“You are lost, signora?” he asked.

In Italian, his voice was just about the sexiest thing she’d ever heard, but his perfect, lusciously accented English sent a shiver rippling down her spine that had nothing to do with the snow dripping from her hair. That was trickling between her breasts and turning to steam.

“I know exactly where I am, signor,” she said, looking into those lusciously dark eyes. To emphasize the point, she eased off the fine leather glove and tapped the piazza on the map with the tip of a crimson nail.

“No,” he repeated, and this time it wasn’t a question as, never taking his eyes from hers, he wrapped long fingers around her hand and moved her finger two inches to the right. “You are here.”

His hand was warm against her cold skin. On the surface everything was deceptively still, but inside, like a volcano on the point of blowing, she was liquid heat.

She fought the urge to swallow. “I am?”

Breathe, breathe…

Hoping she sounded a lot more in control than she was, she said, “One piazza looks very much like another on a map. Unfortunately, neither of them is where I was going.”

“And yet here you are.”

And yet here she was, falling into eyes as dark as the espresso in his cup.

Vettori’s Damsel

in Distress

Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She now lives in the west of England, close to the Regency grandeur of Bath and the ancient mystery of Stonehenge, and these days leaves her pen to do the traveling.

For news of upcoming books, visit Liz’s website, www.lizfielding.com.

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘Life is like ice cream on a hot day. Enjoy it before it melts.’

—from Rosie’s Little Book of Ice Cream

IT WAS LATE and throwing down a sleety rain when Geli emerged from the Metro at Porta Garibaldi into the Milan night. Her plan had been to take a taxi for the last short leg of her journey but it was par for the course, on a day when everything had conspired to keep her from her destination, that there wasn’t one in sight.

Terrific.

The weather had been mild with a promise of spring in the air when she’d left Longbourne and, optimistically, she’d assumed Italy would be warmer; something to do with all those sun-soaked travel programmes on the television, no doubt. If she’d had the sense to check the local weather she’d have been wearing thermals instead of lace beneath her dress, leggings over her ultra-sheer black tights and a lot more than a lace choker around her neck.

Not the most practical outfit for travelling but she was going to Milan, style capital of Europe, where the inhabitants didn’t wear joggers unless they were jogging and policewomen wore high heels.

In her determination to make a fashionable impression she had overlooked the fact that Milan was in the north of Italy. Where there were mountains. And, apparently, sleet.

Okaaay...

According to the details she’d downloaded from the Internet, her apartment was no more than a ten-minute stroll from the Metro. She could handle a bit of sleet. In style.

She checked her map and, having orientated herself, she pulled the wide hood of her coat over ears that were beginning to tingle, shouldered her roomy leather tote and, hauling her suitcase behind her, set off.

New country, new start, new life.

Unlike her sisters, who were married, raising families and, with their rapidly expanding ice cream events business, had life all sewn up and sorted, she was throwing herself into the dark—literally.

With little more than an Italian phrasebook and a head full of ideas, she was setting out to grab every experience that life offered her. If, as she crossed the railway bridge into the unknown, the thrill of nervous excitement that shot through her was edged with a ripple of apprehension, a shiver of fear—well, that was perfectly natural. She was the baby of the family.

She might be the one with the weird clothes, the ‘attitude’, but they knew it was all front; that this was her first time out in the world. Okay, she’d been to Italy before, but that was on a student study trip and she’d been with a group of people she knew. This time she was on her own, without the family safety net of loving hands reaching out to steady her if she stumbled. To catch her if she fell. Testing herself...

‘Scusi!’

‘Sorry...um...scusi...’ She steered her case to one side to let someone in a hurry pass her and then, as she looked up, she saw the colourful street art gleaming under the street lights—bright tropical scenes that lit up dull concrete—and caught her breath.

Despite the icy stuff stinging her face, excitement won out as she remembered why she had chosen Italy, Milan... Isola.

The minute she’d opened a magazine, seen the photographs, read about this enclave of artists, musicians, designers all doing their own thing, she’d been hooked. This was a place where she could spread her wings, explore her love of fashion, seek new ways of making art and maybe, just maybe fall in love. Nothing serious, not for keeps, but for fun.

Twenty minutes later, her face stiff with cold, the freezing stuff finding its way into a hood designed more for glamour than protection, and totally lost, the bounce had left her step.

She could almost see her oldest sister, Elle, shaking her head and saying, You’re so impatient, Geli! Why didn’t you wait for a taxi?

Because it was an adventure! And the directions had been simple enough. She’d counted the turnings, checked the name of the street, turned right and her apartment should be there, right in front of her, on the corner.

Except it wasn’t.

Instead of the pink-painted five-storey house on the corner of a street of equally pretty houses that overlooked the twice-weekly market, she was faced with eight-feet-high wooden barriers surrounding a construction site.

No need to panic. Obviously she’d missed a turning. There had been a couple of narrow openings—more alleys than streets—that she’d thought were too small to be the turnings on her map. Obviously she was wrong.

She backtracked, recounted and headed down one just about wide enough to take a Fiat 500. It ended in a tiny courtyard piled up with crates and lit by a dim lamp over what looked like the back entrance to a shop. In the dark something moved, a box fell, and she beat a hasty retreat.

The few people about had their heads down and her, ‘Scusi...’ was blown away on wind that was driving the sleet, thicker now, into her face.

It was time to take another look at the map.

Ducking into the shelter of the doorway of a shuttered shop, she searched her tote for the powerful mini torch given to her by her explorer brother-in-law as a parting gift.

She’d reminded him that she was going to one of the world’s great cities rather than venturing into the jungle. His response was that in his experience there was little difference and as something wet and hairy brushed against her leg she let out a nervous shriek.

Make that one for the explorer.

A plaintive mew reassured her and the bright beam of her torch picked out a tiny kitten, wet fur sticking to its skin, cowering in the doorway.

‘Hey, sweetie,’ she said softly, reaching out to it, but it backed away nervously. She knew how it felt. ‘You’re much too little to be out by yourself on a night like this.’

The poor creature, wetter and certainly colder than she was, mewed pitifully in agreement. She’d bought a cheese sandwich on the plane but had been too churned up with nerves and excitement to eat it and she opened it up, broke a piece off and offered it to the kitten. Hunger beat fear and it snatched the food from her fingers, desperately licking at the butter.

Geli broke off another piece and then turned her attention to the simple street map. Clearly she’d taken a wrong turn and wandered into the commercial district, now closed for the night, but for the life of her couldn’t see where she’d gone wrong.

Phoning Signora Franco, her landlady, was not an option. The signora’s English was about on a par with her own Italian—enthusiastic, but short on delivery. What she needed was one of Isola’s famous cafés or bars, somewhere warm and dry with people who would know the area and, bracing herself to face to what was now whiter, more solid than mere sleet, she peered along the street.

Behind her, the kitten mewed and she sighed. There were a few lights on in upper floors but down here everything was shut up. The tiny creature was on its own and was too small to survive the night without shelter. The location might be new, but some things never changed.

Inevitably, having begged for help, the kitten panicked when she bent and scooped it up but she eased it into one of the concealed seam pockets hidden amongst the full layers of her coat.

She’d come back tomorrow and see if she could find someone who’d take responsibility for it but right now it was time to put her Italian to the test. She’d memorised the question and could rattle off ‘Dov’è Via Pepone?’ without a second thought. Understanding the answers might be more of a problem.

She stuffed her torch, along with the useless map, in her bag and began to retrace her steps back to the road from the station, this time carrying straight on instead of turning off.

In the photographs she’d seen it had been summer; there were open-air jazz concerts, the communal garden and collective ‘bring a dish’ lunches where every Tuesday the local people gathered to share food and reinforce the community ties. People sitting outside trendy cafés. Perfect.

This was the wrong time of day, the wrong time of year. Even the famous Milan ‘promenade’ was on hold but, encouraged by a sudden snatch of music—as if someone had opened a door very briefly—she hurried to the corner and there, on the far side of a piazza, lights shone through a steamy window.

It was Café Rosa, famous for jazz, cocktails and being a hangout of local artists who used the walls as a gallery. More relieved than she cared to admit, she slithered across the cobbles and pushed open the door.

She was immediately swathed in warmth, the rich scent of luscious food and cool music from a combo on a tiny stage in the corner mingling with bursts of steam from the expresso machine. Tables of all shapes and sizes were filled with people eating, drinking, gossiping, and a tall dark-haired man was leaning against the counter talking to the barista.

If the scene had been posed by the Italian Tourist Board it couldn’t have been more perfect and, despite the cold, she felt a happy little rush of anticipation.

A few people had turned when the door opened and the chatter died away until the only sound was the low thrum of a double bass.

The man standing at the bar, curious about what had caught everyone’s attention, half turned and anticipation whooshed off the scale in an atavistic charge of raw desire; instant, bone-deep need for a man before you heard his voice, felt his touch, knew his name.

For a moment, while she remembered how to breathe, it felt as if someone had pressed the pause button on the scene, freezing the moment in soft focus. Muted colours reflected in polished steel, lights shimmering off the bottles and glasses behind the bar, her face reflected, ghost-like, behind the advertisement on a mirror. And Mr Italy with his kiss-me mouth and come-to-bed eyes.

Forget the thick dark hair and cheekbones sharp enough to write their own modelling contract, it was those chocolate-dark eyes that held her transfixed. If they had been looking out of a tourist poster there would be a stampede to book holidays in Italy.

He straightened, drawing attention to the way his hair curled onto his neck, a pair of scandalously broad shoulders, strong wrists emerging from folded-back cuffs.

‘Signora...’ he murmured as he moved back a little to make room for her at the counter and, oh, joy, his voice matched the face, the body.

She might have passed out for lack of oxygen at that moment but a tall, athletic-looking blonde placed a tiny cup of espresso in front of him before—apparently unaware that she was serving a god—turning to her.

‘Sta nevicando? E brutto tempo.’

What?

Oh...

Flustered at being confronted with phrases that hadn’t featured so far on the Italian course she’d downloaded onto her iPod, she took the safe option and, having sucked in a snowflake that was clinging to her lip, she lowered her hood. The chatter gradually resumed and, finally getting a move it message through to her legs, she parked her suitcase and crossed to the bar.

‘Cosa prendi, signora?’

Oh, whew, something she understood. ‘Um... Vorrai un espresso...s’il vous plait...’ Her answer emerged in a mangled mixture of English, Italian and French. ‘No... I mean...’ Oh, heck.

The blonde grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I got the gist,’ she replied, her English spiced with an Australian accent.

‘Oh, thank goodness you’re English. No! Sorry, Australian—’ Achingly conscious of the man leaning against the counter, an impressive thigh stretching the cloth of his jeans just inches from her hip, she attempted to recover the cool, sophisticated woman of the world image with which she’d intended to storm Milan. ‘Shall I go out, walk around the block and try that again?’

The woman grinned. ‘Stay right where you are. I’ll get that espresso. You’ve just arrived in Isola?’ she asked as she measured the coffee.

‘In Isola, in Milan, in Italy. I’ve been working on my Italian—I picked some up when I spent a month in Tuscany as a student—but I learned French at school and it seems to be my brain’s foreign language default setting when I panic.’

Her brain was too busy drooling over Mr Italy to give a toot.

‘Give it a week,’ the woman said. ‘Can I get you anything else?’

‘A side order of directions?’ she asked hopefully, doing her best to ignore the fact that it wasn’t just her brain; her entire body was responding on a visceral level to the overdose of pheromones wafting in her direction. It was like being bombarded by butterflies. Naked...

She was doing her level best not to stare at him.

Was he looking at her?

‘You are lost, signora?’ he asked.

In Italian, his voice was just about the sexiest thing she’d ever heard, but his perfect, lusciously accented English sent a shiver rippling down her spine that had nothing to do with the snow dripping from her hair. That was trickling between her breasts and turning to steam.

She took a breath and, doing her best to remember why she was there, said, ‘Not lost exactly...’ Retrieving the apartment details from her tote, she placed it, map side up, on the counter and turned to him, intending to explain what had happened. He was definitely looking and, confronted with those eyes, the questioning kink of his brow, language of any description deserted her.

‘No?’ he prompted.

Clearly he was used to women losing the power of speech in his presence. From the relaxed way he was leaning against the bar, to eyes that, with one look made her feel as if he owned her, everything about him screamed danger.

First day in Isola and she could imagine having a lot of fun with Mr Italy and, from the way he was looking at her, he was thinking much the same thing about her.

Was that how it had been for her mother that first time? One look from some brawny roustabout at the annual village fair and she’d been toast?

‘I know exactly where I am, signor,’ she said, looking into those lusciously dark eyes. To emphasise the point she eased off the fine leather glove that had done little to keep her hand warm and tapped the piazza with the tip of a crimson nail.

‘No,’ he repeated, and this time it wasn’t a question as, never taking his eyes from hers, he wrapped long fingers around her hand and moved her finger two inches to the right. ‘You are here.’

His hand was warm against her cold skin. On the surface everything was deceptively still but inside, like a volcano on the point of blowing, she was liquid heat.

She fought the urge to swallow. ‘I am?’

She was used to people staring at her. From the age of nine she had been the focus of raised eyebrows and she’d revelled in it.

This man’s look was different. It sizzled through her and, afraid that the puddle of snow melting at her feet was about to turn to steam, she turned to the map.

It didn’t help. Not one bit. His hand was still covering hers, long ringless fingers darkly masculine against her own pale skin, and she found herself wondering how they would look against her breast. How they would feel...

Under the layers of black—coat, dress, the lace of her bra—her nipples hardened in response to her imagination, sending touch-me messages to all parts south and she bit on her lower lip to stop herself from whimpering.

Breathe, breathe...

She cleared the cobwebs from her throat and, hoping she sounded a lot more in control than she was, said, ‘One piazza looks very much like another on a map. Unfortunately, neither of them is where I was going.’

‘And yet here you are.’

And yet here she was, falling into eyes as dark as the espresso in his cup.

The café retreated. The bright labels on bottles behind the bar, the clatter of cutlery, the low thrum of a double bass became no more than a blur of colour, sound. All her senses were focused on the touch of his fingers curling about her hand, his molten eyes reflecting back her own image. For a moment nothing moved until, abruptly, he turned away and used the hand that had been covering hers to pick up his espresso and drain it in one swallow.

He’d looked away first and she waited for the rush of power that always gave her but it didn’t come. For the first time in her life it didn’t feel like a victory.

Toast...

‘Where are you going, signora?’ He carefully replaced the tiny cup on its saucer.

‘Here...’ She looked down but the ink had run, leaving a dirty splodge where the name of the street had been.

‘Tell him the address and Dante will point you in the right direction,’ the barista said, putting an espresso in front of her. ‘He knows every inch of Isola.’

‘Dante?’ Geli repeated. ‘As in the Inferno?’ No wonder he was so hot... Catching the barista’s knowing grin, she quickly added, ‘Or perhaps your mother is an admirer of the Pre-Raphaelites?’

‘Are you visiting someone?’ he asked, ignoring the question.

‘No.’ Mentally kicking herself for speaking before her brain was in gear—he must have heard that one a thousand times—she shook her head. ‘I’m here to work. I’ve leased an apartment for a year. Geli Amery,’ she added, offering him her hand without a thought for the consequences.

He wrapped his hand around hers and held it.

‘Dante Vettori.’ Rolled out in that sexy Italian accent, his name was a symphony of seduction. ‘Your name is Jelly?’ He lifted an eyebrow, but not like the disapproving old biddies in the village shop. Not at all. ‘Like the wobbly stuff the British inflict on small children at birthday parties?’

Okay, so she’d probably asked for that with her stupid ‘Inferno’ remark, but he wasn’t the only one to have heard it all before.

‘Or add to peanut butter in a sandwich if you’re American?’ She lifted an eyebrow right back at him, which was asking for trouble but who knew if he’d ever lift his eyebrow at her like that again? This was definitely one of those ‘live for the day’ moments she had vowed to grab with both hands and she was going for it.

‘É possįbile,’ he said, the lines bracketing his mouth deepening into a smile. ‘But I suspect not.’

He could call her what he liked as long as he kept smiling like that...

‘You suspect right. Geli is short for Angelica—as in angelica archangelica, which I’m told is a very handsome plant.’ And she smiled back. ‘You may be more familiar with its crystallised stem. The British use it to decorate the cakes and trifles that they inflict on small children at birthday parties.’

His laugh was rich and warm, creating a fan of creases around his eyes, emphasising those amazing cheekbones, widening his mouth and drawing attention to a lower lip that she wanted to lick...

Make that burnt toast...

In an attempt to regain control of her vital organs, Geli picked up her espresso and downed it in a single swallow, Italian style. It was hotter than she expected, shocking her out of the lusty mist.

‘I had intended to take a taxi—’ Her vocal cords were still screaming from the hot coffee and the words came out as little more than a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Unfortunately, there were none at the Porta Garibaldi and on the apartment details it said that Via Pepone was only a ten-minute walk.’

‘Taxis are always in short supply when the weather’s bad,’ the barista said, as Dante, frowning now, turned the details over to look at the picture of the pretty pink house where she’d be living for the next year. ‘Welcome to Isola, Geli. Lisa Vettori—I’m from the Australian branch of the family. Dante’s my cousin and, although you wouldn’t know it from the way he’s lounging around on the wrong side of the counter, Café Rosa is his bar.’

‘I pay you handsomely so that I can stay on this side of the bar,’ he reminded her, without looking up.

‘Make the most of it, mate. I have a fitting for a bridesmaid dress in Melbourne on Tuesday. Unless you get your backside in gear and find a temp to take my place, come Sunday you’ll be the one getting up close and personal with the Gaggia.’ She took a swipe at the marble counter top with a cloth to remove an invisible mark. ‘Have you got a job lined up, Geli?’ she asked.

‘A job?’

‘You said you were here to work. Have you ever worked in a bar? Only there’s a temporary—’

‘If you’ve been travelling all day you must be hungry,’ Dante said, cutting his cousin off in mid-sentence. ‘We’ll have the risotto, Lisa.’ And, holding onto the details of her apartment and, more importantly, the map, he headed for a table for two that was tucked away in a quiet corner.

CHAPTER TWO

‘There’s nothing more cheering than a good friend when you’re in trouble—except a good friend with ice cream.’

—from Rosie’s Little Book of Ice Cream

TOO SURPRISED TO REACT, Geli didn’t move. Okay, so there had been some fairly heavy-duty flirting going on, but that was a bit arrogant—

Dante pulled out a chair and waited for her to join him.

Make that quite a lot arrogant. Did he really think she would simply follow him?

‘Angelica?’

No one used her full name, but he said it with a ‘g’ so soft that it felt like chocolate melting on her tongue and while her head was still saying, Oh, please...her body went to him as if he’d tugged a chain.

‘Give me your coat,’ he said, ‘and I’ll hang it up to dry.’

She swallowed.

It was late. She should be on her way but for that she needed directions, which was a good, practical reason to do as he said. Then again, nothing that had happened since she’d walked through the door of Café Rosa had been about the practicalities and, letting her tote slide from her shoulder onto the chair, she dropped her glove on the table and began to tug at its pair.

Warm now, the fine leather clung to her skin and as she removed her glove, one finger at a time, Geli discovered that there was more than one way of being in control.

A chain had two ends and now Dante was the one being hauled in as she slowly revealed her hand with each unintentionally provocative tug.

She dropped the glove beside its pair and everything—the heartbeat pounding in her ears, her breathing—slowed right down as, never taking her eyes off his, she lowered her hand and, one by one, began to slip the small jet buttons that nipped her coat into her waist.

There were a dozen of them and, taking her time, she started at the bottom. One, two, three... His gaze never wavered for a second until the bias cut swathes of velvet, cashmere and butter-soft suede—flaring out in layers that curved from just below her knees at the front to her heels at the back—fell open to reveal the black scoop-necked mini-dress that stopped four inches above her knees.

She waited a heartbeat and then turned and let the coat slip from her shoulders, leaving him to catch it.

An arch got you lift of an eyebrow as she thanked him should leave him in no doubt that the next move was up to him and she was more than ready for anything he had to offer, but as she glanced over her shoulder, fell into the velvet softness of his eyes, she forgot the plot.

He was so close. His breath was warm on her cheek, his mouth was inches away and her eyebrow stayed put as she imagined closing the gap and taking his delicious lower lip between hers.

Make that burned to a crisp toast. Toast about to burst into flames...

She blinked as a clatter of cutlery shattered the moment and Dante looked down at her coat as if wondering where it had come from.

‘I’ll hang this by the heater to dry,’ he said.

‘Are you mad?’ Lisa, the table swiftly laid, took it from him. ‘You don’t hang something like this over a radiator as if it’s any old chain store raincoat. This kind of quality costs a fortune and it needs tender loving care.’ She checked the label. ‘Dark Angel.’ She looked up. ‘Angel?’ she repeated and then, with a look of open admiration, ‘Is that you, Geli?’

‘What? Oh, yes,’ she said, grateful for the distraction. Falling into bed for fun with a man was one thing. Falling into anything else was definitely off the agenda... ‘Dark Angel is my label.’

‘You’re a fashion designer?’

‘Not exactly. I make one-off pieces. I studied art but I’ve been making clothes all my life and somehow I’ve ended up combining the two.’

‘Clothes as art?’ She grinned. ‘I like it.’

‘Let’s hope you’re not the only one.’

‘Not a chance. This is absolutely lush. Did you make the choker, too?’ she asked. ‘Or is that an original?’

‘If only...’ Geli touched the ornate Victorian-style lace and jet band at her throat. ‘It’s recycled from stuff in my odds and ends box. I cut my dress from something I found on the “worn once” rack at the church jumble sale and—’ if she kept talking she wouldn’t grab Dante Vettori ‘—my coat was made from stuff I’ve collected over the years.’

‘Well...wow. You are so going to fit in here. Upcycling is really big in Isola.’

‘It’s one of the reasons I’m here. I want to work with people who are doing the same kind of thing.’

‘And I suggested you might want a job behind the bar.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘If you’ve got something you want to exhibit I’m sure Dan will find space for it.’ She glanced at him, but he offered no encouragement. ‘Right, well, I’ll go and find a hanger for this,’ she said, holding the coat up so that it didn’t touch the floor. She’d only gone a couple of steps when she stopped. ‘Geli, there’s something moving... Omigod!’ She screamed and, forgetting all about its lushness, dropped the coat and leapt back. ‘It’s a rat!’

The musicians stopped playing mid-note. The patrons of the café, who had resumed chatting, laughing, eating, turned as one.

Then the kitten, confused, frightened, bolted across the floor and pandemonium broke out as men leapt to their feet and women leapt on chairs.

‘It’s all right!’ Geli yelled as she dived under a table to grab the kitten before some heavy-footed male stamped on the poor creature. Terrified, it scratched and sank its little needle teeth deep into the soft pad of her thumb before she emerged with it grasped in her hand. ‘It’s a kitten!’ Then, in desperation when that didn’t have any effect, ‘Uno kitty!’

She held it up so that everyone could see. It had dried a little in the shelter of her pocket but it was a scrawny grey scrap, not much bigger than her hand. No one looked convinced and, when a woman let loose a nervous scream, Dante hooked his arm around her waist and swept her and the kitten through the café to a door that led to the rear.

As it swung shut behind him the sudden silence was brutal.

‘Uno kitty?’ Dante demanded, looming over her. Much too close.

‘I don’t know the Italian for kitten,’ she said, shaken by the speed at which events had overtaken her.

‘It’s gattino, but Lisa is right, that wretched creature looks more like a drowned rat.’

And the one word you didn’t want to hear if you were in the catering business was rat.

‘I’m sorry but I found it shivering in a doorway. It was soaking wet. Freezing. I couldn’t leave it there.’

‘Maybe not—’ he didn’t look convinced ‘—but rats, cats, it’s all the same to the health police.’

‘I understand. My sisters are in the catering business.’ And in similar circumstances they would have killed her. ‘I only stopped to ask for directions. I didn’t mean to stay for more than a minute or two.’

Epic distraction...

She was about to repeat her apology when the door opened behind them. Dante dropped his arm from her waist as Lisa appeared with her coat and bag over one arm and trailing her suitcase, leaving a cold space.

‘Have you calmed them down?’ he asked.

‘Nothing like free drinks all round to lighten the mood. Bruno is dealing with it.’

Geli groaned. ‘It’s my fault. I’ll pay for them.’

‘No...’ Lisa and Dante spoke as one then Lisa added, ‘The first rule of catering is that if you see a rat, you don’t scream. The second is that you don’t shout, It’s a rat... Unfortunately, when I felt something move and that something was grey and furry I totally— Omigod, Geli, you’re bleeding!’

Geli glanced at the trickle of blood running down her palm. ‘It’s nothing. The poor thing panicked.’

‘A poor thing that’s been who knows where,’ Lisa replied, ‘eating who knows what filth. Come on, we’ll go upstairs and I’ll clean it up for you.’

‘It’s okay, honestly,’ Geli protested, now seriously embarrassed. ‘It’s late and Signora Franco, the woman who owns the apartment I’ve rented, will be waiting for me with the key. I would have called her to let her know my plane had been delayed but her English is even worse than my Italian.’

Geli glanced at her watch. She’d promised to let her sisters know when she was safely in her apartment and it was well past ten o’clock. She’d warned them that her plane had been delayed but if she didn’t text them soon they’d be imagining all sorts.

‘There’s no need to worry about Signora Franco,’ Dante said.

‘Oh, but—’

‘Via Pepone has been demolished to make way for an office block,’ he said, his expression grim. ‘I hoped to break it to you rather more gently, but I’m afraid the apartment you have rented no longer exists.’

It took a moment for what Dante had said to sink in. There was no Via Pepone? No apartment? ‘But I spoke to Signora Franco...’

‘Find a box for Rattino, Lis, before he does any more damage.’ Dante took her coat and bag from his cousin and ushered her towards the stairs.

Geli didn’t move. This had to be a mistake. ‘Maybe I have the name of the street wrong?’ she said, trying not to think about how the directions on the map she’d been sent had taken her to a construction site. ‘Maybe it’s a typo—’

‘Let’s get your hand cleaned up. Are your tetanus shots up to date?’ he asked.

‘What? Oh, yes...’ She stood her ground for another ten seconds but she couldn’t go back into the restaurant with the kitten and if there was a problem with the apartment she had to know. And Lisa was right—the last thing she needed was an infected hand.

Concentrate on that. And repeating her apology wouldn’t hurt.

‘I really am sorry about the rat thing,’ she said as she began to climb the stairs. ‘The kitten really would have died if I’d left it out there.’

‘So you picked it up and put it in the pocket of your beautiful coat?’ He liked her coat... ‘Do you do that often?’

‘All the time,’ she admitted. ‘Coat pockets, bags, the basket of my bicycle. My sisters did their best to discourage me, but eventually they gave it up as a lost cause.’

‘And are they always this ungrateful? Your little strays?’ As they reached the landing he took her hand in his to check the damage and Geli forgot about the kitten, her apartment, pretty much everything as the warmth of his fingers seeped beneath her skin and into the bone.

When she didn’t answer, he looked up and the temperature rose to the point where she was blushing to her toes.

Toast in flames. Smoke alarm hurting her eardrums...

‘Frightened animals lash out,’ she said quickly, waiting for him to open one of the doors, but he kept her hand in his and headed up a second flight of stairs.

There was only one door at the top. He let go of her hand, took a key from his pocket, unlocked it and pushed it open, standing back so that she could go ahead of him.

Geli wasn’t sure what she’d expected; she hadn’t actually been doing a lot of thinking since he’d turned and looked at her. Her brain had been working overtime dealing with the bombardment of her senses—new sights, new scents, a whole new level of physical response to a man.

Maybe a staff restroom...

Or maybe not.

There was a small entrance hall with hooks for coats, a rack for boots. Dante hung her coat beside a worn waxed jacket then opened an inner door to a distinctly masculine apartment.

There were tribal rugs from North Africa on the broad planks of a timber floor gleaming with the patina of age, splashes of brilliantly coloured modern art on the walls, shelves crammed with books. There was the warm glow and welcoming scent of logs burning in a wood stove and an enormous old leather sofa pulled up invitingly in front of it. The kind with big rounded arms—perfect for curling up against—and thick squashy cushions.

‘You live here,’ she said stupidly.

‘Yes.’ His face was expressionless as he tossed her bag onto the sofa. ‘I’m told that it’s very lower middle class to live over the shop but it suits me.’

‘Well, that’s just a load of tosh.’

‘Tosh?’ he repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before. Maybe he hadn’t but it hardly needed explaining. It was all there in the sound.

‘Total tosh. One day I’m going to live in a house exactly like this,’ she said, turning around so that she could take in every detail. ‘The top floor for me, workshops on the floor below me and a showroom on the ground floor—’ she came to halt, facing him ‘—and my great-grandfather was the younger son of an earl.’

‘An earl?’

Realising just how pompous that must have sounded, Geli said, ‘Of course my grandmother defied her father and married beneath her, so we’re not on His Lordship’s Christmas card list, which may very well prove the point. Not that they’re on ours,’ she added.

‘They disowned her?’

She shrugged. ‘Apparently they had other, more obedient children.’

And that was more personal information than she’d shared with anyone, ever, but she didn’t want him to think any of them gave a fig for their aristocratic relations. Even in extremis they’d never turned to them for help.

‘The family, narrow-minded and full of secrets, is the source of all our discontents,’ Dante replied, clearly quoting someone.

‘Who said that?’ she asked.

‘I just did.’

‘No, I meant...’ She shook her head. He knew exactly what she meant. ‘I have a great family.’ For years it had just been the four of them. Her sisters, Elle and Sorrel, and their grandmother. They’d been solid. A tight-knit unit standing against the world. That had all changed the day a stranger had arrived on the doorstep with an ice cream van. Now her sisters were not only successful businesswomen, but married and producing babies as if they were going out of fashion, while Great-Uncle Basil—who’d sent the van—and Grandma were warming their old bones in the south of France.

‘You are very fortunate.’

‘Yes...’ If you ignored the empty space left by her mother. By an unknown father. By the legions of aunts, uncles, cousins that she didn’t know. Who didn’t know her.

‘The bathroom is through here,’ Dante said, opening a door to an inner hall.

‘Il bagno...’ she said brightly, making an effort to think in Italian as she followed him. Making an effort to think.

His bagno would, in estate agent speak, have been described as a ‘roomy vintage-style’ bathroom. In this case she was pretty certain the fittings—a stately roll-top bath with claw feet and gleaming brass taps, a loo with a high tank and a wide, deep washbasin—were the real deal.

‘I’ll shut the door so that you can put the kitten down,’ he said, and the roominess shrank in direct proportion to the width of his shoulders as he shut the door. ‘He can’t escape.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ she said as, carefully unhooking the creature’s claws from the front of her dress, she set it down in the bath. ‘And if it went under the bagno...’ She left him to imagine what fun it would be trying to tempt him out.

Dante glanced down as the kitten, a tiny front paw resting against the steep side of the bath, protested at this indignity. ‘Smart thinking.’

‘When you’ve taken a room apart looking for a kitten that’s managed to squeeze through a crack in the skirting board,’ she told him, ‘you learn to keep them confined.’

‘You live an interesting life, Angelica Amery,’ he said, watching as she attempted to slip the buttons at her wrist without getting blood on her dress.

‘Isn’t that a curse in China?’ she asked.

‘I believe that would be “May you live in interesting times”,’ he said, ‘but you’ll forgive me if I say that you don’t dress like a woman in search of a quiet life.’

‘Well, you know what they say,’ she replied. ‘Life is short. Eat ice cream every day.’

A smile deepened the lines bracketing his mouth, fanned out from his eyes. ‘What “they” would that be?’

‘More of an “it”, actually. It’s Rosie, our vintage ice cream van. In her Little Book of Ice Cream.’ He looked confused—who wouldn’t? ‘Of course she has a vested interest.’

‘Right...’

‘It’s the sentiment that matters, Dante. You can substitute whatever lifts your spirits. Chocolate? Cherries?’ No response. ‘Cheese?’ she offered, hoping to make him laugh. Or at least smile.

‘Permesso?’ He indicated her continuing struggle with shaky fingers and fiddly buttons.

Okay, it wasn’t that funny and, giving up on the buttons, she surrendered her hand. ‘Prego.’

He carefully unfastened the loops holding the cuff together, folded the sleeve back out of the way, then, taking hold of her wrist, he pumped a little liquid soap into her palm.

Her heart rate, which was already going well over the speed limit, accelerated and, on the point of telling him that she could handle it from here, she took her own advice. Okay, it wasn’t ice cream or even chocolate, but how often was a seriously scrumptious man going to take her hand between his and—?

‘Coraggio,’ he murmured as his thumb brushed her palm and a tiny whimper escaped her lips.

‘Mmm...’

He turned to look at her, the edge of his faintly stubbled jaw an enticing whisper away from her lips. ‘Does that sting?’

‘No...’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not...stinging.’

She was feeling no pain as he gently massaged the soap between her fingers, around her thumb, wrist and into her palm. All sensation was centred much lower as he rinsed off the soap, pulled a thick white towel from a pile and carefully dried her hand.

‘Va bene?’ he asked.

‘Va bene,’ she repeated. Very, very bene indeed. He was so deliciously gentle. So very thorough.

‘Hold on. This will sting,’ he warned as he took a box of antiseptic wipes from the cupboard over the sink and opened a pouch.

‘I’ll try not to scream,’ she said but, taking no chances—her knees were in a pitifully weak state—she did as she was told and, putting her other hand on his shoulder, hung on.

She’d feel such a fool if she collapsed at his feet.

Really.

His shoulder felt wonderfully solid beneath the soft wool shirt. He was so close that she was breathing in the scent of coffee, warm male skin and, as his hair slid in a thick silky wedge over his forehead, she took a hit of the herby shampoo he used. It completely obliterated the sharp smell of antiseptic.

He opened a dressing and applied it carefully to the soft mound of flesh beneath her thumb.

‘All done.’

‘No...’

Dante looked up, a silent query buckling the space between his brows and her mouth dried. He’d been right about the need to hang on. The word had slipped through her lips while her brain was fully occupied in keeping her vertical.

‘There’s something else?’ he asked.

‘Yes... No...’ She hadn’t been criticising his first aid skills; she just hadn’t wanted him to stop. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Tell me,’ he pressed her, all concern.

What on earth could she say? The answer that instantly popped into her mind was totally outrageous but Dante was waiting and she managed a careless little shrug and waited for him to catch on.

Nothing...

For heaven’s sake, everyone knew what you did when someone hurt themselves. Did she have to spell it out for him?

‘Un bacio?’ she prompted.

‘A kiss?’ he repeated, no doubt wondering if she had the least clue what she was saying.

‘Sì...’ It was in an Italian phrasebook that her middle sister, Sorrel, had bought her. Under ‘People’, sub-section ‘Getting Intimate’, which she’d found far more engrossing than the section on buying a train ticket.

Posso baciarti?—Can I kiss you?—was there, along with other such useful phrases as Can I buy you a drink?, Let’s go somewhere quieter and Stop bothering me!

There hadn’t been a phrase for kissing it better. Perhaps it was in the ‘Health’ section.

‘This is considered beneficial?’ Dante asked.

He was regarding her with such earnestness that Geli wished the floor would just open up and swallow her. Then the flicker of a muscle at the corner of his mouth betrayed him and she knew that Dante Vettori had been teasing her. That he’d known exactly what she meant. That it was going to be all right. Better than all right—the man wasn’t just fabulous to look at; he had a sense of humour.

‘Not just beneficial,’ she assured him. ‘It’s absolutely essential.’

‘Forgive me. I couldn’t have been paying attention when this was covered in first aid,’ he said, the muscle working overtime to contain the smile fighting to break out. ‘You may have to show me.’

Show him? Excitement rippled through her at the thought. It was outrageous but a woman in search of an interesting life had to seize the day. Lick the ice cream—

Coraggio, Geli—

‘It’s very simple, Dante. You just put your lips together—’

‘Like this?’

She caught her breath as he raised her hand and, never taking his eyes from hers, touched his lips to the soft mound of her palm, just below the dressing he’d applied with such care.

‘Exactly like that,’ she managed through a throat that felt as if it had been stuffed with silk chiffon. ‘I’m not sure why it works—’

‘I imagine it’s to do with the application of heat,’ he said, his voice as soft as the second warm kiss he breathed into her palm. Her knees turned to water and her hand slid from his shoulder to clutch a handful of shirt. Beneath it, she could feel the thud of his heartbeat—a slow, steady counterpoint to her own racing pulse. ‘Is that hot enough?’

Was he still teasing? The threatened smile had never appeared but his mouth was closer. Much closer.

‘The more heat,’ she murmured, her words little more than a whisper, ‘the more effective the cure.’

‘How hot do you want it to be, Angelica?’ His voice trickled over her skin like warm honey and his eyes were asking the question that had been there since he’d turned and looked at her. Since he’d put his hand on hers and moved it across the map.

His hand was at her back now, supporting her, his breath soft against her lips and her answer was to lift the hand he’d kissed, slide her fingers through his dark silky hair. This close, she could see that the velvet dark of his irises was shot through with tiny gold sparks, sparks that arced between them, igniting some primitive part of her brain.

‘Hot,’ she murmured. ‘Molto, molto caldo...’ And she touched his luscious lower lip with her mouth, her tongue, sucking in the taste of rich dark coffee that lingered there. Maybe it was the caffeine—on her tongue on his—but, as she closed her eyes and he angled his mouth to deepen the kiss, cradled her head, she felt a zingy hyper-tingle of heat lick through her veins, seep into her skin, warming her, giving her life.

‘Hello?’ Lisa’s voice filtered through the golden mist. ‘Everything okay?’ she called, just feet from the bathroom door and, from the urgency with which she said it, Geli suspected that it wasn’t the first time she’d asked.

Geli opened her eyes as Dante raised his head, took a step back, steadying her as a cold space opened up between them where before there had been closeness, heat.

‘Don’t open the door or the kitten will escape,’ he warned sharply.

‘Right... I just meant to tell you that there are antiseptic wipes in the cabinet.’

‘I found them.’ His hand slid from her shoulder and he reached for the door handle. ‘We’re all done.’

Noooo... But he’d already opened the door and stepped through it, closing it behind him. Leaving her alone to catch her breath, put some stiffeners in her knees and recover what little dignity remained after she’d flung herself at a total stranger.

Okay, there had been some heavy-duty flirting going on, but most of it had been on her side. Dante, realising that she was in a mess, had tried to sit her down and quietly explain about the apartment while she had put on a display that wouldn’t have disgraced a burlesque dancer. One minute she’d been struggling with her glove and the next...

Where on earth had that performance come from? She wasn’t that woman.

Bad enough, but when he’d told her that she’d been the victim of some Internet con she’d practically thrown herself at him.

What on earth had she been thinking?

What on earth must he be thinking?

Well, that was easy. He had to be thinking that she’d do anything in return for a bed for the night and who could blame him?

As for her, she hadn’t been thinking at all. She might have been telling herself that she was going to grab every moment, live her mother’s ‘seize the day’ philosophy, but it was like learning how to parachute: you had to make practice jumps first—learn how to fall before you leapt out of a plane or the landing was going to be painful.

Cheeks burning, her mouth throbbing with heat, she dampened the corner of the towel he’d used to dry her hand and laid it against her hot face before, legs shaking, she sank down onto the side of the bath.

‘Mum,’ she whispered, her head on her knees. ‘Help...’

CHAPTER THREE

‘Ice cream is cheaper than therapy and you don’t need an appointment.’

—from Rosie’s Little Book of Ice Cream

DANTE WALKED INTO the kitchen, filled a glass with ice-cold water from the fridge and downed it in one. The only effect was to make him feel as if he had steam coming out of his ears and, from the way Lisa was looking at him, he very well might have.

Angelica...

Her name suggested something white and gold in a Renaissance painting, but no Renaissance angel ever had a body, legs like that. A mouth that felt like a kiss from across the room. A kiss that obliterated every thought but to possess her.

He hadn’t looked at a woman in that way, touched a woman in that way for over a year but when he’d turned, seen her crimson mouth, the one jolt of colour against the unrelieved black of her clothes, her hair, against skin that looked as if it had never seen the sun, every cell in his body had sat up and begged to go to hell.

Someone must have been listening...

Dark Angel was right.

Aware that Lisa was regarding him with undisguised amusement, brows raised a fraction, he stared right back at her, daring her to say a word. She grinned knowingly then turned away as Angelica finally joined them.

‘How did he do?’ Lisa asked. ‘Has he earned his first aid badge?’

‘Gold star,’ Angelica replied, holding out her hand for inspection. She was doing a good job of matching Lisa’s jokey tone but she wasn’t looking at him and there was a betraying pink flush across her cheekbones.

‘Did you find a box, Lis?’ he asked sharply.

‘I have this box,’ she said, ‘thoroughly lined with newspaper.’ She looked down at the deep box she was holding and then up at him, her brows a got you millimetre higher and he could have kicked himself. So much for attempting to distract her. ‘Chef gave me some minced chicken for Rattino. I assumed you’d have milk up here.’

‘I have, but it’ll be cold,’ he said, grabbing the excuse to escape. ‘I’ll put a drop in the microwave to take the chill off.’

‘Thank you. That’s very kind,’ Angelica replied quietly as she took the box from Lisa and retreated to the bathroom. He watched her walk away, trying not to think about what her legs were doing to him. What he wanted to do to her legs...

He turned abruptly, opened the fridge door, poured some milk into a saucer and put it in the microwave for a few seconds.

‘Haven’t you got something to do downstairs?’ he asked as, feeling like an idiot with Lisa watching, he put a finger in to test the temperature.

‘It’s snowing hard now. Everyone’s making a move and I’ve told the staff to go home.’ She leaned against the door frame. ‘What are you going to do about Geli?’

‘Do?’

‘If it’s true about her apartment.’

‘It’s true about Via Pepone,’ he said. ‘My father demolished it last year. He’s about to put a glass box in its place.’

‘That’s the place—?’

‘Yes,’ he said, cutting her off before she said any more.

‘Right.’ She waited a moment and then glanced towards the bathroom. ‘So?’

‘So what?’ he snapped.

‘So what are you going to do about Geli?’

‘Why should I do anything?’ he demanded. ‘My father may have demolished the street but he didn’t con her out of rent for an apartment that no longer exists.’ Lisa didn’t say anything but her body language was very loud. ‘What do you expect me to do, Lis? Pick her up and put her in my pocket like one of her strays? Have we got a cardboard box big enough?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But she’s been travelling all day, it’s late and, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s snowing out there.’

‘I’d noticed.’ Snowflakes had been clinging to Angelica’s hair and face when she’d arrived. She’d licked one off her upper lip as she’d walked towards him.

‘That’s it?’ Lisa asked. ‘That’s all you’ve got?’

‘Lis...’

‘It’s okay; don’t worry about it.’ She raised a hand in a gesture that was pure Italian. ‘I’ve got a room she can have.’

‘A room?’

‘Four walls, ceiling, bed—’

‘I wasn’t asking for a definition,’ he said, ‘I was questioning the reality. You and Baldacci live in a one-bedroom flat and Angelica’s legs would hang over the end of your sofa.’ He could picture them. Long legs, short skirt, sexy boots—

‘The sofa is a non-starter,’ she agreed, ‘but the room is here, just along the corridor. Right next to yours.’

That jolted him out of his fantasy. ‘That’s not your room!’

‘No? Whose clothes are hanging in the wardrobe? Whose book is on the bedside table? Nonnina Rosa believes that it’s my room and that, my dear cousin, makes it a fact.’

‘Nonnina Rosa is on the other side of the world.’

‘She’s just a second away in cyber space. You wouldn’t want her to discover that when I selflessly volunteered—’

‘Selflessly? Madonna!’

‘—when I selflessly volunteered to come halfway across the world to pick up the pieces and glue you back together, you did nothing to stop me from moving in with a Baldacci?’ She mimed her grandmother spitting at the mention of the hated name. ‘Would you?’

‘The only reason you’re here is because Vanni Baldacci’s father sent him to his Milan office to keep him out of the scheming clutches of a Vettori.’

‘Epic fail. The darling man has just texted me to say he’s on his way with my gumboots and a brolly.’

‘Lisa, please...’

‘Nonnina was desperately worried about you, Dan. She felt responsible—’

‘What happened had nothing to do with her. It was my choice. And you were about as much use as a chocolate teapot,’ he added before she could rerun what had happened. It was over, done with. ‘The only reason I keep you on is because no one else will employ you.’

She lifted her shoulders in a theatrical shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she said, not bothering to challenge him. ‘Of course, if you object so strongly to Geli having my room you could always invite her to share yours.’

‘Go away, Lisa, or I swear I’ll call Nonnina myself. Or maybe I should speak to Nicolo Baldacci.’

‘How long is it, exactly, since you got laid, Dan?’ she asked, not in the least bothered by a threat that they both knew he would never carry out. ‘It’s time to forget Valentina. You need to get back on the horse.’

He picked up the saucer of milk and waited for her to move.

‘I mean it. You’ve been looking at Geli like a starving man who’s been offered hot food ever since she walked through the door,’ she said, staying right where she was. ‘In fact, if I were a betting woman I’d be offering straight odds that you were taking the first mouthful when I interrupted you.’

‘I met her less than an hour ago,’ he reminded her, trying not to think about the feel of Angelica’s tongue on his lip even as he sucked it in to taste her. Coffee, honey, life...

‘An hour can be a lifetime when lightning strikes. I wanted to rip Vanni’s clothes off the minute I set eyes on him,’ she said with the kind of smile that suggested it hadn’t been much longer than that.

‘I’m not about to take advantage of a damsel in distress.’

‘Not even if she wants you to take advantage of her? She looked...interested.’

‘Not even then,’ he said, trying not to think about her crimson lips whispering ‘caldo...’, her breath against his mouth, the way she’d leaned into him, how her body fitted against his.

‘You are so damned English under that Italian exterior,’ she said. ‘Always the perfect gentleman. Never betraying so much as a quiver of emotion, even when the damsel in question is stomping all over you in her designer stilettos.’

‘Valentina knew what she wanted. I was the one who moved the goalposts.’

‘Don’t be so damned noble. You fall in love with the man, Dan, not some fancy penthouse, the villa at Lake Como, the A-list lifestyle. I’d live in a cave with Vanni.’

‘Then talk to your parents before your secret blows up in your faces.’ Dante had experienced that pain at first-hand... ‘It won’t go away, Lis.’

‘No.’ She pulled a face, muttered, ‘Stupid feud...’ Then she reached out and touched his arm. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Good luck with finding a hotel that’ll take Rattino,’ she said, heading towards the door. She didn’t get more than a couple of steps before she stopped, turned round. ‘I suppose Geli could put him back in her coat pocket and sneak him in—’

‘Are you done?’ he asked, losing patience.

‘—but it will only be a temporary solution. Tonight’s scene in the bar will be the talk of the market tomorrow.’

‘The snow will be the talk of the market tomorrow.’

She shook her head. ‘It snows every year but the combination of a head-turning woman, the rare sound of Dante Vettori laughing and a rat? Now that is something worth talking about.’

‘Lis,’ he warned.

‘Never mind. I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

‘You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.’

She grinned. ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking. You and every man in the bar when she arrived in a flurry of snowflakes. How to make an entrance! Tra-la-la...’ Lisa blew on her fingers and then shook them. ‘Seriously, Dan, I don’t know if Geli needs a job but she will need space to show her stuff and having her around will be very good for business.’

‘Are you done now?’

‘As for the other thing, my advice is to get in quickly or you’re going to be at the back of a very long queue.’ She almost made it to the door before she said, ‘You won’t forget that you offered her supper? Have you got anything up here or do you want me to look in the fridge?’

‘Just lock up and go home.’

‘Okay.’ She opened the door, looked back over her shoulder. ‘I’ve brought up Geli’s suitcase, by the way. It’s in her room.’

‘Basta! Andare!’

‘And you have lipstick—’ she pointed to the corner of her own mouth ‘—just here.’

* * *

Geli’s hands were shaking as she scooped out a tiny portion of chicken for the kitten, her whole body trembling as she sank to her knees beside the bath, resting her chin on her arms as she watched him practically inhale it. Trying to decide which was most disturbing—kissing a man she’d only just met or being told that the flat she’d paid good money to rent did not exist.

It should be the flat. Obviously.

Elle was going to be furious with her for being so careless. Her grandmother had lost everything but the roof over their heads to a con man not long after their mother died. Without their big sister putting her own life on hold to take care of them all, she and Sorrel would have ended up in care.

Fortunately, there was the width of France and Switzerland between them. Unless she told them what had happened they would never know that she’d messed up.

Which left the kiss. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if it was her first kiss—her first anything—but for a moment she’d felt as if she’d been on the brink of something rare, something life-changing.

As she leaned against the edge of the bath watching the kitten, she remembered the moment when she’d caught her sister on the point of kissing Sean McElroy. Their closeness, the intensity of their focus on each other, had terrified her. Elle was hers—surrogate mother, surrogate father, big sister, carer—but suddenly there was someone else, this man, a total stranger, getting all her attention.

For a moment, with Dante’s arm around her waist, his lips a millimetre from her own, she’d known how Elle had felt, had wanted it for herself. That was why she was shaking. For a moment she had been utterly defenceless...

‘I’m sorry I took so long to bring the milk. I was arranging with Lisa to lock up for me.’ Dante placed the saucer in the bath but, instead of joining her, he stood back, keeping his distance.

Which was a very good thing, she told herself. Just because she wanted him here, kneeling beside her, didn’t make it a good idea...

‘We’re putting you to a lot of trouble,’ she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the kitten as he stepped in the saucer and lapped clumsily at the milk.

‘He’s looking better already,’ he said, his voice as distant as his body.

‘He’s fluffed up a bit now he’s dry but he hasn’t learned to wash.’ Keep it impersonal. Talk about the cat... ‘He’s much too young to be separated from his mother. I’ll take him back to where I found him tomorrow and see if I can reunite them.’

‘How do you think that will work out?’ he asked.

‘About as well as it usually does.’ She reached out and ran a finger over the kitten’s tiny domed head. ‘About as well as my escape to Isola is working out.’

‘Escape? What are you running away from?’

She looked up. He was frowning, evidently concerned. ‘Just life in a small village,’ she said quickly before he began wondering which asylum she’d broken out of. ‘Conformity. I very nearly succumbed to the temptation to buckle down to reality and become the design director for my sisters’ ice cream parlour franchise.’ She did a little mock shiver. ‘Can you imagine? All that pink!’

He snorted with laughter.

‘You see? You only met me half an hour ago but even you can see that’s ridiculous.’

‘Let’s just say that I find it unlikely.’

‘Thank you, Dante. You couldn’t have paid me a nicer compliment.’ She hooked her hair behind her ear, stood up and faced him. Forget the kiss... ‘And thank you for trying to break the news about my apartment gently over supper.’

He shrugged. ‘I wanted more information before I leapt in with the bad news,’ he said, turning away to reach for a towel. ‘You could have made a mistake with the address.’

‘But you didn’t believe I had.’

‘No.’ He stopped looking down at the towel and looked at her. ‘The map you had was out of date. If you had followed the directions you were given, you would have ended up at a construction site.’

‘Which I did,’ she admitted. ‘Lisa was right when she said you know Isola like the back of your hand.’

‘I spent a lot of my childhood here but it’s changing fast. We’re struggling to hang on to what’s left.’

‘You’ll forgive me if I say that I wish you’d struggled a little harder.’ He didn’t exactly flinch but clearly she’d said the wrong thing. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’

‘Here, Rattino will be more comfortable on this,’ he said. ‘Bring the box through to the fire when he’s settled.’

She looked down at the towel he’d thrust into her hand and then at the space where, a moment before, Dante Vettori had been standing.

What had she said?

* * *

Everything about Dante was still except the hand holding the wooden spoon as he stirred something in a saucepan. The light glinting off the heavy steel band of his wristwatch was mesmerising and Geli could have stood in the doorway and watched him for ever.

‘Is he settled?’ he asked without looking up.

‘Asleep and dreaming he’s in heaven,’ she said. ‘Life is so simple when you’re a cat.’ She held up the lease that was currently severely complicating hers.

He turned down the heat and took it from her. ‘There’s no mistake about the address,’ he said.

‘No. I have Signora Franco’s number,’ she said, clutching the phone she’d used to tell her sisters that she’d arrived safely. Well, she’d arrived... ‘If I call her will you talk to her?’

‘Of course.’

The wait to connect seemed endless but, in the end, was nowhere near long enough.

‘No reply?’ he asked when she let the phone drop to her side.

She shook her head. ‘The message was in Italian, but “number unavailable” sounds the same in any language.’

He shook his head. ‘Tell me, Angelica, how did you learn such impressive self-control?’

She held her breath momentarily. Let it out slowly. ‘Self-control?’

‘Few women I know—few men, come to that—would have taken the news about the apartment without throwing something, even if it was just a tantrum.’

‘Oh...’ Momentarily thrown, she said, ‘I don’t do tantrums.’

‘Is there a secret to that? Anything you’re prepared to share with Lisa?’ he asked.

‘Yoga?’ she offered. ‘It’s all in the breathing.’

He turned back to the sauce without a word, stirring it very slowly.

Damn it, she didn’t know him... He might regret kissing her but he’d been kind when he didn’t have to be. He hadn’t yelled at her, or thrown her or the kitten out when they’d caused a near riot in his café.

She took one of those yoga breaths.

‘I cried a lot when my mother died. It made things difficult at school and my sisters sad because there was nothing they could do to make things better.’ This was something she never talked about and the words escaped in a soft rush of breath. ‘I wanted to stop but I didn’t know how.’

‘How old were you?’ He continued to stir the sauce, not looking at her.

‘Eight.’ Two days short of her ninth birthday.

‘Eight?’ He swung round. ‘Madre de Dio...’

‘It was cancer,’ she said before he asked. ‘The aggressive kind, where the diagnosis comes with weeks to live.’

‘Non c’è niente che posso dire,’ he said. And then, in English, ‘There are no words...’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing anyone can say. No words, not an entire river of tears... Nothing can change what happened.’

‘Is that when you stopped crying?’ he asked. ‘When you realised it made no difference?’

‘I was eight, Dante!’ So much for her self-control...

‘So?’ he prompted, ‘you were too young for philosophy but clearly something happened.’

‘What? Oh, yes... My grandmother found an old black hat in the attic. With a floppy brim,’ she said, describing in with a wavy gesture. ‘Crocheted. Very Sixties. My grandmother was something of a style icon in her day.’

‘And that helped?’ he asked, ignoring the fashion note that was meant to draw a thick black line under the subject.

‘She said that when I was sad I could hide behind the brim.’ She still remembered the moment she’d put it on. The feeling of a great burden being lifted from her shoulders. ‘It showed the world what I was feeling without the red eyes and snot and was a lot easier for everyone to live with. I wore that hat until it fell apart.’

‘And then what did you do?’

‘I found a black cloche in a charity shop. And a black dress. It was too big for me but my grandmother helped me cut it down. Then, when I was twelve, I dyed my hair.’

‘Let me guess. Black.’

‘Actually, it was nearer green but my grandmother took me to the hairdressers’ and had it sorted out and dyed properly.’ The memory of the moment when she’d looked in the mirror and seen herself still made her smile. ‘My sisters were furious.’

‘Because of the colour or because they hadn’t had the same treat?’

‘Because Grandma had blown all the housekeeping money on rescuing me from the nightmare of going to school with green hair. They thought eating was more important.’

‘Hunger has a tendency to shorten the temper,’ he agreed, turning the sauce down to minimum and pouring two glasses of wine from a bottle, dewed with moisture, that stood on the china-laden dresser that took up most of one wall.

‘Where was your father in all this?’ he asked as he handed a glass to her.

‘I don’t have one. None of us do.’

His eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘Unless there’s been a major leap forward in evolution that passed me by,’ he said, leaning back against the dresser, ‘that’s not possible.’

‘Biologically perhaps, but while my mother loved babies, she didn’t want a man underfoot, being moody when his dinner wasn’t ready.’ She turned and, glass in hand, leaned back against the dresser. It was easier being beside him than looking at him. ‘My grandparents’ marriage was not a happy one.’ She took a mouthful of the rich, fruity wine. ‘I imagine the first time she got pregnant it was an accident, but after that, whenever she was broody, she helped herself to a sperm donation from some man she took a fancy to. A travelling fair visits the village every year for the Late Spring Bank Holiday,’ she said. ‘Our fathers were setting up in the next county before the egg divided.’

‘She lived dangerously.’

‘She lived for the moment.’

‘“Take what you want,” says God, “take it and pay for it...”’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘It’s an old Spanish proverb. So? What colour is your hair?’

She picked up a strand, looked at it, then up at him. ‘Black.’

He grinned and it wasn’t just the wine that was warming her.

‘How did you find it?’ he asked. ‘The apartment.’

‘What? Oh...’ Well, that was short-lived... ‘On the internet.’ He didn’t have to say what he thought about that. A muscle tightening at the corner of his mouth wrote an entire essay on the subject. ‘It was an international agency,’ she protested, ‘affiliated to goodness knows how many associations.’ Not that she’d checked on any of them. Who did? ‘There were comments from previous tenants. Some who’d enjoyed their stay in the apartment and couldn’t wait to come back, and a few disgruntled remarks about the heat and the lack of air conditioning. Exactly what you’d expect. Look, I’ll show you,’ she said, clicking the link on her smartphone.

Like the phone line, the web link was no longer available.

Until that moment she hadn’t believed that she’d been conned, had been sure that it was all a mistake, but now the air was sucked right out of her and Dante caught her as her knees buckled, rescued her glass, turned her into his chest.

His arm was around her, her head against his shoulder and the temptation to stay there and allow him to hold her, comfort her, almost overwhelmed her. It felt so right, he was such a perfect fit, but she’d already made a fool of herself once today. She dragged in a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and stepped away.

‘Are you okay?’ he said, his hand still outstretched to steady her.

‘Fine. Really.’

He didn’t look convinced. ‘When did you last have something to eat?’

‘I don’t know. I had a sandwich at the airport when they announced that my flight had been delayed.’

‘Nothing since then?’ He looked horrified. ‘No wonder you’re trembling. Sit down while the pasta cooks.’ He tested it. ‘Another minute or two. It’s nothing fancy—pasta al funghi. Pasta with mushroom sauce,’ he added in case her Italian wasn’t up to it.

She shook her head. ‘I’m sure it’s wonderful but, honestly, I couldn’t eat a thing.’ He didn’t argue but reached for a couple of dishes. ‘The apartment looked so perfect and the rent was so reasonable...’ Stupid, stupid, stupid! ‘I assumed it was because it was the middle of winter, off-season, but it was a trap for the gullible. No, make that the cheap.’ She’d had it hammered into her by Elle that if something looked too good... But she’d been enchanted.

‘Did you give them details of your bank account?’ Dante asked.

‘What? No... At least... I set up a direct debit for the rent...’ As she realised what he was getting at, she blinked, looked down at her phone and then swiftly keyed in her password.

As she saw the balance she felt the blood leave her head.

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