The Italian Tycoon's Mistress

by Cathy Williams

  All in all, it had been a frustrating week. Frustrating because she had lodged in his head like a pernicious little insect, distracting him from the hugely important and pressing work concerns he had to deal with.

  And now this.

  Rocco looked at the letter again, tempted to pitch it in the bin, knowing that such an impulse would solve nothing.

  Nor would he be able to see her in the morning, because he was going to New York to deal with the sale of his own company over there.

  Rocco pushed himself away from the desk and began prowling restlessly through the room, pausing to stare frowningly at the various artefacts on the bookshelf and the touches of his father that singled out his surroundings as his own. He picked up a little wooden horse, on which a rider in full armoury was reading an open book, and delicately turned it around in his hands, feeling that same sensation that had struck him over the past few weeks, ever since he had unearthed the scrapbook. A feeling that there was something happening under the surface, the surface that he had dismissed so thoroughly years ago when he had left England, something that needed to be sorted out.

  He replaced the artefact but remained where he was, thinking. His phone line buzzed and he glared at it with undiluted irritation.

  The situation could not go on. He couldn’t have his head filled up with images of some employee who had not even been grateful enough to accept the very generous offer he had extended.

  Nor of some employee who…

  The sheer enormity of the blow his pride had suffered on being told that he had been little more than a man on the rebound still made his head reel with rage. Rocco, so used to controlling situations, events and people, was literally shaken to his foundations at the mere thought that he had been controlled. He still couldn’t believe it. Not really. Cornered, he knew that she would inform him otherwise. Unfortunately, even when they had been sitting next to one another discussing telephone numbers and business contacts, he had been unable to corner her. And he was left with the gut-churning possibility that he had been used.

  That, more than anything else, was what propelled him to do the one thing he had resolved not to do throughout the course of the day, when the idea had first inserted itself in his head and then proceeded to take root.

  At six-thirty, with everything in order for his flight to the States the following day, he drove to her house.

  His head was telling him to let it go. She had handed in her letter of resignation and he could easily release her from any one-month notice. The project she had been working on could be completed by other people.

  His emotions, however, had been stirred to a point where cold logic, the invaluable tool that had been at his aid for the past decade or so, was no longer a factor in the equation.

  Cutting through the convenient packaging of being philosophical and taking on board that you won a few, you lost a few, a streak of raw anger and a desire for some kind of retribution for having been used by her burnt like bile inside him. The fact that she similarly thought herself to have been used by him barely featured in his internal, warring debates. In fact, didn’t feature at all.

  He arrived at her house at a little after seven-thirty, half expecting to find the place empty even though he knew that an employee who had handed in her notice would certainly not be enamoured at the thought of doing overtime. Dedication to a career could take predictable nosedives in situations such as that.

  Typically, she was home. Her car was parked outside. After several jabs on the buzzer, though, it occurred to him that she must have spotted his car drawing up and had decided to simply ignore his presence altogether.

  With yet another unaccustomed burst of uninvited, unwelcome and frankly disorienting emotion, he pounded on the door, quite happy to draw attention from anyone who happened to be passing by and from whatever neighbours were around.

  His hand was raised for a repeat bang when the door was pulled open and there she was, standing staring up at him with understandable annoyance.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You look bloody awful.’

  ‘Thank you very much but you still haven’t answered my question. Why are you here, pounding on my door?’ The really crazy thing was that as she saw him there now her heart lifted. Noticeably, treacherously and pathetically. She blew her nose vigorously into her hankie, which she then tucked back into the pocket of her dressing gown.

  ‘We have a little something to discuss…’ He waved her resignation letter at her and, taking full advantage of her momentary distraction, pushed himself through the front door and into the hallway.

  ‘Not now, Rocco. I’m…I’m not feeling very well…’

  ‘In which case, you need to sit down as quickly as possible and relax. Just let me lead the conversation.’

  Relax? With him under the roof? He must be joking! She would have been more relaxed in a fish tank filled with piranha.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ He scooped her up, ignoring her shocked protests, and swept her into the sitting room, where he proceeded to lay her on the sofa. ‘You’re hot.’ He frowned and put the back of one cool hand on her forehead.

  ‘I have a cold, Rocco. That’s all. But I’m sorry. I really am not up to discussing that letter of resignation.’

  ‘No, of course you’re not.’ He frowned again. ‘And there’s no point in you being in the sitting room. You will be far better off in your bedroom, in your bed.’

  ‘I’m fine…’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ He picked her up once again, as easily as if he were picking up a feather. He seemed to be making quite a habit of toting her around, she thought dazedly, too weak to fight him off.

  ‘Okay. You win,’ Amy said as soon as she was on the bed, dressing gown still pulled tightly around her. ‘I handed in my resignation because I just don’t want to continue working for Losi Construction with you in charge. I know you’ll probably think that it’s a case of sour grapes because I couldn’t persuade you to hang on to the subsidiary, let us all continue what we’ve been doing, but it’s not. Everyone in the team thinks you’ve been hugely generous with them and I’m pleased for all of them, but what you’re offering just wouldn’t suit me…’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘What?’ Amy blinked, disconcerted by this abrupt tangent.

  ‘A doctor.’

  ‘Of course I haven’t seen a doctor! I have a cold! There’s nothing a doctor can do about a virus. I may not have gone to college or university, but I do happen to know that viruses just have to clear themselves out of your system.’ She sneezed, as if her body were cooperating in proving a point, and subsided into the pillows with an involuntary groan of sheer exhaustion. ‘I’ve said all I have to say on the matter of my resignation, Rocco, so you’re free to leave. And in case you might be thinking that I’ll skip off now that I’ve handed in my notice, I won’t. As soon as I’m better, I’ll be back there working for my obligatory one month.’

  Rocco was only half listening to her as he continued to scrutinise her flushed cheeks and overbright eyes. ‘Would you hang on a minute? I have a call to make.’

  Amy nodded in complete bewilderment and frustration as he flicked his mobile out and dialled into it, walking out of the room as he did so and gently closing the door behind him.

  She wasn’t surprised that he had hunted her down to quiz her about her resignation. He had been magnanimous in victory, offering sizeable carrots to everyone in the team in order to lessen the blow of disbanding them. He would have expected her to have reacted with the same grateful alacrity as everyone else had. She had felt his mounting irritation over the past few days when they had been together that she had been unable to commit to accepting his offer. So, naturally, being confronted with behaviour that did not tally up to what he’d expected would have had him winging his way to her front door with all the predictable questions. Just to make sure that she fully understood the deal she was rejecting.

  She felt too weak to
argue the toss right now and she had no intention of making him think that he was the perfect boss who had come up with the perfect solution to an inconvenient problem. She wasn’t going to pander to his need to always be right either by allowing herself to be talked out of her resignation, or else allowing him to think that she was somehow misguided in not taking what was on offer because, as everyone knew, Rocco Losi always knew best.

  Rocco Losi, as far as she was concerned, could take a running jump.

  She still cringed in shame and horror when she thought of how she had catapulted herself straight into his arms only to discover that he had instigated proceedings merely to prove a point. In fact, she had spent the past week and a half attempting to justify her reaction as perfectly understandable given the circumstances she had been in at the time. She had told him that he had been rebound therapy for her simply to even the score, but the excuse had proved pretty handy when it came to trying to downplay the onslaught of sensation he had aroused in her.

  And she reckoned she could just about keep up the charade with herself, if she wasn’t faced with him. Looking at him was a cruel reminder that making love had had nothing to do with any rebound feelings. It had just been plain, crazy, uplifting lust of a kind she had never experienced before and had therefore been unable to resist. The sheer force and mastery at Rocco’s disposal had required an immunity she hadn’t possessed.

  But it was easier to face all that in her head if she could cling to some vaguely plausible excuse for her behaviour.

  And that, in turn, was easier to do if she didn’t have to deal with Rocco face to face.

  Which was why she hoped that whatever urgent business call he was engaged in would generate a speedy exit from her house.

  She edgily watched the door and then even more edgily watched Rocco as he re-entered the bedroom, this time perching on the bed by her instead of safely standing up by the door, out of harm’s way.

  ‘I just spoke to my doctor and, from the symptoms you have, it would seem that you are right about it being a virus of some kind.’

  ’You spoke to a doctor about me?’

  ‘He also happens to be a friend,’ Rocco said wryly, ‘and I would have got him out here but the trip from New York for a house visit seemed a little excessive.’

  ‘There was no need…’

  ‘You’re still my employee, remember?’

  ‘Oh, right. For the time being.’ Amy closed her eyes because it felt a lot more comfortable shutting him out of her direct line of vision. And she had to try very hard not to be aware of the fractional touching of their bodies, his thigh a whisper against hers. “Cause I won’t be changing my mind. About leaving, I mean. I’ve got lots of plans, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And you can tell me all about them as soon as you’ve had something to eat.’

  Amy’s eyelids flickered but she didn’t open her eyes. ‘You haven’t come here to be nice to me.’ She yawned and finally looked at him with slumberous eyes. ‘And there’s no need, even if you are temporarily still my employer. In fact, I would feel a lot more comfortable if you left so that I could just get on with the business of being ill without having to make conversation with anyone.’

  ‘I’m going to go downstairs and get us something to eat,’ Rocco said by way of response. He had come to throw her resignation back at her and, as an adjunct, to try and manoeuvre the conversation back to that night when they had made love, just so that he could satisfy himself that her wildly, sweetly, sexily responsive behaviour had not been a fiction of his imagination. Having always lived with the arrogant assumption that success with any women he beckoned was more or less a given, Rocco found that the mere thought of her using him to get over her breakup with her ex was a grim blow to his masculine pride.

  Now he found that his unspoken plans were ambushed by the sight of her patently miserable in front of him.

  ‘Please,’ Amy groaned. ‘You don’t have to feel trapped into playing the caring employer just because you came here to confront me with my resignation and instead find me bedridden with a cold. I took some paracetemol earlier and they should start kicking in pretty soon. In fact, I think I feel better already.’ Rocco, duty-bound to behave like a gentleman, was almost as bad as Rocco, hell-bent on proving a point even if it entailed sleeping with her.

  Lying here on the bed, with a day’s worth of fever-induced perspiration making her face look shiny, and a bedraggled dressing gown that only just managed to pass muster as an item of clothing, was bad enough. Throw Rocco into the equation and it all became a nightmare. She didn’t want his eyes roving over her in all her barefaced plainness.

  But he was determined not to go. Amy wanted to cry in sheer frustration.

  ‘When did you take the tablets?’

  ‘I can’t remember. About half an hour ago.’

  ‘I’ve already been here for over half an hour.’

  ‘Well, then, maybe an hour ago! I didn’t check my watch at the time!’ She half struggled up to make her point but the effort was too much and she flopped back onto the pillows and sighed elaborately.

  She watched through half-closed eyes as he disappeared out of the door and returned a couple of minutes later with a cool, wet wash rag, which he proceeded to position on her forehead.

  ‘That should bring the fever down a bit.’

  ‘You’ve done this before, have you?’ Amy said sarcastically, to cover her own acute state of internal hyperactivity at the gesture, and the question was met with an uninformative grunt.

  No, he most definitely had not. Rocco headed down to the kitchen to see what he could rustle up, his thoughts on the girl he had left lying on the bed upstairs. Sickly women and tending them had never been on his fast-moving agenda. In fact, he could distinctly remember a number of dates he had cancelled having been accosted with rasping voices down the end of a telephone line. He was no good when it came to dealing with ill health and he made no effort to disguise the fact. To his credit, the three times he could remember having taken to bed he had done the gentlemanly thing and cancelled himself out of his dates, resisting without much effort the eager pleas to care for him, and waiting for his bugs to blow over with barely concealed impatience.

  He told himself firmly and unequivocally that, had he known she would be ill, he would never have jumped into his car and driven over, but that once here he had no choice but to at least make sure she ate something.

  The something consisted of an omelette for them both and hefty quantities of toast, which he carried up to the bedroom on a tray, along with two mugs of tea.

  ‘And before you tell me that I shouldn’t have, I’ll inform you that omelettes are one of the few culinary dishes that I’m any good at.’

  Amy was just too weak to feel anything but horribly pleased to be taken care of.

  ‘Thank you. I…well, I do appreciate it.’ She sat up so that he could deposit the tray on her lap before retreating to a chair by the window with his own. ‘Even if I don’t need it.’

  ‘Everybody needs a bit of help sometimes,’ Rocco said irritably.

  ‘I never get sick.’ The omelette was delicious. Fluffy and seasoned and just right.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Chicken pox when I was eight. I stayed off school for two weeks and enjoyed every minute of it. Since then, coughs and colds and I let nature take its course. This omelette’s delicious, by the way.’ She glanced up quickly at him and then glanced away. Sitting there by the window, with his arms on his thighs and his plate balanced on the palm of one hand, he looked just a little too disturbingly real for her liking.

  She didn’t want him in her house, overwhelming her with his blatant masculinity, but, now that he was here, she decided that the only way to deal with him was to treat him with the polite cordiality of an acquaintance. It wasn’t worth dwelling on the little technicality that they had slept together, because that would just bring all her nervous, heightened self-consciousness rushing back at her like a freight train in full
throttle.

  So she proceeded to chat harmlessly about various selected bits of her past, the ones that couldn’t lead to any further uncomfortable exploration. She made sure not to go anywhere near the subject of boyfriends, thereby avoiding the possibility of Rocco quizzing her about Sam, which would open floodgates that were much safer firmly shut.

  In fairness, though, Amy could talk about Sam until the cows came home, because his absence from her life had been so surprisingly consequence-free. It was somehow shocking to think that she had managed to have a relationship with someone whose overall effect on her had, in the end, been so transitory and nominal.

  When she finally ran out of steam, she placed the tray to the side of her and looked at Rocco with her head tilted politely at an angle.

  ‘I feel much, much better now.’ She did. ‘I told you earlier about plans I had for after I leave Losi…’

  She was doing it again, Rocco thought with a sharp stab of pure frustration. Building up that polite barrier that was as strong as steel and as high as a mountain and, the faster she built it, the stronger was his urge to crash through.

  ‘Your plans…yes…’ He moved across to take her tray, thought twice, placed it on the ground and sat on the bed. She had removed the wash cloth from her forehead and he reached out and lightly felt her skin with the back of his hand. ‘Good. Fever’s going. You were saying…?’

  ‘I…’ Amy cleared her throat. ‘Yes…I’m sorry I couldn’t take you up on your offer…it was incredibly generous and I can understand why the others jumped at it. It was fair as well…but I think it’s time I maybe made a complete change of direction….’

  The dressing gown had sagged slightly at the front and Rocco couldn’t help noticing the slither of pale skin leading down to her cleavage.

  ‘Yes…’ He shifted slightly on the bed. ‘I think I cut a very fair deal…’

  ‘It’s really something that occurred to me recently,’ Amy explained. She leaned forward, her face fired up by that enthusiasm Rocco had first seen when she had talked to him about the work she did, about the hope she brought to people living on estates that appeared to have been forgotten by the rest of society.