‘Oh? Are you busy today, then?’ she queried, though she hated herself for saying it. And even as she asked she was aware of a new and brittle note which had entered her voice. The old Angie would not have asked Riccardo a question so self-consciously. Nor have pinned quite so much hope on the answer.
Without answering, Riccardo walked back towards the sitting room in search of his jacket and he found it still hanging neatly over the back of the chair. He could hear the pad of bare feet and, in the middle of shrugging the jacket on, he looked up to find her watching him. She was tying the belt on some sort of silky kimono thing and he strove to find the most appreciative way of telling her that it had been a one-off, without actually having to spell it out. ‘Listen, Angie—I had a great time—’
But Angie wasn’t completely dense—and she had known Riccardo for long enough to recognise when he was giving someone the brush off. Hadn’t she seen him doing it often enough during his business dealings? And so she cut him short—burying her hurt at the damning attitude he’d adopted with a crisp question of her own. ‘What about Marco?’
‘Marco?’ he echoed blankly.
‘Your driver and bodyguard. Remember? We left him sitting outside in the car last night.’
There was a pause. ‘Marco can look after himself.’
Angie went over to peer out of the window, wondering how Riccardo’s chauffeur-driven limousine would be received in the narrow and busy street in which she lived. ‘He’s gone!’
‘Of course he’s gone. He usually waits—’
Angie turned round, very slowly. ‘Usually waits for what, Riccardo?’
Riccardo coiled his silken tie and shoved it into his jacket pocket. ‘Nothing.’
‘No, please—do tell me. Or maybe I can guess?’ She felt the plummeting of her heart, the prickle of sweat between her breasts—but didn’t she know that fears were better faced head on? It was not knowing which could eat away at you and destroy you with insecurity. Like all those times her parents had told the bewildered little girl that, no, nothing was wrong. And then it had turned out that Dad had been ill all along and by the time she found out just how bad it was, it was almost too late to say goodbye to him properly.
‘Do you have an allotted time fixed for your nocturnal adventures?’ she demanded. ‘So that if you haven’t reappeared by then, he knows you’ve struck lucky?’
He didn’t flinch from her accusatory stare. ‘Your words, Angie—not mine.’
She flushed. ‘So I’m right.’
His mouth hardened. Was she hoping to make him feel bad? Well, why the hell should he? She had been the one who had been practically begging him to take her. Who had been tantalising him all night long and crossing and uncrossing those milky thighs in his car. ‘You think that this is the first time this particular scenario has taken place?’ he drawled, and then his eyes flicked over her—at the swell of her beautiful breasts beneath the thin kimono. ‘Not for either of us, I should imagine.’
Angie flinched. ‘There’s no need to make me sound like some sort of tramp!’
He shrugged. ‘Again, your words, Angie. What is it that you say in England…“if the cap fits…”?’
She wanted to fly at him—to slap him hard around his arrogant olive face—but what good would that do? As if any woman could ever inflict pain on a man like Riccardo. Stung and angry, she opened her mouth to defend her honour and then shut it again, because there was no point. She could talk until she was blue in the face but it would be a complete waste of time. Riccardo would believe what he wanted to believe—the way he always did. Just as he believed that his sister should be grateful to be getting married to some aristocrat in what sounded like a loveless marriage!
Drawing back her shoulders, she proudly held her head up—striving for some kind of dignity when there seemed precious little else left. ‘I think you’d better go now, don’t you?’
Riccardo didn’t move, his eyes narrowing as he registered her anger, trying to work out the best way to calm the situation down. Because although what had happened should never have happened—it wasn’t worth making a big deal out of. It certainly wasn’t worth jeopardising their perfect working relationship for. And Angie wouldn’t want to throw away a well-paid job simply because they’d both got a little carried away after a few drinks. Give her a couple of days and she’d probably feel secretly relieved that he had seen sense. He tried to defuse the tension with a rare and indulgent smile. ‘Look, let’s just forget this ever happened, shall we?’ he suggested easily. ‘Let’s go back to the way it was before.’
Did he really and truly think it was that simple? Silently, Angie counted to ten. If only he knew how close she was to picking up last night’s mug of cold coffee and tipping it all over his arrogant black head. But if she demonstrated her anger or her hurt—then wouldn’t that make him think that she cared? And she didn’t. Not any more. For how could she care about a man who had a lump of stone for a heart? Who could take her to heaven and back in his arms and then leave her feeling like some cheap little tramp in the morning?
‘Just go,’ she repeated, marching to the front door and averting her eyes as she held it open for him, afraid that he would see the tears of shame and humiliation which were threatening to spill from her eyes.
‘YOU’RE not eating very much, Angie.’
‘I’m not that hungry, Mum.’
‘Oh, don’t give me that, darling. It is Christmas day. Go on—have some more!’
Angie’s smile didn’t slip as she obediently speared a sprout and began chewing it even though she felt as if the effort might choke her. But then it had been like that ever since she’d woken up that morning and eyed the few presents under the tree with a dutiful rather than enthusiastic eye. If the truth were known, she’d rather have put her head back under the duvet and stayed in bed all day than have to go through the charade of celebrating!
Yet her Christmas probably looked picture-perfect from the outside—with snow tumbling prettily down over the houses in the village where her mother lived and every shiny front door decked with a bright wreath of holly. You could have painted the scene and stuck it on the front of a Christmas card and people would have cooed over it.
There had been a traditional service in the tiny church, chatting to people she’d known since she’d been a little girl and then trudging back through the silent white lanes to open their presents. But her mother always found this particular holiday difficult and Angie had been aware of a terrible dull ache which had nothing to do with it being the anniversary of her father’s death. Her sister’s current marital woes weren’t helping matters any either.
Phone calls had been arriving with scary regularity from Australia. Angie had worried how on earth her sister was going to pay for them all with a costly divorce pending—and she wasn’t even sure how useful they were, since they consisted mainly of Sally sobbing and saying how unhappy she was with the ‘Aussie idiot’.
‘Believe me, Angie,’ she had sniffed. ‘There’s a lot to be said for the single life!’
Not from where Angie was sitting. Today, she felt like the loneliest person on the planet—an uncomfortable feeling only sharpened by her regret at having so recklessly gone to bed with Riccardo.
Riccardo. Angie swallowed down the last of the sprout and tried not to feel sick. It didn’t matter what she did or said—nor how much she tried to fill her waking hours with mundane tasks which would occupy her mind—her thoughts stubbornly kept coming