The Untouchable (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

But Captain Whiskers wasn’t having any. Rosy spent ages cooking a delicious dinner to Marco’s exact specifications, arranged it on a saucer, opened the back door and called him by both his names in English and what she hoped was French, to no avail. After several attempts during which her nose froze, she gave up, dumped the saucer—the contents of which she would happily have eaten herself—on the back step and closed herself in the warm kitchen. Maybe he was an Italian-speaking cat?

She looked at the clock. Six-thirty. Time for wine. She poured a glass of red and took it through to the hallway to admire the red and silver Christmas tree, twinkling in the lamp-lit room. Sitting in the chair Marco had used, she remembered she had to call Fiona. She dug her phone out of her jeans and searched the number.

“It’s me again,” she said, when Fiona answered.

“Why, Rosy, why
would you want to stay by yourself in an empty house over Christmas?”

“I like it here, Fi. It’s homey and it’s mine. And it’s not completely empty.” For a brief moment, an image of Rosy’s recently rented accommodation in Putney sprang to mind, complete with dead pot plant, borrowed furniture and too-short curtains. Red Velvet took all her time and the flat, a place she could never quite call home, suffered as a result.

“What do you mean?”

“The housekeeper’s here nearly every day, and there’s a cat.”

“Pfff, nonsense. I smell a fat, reeking rat. It’s Dallariva, isn’t it?”

“Why would you think that? Anyway, listen, I’ve got some amazing news about money
—
”

“Because, a few days ago, when I rang, that very housekeeper, an Italian lady calling herself
Signorina
Hamilton’s housekeeper, said you were visiting him in hospital.
Hospital
, Rosy. Of course I called you immediately and had to resort to mad Googling when you didn’t pick up. Dallariva had a horrible accident, didn’t he, and disappeared from hospital? I bet you’ve got him, Stephen King style, because every time I call it’s a case of
can’t talk now
and
I’ll call you back
which you never do, by the way—”

“Oh, I so do. I called now.”

“At last. It’s Dallariva, isn’t it?”

Cornered, Rosy confessed. “Don’t tell anyone, not even Charlie, promise?”

“Ooh, I
knew
it. What’s up?”

“Promise.”

“Of course I
promise
. What do you take me for?”

“Marco came out of hospital to find his house damaged by that big storm we had.”

“And?”

“And now he’s here. But no one knows, so you mustn’t say a word, Fi.”

“Snowbound in Secret with a Celebrity! It’s a Mills and Boon title.”

Rosy smiled. “If you say so.”

“You were going to tell me something else.”

“Yes, about Red Velvet. Frederick left me money. I’ve paid off our loan. The whole thing.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry, I should have let you know immediately. I knew you’d be worrying.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? What do you mean
oh
?”

“I was hoping for news of a more sensational nature. Sexual, or at the very least romantic.”

“You’ll be the first to know. Meanwhile, are you thrilled about the loan?”

“I can’t take it in. It’s like we’ve won the lottery! Am I dreaming? Please don’t tell me I’m dreaming.”

Rosy laughed. “Please don’t be mad about Christmas.”

“Mad? I’m jealous. Much as I love Charlie and the two teeny terrors, I envy you your romantic refuge, sweetheart!”

“Oh, Fi, it’s not like that.”

“Are you sure? You sound fabulously happy. Why don’t you bake him that rich vanilla sponge? He’ll be yours, immediately, forever.”

“You’re crazy, do you know that?”

“Yep, I do. Way to go, girl!” On the point of hanging up, Fiona remembered something. “There was a guy in Red Velvet yesterday asking questions about you.”

“What? What sort of guy? What sort of questions?”

“Very friendly. Chatting to me about the business, who I was in business with, how long, all that.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Of course not, but it was difficult. He was really persuasive. He knew your name.”

“Probably a customer with a crush on you.” No need to imagine wildfires at the first wisp of smoke. “Let me know if he comes back.”

They said goodbye and Rosy, disturbed, folded the rugs she’d used to cover Marco, and pushed the chair and footstool back into place. In the kitchen she rinsed her glass and put it on the rack to dry, then opened the back door. The saucer had been licked clean.

“You win,” she said, going to the fridge for milk. She topped up the saucer, locked the back door and went upstairs to bed. That was Sunday over and done with. She’d done an okay job caring for Marco. Now she could relax and hand over to Ricky first thing in the morning.

***

Marco couldn’t understand that, while he lived in France and had planned to explore the hills on the Italian border, he seemed to be riding down a deserted road in the pretty Cotswold countryside on his favourite Ducati, wearing full racing leathers. The road curved gently under the dappled shade of old oaks before the downhill straight, where the high stone wall hugged the grassy verge. He pulled the bike out of the bend smooth and fast, and looked ahead at the wall, bigger than he remembered. He glanced down, saw the white road markings flashing beneath his right boot, on the perfect racing line.

And then it all went horribly wrong. Braking hard, he fishtailed into the approaching corner. The front locked up and bounced the back tire. The wall rushed at him, crashing forward. It broke at the top, like a wave. He accelerated, too late. Lightning stabbed, splitting his visor. Thunder exploded and black rain struck the tarmac with such force, it leaped back, blinding him. Out of control, the bike skidded, plunging into the black chasm that gaped at the wall’s foundations. He fell into the jagged darkness with slamming rocks, thumping the breath from his body. They pinned him, trapping him in rubble. A second, blistering bolt of lightning torched his eyes. The baby whimpered. He fought the weight on his chest, shouting as it pushed him deeper, and the baby’s cries turned to screams.

***

Rosy, in her favourite blue and white striped cotton pyjamas, lay in bed, cosy after a hot bath, and stared into the dark. Marco Dallariva made her heart beat faster, of course he did. Gorgeous, famous, enigmatic, wealthy, not to mention vulnerable and helpless in her bed. Oh, and irresistible.
It was the gourmet recipe for a stuff-up. She needed to be careful. Yes, she’d glimpsed humour and empathy, tenderness even, when Marco’s guard was down. But, sooner rather than later, he’d go back to racing, flinging himself at the landscape like he had nothing to lose. She would return to Red Velvet in London, where she belonged. Normal life would resume. Thanks to Zavi she’d be much stronger within herself, moving forward without the confusion that had hurtled around her brain for years. Although that confusion had somehow intensified since Marco came downstairs to watch her decorate the Christmas tree.

She turned over, letting her mind drift to housekeeping issues. Lydia would come tomorrow and there’d be the saga of Marco’s house to sort out. Ricky would be here. He could sleep in Frederick’s room. Even though it was the biggest bedroom in the house there was no way she was going to sleep there. Unless she could persuade Marco to move, so she could have her room back. There would still be a free bedroom and what did it matter? Who slept where was hardly an issue over which to lose sleep. Everything could be sorted in the morning.

Whether it was the storm, the crash, or the terrifying sound of a man screaming that woke her, Rosy found herself bolt upright in bed, wide-eyed and shivering
with fright just a few minutes after she had turned off the light. Had she imagined the noise, or been dreaming? How on earth could she have heard anything over the hammering blizzard, tearing at the shutters?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rosy switched on the bedside light. Five seconds later, a crack of thunder and simultaneous white-hot flash of lightning slammed the room into darkness. She heard the sound again, the cry of someone in distress. Getting up, she fumbled her way past furniture, stopping in the passage, waiting, listening in the blackness over the furious beating of her heart. There, again, a call for help! She stumbled forward.

“Marco!”

Lightning sizzled on the landing window, lighting her path. She covered her ears and blundered into his room, groping for light switches in vain, cringing against the next searing flash. It came, a dazzle of electric blue, illuminating him, halfway out of bed, struggling to pull his arms free of the bedding.

“Be careful,” Rosy cried, but before she could reach him, his foot caught in the quilt and he pitched forward with a roar of fear and pain, and a sickening crash against the armchair.

“
Marco!
” she shrieked, choking on her panic while thunder grumbled, gathering strength, and rain jackhammered so hard on the roof it shook the house.

Rosy remembered she had left the torch in the dressing table drawer. She ran across the room and found it, grappling with the switch, flashing the beam to the ceiling.

“Oh God,” she breathed, heart pounding. She approached the side of the bed where Marco slumped, curled up against the chair, his head hanging, one arm twisted away from his body. Breathing hard, she knelt, putting a hand on his shoulder, feeling the deep tremor of his terror.

“Marco?”

He raised his head. His face and shoulders shone with sweat, blood trickled from his left nostril, and ragged breath rasped through parted lips. His eyes shocked her the most. Distant and dark, they burned with a horror only he could see.

“Marco, what happened?” She flicked a tissue out of the box on the bedside table. “Come, tip your head.” He put his head back against the wall while she held the tissue to his nose. “Why were you getting out of bed? Why didn’t you call me?”

A sob shook his body. “I couldn’t get to the baby.”

Concentrating on his nose, she stopped
the bleeding. Her panic eased, slowing her heart. “You were dreaming. There’s no baby here.”

A million miles away, he looked through her, his eyes devastated.

“Marco?” She stroked a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead.

He jerked at her touch, pulling away like she were a complete stranger. “I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry. It-it was awful.”

“The main worry is you’ve fallen out of bed. Are you hurt?”

He looked down at himself, puzzled. Rosy didn’t dare touch him. She sat beside him on the floor while his breathing settled, until
—
eventually
—
he moved his arm into a more natural position. “I’m okay.”

“Sure?”

He nodded. “I could have sworn—”

“No pain?”

“No.”

“I can call a doctor, or drive you to hospital.”

The lights flickered, came on and crashed off again. Lightning jabbed, followed by a vicious kick of thunder. “Oh yeah?” He raised his voice against the thrum of the rain.

“Can you stand?” She got to her feet holding the torch. “Let’s go to the bathroom and clean up.”

He heaved himself onto one knee and stood beside her.

“Come,” she said. “And tell me if you want to rest.”

He followed. Rosy put the torch on the toilet cistern and made him sit on the side of the bath. She wrung out a towel in water, ice-cold from the pipes, and held it to his nose. “Your poor nose, Marco. I hope you haven’t broken it again, falling face-first into the wall like that.”

“It’s not sore. Not really.”

“Are you sure your arms are all right?”

“Yes.”

She wiped his face, neck and shoulders, businesslike, without any of the embarrassment she’d felt before, even when the lights came on, blinding them in the middle of the toilet routine.

“Hell,” he said. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” A full frontal close-up of Marco Dallariva branded her brain. And it was more than okay. Dallariva in the buff, with nothing left to the imagination, was pure masculine perfection.

Rosy took him back to the bedroom, and tested the bedside light. It came on. She helped him into bed. “Is that better?” She tucked him in. “Do you want that double whisky I wouldn’t give you earlier today? Or a cigarette? You can smoke it right here in bed, I don’t mind.”

“No, thanks.”

They both convulsed with fright as a crack of thunder burst overhead, shaking the windows.

“Shall I leave the light on?” she asked, when the noise died to a low rumble.

Marco’s mouth curved in a tentative smile though his eyes remained unsettled. “Don’t go. Not yet.”

Rosy hesitated, one hand on the light switch.

“Stay,” he said. “Please.”

She sat, shivering, palms pressed together between her clamped knees, on the edge of the armchair. “I hate storms. Nothing good ever happens in storms. Would you like a drink of water?”

“Not there.” He shifted into the middle of the bed, sliding off the pillows, ending up on his back with one over his face. “Get in,” he said. Or, at least, that’s what Rosy thought he said, but his voice was muffled and the rain on the windows loud. She removed the fallen pillow, rearranged the others and turned to go. There was no point only hearing what you wanted to hear. Thereby lay the steep, downhill path to destruction.

“Rosemary, did you hear me?”

“I...um, yes. No.”

“Don’t leave me. Get into bed.”

She deliberately avoided his eyes. Since when had it been so difficult to keep her voice steady? “Are you warm enough?”

He thought for a moment.
“Not inside.”

She’d have to look at him. She’d have to. “Marco, I—”

“It seems we are both terrified of storms.” He tilted his head toward the pillow next to him. “In.”

Calling herself every kind of fool, and before she could think about it too hard, she switched off the light, climbed into his bed, her bed, and lay down next to him, well away on the edge of the mattress.

Silence. She prayed he had fallen asleep instantly. Every muscle in her body tensed, and each nerve strained. What the hell was she doing getting into bed with a virtual stranger? She blamed his eyes. Those hard blue eyes that shielded heart and soul, that held no clues to his emotions, never exposed his feelings. Well, they’d been different tonight. Once the fear had ebbed, there’d been contemplative softness she hadn’t seen before.

The enormity of her actions dried her mouth.

One thing was crystal clear though, brighter than a searchlight in the dark room. Rosy wanted to be here, lying next to Marco, she wanted to, more than anything in the world.

***

Marco turned his head toward Rosy’s dark hair on the pillow next door. “Rosemary?
”

She was awake, he knew it, but he didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like his touch could do the talking. He couldn’t reach out and stroke a finger down her lovely cheek, or run a thumb over her lips. God, she’d looked beautiful tonight. What had happened? In place of the irritation that had turned her eyes to granite on previous encounters, there was tenderness and concern. Her hair, which had earlier been swept up and clipped in a sexy, loose twist, was down around her shoulders, bed-messy. He thought about her mouth and remembered the crimson plums that grew in his grandfather’s orchard near the big old farmhouse, near Montaione in Tuscany. They would drop from the tree, their red flesh filled with bees and, when he was a little boy,
Nonno
Leonardo would tell him not to pick them up, or to stand on them barefoot in case he got stung. Rosemary would like Montaione. Perhaps he’d take her there when all this was over, before the start of the racing season. He’d never been to visit the house since he inherited it; it was locked up, with a caretaker living in the grounds. Another big, old, empty house in his life. He sighed and closed his eyes.

“Rosemary, are you awake?”

“Shhh, Marco. Go to sleep.”

Wide awake after that horrible dream, there was no way he could sleep. Besides, he felt like sex. How could he not?

“Rosem
—
”

“I’m not having sex with you.”

He approached from a different angle. “When I was lying out in the rain on the mountainside, after I crashed, you were there. I saw your face.”

“Probably because it was my fault. I knocked you over and delayed you. I changed your timing so you were caught in the rock fall.”

“No. I stopped on the way. I nearly came back to apologize. I should have, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“I had a date with Zavi that evening, so I was always going to turn back at four p.m.”

“That makes me feel a little better.”

“Good.” He opened his eyes and checked her again. She hadn’t moved, he was sure about that. And another thing, she was too far away. “Rosemary?”

“Mm?”

“Come here.”

Nothing happened for a few moments, and
then she slid across the sheet and lay next to him.

“Hold me,” he said. She put a hand on his chest. “More,” he said. “Properly.” She put her head on his shoulder and smoothed a hand around his ribcage so her arm draped across him. His body reacted immediately.

Christ
.

He blew out a long, quiet breath, pinning his thoughts on something else. “Do you like plums?” he asked.

“Why are you talking about plums?”

“Uh, they came to mind.”

“I love them. I can make a great plum cake, but I need those beautiful, huge, fat, juicy ones. The dense-fleshed, dark red ones.”

“Mmh,” he grunted, crossing his legs. It was too much
—
that mouth, talking about plums. That alone would make him crazy.

“Marco?”

“Yes,” he said, nonchalant, but it came out squeaky.

“Go to sleep. You need your rest.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sexy and sensible. A brilliant combination. And wily. She’d repelled him even while he was stalking her, something that had never happened to him before.

“Marco?” she whispered.

His hopes soared. “Yes?”

“Your cat ate his dinner.”

Great. “Your cat.”

“He won’t come inside though. I’ve called and called. In English and French.

“He speaks Italian.”

“I thought so.”

“Try whistling through your teeth, just two notes, like this.” He demonstrated, feeling her laughter along the length of his body.

“I can’t whistle while I’m laughing.”

“Go on, try.”

“Tomorrow. Goodnight.” She settled her head on his shoulder.

He rested his mouth on her hair and breathed her. “Goodnight.” She hadn’t caved into his demands. Still, how intoxicating to be lying in bed with a beautiful, uncomplicated, laughing woman.

Marco lay for a while, regulating his breathing to calm himself—the same way he did waiting on the grid for the start of a big race
—
listening to her heart and his, beating hard, one up against the other. Gradually, his body loosened, his mind drifted, and he fell asleep to the last of the thunder rolling away over the hills and the steady whisper of rain on the windowpanes.

The exquisite Cotswold countryside stretched away on either side of the road, emerald green. Marco rode between the trees, the white road markings flashing beneath his right boot. Ahead, the dappled shade gave way to sunshine on the road beyond. Faster. Sweeping down the straight next to the wall, he opened the throttle, thrilling to the rich rhythm of a
finely tuned engine. He passed the wall, and now, all he had to do was look forward to getting home.

The dream faded and Marco slept deep, waking at dawn. It took a few moments, lying in the quiet dark, for his head to clear, for him to recall where he was. A ripple of shock buzzed with the memory of the nightmare, followed by a warm rush of embarrassment. Rosemary had helped him back to bed, comforting him like a frightened child.

“Jesus,” he whispered.

She’d climbed into bed and put her arm around him. His body tensed. He raised his head off the pillow, holding his breath. Yes, here she was, her face resting against his neck, her dark hair spilling over his shoulder. Furthermore, he could feel one of her legs hooked around his. He lowered his head and breathed again. Should he wake her, or extricate himself? Or should he worry about that later? He shut his eyes and gave in to the delicious, alien feelings of warmth, comfort and security. He turned his face into her soft hair and took a deep breath, closing his eyes, confused by the strangest sensation of belonging. Why, exactly? Most likely the aftermath of concussion.

Yes, whatever. She smelled delicious.