Читать книгу Modern Romance August Books 5-8 - Мишель Смарт, Julia James - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

BELLA SAT IN Alfeo’s office, chewing her nails.

She could not afford even a single day without work. Most of her savings had been depleted helping Sophie to face Luka.

The rest she kept for herself—Bella did not consider it her money to spend. It was to go towards giving her mother a headstone for her grave, for she had heard that Malvolio had made sure Maria had received a pauper’s funeral.

But it wasn’t just that she might be about to lose her job that had Bella anxious and close to tears.

It was seeing Matteo again.

The vision of him with his fiancée still danced before her eyes. His use of the word lover for another woman had, despite brave, taunting words to him, shaken Bella to her very core.

She loathed his beauty, his arrogance and his passion. She loathed everything about him if it was not aimed at her.

Sure, she had read about his many women over the years.

It had been hell, though, seeing it with her own eyes.

Yes, she had engineered this morning.

Even though she’d known he had booked for two, Bella knew how short-lived his relationships were and had hoped against hope that she might find him alone. In the little fantasy that her mind had created, the agony of finding him with another woman, and intimately too, had not been properly factored in.

No, tipping the water over Matteo and his lover had been no accident.

* * *

‘Bella.’

She stood when Alfeo entered but he gestured for her to sit down.

‘I am sorry about this morning,’ Bella started. ‘In five years of service there have been no incidents...’

Alfeo wasn’t so sure about that! ‘What about the dress that went missing that time and was found in your locker?’

Bella’s teeth ground together. ‘The guest had put the dress in the bin.’

‘And the same guest called Housekeeping a few hours later to say that she had changed her mind and could we go through the garbage...’

Bella pulled a face...typical of the clientele here that they would have the staff rummage through garbage on a whim.

‘I gave you the benefit of the doubt that time,’ Alfeo said, and Bella did her best not to roll her eyes. She had been given the benefit only because she’d known that items tossed aside by wealthy guests all too often found their way into Alfeo’s locker.

‘What about the perfume that went missing earlier this week?’

‘I spilt that.’

‘Straight into a little decanter,’ Alfeo said, and Bella met his eyes and lied.

‘No.’

She had stolen just the little she’d needed, enough to fill the vial in her mother’s heavy crystal bottle, the one her father had given to Maria.

Bella was a survivor and she wasn’t too proud to take from bins if it meant she could keep her dressmaking dreams alive, and thank God that she had because she had been able to fashion an elegant wardrobe for Sophie. And, yes, she had taken a smudge of perfume from a huge bottle but that was so Sophie could go to Luka smelling as she deserved to.

‘You remind me of a magpie, Bella. If it glitters, if it catches your beady eyes, then you want it,’ Alfeo said, but as Bella opened her mouth to argue he got to the point. ‘But all that aside, what happened this morning defies logic. The ice bucket stand was still standing, yet you say that you tripped and knocked it over.’

‘I wasn’t aware that you were re-creating a crime scene.’ Bella struggled to hold her tongue.

‘It might just as well be a crime scene! How the hell do I explain this in a report? Matteo Santini is looking to buy this place. We are trying to show the hotel in its very best light and you choose to give our most important guests a morning bed bath. What the hell were you thinking?’

She gave in then. Given what had happened, there was no way she could keep her job.

‘Can I at least have a reference?’ Bella asked.

‘Saying what? That Bella Gatti is a liar when she chooses to be, as well as an occasional thief...’

‘You could always say that Bella Gatti is a hard worker,’ Bella argued. ‘That she works ten-hour days and often stays well past that, all without complaint.’

‘Or I could tell you that Bella Gatti is on her final warning,’ Alfeo said, and he put her out of her misery. ‘I’ve just come from speaking with Mr Santini. He was most insistent that he does not want you fired but has asked that you take leave for the remainder of this week. I doubt he wants his fiancée to know that he has spared you,’ Alfeo said. ‘He checks out on Sunday, so you can resume work the next day.’

She sat there, completely stunned, as Alfeo spoke on.

‘Bella, know that I’m watching you. I still don’t believe this morning was an accident.’

She gave no smart answer. Instead, she thanked Alfeo for the reprieve.

‘Bella...’ Alfeo halted her as she stood to leave. ‘I don’t know why a guest of his standing would take such a personal interest in one of the maids...’

‘Perhaps he is just kind,’ Bella said, but there was a blush creeping from her throat to her cheeks.

‘From everything I have heard and read about him, Matteo Santini is not a kind man. He doesn’t give out favours,’ Alfeo said, and then he was blunt. ‘Do you?’

‘I don’t...I don’t know what you mean,’ Bella stammered.

‘Oh, but I think you do,’ he said, and then he warned her clearly. ‘If I ever find out that you are having intimate dealings with our guests...’

‘I’m insulted that you would suggest such a thing,’ Bella said, but her cheeks were still pink because had Matteo been alone...

‘Then I apologise.’

She headed out through the back entrance into the alley and then she saw Matteo leaning against a wall. Long limbed, elegantly dressed, his expression utterly unreadable, she wanted to run to him. Had he stretched out his arms or even beckoned a finger she might well have done that, but then she remembered he had someone, that Matteo was, in fact, engaged.

He was, Bella thought, far too beautiful for an alley.

So was she, Matteo decided as she walked towards him.

‘What happened with the duty manager?’ Matteo asked.

‘I think you already know—I get to keep my job, though of course not while you are here with your fiancée.’ She closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the surly note to her voice and to remember her place for he might soon be her boss. ‘Thank you.’

Matteo looked at her pinched nostrils and knew the effort behind those two words and he could not help but smile.

‘What is there to smile about?’ she challenged.

‘Plenty,’ Matteo said, which had Bella frowning.

There was not a lot to smile about, Matteo thought, but there was enough—they were here.

‘Do you want to go for breakfast?’ Matteo offered, and it completely took Bella by surprise.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Won’t your fiancée...?’

Matteo had already decided that it might be safer not to reveal to Bella that he and Shandy had broken up, or that they had never been engaged—he hadn’t needed to see Bella again for memories to try and make themselves known.

He had offered her his world and she had rejected it.

Want was still there, though.

No, it was far safer for him to keep a fiancée in the wings when she was around.

‘Surely two friends are allowed to catch up.’ Matteo took a breath. ‘I want to know how you are.’

She wanted to know how he was too and so she nodded but then looked down at what she was wearing—she had taken off her apron but the pale green dress and flat lace-up shoes were far from flattering. ‘I’m not dressed for—’

‘It’s only breakfast.’ Matteo shrugged. ‘But, sure, let’s go to your home so you can change.’

Bella gave a tight shrug and then walked alongside him.

He was perfection. In a gorgeous suit, with not a glimmer of sweat on his brow despite the bright morning sun. He slipped on dark glasses when they stepped out of the alley and Bella did the same. Only hers were cheap ones and did little against the glare, but she wore them so he could not see the tears in her eyes.

Oh, it was hard to see him so sleek and beautiful. Harder too to get out of her head the image of him in bed this morning with a woman that had not been her.

‘You share an apartment with Sophie?’ Matteo checked.

‘I do.’ Behind her glasses Bella blinked nervously. For Sophie’s sake she did not want Matteo to see how they really lived—they had done all they could to avoid the embarrassment.

For her sake too now, Bella thought.

‘Sophie told Luka that you worked from home.’

There was a slight inference there and, given her behaviour this morning and the way she had spoken to him, Matteo clearly thought she was topping up her wages with the oldest profession in the world.

Once a whore...

She recalled his words.

Bella knew what she had done to get here to Rome and she knew he would never forgive that.

He didn’t need to know the salacious details and certainly Bella never wanted to tell him.

In some ways it was easier to go along with his thinking, to be smart-mouthed and streetwise.

To pretend that facing him wasn’t the hardest thing she had ever done.

She glanced up at Matteo. He was so effortlessly elegant, so out of place by her side.

Yet, just as she always had, she loved him.

‘Wait here,’ Bella said.

‘You’re not going to invite me into your home?’

‘No.’

‘That’s not very Sicilian,’ Matteo teased lightly.

‘Ah, but we are in Rome,’ Bella said. ‘You know how city people are, peeking out from behind their door, terrified you might want to come in.’

‘I do.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’

She left him at the end of her street.

The buildings were high, and some of the ancient buildings contained apartments that had been beautifully renovated. He could not guess, Bella hoped, that hers was not.

She turned down another small side street, unlocked a huge iron security gate and wrenched it back, and then climbed the many steps that led to a very small apartment.

Their lounge was relatively spacious but bare. It easily held two small sofas and a coffee table. Off that was a kitchen and Bella headed straight to the fridge and took out a bottle of water and drank it down, but nothing was going to help her become cool and sophisticated this morning. All their combined efforts had gone into ensuring that Sophie could present herself to Luka looking chic and glamorous—Sophie had wanted to appear far from the peasant that Luka had admitted to calling her during the trial.

Had she given it proper thought, Bella might have known that if Luka was around, then Matteo would be too.

But you deliberately didn’t think, Bella reminded herself.

For five years she had done everything she could to keep the memories out.

Now he was back and the best she could do was pull from her drawer a small black tube skirt and add to it a tight top with spaghetti straps.

She ran a cloth over black ballet pumps and then brushed and retied her hair and headed out, locking the iron gate behind her. She walked back up the narrow hilly street to where he waited.

‘That was quick,’ Matteo said.

‘Did you want me to make a little more effort for you?’

‘I meant,’ he said as they walked, ‘that that was quick.’

There was tension between them.

Bella was still furious at the sight that had greeted her this morning and Matteo had been less than impressed by her crude seductive taunt.

But aside from that there was a different tension, once-upon-a-time lovers trying to act as polite, distant friends who were merely catching up and wondering how the hell to adapt to that.

‘How about here?’ Matteo suggested as, instead of a corner café he stopped by a fashionable restaurant, and Bella nearly turned and ran.

She had once tried to apply for a waitressing job at this very restaurant and hadn’t even made it past the doorman.

She knew that she wasn’t glossy enough even to wait on tables here, let alone sit at them, but Matteo was already asking for a pavement table.

She saw a couple of sideway glances—and she knew they were for him. Here amongst Rome’s elite and most beautiful he still stood out.

The frowns, though, the double takes, well, they were for her.

Amongst Rome’s elite and most beautiful Bella stood out, but for all the wrong reasons.

They took their seats and as the waiter arranged the shade cloth, for once Bella thought Rome looked beautiful.

‘How do you find Rome?’ Matteo asked.

‘Busy,’ she said.

‘Do you miss home?’

‘This is home,’ she said, glad for dark glasses. ‘What about you—do you miss Bordo Del Cielo?’

‘No.’ Matteo shook his head. ‘I have nothing there to miss.’

‘Your mother?’ she asked.

‘She and her new husband moved away after Malvolio died. The property prices went up and they sold out. They spent all the money they made, of course...’ He didn’t elaborate, he was tired of his mother’s dramas.

‘Do you keep in touch?’

‘She rings for money, I send it. That’s it.’

‘You don’t see her?’

He gave a very brief shake of his head.

‘Do you ever wonder about her?’ Bella asked, though the lump in her throat meant she was asking more about herself.

‘I don’t let myself,’ he said.

‘What about your brother, Dino?’ Bella asked, and she watched his jaw tense. She knew what Dino had told him about her.

‘Dino is in prison. Once Malvolio died there was no one who wanted his ways. He is in the same prison that Paulo was.’

‘Do you visit him?’

‘No,’ Matteo said. ‘I do everything I can not to think of him.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sure he’s the same, people don’t change.’

‘They don’t,’ Bella said. The poor stay poor, she thought. The rich get richer and the beautiful age well.

She looked at the living proof.

There he was, immaculate and completely at ease.

And there was her image in his glasses and when she saw that she was nibbling on her nails she moved them from her mouth and sat a little straighter.

‘Do you like your work?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I love to make beds.’ Bella’s voice dripped sarcasm. ‘And sometimes, when I am shining a sink, I feel so blessed, but that doesn’t compare to cleaning a rich drunk’s toilet.’

‘What about your dressmaking?’

‘What about it?’ She shrugged. ‘I am not as good as I thought I was. I have applied to many design schools...’

‘You don’t need a design school,’ he said. ‘You could start up now.’

Behind her glasses Bella’s eyes narrowed—clearly he did not understand that even buying fabric proved hard, that she worked ten-or twelve-hour shifts at the hotel just to stay afloat. Alfeo was wrong—she wasn’t some magpie, she didn’t crave nice things, she just ached to make them, to bite her scissors into fabric, to create, to sew, but that was a dream that was fast fading. ‘You have never seen my work.’

‘I saw it last night,’ Matteo said. ‘Sophie was wearing one of your creations. She pretends to be rich...’

Bella’s breath tripped. She and Sophie had done everything they could so that she could be proud of herself when she asked Luka to do her this one favour.

‘I know that she lies,’ Matteo said, and it was the strangest thing because even with the most private of conversations, even with her best friend’s secret on her shoulders, there was somehow trust that the discussion taking place was between them.

‘Does Luka know that she lies?’

‘I don’t know,’ Matteo admitted. ‘We really don’t speak about our pasts. All I know is that Sophie contacted him and asked him to go along with a fake engagement to appease her father. Now she wants marriage.’ His lips curled a little. ‘I have warned him it will be an expensive divorce.’

‘This isn’t about money,’ Bella swiftly retorted. ‘This is about giving Paulo peace in his final days.’

‘We shall see.’ Matteo shrugged. ‘Why else would she lie and make out that she is wealthy?’

‘Perhaps she needed to feel some pride to look an ex-lover in the eye and ask for help,’ Bella said from behind her dark glasses.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘whatever game Sophie is playing, if what she was wearing last night was one of the dresses you made, then your work is amazing.’

‘It would take just one beautiful woman to make the headlines wearing one of my gowns.’ A smile finally came to her face. ‘Perhaps you could ask Shandy to wear one at one of the functions you attend...’

‘I don’t think so.’ Matteo’s own smile was wry. The waiter came and Bella glanced through the menu as he ordered a panino.

‘Brioche with a side of pistachio and cherry gelato,’ she said.

‘That sounds a lot like home,’ he commented.

‘I don’t eat out a lot,’ Bella said. ‘And so, when I do, I want something that I know for sure I’ll like.’

Her words hit him between the legs. She could make the water the waiter was pouring a reference to sex, he thought as Bella excused herself and walked into the restaurant.

There was no need to be shy now. As Matteo Santini’s breakfast date, the door was held open.

A machine in the wall offered various solutions and normally Bella wouldn’t even deign to give it a glance.

Today wasn’t a normal day, though, and so she fed some coins in.

Some splurge, Bella thought as half a milligram of lip gloss was delivered to her palm.

She painted her mouth, she rearranged her top, she tried to breathe through the images that her mind kept delivering.

Their first kiss, their one dance.

She took her time but felt better for it and as she walked back out the waiter was already returning with her order.

Matteo could have kicked himself for bringing her here. He could see a group of women look down at her shoes and then whisper something.

All he had thought since their eyes had met this morning was how amazing she looked. Now, thanks to others, he could see that her little black skirt was a little faded, that her shoes were scuffed and that her amazing black hair was split and could use a good cut. It had never been his intention to place her under public scrutiny and yet he had done just that.

Here, looks mattered, clothes mattered, down to the bag you carried and the sunglasses you wore.

She thanked the waiter as she sat down and he wished he could take her hand and tell her not a scrap of it mattered to him. She, above everyone he knew, must know his thoughts on all that.

Because that long-ago night he had told her.

Bella slit the bread open and scooped the gelato into it and closed her eyes as she took a bite, and when she saw Matteo watching her she sliced her bread into two and handed him half and they spoke a little of Bordo Del Cielo.

‘I hear it is busy now, that the tourists come to the hotel,’ Bella said. ‘Too many of them apparently, though the people are much happier now that Malvolio is dead.’

‘We will see for ourselves at the weekend,’ Matteo responded, and he watched as the bread paused by her mouth.

Bella didn’t even attempt a bite. Instead, she put the food down. ‘What do you mean—we’ll see for ourselves at the weekend?’

‘Sophie hasn’t spoken to you yet?’ Matteo checked.

‘No.’

‘I got a phone call this morning. She and Luka have booked their wedding for Sunday and I am to be the best man. I have heard that Sophie shall ask you to be bridesmaid.’

‘I’m working,’ Bella said quickly, her mind dancing with the news. Luka had been adamant that he would never marry Sophie and she wanted to hear from her friend exactly what was going on.

‘No,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re not working, remember.’

‘Is that why you said I couldn’t start back till Monday?’

Any hope that he wanted her there, that he had somehow arranged things so that she might be in Bordo Del Cielo for the wedding, were immediately removed by a rather adamant shake of his head.

‘I heard about the wedding after I spoke with your manager.’

‘So your efforts to keep me from Shandy will be in vain.’ Bella gave a hollow laugh. ‘She’ll get a surprise when she sees me at the wedding. Perhaps she will throw a bucket of water over us when we dance...’

Matteo didn’t correct Bella and tell her that Shandy wouldn’t be there. Instead, he outlined how it would be. ‘Ah, but we will be behaving,’ Matteo said, while knowing it was close to an impossible task.

He wondered if he should tell her not to worry about a dance that would possibly kill them both but he chose to leave it to Sophie to tell her that the wedding would not be going ahead.

They sat silent for a moment and then, aching to see her, Matteo reached over and took off the dark glasses that hid her eyes.

Bella let him.

‘You look tired,’ he commented.

‘Because I am tired,’ she said. ‘And I am uncomfortable here too. People keep looking at us.’

Matteo said nothing, he couldn’t deny that people were.

‘I don’t like the scrutiny,’ she said.

Matteo called for the bill.