Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
‘W E NEED TO change the bedsheets,’ Marcello declared the next morning. Victoria’s recovery was continuing. She’d slept soundly through the night without any spike in temperature and had woken only once for painkillers, for what she’d described as ‘a pneumatic drill in my head’. In the hours she’d been awake, she’d eaten two of the croissants he’d found in the freezer, baked for the stated time and only slightly burned for breakfast, drunk two cups of tea from a box the concierge had provided from some hidden stash, brushed her teeth, and taken only half the pain relief allowed. Her colour was steadily improving, the musical lilt of her voice growing stronger too.
She threw him the dubious expression he’d seen many times when she’d been reading through start-up investment pitches. ‘Have you ever changed bedsheets before?’
‘I have seen it done. Do you need help getting out of bed?’
She’d made a few bathroom breaks with Marcello assisting her to and from the door, but had insisted on doing her last visit solo. In turn, he’d insisted on walking beside her so she could grab him if she felt her legs buckling.
He’d imagined not having to touch her would make the journey from bed to bathroom easier. He’d been wrong. Watching her move across the room was as difficult as having her soft body leaning into him.
‘I can manage.’ She pulled the duvet off her lap and slowly twisted her legs round until her feet hit the floor.
As with every other occasion that Victoria had left the bed, Marcello did his best to tune out the body clad only in a white T-shirt. It was a feat that was becoming harder with practice, not easier, and he expelled relief that her gait was stronger than the last time, her steps more assured.
She padded slowly past him, her incredible body on full display, the full breasts... God in heaven, he could not stop himself from fantasising about taking them in his mouth...gently moving beneath his T-shirt, the tips jutting out at the perfect angle... And that large, peachy bottom, and those legs . Victoria had the hourglass figure of the iconic Italian actress whose films his mother had dieted on in his youth, and as she settled on the sofa and drew her knees up to her belly, he could not stop himself from wondering if the pubis hidden behind the black cotton was the same shade of deep red as her hair or the darker, browner shade of her eyebrows.
His veins, already thick with the awareness alive in him from his waking moment, rose in temperature, and a deep stab of desire burned through his loins.
Turning his face away, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, swallowing back the moisture filling his mouth.
If she could read his mind she would be furious with him. Sickened.
He was sickened with himself. Sickened that he could not stop his thoughts going to all the forbidden places. Sickened that he was attuned to her in a way he had no right to be. Sickened, too, that it was becoming increasingly hard to control his physical responses around her.
Desire for his executive assistant, the woman who’d become indispensable to him, had grabbed him by the throat and was refusing to let go.
Her phone rang. He picked it up off the bedside table and dropped it on the sofa beside the bottom that the urge to squeeze whenever she was leant against him was becoming intolerable to live with.
‘I will get the bedding,’ he muttered, already striding to the door.
This couldn’t go on. He needed to create some physical distance between them, starting now.
Victoria stared at the door Marcello had just disappeared out of and knew she hadn’t imagined the shortness in the way he’d just spoken. Knew too that she hadn’t imagined the stiffening in his body when she’d walked past him.
Since she’d woken that morning, she’d felt a lot more with it and much less dopey. More attuned to Marcello’s mood. Something was off with him. It was nothing she could put a finger on, more a feeling. There was a tension about him. His attentiveness hadn’t dipped but his good humour was starting to feel forced.
Wasn’t there a saying about guests being like fish and going off after three days? she thought miserably as she answered her grandmother’s call. She didn’t know if her family were more worried about her illness or the storm, but at least she could truthfully assure them—her grandmother put her on loud speaker so everyone could join in the conversation whether they wanted to or not—that she was on the mend. There was a weariness in her bones but the exhaustion that had cloaked her these last few days had finally lifted.
The storm, though, had gained a second wind and seemed intent on causing as much destruction as possible. The wind itself had dropped but the blizzard continued unabated. To leave Marcello’s apartment, even by car, would be akin to pressing self-destruct.
She was in no position to leave his apartment but she could move to one of the guest rooms, she decided when the call with her family ended. Give Marcello his room back. Give him the space away from her she sensed he needed.
And it would give her needed space away from him too. Because no matter how often she told herself that it was gratitude causing her chest to swell whenever she looked at him, gratitude did not explain why her pulses soared whenever he neared her or why her breaths shortened whenever he touched her, or explain the steady burn deep in her pelvis whenever her shortened breaths inhaled his scent.
She couldn’t lie to herself any more. She was attracted to Marcello. Deeply attracted.
She could cry.
Of all the people in the world to experience her first real desire for, Marcello was the worst. No woman with a single brain cell got involved with him expecting it to last longer than five minutes.
And now she could laugh. Why was she thinking such things?
As if she’d be stupid enough to give her virginity to him... Oh, God, why did she just think that?
If he could read her mind, he’d be embarrassed for her. Worse, he’d pity her.
She would never be able to look him in the eye again.
Their working relationship would be ruined.
If he knew the feelings that were bubbling inside her for him, she’d have no choice but to leave his employment for real. They certainly weren’t reciprocated. She should be grateful for this. She was grateful. In all her imaginings, she’d never considered that the first time she got virtually naked with a man would be through sickness. Marcello’s matter-of-fact attitude about it all meant the mortification she would otherwise be experiencing to remember how he’d undressed her, however vague those memories were, never had the chance to take off. She’d spent days in his company wearing nothing but an oversized white T-shirt one glance in a mirror confirmed left little to the imagination, and he’d not given a single sign that he’d noticed.
Facts were facts, and the fact was Marcello never had seen and never would see her as a woman, so more fool her for letting her lowered defences addle her brain enough to finally see him for the drop-dead sexy man he was.
The bedroom door opened.
Her heart kicked against her ribs.
He flashed a smile.
‘I couldn’t find fresh bedding so I have taken the bedding from the other guest room,’ he said as he dumped his haul on the armchair. ‘They are all clean.’
Of course they were clean, she told herself, desperately trying to think of something to take her mind from the fact her pulses were going haywire. One of Marcello’s little quirks was an insistence of having his bedsheets changed daily. Victoria imagined he’d mentally preened numerous times since finding himself temporarily staff-less at stoically sleeping in the same bedding for longer than a night. She doubted it would have occurred to him to try laundering them himself, a thought that days ago would have made her eyes roll but now filled her chest with an emotion she couldn’t begin to understand and made her haywire pulses thrash even louder in her ears.
He gathered all the pillows she’d slept on. ‘Now that you are well enough to sleep without supervision, I will move to a guest room.’ A brief skim of his eyes to hers and another flash of his teeth. ‘This body of a superhero demands a bed to sleep in.’
The swelling in her chest deflated and sank to the pit of her stomach. So she hadn’t imagined it. He really was craving space away from her.
Trying to fake amusement so he wouldn’t sense the dejection she would hate him to see, she said as lightly as she could manage, ‘Superheroes deserve their own beds. I’ll move to the guest room.’
And be forced to sleep in the bed Victoria had lain over every inch of, and rest his head on pillows her head had rested on? Marcello was trying to drive her out of his senses, not open himself to having her delve deeper into them. He wasn’t a masochist. A few nights in the guest room and then the blizzard would be over, Victoria would return to her own apartment and he would return to his bed without fresh memories of her lying in it.
‘Victoria, when a man is playing the role of superhero he does not make the recovering heroine move rooms,’ he said sternly. ‘I need you to stay here so you can fully appreciate my selflessness.’
Thankful for a task that demanded his attention and distracted his gaze from the beautiful, semi-clad woman curled on his sofa, he yanked at the under-sheet until it submitted and pinged free. He imagined his mother’s reaction at his feat of separating bedsheet from mattress. His ex-wife too, he thought, would be lost for words. He might message Livia and tell her, but...no. It would only lead to questions and he would be unable to give any answer she wanted to hear.
He’d visited her on Christmas Day. Drank a glass of wine with her and her new husband. Not so new now. Six years and two children together. Beautiful, healthy children. Marcello was happy for her. She deserved the happiness she’d found. Livia had found the courage to put her heart on the line again.
For all his genuine happiness for her though, Marcello could never do the same. There was no coming back from the pain he’d gone through. Not for him.
He still didn’t know why he’d woken Christmas morning in his parents’ guest bedroom with the urge to see his ex-wife. They’d kept in touch through the years but he hadn’t seen her since the divorce was finalised and they’d shared one last meal in a concerted effort to part as friends. He could only assume his grandfather giving him his grandmother’s engagement ring on Christmas Eve had set something off in him. He’d known his mother was behind the well-meant gesture so had gracefully accepted the ring, but it had made a difficult time of the year more so.
It was when Livia had been seeing him off from her home and they’d finally been alone that she’d taken his hand and looked him in the eye with a sympathetic smile. ‘You are allowed to move on too, Marcello,’ she’d said.
‘I’m good,’ he’d replied, not pretending not to know what she was talking about.
‘Then why did you come here?’
He hadn’t been able to answer that then and couldn’t answer it now. All he’d known as he’d walked back to his car was that he’d needed to hear Victoria’s musical lilt and so he’d called her, and for the few minutes they’d spoken, a little of the tightness he’d woken with in his chest had eased. It had been enough to sustain him through a day that always felt more bitter than sweet, a day when the gap in his life and the hole in his heart always felt that much more acute.
He reached for the clean under-sheet and said to the woman whose musical voice had raised a smile on a day his cheek muscles rarely worked without effort, ‘Was that your family on the phone?’
‘Yes.’ It was the first time she’d spoken to any of them other than her grandma since New Year’s Day, Victoria realised with a pang. Since she’d moved to Manhattan, the supposed glamour of her life meant things had improved immeasurably when she returned home for visits, her family agog to hear stories about her demanding boss and the city that never slept. But that was only when she was home. Out of sight still meant out of mind. ‘I promised Grandma Brigit that you have been superhuman in your care of me.’
The only wonder was that it had taken so long for the man used to having other people cater to his every need to get fed up of playing nursemaid.
He actually caught her eye at this, a look of astonishment on his face. ‘The fire-breathing dragon is called Brigit? The same as the storm?’
She grinned. ‘Very apt, isn’t it?’
‘Is she as scary in real life as she is on the phone?’
‘Much worse,’ she assured him. ‘When my sister Mags brought her first boyfriend home, Grandma terrified him so much that he never came back. None of my sisters ever brought a boyfriend home after that, not unless they were certain she’d gone out.’
‘She lived with you?’
Watching him wrestle the clean under-sheet with the face of a man wrestling his personal nemesis elicited such a swell of emotion in her that she had to swallow it to answer. ‘My granddaddy died when I was a baby. She moved in with us then.’
The way she said granddaddy , with the fullness of her Irish brogue, made Marcello grin improbably.
‘What?’ she asked, noticing.
He shook his head and continued fighting the ridiculous under-sheet. ‘Nothing. So you grew up living with the fire-breathing dragon?’
‘I did.’
He resisted a quip about Victoria keeping her boyfriends away. This current easy conversation was good. The last thing he wanted was to dip into the dangerous territory of thinking about her romantic life.
Even before he’d developed these disturbing feelings for her, Marcello had known he would cheerfully sabotage any kind of romantic life Victoria had until science found a way to clone her for him. He’d only felt compelled to do it once, the one date she’d mentioned to him: her theatre date. He’d taken great delight in imagining her date as an acne-riddled, pot-bellied bore, then experienced even greater delight that her date must have been as boring as he’d hoped when she left him stranded at the theatre so she could help Marcello find his missing Montblanc.
If he’d known about Grandma Brigit sooner, he’d have offered to pay for her to move in with Victoria as a guard dog to keep suitors away until the scientists had honed their human cloning technique.
‘You must have spent your childhood hiding under your bed from her,’ he said.
She laughed lightly. ‘My sisters would disagree but she wasn’t that bad. Saying that, I was always the closest to her.’
‘She let you get close without burning you to a crisp?’ he asked in fake astonishment.
Her smile was wry. ‘I suffered my share of singes but...’ She was silent a long moment. ‘I think it’s because I was a baby when she came to live with us. I was a distraction for her grief at losing my granddaddy. Or a comfort. I don’t know. I don’t remember, what with only being a baby. But she always looked out for me. Stopped me always being swallowed up by my sisters.’
Marcello felt a pang of empathy for the fire-breathing dragon. There was only one lesson in life he would sell his soul to have never experienced, and that was grief.
‘What do you mean about being swallowed up?’
She was silent another long moment before quietly saying, ‘I’m the second youngest of five girls. I had no clearly defined role in the pack. I wasn’t the oldest or the baby—Sinead came eleven months after me—or even the rebellious middle child. I was the one whose name no one could get right first time. If Mum wanted me, she’d always call one of my sisters’ names first, which I know is normal but it always felt like I was the only one whose name wasn’t on the tip of her tongue, the insignificant one. I could hide in my room for hours and she wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t there.
‘Grandma was terrifying but she knew exactly who I was. She never forgot me or my name.’
An image danced in his mind of a pretty little redhead sitting on a floor, stepped over and unnoticed by the crowd surrounding her.
Blinking the image away, his stare was caught by the grown, beautiful redhead curled on his bedroom sofa, the beautiful redhead whose stifled laughter had stayed at the forefront of his memories like a warm glow for months before he’d grabbed the opportunity to employ her.
‘There is nothing forgettable about you, Victoria,’ he said with simple honesty.
Her eyes widened.
There was an almost imperceptible rise of her shoulders and then, just as he was about to jerk his stare away, he saw it.
The dark pulsing in her eyes and the creep of colour over her cheeks.
A bolt of electricity exploded in his chest.
Silence chimed loudly.
The hazel eyes widened into orbs. A trembling hand pressed against her breast...
Suddenly fighting for breath, Marcello wrenched his stare to the sheet gripped tightly in his hand. Auto-pilot kicked in and, the room in pitch silence, he fought the under-sheet until it submitted, then worked quickly to place the pillows and duvet from the guest room onto the bed, all the while trying to convince himself that he hadn’t just seen what he’d seen. Told himself it had been a trick of the light. A manifestation of his desire in the form of an illusion.
He had to force himself to look at her again. Had to clear his throat to speak. ‘I need to make some calls. I won’t be far, just in the office.’ The office he’d had a second desk added to so Victoria could work from the apartment when needed. ‘Do you need anything?’
Even darker colour stained her cheeks and she hastily turned her face away and shook her head.
‘Bene.’
He left the room without another word.
Victoria’s knees were drawn to her chin, her mouth pressed tight against them.
Her heart was racing.
He’d seen.
Marcello had seen.
Oh, God.
Hot blood was whooshing in her head.
She couldn’t think what to do.
He’d seen . She knew it.
It had been the starkness in both his expression and voice when he’d said there was nothing forgettable about her. The emotion that had ballooned in her...
In that moment she’d been helpless to stop her burgeoning feelings from showing on her face, and he’d seen it. And he’d recognised it for what it was. She knew it. There was no hiding it now. From either of them.
Oh, God, the pained look that had flashed over him.
He’d been unable to get away from her fast enough.
What was she going to do?
More sleep, she decided desperately. Bury herself in oblivion until it was safe to leave the apartment.
The weakness in her legs on her walk to the bed had nothing to do with the virus she’d been fighting.
Whether it was all the sleep she’d had since falling ill or the electrical current zinging in her veins, the oblivion she hankered for refused to come. Even burying her head under the pillow didn’t help. All she could see was Marcello’s pained expression.
‘Victoria?’
She threw the pillow off and whipped her face towards the door.
Marcello was standing on the threshold holding a tray with a bowl and a tall glass of water.
Her heart flew up her throat.
He didn’t meet her stare. His shoulders rose, strong, deep olive throat moving. ‘Lunch. None of the delis or restaurants are delivering still, so I am afraid you have to put up with my latest attempt at cooking.’
So that was how he was going to play it? By pretending nothing had happened?
A way out of the nightmare opened itself, and she scrambled to sit up, murmuring her thanks. If he could pretend then so could she.
He stepped into the room. ‘Where do you want me to put it?’
He hadn’t asked that before. He always brought it to her in bed.
‘The table. By the armchair. Please.’ Pulling the duvet off her lap, she climbed off the bed.
Lips tight, jaw clenched, he turned his face away from her.
For the first time since she’d fallen ill, embarrassment at her lack of clothing seared her, and as mortification engulfed her in a burning flame, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the full-length mirror and understood why he’d turned his stare away. The light in the room had made the white T-shirt she was wearing semi-translucent.
Wishing something would fall from the sky and snatch her up and take her far away, Victoria hugged her arms across her breasts and padded to the armchair. Marcello visibly stiffened when she passed him, magnifying her awkwardness. When she went to sit, her thigh bashed into the table. In horrified slow motion, she watched the tall glass topple and hit the side of the tray with a loud crack.
The glass shattered.
In the blink of an eye, water flooded the tray, spilling onto the highly polished, expensive side table and dripping onto the Persian rug.
Could the situation be any more excruciating? she wondered despairingly as she crouched down and attempted to gather the broken shards together, mumbling an apology.
‘Did any of the glass get you?’ he asked tersely.
‘No. It’s all on the tray.’
‘Then leave it. I’ll get a cloth.’
His tone accelerated her despair. Marcello was the least precious man when it came to spillages and breakages.
He really was fed up of taking care of her. Probably fed up with her altogether.
‘I told you to leave it,’ Marcello snapped when he returned moments later with a hand towel from the bathroom and found Victoria putting all the smaller glass fragments into the larger pieces.
‘It’s my mess, I should clean it.’
‘You have done enough.’
Her flinch made his guts clench.
Marcello knew he was being unreasonable but his clenched guts were burning. He was burning.
It had been hard enough dealing with and fighting his own erupting attraction when he’d believed it to be one-sided. To see it mirrored in Victoria’s eyes...
Dio , he wished he could wipe what he’d seen from his mind.
If that look had come from anyone but Victoria then he’d be welcoming it. Delighting in it.
But Victoria wasn’t just anyone. She was far from being just anyone . She was his Woman Friday. A purely platonic Woman Friday. He’d made damned sure of that.
He could not lose her from his life. To act on their feelings could only lead to disaster.
He had an awful sinking feeling that disaster had already struck.
He’d had to brace himself just to walk back into the bedroom with her lunch, had had to set a clear path in his mind for dealing with it: he would deliver food to wherever she wanted and then, once she was settled and comfortable, he would leave.
If not for the smashed glass he’d already be back at his computer immersing himself in work.
Or trying to.
What was it they said about the best-laid plans? he thought grimly, crouching beside her and doing everything humanly possible to tune out the closeness of the body driving him to distraction.
‘I never asked to get ill,’ she snapped back, pinching another small shard and dropping it with the others.
He gritted his teeth. ‘I never said you did.’
‘You just implied it.’
Dio , he should be celebrating that she was enough of herself to argue with him; the memory of that long night when he’d had grips of fear that she’d never argue with him again still fresh, but the sleeve of her T-shirt brushed against his arm as she reached over to pinch another shard and he knew that if he looked down, he’d find the hem had risen higher up her thigh and would be skimming the bottom his fingers wouldn’t quit yearning to touch.
‘Will you get out of my way and let me clear this up?’ he demanded roughly, lifting the tray and running the towel over the table to soak up the spilt water.
‘Will you stop talking to me like you think I’m an annoyance?’
‘Then stop being annoying.’ Feeling her angry...hurt...stare on him, Marcello gritted his teeth even harder. He would swear he heard her grit her teeth too.
‘I’m not going to throw myself at you, you know,’ she said tautly.
His guts kicked in rhythm with his heart. Breathing heavily, he tightened his grip on the towel. ‘Do not go there, Victoria.’
Some things should never be spoken of. Never openly acknowledged.
He felt her shift. Knew without looking that she’d untucked her calves from beneath her and was now sitting on her damnably beautiful bottom.
‘Why not when that’s what this is all about?’ she retorted. ‘Because it is, isn’t it?’ There was a catch in her musical lilt. ‘I know you saw it, but I know perfectly well that you don’t see me in the same way, so unless you’re deliberately trying to hurt me, you don’t have to make your revulsion so blindingly obvious.’