the sound of Giovanni’s voice, waiting for his explosion. None came. When she opened them again the men had disappeared leaving only Giovanni.

  “Did they touch you?” His voice was tight.

  She shook her head. “No. It’s my fault.”

  “What is your fault exactly?”

  How could she explain to him that everything was. She’d made one bad decision after another, leaving other people to pick up the pieces. Well, no more.

  “Being here—alone. Being here too late.”

  “You’re talking in riddles. Tell me. Something happened in there. What did you hear?”

  How could she tell him? He’d despise her for her weakness, for her guilt. She couldn’t bear it.

  “You won’t tell me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Again. You hide things from me. Come, I’ll get Simon to take you home.”

  A brief phone call had Simon draw up within minutes.

  Giovanni put his arm around her and drew her to him, helping her across the road to the limousine. She yielded to his strength, finding brief and superficial comfort from him. But she stood alone on this. Her guilt was her own. There was nothing anyone could do to help.

  He drew her face to his. “Still nothing to say to me?”

  She searched his face, seeing the signs of the past few years evident in the etched lines of his face, and, most of all in the expression in his eyes—deeper now, more knowing, more aware. She’d done that to him. She’d done enough.

  She shook her head once more.

  He opened the door for her. “We spoke of what made a relationship. Well, cara, there is one more thing a relationship needs to make it work; one thing that you will not give me. Perhaps I do not deserve it, I don’t know. But you need to look more closely. As I said, things change, people change. Perhaps I’ve changed. Perhaps you cannot give me the one thing we do not have.”

  She felt dazed, unable to comprehend his meaning.

  “And what is that?”

  “Trust. And without that, we have nothing.”

  He slammed the door firmly shut and the car pulled off leaving him standing, watching her disappear into the night.

  Giovanni walked back to the party. His presence was required. He hesitated on the steps and turned momentarily, watching the limo disappear around the corner.

  His body ached with need.

  He hadn’t anticipated that she’d turn the tables on him and try to seduce him. And he’d fallen for it. Until she’d had second thoughts.

  The fact that she ran away, rather than trust him with the truth hurt more than anything. He was the person whom everyone relied on to fix things up and he couldn’t help his own wife. She had to know, but no amount of telling would convince her. She had to see that he had changed, that he could be trusted.

  In the meantime, he had some uncomfortable nights—and days—ahead of him.

  He entered the baroque lobby—all wedding-cake plaster and gilt moldings—and watched as Milan’s elite glittered and sparkled before him.

  None of it could touch him like she could.

  She was his match in every way.

  She thought she was turning up the heat on him. Testing him, seeing how he would respond. Well, if little girls liked to play with fire then he’d give her some.

  And this time, she wouldn’t be able to back out so easily. She needed to be pushed outside her comfort zone, shaken up a bit: made to realize what he already knew.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She’d never trusted anyone. How could she start now?

  Mechanically she slipped out of the dress that had symbolized new hope only hours before, and pulled on her robe, dragging the knot too tightly across her waist.

  How dare anyone reproach her for not trusting? What could anybody, least of all Giovanni, know about her upbringing?

  She walked across to the rear window that overlooked the inner courtyard, and opened it up wide to the storm. Darkness lay all around. No sign of life, except the wild weather. No light from Giovanni’s suite opposite. No doubt he was still at the party, taking up with some woman where they’d left off. The thought made her feel sick. She left the window open, despite the rain that slanted in through the window, splattering large, dark drops onto the pale wooden floor. On a clear day she could see the icy peaks of the Alps in the distance. But tonight there was nothing to see: no external sign of an existence beyond herself. There was only her in this little pocket of loneliness.

  She might have been a teenager again, living her life and dreams in the box room of the Council flat: using her paper-round money for her lunches, hiding the rent money in a jar in her room, screwing a lock on her door for those nights when her mother was entertaining. At fourteen she knew the only person who could look after her—give her a future—was herself.

  How could Giovanni accuse her of lacking trust when it had been that very lack that had forced her to look to herself to climb out of the hole that was her mother’s life. It had been the only thing that had got her through all of that. And more.

  Marriage and children hadn’t been on her radar but somehow Giovanni had slipped under it and into her heart.

  But she’d insisted she kept working, insisted that she maintain her independence financially and she’d tried her hardest to maintain an emotional independence. She’d built her whole life around it.

  Only trusting herself. The only person she could be sure of.

  She unclipped her necklace and lay it in the box, alongside the other jewelry Giovanni had bought her. It was all of the best taste—unusual vintage pieces mostly—he knew what she liked. He knew her well.

  She grimaced and closed the box.

  He was right, she didn’t trust him with the truth. But how could she if he could believe Alberto’s lies? If he could believe them, then why would he believe her story—a version of events that seemed even more improbable than Alberto’s? Sad thing was, they actually happened.

  She turned away from the box of memories and went over to the bathroom. She flicked on the light and saw her reflection in the mirror opposite: pale, pensive and confused. She flicked off the light quickly.

  She paced across to the window once more but turned quickly, forcing herself to remember the events of that night. They came in flashes, some scenes felt more viscerally, rather than remembered, others imprinted in every visual detail on her brain.

  That evening, two years ago, Giovanni had been due home. They’d been separated for six months with only fleeting reunions in New York in the early months. She’d been feeling stifled in Milan by Giovanni’s jealousy and had accepted a contract in Hong Kong. She’d needed to get away for a while. Discovering she was pregnant made her feelings of being trapped worse but it took only a few months for her to know her future was with him. But not immediately. They both had to work out their contracts.

  It had been an important, delicate deal for Giovanni, one that he had to oversee personally while Rose completed her work in Hong Kong. She knew if Giovanni had discovered she was pregnant, he would have insisted on staying with her and the deal would have failed. And, along with it, the future of those who depended on them. She couldn’t have that on her conscience.

  And besides, it was only to ha
ve been for a few months.

  At first it had been simple. She’d managed to hide her pregnancy easily. After all she’d hardly put on any weight and had remained fit. But then the passing of the months seemed to slow. She’d had to make excuses not to see him. She knew he hadn’t understood why they couldn’t meet. It had nearly killed her, but she’d believed the pain of separation would pale into insignificance once they were together again. A new life would begin for them then.

  At last, after six long months Giovanni had been due to return. She’d flown in earlier that day and had been about to go directly to Lugano, where they’d planned their reunion, when Alberto had called, informing her that Giovanni’s plane was arriving early and that he would meet her at the Palazzo.

  Giovanni’s supposed change of plan should have raised her suspicions but she’d been so excited that nothing could have clouded her happiness. She’d laughed to herself. So like Giovanni. After months apart he couldn’t wait another half hour.

  She’d arrived at the Palazzo early. Everything had been ready: the staff dismissed, the mood intimate, everything just as he liked it. And then she waited. But not for long.

  She hadn’t been entirely surprised when Alberto had shown up. She’d thought it must have had something to do with business. And then, when he’d taken her to Giovanni’s suite of rooms, his bedroom, she’d been scared—convinced that Giovanni had fallen ill.

  But there had been no Giovanni.

  Instead there had been only a clumsy attempt at seduction. She’d even misconstrued that at the beginning, not taking him seriously. But if there was one thing that angered Alberto, it was being laughed at.

  He was not a large man, but Rose had soon found out that a wiry strength lay in those arms. A simple pass turned into a sexual attack that Rose had been unable to halt.

  The weakness that she’d always seen in Alberto had been masking a lethal mix of frustration and anger at his lack of power that manifested itself in a display of perversion and violence of which Rose had not thought him capable.

  She’d not fought back at first. It was something that had haunted her afterwards. But she couldn’t. Primitive feelings of protection of her unborn child had made her try to diffuse the situation and not to retaliate. But as the situation had deteriorated she’d been forced to defend herself.

  But it had been too late.

  Bleeding, she’d driven back to Milan, to the hospital and seen the best doctors in an effort to save her baby. But it wasn’t to be.

  She’d stayed at a hotel only long enough to bury her baby before buying a ticket to the farthest destination she could think of—New Zealand.

  She’d acted purely on instinct, grieving for the loss of her baby and terrified about what Giovanni would do when he discovered what had happened. Giovanni’s childhood had been dominated by his father’s uncontrollable rages—something he feared that he, himself, had inherited. He’d always hated his brother and Rose knew that this one act would literally make him see red and nothing else: his passions would overtake him and he would hit Alberto and she didn’t know if he’d be able to stop.

  So she did what she always did, trusted no-one with the truth and moved on. Giovanni would get over her. She’d soon just be another blonde to chalk down to experience. One, presumably, he’d rather forget.

  What she hadn’t expected was for Alberto to fabricate the story that she’d been trying to seduce him. He’d claimed she’d finally become desperate at the thought of being with Giovanni again and had invited Alberto to call on her the night before Giovanni was due home.

  Did she do the wrong thing? Should she have trusted Giovanni with what happened? Possibly. She still didn’t know. But she’d been grieving for the loss of her child. And her sense of loss hadn’t diminished.

  But now, at least, she could show Giovanni what Alberto was made of and how little he could be trusted—with family money at least. She’d keep his crimes against herself quiet. It was too late to help Alberto’s newest victim. But the sooner she finished her job the sooner she could let Giovanni get on with his life without her.

  Giovanni’s response to her pathetic attempt to seduce him had obviously been purely automatic. What he really wanted she couldn’t give him—trust—and he’d fallen out of love with her. Whatever his real purpose in bringing her to Italy had been, it hadn’t been to rekindle their relationship. That much was clear. She knew when she left it would be for good and he would not follow her again.

  She flipped open her laptop and logged into the company’s security system. The sooner she’d finished gathering the evidence that would put Alberto away, the sooner she could leave.

  She felt the storm’s heavy atmosphere all around her, isolating her from the world. Rain and wind battered her windows and darkness enveloped the palazzo. She’d never felt so alone.

  It was past four in the morning before he saw the light dim from her window. He sat watching the nightlife high above Milan, aware of her working across the courtyard. He knew what she was doing. Working to forget. It was the one constant in her turbulent childhood—her studies, her work—the one thing on which she could rely. That was what she’d always done. He could read her like a book.

  It was her lack of understanding of him that had always perplexed him. For someone so clever, so bright and so understanding in many ways, she didn’t know him. He turned away from the window and closed his eyes. Or she didn’t dare to know him. Opening up to someone made you vulnerable. He knew that. And she’d have to learn it if they were to be together. And they would be together.

  Tomorrow. He’d show her tomorrow. He’d make her see.

  “Come, I have something to show you.”

  Rose looked up blinking at Giovanni, standing over the computer.

  “I’m busy.”

  “Firstly, it’s Sunday. Secondly you’ve not stopped all day and you were up most of the night working.”

  “How did you know?” She looked around the office and blinked. It was empty. “Hey, where is everyone?”

  “You must be the only person in Milan who doesn’t know that it’s the Festa del Naviglio today.”

  “Ah,” she rubbed her eyes, smarting from working at the computer screen all day, “that’s why they all had urgent appointments. She looked back at the computer absently. “Look, here, Giovanni, I need to show you—”

  “You can tell me as we walk.”

  She raised her eyebrows and smiled at him. “We’re walking?”

  “More surprised that we’re walking or that I’m forcing you to stop work?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know. Both are pretty unusual.”

  “I look after my staff. You should know that.”

  “Right.” She dropped her pen and stood up and stretched. “So you do.” She turned to him suddenly, suspiciously. “But not usually at such a personal level. What are you up to?”

  “Come with me and find out.”

  “You’re taking me to the festival?”

  “En route maybe. But it’s not our destination.”

  He held the door open for her as she grabbed her bag and walked towards him.

  “Umm. This is all very mysterious.” She narrowed her gaze as she brushed past him, trying to ignore the quickening of her breath as she came close. It was as if a flick switched deep inside whenever he was close. Pity it wasn’t reciprocated. She was only a staff member after all.

  Once outside, Rose looked up at the soft blue sky of a beautiful June day—cleared by the storm of its heavy atmosphere—and breathed deeply.

  “You were right,” she said slipping her hand through his proffered arm. “It’s good to be outside.”

  As they fell into step, a warm glow—of being, in that moment, in the right place—enveloped her. If she had no future with him, now was enough. She looked up at his face, to fix it into her mind. The crisp clear light of the summer afternoon highlighted Giovanni’s handsome features. Olive skin, straight black hair that fell across dark brows, a
bove eyes the color of heated caramel. Long cheek-bones swept more down than across, beneath which his skin was dark with late-afternoon stubble.

  It was the face of a man unconcerned with his looks, unaware of their power—an intense man, with an almost permanent frown. And then there were his lips: narrow but beautifully shaped. The tension and passion were held in check by that mouth. Years before, his mouth had seemed fuller, more generous, more given to laughing, to hope.

  His dark tailored suit clung to his tall frame in all the right places, perfectly reflecting his innate, effortless style. Unlike his colleagues, Giovanni always gave the impression of a corporate man by accident, under duress, unconsciously stylish. He would rather be elsewhere but was focused on what he had to do nevertheless.

  He was her man. And that would never change. The effort in keeping her hand still on his arm was immense. She wondered if the need for him would ever diminish. Somehow she doubted it. They’d walked down the same street years ago and her feelings had intensified, if anything, since then.

  She sighed.

  “Why are you sighing?”

  “A little wistful perhaps.”

  “Wistful or nostalgic?”

  “Ah, you remembered.” Her hand tightened, involuntarily, around his arm.

  “Of course. This is the way we came when we first met.”

  “I hardly noticed. I think I would have followed you anywhere.”

  “That didn’t last.”

  She chose to ignore the not-so-subtle barb.

  “Anyway, where are we going? Same place?”

  “No. The festival first—and then? Something different.”

  “We’re going sight seeing? That really doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I prefer to think of it as gazing upon immortality.”

  “An art gallery then?”

  “Why are you English so prosaic?”

  “Please, no praise—it just comes naturally.”

  “When you were last in Milan, we were both too busy to enjoy it. Last night you said you knew nothing of its treasures. It’s time to rectify that.”