Vettori's Damsel in Distress

Geli groaned. ‘It’s my fault. I’ll pay for them.’

‘No...’ Lisa and Dante spoke as one then Lisa added, ‘The first rule of catering is that if you see a rat, you don’t scream. The second is that you don’t shout, It’s a rat... Unfortunately, when I felt something move and that something was grey and furry I totally— Omigod, Geli, you’re bleeding!’

Geli glanced at the trickle of blood running down her palm. ‘It’s nothing. The poor thing panicked.’

‘A poor thing that’s been who knows where,’ Lisa replied, ‘eating who knows what filth. Come on, we’ll go upstairs and I’ll clean it up for you.’

‘It’s okay, honestly,’ Geli protested, now seriously embarrassed. ‘It’s late and Signora Franco, the woman who owns the apartment I’ve rented, will be waiting for me with the key. I would have called her to let her know my plane had been delayed but her English is even worse than my Italian.’

Geli glanced at her watch. She’d promised to let her sisters know when she was safely in her apartment and it was well past ten o’clock. She’d warned them that her plane had been delayed but if she didn’t text them soon they’d be imagining all sorts.

‘There’s no need to worry about Signora Franco,’ Dante said.

‘Oh, but—’

‘Via Pepone has been demolished to make way for an office block,’ he said, his expression grim. ‘I hoped to break it to you rather more gently, but I’m afraid the apartment you have rented no longer exists.’

It took a moment for what Dante had said to sink in. There was no Via Pepone? No apartment? ‘But I spoke to Signora Franco...’

‘Find a box for Rattino, Lis, before he does any more damage.’ Dante took her coat and bag from his cousin and ushered her towards the stairs.

Geli didn’t move. This had to be a mistake. ‘Maybe I have the name of the street wrong?’ she said, trying not to think about how the directions on the map she’d been sent had taken her to a construction site. ‘Maybe it’s a typo—’

‘Let’s get your hand cleaned up. Are your tetanus shots up to date?’ he asked.

‘What? Oh, yes...’ She stood her ground for another ten seconds but she couldn’t go back into the restaurant with the kitten and if there was a problem with the apartment she had to know. And Lisa was right—the last thing she needed was an infected hand.

Concentrate on that. And repeating her apology wouldn’t hurt.

‘I really am sorry about the rat thing,’ she said as she began to climb the stairs. ‘The kitten really would have died if I’d left it out there.’

‘So you picked it up and put it in the pocket of your beautiful coat?’ He liked her coat... ‘Do you do that often?’

‘All the time,’ she admitted. ‘Coat pockets, bags, the basket of my bicycle. My sisters did their best to discourage me, but eventually they gave it up as a lost cause.’

‘And are they always this ungrateful? Your little strays?’ As they reached the landing he took her hand in his to check the damage and Geli forgot about the kitten, her apartment, pretty much everything as the warmth of his fingers seeped beneath her skin and into the bone.

When she didn’t answer, he looked up and the temperature rose to the point where she was blushing to her toes.

Toast in flames. Smoke alarm hurting her eardrums...

‘Frightened animals lash out,’ she said quickly, waiting for him to open one of the doors, but he kept her hand in his and headed up a second flight of stairs.

There was only one door at the top. He let go of her hand, took a key from his pocket, unlocked it and pushed it open, standing back so that she could go ahead of him.

Geli wasn’t sure what she’d expected; she hadn’t actually been doing a lot of thinking since he’d turned and looked at her. Her brain had been working overtime dealing with the bombardment of her senses—new sights, new scents, a whole new level of physical response to a man.

Maybe a staff restroom...

Or maybe not.

There was a small entrance hall with hooks for coats, a rack for boots. Dante hung her coat beside a worn waxed jacket then opened an inner door to a distinctly masculine apartment.

There were tribal rugs from North Africa on the broad planks of a timber floor gleaming with the patina of age, splashes of brilliantly coloured modern art on the walls, shelves crammed with books. There was the warm glow and welcoming scent of logs burning in a wood stove and an enormous old leather sofa pulled up invitingly in front of it. The kind with big rounded arms—perfect for curling up against—and thick squashy cushions.

‘You live here,’ she said stupidly.

‘Yes.’ His face was expressionless as he tossed her bag onto the sofa. ‘I’m told that it’s very lower middle class to live over the shop but it suits me.’

‘Well, that’s just a load of tosh.’

‘Tosh?’ he repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before. Maybe he hadn’t but it hardly needed explaining. It was all there in the sound.

‘Total tosh. One day I’m going to live in a house exactly like this,’ she said, turning around so that she could take in every detail. ‘The top floor for me, workshops on the floor below me and a showroom on the ground floor—’ she came to halt, facing him ‘—and my great-grandfather was the younger son of an earl.’

‘An earl?’

Realising just how pompous that must have sounded, Geli said, ‘Of course my grandmother defied her father and married beneath her, so we’re not on His Lordship’s Christmas card list, which may very well prove the point. Not that they’re on ours,’ she added.

‘They disowned her?’

She shrugged. ‘Apparently they had other, more obedient children.’

And that was more personal information than she’d shared with anyone, ever, but she didn’t want him to think any of them gave a fig for their aristocratic relations. Even in extremis they’d never turned to them for help.

‘The family, narrow-minded and full of secrets, is the source of all our discontents,’ Dante replied, clearly quoting someone.

‘Who said that?’ she asked.

‘I just did.’

‘No, I meant...’ She shook her head. He knew exactly what she meant. ‘I have a great family.’ For years it had just been the four of them. Her sisters, Elle and Sorrel, and their grandmother. They’d been solid. A tight-knit unit standing against the world. That had all changed the day a stranger had arrived on the doorstep with an ice cream van. Now her sisters were not only successful businesswomen, but married and producing babies as if they were going out of fashion, while Great-Uncle Basil—who’d sent the van—and Grandma were warming their old bones in the south of France.

‘You are very fortunate.’

‘Yes...’ If you ignored the empty space left by her mother. By an unknown father. By the legions of aunts, uncles, cousins that she didn’t know. Who didn’t know her.

‘The bathroom is through here,’ Dante said, opening a door to an inner hall.

‘Il bagno...’ she said brightly, making an effort to think in Italian as she followed him. Making an effort to think.

His bagno would, in estate agent speak, have been described as a ‘roomy vintage-style’ bathroom. In this case she was pretty certain the fittings—a stately roll-top bath with claw feet and gleaming brass taps, a loo with a high tank and a wide, deep washbasin—were the real deal.

‘I’ll shut the door so that you can put the kitten down,’ he said, and the roominess shrank in direct proportion to the width of his shoulders as he shut the door. ‘He can’t escape.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ she said as, carefully unhooking the creature’s claws from the front of her dress, she set it down in the bath. ‘And if it went under the bagno...’ She left him to imagine what fun it would be trying to tempt him out.

Dante glanced down as the kitten, a tiny front paw resting against the steep side of the bath, protested at this indignity. ‘Smart thinking.’