Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
T HE SNOW WAS falling so hard that Victoria didn’t realise Marcello had yanked open the driver’s door of the first crunched-up car until she walked into him. Her apology dissolved into the howling wind.
The driver and sole occupant, a middle-aged man who looked dazed rather than injured, let them help him out.
‘You take him inside,’ she shouted at Marcello. The cold was biting through her thick winter clothing. Marcello didn’t even have a suit jacket on to protect him. ‘I’ll see to the other car.’
‘What?’ he shouted back.
‘Take him inside!’
She then shuffled through what had to be at least four inches of snow to the driver’s side of the other car, and opened the door. The wind almost pulled it off its hinges.
Mercifully, there was only one occupant in this car too, a middle-aged woman who also looked more dazed than injured. Her airbag had been deployed and, after she’d fought her way out, she clung to Victoria, shouting an explanation as to why she was on the roads in such treacherous conditions that Victoria barely heard a word of. The wind was just too loud. Supporting the woman’s weight, she guided her to the building. Incredibly, the woman was wearing a pair of stilettos, making the going slow and dangerous. Any moment and the woman would lose her footing and they’d both go tumbling. When Marcello emerged before them, she didn’t know if she was horrified or grateful that he’d come back out.
‘Anyone else?’ he yelled close to her ear.
‘No, this is it! Go back in! I’ve got her!’
Ignoring her, he lifted the woman into his arms and disappeared into the whiteness.
Virtually snow-blind, Victoria shuffled one foot in front of the other until she reached the steps. Clinging tightly to the railing, she made it to the top. Shoving the door open, she practically threw herself inside only to collide straight into rock-solid man.
An arm hooked around her back to steady her.
Blinking snow out of her eyes, she looked up and into Marcello’s piecing blue stare.
The easy smile that was more familiar than any other spread over his face. ‘I know you are cross about a bagel but do you have to keep slamming doors into me?’
His dryness collided with the surging relief that they were both inside and safe. It raced up her throat and expelled from her body as a short burst of laughter. The piercing blue eyes crinkled and then he burst into bemused, disbelieving laughter of his own.
After one quick squeeze of her waist and one dropped kiss on the top of her snow-laden hat, he stepped away from her, shaking his head whilst running his hand through the melting snowflakes in his thick black hair.
Even though she knew intuitively that the squeeze and kiss were Marcello’s own relief manifesting, it still made her blink. Marcello was very Italian in his mannerisms, very tactile...but never with her. Everyone who crossed the threshold into his office was greeted with a handshake and a kiss to each cheek. Victoria had sat in on countless interviews kicked off with the same greeting.
It was his charm, Victoria had long ago decided, that along with his smile disarmed people and stopped his tactile manner crossing into unwanted behaviour. It was part of the package that had made an ordinary Roman rise to the top and conquer Manhattan before his thirtieth birthday, when he finalised an audacious takeover of a multi-billion investment group. A strong work ethic, a body that required little sleep and an instinct about people that enabled him to spot a potential troublemaker or a latent genius within two minutes had been the other components in his rise.
Now aged thirty-six, he was the king of his own castle with a devoted workforce. Victoria doubted there were many workers in the Guardiola Group who wouldn’t take a bullet for him. It was her own devotion that had held her back from resigning the fifty-odd times she’d considered it before. Because, as selfish and demanding as Marcello was, he was also generous and fun to be around. His bad moods were rare and always followed with an apology. He complained about Victoria’s predecessor quitting but he’d been partly to blame for that by giving her an incredibly generous maternity package followed by an eye-watering bonus because, he’d confided with great, if misplaced, authority, ‘Babies are not cheap to raise.’
That bonus had been the equivalent of two years’ full salary.
When the woman in question, Denise, had brought the baby in for everyone to coo over, Victoria had not long started as her replacement. For all his complaints about Denise leaving him, Marcello had greeted her like a long-lost sister and spent so long cuddling and fussing the baby that the child probably left thinking he was his father. He didn’t even complain when the baby brought up milky sick on his Armani suit.
And yet, for all his tactile ways, with Victoria, he was strictly hands off. For her birthday, he’d had their office decorated with balloons and banners, given her tickets to a Broadway show—her last full night off without him bothering her about something inane—she’d longed to watch but couldn’t remember mentioning to him, and generally made a great big fuss of the day, all without giving her the smacking kisses to the cheeks everyone else received on their birthdays. The most he’d ever done was shake her hand when they’d got together to discuss the job he’d poached her for.
Shaking off the weird unsettling feeling his brief display of affection had provoked, she cast her attention to the drivers of the collided cars.
Quickly establishing they were both physically fine, she arranged for the concierge, who’d reappeared even more frazzled, to keep them fed and warm until the emergency services arrived, whenever that would be.
With nothing more to be done for them, Victoria rewound her scarf around her neck. ‘You should go up and get some dry clothes on,’ she advised Marcello. He had to be freezing after his Action Man heroics. If it was anyone else, she’d suggest a hot bath too.
His white shirt was drenched from the melted snow and she was having to make a concerted effort not to let her eyes dip down to the naked chest it now transparently covered. Dark hair that covered much of his ripped torso and brown nipples were clearly visible.
She’d only seen him topless once, around a year ago. Coffee in hand, they’d just left their office for the boardroom when an absent-minded tech guy had walked into him. Coffee had splattered all over his shirt.
Victoria’s first boss, the one Marcello had poached her from, would have gone berserk and probably fired the tech guy on the spot. Marcello had reassured him the coffee was cold so no harm had been done, advised him to watch where he was walking in the future, then dived back into his office and through to the mini-dressing room at the far end where his emergency clothing was kept. Victoria had been checking her emails while waiting for him when he came out sticking his arms into a fresh shirt asking her something she’d long forgotten.
What she hadn’t forgotten was the fuzzy sensation she’d experienced to see his bare chest. It was much the same sensation as when she imagined him asleep in his bed.
‘So should you,’ he told her.
‘I will.’ She set off to the door. ‘Go and drink your coffee and get warm.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home,’ she answered, surprised he’d asked.
He gave her the look he’d once given a trio of college leavers pitching for an investment in their start-up business of beer brewed with a twist. His expression when he’d actually tasted the beer had been such a picture that she’d barely held it together until they were finally alone and she could let it out. The two of them had laughed so hard tears had been streaming down their faces.
This look was the look given to the initial We’ve decided to improve beer by adding strawberries to it pitch: utter incredulity that someone should think of something so stupid.
‘You are not.’
‘You’ve experienced for yourself how bad it is out there and the storm’s barely started. Imagine how much worse—’
‘You are not walking home in that.’ Marcello jabbed a finger in the direction of the window. ‘It is too dangerous.’ And there was not a chance in hell he would let Victoria step another foot in it.
‘I’m not hanging around here waiting for it to pass. They’re saying the storm could last a couple of days.’
‘I don’t care if they are predicting it to last for weeks. You’re not going anywhere until it is safe.’ He positioned his back against the door, barring her exit. ‘You will stay with me.’
‘Not necessary.’
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Completely necessary, and it is not an order dressed as a request but an order.’
‘You’re not my boss so you can’t order me to do anything.’
‘Your notice has not been given in an official capacity so I am still your boss, and as your boss I am ordering you to stay. You can endanger your life all you want once I have found a replacement for you,’ he added.
The glare she threw at him was completely mitigated by the amusement dancing in her eyes and the twitching of her lips. ‘Ah, so it isn’t concern for me but concern for the management of your life.’
He smiled widely. ‘Perfectly put.’
‘They’re saying everyone needs to stay at home,’ the man they’d rescued called out to them. ‘Only essential travel as of now. You should take the man up on his offer, lady.’
‘See, lady ?’ Marcello said. ‘ They agree with me. It is not safe for you to leave.’
She tilted her head and, her Irish lilt musing, said, ‘How strange when barely an hour ago you thought it acceptable for me to go out in it and collect your bagel.’
‘I wasn’t to know the storm had come in so quickly, was I?’
‘Of course not. After all, I only mentioned it a dozen times.’
‘If I have told you once, I have told you a million times not to exaggerate.’
Her lips twitched again, her chin wobbling, a classic sign that Victoria was suppressing laughter.
Marcello had never met anyone with such similar humour to him before. He’d recognised it the day he’d met her, when she’d been the assistant of the CEO of a firm he’d been considering investing in. During the firm’s presentation, anything that could have gone wrong had. Victoria had impressed him with her handling of it all, all grace under fire. It wasn’t until the final slide that it had become apparent everything going wrong was due to sabotage. Instead of the usual boring variation of, Thank you for your consideration appearing on the screen, someone had replaced it with a still from an old popular musical film where three high school students flashed their bare backsides and ‘mooned’ to the camera.
The po-faced directors had been outraged. Marcello had thought it hilarious. One look at the curvy redhead’s contorted face had only added to his delight. It was seeing the tortured suppression of her laughter that had made his own all the sweeter.
‘Your staff must really hate you,’ he’d observed once he’d stopped laughing. Then, unable to resist, he’d looked again at the redhead. She’d clamped her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders had been shaking. Tears had been in her eyes. Only the expression in them had betrayed her thoughts. Those eyes had clearly been telling him she couldn’t hold it back much longer and implored him not to say another word.
He’d taken pity on her and declined the investment without any further quips.
When Denise had announced she wouldn’t return from her maternity leave, he’d known exactly who to appoint as her permanent replacement, and it would be a cold day in hell before he let Victoria leave him...terminate her employment, he corrected himself. It would be a colder day in hell before he let her go back out into that storm.
Unfolding his arms, he held his hands up. ‘Okay, I admit it. You were right and I was wrong, and as you were right you must see that walking three blocks in this weather is a suicide mission.’
Eyes narrowing, she lifted her chin. ‘Do you take back the part where you accused me of whining?’
He sighed. ‘ Sì , I take it back.’
Her eyes now widened as she eyeballed him and non-subtly cleared her throat.
He exaggerated the next sigh. ‘I am sorry that I accused you of whining. Now, can we please go up to my apartment before I drop down dead of hypothermia?’
More lip twitching. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that—you carry enough hot air in you to keep your core temperature up longer than the rest of us mortals.’
He shook his head regretfully. ‘More talk like that and I will have to sack you.’
Her twitching lips spread into a wide grin and she shook her head before heading to the elevator, loudly saying, ‘You’re an idiot.’
He clamped a hand to her shoulder as he fell into step with her. ‘You love me really.’
He didn’t even have to look at her to know she was rolling her eyes.
Maybe she had a point about him being full of hot air because the warmth in his chest as he rode his elevator back up to his apartment with his favourite person in the whole of New York was enough to take the edge off the chill of his skin.
With Marcello taking a hot shower to defrost, Victoria curled up on her favourite of his sofas with a mug of his precious and admittedly delicious coffee. She’d thrown her wet jeans in the tumble dryer—she would bet money he didn’t know where it was located in his vast apartment—and been astounded to find them dry within minutes. Relieved too. No way did she want to be around Marcello with only tights and socks covering her legs. Her jumper barely skimmed her bum.
She turned the telly on. Storm Brigit and the destruction it was already causing dominated the news.
She flicked through the channels in the hope of finding a forecaster with a better prognosis for it. She’d settled on the most optimistic of them when she head Marcello’s footsteps coming down the staircase that connected the ground floor to the overhang behind her.
He refilled his coffee from the pot she’d brought from the kitchen into the living room, and made himself comfortable on the L-shaped sofa to the side of the one she’d taken.
‘Jeans?’ she gasped with faux horror when she clocked he wasn’t wearing a suit.
‘Do not tell Time Magazine,’ he quipped.
‘They wouldn’t believe me.’
He met her stare and grinned. Along with his faded blue jeans, he’d donned a long-sleeved black top that enhanced his muscular physique. Not that he was over muscly. He didn’t aspire to be a bodybuilder or anything, but he liked to take care of himself and made regular use of the apartment building’s humungous gym and swimming pool.
‘Looks like we are going to be roommates for the next couple of days,’ he said, nodding at the telly and the optimistic forecaster still trying to convince New York that the storm was predicted to blow itself out within forty-eight hours when all the other forecasters were predicting three days.
‘Don’t tell Jenna or she’ll scratch my eyes out.’ Jenna was Marcello’s latest girlfriend. Victoria loathed her more than all the others.
‘That’s been over for some time,’ Marcello admitted, allowing himself a quick side-eye to see her reaction.
‘Oh, really?’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘You’re right, I’m not.’ Eyes glued to the television, she added, ‘When did you end it?’
‘The day I walked in on her speaking to you like you were something she had trodden on.’ He’d been in one of the rare meetings he didn’t need Victoria to accompany him to. He’d returned to the office suite he shared with her to find Jenna with her palms down on Victoria’s desk sneering, ‘You’re just a no one secretary. It’s pathetic.’
Her gaze whipped from the television to him. ‘That was months ago.’
Three months to be exact. ‘Sì.’
‘You never said.’
‘It was not important.’ He cast her another side-eye. ‘You never thought to ask why I stopped scheduling dates with her?’
She fixed her gaze back on the weather report. ‘Your romantic life is none of my business.’
‘I would not call it romantic.’
‘I don’t want to know what you call it,’ she said sweetly, then drained her coffee. ‘Who are you dating now?’
‘I thought it was none of your business?’
‘It isn’t. I’m just being nosy.’
He laughed. ‘I am not dating anyone.’ Hadn’t dated anyone since Jenna.
Victoria faced him with fake alarm. ‘Are you ill?’
He’d wondered that himself a few times in recent months. Since Marcello had moved to Manhattan a decade ago, in need of a fresh start and with a determination to put the pain of the past behind him, he’d been as relentless in his pursuit of women as with business, and every bit as successful. It helped that he’d arrived here having already accumulated a modicum of wealth and that he had a face and physique the opposite sex found attractive. It also helped that he wasn’t looking for a wife so wasn’t seeking a meeting of minds or any of that romantic stuff, which widened his dating pool considerably.
He’d done marriage. He’d done family. What he’d lost could never be replaced.
He knew he’d developed terrible taste in women and he didn’t care. It was better that way. If he was to date someone like Victoria for example, someone he greatly respected, who shared the same humour and with whom he could hold an entire conversation without either of them opening their mouths, then it would not be so easy to just send a text message calling things off. Not so easy to remain unmoved and ignore the outraged replies. Dating someone like Victoria would be much less drama in the short term but messier in the long run.
And so he stuck to his wide dating pool filled with shallow beauties whose lives revolved around themselves. Or had because all the shallow beauties he’d met in recent months had left him cold. He could too easily imagine them speaking to Victoria in the same way Jenna had. He could tolerate all forms of behaviour if a warm body was guaranteed but he could not tolerate that.
He hauled himself up from the sofa. ‘I am not ill but I am hungry.’ Now that the drama from earlier was over and he was warm and dry again, his neglected empty stomach was demanding food. ‘Would it be unreasonable to ask the agency to send a chef over?’ he added tongue in cheek, referring to the agency Christina and Patrick employed the pool of domestic workers who worked their magic keeping his home clean and fresh. Top quality chefs were part of the agency’s services.
‘Yes,’ she stated firmly.
He smiled.
Her eyes narrowed before, half laughing, she shook her head. ‘I can’t cook!’
‘I will add an ever bigger bonus to your salary.’
‘I meant it literally. I can’t cook.’
‘How can you not cook?’
‘How can you not cook?’
‘Because I employ people to do it for me.’
‘I don’t work for you.’
‘You do until you have given and worked your notice.’
‘I don’t have to work my notice.’
‘And I don’t have to sue you for breach of contract.’
Victoria couldn’t suppress a snigger. ‘Seriously, the only thing I can cook is toast. Oh, and instant noodles. Did you not learn your way around a kitchen before you become a spoilt billionaire?’ He hadn’t moved to Manhattan until he was twenty-six. His rise since his arrival had been stratospheric but she knew his background was modest and that he came from a family very similar to her own, but with fewer siblings and a less scary grandmother. She knew, too, from the grapevine, that he’d been married before his move to Manhattan, a short-lived marriage that’s ending had left him devastated and swearing to never marry again. She’d often wondered what his wife had been like. Had she been an entitled bitch like his succession of lovers or someone normal? What did she have that no other woman had? What had gone so wrong between them that Marcello would become such an avowed bachelor?
All questions she would never learn the answer to. Marcello’s marriage was the one subject that had never been discussed between them. As far as she was aware, he didn’t even know that she knew he’d been married.
‘I have managed to forget the few skills I learnt,’ he informed her blithely.
‘How convenient.’
‘Being a spoilt billionaire is a very convenient excuse,’ he agreed. ‘What is yours?’
She smiled sweetly. ‘Having a slave-driving, spoilt billionaire boss demanding my attention at all hours and leaving me reliant on take-out.’