A Deal with Di Capua

by Cathy Williams

  “The cottage? Just before I left?”

  “I’d rather not talk about that.”

  “Why not? I realise you might feel a little embarrassed because you made a pass at me and I turned you down, but I still think we should revisit what happened.”

  “I know you’re bitter towards me, Angelo, but if this is your idea of fun at my expense then I’m not laughing. I said I don’t want to talk about what happened and I don’t. Okay, so I’m grateful for the way you handled Ian, but that doesn’t mean that you can say whatever you want and humiliate me however you please. This is my house and I think it’s time you left.”

  “You think that’s what I’m trying to do—by talking about what happened between us.”

  “Nothing happened between us.”

  “But something very nearly did.”

  “It’s time for you to leave.”

  “Are you that scared? You’d rather chuck me out of your house than have a conversation with me?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Angelo. I made a mistake. It was stupid of me. I can’t take it back but I don’t have to discuss it for your amusement.”

  “So maybe I made a mistake as well.” Angelo’s voice was curiously soft. It wasn’t what Rosie had been expecting him to say and she looked at him with mutinous hostility. “Maybe I should have just faced reality.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, you don’t want to know what I’m talking about, Rosie. You want to pretend that you can walk away now that the business with the cottage is at a stalemate and never look back. You give instructions to a lawyer, he handles everything for you when and if you need him. But you give the game away every time you get too close to me.”

  Rosie stared at Angelo in terrified silence. She could keep arguing with him, telling him that he didn’t know what he was talking about, except how could she deny that very obvious pass? How could she deny the way the colour bloomed in her cheeks whenever he was near, or the way her words emerged, high and unnatural? It didn’t make any difference knowing that she should be distant and remote towards him. She would never forget the way he had ended things with her, the fact that he had jumped into bed with her friend and then married her. Yet on some horrible, primitive, elemental level, she just couldn’t shake the effect he still had on her.

  “I don’t even like you,” she protested weakly. “You married my best friend!” Tears gathered at the back of her throat, thickening her voice, and she looked away abruptly because she didn’t want to go there. She didn’t want to rake up the past. She just wanted to move on from it, except how was she going to do that when he was standing metres away from her, forcing her to face up to stuff she didn’t want to acknowledge?

  “And you think I had a choice?” Angelo rasped, pushing himself away from the window. He raked his fingers through his hair and grimly wondered how far he was prepared to go to get her into bed with him. Would he be prepared to unearth things that were better left buried? Would his intense pride even allow him to do that? No!

  Rosie was shocked rigid by Angelo’s response. She had no idea what he was talking about. Of course, he would have had a choice. There was no way that Angelo, of all people, would ever have allowed himself to be pushed into doing something he didn’t want to do. And yet there had been an underlying savagery and bitterness in his denial that confused her.

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I mean we still turn each other on, Rosie. Cute, don’t you think? After everything we’ve been through? When I saw you at that funeral... I can’t believe I’d forgotten just how sexy you were. Or maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I’d shoved the memory somewhere to the back of my brain, tidied it away so that it was out of sight. Is that what you did as well?”

  “What did you mean when you said that you had no choice?”

  “Let’s move on from that, Rosie. I have no intention of getting mired in semantics. The past is over and done with, but unfortunately it’s left us with a somewhat uncomfortable present. I turned you down the first time you made a pass at me in the cottage because I stupidly failed to think this whole attraction situation through.”

  Rosie was in a daze. How could he be talking about something as intense as the chemistry that still sizzled between them in a voice that was as cool and as casual as a stranger’s voice? When he spoke about this whole attraction situation, he could have been discussing a curious weather system or a nasty traffic incident on the M25.

  “And now?” She couldn’t escape the sudden electric tension in the room.

  “You look as stiff as a plank of wood,” Angelo said drily. In fact, there was a part of him that was stunned at what he was doing. He was pursuing a woman who had no place in his life. He was elevating sex to something he couldn’t do without. It was a weakness he felt he couldn’t control, although it certainly helped dealing with it the way he was now.

  “How can you expect me to be relaxed?” Rosie sprang out of the chair and began pacing the room, her arms tightly clasped around her body. When she had impulsively taken Angelo’s call and done the unthinkable, the unexpected...asked him to help her...she hadn’t envisaged that this was where the evening would end. She stopped and looked at him from across the width of the room. “This is the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever had!”

  “Why? Because we’re talking about sex? Finishing a conversation you began when you touched me?”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking when I did that.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “Weren’t what?”

  “You weren’t thinking. You were acting purely on impulse. I was the one thinking and it has to be said that sometimes it pays not to think too much. Can cloud the water.” Except this was a much better outcome.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Angelo continued as he sauntered towards the sofa, eyed it as though it might harbour infectious germs and decided against it to try the third chair in the room which, although not as challenging as the one to which Rosie had now returned, didn’t offer much hope of relaxation. He might not have grown up with creature comforts but he had certainly grown accustomed to them.

  “What sort of proposition?” Rosie asked warily. Her back ached from the chair but her legs were shaky, and pacing the small room like a caged bear made her feel awkward and vulnerable. The palms of her hands were clammy with perspiration and the black dress felt scratchy and uncomfortable.

  Angelo leant forwards and rested his forearms on his thighs so that his hands dangled loosely between his legs. “We could go round in circles,” he murmured, “sniffing each other and then backing off, but we can’t hide the fact that we’re attracted to one another.”

  “We don’t like each other.”

  “Not the point. Over the past three years, tell me honestly, did you manage to put me out of your mind?”

  Rosie thought about that blind date with Ian, the reasons that had prompted her to go on it in the first place. Since Angelo had disappeared from her life, she had hidden behind her work and entombed herself behind a wall of ice. She reddened and remained silent, which was answer in itself.

  “I’m getting the picture.”

  “No, I don’t think you are, Angelo. You think that because we happen to be attracted to one another, that we should do something about it?” There was a hysterical edge to her laughter but when she caught his eye it was to find that he wasn’t sharing in the mirth.

  “We don’t do something about it,” Angelo said coolly, “And we don’t get past it.”

  “Of course we do. Physical attraction doesn’t last. That’s the whole thing about lust. It goes away, given enough time.” She smoothed restless hands along her thighs. “You slept with my friend.”

  “Don’t go there.” Angelo stared her down. If only she knew the circumstances of t
hat one fateful night, when he had been bombarded with the information that would signal the death of their relationship.

  It was a memory he kept firmly locked away and he would never bring it out of hiding. It was a moment in time of which he was deeply ashamed. Drunk, wild with rage and pain. God, had he cried? He might have. He thought he had. How could one woman have so thoroughly burrowed under his skin? Where had his natural aptitude for self-preservation gone? Had he been so thick that he had needed someone to come along and show him the proof of his own stupidity? He had barely been aware of Amanda in the bedroom although he had certainly been stripped and far more, as it turned out, the consequences of which he could never have envisaged.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Am I?” He stood up with lazy intent and she was frozen to the spot as he walked slowly towards her. When he was standing in front of her, he reached down and trailed one long, brown finger against her cheek.

  In her head, Rosie was pretty sure she was objecting to that fleeting, horribly intimate caress. Barely a caress. Just a feathery touch. Unfortunately, her head had stopped communicating with her body which had been galvanised into shamefully instant response. Wetness spread between her legs, dampening her underwear. She could feel it. And then, galloping away at a tangent with breakneck speed, a series of graphic images leapt into her head: thoughts of that lazy finger stroking between her thighs, parting the soft folds that protected her clitoris, rubbing the small bud until she was crying out for more. Her breasts felt heavy, the nipples tight and sensitive. He knew her body so well. It was as though no time at all had elapsed since they had been lovers.

  How was this possible? How could she be feeling like this? But she knew that it was the same violent physical reaction, as instinctive as a knee-jerk, that had driven her to reach out and touch him at the cottage.

  He nudged his thigh between her legs, pushing it up and under the stretchy dress, and moved his knee with gentle but demanding pressure so that waves of sudden pleasure made her gasp aloud. No one had touched her since him. She hadn’t even been able to conceive of letting anyone near her. Having him touch her now electrified her body and her eyelids fluttered.

  “You’re hot for me.” Angelo was holding on to his self-control by a thread. “I can feel it... I can hear it...”

  “Angelo, please.”

  “Please what? Please bring me to orgasm? Or maybe please put your mouth where your knee is? Because I know how much you like that, Rosie, just like I know how sensitive your nipples are, how one lick of my tongue can almost make you come.”

  He reluctantly removed his legs where a damp patch at the knee was proof of how turned on she was by him, despite the fact that she had mouthed all the right words and made all the right objections.

  He knelt down next to her so that they were eye-level. Rosie was still breathing quickly, panting almost. She wriggled up into a sitting position and pulled her dress back down because it had been pushed up over her hips. Her hands were shaking. She could barely think straight. She felt shell-shocked.

  “I have yet to tell you my proposition,” he murmured and tilted her face to his when she would have looked away.

  “I know what it is, Angelo. We fall into bed like a couple of horny teenagers who are too stupid to think through the consequences.”

  “You want to go into catering? I will set you up with your first big job. In Cornwall. I know everybody who’s anybody down there and the rest would jump at a chance to nose around the manor. You won’t need to invest in any equipment. I’ll even throw in a small car. You can pay me back when you start making money or if the cottage is sold.” He shrugged. “Or you can not pay me back at all. It’s immaterial...”

  Rosie blinked. Never had such soothingly spoken words carried such dangerous intent. She was listening to him propose a pact with the devil. Her mouth parted and she made an inarticulate, strangled sound under her breath.

  “I know. Thrilling, isn’t it? Just when you thought your ship had sunk.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “Don’t bother trying to work a maidenly exit, Rosie. You’ll never be able to pull it off. I’m offering you the deal of a lifetime, so to speak.”

  “I’m not a...a...”

  “I think I know the word you’re striving to say, but let’s leave that unspoken. I like to think that what we have here is the perfect arrangement.” He idly traced the contour of her breast and then laughed when she primly pulled away. “Horse, bolting and locking the stable door springs to mind.”

  He stood up, pulled the chair over so that they were facing one another and he leant back to hook his arms over the back.

  “How can you even begin to tell me that sleeping together is the perfect arrangement?”

  “Let’s not forget the perks: happiness, prosperity and moving on lie just round the corner. And, just to throw a little more sweetener into the deal, you move into the cottage, we have our fling, wean ourselves off one another and I sell up when it’s all over and done with.” He allowed the thought to take shape and form: at least when I decide it’s all over and done with...

  “You sell up?”

  “I can’t see the pull of owning a place when you live on the grounds. Whether you own some of the land or not is a technicality. I imagine we’ll be only too glad to be rid of one another when our time’s up.”

  “But I thought you wanted to develop the grounds.”

  “Into a luxury hotel complex but, quite honestly, I’m expanding at some speed into the Far East. I could probably do without the hassle of opening something in Cornwall. The money in IT is guaranteed. The money in a hotel complex less so. Originally, it might have been a hobby of sorts, but I’m more than willing to ditch that hobby for, let’s just say, the cause for the greater good.” He shrugged. “At any rate, I have a chain of boutique eco-hotels across Europe. One more hotel might just fall into the category of overkill.”

  “How can you be so cold?”

  Angelo’s mouth twisted into a smile. Really? How could he be so cold? She was priceless. She had fleeced him and more, yet she had the brazen cheek to talk to him about being cold.

  “So, to recap,” he said. “You move into the cottage. I can’t imagine you’ll miss this hell-hole. If you need to lose your deposit, then you’ll be compensated. I will immediately host a party or any number of parties so that your name is circulated. I have some impressive company contacts there as well. A word in the right ear will guarantee business for you.

  “My boundary lines are any personal discussion of what happened in the past. We won’t be in the business of post mortems; we’ll be in the business of scratching an itch.” He delivered a wolfish, amused smile that didn’t quite manage to reach his eyes. “You think I’m cold—I’m realistic. It’s been three years and you still went up in flames the second I touched you and it’s the same for me. I don’t want you in my head any more than I suspect you want me in yours and the only way to kill that dead is to get into bed and exhaust whatever nagging remains of passion we have left.”

  “And if I don’t go along with that?”

  “You will, Rosie. All your boxes have been ticked. You stand to gain a lot. Why wouldn’t you?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHY WOULDN’T SHE? What sort of crazy question was that?

  Because there was no way that she would sell herself? No way that she would allow herself to be touched by a man who gave away his hatred for her with every syllable that passed his lips? How could he offer an arrangement of sex without any involvement, without any conversation? How could he think that they could climb into bed and forget everything that had happened between them, pretend that none of it had ever existed?

  Rosie wished she had been as coherent then as she was now, three days later. In fact, faced with his outrageous suggestion, sh
e had barely managed to stutter a half-baked, lame and uncertain protest before being left gaping like a stranded gold fish as Angelo had let himself out, leaving her to ponder his proposal.

  It was all well and good being clever post-event. Being able to formulate some very articulate rebuttals to his crazy proposition in the quiet of her own house. Unfortunately, she was unable to deliver her scathing, icy speech because he had left the country for business in Singapore. In closing, his text promised that they would talk when he returned to the country.

  Rosie had no intention of doing any such thing. However, she did telephone James Foreman, who indeed confirmed that selling the cottage would be a long-winded business entirely dependent on the matter of the boundary lines being sorted. Angelo had not foreseen a circumstance in which the land would have to be legally divided and so had taken no precautions.

  “Well.” Rosie inhaled deeply and made her mind up on the spot. “I won’t be selling just at the moment.” Angelo’s brutal summary of her achievements thus far and the promise of a future that was barely better than the present had made her think. She could spend the rest of her days trying hard to set up her own business, fighting competitors with far more experience, possibly investing money to see it go down the pan, or she could turn her back on the bright city lights and take her chances in a much smaller pool. The potential clients might be fewer but so would the competitors.

  There was no way that she intended to accept charitable handouts from Angelo in return for sex, but why shouldn’t she do her own canvassing? Why shouldn’t she move into the cottage, get calling cards printed and put leaflets through doors? Maybe get Jack to design a website for her? He was clever at things like that.

  Why should she crawl back into the limited space she had erected for herself and not take advantage of a windfall? Amanda would never have left her the cottage unless as some expression of regret for the way things had unfolded and the part she had played in that. James Foreman had said as much and Rosie believed him.