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“No family, Angelo. She lived with Annie, her grandmother. I’m sorry I never mentioned my dad to you,” she was constrained to tell him. “I didn’t think it was important.”
“Correction. You didn’t want me to be influenced by it.”
“Well, maybe I didn’t!” Rosie burst out with sudden anger. “And can you blame me? The way you’re looking at me now...!”
“Do you really think I would have given a damn where you came from?” He didn’t want to become embroiled in a fruitless discussion with a woman who dug herself deeper and deeper into a hole with every sentence that passed her lips but, like a thorn, she had burrowed under his skin. “I despise liars,” he imparted grimly. He wanted to ask her what other lies might he expect from her and had to remind himself that she was no longer his concern. She was disposable. Were it not for extraordinary and unforeseeable circumstances, he wouldn’t even be sitting here in this cottage with her, having this conversation.
“So do I,” Rosie said quietly. Did he think that she didn’t know about the way he had strung her along? Did he really imagine that he was as unblemished as pure snow?
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Rosie muttered. “It’s just exhausting arguing with you. It’s not my fault Mandy left me this cottage, and it’s not my fault that I’m grateful that she did and that I want to live in it. I just don’t accept that you have to treat me like dirt because you happen to disapprove.”
“Why did you decide to up sticks and come to London? Why didn’t you stay put and try and do something nearer to where you grew up?”
“Sorry?” Rosie blustered. She looked at him narrowly, searching his face for more cold, biting dislike and was disconcerted to find none there. There might not have been any warmth but for the moment at least his icy contempt was not in evidence.
“Call me a masochist,” Angelo drawled, “But I’m curious to discover what makes you tick.”
“Why?”
“When I so completely fail to read a person, I like to work out where I went wrong.” He shrugged his broad shoulders.
“You mean so that you don’t make the same mistake twice?”
“You’re a one-off, never-to-be-forgotten learning curve,” Angelo said with a cutting lack of emotion. “Believe me, I won’t be repeating the mistakes I made with you, but I’m still curious.” And he was, because her personality now seemed to fall in place. Her vigour, her stubborn refusal to conform to what other people demanded, her ability to challenge him without fear of consequences. “Where exactly did you grow up?”
Rosie sighed. If he wanted the full low-down on her background, then she would give it to him. It would be cathartic. In fact, it might even help her get over him. Every time she made the mistake of calling up that image of him in her head, which still seemed to happen with alarming regularity, she would picture him turning away from her in disgust at the person he now knew she was—someone so out of his league that it was laughable. “On a very rough council estate,” she told him, daring him to snigger.
“Yet you managed to get out.”
“If you don’t get out when you’re young, then you never get out. Have I managed to satisfy your curiosity? Because I’m beginning to feel a little tired. It’s been a long day. I just want to go to bed now, get some rest.” She stretched, stifled a yawn and watched him sideways as he rose to his feet and prowled for a few seconds around the room.
“It’s all very bland, isn’t it?” he mused. “No pictures, no photos.” He turned to look at her. “Amanda could have done this up however she wanted, and yet she chose to do as little as possible with the decor once the renovations had been completed. Why do you think that is?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Rosie returned neutrally.
“And will you be overhauling the place once you move in?”
“I probably won’t have the money,” Rosie said bluntly.
“You came to London to make your fortune. Now you can’t wait to leave, even though you’ll end up jobless here, trying to make ends meet. What are you running away from?”
“I’m not running away from anyone!” Rosie answered a little too quickly, and Angelo raised his eyebrows in a question.
“I don’t believe I suggested that you were running away from a person, did I?”
Flustered, Rosie glared at him. What was he playing at? Was he trying to find chinks in her armour so that he could exploit them at a later date? How had the man she had fallen head over heels in love with morphed into this cold stranger? Scratch that, she told herself angrily. She knew how and, furthermore, if she had been his learning curve, then he had certainly been hers!
“Because it is a man you’re running away from, isn’t it?” he continued silkily.
Lost in her own thoughts and wrong-footed by the way he had zoomed straight in to form the right diagnosis behind her eagerness to leave London—scoring a direct hit, in fact—Rosie was hardly aware of him approaching her until she realised that he was standing right in front of her. If she reached out just slightly with her hand, she would be able to touch his hard, muscled chest. He was now her enemy, yet she was suddenly overcome with such a wave of yearning that her mouth went dry and her ability to think seemed to disappear. She edged back and bumped into the wall.
“I don’t know what gives you that idea,” she breathed jerkily.
“Your boss, is it? Mr Helpful who has so many useful connections in this part of the world?” His veiled, brooding eyes took in everything, from the way she failed to quite meet his gaze, to the nervous way she moistened her lips with her tongue. “Except why are you running from him if he’s that terrific? Have you suddenly decided that you’ve made a mistake? Is he married? Some poor sucker with a couple of kids and a long-suffering wife back home?”
“I am certainly not having an affair with Julian!” She wanted to yell at him that he had no right to jump to conclusions like that, to speculate on her private life. Except they shared a history and, even though it had ended in bitterness, she could feel it too, the way it wrapped its tentacles around them, making it hard to remain detached. Or at least, that was how it was for her.
“And I would never sleep with a married man. Don’t you know me at all?”
“A question I could debate for hours.” The colour had rushed to her cheeks and her full lips were parted, probably on the onset of another verbal attack. Whatever he thought he knew or didn’t know about her, right at this very moment in time he was certain of one thing—she was as vibrantly alive to his presence as he was to hers. The air between them was so charged that it almost crackled, and her body was leaning towards him, even though the expression on her face told him that she was trying desperately to back off...
Never before had he felt such an all-consuming urge to take a woman to bed, to make love to her until she was speechless. He was aware that he was breathing heavily, that he couldn’t drag his eyes away from her flushed face.
“Angelo.” Rosie was shocked at the sound of her own voice, husky and tremulous and shamefully provocative. She raised her hand and half-closed her eyes as she felt the warmth of his chest under her fingers. She didn’t know why she was doing this. There was way too much water under the bridge for them even to have a passing acquaintance. Yet her whole body seemed to reach for him of its own accord.
Her hand on him set off a series of intense flashbacks in Angelo’s head. It was almost as though he had been in limbo for three years, waiting to recapture the feel of her. It shocked him.
He curled his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand away from him. It took almost more effort than he felt himself capable of, but he did it, then he stepped back and stared down at her with a cold, shuttered expression.
“Much as I appreciate the offer, darling, I’m going to have to turn you down. I can’t help but think that your sudden interest in me might just have a little too much to do with getting me onside just in case you end up needing to save your skin.”
Rosie’s eyes flew open and she stared back at him, aghast and mortified. She wanted the ground to open and swallow her up. When she tried to say something, nothing emerged, and she kept staring in mute silence as his mouth curled into a half-smile and he inclined his head, before he turned around and walked out of the cottage.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHICHEVER WAY SHE tried to work the figures, the maths just wasn’t adding up.
Rosie groaned with frustration and shoved the lined pad away from her. She had been back for the best part of a week and it hadn’t taken long for her to grudgingly acknowledge that Angelo had been spot-on when he had listed the catalogue of potential financial disasters facing her if she moved to the cottage.
She might enjoy the dream of the simple life, away from London, but how was she ever going to be able to finance it? Julian had been sympathetic when she had explained the situation and, yes, he had some contacts. But, as he had reasonably pointed out, what restaurant owner was going to hand over lists of potential customers to someone they would see as a rival?
