The Italian Next Door...
Page 5
It was torture.
Even worse than the aftermath of the kiss, if possible, was her awareness of the exhibition she’d made of herself during the journey, freezing with fear like that in the car. Her delight in her first sight of the amazing old village cascading down the cliff, the terraces and villas built seemingly on top of one another, was all but ruined.
He drove her almost down as far as the sea, drawing up in a small square before the small church. Taking her bags from the car, he carried them up through a maze of narrow alleyways that here and there turned into steep stairs hewn from the rock face. Eventually he pushed open a gate that led into a terrace with a little courtyard.
There were several apartments of pale pink stucco in the row, each with a balcony under an arcaded roof. Pia followed the apartment numbers with her eye and found Lauren’s at the end. She hoisted the canvas bag onto her shoulder while Valentino hefted her suitcase upstairs to the balcony.
‘Do you have a key?’ he said, pausing.
‘Above the mantel, Lauren said.’ Constraint made her voice sound unnatural even to her own ears. She reached up to the beam but he was there before her, his cool hand colliding with hers on the ledge.
She drew hers sharply away.
He gave her the key and she unlocked and stood aside for him to carry in her things. She barely noticed the apartment’s interior, she was so intensely aware of Valentino and the brooding vibrations.
When her stuff was inside and he was outside on the balcony, ready to depart, she racked her brains for something to say to ease the strained atmosphere.
‘Where did you say you live?’ she enquired, in too much dismay to give the miraculous houses, apartment blocks and tiny terraced gardens crammed on the hillside above and adjacent to Lauren’s terrace more than a cursory glance.
‘There.’ He pointed below.
Her eyes jolted wide open. The dwelling he indicated was nearby, all right. It was on the next level down, an elegant white villa with a broad terrace at the rear and a small, cultivated garden, with grape vines, peach and lemon trees. Set into the terrace, an irregularly shaped pool sparkled in the midday sun like a jewel, and beyond the villa was the sea.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, swallowing, ‘I hadn’t realised you would be so—close.’
His eyes veiled and he turned away, muttering with grim courtesy, ‘Not too close, I hope.’
She lowered her gaze and edged back into her doorway. It was hard to know what to say, faced by all that spectacular beauty and a smouldering Italiano.
‘Well… Thank you for—everything.’ She scrabbled in her purse for some notes. ‘I hope you will allow me to contribute to the petrol.’
He stiffened his wide shoulders and waved away her proffered euros. ‘Please. We are neighbours. In Positano neighbours open their hearts and their generosity.’
She flushed, feeling as if her offer had contravened some unspoken tenet of gracious behaviour.
He made a move towards the steps, then halted and turned to her. His dark eyes flickered over her, measuring, assessing. ‘Tell me. Have you always been so afraid of men?’
She gasped. ‘I am not afraid of—anything. Far from it. I am as open to…as—as comfortable with…I—I enjoy…’
As she stuttered her denials he tilted his dark head to one side and his expression grew gravely sympathetic, and she realised she was protesting too much.
At once she checked the flow and, lifting a haughty eyebrow, gathered her womanly poise around her. ‘I just prefer to feel some attraction to the man I’m kissing.’
With a cool, rather cruel smile she stepped back inside and closed the door in his face.
CHAPTER FOUR
FROWNING like a thundercloud, Valentino pushed open the black wrought-iron gate and strode beneath his grandfather’s grape arbour to the side entrance, dropping his suitcase and briefcase while he searched his pockets for the key.
There was a jagged lump in his chest. Far from improving, his mood had worsened. His heart felt too heavy for him to talk to Nonno just yet. There were issues he needed to think through.
Women.
If Nonno saw him like this… In a bid to collect his cool before he worried the old guy unnecessarily, he strolled around to the pool terrace and surveyed the garden. Inevitably he glanced up at the neighbouring terrace.
Pia Renfern was a liar. That stuff about not feeling the attraction was rubbish, and if she hadn’t been such a volatile, unpredictable, difficult female he’d have enjoyed proving it to her, over and over again, hot, hard and convincing.
Anyone would have thought he was a criminal. Anyone would have thought…
A guilty pang sliced him. Be honest with himself, he shouldn’t have kissed her. But he was hardly made of stone, perdio. Of course he’d wanted to comfort her. What red-blooded man could have resisted when she was looking so pale and vulnerable, standing on that cliff pretending with all her heart to be brave?
And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been fluttering her lashes at him. The messages there had been plain for any man to read.
Still, he had to acknowledge he’d let himself down. He’d betrayed his calling and the unspoken trust he’d painstakingly built with her on the journey, and it ate at him that a woman, any woman, should have such a low opinion of him. Ariana, naturally enough, thought he was a bastard of the first water for all the times he’d neglected her and put his work first, and, sure, he was guilty as charged and had paid the price. What a price. His guts clenched to think of it. But even she, with all the things she’d said spurred on by that vixen she called her friend, had never had any reason to condemn him like this.
To think that he, Valentino Silvestri, CIO and consultant to twenty-seven national police forces, was accused of being some low slimy sleaze who’d take advantage…
Even thinking the words pierced his guts like a hot skewer. The sense of shame jabbing him every time he thought of the momentary fear he’d glimpsed in Pia Renfern’s blue eyes swelled until it inhabited his whole being. He clenched his fist and punched the wall. He shouldn’t have touched a hair of her head, though, sacramento, it was only a kiss, and tame at that. Who’d have guessed she’d have turned into such a fiery little virago?
If only she could have put aside all her womanly rules and reservations and just… He closed his eyes, reliving those delicious initial moments when her soft curves had melted against him and he’d felt the thrill surge through their entwined bodies.
There was passion in her. She’d felt the desire, all right. Every fibre of instinct and experience told him she’d felt it.
Despite himself, his incorrigible blood stirred as an intriguing thought came to him. If the desire was there burning like a low flame in her slim body, surely it was only a matter of unlocking it?
He sighed and turned back to the entrance. Forget it. She was trouble. Already he’d gone a step too far with her. He didn’t want to see into the woman behind the face. Experience had taught him that to understand too much about what was going on inside a woman’s head was the Appian Way to emotional involvement.
To know was to care. Next thing a man knew he was being measured for a wedding suit and paraded in front of the relatives like a prize bull.
Why couldn’t he be like other guys he knew and feel attracted to uncomplicated women who could accept an honest attraction for what it was and were only too willing to indulge in some sweet amore without all the palaver?
He let himself into the villa. ‘Nonno,’ he called ‘Dove sei?’
After a minute the old man appeared from the direction of the kitchen. His face wreathed in smiles, and his arms opened wide.
‘Tino, Tino my boy. At last. Welcome, ragazzo, welcome home, you young devil. Three years it’s been. What kept you?’
Valentino laughed and hugged him through a wall of remorse. Was it truly three? Nonno seemed to have shrunk, and though his eyes were bright the cherished elderly frame felt more frail than he remembered.
However he took that, Nonno didn’t stop grinning, though his eyes grew moist.
‘No matter. It’s just so good for an old fool to know you bother to come to see him once in a while. Here, sit, sit down,’ he exclaimed. ‘You need a drink.’ He handed Valentino the beer to take care of while he set about producing the cheese, the loaf, the olives and tomatoes picked from his very own garden. ‘How was your trip? Did you drive all the way from France? What was the weather like there? What do you find to eat in that hellhole?’
He gave Valentino little opportunity to answer any of his thousand and one questions, bustling about setting food on the table with spritely excitement, at the same time as hopping from one news item to the next like a mountain goat from crag to rocky crag.
‘Wait until I tell you about Mirella’s grandson,’ Nonno crowed. ‘And remember Lorenzo Corelli’s sister-in-law? You’ll never guess what they’re saying in the piazza.’
Valentino lent an ear to Nonno’s updates on the local gossip, knowing he’d once been the main topic of the town himself, or at least his lovely young bride had been. While he’d been involved in an undercover operation in the north, Ariana had revived an old friendship with some film people on Capri who had encouraged her to dream of a movie career.
The outcome had been inevitable. Ariana’s face now smiled from the silver screen, though no longer from the pillow adjacent to Valentino’s. Constant separations and the changes in Ariana, especially some illegal lifestyle choices that had outraged him when he’d found out, had damaged their relationship beyond repair. Valentino had spent too much of his professional life fighting the narcotics trade to condone his own wife’s participation in some of the indulgences of her sophisticated friends.
For the first time in his life, the sordid sleeve of crime had brushed his own family. Perhaps the casual, unthinking crime of the seriously rich, but squalid nonetheless. And it seemed the languid, hedonistic friends who had seduced his bride into their glitzy world were untouchable. His burning desire to cut them to ribbons with the flaming sword of the law was frustrated.
To his eternal shame and chagrin, for the first time in his career he had a conflict of interest.
The rest was history, though he preferred not to recall the details. The painful time was something of a blur now.
Separation. Scandal. Ariana’s rumoured affair with the Argentinian director. Her inability to deny it. More scandal, paparazzi dogging his footsteps for a soundbite. And as night followed day, public dishonour. Divorce, shame and an abysmal, lasting emptiness.
He shuddered. Never again. Not even a certified angel from heaven would tempt him down that thorny road again. Lucky for him Interpol had the most efficient and far-reaching database on individuals on the planet.
If by some extremely unlikely conjunction of the stars he ever reached that dangerous crossroads again with a woman, it was comforting to know he wouldn’t be forced to take her on trust. If the worst came to the worst, he could run her ID through the system. Though of course, if it ever came to the point where he needed to do that, he’d know he was sick and it would be time to leave town.
‘…have you, Tino?’
He started as he realised his grandfather was telling him something about the night’s entertainment in the piazza.
‘Sorry, Nonno. What was that?’
‘A nice young woman,’ Nonno repeated patiently. ‘Some bella ragazza to sweeten your pillow and free you from cooking. Don’t you think it’s time to start afresh?’
Valentino made a rueful grimace. If only it were so simple. Nonno wasn’t suggesting any modern solution to his singularity. He was talking of brides, while Valentino’s preference was for less permanent arrangements. Purely physical meetings on neutral ground. No promises. No guilt attached. Honour intacta.
Usually.
The weight in his chest nagged and he realised what was wrong with him. If only he could think of a way to absolve his honour with Pia Renfern.
Catching sight of Nonno’s lined old face puckered in
anxiety, he realised he was frowning. He made the effort to summon a grin.
‘I don’t mind cooking, Nonno,’ he said. ‘It gives me a chance to think.’ He clapped the old fellow on the shoulder, though not too vigorously for fear of damaging the ancient edifice. ‘Now what are we doing for dinner, old man? I’m in the mood for creating a sauce.’
* * *
On her first foray out to find food, Pia was so enchanted by the long narrow staircases, the pretty lanes and gelato
coloured villas overhung with purple bougainvillea, for a time she almost managed to thrust Valentino Silvestri’s accusation out of her mind.
Almost.
The truth was, beneath her anger and sense of insult was the nagging knowledge that, despite her brave new face, she’d managed to expose her weakest points to the first person she met in Italy. She felt as if all her progress over the recent months, her strong and positive self-talk and courage in organising the trip, boarding the plane and flying across the world, amounted to zilch. Whether from fatigue, jet lag, or her instant and ridiculous attraction to him, she’d allowed herself to momentarily regress to her cowardly old state and Valentino Silvestri had seen straight through her.
It was so unfair.
The first attractive man in ages and with the smallest amount of stress she’d gone into instant meltdown, and in the worst and most revealing way.
If she never saw V Silvestri again it would be too soon.
At least, though, so far as everyone else in Positano knew, her slate was clean. So far. It was good that the town was abuzz with tourists. She hardly stood out as a stranger. In fact, she gloried in the anonymity. No one here was expecting her to paint, and, if she just forgot about work and enjoyed her time here, chances were it would recover itself naturally.
If she could put aside her worries about her lapse on the journey, it wasn’t too optimistic to think she’d be able to start painting again soon. Wherever she looked she saw scenes begging to be brought to life on canvas.
She thought often of that moment in the car when her fingers had been itching to draw. That had been so encouraging. So like her old self. A huge energising surge of hope gathered in her. Perhaps her creativity was on the way back already.
She found the market and a greengrocer’s and bought some food essentials. By that time of day there wasn’t a lot of bread left to choose from in the bakery, but they managed a couple of crusty panini for her.
She climbed the steps back to Lauren’s, and enjoyed stocking the fridge and making it feel like her own.
The apartment was simple and chic, and so Lauren. It was old and high-ceilinged, with blue and lemon patterned floor tiles, an airy bedroom and a sitting room lined with books and furnished with lamps, rugs, two wing chairs and a deep comfy sofa. Several of Lauren’s photographic studies were hanging there, and she’d covered an entire wall with pictures of herself and her friends. Lauren had always been a great socialiser.
She’d never been the slightest bit afraid of anyone or anything.
Not that Pia was afraid. A little uncomfortable with heights still, perhaps, but as for being afraid of men, per se…
She drew a long simmering breath. That was simply not true. She knew what Valentino had been insinuating. ‘Afraid of men’ in his terms meant being afraid of sex.
The very idea was laughable. She’d had boyfriends, she’d had a genuine serious relationship, although she could admit now Euan hadn’t been as fantastic a lover as he’d started out. Even before the bank incident he’d often rushed her and been quite insensitive. When she’d reached the point of not finding herself able to respond, he’d insinuated the fault was hers.
One good thing about that kiss this morning was the discovery that she could sti
ll respond. As kisses went it had been very stirring. Wasn’t that why she’d called a halt to it?
Now, ironically, she was finding it hard not to dwell on it. Though so brief, the astounding power of it seemed to have sunk into her senses and stayed there. That was probably why Valentino had struck such a chord with her when he’d said he could still feel her through to his bones. In a strange way she was similarly affected, seemingly haunted by the feel of him. His taste. His quite overwhelming masculine aura.
She was sure he’d only accused her of being afraid of men to excuse his guilt and the insult to his ego. She felt perfectly justified in the things she’d said to him. Any woman would have reacted the way she had.
It was just disappointing that such an attractive man, an intelligent, charming man with that appealing accent, should have tried to turn the situation around to blame her. Certainly he could kiss well, but that was all he had going for him. Well, apart from his looks and his shoulders. All right, his eyebrows, perhaps. His hands.
In spite of his typically macho behaviour, though, her decision to search for a less physically outstanding specimen, a humble man with honour and sincerity, was in danger of sagging. She needed to remind herself of what she would have to gain from such a tranquil relationship. Who knew that she might not even meet him here in Positano? The possibility had crossed her mind once or twice before she left home.
Finding a soulmate in Italy. Perhaps like her he’d be passing through. A sensitive art curator, or some gentle billionaire who understood women, was good at expressing his feelings, and could kiss like…well, like, for example, Valentino. Someone who would understand that for her the art must always come first.
She was engaged in hanging her things in Lauren’s wardrobe when she started at the sound of the doorbell. Instantly Valentino’s image flashed into her head. It had to be him. Who else did she know here?