Angelo swung his car away from his drive and headed towards the cottage.
He screeched to a stop in front of the cottage in a blaze of spitting gravel.
Inside, and about to begin the task of unloading the dishwasher, Rosie felt a surge of guilty relief that Jack was back, probably having forgotten something. Yet again, she was finding it difficult to be alone. The second there was no distraction, her thoughts took flight, and they always flew in the same direction.
It wasn’t going to do. She knew that. She just needed her brain to start paying attention to what it surely knew it must do.
She was half-smiling as she opened the front door before the doorbell had even been rung.
More than anything else, her smile infuriated Angelo. It didn’t take a genius to work out who that smile was for! In the space of the minute or so it had taken him to drive to the cottage, his mood had reached rock-bottom. Common sense had flown through the window. He seemed to have lost all sense of perspective.
“So I see old habits die hard,” he gritted.
“Angelo.” Rosie shrank back at the ferocious expression on his face. “What...what are you doing here?”
“You wanted to talk?” His voice was lethally cold, matching the look on his face. “Then let’s do it, Rosie. Let’s talk!”
CHAPTER TEN
“WE’VE SAID ALL there is to say to one another.” Rosie found that she was shaking like a leaf and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his beautiful face. But she was determined not to be weak, not to just go along for the ride. He hadn’t wanted to talk before. No, he had wanted to do anything but talk! And now here he was, looking as though he wanted to punch things, telling her that he suddenly wanted to talk. How was she ever going to get her life back on track if she remained vulnerable like this? If she allowed him to keep imagining that he could just show up and that she would let him in?
Besides, if he was angry over something, then she could figure out what it was. Something to do with the cottage or the land or both.
“We agreed that whatever we needed to discuss about the land would go through a lawyer.” She stood in front of the doorway and folded her arms.
“I couldn’t give a damn about the land. Now stand aside. I want to come in.”
“And if I don’t want to let you in?”
“Then—” Angelo nudged closer and she fell back “—you might find that you don’t have a choice.”
“How has life been treating you?” He walked past her, his keen, green eyes searching for signs of occupation. By a man. By a man whose face was all too familiar to him.
“Fine!” Rosie stuck her chin up in mutinous response. He had headed towards the kitchen, but before she could catch up with him he was back out and making for the sitting room. From the way he glanced up the stairs, she wondered if he intended to do a full circuit of the cottage.
“I’ll bet,” Angelo snarled. There were no tell-tale signs of permanent occupation by someone else in the cottage, but then who knew? The bathroom upstairs might be a positive hotbed of men’s razors, boxer shorts and after shave!
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I should have guessed he was still around. And you had the nerve to try and wheedle personal details out of me! You’re a piece of work!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and if you’ve come here to insult me then you can leave. Right away!” She wondered how she would follow that ringing command through. He was bigger, stronger and, judging from the look of it, in no hurry to go anywhere. In all the time she had known him, this barely contained savagery had never been apparent. Not for a second did she imagine that it would translate into anything physical, but she feared what he might say to her. She couldn’t bear it if he began repeating how much he didn’t care and had never cared about her.
Angelo laughed mirthlessly. Every time he thought about that man nonchalantly driving away from the cottage, he saw red. It was almost more than he could do just to keep up a conversation of sorts when he wanted to smash things.
“Guess what?” He walked across to the bay window and perched on the edge of it because he couldn’t imagine being able to sit still.
“What?” Rosie hovered by the door, uncertain of what was expected of her.
“I saw him. So why don’t we quit playing games? You can stop pretending that you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about and I might finally learn the truth straight from the horse’s mouth. Or should I say straight from the mouth of the scheming, lying opportunist you never stopped being?”
Rosie tentatively walked towards the sofa and sat down, drawing her legs up to her chin.
Angelo didn’t take his eyes off her. God, but she was giving an Oscar-winning performance as the confused girl without an ounce of guile in her entire body. Her eyes were huge as she stared up at him. Gold-diggers usually came in sexy clothes; a few buttons undone; lashes longer than was natural; lips red and always slightly parted. She bucked the trend. Even when he had first met her in that cocktail bar, she had failed to do the part of “sexy babe” justice. Was that why he had been taken in three years ago? She was wearing her gardening garb of faded dungarees and a striped T-shirt underneath. Her feet were stuck into a pair of thick socks but she wasn’t wearing any shoes.
“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, Angelo.”
“Blond hair in a pony tail? Looks like a tree-hugging loser through and through? Ring any bells?”
“Are you talking about Jack?”
Angelo was enraged that she managed to maintain that steady, puzzled look even as she confessed the continuing presence of the man in her life.
“Are you going to tell me that he wasn’t here? That he didn’t spend the weekend in your house?” He could hear the ugly, unacceptable jealousy in his voice but he didn’t care.
“Yes, he spent the weekend. What of it?”
“You disgust me.”
“I disgust you?”
“Has he been on the scene all the time? I might have known that you would never have given him up!”
Rosie, about to lay into him—because how dared he start questioning how she lived her life?—was stunned into confused silence.
“Given him up?” she asked, bewildered.
“Spare me the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth routine!” Angelo propelled himself away from the bay window, clenched his fists and unclenched them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You were seeing that man behind my back three years ago and you’ve continued seeing him behind my back this time round. What game did the pair of you have up your sleeve?”
“Seeing Jack? Yes, I’ve been seeing Jack. Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve known him since...since for ever.”
“You mean you aren’t even going to deny your own infidelities?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.” He sat down on the chair and forced himself to keep perfectly still. It was the only way he could think of to impose some kind of self-control over emotions that were all over the place.
“You think I’ve been sleeping with Jack?” Rosie started laughing. She couldn’t stop. She knew that there was a dangerously hysterical edge to her laughter but she just couldn’t keep it in.
It was Angelo’s turn to be confused. He wondered if this was a ploy. He refused to believe that he could have been wrong. No, he wasn’t going to give that house-room.
“I know you have.”
Abruptly, Rosie stopped laughing. “And you know that how? Because I’m just the sort of tramp who would string two men along at the same time? And was I sleeping with Jack while that creep was stalking me? And what on earth would possess you to think that Jack and I could ever have a relationship like that?”
“I have proof!”
“That’s impossible.” Rosie had the weird feeling that she had stepped into a parallel universe, one in which nothing made sense any longer.
“Pictures, Rosie. Of you. And him. Arms wrapped round one another. Laughing up at him. Him looking down at you.”
Rosie heard the raw jealousy in his voice and she could see that every word he uttered was dragged out of him, as though he could no longer help himself. For the first time, she was looking at an Angelo who was vulnerable. Something inside her stirred and she wanted nothing more than to hold him tightly against her until that dark, devastated expression was wiped off his face.
“Where did you get those pictures from?” she asked steadily.
Angelo raked his fingers through his hair. His hands felt unsteady. “Your trusty friend showed them to me. There’s no honour amongst thieves.”
“Oh, Mandy,” Rosie murmured.
She looked at Angelo; he glared at her and immediately said, “Don’t even begin to think that you can talk your way out of this one by telling me that whatever I saw was a bunch of lies...”
“Of course Jack and I were hugging one another, and I’ll bet you a million pounds I know when those pictures were taken as well.” She risked standing up so that she could walk over to the comfy chair on which he was perched in tense, watchful silence.
Angelo’s jaw hardened as she pulled over a small stool to sit right alongside him. He felt like an invalid being visited by the doctor about to break bad news. He wished to God that he had never set foot inside this cottage, yet there was an inevitability to what was unfolding between them. He had laid down ground rules, had told her that the past was off-limits, but holding it at arm’s length didn’t mean that it ceased to exist. He hated this feeling of helplessness in the face of uncontrollable events.