Читать книгу Recipe For Disaster - Нина Харрингтон - Страница 11

‘So Rossi and Rossi are the Caruso company lawyers. Is that right?’ Bunty asked.

‘For over fifty years. Best in the business,’ Fabio replied with a small shoulder shrug and followed Bunty through the deli, which was already busy with customers, and into the kitchen.

‘No doubt.’ She flashed a half-smile at the handsome Italian who seemed to fill the space between the front door and the counter and block out the light.

Rossi. Of course.

She knew that she remembered that name from somewhere. Rossi and Rossi were the lawyers who wrote the contract that locked her and her mother into slave labour working for Luca for pennies when her father died. The Carusos only swam with the big sharks. And legal sharks did not come any bigger than Rossi and Rossi of Milan.

Shame. Fabio was even more gorgeous in daylight. Designer jeans that cupped his bottom beautifully and a simple white shirt. Carefully chosen to highlight his golden tan and the flash of gold in his wristwatch.

It was sinful to be that attractive and a lawyer.

But this flash hotshot Italian lawyer was not going to faze her. Oh, no.

She was the new Bunty now.

In control. Calm and organised. Open and honest.

‘Should I feel honoured that Rossi and Rossi sent a Rossi man to deliver my birthday card last night? Because I have to be honest and tell you that I am not feeling the love. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I had no idea that the Caruso side of my family would send me anything, hence my surprise when you gate-crashed my party last night.’

‘Understandable,’ he replied and crossed the floor in a couple of long-legged strides to come and stand next to Bunty. They stood in silence for a few seconds as she rearranged the contents of her bakery shelf, his hands plunged deep into his pockets of his slim-fit denims, his gaze locked onto the floor.

‘Actually I was surprised that none of the Caruso family was there in person to help you celebrate last night. Or did I miss them?’

She snorted through her nose. ‘At my party? That would be no. We are not exactly what you would call a close family. The only connection I have with my family in Italy is through some work I do for my cousin Luca. Have you heard of him? Yes? Luca came to chat with me yesterday about working with him on his next cook book but that was it. He seemed to think that his overwhelming personal charm and a much better deal would persuade me to give some of my time to a joint project.’

‘Did his plan work?’ Fabio asked, glancing in her direction.

Bunty breathed in deeply through her nose, lifted her chin and chuckled as she walked away from him. ‘Yes. It did work. Against the odds. I am actually thinking of taking him up on the new idea. Which, believe me, is totally amazing. That boy is no fool. He knew that I wouldn’t be able to turn down the chance of having my name on a book cover next to his. I need that publicity and I need the extra cash to support my business plans. It is as simple as that. So he flattered me just enough to stop me telling him exactly into which body orifice he could insert any offer he had to make for a new contract. And left with a smile on his face.’

Fabio straightened his back and his eyebrows went skywards. ‘As bad as that?’

‘Oh, yes. Until his offer I could not think of anything that would persuade me to work for the Caruso family again.’

He turned around and his gaze locked onto her face.

‘I am sorry to hear that.’ He spread his fingertips out on the counter and bent close enough for her to almost touch the fine stubble on his chin as it contrasted with his perfect-toned, smoothly tanned cheeks.

Those deep brown eyes scanned her face for a fraction of a second, his gaze locked, laser sharp, on hers.

Suddenly Bunty felt the need to make sure that the labels on the tins and packages of amoretti biscuits were perfectly aligned.

Anything to avoid looking at the man standing so close who was working for the family responsible for her pain, and totally oblivious to all of the reasons she had promised herself that she would never work for them again.

No more birthday and Christmas cards that were never returned.

No more reminders of the bitter disappointment on her mother’s face as she was rejected time and time again when she tried to make arrangements to visit Italy for a few days’ holiday in the huge house on the lake where she had grown up. There was always some excuse why it was not convenient.

And it had broken her heart and, in the end, her spirit.

All the more reason why Bunty was more determined than ever before to create her own dynasty and food business and make her mother proud.

She was going to show them that she was just as capable as they were. Better, in fact!

Her way.

Bunty picked up an escaped piece of fusilli that Fran had missed, stood back and peered at her display from various angles. In four days she had the chance to wave goodbye to her current contract and focus on her own business plans.

But if Luca could help her to do what she wanted? Fine. If not, she would get along fine on her own.

This time she was prepared to use him just as much as he had used her skills.

Even if it meant working for Luca for another year.

Bunty swallowed down the lump in her throat.

Take control. Take control.

She turned and took one step closer to Fabio so that she was totally inside his body space before looking into those amazing caramel eyes.

A small smile creased her lips and when she spoke her voice was light and soft and totally focused on Fabio.

‘Of course, Luca might have popped back for some quick cannoli. He simply cannot resist my special recipe.’

The right-hand corner of Fabio’s mouth turned up and his lower lip twitched into the faintest smile. Oh. Perhaps he did have a sense of humour after all.

‘They must be good. Your cannoli.’

‘Very,’ she answered in a low calm voice. And blinked. Twice.

‘Perhaps I should try one?’ Fabio whispered in a voice as smooth as hot chocolate sauce poured over fresh cream profiteroles.

‘Maybe another time. Right now I need to get back to work. And no doubt you do too. Both busy people. Do we understand one another? Mr Rossi?’

‘Perfectly, Miss Brannigan.’ Then he blinked and returned her smile with a quick flick of his head over one shoulder. ‘Shall we get down to business?’

She smiled and waved her right hand with a wide flourish. ‘After you.’ She sniffed. ‘Saturday is a busy day.’

Fabio pushed open the door and followed Bunty into the kitchen. And froze. Trying to take in what he was looking at.

In contrast to the kaleidoscope jumble of textures and colours from the bright packaging in the shop area, the kitchen walls had been painted in a pale cream, which seemed to absorb the overhead light and reflect it back onto the long sealed-top worktable that ran the length of the room.

From the hard tile floor to the false ceiling panels and stainless-steel cookware, it was the kind of spotless clean space that made Fabio want to whisper. Painted cupboards lined one complete wall. Floor to ceiling. The overall effect was stunning. And professional. This was a kitchen that would not look out of place in a top city restaurant.

‘Was this a working kitchen when you bought the place?’ Fabio asked as Bunty strode down the hard floor towards a dining area at the very back of the room.

‘A gentleman’s tailor. When the house and workshop came on the market, my parents made the old maestro an offer he couldn’t refuse. The skylights and patio windows were his idea, and they still work. I prefer to work in natural light whenever possible.’

‘What do you use the table for?’ Fabio asked, glancing at the huge long, smooth surface stretching away from him towards a set of tall patio doors that seemed to lead onto an outdoor space. Various shapes and sizes of complicated-looking machinery were clustered in the centre.

Bunty reached forward to pick up a plastic container and his gaze was drawn to her long slender fingers, which had clearly never seen a manicure. No rings.

This girl had working hands. Deft and able. He admired talent – always had — and there was something about Bunty that screamed that she knew exactly what she was doing.

He had made a mistake at the restaurant the previous evening when he thought she was attractive. Even in this light she was stunning. She had changed into a smart white chef’s jacket and wide-leg navy blue and white trousers, which contrasted with her porcelain skin. And that hair! Dark auburn brown, tied into a loose knot at the base of her neck. Low black training shoes. She was sexier than she had a right to be.

Years of professional gambling had given him the ability to judge people very quickly.

He was rarely wrong. But of course there could always be a first time, and Bunty Brannigan was certainly hiding something.

Suddenly conscious that he had been ogling her hands for far too long, he looked up into her hazel-green eyes. Intelligent and something else. Wary. And why not?

Perhaps he had better get back to that.

‘So you make all of the food yourself?’ Fabio asked.

‘Please don’t sound quite so surprised, Mr Rossi. I am a trained chef, and this is my work. And my pleasure. I change raw ingredients into delicious finished meals. I also use the kitchen for my catering students from the local college.’

A teacher, then? Smart girl. He liked smart.

‘Does anyone in your family cook from scratch?’ Bunty asked. ‘It’s quite a tradition in mine.’

Fabio laughed out loud at that one, and shook his head at the thought of his mother or sister making an elaborate meal. ‘That would be no. They like to shop. Buy things other people have cooked or follow a few simple recipes when the occasion demands.’ He paused for a few seconds as Bunty rearranged the packets into a neater design. ‘I don’t think a creative gene runs in the Rossi line. Not so far anyway.’

Her lips were full, warm and when she smiled the difference on her face was startling.

‘I am sure you understand how families work, Mr Rossi. Well, this is Caruso family business and I would rather not discuss it.’

‘Well,’ he replied. ‘In that case, we’ll just talk about you instead.’

Bunty turned her head and blinked at Fabio a couple of times, eyebrows high. She found herself drawn to his brown eyes. Only they weren’t brown, more of a soft truffle golden brown like the caramel topping on the finest crème brûlée dessert. His thick, wavy, gelled-back hair was only a little darker than the slight stubble above his lush upper lip and each side of the chiselled chin.

And every pore was oozing sex appeal.

The kind of sex appeal that could encourage a girl to let her guard down and say more about the Caruso family than was necessary or good for family relationships. Especially to a man who worked for her family and was probably being paid to report back everything that she told him.

She glanced at the wall clock and exhaled slowly. She had a couple of hours at most to get her act together before Luca called. She had to come up with a master plan. And there was only one way she knew how to do that – by cooking, and thinking, then cooking some more.

She didn’t have any more time to waste on lawyers. Even if they were only doing their job.

Bunty rolled her shoulders back and inhaled.

She could do this. This was her life. And she was damned if she was going to let anyone tell her how to live it.

Bunty turned around, rubbed her hands together and her eyes instantly locked on Fabio, who looked up at that moment as though prompted by some unseen signal.

Their gazes locked across the few feet of warm kitchen air that separated them. And stayed locked.

The weird thing was, the longer she stared at him, the slower her breathing became, and her fists unclenched one finger at a time until she could rest a hand on each hip.

‘Nice flowers,’ Fabio said in a cool, calm and totally matter-of-fact voice after what seemed like a geological time period of intense quiet. It was a rich, warm voice. And it came from deep within his chest so that it reverberated between the walls before finding a home between her ears.

‘They are. Thank you.’

‘You are most welcome.’ His head tilted about ten degrees to the side. ‘Do you want to talk about last night?’

‘You mean, when you gate-crashed my party?’ she replied.

‘Doing my job. Our client laid down some very specific instructions. Step one was to deliver the package on a specific date to a specific person.’

He nodded in her direction. ‘But there is more. I meant what I said last night. One of the Rossi legal team has to personally see you open that package and work through the contents. And until that is done I am not allowed to leave your side. Have you, by any chance, found the time to…? No?’

Bunty inhaled slowly and did the squinty-eyed thing at him. ‘No. As you can see I have a business to run and your emergency is not my problem. But if you give me your number I’ll let you know when I am good and ready. So feel free to go back to Milan or wherever your office is.’

The corner of Fabio’s mouth twitched just a little. ‘I wish I could, Miss Brannigan. But the client was very clear. And since my client paid in advance, it would be wrong of me to shirk my duty.’

‘How noble. And I really don’t want to appear rude, but things are going to get quite busy around here and you are going to be in my way.’

‘I won’t be in your way.’ He smiled, and turned sideways and slowly started to unpack his laptop computer on her kitchen table. ‘This will be just fine.’

‘Take a gold star for persistence, but you can’t be serious. You actually have to stay here until I open the package you brought all the way from Milan? Was that a nod?’ Bunty crossed her arms and shook her head in disbelief. ‘Unbelievable,’ she snapped. ‘This is blackmail. Pure and simple.’

With a shrug of her shoulders, Bunty broke eye contact, turned and went back to work, focusing on the oil and herbs in the roasting tray. ‘Well, find someone else to use that trick on, Mr Rossi, because I am not playing. Anyone who puts pressure on me to do something is going to find that it does not work.’

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘let’s set out a few game rules. As far as I am concerned, Mr Rossi is my father, chairman of Rossi and Rossi, Milan. I’m Fabio. Will you call me that, Bunty?’

She whirled around to tell him what he could do with setting rules in her kitchen, and froze. His eyes were locked onto her face with an intensity that had the power to blast any sensible thought from her mind.

The air between them was so heavy with electricity that Bunty was terrified to say anything in case one word would cause a spark.

Maria walked through, waving a thin piece of paper. ‘Hi, Bunty. Frank’s been on the phone. He wants double quantity ricotta today. That okay?’

Bunty almost recoiled as though a spring had been released that had been holding her to Fabio, and, judging from the expression on his face, she had not been the only one caught up in the moment.

She paused a second to wipe her fingers on a damp cloth and to remember how to breathe again before flicking through a bundle of order sheets hanging from a metal clipboard, then changing the quantity on one.

‘No problem. That’s sixty ricotta, thirty peppers and thirty porcini. And can you tell him that the organic salami is on offer this week? Thanks. Oh – and, Maria? This is Fabio Rossi. Better get used to seeing him around. He could be here for quite some time.’

As Fabio flicked his eyes up from the press release he was working on with Jerry for the launch of his new firm, Bunty took a bowl out of the fridge, and started flouring a huge board.

What looked to him like lumps of dough appeared from nowhere and she started to thump them with the very solid rolling pin. Hard. Her hands moved swiftly, transforming the dough into a thin oblong.

When he risked looking up again, thin strips were being passed one after another through a roller clamped to the table. One after another, fast, a production line; she twiddled with something on the roller machine then started feeding the pasta through again.

He couldn’t look away. Fascinated. Entranced. Six, seven pieces of dough become transparent strips of golden pasta. Brushes. Milk. Knives.

Bunty was focused totally on the food, oblivious to his presence. Tiny squares of filled pasta shapes appeared on a metal tray on the table between them as she worked. Ravioli. It had to be ravioli.

Fabio loved ravioli.

This woman was a magician. Transforming flour and bowls into the most amazing food. A conjuror. A specialist.

There had been very few times in Fabio’s life when he’d felt inadequate. Work and study had always come easily to him, no effort required. No challenge.

This was one of those times.

All he could do was smile and get back to work, silently loading and downloading what he needed, his fingers and eyes working through a well-established sequence. This was his world. And it had nothing to do with the microcosm that whirled around him as he sat there.

Bunty might be a genius in the kitchen but this was what he excelled at. Seeing patterns. It did not matter whether it was card tricks or book-signing dates and places and people.

Especially people.

Fabio watched as Bunty moved around, chopping and adding what smelt like herbs to pans, and wondered at the woman who dominated the space.

For the last ten years of his life he had worked in an industry built on suspicion, where every employee was a possible security risk. Every contract designed to build in get-out clauses for the clients for when things went wrong.

Then there was the poker. Casinos where he had worn sunglasses during the day, indoors, to prevent other players around the table from guessing his next move. You could hide body language with practice, you could even create a poker face, but you couldn’t hide the truth in your eyes.

Bunty Brannigan showed everything to everyone.

She was completely open. Almost raw. She had never learned the art of concealment. It had been years since he had met someone so comfortable with revealing themselves to others. So happy in their own skin. And she had no idea how rare and precious a thing that was.

Occasionally he looked up to rest his eyes and check in to what was happening around him. Maria was in and out all the time, collecting orders and spooning food into plastic containers, chatting and gossiping about customers — more ready meals, more antipasti.

A young man strolled through the back door of the kitchen carrying wide trays of white and yellow cheeses. Bunty’s laughter echoed around the room as she joked with Maria and this stranger.

He had a nod from a spotty youth in chefs’ check trousers who went away loaded with plastic containers, but apart from that they ignored him. He was invisible.

When was the last time he had sat in a family kitchen and felt so at home? Because that was the bizarre thing. He felt more relaxed sitting in a corner of this busy deli kitchen than in his own serviced apartment in Milan.

Bunty was working at the stove, stirring saucepans of such delicious-smelling food it made his mouth water.

He had been standing only metres away from her when she’d faced up to him outside the restaurant last night and even in the fading light he could see the pain and shock on her face the instant she’d picked up that package and scanned the envelope.

Jerry was right. This girl was a one-woman business who had been crushed and deeply wounded by something or someone in her past.

Well, he knew what that felt like.

But it was more than that. He had trained his instincts to observe body language in the finest casinos in the world, and every one of those finely honed instincts was screaming out to him that there was no way Bunty Brannigan was going to give in and open her present any time soon.

She was as stubborn as he was. And that was something like stubborn.

He needed to catch up with Jerry in person. Time to make a move.

‘Hi, Fabio. Do you want some coffee? Just made some.’

Maria strolled up to Bunty carrying a steaming beaker, and she turned around to see her friend, just as Fabio stepped forward.

His free hand connected with Bunty’s arm to steady her for just long enough for her to step back and look into his face as though she had just that minute realised that he was still there.

His senses reeled in overload.

Her hair smelt of onions and the long joint of beef he had seen her frying earlier. And herbs. He could have smelt her hair all day. And her eyes were not only green but the colour of forest leaves in the spring tinged with copper and gold. The moment expanded, and then closed as she moved away back to her work.

‘Thank you, but no. I have to pop back to the hotel for a meeting, but I shall be back this afternoon, Bunty, and that is a promise.’ He lifted his laptop bag higher onto his shoulder, and with an embarrassed cough strolled away through the deli, well aware that the two women behind him were suspiciously silent.

Um. Maybe he should take to wearing long coats.

‘Right. Of course.’ Bunty rolled her eyes and followed Fabio out into the shop, checking out his spectacular rear as he walked through.

Incredible.

Those jeans could not have been tighter.

Bunty watched Fabio stroll away as the beginnings of a pressure headache started to build behind her eyes.

Luca would be calling soon. Her day was mad and Fabio was turning out to be more of a distraction she could not afford to take.

Bunty had just turned to go back to the counter to talk salami with Maria when a distinctive Italian male voice boomed out from behind her.

‘Bunty! Darling. Looking fabulous. Hope you don’t mind me dropping in but I simply couldn’t wait a minute longer to hear what you thought about my ideas.’

Luca Caruso. And this time he wasn’t alone.

‘Bunty! Come and meet my newest best friend. Irina Usova.’ Luca beamed and wrapped his arm around the shoulders of a very slim, stunningly pretty blonde whose hand hovered over his bottom as though it was used to being there before moving to his waist.

‘Irina is one of the best photographers I have met in a long time and she cannot wait to start work on your deli for our new marketing campaign. Isn’t that exciting?’