Rocco found that he wasn’t actually lying. He was surprisingly curious about this mystery man about whom the woman striding along next to him was so unforthcoming. Women were normally so terminally drawn to rambling on about their men, to showing them off along with the diamonds sitting on their fingers, to wandering around with a dreamy look in their eyes and a faraway expression of bliss.
Rocco took a keen interest in all his employees. His ability for recall was limitless, as was his wry observation of those female members of his staff who fell in love and turned swiftly from eight-to-whenevers into nine-to-fivers who couldn’t wait to race home to their men.
‘Italian would be fine.’ Amy tried to imagine how Sam and Rocco would interact and came to the conclusion that Rocco would eat Sam alive. As spectator sports went, that was one she had no intention of indulging in.
Which left her in no position to continue harping on about wanting to go home.
They had emerged from the car park into a pleasantly cool evening with the smells and sounds of summer around them. There were lots of people around, couples, groups, all laughing and relaxed in the late evening. This was obviously the hub of restaurants and night life.
For the moment, Rocco was content to drop the little matter of her boyfriend, knowing that, the more he probed, the faster she would retreat, especially since she knew that his probing was founded in nothing more meaningful than idle curiosity. Instead, he asked her about the place and Amy snatched the change of topic to tell him everything she knew about what had been happening in the city centre, finishing with, ‘Didn’t you ever have any interest in visiting the place? In the past ten years?’
‘No.’ One syllable spoken with such flat finality that she glanced across to him in surprise.
‘Oh, sorry. Sensitive subject, I take it.’
‘Yes,’ he grated, steering her into the first Italian they came across, only to discover that there were no tables free for at least half an hour. ‘We’ll wait,’ he said shortly. ‘And in case you hadn’t got the message,’ Rocco said, finally facing her squarely, eyes narrowed, ‘my private life is off limits.’
Amy waited until he had ordered a glass of wine for them both. ‘And my private life isn’t?’
Rocco gave her a thunderous frown from his ten-inch height advantage. ‘I can’t remember asking you anything very personal,’ he said with an edgy threat in his voice, even though the cooler part of him was telling him to leave it alone and move on to a less contentious topic of conversation. ‘I also find nosy, prying women highly irritating.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Amy said, enjoying the feeling of somehow catching him on the back foot. ‘Nosy. Prying. Would that mean asking the odd question or two?’ She gazed serenely up at him and his intense blue eyes sent a bolt of sheer giddy thrill rocketing through her. She quickly gulped a couple of mouthfuls of wine.
‘That’s right. The odd question or two on the wrong subject.’ Rocco never, but never, discussed his past with anyone. The few women who had tried to worm their way into his affections by expressing interest in his background had met with a brick wall and had instantly retreated.
He looked, ill temperedly, at the face staring up at him and met her direct gaze without flinching.
She might not meet the normal standards of the highly feminine women he was accustomed to. The flirtatious ways of the female sex might have bypassed her, but he was still her boss and he would make damn sure to say as much if her tongue decided to wander in the wrong direction…
CHAPTER FOUR
AMY finished her glass of wine, which must really have been a tiny glass considering she polished it off in under five minutes when she wasn’t a drinker. She rested it on the bar and nodded without hesitation to the offer of another.
Like her, Sam was not a big drinker. He didn’t exactly view alcohol as the product of the devil, but his mother had always expressed distaste for people who never knew when to stop, and her words had somehow entered his system through a process of osmosis. Since Amy had never taken much interest in alcohol, it had been just something else that they seemed to have in common.
This wine, she thought guiltily, must be particularly good or else especially weak if she wanted another already.
Maybe it was just addictively strong, she thought, nursing the glass as they were led to their table and she found that her legs were feeling a lot less steady than they were accustomed to.
‘So, let me get this straight,’ she said as soon as she was thankfully seated and no longer had to worry about the state of her legs or anything else. ‘You don’t like women to be too assertive, you prefer them to look up to you as a caveman style he-man who sees them as his property and, in addition, you’d rather they never asked too many questions that were too personal…’
Rocco was hit by the feeling that this was one of the few moments in his life when he was utterly lost for words. Amy, already halfway through her second glass of wine and feeling better for it by the second, jumped into the brief silence to continue, ‘With all those parameters, it must be a little delicate actually making relationships happen, I would have thought…’
‘Not everyone is quite as…forceful as you,’ Rocco said heavily.
‘I don’t think it’s particularly forceful to wonder how it is that you never felt inclined to come back and have a look around at the place where you grew up…’
‘I did not grow up in the centre of Birmingham,’ Rocco informed her. ‘Actually, I never lived in the city centre, so I have no sentimental yearnings to return to it! In fact, at the risk of being pedantic, I have about as much sentimental feeling towards it as I would have towards a random town I had located by sticking a pin on a map.’
Amy sipped her drink and then proceeded to sit on her hands, a childish habit she had never quite lost but that she consciously strove to avoid, ‘You mean you never ventured into the city, even though you only lived a few miles away?’
‘This is a conversation without a future.’
‘I was just trying to turn you into a three-dimensional person,’ Amy said helpfully, quoting him back neatly, and Rocco exhaled one long sigh of pure exasperation.
‘I never actually spent a great deal of time in this part of the country,’ he snapped. The ice in his drink had melted and he pushed it aside, virtually untouched.
‘Oh, yes. You went to a boarding-school.’ For a minute her eyes softened on him, which as far as he was concerned was even worse.
‘Information from my father, I presume? During one of your cosy chats? Possibly after you had buttered him up into supporting some hare-brained project that would involve spending buckets of money somewhere for no return?’
Normally Amy would predictably have reacted to this with anger, but the wine had softened her instincts to defend, and, instead of snapping back, she drifted off for a few seconds into pleasant memories of the many evenings she had spent with Antonio, chatting to him about everything under the sun. She leaned forward on her hands and smiled.
‘We did spend lots of time chatting,’ she admitted, gazing past Rocco’s startling face, into her memories. ‘I missed that when my father got…ill. Dad and I used to chat a lot. I guess because I was his only child. He treated me much more like an adult than a kid…’ She refocused on Rocco’s shuttered expression and frowned. How had she arrived at that particular confidence?
‘Did you miss home a lot when you were at boarding-school?’
The directness of the question, her obvious disregard for what he had told her about the boundaries he laid down around himself, took him aback and he signalled to the waitress for her to take their order. He would normally thrash anything into the ground, but this time he would have to take the distasteful decision to retreat. It went against every grain in him but he had no choice. His private life was not up for chit-chat over an Italian. Not up for chit-chat period.
‘Have you been here before?’ he asked politely as he scrutinised the menu.
‘Never.’<
br />
‘Surprising. It’s got a very buoyant atmosphere. And the food seems to be good value for money.’
‘Oh, we don’t often venture into the city for a meal,’ Amy explained. ‘Easier to stay local.’ Maybe she would reconsider that option though. The menu was certainly a lot more appealing than the usual Chinese, Indian or pizza fare she and Sam were used to eating.
‘I’ve been to the city quite a bit, though, and not just through my work. When your dad was fit and healthy, we would sometimes drive in on a weekend. He used to love going to the old Bull Ring.’
‘The market?’ Rocco couldn’t contain his surprise at this snippet of information.
‘Why do you sound so shocked?’
‘I don’t recall him ever expressing any interest in going to markets, not unless you consider the food hall at Harvey Nichols a market.’ His voice was laced with scorn. ‘In fact, from what I remember, he had other people to do the awkward business of shopping for him. I can’t imagine him traipsing through a flea-infested pit just for the fun of it.’
‘It wasn’t a flea-infested pit,’ Amy informed him quietly. ‘In fact, it was always very lively, full of people selling everything from used books to bales of cloth.’ Her face softened. ‘He developed a passion for the book stalls, as a matter of fact. So much so that in summer, on a Sunday morning, we would hunt out different open-air markets in the countryside, just so that he could browse through the second-hand book stalls.’
‘Looking for what? Something suitably worthwhile which he could buy for a penny and sell for a pound?’
His acidity snapped her out of her mellow, wine-induced mood and she looked at him with unconcealed curiosity. ‘You make him sound like a monster.’
‘And you make him sound like a saint.’
‘Not a saint. But someone very kind, very thoughtful, not too proud to mingle with people socially his inferior or to go to places like markets when he could easily have afforded anything he wanted brand-new and straight out of an expensive shop somewhere.’
That brought a guffaw of harsh laughter. ‘Are you sure we are talking about the same man?’
‘One you obviously never saw,’ Amy told him, braving all the ground rules he had laid down about not treading on his personal territory, ‘but maybe one you could have if you’d ever taken the time to make an effort.’
Rocco’s face froze. A dark flush spread over his high, sculpted cheekbones and his mouth flattened into a thin, forbidding line.
‘How typical of the person with a social conscience,’ he said coldly. ‘Always there with the woolly, meaningless words of wisdom which they somehow feel they have a God-given duty to express. Ever ready to right the world and preach heartfelt sermons about things they know nothing about.’
‘Having a social conscience isn’t a crime and, believe me, the last thing I ever do is preach.’ She sat back so that their starters could be placed in front of them. A platter of antipasti that was designed to be shared. Cold meats, cold roasted vegetables in olive oil and herbs, tomatoes laced with garlic.
‘Really?’ Rocco jabbed some of the meat onto his fork and looked at her with distaste. ‘Hence your trite little remark about my lack of effort being the source of my misfortunes in not knowing this wonderful old duffer you seem to have unearthed?’
‘How can you talk about your father like that?’
‘Quite easily considering the man I knew was frozen in ice. A tyrant who expected his only son to address him as sir and was prone to towering rages if so much as a scrape of noise was heard in the hallowed walls of the grand old manor from which he presided like a lord over his army of servants.’ He stabbed some more meat with his fork, furious with himself for his weakness in explaining anything of his past to the girl looking at him with an unreadable expression. ‘So on the point of my father, I think we will have to differ,’ he informed her coolly. ‘You’re not eating.’
Amy obligingly helped herself to some of the vegetables, which tasted of garlic and were mouth-wateringly delicious. What he had just said had left her shaken, but she knew better than to pursue the subject. Instead, she asked him about New York, making sure not to steer into any more dangerously private waters, although her curiosity was overwhelming.
‘Why did you choose New York, of all places, to live?’ she finally asked. ‘Why not Italy? Wouldn’t it have been easier to have just returned to your country of birth if you wanted to start from the bottom?’
‘Italy was not an option,’ Rocco said bluntly.
‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘Why not?’
‘Do you ever stop asking questions?’ he grated and she smiled with such disarming frankness that he was nearly tempted to smile back.
‘It’s a habit,’ Amy explained truthfully. ‘I ask questions all the time. It’s part and parcel of what I do. How else do I find out what people need if I don’t ask questions?’
‘And what do you need?’
‘You already know.’
‘Do I?’ For a few disorienting seconds as the almond-brown eyes met his Rocco had the mistaken impression that they were talking about something else entirely. Whenever the word need was spoken by a woman in his presence, it only ever had one answer. Him.
‘My job,’ she said prosaically. ‘To continue doing what I do. I know you think it’s ridiculous for your father to have subsidised building projects for the needy, that helping other people is a waste of good resources, but it’s very worthwhile. I wish I could make you see that.’
Rocco signalled to the waitress that they were finished with their starter, keeping his eyes rigidly glued to her earnest face.
‘We’re not back to this, are we?’
‘The only reason we’re here,’ Amy pointed out, ‘is because of this, so how do you expect me to just put it to one side and pretend that it doesn’t exist?’
‘Life isn’t exclusively about work,’ Rocco heard himself say, and he had to muse ironically to himself that he was a fine one to talk. He did nothing but work. It was his lifeblood. However, he did not expect to sit having dinner, and a very good dinner at that, in the company of a woman and converse about nothing but work. The mere fact that that was all she was interested in perversely made him want to veer off the topic completely and corner her into talking about her hobbies, her past, her personal life. Anything and everything that did not involve the do-gooding nonsense she did for a living.
He supposed, though, that she would have to be dragged kicking and screaming away from the subject. There was nothing more relentless than a feminist in possession of a cause.
‘I’m surprised to hear that coming from you,’ Amy said with asperity, ‘considering your life is a testimony to work.’
‘More sweeping assumptions?’ With some surprise, he noticed the waitress who had approached with their main course. Already? Fish for her and steak in port for him. He barely noticed the smiling girl putting it in front of him and didn’t focus on her at all as she went through her well-rehearsed routine speech about hoping that they enjoyed their meals.
Amy dug into her fish. Not only did she and Sam rarely venture into the city centre for a meal, they never indulged in meals like this. Sam simply couldn’t afford it on his salary and Amy would never have dreamed of insulting his masculine pride by offering to pay. In fact, Sam would probably have had a heart attack if he knew how much more she earned than him. He had always assumed that they were more or less on equal pay, little realising that the government was a far more stingy employer than Antonio.
‘How else could you have gone as far as you have in the space of ten short years if you hadn’t devoted every waking moment to your career?’ Amy asked reasonably. ‘I’ve read it all.’
Rocco, in the middle of raising his fork to his mouth, stopped and frowned at her, bemused by the remark.
‘You’ve read it all?’ Rocco’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Does your work involve you taking out subscriptions to The New York Times? Just in case there’s some down-and-out community on t
he other side of the Atlantic in urgent need of funding?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of taking out a subscription to The New York Times.’ Amy scooped some food onto her fork. Fish that melted in the mouth, vegetables done this side of perfection, a tiny new potato. ‘But your father did. He’s collected every article ever written about you from the day you went abroad to live and he’s shown them all to me.’ She lowered her eyes, concentrating on her food and thinking back to Antonio and the pride he took as he measured his son’s progress in New York, because Rocco, with his fabulous looks and shadowed background and breathtaking talent for spinning everything he touched into gold, had reached the financial pages very quickly indeed. He was a man who had not been born to go through life unnoticed.
‘Would you mind repeating that?’
There was a stillness about him when Amy looked up that made her wonder uneasily what she had said that could have been so offensive.
‘I said your father collected articles about you.’
‘Is this another psychological ploy to get me feeling guilty about leaving England?’ Rocco said harshly, but he was shaken by what she had just confessed. And he knew that she hadn’t been lying. She had made the remark too naturally.
‘You are the most cynical man I have ever met in my entire life. I can show you where he kept the articles. In fact, I’ll tell you. In his library. Bottom drawer of his desk. All neatly stacked in chronological order. Satisfied?’
‘If your game is to try and play Chief Liaison Officer between my father and myself in the expectation that you might work a small miracle and thereby secure your career through my gratitude, then you can forget it,’ Rocco informed her, resuming his eating. He was disturbed to find that her revelation had got him thinking, though. Why had the old man kept news of him? In the four times during which they had met, only because of certain things that had needed signing to do with his father’s company, their conversations had been brief and the barriers that had always existed between them had been as high as they ever had been. He had certainly not got the impression of a father proud of his son’s achievements. But then, why the stored articles…? Did those include the gossip column ones as well? Rocco wondered. Now that he might understand, if only because they would prove that Antonio had given birth to a son who was adept at making money but unequal to the task of commitment, a fact that the old man had made clear on the few occasions they had met. As Rocco had grown older, he could very well have replied that commitment really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. To commit was to open yourself up to pain. After all, hadn’t that been his father’s fate? Committed to his wife. So committed, in fact, that when she’d died in childbirth he had found it impossible to move on, impossible even to accept the child she had produced for him.
The Italian Tycoon's Mistress Page 6