‘It’s only breakfast.’ Matteo shrugged. ‘But, sure, let’s go to your home so you can change.’
Bella gave a tight shrug and then walked alongside him.
He was perfection. In a gorgeous suit, with not a glimmer of sweat on his brow despite the bright morning sun. He slipped on dark glasses when they stepped out of the alley and Bella did the same. Only hers were cheap ones and did little against the glare, but she wore them so he could not see the tears in her eyes.
Oh, it was hard to see him so sleek and beautiful. Harder too to get out of her head the image of him in bed this morning with a woman that had not been her.
‘You share an apartment with Sophie?’ Matteo checked.
‘I do.’ Behind her glasses Bella blinked nervously. For Sophie’s sake she did not want Matteo to see how they really lived—they had done all they could to avoid the embarrassment.
For her sake too now, Bella thought.
‘Sophie told Luka that you worked from home.’
There was a slight inference there and, given her behaviour this morning and the way she had spoken to him, Matteo clearly thought she was topping up her wages with the oldest profession in the world.
Once a whore...
She recalled his words.
Bella knew what she had done to get here to Rome and she knew he would never forgive that.
He didn’t need to know the salacious details and certainly Bella never wanted to tell him.
In some ways it was easier to go along with his thinking, to be smart-mouthed and streetwise.
To pretend that facing him wasn’t the hardest thing she had ever done.
She glanced up at Matteo. He was so effortlessly elegant, so out of place by her side.
Yet, just as she always had, she loved him.
‘Wait here,’ Bella said.
‘You’re not going to invite me into your home?’
‘No.’
‘That’s not very Sicilian,’ Matteo teased lightly.
‘Ah, but we are in Rome,’ Bella said. ‘You know how city people are, peeking out from behind their door, terrified you might want to come in.’
‘I do.’
‘Well, you can’t,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’
She left him at the end of her street.
The buildings were high, and some of the ancient buildings contained apartments that had been beautifully renovated. He could not guess, Bella hoped, that hers was not.
She turned down another small side street, unlocked a huge iron security gate and wrenched it back, and then climbed the many steps that led to a very small apartment.
Their lounge was relatively spacious but bare. It easily held two small sofas and a coffee table. Off that was a kitchen and Bella headed straight to the fridge and took out a bottle of water and drank it down, but nothing was going to help her become cool and sophisticated this morning. All their combined efforts had gone into ensuring that Sophie could present herself to Luka looking chic and glamorous—Sophie had wanted to appear far from the peasant that Luka had admitted to calling her during the trial.
Had she given it proper thought, Bella might have known that if Luka was around, then Matteo would be too.
But you deliberately didn’t think, Bella reminded herself.
For five years she had done everything she could to keep the memories out.
Now he was back and the best she could do was pull from her drawer a small black tube skirt and add to it a tight top with spaghetti straps.
She ran a cloth over black ballet pumps and then brushed and retied her hair and headed out, locking the iron gate behind her. She walked back up the narrow hilly street to where he waited.
‘That was quick,’ Matteo said.
‘Did you want me to make a little more effort for you?’
‘I meant,’ he said as they walked, ‘that that was quick.’
There was tension between them.
Bella was still furious at the sight that had greeted her this morning and Matteo had been less than impressed by her crude seductive taunt.
But aside from that there was a different tension, once-upon-a-time lovers trying to act as polite, distant friends who were merely catching up and wondering how the hell to adapt to that.
‘How about here?’ Matteo suggested as, instead of a corner café he stopped by a fashionable restaurant, and Bella nearly turned and ran.
She had once tried to apply for a waitressing job at this very restaurant and hadn’t even made it past the doorman.
She knew that she wasn’t glossy enough even to wait on tables here, let alone sit at them, but Matteo was already asking for a pavement table.
She saw a couple of sideway glances—and she knew they were for him. Here amongst Rome’s elite and most beautiful he still stood out.
The frowns, though, the double takes, well, they were for her.
Amongst Rome’s elite and most beautiful Bella stood out, but for all the wrong reasons.
They took their seats and as the waiter arranged the shade cloth, for once Bella thought Rome looked beautiful.
‘How do you find Rome?’ Matteo asked.
‘Busy,’ she said.
‘Do you miss home?’
‘This is home,’ she said, glad for dark glasses. ‘What about you—do you miss Bordo Del Cielo?’
‘No.’ Matteo shook his head. ‘I have nothing there to miss.’
‘Your mother?’ she asked.
‘She and her new husband moved away after Malvolio died. The property prices went up and they sold out. They spent all the money they made, of course...’ He didn’t elaborate, he was tired of his mother’s dramas.
‘Do you keep in touch?’
‘She rings for money, I send it. That’s it.’
‘You don’t see her?’
He gave a very brief shake of his head.
‘Do you ever wonder about her?’ Bella asked, though the lump in her throat meant she was asking more about herself.
‘I don’t let myself,’ he said.
‘What about your brother, Dino?’ Bella asked, and she watched his jaw tense. She knew what Dino had told him about her.
‘Dino is in prison. Once Malvolio died there was no one who wanted his ways. He is in the same prison that Paulo was.’
‘Do you visit him?’
‘No,’ Matteo said. ‘I do everything I can not to think of him.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sure he’s the same, people don’t change.’
‘They don’t,’ Bella said. The poor stay poor, she thought. The rich get richer and the beautiful age well.
She looked at the living proof.
There he was, immaculate and completely at ease.
And there was her image in his glasses and when she saw that she was nibbling on her nails she moved them from her mouth and sat a little straighter.
‘Do you like your work?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I love to make beds.’ Bella’s voice dripped sarcasm. ‘And sometimes, when I am shining a sink, I feel so blessed, but that doesn’t compare to cleaning a rich drunk’s toilet.’
‘What about your dressmaking?’
‘What about it?’ She shrugged. ‘I am not as good as I thought I was. I have applied to many design schools...’
‘You don’t need a design school,’ he said. ‘You could start up now.’
Behind her glasses Bella’s eyes narrowed—clearly he did not understand that even buying fabric proved hard, that she worked ten-or twelve-hour shifts at the hotel just to stay afloat. Alfeo was wrong—she wasn’t some magpie, she didn’t crave nice things, she just ached to make them, to bite her scissors into fabric, to create, to sew, but that was a dream that was fast fading. ‘You have never seen my work.
’
‘I saw it last night,’ Matteo said. ‘Sophie was wearing one of your creations. She pretends to be rich...’
Bella’s breath tripped. She and Sophie had done everything they could so that she could be proud of herself when she asked Luka to do her this one favour.
‘I know that she lies,’ Matteo said, and it was the strangest thing because even with the most private of conversations, even with her best friend’s secret on her shoulders, there was somehow trust that the discussion taking place was between them.
‘Does Luka know that she lies?’
‘I don’t know,’ Matteo admitted. ‘We really don’t speak about our pasts. All I know is that Sophie contacted him and asked him to go along with a fake engagement to appease her father. Now she wants marriage.’ His lips curled a little. ‘I have warned him it will be an expensive divorce.’
‘This isn’t about money,’ Bella swiftly retorted. ‘This is about giving Paulo peace in his final days.’
‘We shall see.’ Matteo shrugged. ‘Why else would she lie and make out that she is wealthy?’
‘Perhaps she needed to feel some pride to look an ex-lover in the eye and ask for help,’ Bella said from behind her dark glasses.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘whatever game Sophie is playing, if what she was wearing last night was one of the dresses you made, then your work is amazing.’
‘It would take just one beautiful woman to make the headlines wearing one of my gowns.’ A smile finally came to her face. ‘Perhaps you could ask Shandy to wear one at one of the functions you attend...’
‘I don’t think so.’ Matteo’s own smile was wry. The waiter came and Bella glanced through the menu as he ordered a panino.
‘Brioche with a side of pistachio and cherry gelato,’ she said.
‘That sounds a lot like home,’ he commented.
‘I don’t eat out a lot,’ Bella said. ‘And so, when I do, I want something that I know for sure I’ll like.’
Her words hit him between the legs. She could make the water the waiter was pouring a reference to sex, he thought as Bella excused herself and walked into the restaurant.
There was no need to be shy now. As Matteo Santini’s breakfast date, the door was held open.
A machine in the wall offered various solutions and normally Bella wouldn’t even deign to give it a glance.
Today wasn’t a normal day, though, and so she fed some coins in.
Some splurge, Bella thought as half a milligram of lip gloss was delivered to her palm.
She painted her mouth, she rearranged her top, she tried to breathe through the images that her mind kept delivering.
Their first kiss, their one dance.
She took her time but felt better for it and as she walked back out the waiter was already returning with her order.
Matteo could have kicked himself for bringing her here. He could see a group of women look down at her shoes and then whisper something.
All he had thought since their eyes had met this morning was how amazing she looked. Now, thanks to others, he could see that her little black skirt was a little faded, that her shoes were scuffed and that her amazing black hair was split and could use a good cut. It had never been his intention to place her under public scrutiny and yet he had done just that.
Here, looks mattered, clothes mattered, down to the bag you carried and the sunglasses you wore.
She thanked the waiter as she sat down and he wished he could take her hand and tell her not a scrap of it mattered to him. She, above everyone he knew, must know his thoughts on all that.
Because that long-ago night he had told her.
Bella slit the bread open and scooped the gelato into it and closed her eyes as she took a bite, and when she saw Matteo watching her she sliced her bread into two and handed him half and they spoke a little of Bordo Del Cielo.
‘I hear it is busy now, that the tourists come to the hotel,’ Bella said. ‘Too many of them apparently, though the people are much happier now that Malvolio is dead.’
‘We will see for ourselves at the weekend,’ Matteo responded, and he watched as the bread paused by her mouth.
Bella didn’t even attempt a bite. Instead, she put the food down. ‘What do you mean—we’ll see for ourselves at the weekend?’
‘Sophie hasn’t spoken to you yet?’ Matteo checked.
‘No.’
‘I got a phone call this morning. She and Luka have booked their wedding for Sunday and I am to be the best man. I have heard that Sophie shall ask you to be bridesmaid.’
‘I’m working,’ Bella said quickly, her mind dancing with the news. Luka had been adamant that he would never marry Sophie and she wanted to hear from her friend exactly what was going on.
‘No,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re not working, remember.’
‘Is that why you said I couldn’t start back till Monday?’
Any hope that he wanted her there, that he had somehow arranged things so that she might be in Bordo Del Cielo for the wedding, were immediately removed by a rather adamant shake of his head.
‘I heard about the wedding after I spoke with your manager.’
‘So your efforts to keep me from Shandy will be in vain.’ Bella gave a hollow laugh. ‘She’ll get a surprise when she sees me at the wedding. Perhaps she will throw a bucket of water over us when we dance...’
Matteo didn’t correct Bella and tell her that Shandy wouldn’t be there. Instead, he outlined how it would be. ‘Ah, but we will be behaving,’ Matteo said, while knowing it was close to an impossible task.
He wondered if he should tell her not to worry about a dance that would possibly kill them both but he chose to leave it to Sophie to tell her that the wedding would not be going ahead.
They sat silent for a moment and then, aching to see her, Matteo reached over and took off the dark glasses that hid her eyes.
Bella let him.
‘You look tired,’ he commented.
‘Because I am tired,’ she said. ‘And I am uncomfortable here too. People keep looking at us.’
Matteo said nothing, he couldn’t deny that people were.
‘I don’t like the scrutiny,’ she said.
Matteo called for the bill.
CHAPTER FOUR
ROME WAS SO beautiful today, Bella thought as they stepped out into the sun.
There were tourists and lovers and all the scents of a city and how strange it felt to be here with Matteo and not to be holding hands.
Not to be pressed up against a wall this hot morning and kissing with all the promise of later falling into bed.
‘Not a cloud...’ Matteo looked up. ‘I thought your note said there would be storms.’
‘I’m the storm.’ Bella smiled and so did he.
‘I did some sightseeing last night,’ he said, and she gave him a sideways frown because she couldn’t really imagine Matteo doing such a thing. ‘I hired a moped and—’
‘I don’t want to hear about your night with Shandy.’
‘I wasn’t with her then,’ Matteo said. ‘I was with you.’
He stopped walking and so did she and they faced the other but stood apart.
‘We could do that together now,’ he said. ‘I could hire a moped, we could—’
‘No,’ Bella said.
‘But you told me that you love exploring.’
‘I do.’
‘So why not?’ Matteo pushed, but when she gave her answer he wished that he hadn’t.
‘Because then we’d be touching.’
They walked, not talking, just together, and then came to a grassy knoll where families sat and so too did couples.
Matteo bought two coffees and they sat there, watching the world go by. Tired from a ni
ght spent thinking of each other, they lay on the grass and Bella took off her glasses and let the warm sun bathe her.
If there was one place in the world where Bella felt she belonged, it was lying by his side. There, she could look up and see no one and feel no one watching or, if she looked to the side, she could see only him.
Matteo, still in dark glasses, was looking up at the sky as she turned to him and gazed at his perfect straight nose and strong profile.
‘I do miss home.’ He admitted to his lie in the restaurant. ‘Not the people, more...’ He hesitated.
‘I miss it too,’ she said. ‘Every day I tell myself that I love Rome and I do. I love the freedom, I love that I am no longer scared, yet I miss so many things about Bordo Del Cielo. I miss the beach,’ she admitted. ‘Sophie and I would go there every day. I miss the markets too and the food. I miss days spent exploring. If I lived there for ever there would still be more to discover...’
‘How was your mother about you leaving?’ Matteo asked.
Bella lay there.
Because she had so few people in her life, the question barely came up. She had only had to say perhaps a handful of times that her mother was dead, and she just didn’t know how to say it now and not break down.
She asked him a question instead.
‘What do you miss?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Just those last six months...’ Matteo answered. He took no offence that she hadn’t answered; he was the master at being evasive when people asked things about his past.
He thought for a moment and she watched, a little smile on his dark red lips as he thought of them. ‘I’ve never even told Luka, given he spent those months in prison, but during that time, running the hotel not having someone breathing down my neck, I felt I might get somewhere, I could see myself living there without wanting to get away...’
‘Do you really not miss your mother?’ Bella asked. She just couldn’t imagine he wrote his family off that easily.
‘There’s nothing to miss. She was barely there when I was growing up. She hated me,’ Matteo said, and Bella frowned.
‘I doubt she actually hated you...’
‘Oh, she told me so,’ he said. ‘And he didn’t have to tell me that, his fists did the talking. I never remember a time she wasn’t married to him...’ Even to this day Matteo would not call his stepfather by name.
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