Vettori's Damsel in Distress (Harlequin Romance Large Print) (9 page)

‘Only because I found Rattino and you put up that notice,’ she said. ‘Do you see your mother, Dante?’

He stared straight ahead and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer her, but then he shrugged. ‘Occasionally. She remarried, started a new family.’

‘So you were able to return to Italy.’

‘Just for the holidays. I was at school in England. Then I was away at university.’

‘England or Italy?’

‘Scotland. Then the US.’

Distancing himself from a father who was too busy with the new woman in his life to put him first, she thought. And from a mother who had found someone new to love and made a second family where he probably felt like a spare part...

She felt a bit like that, too, now that her sisters were married. It was no longer the three of them against the world.

‘What did you read? At uni?’ she asked. Anything to take away the bleakness in those dark eyes.

‘Politics, philosophy and economics at St Andrews. Business management at Harvard.’

‘St Andrews,’ she repeated, with a teasing Scottish accent. ‘And Harvard?’

He looked down at her, a smile creating a sunburst of creases around his eyes. ‘Are you suggesting that I’m a little over-qualified to run a café?’

She made a performance of a shrug. ‘What are you going to do with your degree except work as a researcher for a Member of Parliament? But business management at Harvard seems a little over the top. Unless you’re planning world domination in the jazz café market?’

‘Not ice cream and definitely not jazz cafés,’ he said. ‘The plan was that I gain some experience with companies in the United States before joining my father.’

‘The fourth generation to run Vettori SpA?’

‘Until Via Pepone got in the way.’

‘Do you regret taking a stand?’ she asked.

‘Wrong question, Angel. The question is whether, given the same choices, I would do it again.’

‘Would you?’ she asked, shivering against him, not with the cold, where the snow had melted into her skirt and clung wetly to her legs, but at the thought of the boy who’d had his life torn apart, bouncing between adults who thought only of themselves.

‘Maybe I was never meant to be the CEO of a big company,’ he said, taking out his cellphone and thumbing in a text with the hand he didn’t have around her shoulders. ‘I hoped it would bring us closer together, but my father and I are very different. He thinks I’m soft, sentimental, trying to hang onto a past that is long gone. Incapable of holding onto a woman like Valentina Mazzolini.’

‘When what you’re actually trying to do is make a future for a place that you love.’ A place where, sitting in Nonnina Rosa’s kitchen as a boy, watching her cook, he’d been happy. Where he’d spent time as a youth on those long school holidays while his mother and father had been absorbed in new partnerships...

Isola was his home.

‘Local politics seems to be calling me,’ he admitted. ‘There’s no money in it, no A-list parties, just a lot of hard work, but maybe, in twenty or thirty years, if I’ve managed to hold back the march of the skyscraper and secure the spirit of old Isola in a modern world, they’ll elect me mayor.’

‘Tell me about Isola,’ she urged. ‘About your vision.’

‘Vision?’

‘Isn’t that what the report you’re writing is all about? Not just facts and figures, but your vision, your passion. The human scale?’

‘That’s the idea,’ he said, ‘but it’s difficult to put all that into words that a politician can use. They need the facts and figures. It’s dull stuff.’

‘We’re going to be here for a while and the only alternative is a pile of dog-eared Italian gossip magazines about people I’ve never heard of.’ And she could have listened to Dante Vettori read the telephone directory. ‘Go for it.’

‘Go for it?’

‘Tell me your plan, Dan.’ He laughed—not some big ha-ha-ha laugh, it was no more than a sound on his breath, but it was the genuine article. ‘Tell me why you love it so much,’ she urged.

‘It’s real,’ he said. ‘This was a working class district with a strong sense of community. The park was closed and, with no green space, we made our own on a strip of abandoned land by the railway. The factories and the foundry are gone now, but people are still making things here because it’s what they do, who they are. You know that, Angel. It’s why you came.’

‘Nothing stands still. There has to be change. Growth.’

‘But you don’t have to tear everything down. If they could just see—’ He dismissed the thought with a gesture.

‘What would you show them?’ she pressed.

‘The life, the music, the people.’ And, at her urging, he poured out his love of Isola, his vision of the future.

‘I don’t think they’ll wait twenty years,’ she said when he fell silent. ‘I think, given the chance, they’d elect you now.’

That raised one of his heart-stopping smiles. ‘Maybe I should ask you to be my campaign manager.’

‘Maybe you should.’

Their words hung in the air, full of possibilities, but she knew he hadn’t meant it. It was just one of those things that slipped out when your mouth was working faster than your brain...

A tap on the outside door released them.

‘I hope that’s not another emergency.’

Dante didn’t reply, but slipped out of his jacket and wrapped it around her while he went to investigate. He returned a few moments later with two carry-out drinks from Café Rosa and a box containing a pizza the size of a cartwheel.

‘I didn’t eat the supper you brought up,’ he said, staring at the magazines for a moment before pushing them aside and opening the box to release the scent of tomatoes, cheese, basil. ‘And you didn’t get your break. It’s a Margherita,’ he added, glancing at her. ‘No meat.’ He checked the cups. ‘This is yours. Hot chocolate.’

‘
Posso abbracciarti,
Dante
?’ His only response was a frown. ‘Did I mess that up?’

‘That depends if you intended to ask if you could give me a hug.’

‘You sent out for hot chocolate and my favourite pizza,’ she pointed out. ‘What do you think?’ Then, grabbing a slice to cover her embarrassment, ‘Don’t fret. I was speaking metaphorically.’

‘Metaphorically? Right.’ Did he sound disappointed? She didn’t dare look. ‘Your Italian is coming along in leaps and bounds.’

‘I’m memorising the phrasebook that Sorrel gave me.’

‘Your sister?’

‘The one who’s married to an explorer.’

‘And that was in it?’

‘They’ve apparently moved on a bit since “my postilion was struck by lightning”.’ She took a bite of the pizza and groaned with pleasure.

‘But they haven’t got to grips with the metaphorical.’

She caught a trailing dribble of cheese with her finger and guided it into her mouth. ‘It’s a very small phrasebook.’

‘Small but dangerous. Not everyone will get the subtleties of meaning.’

‘Marco?’ she suggested. ‘He wasn’t very subtle.’

‘Nor was Roberto.’

‘Oh, I’ve got him covered.’ She adopted a pose. ‘
Non m’interessa—
I’m not interested.
Mi lasci in pace—
Leave me alone
. Smetta d’infastidirmi!—
Stop bothering me!’

‘I take it all back. It is a most excellent phrasebook.’

‘And this is the most excellent pizza. You texted Lisa?’

‘I knew she’d worry when we didn’t come back. And I thought you would welcome some warm food.’

‘You thought right,’ she said, helping herself to a second slice. Then she drank her chocolate, checked the time.

‘Put your feet up,’ Dante urged and, rather than unlace her boots, she picked up a magazine, placed it on the sofa and rested them on that. Then she eased the damp skirt away from her legs, tucked her feet up under her coat and invited him back into his jacket. He slipped his arms in and she leaned back against him as if it was the most natural thing in the world and, warm from the food, tired from what had been a very long day, she closed her eyes.

Dante watched with the envy of the insomniac as Angelica closed her eyes and was instantly asleep. Watched her as the silence grew deep around him and he closed his own eyes.

‘Dante...’

He felt a touch to his shoulder and looked up to find the vet standing over him. He’d slept?

‘It’s over, Dante. She’s in recovery.’

‘The prognosis?’

‘Fair. Cats are tough. We’ll keep her here for a day or two and see how she does but, all things being equal, you can take her home in a couple of days.’

‘Actually, she’s a stray.’

‘Good try,’ he said, ‘but she’s going to need warmth, good food and care if she’s going to make a full recovery. Tell the young lady that she saved her life. Another hour or two...’ His gesture suggested that it would have been touch and go. ‘You can see her if you want.’

‘I’m sure she’ll want to.’

‘Come on through. Is there a spare slice of pizza?’

‘It’ll be cold.’

‘My food usually is,’ he said, helping himself to a slice and taking a bite.

‘How much do I owe you?’

‘My receptionist will send you a bill at the end of the month but I’ll bring my family to the café at the weekend and you can give us all lunch. A small repayment for disturbing my evening.’

‘My pleasure.’

Angelica stirred, opened her eyes, looked blank for a moment and then sat up in a rush as she saw the vet walking away with a slice of pizza in his hand. ‘What’s happened? How is she?’

‘She’s fine. We can take her home in a couple of days. Do you want to see her?’

‘Please.’ She stood up, picked up the magazine to return to the table and saw the front cover. An older man and a much younger woman arriving at some gala event. She didn’t need to read Italian or check the names to know who they were.

He was Dante, twenty-five years on, just as she’d imagined him, with a touch of silver at the temple to lend gravitas. The woman, gold-blonde with ice-blue eyes, was wearing a designer gown that was a shade darker than her eyes and a Queen’s ransom in diamonds.

He turned back to see what was keeping her and saw the magazine in her hand. He walked back to her and took it from her.

‘The first time I saw her was at a party my father threw to welcome me to Vettori SpA. They were standing together but I was too self-absorbed to realise that he was in love with her. Even later, when he married her, I thought...’

‘You thought he’d done it to hurt you.’

‘Lisa told you that.’ He shook his head. ‘I was wrong. If I’d just taken a moment to look at him instead of her.’ He looked bleak, utterly wretched and, unable to bear it, she touched his arm so that he looked up at her instead of the picture. ‘He stood back and let me walk away with her.’

‘Because he loved you both.’

‘Maybe, but he chose her.’

Rejecting him for the second time. And yet Dante had called him tonight, asked him for help. For her.

Before she could think of the words to tell him that she knew how much it must have cost him, he tossed the magazine back on the pile at the end of the table. ‘Shall we go and see how cat number four is doing?’

They went through to the recovery area where she was sleeping off the anaesthetic. Large patches of fur had been shaved off. There were stitches, her leg was in a cast and she’d lost most of her tail.

‘She looks like Frankenstein’s cat,’ he said.

‘It’s temporary. She’s been through the mill and she’ll need a lot of TLC, but one day, when her fur has grown back and the pain has retreated, she’ll smell a mouse or see a bird and, without thinking, she’ll be up and away, purring with pleasure at being alive and on the hunt.’

He was very still beside her, not speaking, not moving. Then he said, ‘My father took Valentina away and married her secretly in Las Vegas. No one knew about it for months.’

‘Well, that makes sense. The gossip magazines would have gone to town. Paps following you around, hoping for some reaction. Speculation about whether you’d been invited to the wedding. Whether you’d show.’

He managed a wry smile. ‘I suppose I should be grateful. In the end, their extended honeymoon was brought to an end when Valentina’s grandmother died. The fact that she was very obviously pregnant made the front page of
Celebrità
.’

‘That must have been a shock. Were you there? At the funeral?’

‘No. My father sent me an email telling me that they were married, about the baby, asking me to stay away and I’ve done that.’

‘Until tonight.’

He nodded.

‘And he answered.’

‘I imagine he’s been waiting for my call.’ He took out his gloves and pulled them on. ‘When he realised that all I wanted was to get into the site to rescue a cat he was so relieved that he couldn’t do enough.’

‘Maybe he’ll call you next.’

‘If he doesn’t, I’ll call him.’ He’d sounded matter-of-fact as he’d talked about what had happened but, when he turned to her, his normally expressive face was blank of all emotion. ‘Shall we go?’

She paused on the step and, hunting for a way to change the subject, she looked up at the night sky. ‘There are no stars.’

‘It’s the light pollution from the city.’ Dante took her arm as her foot slipped on the freezing pavement. ‘You have to go up into the mountains to see them.’

‘In the snow? That would be magic.’

He looked down at her, his lips pulled into an unexpected smile. ‘Would you like to go?’

Her heart squeezed in her chest. ‘Now?’

‘You’re the advocate of seizing the day,’ he reminded her. ‘The forecast this evening suggested a warm front was coming in from the south. It could be raining tomorrow.’

For a dizzying moment she saw herself lying back in the snow, making angels with Dante, while all around them the world was sparkling-white, velvet-black and filled with diamonds...

This was why she’d come to Italy. For excitement, for moments like this. Her mother would grab the moment without a backward glance, without a thought for the consequences.

But she wasn’t her mother.

‘I have to check the kittens,’ she said, sounding exactly like her responsible big sister, Elle. Elle who, just eighteen and with a college place waiting, had sacrificed her ambitions to stay at home and take a minimum-wage job so that she could feed her siblings, take care of her mentally fragile grandmother. Nurturing, caring, always there.