After the Storm (All I've Ever Needed) (12 page)

“The woman you kissed outside the office the morning after your father had taken ill.”

“Woman?”

“I only got a glance of her, but she definitely looked like feminine to me.”

“Is that why you’ve been acting the way you have since then?”

“I played second fiddle to another woman once.
 
I wasn’t ready to do that again.”

Stephano sat on the stool in front of her vanity mirror and calmly pulled on his socks and then his shoes without responding.
 
His movements as he tightened the laces of his formal shoes were precise and deliberate.

Finally he stood up and walked over to the bed.
 
He brushed the curl that had fallen over her forehead back and raised her chin until she was looking up into his eyes.
 
“Trust is everything to me,
cara
.
 
Without it we can have nothing.”

Natalie gasped as he turned and walked out of the room.

What the hell did he mean by that?

“Good morning, Natalie.” Stephano’s response to her greeting on Monday morning was frosty.

Natalie battled with her temper.
 
If she had been wrong about the other woman all he had to do was say so.
 
After all, it wasn’t as if she’d made some random accusation—she had seen him kiss the woman.

With a day full of meetings, Natalie arrived back at the office at five thirty to find it empty.
 
She could have gone home instead of coming to the office after her last meeting, but had returned in the hope of seeing Stephano and having it out with him.

Disappointed, she walked around her desk to take her computer off sleep mode and shut it down completely.
 
Stephano rarely left the office before half past six, so he must be trying to avoid her.

“I thought you would have gone straight home.” Natalie jumped as Stephano entered the room with a steaming mug of black coffee.

“I had something I wanted to complete before tomorrow,” she explained.

“Would you like a coffee?”

“Sure.”
 
She’d had a creamy mochachino from Belgique in Wanstead less than an hour ago, but the coffee seemed to be a peace offering; it would have been ill mannered of her not to accept.
 

Stephano returned with her coffee, pulled up a chair next to her desk and sat sipping his, staring at her as if he as trying to read her mind.

She took tiny, occasional sips of hers and stared back at him.
 
She was too angry at him to feel any shyness.

“Trust is everything to me,” he said quietly, breaking the palpable silence between them.

“You said that already, but what exactly do you mean by it?”

“My last girlfriend Renata is a beautiful woman who could have been a model if she was four inches taller, and yet she’s very insecure.
 
I abandoned the guys and went home to her the first three times she called me when I was out with them.
 
She begged me to come home, saying that she needed me.
 
It was exciting to get home and find her waiting for me…ready for us to—”

“Should you be telling me this?” Natalie interrupted, wanting to scratch the woman’s eyes out already.

“I’m trying to explain why I need trust in a relationship,” Stephano replied patiently.

“Okay, but can you do so without telling me how
gorgeous
your ex-girlfriend is!”

Stephano laughed at her vehemence and Natalie wanted to kick herself for coming across like a jealous shrew.

“Sorry.
 
The next time she called I refused to go home.
 
My friend Adam who works in South Africa was in London on business and several of us from university had met for drinks.
 
We don’t see him often and we had a lot to catch up on.
  
When I got home she was crying like someone had died.
 
She accused me of having an affair and nothing I said convinced her.
 
The next time I was out she turned up at the bar, pretending that she’d been in the area.
 
Then one night I went out with the guys and when Harry returned from the bathroom he told me that he saw a blonde at the bar who looked just like Renata.
 
He thought it was just a coincidence, but I knew immediately that it was her, spying on me.
 
When I got to the bar it was her wearing a wig.
 
She admitted that she had been following me for months.

“I admit I found it flattering at first.
 
A gorgeous woman…sorry…behaving as though she couldn’t get enough of me.
 
But the constant phone calls to check up on me and her neediness soon became tiring.
 
She called me sometimes ten times or more when I was on a night out with the guys.
 
I got tired of having to go outside just to hear what she was saying.
 
When I switched off the phone she was accused me of being with another woman so I couldn’t take her call.
 
We were arguing almost all the time and one day I decided that I couldn’t live like that anymore.”

“You lived together?”

“Yes,” he admitted.
 
“She was renting a studio in Shoreditch when I met her and I took over paying the bills when I moved it.
 
I thought I’d met the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
 
I was ready to settle down and have children, but we would have been very unhappy with her questioning my every move and doubting my integrity.”

“How long has it been over?”

“About seven months.”

“And you’re not seeing anyone else now?”

“No.
 
I been on a couple of casual dates, but I haven’t been in a relationship since.”

“So, who was that woman?”

“That was Eva.”
 
Stephano unlocked his iPhone and flicked through his
 
photographs until he found what he was looking for.
 
“If I dated her it would be like dating my sister.”

“She’s quite petite.” Natalie looked at the slender woman smiling back at the camera. She couldn’t be more than 5’2”, but she was beautiful with long, relaxed hair loose around her shoulders and not pulled back in a chignon as it had been the day Natalie had caught a quick glimpse of her before she’d driven away. She was petite, but had curves in the right place and especially where it mattered to Stephano—the hips.

“She’s small but deadly
 
She used to beat up anyone who messed with me!”
 
Stephano chuckled.
 
“She’s a secondary school teacher now and I’m sure her students are all terrified of her.”

Natalie wondered if Stephano was pulling her leg.
 
The smiling woman looked harmless.

“She was my best friend growing up and we’re still close today.
 
I think our parents thought that something might develop between us when we got older, but we don’t feel that way about each other.” Stephano’s voice was filled with a warmth that Natalie hoped would one day be there when he spoke about
her
.
 
“She used to beat me up and take away my sweets when we were younger.
 
Truthfully I’m still scared of her now, though she’s five feet nothing.”

Natalie smiled at the image of Stephano cowering in front of a woman over a foot shorter than he was.

“When you meet her you will see that there’s nothing there for you to be jealous about.”

 
She loved the fact that he’d said “when”, not “if”.

***

Later that night, Natalie lay awake in bed trying to process the day’s events.
 
She’d persuaded Stephano not to accompany her home.
 
He had make another trip to Cadbury’s Head Office.
 
The competition was stiffer than had been anticipated.
 
A much larger, very reputable rival had thrown its considerable resources together to put up a fierce battle.
 
Getting the account would be a real coup, so Paul was flying up from Ireland to accompany Stephano for the last round of talks.
 
Natalie knew how important it was for Stephano to be rested and at his best when he gave his final presentation to the prospective clients.

She’d also needed some time to think.
 
Although she had told her mother about him, she’d had no intention of having Stephano meet the family if she had taken on the role of ‘other woman’.
 
Convinced that he was seeing someone one else, she hadn’t considered what it would mean to be Stephano’s woman exclusively.

Her father would be her biggest hurdle.
 
He had always kept to ‘his own kind’, as he phrased it, but he hadn’t objected to her mother or Nathan having friends of all races or bringing them home.
 
He’d never said it explicitly, but Natalie knew that he’d expected his children to marry within their race.
 
And like her mother, her father would have assumed if one of his children did date a white person, it would have been Nathan.

But as her mother had said, it was her life and she had to live it to suit herself.

Stephano was everything she’d ever wished for in a man—their connection went deeper than skin color.
 
The first day, she’d joined the agency she’d felt it when their eyes met.
 
She had put it down to his good looks and charm, but she’d always been acutely aware of him.

The dynamics at the office would change if she and Stephano started dating.
 
If she agreed with Stephano on an issue it would be assumed she did so because they were sleeping together; if she disagreed, their colleagues would wonder if they were having problems in their personal life.
 
But she and Stephano had a healthy respect for each other professionally and that wouldn’t change.
 
As a matter of a fact, with so much in common, their lives could blend together beautifully.

The hardest part would be telling Stephano about her past.
 
She couldn’t brush it under the carpet and simply start afresh—there were hang-ups she still had as a result of her relationship with Michael.

Working for the agency had helped build her confidence.
 
Paul was like a kindly grandfather and an expert life coach.
 
He had analyzed a few of her presentations, taking them apart step by step, and had been as generous with praise as he was with criticism.
 
The thing he loved the most about her he’d told her was her voice with its merest hint of a West Indian accent.
 
He’d called it “seductive” and “persuasive”, saying that she could “sell oil to the Arabs”.

Paul had told her that she would benefit from a few sessions of therapy to build her confidence and had discretely arranged a meeting with one of the best on Harley Street.
 
The therapist had later recommended a session with a colleague of hers, a reputable hypnotist and Natalie had made remarkable progress over the next weeks.