Chapter Three #2
‘And you tell me this now?’ he demanded. ‘ After extracting ninety thousand pounds from me?’
She winced. ‘I thought I’d have more time to prepare. But if I’m drunk, then it will just look like I’m drunk. Isn’t that better than being caught out for lying?’
He willed his mouth not to drop at her logic. And then poured her another glass. ‘We’ll do both,’ he decided.
‘If it’s any consolation, I’m not much of a drinker, so it really shouldn’t take long. Or waste too much of your alcohol,’ she explained.
‘It’s not,’ he replied. ‘A consolation,’ he clarified when she appeared confused by his response.
She shrugged apologetically and took another worryingly large mouthful.
‘Okay,’ he said, taking the glass from her. ‘Slow down. We want drunk, not throwing up.’
He leaned back in the seat opposite her and tried to get his nerves under control. What was wrong with him? He didn’t get flustered like this. It was her. Ivy. In his house. No one came to his house. Not even his mother, or his cousin.
He just needed to focus. That was all.
‘We need to make it look like we did marry for love, but that it didn’t work out. And that now our lives are so very different it would be untenable to continue with the marriage.’
‘Right.’ She nodded. ‘So, it doesn’t matter that we haven’t been living together?’
‘No,’ Antonio said.
‘But did we ever?’
‘How much did you drink?’ he asked her, suddenly worried.
‘No, I mean, we’re going to have to lie about our…history, right?’
‘Yes,’ he said, closing his eyes in understanding. ‘Of course. Sì . Yes. We lived together in England. But not Italy.’
Ivy bobbed her head in agreement, the long chestnut layers of hair picking up the glimmer of the setting sun. ‘I suppose the assessor is going to expect us to know things about each other?’
Antonio nodded, before abruptly shooting a question at her. ‘What is your favourite colour?’ he demanded.
‘Red,’ Ivy replied, trying not to let his rapidly fired question throw her. It had been the easiest colour for her to see following the accident. Rich, vibrant, lipstick red. ‘You?’
‘Blue,’ he said, barely stopping to take a breath before asking, ‘How do you take your coffee?’
‘I don’t,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t really like the taste.’
Antonio spluttered. ‘But you worked in a coffee shop.’
This time she couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Not because I like coffee, Antonio. I just needed the money,’ she said.
He stared at her as if he were trying to reframe what he thought of her.
‘ Va bene . Family?’ he pressed on.
‘One brother, Jamie,’ she said.
‘Parents?’
She sighed; the topic of her parents was always difficult. ‘We haven’t heard from our father in about ten years now. And our mother…she remarried and lives abroad,’ she replied, remembering the phone call from four years ago vividly.
‘I got married! To Ted! Oh, love. He’s just wonderful. He really is.’
‘When?’ was all Ivy had been able to ask.
‘Last week. We didn’t want to bother you about it. Especially as it would have been so far for you to come.’
‘So far?’
‘Boston. I’m in Boston! We have to be here because Ted needs to be near his daughter.’
A daughter only two years younger than Jamie. And six years younger than her. Ivy swallowed. Her mother hadn’t even asked about Jamie, her own child. She hadn’t even asked how Ivy was, what she was doing, whether they needed anything.
‘You?’ she asked him to stave off any further delving into her personal life.
‘Family? Lots. Gio had five children. My mother, Alessia, was the eldest. The eldest son, also called Gio, passed away before I was born. Uncle Carlos was next, but he is unmarried with no children. There was Aunt Amalia, who Gio disinherited long before trying that on with me. She had the gall to marry an American actor, much to my grandfather’s horror.
She had a son, our cousin Enzo, who we met for the first time at the funeral.
And then the youngest is Uncle Luca, who is Maria’s father. ’
Ivy swallowed. There was no way she was going to remember all that. And in the silence that settled between them, she wondered whether he realised that he’d listed his family by their importance to his grandfather.
‘So why the library?’
‘Mm?’ she asked, catching up with the back and forth of the conversation.
‘You work at the library. Is that just for money too?’ he asked.
‘Oh. No,’ she replied, a small smile gracing her lips.
‘Well, not only for the money,’ she conceded.
The library hadn’t been where Ivy imagined she would end up working, end up finding her purpose .
But it had been. ‘It’s an important part of the community,’ she said judiciously to Antonio.
‘It’s a place for people to come when they want to escape. It’s a shelter. It’s companionship.’
It’s a haven.
‘That’s noble,’ he mused.
‘You say that like you don’t believe in such a thing.’
Antonio shrugged, refusing to get drawn in further.
‘And Alessina International? What exactly is a brokerage firm?’ Ivy asked.
‘I help negotiate between people who want to have something and people who want to sell something.’
Ivy could see how that worked. Money, transactions, she saw, were important to him.
‘I’m proud of it,’ he continued. ‘We have offices in several major cities, employ over a thousand people and have a turnover that would make most businessmen weep,’ he announced with a passion she could see was true and honest.
‘Congratulations,’ Ivy replied sincerely. ‘I can’t imagine how hard you had to work to make that happen. Especially in such a short amount of time.’
He nodded, accepting her praise, but she wasn’t entirely sure he heard her. She’d meant it. Ivy really was impressed by what he’d achieved, knowing that it had been done in spite of his grandfather, rather than because of him.
But she couldn’t help feeling that Antonio might be taking a wrong turn with what the assessor would be interested in.
‘Do you think that the assessor might want to know other things, rather than what we know about each other?’ Rather than each other’s CVs, she thought privately, but stopped herself from saying that.
‘No,’ he dismissed. ‘Honestly, this meeting will be a walk in the park. We’ll just explain that we met in London—’ he rolled his hand ‘—had a whirlwind romance—’ another roll ‘—we were young and wanted to be together, couldn’t bear for it to end—’
He broke off as Ivy failed to stifle her laughter.
‘What?’ he demanded, for some reason moving her glass of wine slightly out of her reach.
‘You might want to look a little less flippant when you say that,’ she advised.
‘Say what?’
‘That we wanted to be together? It’s undermined a little by the distaste so evident in your tone.’
Antonio’s sigh of frustration as he sank back into the chair almost made Ivy feel sorry for him. Almost. She wondered whether his autocratic nature had increased because of the power and money he had amassed, or because people were intimidated by him and agreed to his every whim.
‘Okay,’ he said, leaning across the table and taking her hand.
‘We were so young,’ he said, repeating his earlier words, this time his tone like honey, pouring over her skin.
‘We thought we were in love, unable to bear the agony of being apart.’ The espresso-rich gaze bored into her, the intent furrow of his brow casting his face in shadow, emphasising the graze of stubble across his jawline.
Even though the dusk of the evening made it harder for her to see, Ivy was still hit by the near brutal impact of his masculinity.
The shirt button, opened at his neck by frustrated impatient fingers, displayed a dusting of dark hair over olive skin, just enough to tease an underworked imagination.
It had been years since she’d thought about men.
Since she’d had the chance, or the inclination.
After the accident, the little energy she did have was needed to simply get up and face the day.
‘We married in a whirlwind,’ he continued, drawing her further into the fantasy he was weaving, utterly uncaring of the impact he was having on her, intentionally or otherwise. ‘And for a few spectacular weeks it was perfection.’
She almost believed it herself, the sincerity in his voice, the way he was looking at her. As if…as if…
‘But then reality hit, hard and fast. I had to return to Italy. You had to stay in England, and the relationship just petered out,’ he concluded with a shrug.
Ivy nodded, willing her heartbeat to slow. Cleared her throat. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I think that will be enough.’
‘Signor Gallo? C’è qualcuno qui che vuole vederla.’
Ivy jumped at Agata’s statement, wondering how long she had been standing in the doorway.
‘The assessor is here. She’s early,’ he commented.
Ivy nodded, and cast a look at the remaining wine in her glass. It hadn’t been a great idea—alcohol on top of the exhaustion and unfamiliarity of the location. She’d probably bump into a wall or something, but at least both Antonio and the assessor would only think she was tipsy.
‘Shall I bring her outside?’ Agata asked in Italian.
‘Would it be better to take this inside? It’s getting quite dark.’ Ivy intervened before Antonio could make his decree.
Antonio looked at her, frowning as if she had said something unexpected, his eyes beginning to narrow. She looked away, and Agata cleared her throat. ‘Signor? ’
‘Salotto.’
Relief swept through Ivy as she followed him to the living room. He turned back to her, as if he were about to ask her a question, when clipped, determined footsteps claimed their attention.
They turned, unknowingly in unison, to watch the approach of a grey-clad no-nonsense woman in her late fifties. Steel-grey hair pulled back in a bun that appeared more brutal than efficient.