Her Italian Boss’s Agenda

by Lucy Gordon

‘Stay away from her.’

  ‘That would be hard since we’re living together.’

  ‘Don’t fool yourself. She only went with you to revenge herself on me. She cares nothing for you.’

  ‘You’re sure of that, are you?’ His eyes met Primo’s in a direct challenge.

  ‘Go to hell,’ Primo said.

  ‘If I can take her with me, I’ll go anywhere. Ah, here she is.’

  Luke went forward to greet Olympia with a kiss on the cheek, but Primo did not see this. He walked away to his own car, got in and drove away.

  As Luke drove her home he asked, ‘Did he give you a hard time today, demanding explanations and so forth?’

  ‘Not at all. He barely spoke to me.’

  ‘Good. Don’t you go explaining anything. It’s no business of his.’

  ‘I know. It’s just that it feels like deceiving him.’

  ‘Not deceiving. Just leading him up the garden path. And let’s face it, that’s how you two communicate.’

  She gave a wry laugh. ‘That’s true enough.’

  Luke’s home was on the southern boundary of Naples, in a recently built apartment block. Here everything was ultra-modern and shining. The computer was the latest, smoothest, most powerful of its kind. So was the internet connection, the printer, and ‘all the other bells and whistles’ as Luke cynically put it.

  The same was true of everything in the kitchen, where the cooking arrangements were so complex that they could have propelled a spacecraft to the moon.

  ‘But they also do a mean scrambled egg,’ Luke had pointed out the previous night, then proceeded to demonstrate.

  The apartment had two bedrooms, both with double beds and acres of wardrobe space. Her suitcases were still only half unpacked in the guest room, and now she hung up the rest of her things.

  Luke knocked on the door. ‘I’ve made you some tea.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said fervently.

  While they were drinking tea she said, ‘I’d offer to cook supper but I don’t think I could cope with your kitchen.’

  ‘Another time. You have a lot of reading to do, if that stuff you’ve brought home means anything.’

  ‘Right, and I’m going to have to work hard because it’s in Italian and I’m still learning.’

  ‘Let me know if you need any help.’

  She studied while he cooked, refusing to let her help. Nor would he allow her to help clear away after the excellent meal. After several hours devoted to files, with his assistance over awkward words, she felt she was beginning to get a grip on things.

  How would it have felt if it had been Primo here, helping her out, caring for her with kindness? She closed her eyes. He no longer existed.

  By the end of the evening she had a strange sense of contentment and safety. Luke even made her a mug of cocoa and said goodnight to her at her bedroom door.

  She didn’t see Primo for two days and then he dropped into her office without warning.

  ‘Getting ready to go?’ he asked, seeing her tidying papers on her desk.

  ‘Yes, Signora Pattino and I are setting out tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.’

  She tried to speak normally, not letting him see how the sight of him affected her.

  ‘Good. Enrico tells me that you’re doing well.’

  ‘He seems to have started with a good opinion of me. That must be down to you.’

  ‘I told him what I thought, that your executive talents are considerable.’

  ‘Even though you hate me?’

  ‘I don’t hate you, Olympia, and I hope you don’t hate me. You did what you had to do. I should have understood sooner. It would have saved us both a lot of pain.’

  The pain was there in his face. She saw it when she looked up, and her heart went out to him.

  But he didn’t want her heart. He was still unyielding. Nothing in him was reaching out to her in return.

  ‘Are you talking about Luke?’ she asked.

  ‘It hardly matters now.’

  ‘Don’t wave me aside like that. Of course it matters.’

  ‘I just think you might have warned me that he was in your bedroom.’

  ‘I told him to stay out of sight while I got rid of you. I meant to do that in ten seconds.’

  ‘But you didn’t-’

  ‘I got angry with you and I forgot about him. He was only helping me pack-’

  ‘And undress.’

  ‘It was a hired dress. I had to leave it behind. I changed into something plain and useful, as you saw.’ She folded her arms and gave him a challenging look. ‘I promise you, they were not my seduction clothes.’

  ‘True. I remember.’

  ‘I’ve got to get going.’ She turned away to her desk but he detained her with a hand on her arm.

  ‘I just want you to know-I really didn’t throw you down on to the bed. It was an accident.’

  She gave a shaky laugh. ‘I guess I knew that. You’re not the caveman type-whichever one of you was there that night.’ She saw him close his eyes suddenly. ‘Hey, I was only joking. It’s the past. Over and done with.’

  ‘As you say, over and done with. But I wish you weren’t living with Luke.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll find somewhere else later, when I know more about Naples.’

  ‘I’ve got friends in the business. I could-’

  ‘Primo, stop this. You can’t organise me. Not everyone can be bought off with a hefty tip.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean the hotel receptionist who didn’t call ahead to warn me you were coming. He was apologetic when I went down. He didn’t actually say you bribed him, but I guess you have your own methods of persuasion. Primo Rinucci always gets his own way, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Not always,’ he said sadly. ‘Sometimes even he knows when he has to admit defeat. Goodbye, Signorina Lincoln. I wish you well in your career.’

  The soft touch of his lips on her cheek was unnerving. Then he was gone.

  She and Signora Pattino were away for a week touring the Leonate factories in southern Italy. They got on well; Olympia drank in information about the firm and her companion was impressed.

  Everything she had ever wanted would soon be hers, but now she wanted something more. And she had lost it.

  But as they began the long drive back her courage revived. She was haunted by the memory of their last meeting, the sadness she had sensed in him despite his distant manner. He wasn’t cold to her, whatever he might want her to believe. Sometimes she could still feel his kiss on her cheek.

  They were working in the same building. She would have a hundred chances to take him aside, persuade him to talk. And out of that talk would come understanding and mutual forgiveness.

  Surely it was the same with him. The time apart had allowed their tempers to cool and now they were ready to move on. The future could still be theirs. As she arrived back in Naples she was full of confidence and almost happiness.

  Enrico welcomed her back jubilantly, and in Italian.

  ‘Such glowing reports I’ve had of you! Everyone says you’re wonderful.’

  ‘Everyone’s been very kind to me,’ she said, also in Italian.

  ‘Ah, Primo was right to praise you. If only he could be here to see your triumph. But I’ll tell him next time I phone England.’

  ‘England?’

  ‘Yes, he had to go back. Cedric Tandy’s confidence has been shaken by the Banyon episode, and he says he can’t go on. So Primo’s had to dash back and take over until a full-time replacement will be found. He’ll be away for quite a while.’

  Olympia often thought that Primo would have been surprised if he could have seen her at home with Luke, who acted like a kindly brother. Since he had an arrangement with a firm who cleaned the place and took care of his laundry she had nothing to do but think of her career.

  Sometimes he would take her to the villa to have dinner with the family. Hope would overwhelm her with tender consideration, clearly trying to smooth
their ‘romance’ along, which made Olympia feel slightly awkward but Luke seemed unperturbed.

  Once, while she was there, the phone rang. Hope answered it, saying, ‘Ciao, caro,’ and it soon became clear that she was talking to Primo. Olympia listened to the flood of Italian which was too rapid for her to follow in detail, but she could tell that there was no mention of him returning home soon.

  Hope hung up with a sigh. ‘I like to have them around me,’ she said. ‘I am unreasonable, since they are all grown men, but there! Mothers are unreasonable. And perhaps it’s better for Primo and Luke to be apart just now.’

  There was a slight buzzing in Olympia’s ears. ‘Why just now?’ she asked, trying not to sound too curious.

  ‘It’s hard to say. All their lives they have been fighting. If it’s not about this, it’s about that. The last thing was a man they both wanted to employ, but Primo snatched him from under Luke’s nose. “Stole him” according to Luke. But that’s not important. There’s something else, something that causes really bad blood between them.’

  It gave Olympia a shock to realise that Hope still didn’t know what had been between herself and Primo. She thought they had met for the first time at the party.

  ‘Was that Primo?’ Luke asked from the doorway.

  ‘Yes, he is well and he sends his love to everyone.’

  ‘Including me?’ Luke asked in disbelief.

  ‘Including you,’ Hope said firmly.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better test it for poison first.’

  ‘Stop that,’ Hope ordered him, suddenly stern. ‘Whatever it is that has come between you, he is still your brother.’

  ‘Sorry, Mamma,’ Luke said sheepishly. He put his arms about her and kissed her. ‘It’s nothing,’ he told her tenderly. ‘You know that he and I have always been at odds about one thing or another.’

  ‘But this time it’s serious, I know it is. Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because it’s nothing. Come on, you know what we’re like. If we’re not scrapping we’re not happy.’

  After that he exerted himself to make her laugh and the matter was allowed to pass.

  Primo wasn’t mentioned again, but he stayed in Olympia’s thoughts and perhaps Luke’s too, because he suddenly began talking about him as they drove home that night.

  ‘He’s a contradictory man in many ways,’ he mused. ‘He can feel something with all his being, while doing things that go completely in the other direction.’

  ‘Surely most people can do that?’

  ‘Yes, but he takes it to extremes. Maybe it’s the result of not really knowing whether he’s Italian or English. You only have to look at how he behaved over our brother Justin.’

  ‘Exactly who is Justin?’ she asked curiously. ‘I keep hearing odd bits of information but never very much. He’s almost like a ghost.’

  ‘For years he was a completely taboo subject. We all knew that Mamma had another son, but nobody knew what had happened to him. She was only fifteen when she became pregnant. She wasn’t married, of course, and in those days it was a great stigma. What her parents did was unforgivable, but they must have been desperate.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘Snatched her baby, handed it over for adoption and told her he’d been born dead.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Olympia exclaimed, shocked to the core.

  ‘She never got over the loss of her baby. She married Jack Cayman and became Primo’s stepmother. Primo couldn’t remember his real mother and he adored Hope from the start. When they adopted me he wasn’t best pleased. I was competition for her attention, you see. We’ve always fought and bickered.

  ‘But I think the thing that really got to him, almost as much as it did Hope, was when she discovered that her baby hadn’t died after all. She went crazy trying to find him, but it was too late. He’d been adopted. She’d lost him.

  ‘Her marriage didn’t last. When it ended she took me with her, but Primo was Jack’s son and she couldn’t claim custody. But when Jack died Primo’s Italian family brought him here and she contacted him again. Since she married Toni we’ve all been one big family.

  ‘But Mamma never forgot her first son. She couldn’t trace him, but when he turned eighteen she began hoping that he would try to trace her. No luck though.

  ‘In the end it was Primo who found him. He contacted every private eye in England that he could find, putting down markers, saying he was to be notified if anyone likely turned up. And in the end it happened.

  ‘But here’s the strange thing. Primo was always jealous of Justin for displacing him as Mamma’s eldest son. Yet he did it for her, because he knew what it meant to her. It took him fifteen years, and, when he got the first hint, he went over to England to meet him, check him out, then bring him back here.’

  ‘What a wonderful thing for him to do,’ Olympia said, touched.

  ‘Yes, it was. My brother drives me nuts sometimes. He’s pig-headed, too sure of himself, blinkered, obstinate-but then he’ll do something that makes you stare, and wonder if you could be as generous as that. And I don’t think most people could.’

  His words brought back a memory-Primo talking on the phone to an agitated Cedric, calming him with kindness, promising to be there for him, no matter the inconvenience.

  And that was the real Primo, the one who could empathise with someone else, even when it was against his own interests.

  ‘Fifteen years,’ she murmured. ‘He would have been so young when he started.’

  ‘True. Fifteen years of patient watching and waiting. That’s very Primo. He knows how to take his time. Incredibly, he’s still jealous. Mamma’s thrilled about what he did for her. She calls him her hero. But he minds about Justin because he feels displaced.’

  His words gave Olympia a strange feeling because they cast a new light on Primo’s behaviour in England: watching and waiting, moving slowly towards his goal, keeping in the shadows while she tricked and teased another man-even though that man was himself.

  She thought of the quiet, self-effacing generosity of someone who would spend years seeking a person he didn’t really want to find, to please the mother he loved.

  How she wished she could have known him under other circumstances! How different things might have been!

  Life with Luke was contented. She found him easy to talk to and he soon knew all about her, including the story of her elderly parents. After an initial hesitation she told him about the Valentine cards and how she’d fooled Primo.

  ‘So he was living with you?’ Luke asked when he’d finished laughing.

  ‘No, he just stayed one night.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t see,’ she said, aiming a swipe at him. ‘It was because he had a bump on the head.’

  ‘Which you gave him?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. We had a little altercation on the way home and he crashed his car into mine.’

  He eyed her askance. ‘None of the men in my family are safe from you in a car, are they?’

  ‘Anyway, Valentine’s was next day and you should have seen his face when the cards arrived. And the red roses that my parents always send me.’

  ‘Have they ever been to Naples?’ he asked.

  ‘Never. I took them to Paris once as a treat, but apart from that they’ve never been abroad.’

  ‘I’m going to be away for a few days. Why not invite them to stay here?’

  ‘You really mean that?’

  ‘Why not? Give them a real vacation. They’ll enjoy the Maggio dei Monumenti.’

  ‘Whatever’s that?’

  ‘Literally it means May of the Monuments, although it starts in the last week in April. For a few weeks many museums and monuments open for free, and because they attract such crowds other things have started up at the same time-fairs, dance spectacles, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Wait, I saw a puppet show in the street yesterday,’ she remembered.

  ‘That’s right, it’s just st
arted, and now there’ll be processions and concerts of Neapolitan songs. Spring is coming and it’s a great way to celebrate. Call your parents and get them down for the fun.’

  She did so, booked and paid for the tickets, and met them at the airport three days later. It was a joyous reunion, only slightly marred by her mother’s immediate exclamation, ‘Darling, you look so thin and tired. Are you working too hard?’

  They behaved, as she afterwards told Luke, ‘like a couple of kids at the seaside for the first time.’ She spent the weekend showing them around the city, now growing warmer as April passed into May. When she had to return to work they were sufficiently confident to make their own way around, and even to take a day trip to Pompeii to see the ruins.

  The following evening Enrico took them all out to dinner, entertained them with outrageous stories and flirted like mad with Olympia’s mother, while her father looked on in resignation.

  ‘She’s incorrigible,’ he told his daughter. ‘She always has been.’ But he said it with a touch of pride.

  They returned home to the disconcerting sight of Luke, asleep on the sofa.

  ‘I got back early,’ he said, getting up and rubbing his eyes. ‘My business finished quickly, and I wanted to meet our guests.’

  They were charmed by him, especially since he put himself out to achieve that very object. They all sat up late into the night eating pizzas, drinking wine and becoming the best of friends. By the time they’d finished he was calling them Harold and Angela.

  There was an awkward moment when it became clear that Luke meant to spend the night on the sofa.

  ‘Oh, but there’s no need for that,’ said Angela, anxious to be broad-minded. ‘I mean-just because we’re here there’s no need for you to do anything different-’

  ‘Let it go,’ Harold begged, covering his eyes.

  ‘But I only-’

  ‘Darling, they know their own business best. Come to bed. Goodnight, you two.’

  He said the last words hastily and almost carried his wife out of the room.

  When they had gone Luke regarded her gleefully. ‘I think I’ve just been given your mother’s permission to-’

  ‘Yes, I know what she’s given you permission to-’ she said with heavy irony. ‘Thank you for being nice to my parents. Now, I think I’ll go to bed.’