Irresistible You (6 page)

Rosanna had got the shock of her life when returning to the apartment.

‘Elena?’ she’d called as she’d walked up the steps into the living room. ‘I hope you’ve been thinking about things whilst I’ve been out.’

Rosanna stopped in shock at the top of the steps at the sight of a half-naked man in the living room wearing nothing but a towel. Her mouth opened wide but no sound came out. She just stared. Who the hell was he? And what was he doing in Sandro’s apartment? She’d only been out a few minutes and, as far as she knew, Elena hadn’t left the apartment at all, so this man couldn’t possibly be a burglar who just happened to have taken a shower.

‘
Porca Madonna
!’ she managed at last. ‘Who are you?’

‘You must be Rosanna,’ he said calmly, in perfect English.

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to work out who this drenched god was. And then she remembered her words of warning to Elena. How she’d explicitly told her not to go inviting anyone to stay. Of course! This must be her fiancé from England. Well, it seemed obvious to her that Elena had planned all this before she’d even come out here. She could see it all now - Elena had come on her own first and, what was the delightful English phrase she used - to
butter her up
? Then, her fiancé would show up and the two of them would have a fabulous free holiday at Sandro’s expense. Elena hadn’t wanted to spend time with her at all, had she? Rosanna was just part of some scheme of hers.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ the man said. ‘I didn’t plan this as an introduction.’

Rosanna shook her head. There was a slight blush around his cheeks and along his throat. She swallowed hard, trying not to let her eyes slide down his chest. He was incredibly attractive: raven-dark shoulder-length hair, wet from the shower - the water droplets sparkling like jewels; eyes dark as any Italian’s but set in an alabaster face - not a sickly, pasty white like some English men’s but that aristocratic white you see in old portraits in stately homes. Whatever Rosanna suspected about Elena, she couldn’t blame
him
for it. He probably had no idea what he was letting himself in for by getting engaged to her.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Do you want another towel?’ she asked and then bit her lip. What sort of a thing was that to say?

‘I am dripping a bit, aren’t she?’

‘Oh! I didn’t mean -’

‘It’s okay. No, I’d love another towel. Thank you.’

At least that had given her something to do - some temporary distraction from his half-naked godliness. It wasn’t every day that she got to meet such attractive men, and without even having to leave the apartment. The men she usually got to meet were overweight, overpaid businessmen with great, fat hands and stomachs that bulged up against their easels. She couldn’t help feeling just a little bit envious of Elena.

Rosanna peeped at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and he caught her eye. She felt herself blushing. This was ridiculous. What was she thinking of? This was her sister’s fiancé and here she was having all sorts of impure thoughts about him! About how masculine his arms looked, and how his waist was so slim, how long his fingers were and...

She shook her head and bit her lip. She wasn’t going to go there; she refused to let her mind wander into realms it had no business wandering in. And then she remembered her manners.

‘I believe congratulations are in order,’ she said, the fact that this was her future brother-in-law standing before her dawning on her at last.

A beautiful smile crossed his face and his dark eyes glittered. ‘Oh! Elena’s told you already?’

‘Yes!’ she said, pulling a white towel out for him.

‘Thank you,’ he said, roughly drying his hair before brushing the towel over his chest and arms.

‘Have you set a date yet?’ she dared to ask.

‘Er - no.
Not yet. That’s kind of why I’ve come out here,’ he said, suddenly looking quite shy.

‘Oh? Are you thinking of getting married in Venice?’

He smiled. ‘I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s a great idea.’

She smiled back at him, trying to picture him in a gondola with Elena. ‘It would be very romantic,’ she said, a wave of jealousy engulfing her. Corrado hadn’t once talked about getting engaged let alone setting a date for a wedding but she couldn’t really blame him. She hadn’t exactly been the most loving of girlfriends of late. Still, it was strange to think of Elena getting married. Rosanna had always known she would, of course, but this was all happening so fast. Hadn’t she just met this man?

‘You work at the same college as her, don’t you?’ she asked, trying to steer the conversation back to small talk.

He frowned, his dark eyes seeming darker all of a sudden. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m an artist.’

‘Really? Oh!’ she blinked in surprise. She’d obviously got confused somewhere along the line. She’d thought Elena’s fiancé was a teacher - like her. ‘So you teach art at the college?’ she asked, taking his wet towel from him and walking back through to the living room.

There was a pause before he answered. ‘No! I’m an artist,’ he said again.

She stared at him and she could feel her mouth dropping open once more. ‘But you’re Mark, no?’

‘NO!’ he shouted. ‘
I’m Reuben
.’

‘
Reuben?
’

‘Yes!’ he
said, his hands firm on his hips and his face set rigid.

‘Oh!’ she said. What else could she say? It was one of those moments when you wish to become instantly invisible, when you’d give anything to take back what you’d just said. But there was no getting out of this now. Her words were out and this Reuben guy, whom she’d thought was Mark, was expecting some kind of explanation from her and she didn’t have one.

‘What
the hell’s
going on? I thought you said Elena told you we were engaged?’

Rosanna’s heartrate accelerated. Something was terribly wrong here. Had she made a huge mistake? Was she confused? She looked around the apartment, wondering where on earth Elena was, and it was at that moment that she waltzed down from the bedroom. It got a bit confusing then because, for a few minutes, they were all shouting at each other at once.

‘Elena! Who the hell is Mark?’

‘Mark? What have you been saying, Rosanna?’

‘Don’t blame me! What am I meant to think when I come back to find a stranger in the apartment wearing nothing but a towel?’

‘Is this Mark someone you work with? Is that why you never let me meet you at the school?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Reuben! Mark has got nothing to do with-’

‘Your sister seems to think that you’re engaged to him!’

And on it went: questions, threats, recriminations until:

‘
QUIET!
’ Elena suddenly yelled.

Rosanna bit back what she was about to say next and decided it was probably better to say no more until this was sorted out - one way or another.

‘Listen!’ Elena began. ‘There’s been a dreadful misunderstanding here. Reuben - please don’t look so serious. I told Rosanna about our engagement this morning.’

‘So, what’s all this about some bloke called Mark?’ he interrupted.

It was exactly the question Rosanna wanted to ask her.

‘He’s just someone I work with. I don’t know, we were just talking about my job and he came up. But that’s it.’

Rosanna glared at Elena but she fired back a look which warned her away from their discussion of that morning.

‘How come Rosanna thought you were engaged to this Mark, then?’

Elena shrugged. ‘Rosanna?’

Great! It was
pass the buck time. Rosanna might have guessed. She felt so angry. How was she meant to know that the half-naked man in the middle of Sandro’s apartment wasn’t Mark, her sister’s fiancé? One minute, Elena was telling her about this man she’d met at work and, after what seemed to her to be an extraordinarily short space of time, got engaged to. She’d shown her the ring too - a beautiful diamond solitaire. A little smaller than she’d imagined Elena ending up with but lovely all the same. Then, after chiding her for her behaviour, she went out for a few brief moments and came back to find a semi-naked man padding around the apartment. A man called Reuben to whom her sister was engaged. Was she going mad?

For a few tense moments, she let them stew whilst her mind tumbled. Half of her wanted to expose and embarrass Elena - to flush out her lies and find out exactly what was going on; the other half - the sisterly half - got the better of her and, like a fool, she heard herself backing her sister’s ridiculous story.

‘I’m sorry,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I must have got confused. We had a few drinks last night and, what with not getting enough sleep, I had the most horrendous headache this morning. I’ve obviously got everything muddled.’

Reuben nodded sagely. Rosanna was an appalling actress but her lie was obviously what he wanted to believe.

‘You see?’ Elena said, her tone jovial but jarring to Rosanna’s ears. ‘You can be so silly and jealous sometimes,’ she said, hugging Reuben and kissing his cheek.

Rosanna couldn’t quite believe what she was witnessing and she had an uncontrollable urge to slap her sister. She didn’t know what was going on but she’d wager Elena was up to no good.

Mark wasn’t savouring his flight to Venice. There weren’t many people in the world that could get him on a plane and, even though it was only a two-hour flight, he couldn’t help wishing that Elena had a sister in Norfolk instead of Italy.

Barney’s girlfriend had come good with his three hundred pounds but he wasn’t likely to see much change from it if he had to find a hotel. He was really hoping that Elena would let him stay in the apartment. He smiled to himself. Venice was meant to be one of the most romantic cities in the world. He had visions of them walking through the streets as if they were honeymooners. They might even want to go back for their honeymoon, he thought, trying not to think how many thousands of feet in the air he was at that precise moment and also refusing to think about how much this wedding and honeymoon were going to cost. It would mean taking out a loan and the thought of that made his stomach flip. But Elena deserved nothing but the best. For a moment, he tried to imagine her in a wedding dress – something floaty yet elegant – like Liv Tyler in
Lord of the Rings
. Yes, he liked that idea. He’d already been checking out venues for the reception and had found a perfect coaching inn in the Thames Valley with the prettiest garden looking out over the river. Well, if you were going to get into debt, you might as well do it with style, he reckoned.

They hadn’t talked much about where they were going to live but it was pretty obvious that his grim flat wasn’t in the running. He’d never been to Elena’s. She’d assured him that her flat was worse than his and that it wouldn’t do at all as a marital home so he guessed they’d be looking for something else over the summer.

Mark had wondered about asking Tomi about a pay rise but he’d thought better of it when he was told by another of the teachers that the last person to do that had been ‘let go’ and replaced by someone half his age for, presumably, half the salary. They’d have to come up with something else. Maybe they could teach some private lessons. He’d always been rather keen on the idea but couldn’t possibly think to do it in his present accommodation.

He closed his eyes and tried to picture the kind of apartment he imagined them living in: a light, spacious loft conversion with pale wooden floors, white walls and windows looking out over more expensive suburbs than his present flat did. Three or four bedrooms would be nice: one for them, a spare for friends and family, a study, and one for – he grinned – the future.

Maybe they could use the study as a classroom – setting up their very own school in miniature. They could charge a better hourly rate and there wouldn’t be the hassle of early mornings on the tube and the stress of actually getting Tomi to pay them at the end of each month. They could stumble out of bed after an early session under Egyptian cotton sheets, share a shower, cook breakfast in the sleek steel kitchen and then greet the students who’d all be incredibly well-behaved and stinking rich.

Mark fidgeted in his seat as he began to get excited about his dream future with Elena. That was the great thing about dreams – you could have the most expensive taste in the world and it wouldn’t cost you a penny. He dreaded to think what the reality would be but he wasn’t going to think about that now. Instead, he focussed on the next few days ahead and what he was hoping to achieve.

It was only over the last couple of weeks that he’d become aware of Elena’s multiple persona. He didn’t really know how to explain it but he got the feeling that she was many different people all at once. He knew everybody could be like that: who didn’t become the downtrodden child when talking to a parent, or a sycophantic sop when speaking to a bank manager? But it was more than that with Elena.

For the most part, he got the vibrant vixen who was so full of energy that it practically spilled out of her but there were times when somebody else would flash from her eyes – a
distant, more thoughtful person – somebody she tried to keep hidden but who, nevertheless, kept trying to escape.

‘What’s the matter?’ he’d asked her the first time he’d seen her with a look in her eyes of such mournful proportions that it had almost made him cry.

‘Nothing!’ she’d said, and her mouth had heaved into a huge smile again and the look was gone. He’d caught her off-guard but she refused to acknowledge it, and that wouldn’t do. If they were going to be married, if they were planning a future together, then he needed to know all about her.

There was nothing about his mundane life she needed to know. An only child with divorced parents who’d both gone on to marry perfect replicas of their exes, he’d spent all his life in West London with a quick detour to Edinburgh University before becoming a teacher. He felt dull, dull, dull, and he wondered what somebody as vibrant as Elena was doing with someone like him. They said opposites attracted but he felt as if he were a bungalow next to her palace. But this palace obviously had hidden hallways – maybe even a prison or two – and it was up to him to find out exactly what she was hiding behind so perfect a façade.