Italian Invader

by Jessica Steele

  'I'm doing nothing special this morning,' Guy sud­denly broke into her thoughts. 'I'll drive you into Pinwich, if you like.'

  She looked at him and, feeling never more dejected, knew she just wasn't up to the hassle should she tell Guy she wasn't going to work at Zappelli's again. Damn Max Zappelli. Damn him. Damn him to hell!

  She was still damning the man she loved. Still trying to get him and his treachery out of her head. Still trying to get some troublesome figures to behave when at three thirty-five that afternoon, for the moment the sole oc­cupant of the office, she had to break off in mid-calculation to answer the incessant clamouring of the internal phone.

  'Yes!' she said, her tone coming out more sharply than she had meant it to—and nearly fell off her chair in astonishment.

  'My office, Miss Talbot, now!' rapped a voice she would know anywhere, and bang, the phone went dead.

  Stunned, disbelieving, Elyn stared at the phone in her hand. Had she imagined it? Did she have Max so much on her mind that she had imagined that call? But she couldn't have—she still held the phone in her hand. And suddenly everything went wild inside her.

  Max was here! He was here, in Pinwich! In this very building! He should, by rights, be in Rome. But he wasn't in Rome—he was here!

  CHAPTER NINE

  Max was here—here in Pinwich! Not only that, but wanting to see her. Was actually waiting to see her! Waiting for her to go along and present herself at his office!

  Elyn was in a flat spin for several minutes, and those minutes seemed like an age as she struggled to pull herself together. I'm not going! she decided, and as she looked round for her bag, which was precisely where she always kept it, going home seemed to her to be a much better idea.

  She grabbed up her bag, ready to flee, when two things stopped her. Oh, grief, Guy! Belatedly she thought of Guy and how he would react if she went home early and told him that she had, after all, walked out. Though she felt more like running out than walking. But—she wavered—hadn't she run enough?

  Elyn sat down, unaware that she had sprung to her feet. Why run just because Max wanted to see her? And for that matter, what did he want to see her about? For that matter too, what did he think he could say that could possibly interest her?

  Suddenly, though, at the thought that maybe he in­tended to sack her personally, the way he had personally dismissed Hugh Burrell, Elyn found the stiffening she needed. Let him try, she fumed, starting to get angry, and Guy or no Guy, she would tell him exactly what he could do with his job!

  Her stiffening, her anger, stayed with her right up until she reached his office door. 'Come in!' she heard his voice respond to her tap at his door—and her legs went weak.

  She squared her shoulders, took a steadying breath and reached for the door-handle. She might be shaking like a leaf inside, but only she was going to know it.

  An unexpected wave of tender emotion rushed over her as she opened the door and stepped into Max's office. Tall, straight and unsmiling, he was standing to one side of the settee in the room, his eyes watching the door. And oh, how dear he was to her!

  Elyn closed the door and strove hard to hold down the emotion that was trying to trip her up. 'You wished to see me, Mr Zappelli?' she queried. Mr Zappelli? To this man who had so tenderly held her in his arms last Saturday? To this man who so tenderly, and in turns so passionately, kissed her? And, prodded that part of her that she sorely needed, who had secretly acted so treach­erously to her.

  She caught his sharp look on her and knew that he wasn't too much taken with her tone. But she was fighting for survival, and she didn't care what he was or was not taken with. She wanted this interview over— wanted to be gone.

  'Take a seat!' he instructed shortly, his dark eyes taking in her smart emerald suit and crisp white shirt. 'Not there!' he rapped, when she would have gone over to the high-backed chair by his desk and pointed to one of the easy-chairs in the room.

  Elyn shrugged. He was the boss—for the moment. She looked away from him and went to take the seat he had indicated, and when she raised her head, she saw that he had taken the pace necessary round the settee, and was now seated too.

  Neatly, decorously, she crossed her ankles and sat with her long legs to one side, trying to appear casual. But it was unnerving to have Max say nothing, just giving her that hard, steady scrutiny—almost, she thought rid­iculously, as if he was unnerved too, and hardly knew where to begin.

  But, to show just exactly how ridiculous that thought was, only a moment later Max touched a hand to his chin and coolly, levelly, questioned, 'Why did you leave Italy in such a rush, Elyn?'

  She could have done without the 'Elyn'. To have him 'Miss Talbot' her through the whole of this interview would have suited her far better. Just to be called 'Elyn' in that naturally seductive voice of his was making a nonsense of her trying to pull herself together.

  Had she foreseen this interview she would have had something rehearsed. But she hadn't for a second thought that should Max come to England—especially today, when he should still be in Rome—he would invite this interview.

  'I'd decided to leave!' she stated off the top of her head. 'It seemed to me to be a waste of company money for Tino to continue to use his valuable time in giving me any further training when I would be leaving.'

  'Mmm,' Max commented, stroking a reflective hand over his strong and manly chin. 'That was very fair of you.' She relaxed a fraction. Good, he had swallowed it! 'If,' he went on, fixing her with a dark assessing gaze, 'not exactly truthful.'

  'What do you mean?' she fired, striving not to panic, agitation filling her as she realised she shouldn't have relaxed a fraction, not one iota, where this man was concerned.

  He moved one shoulder expressively, but his gaze was as intent as ever. 'What I mean,' he replied, 'is that either you lied to Felicita Rocca when you said you merely wanted a transfer to England, or you are lying to me now.' Oh, lord, he was much too smart for her! 'Why, Elyn, I wonder,' he went on relentlessly, 'do you find it necessary to lie to me?'

  With her feelings of agitation peaking, hot words rushed to her lips to deny that she was lying. Suddenly, though, she came to a full stop. Dammit! Who the hell did he think he was, to push her into a corner after the way he had lied to her]

  'I might ask you the same question?' she tilted her stubborn chin to bounce back at him. She was leaving anyway; let him sack her for impudence, see if she cared!

  She thought, momentarily, that he looked a shade put off of his stride, but he nodded, and responded coolly, 'I can explain, in due time, why I had to pretend I had injured myself on that mountain.'

  The nerve of him, that he could so blatantly bring that up! But Elyn didn't want him referring to anything to do with those twenty-four hours they had shared in the Dolomites, and determinedly, if with her insides turning, she stayed steadfastly on the tack she wanted to be on.

  'I wasn't meaning that!' she retorted snappily. 'I was meaning that out-and-out lie you told me when I asked if the person who stole Brian Cole's precious design had been found.'

  'Ah!' he murmured, paused, and, as if it was dragged from him, 'I was hoping you might still be in ignorance of it.'

  'I'll bet you were!' she flew, it was all too much that he could say what he had, could openly, unblushingly own that he still hoped she was in ignorance of all sus­picion being removed from her! 'Thanks for nothing!' she seethed, and was on her feet, storming to the door.

  She had her hand on the door-handle ready to wrench it open when, 'Elyn! Don't leave!' rent the air.

  Her hand froze; she froze. But then she remembered that she'd heard him say something similar before. At Cavalese, last Sunday! 'You can't leave,' he had said, and, when there had been nothing in the world the matter with his foot, he had pretended he needed her help.

  My stars! What an idiot she'd been then! But never again. Oh, no, never again! Swiftly she spun round, hot words already pouring from her. 'Your foot, is it?' she stormed with furious s
arcasm. 'Your poor injured…' She broke off. Max, some of his colour gone, was holding on to—the settee! 'What's the matter—what's wrong?' she demanded urgently, shocked and shaken, for, as she had sprung to her feet, so too, as if he would charge after her, had Max—and it seemed as though that action had hurt. Somehow, he appeared to be actually rocking, unbalanced, where he stood!

  He was putting it on! She refused to believe that he was injured in some way. But even so, when he said not a word, when she knew what a lying rat he was, she just had to go back further into the room. Warily, she walked slowly round him to the other side of the settee. She stared at him, at the way he was proudly trying to appear as if there was nothing wrong with him—but there was! Her eyes travelled over him, down to his feet—and then she saw it. Protruding from beneath the settee, as if he had been trying to hide it, she saw a rubber ferrule.

  She went over to it, took hold of it and pulled—it was attached to a walking stick. 'What's this?' she de­manded, and wasn't sure she would not have brained him with it had he answered, 'A walking stick'.

  Solemnly his dark eyes stayed steady on her mis­trusting green ones. 'Some woman, in a magnificent fury, hurled a ski-boot at me,' he quietly let fall.

  Startled, shocked again, she stared at him. 'It hit you!' she exclaimed.

  'It did,' he agreed in the same quiet tone. 'It hit me, bounced off and, while I was coming after you at a run, I tripped over it—and twisted my ankle.' Elyn's breath caught. 'If you'd like proof, and I'd hardly blame you,' he conceded, 'I'll willingly take off the strapping to show you the swelling and the bruising. Though I wouldn't mind at all if we could finish saying all we've got to say to each other sitting down.'

  Her heart somersaulted. His tone was milder, kinder and, she had to own, his pain was her pain, for to know she had incapacitated him made her feel dreadful. His words 'all we've got to say to each other', though, were making her wary again. There was nothing more she had to say to him… But suddenly the look of strain on his face touched her, and involuntarily she pleaded, 'Oh, do sit down, Max.'

  A trace of a smile appeared on his up to now un­smiling mouth, and Elyn was a mass of agitation inside again. 'After you,' he suggested, and while praying that she had not given away the extent of her caring, Elyn was able to hide her expression from him by going back to take the chair she had so hurriedly vacated.

  He was sitting on the settee again too by the time she looked up, his colour returning. But by then she had got herself a little more under control. 'You must have fallen very heavily,' she looked across at him to comment coolly.

  'It seemed so at the time,' he replied, his eyes on her, not seeming to miss a thing.

  'What did you do?' she questioned, and as she ima­gined the whole ghastly scene of Max fallen in a heap and maybe unable to get up, 'You should have tele­phoned me at my hotel, I'd have…' She broke off, damning her impetuous tongue.

  'You'd have what?' he took up, another endearing hint of a smile coming to his mouth. 'From the whirlwind way you left, I rather thought "Go to hell" might be the best reception any phone call about my hurt foot might receive.'

  'You—er—could be right there,' she allowed, and didn't want him kind or smiling; it made a nonsense of all her attempts to be anti for more than two minutes together. 'So presumably, since you couldn't drive…'

  'Couldn't drive, couldn't walk, and, not to overstress the situation, I just could not believe that, so instantly, I was totally incapacitated!'

  Oh, Max! she could have cried for him. But she mustn't be soft—that way led to disaster, to letting this perceptive man see that when he bled, she bled; when he hurt, so too did she hurt. 'So you rang elsewhere for help?' she suggested.

  'I contacted a doctor.'

  'And?' she questioned. It was like pulling teeth to get all the details out of him!

  'From there hospital, X-rays, and my home by ambulance.'

  Oh, Max, my poor dear love! her heart cried in horror. 'But you haven't broken anything?'

  'To my surprise, no,' he replied, that hint of a smile coming out again, while from that 'To my surprise' Elyn guessed that it hurt enough for him to have broken every bone in his foot.

  'That's good,' she murmured—a polite enough thing to say, she thought, and a comment that gave away nothing of how she felt inside.

  'And that,' Max took up, his eyes gentle on her face, 'considering my lies to you, my deception, is more than generous of you, Elyn.'

  Don't—oh, please don't, she wanted to cry, her spine already starting to melt at his gentle look. 'So an am­bulance took you home,' she managed to find a degree of stiffening from somewhere.

  'From where I telephoned you on Monday and said that I wanted to see you—and, for my pains, received another helping of your most ferocious temper.'

  'What did you expect?' she asked, remembering Monday all too clearly. But she remembered too her jealousy over Felicita—entirely unwarranted, she could see that now—but by no chance did she want this clever man to know of the uproar her emotions had been in at that time. The time now seemed right to change the subject. 'I'm not certain why you asked me to come to see you—er—today, now, I mean, not then.' Oh, grief, she was making a real hash of it! 'But,' she forged gamely on, and even found a spark of spirit, 'if you've now changed your mind about being happy to leave me in ignorance about that missing design, and have now de­cided to condescend—' she found some sarcasm for good measure '—to let me breathe a sigh of relief that there's no longer a shadow hanging over my good name, then I hope you're not expecting me to thank you for it!'

  'No, I'm not expecting that,' he agreed, his eyes on the sparking anger that suddenly flashed in her green eyes.

  'Good!' she snapped, and since that must be it, she started to get up from her chair.

  'No!' Max stopped her, and as she stared at him, she realised that he must have more to say, but that, her language not being his language, he must be sorting through for the best way to say what he had to say.

  And, as Elyn faced the fact that she didn't want to go, not yet, that she loved him and wanted to hear what he had to say, be it only that he wanted her to work out her notice in Italy, she subsided back into her chair.

  She had just decided though that, love him with all her heart as she might, she could just not see the point of working out her notice in Italy, when, to confound her utterly, Max began, 'To confess to you my lie with regard to that missing design is part of why I've asked you to come and see me, but only a small part.' And, as she stared at him, 'There is more to it than that.' He seemed to hesitate, but that gentle note was back in his voice again when, he added softly, 'More Elyn, between us, than that.'

  Oh, heavens, she needed help from somewhere. But she was being seduced by his tone, and couldn't think clearly. 'Oh, yes?' she murmured enquiringly, and hoped she was the only one who would notice that her voice had gone husky. She coughed to clear a small con­striction, and found a bit more backbone. 'How—er— do you make that out?' she queried. 'I mean, if you're referring to work, then…'

  'I'm not referring to work, cara,' he butted in quietly, and Elyn's backbone was on the melt again.

  'Well—er—there c-can't be anything of any signifi­cance, any importance, any…' Her voice dried, and she had to give another nervous little cough before she could go on again. 'If you're talking about friendship—' Oh lord, was she making a complete fool of herself? Was he not meaning that at all? She swallowed hard. 'Well then, in my book, friendship is based on trust. And you, Max Zappelli,' she snatched at another passing strand of backbone, 'I wouldn't trust an inch!'

  There, if he'd any inkling that she cared for him, she reckoned she just sent such a notion flying. But strangely, when she had expected him to come over all proud Italian, to start Miss Talboting her for her nerve, and to deliver a one-line dismissal, to her amazement he did nothing of the kind. But, leaning back on the settee, one immaculately suited fine wool sleeve relaxed and easy on the settee arm, he looke
d at her expressive face for some long quiet moments, then stated quietly, 'You are beautiful, Elyn, quite stunning, and, I can see—a mass of nerves.'

  'I'm not!' she denied before he'd barely got the words out of his mouth.

  'You are, and I've wronged you, and I want to put it right—and,' he added, with a smile that nearly sank her, 'I confess that I am nervous too.'

  'You? What have you got to be nervous about?' she questioned, and could have bitten out her tongue, be­cause implicit in her question somewhere was confir­mation that she was indeed nervous herself!

  If Max had noticed it, though, he gave no sign but, leaning forward, his seemingly relaxed manner gone, 'There is so much I want from you, for you, for us,' he told her, and while Elyn stared at him, hardly crediting what she was hearing, 'so much I want—but first and most important of all, I want that trust you spoke of just now.'

  I'll bet you do, Elyn thought, staring at him, barely able to believe, if her brain hadn't totally deserted her, that Max had just propositioned her! She had been his for the taking up at that chalet! He had rejected her then, but now, it seemed, had changed his mind and decided he would quite like an affair after all!

  'You've some plan already worked out on how to go about gaining that trust, of course?' she questioned sar­castically, while part of her warned that she should get out now. She was vulnerable where he was concerned, for heaven's sake. Get up, Elyn. Get up, and walk away before it's too late! Before he mesmerises you into doing all that he asks.