The Italian's Perfect Lover (15 page)

It was only when her stomach groaned that she
realized dinner-time had been and gone. She looked at her watch.
Then peered at it. It was gone ten. She glanced around and
listened. No sign of Alessandro. No sign of any guards or staff.
But then Alessandro had dismissed the guards from around the villa.
She remembered now. He’d said he’d look after the villa.

She rose, stretched and peered out of the
window. He should be here soon. It was still raining heavily.
Raindrops drummed down onto the roof of the loggia, spilling over
the gutters and thundering onto the terrazza below. She went
outside onto the loggia, safe from the rain and smelt the wild
night—the sodden earth, the fragrance from the crushed flowers. No
lights. No guards. Nobody. She was entirely alone.

She swallowed the hint of fear that
threatened to surface.

Emily ate a cursory meal of whatever she
could find in the larder. No staff had turned up that night. It was
the first time.

She wished she hadn’t let the others leave
quite so easily.

She shivered, locked up the villa and went to
bed and lay listening to the wind battering the old building that
creaked and groaned under the barrage.

Suddenly there was a crash and she looked out
the window. Her heart was pounding, but it was just a terracotta
roof tile that had fallen onto the terrazza.

She drew the shutters together once more and
sat back on the bed.

God, she couldn’t do this. She’d wander over
to the cottages. If she got chucked off the job, so be it. But it
wasn’t as if anyone was around to notice.

She put on her wet weather gear and went out
into the garden that was now like a lake surrounded by mud. Head
down against the rain and wind, she trudged up the drive and
checked the gates. They were open and there was no security to be
seen. Stunned, Emily stumbled into the shadows, under the shelter
of the huge trees that groaned and cracked in the fierce wind. No
security, she repeated to herself as if trying to impress upon her
numbed mind the severity of the situation. Even if there was no
security for the house, they should still have been around the
estate. Something must have gone wrong. She peered down the rough,
metal road. It clung to the hillside and twisted sharply out of
sight. It was possible that there had been a rock fall or mudslide
that had effectively cut her off from Naples.

Still, her friends were on the other side of
the estate.

And she wasn’t afraid. Was she?

Tentatively she emerged out of the shelter of
the trees and found the perimeter path to the cottages. But before
she’d taken two steps she stopped and grimaced. She’d left her
cellphone behind. If anyone needed her she wouldn’t know. Not, she
told herself sternly that she was expecting a call from Alessandro.
After all he hadn’t bothered to contact her all day.

His words still rang in her ears. It was
obvious he’d meant them. She was as bad as all the others with her
facile judgments, making assumptions about other people that were
really her own.

Was he right? Was it she who was obsessed
with perfection, not anyone else? Was
she
the superficial,
shallow one?

Absorbed in her thoughts she returned to the
house and ran up the stairs.

She grabbed her cellphone and checked it for
the hundredth time that day. Then she froze. The wind had died down
momentarily and she distinctly heard the back door bang shut in the
wind.

She’d locked it before she’d left. Someone
had managed to pick the lock and enter the villa.

A cold sweat swept over her.

Marcus. The vision of his face—round, bland
and cruel—forced itself into her mind.

She shook her head. It couldn’t be. She was
haunted by phantoms.

Probably just one of the team had come to
check to see if she was OK.

She forced herself to step towards the door.
She thanked God she hadn’t bothered to turn on the gas lights,
knowing as she had where her cellphone would be.

Now, at least, she didn’t advertise her
presence.

At first she couldn’t hear anything. That
alone made her realize it couldn’t be any of her team. Instead of
relaxing she tensed, staying out of sight, and listened.

One by one she identified the sounds,
straining to hear anything above and beyond the strengthening
storm.

Rain battered the villa and the wind in the
trees tore and whistled through the branches. But above that she
heard something else: sounds that numbed her mind with fear.

The creak of the wooden stairs as some kind
of pressure was exerted on their surface was followed by the soft
thud of a second foot joining the first on the hollow step.

Feet shuffled on the landing as they went to
move forward but instead, paused at the first bedroom before
entering, moving and then leaving the room again.

Another step, closer now.

Her heart thudded wildly.

It had to be Marcus. Who else? The treasures
weren’t here were they? What else,
who
else, could the
person be searching for, but her? He’d told her that he’d come back
for her, that she hadn’t seen the last of him. She knew them to be
the ramblings of someone who was mentally ill but what if the
treatment he’d received hadn’t worked? What if he really had come
back for her now, to finish off what he’d started?

She clenched her hand over the phone and an
idea flashed into her mind.

As the steps approached she quickly and
silently selected her ring-tone and, putting it on to the loudest
setting, held it up to the open door.

The sound of her friends screaming and
yelling as fireworks exploded around them filled the air, followed
by the cracking sounds of two rockets launching and exploding. They
sounded like gunshots in the empty, echoing hall. She picked up a
trowel in the other hand, opened the door wide, shone the light of
her torch down the hall and threw it with all her might. But
whoever it was had his back to her and was half way down the stairs
and would have been aware only of the thud of the metal trowel
against the wooden handrail.

Emily collapsed against the wall as she heard
the intruder run out of the villa.

She crawled over to the open window and
strained to hear him leave the grounds.

She was rewarded with an abbreviated shout of
laughter or perhaps it was just the shriek of the wind straining
through the tangle of ancient branches in the thick canopy
overhead?

Whatever. It struck chills through to her
soul.

He’d be back. He thought he’d escaped a trap
but he’d be back. She’d frightened him off for now. But if it was
Marcus—and she felt a bone-deep chill certainty that it was—then
he’d find another way to come for her.

She flicked opened her cell once more and
tried to call Alessandro but there was no coverage. All she could
so was to sit and wait for either Alessandro to come or Marcus. But
the hours passed—slowly, stiffly, chillingly—and Alessandro didn’t
come.

No-one came.

Alessandro slammed on the brakes of the
four-wheel drive in a shower of mud in the dark early hours of the
morning. Despite his exhaustion, caused by working alongside the
road crew to shift the mudslide that had blocked the road to the
villa, he jumped out onto the sodden lawn and ran over to the
villa.

He burst through the door and stopped in his
tracks.

There, in the corner, cradling some
vicious-looking archaeological tools, Emily was slumped, sound
asleep.

He felt sickened to see this strong woman in
such a vulnerable position. He should have been there. He cursed
himself for their stupid argument that meant nothing now. Not
beside this. Not beside Emily. She could have been hurt. She needed
him and he hadn’t been there for her.

He crouched down beside her.

“Emily.” He stroked her arm. She moaned,
rolled her head and blinked her eyes open. Her eyes slowly focused
on him.

“You’re here,” she said sleepily and
smiled.

The tension of the night had disappeared.
“I’m here. Just a little late.”

The trowels and knives clattered onto the
tiles as she released them from her grip.

“What the—?” She jumped up. “Where were you?
I’ve been here all night. Alone!”

He took her in his arms. “I know. I couldn’t
get to you. I’m so sorry, Emily. I let you down. No-one could get
to you. The road was blocked. Are you OK?”

She began to pace across the room, back and
forth. She stopped suddenly, raked her hair back off her face and
turned to face him.

“He was here, Alessandro. He was here.” Tears
coursed down her face. “He was here,” she said more softly, her
face contorting with a pain that found a corresponding pain within
him.

“I know.” He drew her close to him and
stroked her hair, desperate to give comfort, to extinguish the fear
he could see in her eyes. “The security guards found him.”

“You have him?” She pulled away, relief and
disbelief filling her face in equal measure.

“He had no choice but to return by the main
road. We caught him at the road block.”

She slumped into his arms and sobbed. “I
thought he’d got me again. I thought he would hurt me again. I
thought—”

“What do you mean again? The man was a
professional thief. He hurt you?”

“What?” She got up, shaking her head. “No.
He’s not a thief. He’d come up the stairs, looking for me.”

“Looking for family treasures. That’s where
people keep their valuables. And he knew it.”

“No. You’ve got it wrong. It was him.”

“Tell me, Emily, what happened? Who was it
that you saw?”

“Marcus. I mean, I was sure it was him.”

“Did you see this Marcus?”

He could see the uncertainty in her eyes.

“No. But it must have been him. I felt that
it was. I thought I saw Marcus out there. And he laughed. It was
the same. It sounded the same as it used to sound.”

She sat down again and put her head in her
hands.

“And the laugh—you’re sure it sounded like
this man, Marcus?”

She looked up, rested her face against the
cool glass of the window and closed her eyes, as if trying to
recall the sound.

“No. It could have been any sound. It’s just
that I was afraid and I imagined —“ She shook her head. “No. It
wasn’t him.”

“This is the man, Marcus, who makes you
afraid?”

She nodded her head, her eyes still
closed.

“Emily. It wasn’t him. It was an Italian
thief—known to the authorities. It wasn’t your Marcus.”

“Not
my
Marcus. Never my Marcus. Not
after what he did.”

He had to turn away from her then because he
suddenly understood. So it was this man, Marcus, who had committed
such atrocities. With all the force and strength of his character,
dredged from deep down, he held his tongue and turned back to her.
She needed him. She didn’t need his anger.

“Cara. Come here.” He pulled her to him and
gently cradled her head in his hands. “It was not Marcus. The man
is gone. But I promise you that this other man will never come near
you again.” She looked up at him. “I promise.” He kissed her then,
wanting to comfort and reassure but also needing to express the
consuming tenderness he felt for her.

But she pulled away. “How can you promise?
No-one can. It’s down to me.”

“Don’t shut me out, Emily. I’m here now and
here I’ll stay.” He looked around, noticing the flashes of light
from the guards outside the window—the numbers having been doubled
after the intrusion. “I’ll stay with you but not here. The place is
still virtually cut off. We have all the dispensation we need to
move into the cliff-top villa. We’ll stay there from now on.”

“But what about the dig?”

He shook his head and smiled “You don’t give
up easily, do you? Don’t worry. It can wait. It’s going nowhere.
But we are. We’re going back to civilization.”

Emily sank into the hot bath, sighed and
closed her eyes.

Civilization certainly had its compensations.
The Rovello city house—the house where she’d first met Alessandro,
set high above the city on the cliff top—was as luxurious inside as
it was out.

It must have been past five in the
morning—she’d lost track—but she desperately felt the need to
cleanse herself in piping hot water. She inhaled the scented water
and felt the candlelight flicker behind her closed lids. The storm
had blown itself out and there was nothing but silence now. She
felt safe for the first time in years.

She opened her eyes at Alessandro’s knock on
the door. As she watched him walk over to her and sit down on the
side of the bath, she felt the familiar surge of love that swept
through her every time she saw him. But this time the heat of love
had an added, poignant note when she saw the concern in his eyes
and the drawn pallor of tiredness and worry in his face.

Silently he picked up a sponge, lathered it
and gently slid it along her arms, and up to her shoulders, tracing
the scars and bones of her back.

“Will you tell me how it happened?”

She closed her eyes tight. How to tell him
what a fool she’d been; how she’d somehow provoked such violence
from someone who appeared so quiet, so in control? The psychiatrist
she’d seen for years had taken her through a healing process of
sorts. But she still couldn’t quite believe that some of it wasn’t
her fault.

“He was my tutor at university.”

She tried not to look at Alessandro’s face
but she felt the hesitancy of his touch before he continued to
sponge her body.

“Go on.”

“He wanted me.”

“And you couldn’t say no?”

She shook her head. She didn’t trust herself
to speak. But Alessandro was patient. She took a deep breath. “He
was the first person who wanted me.”