Chapter Ten
ONE WEEK.
One week of torture. Raffaele hadn’t been able to sleep. Worse, he hadn’t been able to work. He’d cancelled meetings. Had delegated the search for Erin’s replacement to one of the PAs who worked for his finance director and was indifferent to whatever qualifications they came with.
‘Just as long as they’re competent, can tell the difference between a computer and a microwave and over forty-five.’ Man or woman, he didn’t care.
He stared, scowling at his office door, which was shut. The adjoining office where Erin used to sit was empty. He could still remember the soft sound of her packing her stuff and the gentle click of the outer door as she’d let herself out of the office and out of his life for good.
He pushed himself away from his desk and swivelled the chair so that he was staring out of the window then clasped his hands behind his head and succumbed to yet another pointless bout of thinking.
How much thinking could one guy do? Shouldn’t thoughts run out sooner or later?
For the millionth time he thought of Colin, the guy who’d been flirting with Erin at the party he’d thrown a few weeks back. Mr Dependable Lawyer, who was probably just the sort of solid, reliable man Erin should go for.
Not him. Not Raffaele Rossi, the guy with the broken background who had only ever reliably lived up the dubious role of heartbreaker.
He was the last man she should go for, which was why he’d been good for a bit of fun but nothing more.
Had he wanted more than that? From her?
The question, which had been plaguing him for the past week, inserted itself into his consciousness once again, and Raffaele leaned back against the chair and sighed.
He knew that answer to that. Why bother fighting it? He’d tried. He really had. She’d walked out on him and he’d immediately told himself that it was for the best. He’d seen her with Colin and also immediately told himself that that also was for the best.
Women came and went and if she’d left a hole in his life then it was because she had been the one to leave prematurely, because she’d worked for him, because their arrangement hadn’t been the usual one he was accustomed to.
Blah, blah, blah.
Underneath all of that, the feelings unleashed in him had refused to go away and hadn’t paid a scrap of attention to the voice of reason.
He’d opened up his heart to Erin and he couldn’t seem to escape the consequences of that.
Each line of thought he’d taken to try to avoid that fact had crashed into a brick wall, a dead end. Now Raffaele, in the quiet of his office at one forty-five on a Tuesday afternoon, finally accepted what he’d been dodging for the past week.
Longer.
He’d fallen in love with her. And what he’d wanted in return hadn’t been fun. What he’d wanted in return had been her love.
And now another man was on the scene.
Some guy she deserved. Who deserved her.
Raffaele banged his fist on his desk and shot up to his feet. He didn’t give a damn who deserved who, and he was done with this game of pretending that everything was just fine and that all he wanted was the best for her. Yes, he damn well wanted the best for her! Just so long as it included him…
Step one…he’d find Colin, do his best to keep calm and find out what she was up to, whether there was something there, some budding relationship. If there was? Well, that would change nothing. He needed to see Erin, needed to tell her how he felt, and no one was going to stand in his way.
Erin was watching telly when the doorbell went.
Her parents were out and she was guiltily pleased about that.
‘You deserve to have a bit of time out,’ she had urged them both the evening before.
‘Dad, I know you think you have to be careful with money all of the time but you don’t.
Having dinner out now and again is a good thing.
It’s not extravagant. Not unless you go to that place by the town hall where you have to remortgage your house to afford a starter.
’ She’d laughed. They’d laughed. But it had still taken a lot of persuasion to get them to make a booking somewhere and to propel them through the front door an hour ago.
They were both so grateful to her for her financial input even though she told them that there was no need.
They were also so concerned about her, about her break-up, about her career now that she had fled London with no plans to return unless it proved impossible to get work locally…
The weight of their anxiety was wearying.
Now, with them both out of the house, for the first time in a week Erin felt that she could actually stop pretending to be okay.
She could stop smiling till her jaw ached.
She could relax as much as it was possible to react when the only thing on her mind was Raffaele. He occupied so much of her thoughts that she had occasional moments of despair, when she wondered whether she would ever be able to clear her head of him.
The memory of clearing out her office, gathering up the few personal bits and pieces and stuffing them into a carrier bag, was as vivid as if it had happened minutes ago.
She’d stood outside, talking to Colin, unwilling in some weird way to break the connection with the place she had worked for such a long time, with the man to whom she had lost her heart.
She had felt scared and overwhelmed and adrift.
But then Colin had finally and reluctantly left, and she’d taken one last look up to the bank of glass through which she had peered through countless times, hoping for a final glimpse of Raffaele.
But of course he wasn’t there, staring out like some lovelorn teenager.
He’d was already behind his computer, already putting her to the back of his mind the way he’d done with all those other women he’d dated in the past once their time with him had come to an end.
The sound of the doorbell ringing again, this time more insistently, finally cut through her memories and she reluctantly stood up.
It was a little after seven thirty in the evening, the sun was shining outside and it was still warm enough to be sitting out in the back garden.
She felt lazy and slothful cooped up inside wearing some faded cotton trousers with ridiculous cartoon characters all over them and an old T-shirt she had found in one of the drawers in the bedroom she used whenever she came down to see her parents.
She didn’t want to answer the door. She didn’t want to speak to anyone. She wanted to wallow in dismal thoughts and then lose herself in whatever terrible television show she could locate on the few channels her parents had on their telly.
She was ready with her excuses when she pulled open the door to find…the very man she’d been thinking about standing on the doorstep.
Or was it?
Was she hallucinating? Had her fevered thoughts conjured up the one person in the world who was occupying all the space in her head?
‘Erin.’
‘Raffaele? What are you doing here?’
‘Will you let me in?’
‘How did you find out where I was? How did you get hold of my parents’ address?’
‘I asked the lawyer. Told him I had some confidential papers to give you and I wanted to deliver them personally in case you had any questions.’
‘Who are you talking about? What lawyer?’
‘The one who was chatting you up at my party.’
‘The lawyer has a name and you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. You can’t just show up on my parents’ doorstep without warning.’
‘I thought that if I warned you I was coming, you might have not wanted to see me.’
‘Why?’
Belatedly, Erin remembered that he knew nothing of her broken heart, nothing of her feelings for him. To Raffaele, everything was as it should be and if he was standing on her doorstep now then it was because there was some work-related issue he wanted to discuss.
Or maybe he wanted to plead with her to fall back into bed with him. He could be a dog with a bone if he wanted something that wasn’t going his way.
For a few treacherous seconds, Erin played with that tantalising thought before reluctantly boxing it up and shoving it to the side.
‘Why wouldn’t I want to see you, Raffaele?’
Raffaele’s mouth had been dry ever since he’d seen her standing there in the doorway. She was wearing some pyjama bottoms with gaudy cartoon figures splashed over them and a T-shirt that had Bargain Basement stamped all over it and he had never seen anything sexier in his life before.
‘Because of the way things ended between us. Felt like we parted on a regrettably sour note. Look, let me in. Are your parents here? I won’t be long. You have my word.’
Erin shifted and Raffaele stepped into the small, attractive house and had a quick look around him.
It was quiet here. The cottage was at the end of a peaceful lane and was surrounded by hedgerows and low stone walls. Inside there were beams and whitewashed walls and clutter.
Lots of clutter. A pile of books stacked by the side of the front door, pictures on the walls and lots of them, all framed family photos.
Through the open door he could see the sitting room with squashy sofas and a rug and yet more framed family photos and in the background he could hear the sound of the television.
He liked open space, clean lines and absolutely no clutter whatsoever. He should have hated this, but he immediately felt at home.
‘Things ended fine between us,’ Erin quickly contradicted. ‘I told you I wasn’t prepared to carry on sleeping with you until the whole thing fizzled out and then I packed my stuff and left.’
‘Afterwards I wondered whether you might have been offended because I offered you that promotion.’
‘Why would I have been offended? It was a very generous offer.’
‘Could we sit? Maybe I could have something to drink. I’ve spent quite some time on the road.’
Erin sighed.