Vettori's Damsel in Distress. Liz Fielding
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