At the Italian's Command

by Cathy Williams

  So far, she had not seen Patricia look anything but calm, measured and unflappable, even when Rafe had been storming around, restlessly barking orders and moving at the speed of light.

  The sight of her now, in a distinct flap, was cause for worry.

  In fact Sophie half rose from her chair, to be waved down by an agitated Patricia.

  ‘It’s Mr Loro!’

  Sophie felt her face whiten as all the mature thoughts she had been diligently processing flew through the window. She leaned forward urgently. ‘What’s happened, Patricia? Has there been an accident? Is he…is he all right?’ She had a sudden vision of Rafe caught up in a rubble of broken metal, his vital body shattered and lifeless. Nerve endings she’d never known she had reared into sensitive life, catapulting her body into painful overdrive.

  ‘Yes. Oh, dear. I’ve worried you unduly.’ Patricia took a few calming breaths and shut the door behind her, moving to sit in the chair opposite the desk. ‘It’s…well, Mr Loro has just called to inform me that he won’t be coming in today and probably not for the rest of the week…’

  Sophie felt faint with relief. The feeling was swiftly followed by irritation with Patricia that she had obviously made a mountain out of a molehill and with herself for her extreme reaction.

  ‘Was there a problem with yesterday’s meeting?’ she asked, relaxing now. ‘Must have been tricky if he’s had to stay there for a couple of days.’ Such was the aura of invincibility that he created around himself that it was almost impossible for her to imagine any situation he might find tricky.

  ‘No, no problem. It’s just that…he phoned in to say that he isn’t well. You can imagine my shock! Mr Loro has never had a day off work, not in all the years I’ve worked with him. He’s always had the stamina of a…a…’

  ‘Bull?’ Sophie volunteered helpfully. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Apparently there’s some virus going around and he appears to have got it.’ She allowed herself a small smile. ‘It’s almost nice to know that he’s human after all. I hope you won’t put that in your article!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he would strike a line through it if I did.’ Sophie smiled back at the older woman. ‘He might be insulted to be called human after all.’

  ‘The reason I flew in here,’ Patricia carried on after a pause, ‘is that Mr Loro specifically requested that you go over to see him.’

  ‘He requested what?’

  ‘Perhaps request isn’t quite the word…’

  ‘You mean I’ve been ordered to go to his house. Why?’ As if she didn’t know. What did he think she might get up to if he wasn’t around for a couple of days? Mass subversion of his staff? Maybe he thought that she would encourage them to down tools and use the office building for an all-night rave?

  ‘I don’t know. This is an unprecedented situation. He did mention that there are a few documents he needs to have but, really, I could have taken them over, or I could have arranged for a courier to take them.’ She looked as though she had been presented with a mathematical problem way outside her domain, one which she had not a hope in hell of solving.

  ‘When did he want me over?’ Sophie asked, resigned. ‘Soon, sooner or soonest?’

  ‘Soonest, I gather.’ She deposited a stack of documents on the desk and stood up. ‘Good luck.’ This time the glance was sympathetic. ‘He doesn’t sound in the best of tempers.’

  Does he ever? Sophie wondered.

  London, as ever, lay in a pall of rain. The steady grey drizzle that had greeted her first thing when she had left her flat earlier on had decided to take a short coffee break, but it was leaving no one with any illusions that it had gone for the day. The skies were still leaden and there was the smell of damp in the air.

  Fortunately, no public transport to worry about this time.

  Patricia had primed George and he was waiting in Reception for her, so she only had a quick sprint to the Jaguar, then blissful warmth once inside. She made some desultory conversation for a few minutes, then lapsed into silence, happy to stare out through the window and stoke her irritation at the thought of Rafe summoning her halfway across London. Wasn’t this taking his babysitting duties too far? What next? Handwritten reports on her movements so that he could double-check them and make sure she was behaving herself? She was the one who was shadowing him, for goodness’ sake!

  The traffic was thick. The rain had turned the streets into a gluey mass of cars and taxis, which moved along in slow, unsatisfactory spurts, and it was a full hour before they finally arrived at their destination.

  Sophie had no idea what she expected. It certainly wasn’t an unshaven Rafe, who answered the doorbell in his dressing gown and, while she was still standing on the doorstep, unsettled at the vision, turned his back and began walking towards a room off the hall.

  Sophie followed at a rapid pace into a room that looked as though it had been designed for elegant relaxing rather than work. The long windows were dressed in deep red curtains, with Victorian shutters drawn back to allow as much watery light in as possible. The large sofa, which would have been too big for most rooms but fitted nicely into this one, had been turned into a makeshift bed, with the cushions piled up at one end, and the exquisite table that should have sat in the middle of the room had been dragged over and now housed several stacks of paper, a laptop computer, Rafe’s cellular phone and various assorted items of stationery.

  Sophie paused in the doorway, taking it all in, until Rafe said, irritably, ‘Don’t just stand there gawking.’ He had dropped into one of the big chairs by the fireplace and was scowling at her.

  Summoned out of her reverie, Sophie looked over in his direction, at the brown legs exposed by the bathrobe and the sliver of chest.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be properly…dressed if you’re not well?’ Originally she had planned on laying into him as soon as she arrived, demanding why he had seen fit to order her over to his house, accusing him of being offensive in his efforts to keep an eye on her, as if she were seven instead of twenty-seven.

  Her plans had been scuppered by his semi-nudity. She found it hard to look at him at all, for fear of a detached glance turning into an avid, devouring stare. So she addressed the mantelpiece while remaining by the door.

  ‘In a suit, you mean?’ Rafe asked sarcastically. ‘Which, of course, is the attire of choice when at home ill?’ His voice sounded throaty and, with some self-reproach, Sophie ventured into the room. Normally her compassionate nature would have kicked in by now, but, even ill, Rafe still managed to intimidate.

  ‘I meant perhaps you should dress in something warmer.’

  ‘I’m boiling hot, as it happens.’

  ‘You probably have a fever.’ She scuttled over to one of the chairs and sat down, resting the papers on her lap and her handbag at the side on the ground.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Have you taken anything for it?’

  ‘I don’t tend to keep flu medicine in the house. Believe it or not, this is the first time I can remember being ill since I was a child.’ He frowned. ‘Could you sit a bit closer? My throat hurts and shouting to you isn’t going to do it any good. Actually, you might just as well go and buy me some tablets or whatever one takes in a situation like this.’

  ‘The situation is called having a cold, Rafe. It’s an annual event for most of us.’ She looked down quickly because there was a bubble of laughter waiting to erupt inside her and she dreaded to think what his reaction would be to that. Poor Rafe, she sternly told herself. Of course he was finding it difficult to cope with a spot of ill health. Germs normally avoided him like the plague! That thought made her want to laugh even more. She stood up and fussed with the handbag at her feet, making sure that her face was perfectly composed when she finally turned to face him.

  ‘I’ll just pop out and get you something, then,’ she said. ‘Are you better with liquid or tablets?’

  ‘Whatever’s stronger,’ Rafe muttered. ‘I have to be back on my feet by to
morrow afternoon. I have a very important meeting.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that. Tell your virus,’ Sophie informed him, heading for the door. ‘Although,’ she threw over her shoulder, ‘they have a nasty habit of not listening.’

  ‘There’s a corner shop just down the road,’ was his response, and she waited until she was safely out of the house before she gave in to the fit of laughter that had been threatening for the past ten minutes.

  She returned to find Rafe exactly where she had left him. His legs stretched out in front of him, and he was dozing lightly, although his eyes opened as soon as she walked through the door.

  ‘You should get upstairs and try and sleep,’ Sophie said, extracting a box from her bag and then proceeding to read the instructions on the back. ‘You were nodding off just then. That’s your body telling you that you need rest.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I was in the middle of finalising a report when you came in. My body will get rest when I tell it to and not a minute before. Never a good idea to sleep on the job, you know. Is that the medicine? What have you got there? Bring it over.’

  ‘If you’re not careful,’ Sophie said, walking towards him, ‘you are going to grow into a very crotchety old man, Rafael Loro. Snapping fingers and giving orders and grumbling.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Sophie. Our mothers might be good friends, but there is only so much psychobabble I can take. And another piece of advice for you: there’s a fine line between preaching and nagging.’

  But his voice was absent-minded as he took the bottle from her. Their fingers brushed and, with a slight frown, Sophie rested the back of her hand against his forehead.

  ‘Lord, Rafe, you have got a fever! Look, hand me the bottle. It’s a capful of this stuff.’

  ‘I would have preferred the tablets, actually.’ He held onto the bottle and she looked at him incredulously. ‘I’m not very good with this syrupy stuff, never have been.’

  ‘Too bad. I’m not going back to the shop. It’s beginning to rain again and it’s cold out there.’ She regained possession of the bottle, poured him a generous capful, and then folded her arms and watched as he drank the lot down with a telling grimace.

  ‘There. Happy?’

  ‘You’re not taking this stuff for my benefit, Rafe. You’re taking it for yours!’ She moved quickly away, talking with her back to him. ‘And you need to go up to your bed. Sitting down here, half dressed and pretending that you’re going to get some work done, is just going to prolong this cold you’ve got.’ She turned round and looked at him firmly, arms folded. He might not like her chivvying him, he might now add shrew to the list of other charming attributes he had for her, but so be it. ‘I’m not nagging you, but if you insist on acting like a little boy, then that’s exactly how I’m going to treat you!’ It was worth it to watch the expression of disbelief on his face as he stared at her. Women didn’t nag him, didn’t chivvy him, and certainly never told him that he was acting like a child!

  ‘I don’t suppose I can stop you from trying to get some work done, but I’ll just tell you that, the more work you do now, the less capable you’ll be of getting out of bed in the morning. Lord knows, I’m surprised your body’s taken this long to tell you that it needs a break!’

  ‘Have you ever considered a career as a matron?’ Rafe finally rediscovered the power of speech. ‘Or perhaps something in the prison service?’ Curiously, her bossiness, which was quite frankly the least feminine trait he could think of, didn’t ruffle his feathers. He stood up and belted the robe. ‘Bring up those documents Patricia sent over with you. I think my raging fever can accommodate a little work.’ He paused in front of her and smiled slowly. ‘You do that sergeant-major impersonation very well, did you know that?’

  ‘And you do the offensive patient very well, did you know that?’

  She could hear him chuckling softly as she whipped round the room, scooping up her bag, the papers and of course his laptop computer, which she doubted he could exist without for longer than a few minutes.

  Matron? Prison officer? Sergeant-major? Her cheeks were burning as she sprinted up behind him, to see him disappearing through one of the doors.

  This wasn’t even supposed to be part of her job! Yes, she was supposed to follow him, to shadow his movements so that she could write a comprehensive piece about him, but playing nursemaid? Dashing in the rain to the shops to fetch him some cold and flu medicine?

  She pelted through the open door, still fuming, and stopped dead in her tracks.

  It was a big bedroom. Enormous. Two wood-panelled walls gave it a feeling of mellow warmth, as did the dark furniture and the masculine colours of deep reds and blues. The bed was unmade, with the sheets and pillows and quilt chaotically rumpled. And in the middle of his room, there he was, standing with his back to her, his body no longer even sparingly partially concealed by the robe, which had been discarded, joining the tangled linen on the bed.

  Sophie had the disorienting feeling of everything slowing down for a few seconds, only to accelerate until the room seemed to be spinning around her at top speed.

  At least he had had the decency to keep his boxer shorts on, but not even these provided a safe haven for her eyes because they just accentuated the perfection of his body, the broadness of his shoulders tapering down to his waist, the powerful length of his legs.

  Sophie gulped, eyes wide. She must have made a noise as well, because to her horror he turned around and faced her, making no attempt to cover himself.

  ‘Good. You brought my things up.’ He walked towards her and she fell back a couple of inches, clutching the laptop and papers to her chest like a protective shield.

  His body was almost indecently masculine. Fine, dark hairs on his chest, stomach hard and flat, shoulders rippling lightly with muscles as he moved. She looked away and cleared her throat.

  ‘Do you mind…getting changed, Rafe?’

  Rafe halted in mid-stride. ‘You’re not embarrassed, are you, Sophie? I was about to climb into bed, in actual fact. You know, you can look at me. I’m not completely naked.’

  He knew that this was a childish ploy. He had timed removal of the robe with exquisite precision because he had guessed just what her reaction would be and she was not disappointing him. She looked as though she was issuing a silent but heartfelt prayer to the gods to rescue her from her situation. And if she held onto that laptop computer any harder, she would have a job flexing the muscles in her fingers afterwards.

  He could only think that it was the intense boredom of finding himself cooped up against his will that had encouraged this uncharacteristically juvenile gambit. That and the desire to enjoy the delicate bloom on her cheeks, the flitting of emotion across her face that he had recently found himself rather drawn to.

  The devil and idle hands, he supposed.

  With a little sigh, he headed towards the bed, slipped under the covers and watched as she tried to gather her scattered wits sufficiently to approach him.

  ‘You would see the same on any beach,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘If I embarrassed you, I apologise. You were right, anyway. Better to be up here, much as I hate to admit it.’

  Sophie risked glancing over. ‘Aren’t you going to put on any…pyjamas?’

  ‘Don’t possess any. Not all of us do.’ He grinned innocently at her, just enough to make her realise that he knew precisely where that observation was leading, right to her bedroom and his gentlemanly changing of her clothes. Sophie chose to ignore him.

  She deposited the computer on his bed, along with the documents Patricia had given her, and stepped back. She was finding it increasingly unnerving being here, being in his house, his bedroom. He was bored and it was a dangerous situation for a man who operated continually in fifth gear.

  There had been no need for him to get undressed when he had known that she was following him up the stairs.

  ‘Is there anything else you want?’ she asked, and then quickly rephrased the question. ‘I mean,
I really should be heading back now, but I can bring you up some water…you’ll need to take more of that medicine in about four hours’ time…’

  ‘Food,’ Rafe told her succinctly, switching on his computer and frowning at the screen.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You asked me if there was anything I wanted. Food. I haven’t eaten this morning.’

  ‘You want food?’ Sophie gaped.

  ‘Starve a cold and all that.’ He glanced up at her from his computer. ‘Why? Is it too much trouble for you? Your job is to be with me at all times, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘I’m not asking you to do anything extraordinary. Just some eggs and toast, perhaps…’

  ‘Cooking for you wasn’t really part of my assignment,’ she said stoutly.

  ‘I’m ill. I have a raging fever. You said so yourself. It seems we tycoons do fall prey to things beyond our control. That’s an interesting aspect you could cover in your article. The human touch you’re so keen to incorporate…’

  ‘You haven’t got a raging fever!’ But his attention was already back with whatever was on his computer screen and, with a muffled snort, Sophie found herself heading off towards the kitchen and wondering how she had managed to find herself in this position.

  There had to be something she gave off, some scent, that alerted people to that side of her that was the home-bird. Whenever one of her friends had been poorly in the past, she had always been the one they called, the one who came round with the shopping and made them cups of tea. That was fine for friends, she thought sourly, but when it came to Rafael Loro, it smacked of being used.

  The kitchen, through the dining area and overlooking the back garden, turned out to be an interesting mixture of homely furniture—a lovely, worn pine table, chairs, old mat in front of an Aga—and state-of-the-art appliances. It took several minutes to locate what she needed, several more to work out the toaster and the coffee machine, and a good half an hour before she was wending her way back up the stairs to his bedroom, with scrambled eggs on toast, juice and coffee all laid out on a tray, along with cutlery and a napkin.