At Dante's Service

‘How nice for them, and for you,’ he said drily. ‘Unfortunately, I was not brought up in a stable family unit. My parents split up when I was young and for most of my childhood they fought over me like two dogs over a bone. Not because they loved me particularly, but because I was something else to fight about and winning was all that mattered to either of them.’

Rebekah heard the underlying bitterness in Dante’s voice and felt guilty that she had brought up a subject that he clearly found contentious. ‘That can’t have been much fun,’ she said quietly, trying to imagine what it had been like for him as a young boy, torn between his warring parents. Her own childhood had been so happy, and she had always hoped that one day she would have children and bring them up in the same loving environment that she and her brothers had enjoyed.

Silence fell between them while they ate. Dante gave a murmur of appreciation after his first mouthful but Rebekah’s appetite had disappeared and she toyed with her chicken.

‘I’m surprised you’re not married,’ he said suddenly. ‘You seem the sort of woman who would want to settle down and have a couple of kids. But you’re what—late twenties? And you’re still single.’

‘Twenty-eight is hardly over the hill,’ she said tersely. He had touched a raw nerve, especially when he had mentioned children. She was unaware that Dante had noticed her fingers clench around her knife and fork. He could almost see her putting up barriers and once again he asked himself why he was curious about her.

As the silence stretched between them Rebekah realised Dante was waiting for her to continue the conversation. ‘I would like to marry and have children one day,’ she admitted. She did not add that her longing for a baby sometimes felt like a physical ache inside her. ‘At the moment I’m concentrating on my career.’

‘What made you decide to train as a chef?’

‘I suppose cooking has always been part of my life and, when I left school, training to be a professional chef seemed a natural progression. My grandmother first taught me to cook, and by the age of seven or eight I could make bread and bake cakes and help my mother prepare the dinner. It was a matter of expediency,’ she explained. ‘I have seven brothers—six are older than me and Rhys is younger. When we were growing up, the boys helped my father on the farm, and they’re all huge rugby players with enormous appetites. My mother says it was like feeding an army when they all came in from working in the fields. I think she was relieved when she finally gave birth to a girl. Even when I was a small child I used to help her around the house.’

‘I don’t have any siblings and I can’t imagine what it’s like to be part of such a large family. Didn’t you resent being expected to help with domestic tasks rather than work on the farm with your brothers?’

Rebekah laughed. ‘My family is very traditional, but I’ve never minded that. We’re all incredibly close, even now that most of the older boys are married and have families of their own. Mum was too busy to teach me how to cook, but my grandmother loved showing me recipes she had collected over many years, and others that she had created herself. Nana Glenys is in her nineties now, but when she was young she worked as a cook for a top military general and his family, and she travelled to India and the Far East. Much of her cooking was influenced by the food she experienced abroad, as well as traditional Welsh dishes.’

She hesitated, wondering if she was boring Dante. Although she had worked for him for two months she had never talked to him on a personal level and she was conscious that the details of her life were mundane and unexciting. But when she glanced at him she found he was watching her and appeared interested in what she was saying.

‘Actually, I’m compiling a cookery book of Nana’s recipes. I’ve been working on bringing the dishes up to date and replacing items such as double cream with low-fat ingredients that are available today. A publisher has shown some interest in the book, and Nana would be thrilled to see her recipes in print. But she’s very frail now and I’m aware that I need to hurry and finish the book.’

Her eyes softened as she thought of the tiny elderly lady who had only recently been persuaded to leave her remote cottage and move into Rebekah’s parents’ farmhouse.

‘It sounds like you are close to your grandmother.’

‘Yes, I am. She’s a wonderful person.’

Dante found himself transfixed by Rebekah’s gentle smile and he wondered why he had not noticed before how pretty she was. Perhaps it was because her dull clothes and the way she wore her hair in that severe style, scraped back from her face and tied in a braid which she pinned on top of her head, did not demand attention.

But it wasn’t quite true that he had not noticed her, he acknowledged. He knew from the subtle rose scent of her perfume the moment she walked into a room, and sometimes he felt a little frisson of sexual awareness when she leaned across him to serve a meal. Her violet eyes were beautiful, and her dark lashes that brushed her cheeks when she blinked were so long that he wondered if they were false. He quickly discounted the idea. A woman who was not wearing a scrap of make-up was not likely to bother with false eyelashes.

‘I was close to my grandmother. In fact I adored her.’ As the words left his mouth he silently questioned why he was sharing personal confidences with his cook when he had never felt any inclination to do so with his mistresses. ‘She died a year ago at the grand age of ninety-two.’

‘Did she live at your family’s estate in Norfolk? I looked you up on the Internet and learned that the Jarrells own a stately home near Kings Lynn,’ Rebekah admitted, her cheeks turning pink when he looked surprised.

‘No, Nonna Perlita was my Italian grandmother. She lived in Tuscany, where I was born. Years ago my grandparents bought an ancient ruined monastery with the idea of restoring it and making it their home. When my grandfather died shortly afterwards, everyone assumed Perlita would sell the place, but she refused to move, and oversaw all the renovations my grandfather had planned. She said the Casa di Colombe—which means The House of Doves—was a lasting tribute to her husband.’

‘That’s lovely,’ Rebekah said softly. ‘You must miss her.’

‘I always spend July in Tuscany. This is the first year that she won’t be there and I know the house will feel empty without her.’

Thinking about his grandmother evoked a tug of emotion in Dante’s gut. After he had discovered the truth about Ben and learned how Lara had deceived him, Nonna was the person he had turned to and he had poured out his pain and anger to her.

‘Dante … is something wrong?’

Rebekah’s hesitant voice forced him to drag his mind from the past and, catching her puzzled look, he glanced down and saw that he had tightened his grip on his wine glass so that his knuckles were white.

‘Is it the sauce?’ she asked anxiously. ‘It does have quite a unique flavour. Maybe I used too much lemon-grass.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ he reassured her. ‘The dinner is superb, as usual. You said you have been concentrating on developing your career—’ he determinedly steered the conversation away from himself ‘—is that the reason you left Wales two years ago and came to London?’

‘Yes,’ she said after a long silence.

Dante lifted his brows enquiringly.

‘I … was in a relationship,’ Rebekah explained reluctantly, realising she would have to elaborate. But she could not tell him the full truth. Maybe one day she would come to terms with what a fool she had been, but she felt ashamed of the way she had blindly trusted Gareth. ‘It didn’t work out, and I decided to move away and make a new start.’

‘Why did you break up with the guy?’

Dante knew he should back off. He had heard the tremor in Rebekah’s voice and sensed that she had been hurt. He did not need to be a mind-reader to realise she was uncomfortable with him probing into her private life, but for some reason he could not control his curiosity about her.

‘He … met someone else,’ she muttered.

‘Ah, that explains a lot.’

‘What does it explain?’ Irritation swept through Rebekah at Dante’s complacent expression.

‘Why you got involved in the situation with Alicia, for a start. Your boyfriend let you down—I assume he was unfaithful with the “someone else”—and now you think all men, including me, are untrustworthy like him.’

‘You are untrustworthy.’ Rebekah did not know how they had got into this conversation, or where it was leading, but she recognized the truth in what Dante had said. Gareth’s betrayal had rocked her comfortable world and made her doubt her judgement. ‘In fact, you are a hundred times worse than Gareth,’ she said hotly. ‘You never stay with one woman for longer than five minutes.’

‘True,’ Dante agreed unrepentantly. ‘But I never cheat. I have a strict rule of one woman at a time, and I always end a relationship before I start another one. I’m completely upfront at the beginning of an affair that I’m not looking for permanence. Surely that’s better than stringing a woman along and building up her hopes that I might make a commitment to her?’

‘In other words, you’re a paragon of virtue when it comes to relationships,’ she said sarcastically.

‘I’d like to think so,’ he replied seriously. ‘I certainly don’t deliberately set out to hurt anyone.’

Morosely, Rebekah pushed her plate of barely touched dinner aside. Maybe Dante was right. Maybe it was better to have an affair with someone who was adamant they did not want a deeper relationship than to trust that if a man said he loved you he meant it.

Dante’s voice intruded on her painful thoughts. ‘Your relationship must have ended some time ago, and you moved to London. How’s the new start going—are you seeing anyone?’

‘Not currently,’ she muttered, wishing she could turn the conversation away from her personal life.

Dante leaned back in his chair and sipped his wine while he appraised her. ‘Don’t you think you’ve spent long enough moping over the guy in Wales? You need to get out and socialise. And I suggest you update your wardrobe. Without wanting to be rude, you’re never going to attract a man in the frumpy clothes you wear.’

Anger boiled inside Rebekah like molten lava. ‘My clothes are not frumpy; they’re smart and professional. Would you rather I served your dinner dressed like a burlesque dancer?’

‘Now there’s a thought,’ he said softly.

The wicked glint in Dante’s eyes caused a flush of rosy colour to spread across Rebekah’s cheeks and the atmosphere in the dining room prickled with an inexplicable tension. Her breath caught in her throat and she unconsciously moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. She watched Dante’s eyes narrow and, to her shock, she felt a spark of electricity sizzle between them.

Startled, she dropped her gaze, and when she looked at Dante again his expression was shuttered and she wondered if she had imagined the flash of sexual awareness in his eyes. She shoved her hands under the table to hide the fact that they were trembling. ‘Anyway, I do socialise,’ she told him, annoyed by his accusation that she spent her free time moping about the house.

‘You’re hardly likely to meet a new man at an evening class in pottery,’ he said sardonically.

‘I don’t recall saying I wanted to meet a new man.’