Passionate Chef, Ice Queen Boss / Rescued in a Wedding Dress: Passionate Chef, Ice Queen Boss / Rescued in a Wedding Dress

‘Goodnight—’

‘Thank you for seeing me—’

He reached for her hand, perhaps to shake it.

Scarlett took a step towards the door as he did so, and they each stepped into the other’s path. Lorenzo’s hands came up to cup her elbows, perhaps to hold her still while he stepped around her.

Instead she glanced up. He glanced down into her eyes and a moment later, their lips met.

Chapter Four

‘GOODNIGHT. I—thank you for seeing me home.’ Scarlett uttered the words through lips that wanted to deny what had just happened.

Wanted to deny a kiss that had lasted less than a second, a mere brush of lips against lips before she and Lorenzo had both…broken away. They’d each stepped back as though they’d been burnt. ‘I have to—’

She couldn’t make calm words come out, couldn’t do anything to downplay something that shouldn’t even need to be downplayed and yet, to Scarlett, the entire world had stopped and then started up again and now it was spinning strangely and nothing felt quite right because of Lorenzo’s kiss…

Barely even a kiss, Scarlett.

Somehow she got her key straight into the lock, twisted it and got the door open. Her feet carried her through and she closed the door. She didn’t look back, and then through the closed door she heard his footsteps taking him away in a rapid stride that went, and then half missed a step, and then kept going.

He’d hesitated.

And as that happened Scarlett had leaned her shoulder against the closed door and shut her eyes and silently willed…What? For him to stop? Keep walking away?

She should have said something. Scarlett shouldn’t have allowed that kiss to happen in the first place. And that was the problem. Scarlett didn’t believe either one of them had anticipated the kiss happening. It hadn’t been planned or thought about. How could she protect against the possibility of something she simply hadn’t expected?

For one little blink in time, five years had dropped away and they’d simply reached for each other. That should not, even for a second, have seemed the natural thing to do.

This had shocked her.

Perhaps it had also shocked Lorenzo.

Then maybe you should ask yourself how it’s affected you now that it’s happened?

Scarlett shook her head and went to the wardrobe to pull out her workout clothes of knee-length fitted black pants and lime-green vest-top and trainers. She clipped on her iPod, turned the music to a mind-numbing set, and began her Pilates routine.

Forget being kissed by a man who had no right to kiss her, before they both realised the insanity of their actions, and stopped. Forget how it had happened or why it had happened or anything else about it.

Scarlett was here for Rosa and her family and she only wanted to think about those issues. She forced her brain to the tricky issue of pulling Rosa into an utterly profitable financial position, and kept her thoughts there as she stretched and twisted and limbered away the tensions of her day.

Over the next five days, Scarlett forced aside what she chose to refer to in her thoughts when she couldn’t avoid acknowledging it altogether, as ‘that regrettable moment’. And indeed for the most part, she did a very good job of forgetting/ignoring/not confronting the issue in a tizzy of busyness at the restaurant.

She worked hard, visited often with Isabella and sometimes with other family members. She also co-operated with Lorenzo in terms of the running of Rosa where that co-operation was needed, and he co-operated with her. Scarlett felt quite certain that Lorenzo also didn’t give the matter of that one, tiny, completely insignificant slip that had occurred outside her bedsit a single thought.

She frowned and dipped her hand through the cool, clear swimming pool water. Today was Monday and the restaurant was closed during the main part of the day while the town observed a partial religious holiday. For those so inclined there’d been church services earlier. Rosa would staff up at four p.m. and open for business for the evening.

For now, Scarlett, Isabella and Scarlett’s sister Jackie were lazing in this sheltered swimming pool that was available to townsfolk who belonged either as students or teachers to the study faculty that owned it. It was a hot day, and quiet and restful here. Getting away for this had been a very welcome idea.

Scarlett dipped her shoulders beneath the cool water. Her hair was up in an untidy knot on top of her head, secured with a hair band and a thick red ribbon that exactly matched her high-cut one-piece red suit. She was not obsessive-compulsive about her ribbons. Scarlett simply enjoyed finding new ones and matching them to her clothing.

Lorenzo has looked at each change of ribbon. His gaze goes often to your hair. He used to enjoy sifting it through his fingers…

Oh! Scarlett pinched her lips together. She was having a rest. Thinking about the head chef of Rosa was not on her agenda for right now. For at all! She turned to Jackie and forced a smile. ‘This is nice. Thanks for talking me into joining you and Izzie.’

‘You’ve been hard to pin down for any one-on-one time since you came back to Monta Correnti.’ Jackie’s words were not accusatory, simply honest. ‘When Romano said he needed to come out here, I thought why not make a little pool party of it?’

Had Jackie chosen an event where Isabella would be present to make this a little easier for her sister? Scarlett didn’t know what to say. Of all the family, Jackie was the one she found it most difficult to spend time with.

Her guilt over her sister’s loss of her daughter, Kate, for so many years ate at her. Scarlett…didn’t know how to deal with that. And she realised now, as she looked into Jackie’s eyes, that she had been avoiding her sister because of this issue.

Before Scarlett could speak, and she didn’t know what she would have said anyway, Jackie went on.

‘Romano had to come out here anyway for a meeting. He only teaches an evening class once a week, but now that he’s on the board of teachers things like that come up periodically.’ Her voice softened as she spoke of the man who’d been her teenage lover and also the father of the baby that Jackie had given up for adoption. ‘I figured we’d all be grateful for some time in the water, anyway.’

That was true. It was a hot day.

‘Do you suppose we should actually make some appearance of swimming, just so we look like we belong in here?’ Isabella asked the question without moving a muscle.

‘Oh, I think somnolent suits us fairly well, don’t you?’ Scarlett inserted this quip and was proud of her effort. She wanted…to feel closer to Jackie, and to feel comfortable with her sister overall. That would be nice, but it wasn’t going to happen while Scarlett kept putting off self-protective prickle vibes every time they were near each other.

Isabella seemed to have dealt with any guilt that she felt over Jackie’s loss. Why couldn’t Scarlett do the same and put all that behind her?

‘Well, I’m not moving an inch until Romano finishes his meeting with the others and comes to join us.’ Jackie laughed and settled her arms more firmly back against the edge of the pool.

Isabella raised her brows in Scarlett’s direction. ‘You never said what the phone call was about from your mother yesterday at the restaurant, Scarlett. Is it anything I should know about, or tell Papa? I know we’ve put you in charge but I wouldn’t want you to think you have to deal with everything all by yourself. If there are any issues with Sorella—’

‘No, it wasn’t about either of the restaurants.’ Her mother and her uncle Luca owned a restaurant each. Their rivalry when it came to those restaurants was long-standing, though from the viewpoint of the staff actually working at Rosa, at least, Scarlett wasn’t really picking up that vibe. They just wanted to get on with the job. It wouldn’t surprise her too much to learn that the staff at Sorella felt the same way.

‘As predicted, Izzie, Mamma wasn’t happy to know that I’d moved out of her home.’ Scarlett shrugged. ‘She wasn’t pleased initially to know that I was going to work at Rosa, either. I thought, when she invited me to stay at her villa while I was here, that she’d got over that.’

‘I wish she and my father could just get along.’ Isabella shook her head. ‘I hope her call didn’t upset you too much, Scarlett.’

‘No. That’s just Mamma. Her reaction just concreted it in for me that I’d made the right decision in moving out of her villa.’ Scarlett let her glance encompass Jackie. ‘As for my working at Rosa, that’s my decision. It’s got nothing to do with our mother.’

Jackie dipped her chin in acknowledgement. ‘That sounds very fair to me.’

It was. And Scarlett appreciated the support. ‘Mamma said that Elizabeth would never move out of her own mother’s home making the entire town assume that home wasn’t good enough for her.’

Jackie stared for a moment and then threw her head back and laughed.

Scarlett shook her head in bewilderment. ‘What?’

‘Lizzie might be the one of us who gets on the best with our mother, but Lizzie is also living in Australia! It’s not as though she’s right in Mamma’s pocket all the time to test the friendship, so to speak.’ Jackie’s smile widened. ‘It’s just that you’re the one who looks exactly like Mamma when you pull that intolerant, fed-up-to-the-gills expression.’

‘Oh, thanks very much!’ Scarlett flicked water at her sister and received the same treatment back.

Izzie, caught in the middle, squealed and ducked right under the water, which somewhat defeated the purpose if she’d been trying to avoid being splashed.