‘I’m thinking of going back to school.’
‘What?’
Amy laughed self-consciously. He was the first person she had shared this idea with and it was suddenly very important that he gave it the green light.
‘Going back to school. Is it such a crazy idea?’
‘Not crazy…no…’ Rocco smiled slowly, infected by her animation, forgetting the angry reason that had driven him to confront her. ‘How long would you be in the educational system?’
‘Well, I reckon that I would have to do some kind of access course to compensate for the fact that I never took my A levels, then a proper university course, but one geared towards teaching…I’d have to check it out…’
‘And what would you do about money while all this schooling was going on?’
That put a dampener on her high spirits and Amy’s smile faded.
‘I hadn’t given it much thought, actually.’ She leaned back against the headboard and folded her arms. ‘I had only just begun to play with the idea.’
Rocco pushed himself off the bed, collected the tray from where he had nearly stepped into it on the ground and proceeded to reload his own crockery onto it.
‘I’ll take this downstairs. Anything else you want? More tea?’
What she wanted, Amy thought, was for him to actually listen to what she had begun saying, but then why should he? He had come to discuss her resignation, to make sure that she got the message loud and clear that if she didn’t take the job he had offered, then it was because she was short-sighted and not because he wasn’t the model employer. He’d got that and now he couldn’t wait to be off.
‘So what do you think?’ Amy heard herself ask.
‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’
‘I’m absolutely fine now,’ Amy replied irritably. ‘My colds never last very long and I can tell that this one is on the way out. Food and tablets. Did the trick. If you could just leave the tray in the kitchen and slam the front door behind you. It self-locks.’
Rocco inclined his head to one side, gave her a brief nod and then left the bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Amy shot a disgruntled look at the closed door and shuffled herself out of the bed, removing the wretched dressing gown en route to the bathroom so that she could wash her face and brush her teeth.
Why did he always do this to her? Make her swing into actually thinking that he was human, and interested in what she had to say? That foolish delusion had landed her in bed with him and she was angry with herself now for feeling disappointed that he had calmly left, admittedly on her instructions, apparently profoundly uninterested in anything she had to say about her plans for the future.
She had washed her face and brushed her teeth and was heading back to the bed for an evening with her book and whatever happened to be on television, even if it was just background noise emanating from the portable set on top of her chest of drawers, when the bedroom door opened.
Rocco caught her in a fleeting snapshot of startled surprise. He also discovered what it was that she had been wearing underneath the voluminous dressing gown. Not much. Some tiny shortie pyjamas with a comic-strip character on the front that should have made her look like a kid, but somehow didn’t because the vest top was figure-hugging enough to show off her body. His breath caught in his throat. He forgot all about resignation letters and wounded masculine pride. For a few paralysing seconds, neither of them said anything, then they broke the stretching silence in unison, with Rocco telling her that he had washed the crockery and Amy asking why he hadn’t left.
‘I did say I would come back up to hear about your plans.’
Amy hovered awkwardly, staring at him, feeling practically naked in her attire but with legs that seemed nailed to one spot, unable to dive for cover.
‘I only asked you out of politeness,’ Amy said stiffly. ‘I thought you might like to know considering I’d turned down your job offer.’
Rocco moved into the bedroom and took up position on the same chair he had occupied to eat his omelette twenty minutes previously, freeing Amy to either head for the bed or for the only other chair in the room, which was a squashy one nicely squared by the window. Her reading chair, perfect for curling up in. She opted for the chair because tucking herself under the duvet would have been just a little too intimate for her liking.
‘So you want to go back to school,’ Rocco drawled. He thought of her going to university, surrounded by lusty men with testosterone levels that were way too high and on the hunt for someone just like her.
Amy curled up in the chair and tucked her feet under her. ‘I think, deep down, I always liked the idea of finishing my education. Now I’m being kick-started into doing it.’
‘Oh, really.’ He sat back and crossed his legs, giving his mind free rein to imagine what this impossibly naïve, impossibly sexy girl/woman might get up to released, for the first time in her life, into an environment where men were as available to sexual experience as the average dog in heat. It was an unpleasantly savage thought. ‘Considering that you’ve been offered the deal of your life, I wouldn’t say that the description kick-started quite fits the bill, would you?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have done it otherwise…’
‘And why should you have? Do you understand how difficult it is to make the transition between working and earning money to returning to college?’
‘Yes, of course I understand that! I’m not completely lacking in imagination!’
Rocco overrode her protest with fluid arrogance. In fact, he barely registered it. ‘Not to mention the sheer hard slog of getting back into the routine of learning, especially when, as in your case, you abandoned it at the age of sixteen.’
Amy felt two patches of hot colour invade her cheeks. The draining lethargy she had felt all day had disappeared, replaced by a surge of furious energy.
‘I did not abandon my education! I was forced to leave because of circumstances beyond my control! All I want to do now is catch up with everything that I missed!’
Her phraseology brought a thunderous scowl to Rocco’s face. His mind flew back through time to his own days at university. Born to achieve, he had never suffered the miserable fate of having to work especially hard. Instead, he had landed squarely on his feet and enjoyed everything university had had to offer, including the girls. He had been as keen to explore the boundaries as they had been. He was snapped out of his reverie by her next question,
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to make up for lost time?’
Rocco, caught off guard by her question, flushed darkly.
‘Well?’ Amy pressed. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘I can tell you’re feeling better. You’re attacking me.’
‘I’m asking you a simple question. That’s not attacking,’ she said in an attacking voice. ‘Antonio says the family would love to see you in Italy, that perhaps you could be persuaded to take a few days off when he’s over there. He wants to build bridges. He’s old and he’s been given a taste of mortality. I’m not the only one who might feel the need to make up for lost time…’
‘We weren’t talking about me.’
‘We weren’t, but we are now,’ Amy said bluntly. ‘Go and see him, Rocco.’
‘You will make someone a very good wife,’ Rocco grated, uncomfortably aware that somehow she had managed to scupper his argument and pin him against a wall. ‘You show all the signs of being a nag.’
For the first time that evening, Amy smiled, even though she knew that smiling was fatal, that feeling this warmth glowing inside her like a radiator that had been switched on was even more fatal.
‘So will you go?’
‘I will think about it.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
Rocco stood up and began prowling through the room, casting restless sidelong glances at her. ‘I’ll go,’ he finally muttered, scowling. ‘Happy?’ When she nodded, he paused to stand in front of her, then leaned down to rest his hands
on the springy arms of her chair. ‘So can we get back to our original conversation?’
‘I already know all the pitfalls.’
‘You will be entering as a mature student,’ Rocco stated, preferring this line of thought to her jabbing inquisition and to the thought of her being surrounded by lusty boys barely out of their teens. ‘You might well find yourself like a fish out of water.’
‘No more than when I started working for Losi Construction,’ Amy retorted. From a safe distance, her lack of appropriate clothing was all right, but with him leaning over her she was acutely aware of the bare skin on display. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, pressing back into the chair, ‘there are an awful lot of mature students on teaching courses.’
‘And what about the money?’
‘What money?’
‘It costs to support yourself for four odd years of your life with no income coming in apart from the basic teaching grant.’
‘If you don’t go back to your chair, you’re going to end up getting my germs.’
Rocco ignored her. ‘How do you intend to do that?’
‘I happen to have some money saved,’ Amy snapped, ‘and then there’ll be the redundancy package offered by the company.’
Rocco grunted and took himself off to the window just by her chair so that he could perch on the sill and continue to observe her with narrowed eyes. ‘Four years is a hell of a long time to live off a limited amount of money.’
‘I’m a very careful person.’ She twisted round so that she could look at him. ‘Anyway, what I decide to do with my life is none of your business.’
‘Theoretically, yes,’ Rocco drawled, ‘but I find that sleeping with someone does allow them a little more leeway when it comes to opinions…’
This time it was Amy’s turn to flush but she managed to keep her eyes steady. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘Fine.’ Rocco pushed himself away from the window and strolled towards the bedroom door. ‘But here’s a piece of advice. If you do go back to school, try to remember that approximately ninety-nine per cent of the boys you meet, and I emphasise the word boys, will be sex mad. Nothing to do with love.’
Amy bristled with fury, but managed to hold it in. This was what it was all about. More lessons in how she should take care of herself. Did he somehow see her as his pet mission? The misguided goody-goody whose poor taste in the opposite sex had spurred him on to save her from a potential mistake? An innocent country bumpkin to whom he had been perhaps marginally attracted through sheer boredom and whose naïvety had been a challenge for him, if only to prove that by making love to her he could rescue her from her infernal, foolish ignorance when it came to Sam?
She smiled sweetly at him. ‘Which, interestingly, still leaves one per cent. Oh, and close the door on the way out, would you?’
CHAPTER NINE
AMY looked at her reflection in the mirror and gave herself a stern lecture.
The lecture ran along the lines of making sure to avoid Rocco as much as possible. That uphill ambition was sweetened slightly by a process of calm reasoning that predicted that she could manage to do that if she played her cards right and simply scuttled from group to group depending on whether he was there or not.
No problem, she told herself, leaning forward for a closer scrutiny of her make-up. In her head, she had lathered it on, only missing appearing clown-like by a whisker. In reality, she had applied just a shade of translucent powder, some blusher, a light flirtation with dark brown kohl pencil under her eyes and lip gloss. Her hair shone.
Her dress, however, was more of a problem. The sales assistant had persuaded her into a rather daring shade of jade green in a style that even more daringly clung to every inch of her body like a glove, ending just above her knees. A respectable length that didn’t seem that respectable given the design. Her high heels added to the glamour factor. Too late to change into anything else, not that she had anything appropriate for the occasion, Amy hoped that she didn’t appear tarty.
Really, this occasion shouldn’t have been happening. A fortnight ago, she had suggested to her team that she take them out for a leaving do. A restaurant, perhaps. She had duly gone to clear it with Rocco, to ask whether the company would foot the bill, only to run into a barrage of objections culminating in his decision, cunningly veiled as a suggestion, that instead of an isolated small leaving party for just her team they have something rather more elaborate involving all the employees of the company. A sort of thank-you for the effort they had all put in over the years and a welcome to the new start.
‘But I wanted something a little more intimate,’ Amy had muttered, hovering in front of his desk and evading those brilliant eyes focused on her.
‘Your work has involved more than just the members of your team.’ Rocco had sprawled back in his leather chair and surveyed her coolly. ‘Hardly fair to go for the intimate option and sideline everyone else.’
It had seemed easier to agree. Only a week previously, in fact, precisely five days after he had left her house with her trilling reminder to him that she would be able to manage going back into education and would be looking forward to the mysterious one per cent of men who might not be decades younger than her and intent on climbing into her bed, her team had shifted out of their premises and into the head office. Re-absorption had commenced in earnest. Rocco, having made his mind up, was not hanging about. And he had been in a foul mood every time she had bumped into him in the graceful old building.
In fact, he had been in a foul mood on each and every occasion that he had summoned her into his office to ask for information he had felt he needed from her.
Recently, Amy had taken to ducking into the Ladies whenever she spotted him approaching down the corridor from his office to the partitioned section in which she and her team had been temporarily located.
She hadn’t wanted a prolonged argument with him on the merits and drawbacks of an intimate restaurant for her and her team versus a room booked in one of the top country houses close to Stratford for the entire company. So she had hurriedly agreed, no argument, not even a debate.
Now she realised she was dreading it. At six-thirty, with her silky fringe shawl lightly wrapped over her shoulders, she stepped into the taxi that she had pre-booked and gazed absent-mindedly out of the window as it rushed her along to the venue.
It was hard to believe that she only had a little over one week left at Losi Construction. She had received a lovely, encouraging phone call from Antonio when she had written to him with her plans, had received encouragement from everyone, in fact, but, instead of feeling excited at the Brave New World awaiting her, she felt sickeningly hollow.
And she knew why.
She had had a good few days to come to grips with exactly why she was feeling the way she was, and the only thing that surprised her was that it had taken so long to reach the obvious conclusions.
Not content with fraternising with the enemy, as Sam had once called it, she had fallen in love with him. Oh, yes, she had managed to give herself a load of reasons as to why her heart went into overdrive whenever he was around and why her whole body seemed to come alive simply at the thought of him. She had put it down to the misguided notion that anyone whose plans had the potential to alter the course of her life would have had that sort of effect. She had excused her attraction to him on the grounds that his dynamism and powerful good looks made it a simple case of sexual lust, but that she could handle it because she didn’t like him. Not really.
It seemed pathetic now that she had admitted the awful truth to herself. She was head over heels in love, in lust, in everything with a man who played with women, who had avoided commitment into his thirties as most people would avoid the plague. She had made the ultimate foolish mistake and that was why there was no reason she could even consider working alongside him on a never-never basis. That way lay madness.
She arrived at the country house with her thoughts still free-wheeling in her head and took sever
al deep breaths just standing there, gazing up blankly at the sumptuous stone building with its dominating, coldly impressive edifice, portals guarded by four stately columns. Having visited this particular stately house several times, she was still struck by its perfect English beauty. It lay perched on the brow of a hill, gazing down at some four hundred acres of parkland. Last time she had been greeted by peacocks, which were left free to roam the gardens, but this time there was no sign of them, which was good because they unnerved her.
By the time she had mounted the curving stone steps up to the entrance, her heart was thumping like a trapped bird in a cage.
In fact, thumping so hard that she barely noticed the magnificent surroundings. She just followed the instructions of the middle-aged chap who had been waiting to greet her, took a glass of champagne from one of the girls holding out a tray because she needed something to do with her hands, and walked into a room blessedly packed with everyone from the office.
As with most affairs of this nature, a certain amount of initial effort was made between members of staff who rarely communicated. Amy could see Freddy with a glass of champagne in one hand trapped in a polite conversation with Richard Newton and his wife, Pamela. Several of the younger people, secretaries and their other halves, had already formed their natural groups and were in animated discussion about something or other. In between the eighty-odd people, various waiters and waitresses were circulating with trays of appetisers and drinks. The noise levels were high but she still jumped when a finger lightly tapped her on the shoulder and she swung round to discover that it was only Dee, wearing a dress as white as her hair and looking so unlike her normal self that Amy grinned and relaxed.
‘Well, I don’t often get to have drinks and dinner in a place like this—’ Dee read her expression and grinned back ‘—so I thought I’d go the whole hog. I mean, you know what my usual garb is, but then again fancy clothes aren’t exactly a good idea to wear to work, given where our little place is located. Or should I say was.’
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