The Italian's Perfect Lover (14 page)

“Emily.” He reached up to her hands but
instead of a caress, he pulled them back down to their sides. “I
can’t risk it. Losing control again.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s the past.”

“Ha! You and your stupid phobia about the
past. Tell me. Tell me!”

“I lost control in a fight once. I nearly
killed a man.”

“You what?”

“Lucky for him, and for me, that a friend
pulled me off him in time.”

“So, it was a one-off. He survived. You
learnt from it.”

“No. It was more than that. My anger and
stupidity led to the death of someone dear to me.”

“Oh,” her voice was soft. He’d loved and
lost. No wonder he had no interest in the future. He’d had all he
wanted in the past and blamed himself for its loss. He couldn’t
look back and he couldn’t look forward. Doomed to remain in the
present, the place of everlasting forgetfulness. “And I make you
remember?”

He nodded. “You make me remember everything
that I want to forget and everything about me, about what I’m
capable of, that I want to forget.”

Emily could feel panic rising within.

“So, what are you saying? That it’s
over?”

“I don’t know. Just that perhaps you were
right that we weren’t meant to be together. Except for different
reasons.”

She stepped away from him. She’d succeeded
and yet she felt defeated. She didn’t want to push him away now.
She wanted him close, with her, forever.

“But I was wrong. I’m so sorry. My scars have
been with me for so many years—affecting everything that they
seemed bigger than everything, even you. They skew my thinking, my
feelings, always.”

He shook his head. “I understand. But perhaps
if your feelings were true, then they wouldn’t. Perhaps if your
feelings for me were stronger, then a few scars wouldn’t have been
able to come between us. But my darling Emily, your scars are
visible and easier to deal with. It is mine that you’ve uncovered
now. And they’re impossible to deal with. I’m sorry.”

His eyes were chill; his jaw was set in a
hard line where the muscles clenched with control.

“It’s too late, isn’t it?” Her voice sounded
as distant as the look in his eyes.

He nodded. “It’s too late.”

He watched her go and wanted her to stop. But
he closed his eyes instead, willing himself not to call out after
her. And as his eyes closed he remembered the last time he’d felt
this angry. He remembered not wanting to stop as he hit his wife’s
lover and he remembered the fear on the face of Niccy, his son,
just before his wife had taken him and driven off, into a tree,
killing them both outright.

No. He was right. Losing control like that
with Emily was a vivid reminder of his weakness and the damage it
could wreak. He could never again afford to lose control.
Particularly with Emily. He had to protect her from himself because
as much as he tried to repress any violent tendencies by repressing
all emotions altogether, Emily seemed to be a key that unlocked and
unleashed things that he’d thought were long dead.

He looked around as if awoken from a stupor,
noted the pale light, weak and threatening, and the sounds of his
party continuing, oblivious to the scene just acted out. Laughter,
talking, music. He needed a drink.

With sudden decision he strode back into the
party and began talking to a slender blonde, sleekly dressed in the
latest fashion, not a hair out of place. She’d do. He didn’t even
notice her face, her looks, her conversation. He sought only
oblivion.

He didn’t even notice when Emily turned,
retraced her steps and watched as he flirted outrageously—and
effectively—with the tall blonde. He didn’t notice her turn, almost
stumble into a waiter, before running out of the room.

The leather chair squeaked as Alessandro
pushed it back and put his feet on the table, swinging the chair to
an angle so that he could tap the pen on the desk, turn it once,
tap again and turn again.

The tapping sound somehow helped to keep him
tethered to the here and now: its repetitive staccato, an appeal
from his mind to his emotions to stay on track. But they kept
swerving off-course with glimpses of his son like half-forgotten,
faded snapshots, flicking randomly through his brain.

His son’s hands, plump and softly rounded
with stubby, unformed fingers topped by half-bitten nails. The
memory of those ragged nails spiked his heart—a reminder of his
son’s timid nature which he’d been unable to reassure.

He tapped the pen more loudly on the
glass-topped desk, keeping in time with the second hand of an
antique clock, once a possession of his father’s.

Again his son’s face, that last night, white
with shock. Alessandro hadn’t known that he was there. It had only
been when Alessandro’s friend had pulled him off Eva’s lover, when
the pounding anger lessened that he’d turned and seen his son’s
stricken face watching him. It had been only a few seconds during
which Eva had hurled abuse at him and, when Alessandro had
approached, wanting to get close to his son, to explain, to
reassure that he wasn’t the monster the boy had just seen, Eva had
grabbed his son and half-dragged him to the car.

He’d seen that the boy’s seat belt wasn’t
fastened. He’d seen it and he’d been unable to do a thing about it
when Eva had hurled the car around the drive, skidding before she’d
accelerated down the long icy drive from which they were never to
emerge alive.

Alessandro stabbed the desk with the point of
his steel-tipped pen; the metallic sound echoing around the
hard-surfaced interior. But it made no difference. He rubbed his
eyes and looked bleakly out of the window. His focus on the present
was weakening.

He’d not felt the vividness of the pain for
years. He’d buried the acute agony of the knowledge that, despite
his love for his son, he’d failed him. He’d caused his death. He’d
buried it deep. And he’d turned away from the memories, unable to
endure them.

And then Emily had come along.

She’d broken down that barrier between him
and his past by making him feel again.

The face of his son morphed into Emily’s
green eyes. They drew him in until he forgot himself in their
verdant secrets.

She was a key to the past he could not forget
and which he couldn’t bear to remember. She touched him like the
vibration of a note on a stringed instrument, bypassing all his
thought processes, finding its home at his core. He could no more
control the effect of her than stop breathing.

And what had he done with this woman who’d
worked magic over his emotions? He’d taken her without finesse,
without protection. He’d damaged her as surely as he had his son;
as surely as the perpetrator of her scars had done. He could not be
trusted with love. He couldn’t be trusted.

“Cazzo!” He flung the pen down the table
until it skittered to a halt by a model of a building.

Someone coughed and removed the offending
pen.

He looked up, surprised to see four pairs of
eyes looking at him as if he’d lost the plot.

He shrugged. “Cosa?” Perhaps he had lost the
plot because his story was turning out to be a pretty twisted
affair.

“Cosa?” He asked more loudly this time,
demanding a response, turning from one to the other. But none was
forthcoming. Suddenly he felt very tired. He gestured to the
miniature complex of buildings. “Proceed.”

He swung the chair so that he had his back to
the table and stood up and walked to the window.

The sky was black and the rain had begun to
pour. The storm was nearly upon them. They happened infrequently in
Campania but when they did they could be brutal.

They could destroy everything in their
path.

He turned to look at his staff discussing the
removal of slum dwellings on the development site.

He closed his eyes and pinched his nose. He
was sick of destruction.

The rain pounded against the window, the
premature evening closing in upon him, intensifying his need to
escape his ghosts. But the prime offender now stared back at him:
his reflection looked demonic in the darkened glass.

He could get away. Go, as far away from her
as possible. The storm provided the perfect excuse. If it was as
bad as they forecast the precarious road to the estate could become
blocked. At least it would give him an excuse to stay in the city.
The solicitor couldn’t hold that against him. It would be a relief
not to lie so close to her at the villa and not have her in his
arms: not be haunted by his past, by his feelings. Wouldn’t it?

He groaned and closed his eyes.

But it was too late for that.

It had been too late from the minute he’d
laid eyes on her: the body with which he needed to connect and the
mind and spirit that moved and played and sang in tune with his
own.

He ground his fist into his other fist,
summoning up the aggression that he needed to resist her.

“Conte?”

When he turned to the meeting, he realized
that they must have been calling him for some time, that they’d
moved on to the development of the villa estate.

“Si?”

“The plans are going well. The concept is one
of contrasts. The Aphrodite Mosaic will be encased in Perspex and a
centerpiece to the foyer of the spa. The designers see a monochrome
color scheme—white with steel—sharp angles and clean lines.

“And the ruins?”

“As the ultimate back-drop—a talking
point.”

Alessandro shook his head and his fingers
worried the amber piece of tessera he kept in his pocket. The one
Emily had shown him that first night. “A talking point.”

“As you, yourself, suggested at our previous
meeting,” replied the perplexed-looking executive.

“Right. No, you are correct. It is exactly as
we planned.”

Then why had the world shifted and the plans
suddenly not look so brilliant any more?

“We were also saying that the planning for
the new development is at a crucial stage now. Any more
archaeological excavation could be counter-productive. We can use
what we’ve discovered so far but any more and the state will
intervene.”

“Si.” He nodded wearily. He knew all about
the regulations. And he knew that the day he had to tell Emily that
she could no longer dig at the estate, would signal the absolute
end to their relationship.

But not yet. Now there was time. What the
hell was he waiting for?

He turned and looked at the grey rain lashing
the building. The bay had disappeared—the water and sky had become
one. He hoped he hadn’t left it too late.

The lightning lit up the dull afternoon and
the thunder echoed so loudly around the dig that some of the team
shrieked and clapped their hands over their ears.

“Let’s call it a day, Em. We can’t see
anyway.” Sue looked around the dig anxiously. “Let’s get some
tarpaulins over this section. It looks like there might be some
flooding.”

“Get the tarps in place but let’s keep going
while there’s light. And when the light goes we have torches.
Time’s running out. And, if we get the go-ahead to extend the
excavation, which we should do, we’ll have a heap more work to
do.”

Even Emily’s enthusiasm couldn’t blind her to
the increasing chill and heaviness of the rain that soaked them to
the skin within minutes.

But it was the atmosphere that got to her.
The light was strangely yellow as the storm built. Anaemic,
jaundiced, sick.

She felt a shiver run down her back.

“OK,” she shouted to the others. “Let’s get
inside.”

They raced through the dissolving ground back
up through the overgrown gardens to the villa.

They tumbled inside laughing and shaking
themselves.

She pulled the doors closed with effort
against the wind.

“Man, where did that come from?” Sue
asked.

“It’s been brewing for some time. You could
feel it in the air.” Emily gazed out at the wind and the others
exchanged glances. “And it’s meant to get worse.”

“At least there’s no electricity to go off,”
Sue giggled nervously.

“What?” Emily looked around as if suddenly
aware of her surroundings. “I’ll turn on the gas lamps. It’s like
night in here.”

“If it’s going to get worse, we’d best get
back to the cottages.” One of the young students looked anxiously
at the sky.

“And leave Em here, alone?”

“I’ll be all right. You guys go. You’re
right. Go to the cottages and we’ll get back to work as soon as the
rain stops.”

“You sure?” The young student was already
dragging at Sue’s hand.

“Sure I’m sure. There’s enough security
roaming the estate. I’ll be fine.”

“And there’s the count,” Sue raised her an
eyebrow. “He’ll keep you company.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Anyway, you go. I’ve
paperwork to do.”

“I’m glad the count will be here. This place
is too damn creepy, with or without guards.”

Emily watched her team run outside, shrieking
loudly as the cold rain slapped their wet bodies once more.

Emily changed, twisted her long hair into a
towel and made herself a coffee. She wandered back to the office
from the kitchen, checking on the rooms, feeling vaguely uneasy. It
was stupid. She was just off-balance at the moment, more
susceptible to others’ fears.

She towel-dried her hair and curled up in an
armchair to do her paperwork. The reports that needed compiling for
the university’s sabbatical and research committees, the proposals
for the dig in Antioch, updating budgets for the current dig etc,
etc, etc. It was never-ending and the least favorite part of her
job.

She didn’t notice the daylight leach out of
the room, little by little. Under the small pool of light the gas
lamp emitted, Emily was oblivious to the fact that she was
surrounded by utter darkness as she continued to work.