Italian Invader

by Jessica Steele

  'What can I tell you?' she asked. 'Should I tell you how, only two days later, we were having a meal—after I'd finished typing a report that was so urgent I had to work late,' she inserted, and loved his unrepentant grin. 'You wretch,' she said lovingly.

  'Go on about the meal,' he prompted.

  'I looked at you—and was suddenly breathless,' she confessed.

  'Because of me?'

  'Who else?' she smiled, but went on to confess, 'It was not long afterwards—that same night, in fact—that I realised that I'd done the most unthinkable thing. I'd fallen in love with you.'

  'Amore mia! You knew then?' She nodded, and was soundly hugged, then kissed for her trouble. 'But why unthinkable?' he asked.

  'Well, apart from the fact that you were never going to fall in love with me…'

  'There, you see, you do not know it all!' he interrupted.

  'That's true,' she agreed. 'At first I thought you were an out-and-out philanderer.'

  'Oh, my lovely Elyn,' he came in quickly, 'the only reason I took you in my arms that night after our meal was that I simply could not help myself. Always before, I have been in control, but the attraction of you pene­trated that control.'

  'Honestly?' she questioned, wide-eyed.

  'Please believe me—I am just not interested in casual sex, and certainly not with any one of my employees. I prided myself that I had far more control than that. Yet you…' He broke off and gave her a lopsided grin that thrilled her. 'I left you that evening realising that I had better keep out of your way in future.'

  'Which you did,' Elyn recalled. 'I didn't see you for an age after that.'

  'It was the following Wednesday, to be exact,' he sup­plied, and Elyn stared at him, her trust in him starting to set hard. She had known it was the following Wednesday—but had he too ticked the days off when they had not seen each other? 'Despite my intention to keep out of your way, it was strange the number of times I found it necessary to walk the corridors near the com­puter section.'

  'Oh, Max, you were looking for me!' she smiled, en­chanted, and he left what he was saying for the moment just to feast his eyes on her, and then to place a small kiss on either side of her mouth, before finding her lips and kissing her gently.

  'I was hoping to catch sight of you,' he admitted.

  'Which you did. I was on my way back from lunch, and…'

  'And you, after the briefest of conversations, sailed on by with your nose in the air, and I—I acknowledged for the first time that whatever the emotion in me about you was, it was more than fleeting.'

  'Oh!' she sighed, and asked, 'You didn't know then that you—er—loved me?'

  'That I love and adore you, cara mia,' he corrected, but shook his head. 'I did not know then what this emotion was. All I knew was that I wasn't happy with your cold attitude. Can you wonder,' he asked, 'that I again decided to keep my distance from you?'

  'I didn't see you for a whole week after that.'

  'You were counting too?' he asked jubilantly, and as she laughed in pleasure at his jubilation, he went on rue­fully, 'My darling Elyn, you can have no idea of how you have haunted me. Of how, that next Wednesday, I purposely went to work later than normal, and adjusted my car mirrors so I could sit in the car park and wait and watch for you to go by.'

  'It wasn't accidental, that meeting!' she gasped.

  'Not accidental at all,' he assured her firmly. 'But when all I wanted to do was to talk to you, I found that I could not be natural with you. Well,' he qualified with a dry smile, 'not until you said you had been sightseeing in Bolzano—when what did I do then but—because you had to have been there with some man—fly into a jealous rage!'

  'How wonderful!' Elyn beamed in utter rapture.

  'I shall kiss you breathless for that,' Max promised severely, but grinned in pleasure when she laughed happily at the idea. 'However, first things first!' he re­sumed. 'The next thing that I knew was that Felicita was informing me that you were going away for the weekend with Tino Agosta.'

  'We were having separate hotel rooms,' Elyn inserted hastily.

  'You were having nothing!' Max told her bluntly, and to her entire amazement added, 'It did not take me long to find a good reason to send him in the opposite di­rection from Cavalese last weekend.'

  'You arranged that tutorial!' she gasped, her lovely green eyes huge in her face.

  'You are mine, not his!' Max answered with thrilling possessiveness. 'My first thought was to dismiss him at once—but that was before my sense of fairness took over.'

  'So you sent him away instead,' she commented, but was startled again when something suddenly occurred to her. 'What an amazing coincidence that you had ar­ranged to go to Cavalese too that weekend, though!'

  Max gave her a wry look, then owned, his mouth curving upwards, 'There was nothing coincidental about it, cara. I just "happened" to be in the same area as you when you were leaving last Friday night. When I recovered from my annoyance that you, by the sound of it, were still going skiing, I decided it was time I did a little skiing myself.'

  'You hadn't intended to…' she gasped.

  'I'd no intention at all,' he agreed. 'But it was a simple matter to contact a friend for the loan of his chalet. I drove to Cavalese early on Saturday morning—and from then on spent a most frustrating time looking for you.'

  'You were looking for me!'

  'I looked everywhere until I became furious that it should matter. I was thoroughly fed up when I decided you must be on Alpe Cermis. But even there I could not find you. Frustrated beyond enduring, I decided that some physical exercise might take you out of my head and took the chair-lift to go higher. And that,' he smiled, 'when I was too high to get off, was when I saw you heading for the trees.'

  'You spotted me from the chair-lift?' she asked.

  'And fearing that I might never find you again, I had to wait to get off that damned chair-lift before I could come after you.'

  'Oh!' she sighed, and recalled, 'And I—I wandered on to the ski-run.'

  He shook his head. 'It was I who was in the wrong. But, as I've said, I was anxious to get to you. Anxious,' he said tenderly, 'and loving the concern in your voice when, in my efforts to avoid crashing into you, I swerved too sharply and went over. So much did I love that concern, dear Elyn,' he confessed roguishly, 'that, when there was nothing at all the matter with me, to my own astonishment, I heard myself making believe I was injured.'

  'You wretched man!' she exclaimed lovingly.

  'It is all true,' he agreed. 'But whatever it was I did not know, what I did know was that I did not want you in some hotel while I was alone in some chalet. But, as we ate our supper and talked, I grew more and more enchanted with you. Then, my dear sweet wonderful Elyn, we began to make love, and I was lost.'

  Elyn was in a dream world from which she never wanted to awaken, but as she remembered the way it had been, she just had to ask, 'Max, was I—er—too—forward?'

  'Too forward?' he enquired, his own expression serious as he studied her slightly worried face. 'How do you mean, cara?' he asked gently.

  Elyn swallowed, but this was no time to hold back. Max seemed to want her to understand, to have all mis­understandings out of the way—and so did she. 'When we were—er—loving each other. I thought, when you— er—stopped, that it was because I was too easy, too…' Her voice faded at the incredulous expression that came to his face.

  'No!' he exclaimed forcefully. 'It was not for that reason that I stopped!' he denied. 'Oh, my dear love, don't you know I was lost—lost to everything, de­lighting in the warmth, in the naturalness of you? Until that moment when you said the words "I've never wanted a man before" I wasn't giving a thought to any­thing but the beauty we were sharing.'

  'My words p-put you off?' she asked hesitantly.

  'Oh, Elyn, Elyn!' cried Max, gathering her closer. 'I was not put off at all! I wanted you, with a fierceness that was driving me crazy. But when you said what you did, I was reminded that I would
be first with you, that I was about to take your purity—and, while that in no way lessened the urgent desire I felt for you, I wasn't otherwise sure how I felt about that. I was unsure about everything suddenly, and all I could be certain of was that, by getting you to talk out the pain of your parents and their eventual break-up, I had made you vulnerable. Would you hate me in the morning that, vulnerable—through me—you had given yourself to me.'

  'Oh!' she gasped in wonder. 'Oh, Max,' she sighed, and just had to tell him, 'you really are quite wonderful!'

  'Speak to me so always,' he smiled, and they kissed and held each other, until, as if determined to get it all said and out of the way, Max confessed, 'I wasn't feeling so very wonderful on Sunday morning.'

  'You'd spent the night on that wooden-armed settee,' she recalled.

  'That was the least of my problems,' he told her. 'By then you were getting to me in such a big way that in the morning I didn't know where the hell I was. All I knew then was that I still wanted you where I could see you. Against that, I had this almost overwhelming com­pulsion to take you in my arms—to have you safe in my arms—the whole time. Only I'd done that the night before, and look what had happened.'

  'So instead you were distant with me,' Elyn put in.

  'And instead of pleasant conversation, we were sharp with each other,' he agreed. 'We went for a drive and I learned, my beloved woman, that because of your fear of debt, you had sold your car. But, even while I was feeling such a tenderness for you for that, you pro­ceeded to astound me by blaming me for the collapse of Pillingers. Do you still blame me?' he gently enquired.

  Elyn shook her head. 'The crash had been coming for a long time,' she owned, and, no secrets between them now, 'I'd told Sam repeatedly how bad things were,' she admitted, 'but I should have tried harder. When Hutton's, our major outlet, went bankrupt owing us thousands, and then some of our suppliers refused us credit, we just couldn't hold up. Er—by the way—Guy, my stepbrother, has applied here for work—Hugh Burrell's job, actually.'

  'Then we shall have to see that he gets it,' Max promised.

  'Oh, Max!' she beamed, loving him so very much. 'Though Guy is brilliant at his job,' she thought to mention.

  'All the more reason for us to employ him.' Max smiled, and, seeming to love her happy look, he went further by adding, 'Perhaps, when your stepfather is re­ceptive to speaking with me on such matters, I will discuss with him the possibility of him helping us in a design consultant capacity.'

  'Oh, would you?' she asked excitedly.

  'I'm sure he has a wealth of experience built up over the years which should not be allowed to go to waste,' Max remarked. 'But, my darling,' he went on, his adoring dark eyes fixed on hers, 'I am, right now, more interested in us than anyone else, and wish you to know how last Sunday in Cavalese I was so emotionally troubled that I was not thinking at all clearly.'

  'But you eventually started to think more clearly?'

  'It took a fiery green-eyed blonde to hurl a weighty ski-boot across the room at me for me to suddenly re­alise that, hell take it, I was heart and soul in love with the woman!'

  'That was when you knew!'

  'It had been there almost from the first, I know that now. But yes, like a blinding light, it was suddenly re­vealed to me how very much I was in love with you— and how, because you had incapacitated me, I couldn't come after you.'

  'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' she regretted, and reached up to kiss him shyly.

  'Beloved Elyn!' he breathed, and kissed her lingeringly. She was pink-cheeked when he broke his kiss. 'Where was I?' he asked, his voice thick in his throat.

  'You're asking me?' she choked, her brain away with the fairies.

  She loved the sound of his amused laughter. Then, 'Ah, yes,' he remembered, 'So, unable to even hobble, I was eventually stretchered to my home…'

  'Oh, Max!' Elyn exclaimed, aghast at the thought that she had been the instrument of all that had happened, 'I'm so, so sorry!'

  'You can kiss me better later,' he suggested with a grin, and resumed, 'But at my home, with thoughts of you driving me crazy, I attempted to concentrate on some­thing else by ringing Felicita to cancel my Rome trip and to ask her to bring me some work.' He smiled. 'But you were so much in my head, my love, that before Felicita could get to my home I was putting through a call to you to ask, since I could not come to you, if you would come to me.'

  'Oh, darling,' she mourned, 'and I slammed the phone down on you!'

  'Did I not say you had a magnificent temper?' he forgave her handsomely. 'I knew then, though, that news of my injury must have reached you—and that you didn't believe it.'

  'I didn't,' she owned.

  'And who could blame you? However, since it seemed to me that I would only get the same reaction if I at­tempted to phone you again, I had no option but to wait. By tomorrow you would know everything.'

  'Felicita?' Elyn guessed her intelligence at work. 'Since you couldn't put your foot to the floor, you thought Felicita might tell me the next day that you were genu­inely injured?'

  'There was no "might" about it, sweet Elyn,' he told her. 'I had it all worked out by the time she arrived how she must stress to you the true extent of my injuries, she must tell you how I fell over a ski-boot—and then perhaps, I hoped so much, you would be more receptive when I began to make formal approaches to you.'

  Formal approaches? Her heart bumped. It sounded lovely—did he mean, in his wonderful Latin way, when he began to pay court to her? 'Oh, my dear!' she sighed, and was kissed, and adored, before Max pulled back, and again had to force himself to remember what he had been saying.

  'Can you imagine my amazement?' he asked, his ex­pression clouding, 'or conceive how stunned I felt, when Felicita arrived and, in reply to my question of how you knew about my "sprained ankle", revealed that you had that morning asked for a transfer back to England! When she said that you had put in your request before she told you of my "second" accident, I felt then that I had perhaps hurt you, and that was your reason for wanting to leave Italy.'

  'It was,' she owned.

  'I shall never knowingly hurt you again,' he vowed, and almost reverently laid a tender kiss on her brow.

  'I was also—ahem…' Elyn had to cough before she could bring out the rest of her confession, 'I was also pea-green with jealousy of Felicita.'

  'You were jealous!' he beamed, but, astonishment coming to him, 'Of Felicita?'

  'I know now that I'd got it all wrong, but—well, I was in a stew about you too, remember, so when Felicita said how you were injured—and I didn't believe that for a moment—and how she was leaving in a few minutes to drive to your home, albeit with some work, I put two and two together and made a neat, if erroneous, five.'

  'Because you too have experienced a taste of that dreadful gut-tearing emotion of jealousy, I will forgive you,' he decreed charmingly, but questioned, 'Is that why you ran from Italy without telling anyone where you were going?'

  'It wasn't just that,' she admitted. 'I was hurt, jealous, and you'd rejected me, and…' She broke off when his arm instantly tightened about her, and a stream of such emotional Italian left him that she just knew, without comprehending the words, that he was wholeheartedly denying that he had rejected her in any way. 'Anyway,' she resumed with a smile to show him that she was no longer hurt, 'your phone call to me was the last straw. I just couldn't take any more.'

  'Cara! My beloved,' Max crooned, and kissed her and stroked her face with caring sensitive fingers.

  'Oh, my love!' she gasped, and, feeling sorely in need of some humour just then, 'Where was I?' she teased.

  'You were flying back to England,' he reminded her. 'Something which it just had not occurred to me that you would do—not before I had begun to pay my re­spectful attentions to you.'

  'Perhaps I do have something of a temper, as you say,' Elyn murmured, and as the thought landed, 'How did you know I'd gone, by the way?'

  'How, was easy. Working out why, and
consequently hoping, was the difficult part. You'd left the apartment key with the hall porter. He rang my PA the next morning to ask whether he should hold on to it or deliver it to her. Felicita in turn rang Tino Agosta, who assured her that you were never late but weren't in yet, but had gone home early the day before with a migraine.'

  'I'd invented a headache,' Elyn confessed.

  'You really have to stop telling these lies, Miss Talbot,' Max reprimanded her lovingly.

  'Sauce!' she exclaimed, but had to laugh, though she sobered to ask, 'So Felicita knew I'd flown back to England by the time she spoke to you next.'

  Max nodded. 'I couldn't believe it at first. You must be exceedingly angry by my deception, I realised. Exceedingly hurt by me too, so hurt in fact that even this fear of debt you have is of no consequence, be­cause, not waiting for a transfer, you had quit your job! By that time it was ten-thirty, Italian time. By ten thirty-five, my brain was racing so fast, and bringing me such amazing possibilities, I could barely remember our Pinwich telephone number.'

  'You began to suspect… You rang her el' asked Elyn, trying desperately to keep up with him.

  'It was for certain that with my foot the way it was I could not get here in person. Bearing in mind how much you feared penury, it was my intention to speak to Personnel, who were to pass instructions for your salary to continue to be paid into your bank.'

  'Good heavens!' Elyn exclaimed in astonishment.

  'But I didn't get further than to say I was ringing in connection with Miss Elyn Talbot than I was hearing that, not fifteen minutes ago, you handed in your notice. "Do you mean that Miss Talbot is in work today?" I asked, for I really could not believe it.'

  'I—er—Guy, my stepbrother, was upset. He thought I would have the family labelled unreliable, and thereby ruin his prospects of employment with your company, if I just walked out,' she explained.

  'Sweet, sweet Elyn, so you did it for him! No matter,' he went on. 'To hear that you were there, to know where you would be Monday to Friday for the next four weeks, was a little solace to me. I had your address, of course, but until today, when I could at last get my feet into two vastly different sizes of shoes—which my good house­keeper purchased on my behalf—I was going nowhere.'