Irresistible You Page 9

  He’d bought new bed linen, had all his curtains dry-cleaned, ordered a new three-piece suite to replace the two-seater sofa which had seen him through his bachelor years and had even bought a few pot plants to make the house seem a little more inviting. Mrs B had suggested some scented candles and potpourri but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go that far.

  Yes, he thought, walking into the living room, he was very proud of his new-look home. The stage was set. All he needed to do now was to find the other player.

  Chapter 18

  ‘You must like one better than the other?’ Rosanna said, clattering around the kitchen as she prepared breakfast the morning after the arrival of the fiancés.

  ‘I’ve told you, it isn’t that simple.’ Elena put her head in her hands at the breakfast bar and sighed. ‘I thought you understood that.’

  ‘But you must - you know - gel with one of them more?’

  ‘That’s crazy, Rosanna! Are you seriously telling me that there’s only one perfect person out there for us?’

  Rosanna stared at her. ‘Yes! I guess I am!’

  ‘That’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard! That would mean you could be wandering around forever trying to meet them! And what if you missed them? What then? Say if you got on the bus five minutes before they arrived at the stop or if you spent your entire life shopping at the wrong supermarket because you liked Waitrose and your perfect partner preferred Sainsbury’s? Does that mean you’d have to spend your life on your own?’

  ‘You’re getting hysterical, Elena. Keep your voice down! Or do you want to wake Mark?’

  Elena bit her lip. Mark was still sleeping and it had given her a chance to talk things through with Rosanna but she was beginning to wish she hadn’t asked for her advice.

  ‘I guess I just don’t believe that there’s only one perfect person,’ Elena started again. ‘I think there are lots of people you could be happy with - dozens, hundreds maybe.’

  Rosanna’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped. ‘Dio mio!’

  ‘There has to be! Think of all the potentially life-changing decisions we make each day. We take a certain route to work, we choose a shop for our groceries, we decide to go to a party - all these things involve meeting people and that means a potential mate.’

  ‘God, you make it sound so animalistic!’

  ‘I think it is. Do lions or bears or birds hang around for a perfect partner? I think they choose the best that’s around at the time and get on with it.’

  Rosanna crinkled her nose in obvious disgust. ‘But we’re not like that - we expect more.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But what you’re saying is-’

  ‘What I’m saying is that maybe both Reuben and Mark are right for me.’

  Rosanna huffed. ‘I think you’re just making excuses.’

  Elena shook her head. There was no point continuing with this conversation. Rosanna would never come round to her way of thinking and she didn’t want to spend her holiday arguing with her.

  There were a few moments’ silence and she watched as Rosanna tidied the kitchen. She looked just like their mama when she did that.

  ‘The thing we have to make sure of,’ Rosanna said at last, in a much calmer tone of voice, ‘is that, whilst you’re doing whatever you have to do, they don’t accidentally bump into each other. Reuben already has his suspicions about Mark, doesn’t he?’

  Elena cast her eyes in the direction of the spare room where Mark was sleeping. ‘Yes,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘He has a rather jealous nature.’

  ‘I noticed,’ Rosanna whispered back. ‘How, exactly, did you meet him?’

  ‘It was a bit like you and Sandro. I heard he wanted a new model and went along to his studio. I’d never modelled before that. I guess it must run in the family because he kept booking me and the money is definitely better than what I earn at the school - for the work involved, I mean. It’s just a shame his studio isn’t quite like this. I mean, it’s not bad if you compare it to Mark’s place, but it’s a bit of a dump in comparison to this.’

  ‘Oh? How?’

  ‘It’s a great building - one of those converted warehouses - but it’s not in a very nice neighbourhood.’

  ‘He can always move in time.’

  Elena nodded. ‘Oh, he plans to.’

  ‘And what are his plans?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re very interested all of a sudden.’

  Rosanna looked a little put out at her observation. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t I show an interest in the man who proposes to marry my sister?’

  She smiled. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I think he’d take good care of you.’

  ‘You do? So does that mean he has your vote?’

  Rosanna put down the tea towel for a moment and looked at her. ‘I didn’t say that. I only said I liked him.’

  ‘So, you think I should go for Mark?’

  ‘Porca Madonna! Elena! You can not ask these questions! What am I meant to say? I can not make these decisions for you!’

  She sighed. ‘I’m sorry! It’s just, you’re so wise.’ Elena’s comment instantly calmed her. ‘You always seem to make the right decisions.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well, don’t you?’

  Rosanna echoed her weary sigh. ‘I’ve got a problem of my own and, I’m afraid, it’s of my own making.’

  Elena bit her lip. ‘What?’ she asked in anticipation, relieved that she wasn’t the only Montella girl who got herself into trouble.

  ‘I’ve been invited for tea at La Stronza’s!’

  Elena’s eyes widened in sympathy. ‘Irma Taccani?’

  ‘Beetch!’ Rosanna spat, finding it necessary to curse the woman in more than one language.

  Elena stifled the urge to laugh. ‘I don’t understand. If you hate her so much, why are you going?’

  They walked through to the sofa with bowls of muesli and Elena perched on the arm whilst Rosanna flopped on a heap of cushions.

  ‘I’m going because Corrado wants me and his mother to be friends.’

  ‘Then you must still love him? I mean, you must if you’re doing this for him.’

  Rosanna’s face fell. Her whole expression seemed to sink before her very eyes.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t much look like a woman in love.’

  ‘I don’t?’

  Elena shook her head and rested a hand on her shoulder. Putting her half-eaten cereal down, Rosanna took hold of a cushion and hugged it to her.

  ‘I feel as if I’ve had a cold for the last six months.’

  Elena frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know when your whole body aches and you feel listless and lifeless? That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling. But this is far worse than a cold because I’m denied the pleasure of a good sneeze.’

  Elena laughed.

  ‘What?’ Rosanna turned to her, her eyes wide with hurt.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she said. ‘I just had this image of Corrado being stuck up your nose!’

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and, putting her breakfast bowl down too, she nestled up next to her. ‘So, we have three men to sort out,’ Elena told her, doing her best to eliminate Prof from the love equation for the time being.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Rosanna whined.

  ‘Corrado will be there, won’t he? He wouldn’t leave you alone with the old witch?’

  ‘No, he’ll be there all right. Mama’s darling little helper.’

  ‘Then, you should go. Go and have tea. Try not to throttle anyone. See how things go and come back and tell me all about it,’ she advised.

  ‘And you’re going to sort things out with Mark and Reuben?’

  ‘Well, that’s rather a tall order for an afternoon’s work but I’m going to try,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to find Mark a cheap hotel. He doesn’t have a lot of money.’

  ‘Well, don
’t book him into the Danieli! Can you imagine if that happened? Dio mio! Do you think there’d be a fight?’

  ‘Rosanna! They are not going to meet! Not if I have anything to do with it.’

  Rosanna looked glum all of a sudden as if the reality of it all were just hitting her. ‘Your situation makes me feel much better about having tea with La Stronza.’

  ‘Thanks a lot! I’m glad I’m useful for something.’

  Rosanna kissed her cheek. ‘I’ve got an appointment in Murano.’

  ‘Modelling?’

  She nodded. ‘A dirty old businessman who likes me to pose with a disgusting teddy bear.’

  Elena grimaced and walked down the steps with Rosanna and watched her go.

  ‘I’ll be back for lunch - in time to get changed for this afternoon.’

  ‘Okay!’ she called after her. ‘You’ve got your mobile?’

  ‘Of course!’

  Elena smiled, relieved that her sister carried it with her in her line of work. She really didn’t know how she could do her job. She didn’t think she could ever do it, and yet she had posed for Reuben. That was different though - she was in a relationship with him before she’d taken anything off. But she couldn’t ever strip for strangers no matter how good the money was which was why she was so surprised at Rosanna for being able to do it. She’d always been the bossy sister - the one in control but, out of the two of them, she was also the shy one. Elena had to admire her, though. She was an independent woman making a good living in a beautiful city. All she needed to do now was to find the right man and Elena had a strong feeling that it wasn’t Corrado.

  Chapter 19

  Rosanna always loved the brief boat ride to the island of Murano. It was normally packed with tourists and it was usually a squeeze to find somewhere to stand as few people wanted to sit indoors when you could watch the progress of the boat across the lagoon stopping, on its way, at the island of San Michele, where everyone would strain their necks to try and get a peek at the graves without actually leaving the boat.

  The water usually helped her to think but she didn’t think anything could have eased her mind that morning. She’d left Elena in the apartment with her fiancé, or, rather, one of her fiancés. The other, of course, was at one of the most expensive hotels in Venice. Two fiancés, Rosanna tutted aloud to herself. How on earth had she managed to do that? She knew Elena’s track record but she’d never thought that anything like that would happen. And to have them both turning up at the apartment!

  Rosanna thought of her first encounter with Reuben and could feel her face flushing as she did so. It wasn’t because he’d been dressed only in a towel, which had been embarrassing enough on its own, but it was how she had felt. She closed her eyes and tried to recall it. It was warm, it was tingly, and it was incredibly disturbing because she hadn’t felt like that since school. Yes, that was it, she thought: it was like having a crush - that strange phenomenon she’d thought you left behind once you became an adult, but here she was experiencing the self-same feelings - for her sister’s fiancé.

  This was terrible. Did she really have a crush on Reuben? It couldn’t possibly be anything more than that, could it? She’d only met him yesterday. It was outrageous to suppose that the emotion was anything more. She’d be in dreadful trouble if it was. No, she reasoned, he was just a very attractive man who’d happened to be standing half-naked in front of her. What normal red-blooded Italian girl wouldn’t respond to something like that?

  But, the thing that was worrying her was that she couldn’t remember ever having responded that way to Corrado. There’d been no adrenaline rush. Her heart hadn’t fluttered inside her. Not once had she blushed when he’d looked at her. Was that normal? Did that mean she didn’t love Corrado? Or, should the question be, did it mean she was falling in love with Reuben? Oh! Elena had got her so confused with her ideas about each person having so many possible partners and how impossible it was to choose just one but, even so, she shouldn’t have been thinking about the physical beauty of one of her potential brothers-in-law. It wasn’t right. In fact, it was probably illegal.

  Leaving the boat, and attempting to put any illegal and incestuous thoughts firmly out of her mind, Rosanna made her way to the heart of Murano, towards the street where Signore Vapori lived. He owned a tiny apartment above an antiques shop which he ran and it was stuffed full of beautiful objects which he’d have her pose alongside. She’d been naked under a chandelier, naked on an oak chest, naked on an eighteenth century chair and, the latest one was naked with a teddy bear - antique, of course. She’d never forget her horror as he’d handed the bear to her last week and told her to place it in her crotch. She didn’t want to think about where else this teddy had been. It didn’t look as if it had ever been washed in its long lifetime, and she was sure she could smell something unsavoury on its fur. But, she was being paid to do this and, no matter how strange it was, she reminded herself that it was preferable to many other jobs she could’ve ended up doing.

  There were two ways she’d found to cope with such situations: she would either pretend that this was the greatest living painter she was sitting for and that this painting was her passport to eternal fame or, and this was her favourite, she would work out how much she’d earned that month and what she could spend it on if she so chose. Her mind would drift over the latest lipsticks and expensive perfumes to velvet scarves she’d seen draped gently over a mannequin or the latest season’s stylish boots. These thoughts would usually keep her occupied until she was given a tea break when she’d pull on her robe and have to make polite conversation. This too, she’d learned, was a necessary survival tactic. She’d soon discovered, after a couple of near-misses, that she should be polite but with an air of aloofness. A lot of her clients dabbled in art as a hobby and would forget that the woman who’d been sitting in front of them with no clothes on was actually doing it for the money and not to titillate them. Occasionally, if she felt a client was becoming particularly frisky, she would say something like, And how is Signora Vassallo? Or, My fiancé, Corrado, got into a fight at the weekend! Can you believe it? A grown man fighting in the streets! But she only used that one in extreme cases.

  But, as she sat for Signore Vapori, she realized that he was far more interested in the old stuffed teddy than he was in her body and she felt herself relaxing or rather dwelling, once more, on the peculiar events of the last couple of days.

  Reuben. Her mind wouldn’t leave him alone. She didn’t even know his last name. All she knew were the brief facts that Elena had told her. And that he was very handsome. She’d never seen a man with long hair before. Well, it wasn’t long like hers but it was almost shoulder-length, and it was so dark. That was another thing, once he was dressed, she’d noticed that he was wearing black from head to toe. She’d always thought she was rather cautious with colour - going for muted tones and subtle hues but she’d never gone as far as that. Strangely enough, though, she quite liked it.

  No! No! No! She mustn’t keep thinking about him! She must put him firmly out of her thoughts.

  ‘Miss Montella!’

  A voice suddenly startled her out of her thoughts.

  ‘Signore Vapori?’

  ‘Could you please loosen your grip on the bear? You’re strangling him!’

  Rosanna looked down and noticed that, in her agitation, her hands were, indeed, throttling the poor teddy to within an inch of his already threadbare life.

  *

  After three hours of posing with the smelly teddy, Signore Vapori paid her. Luckily, he didn’t deduct any money for her near-murder of his beloved toy, and she got the boat back to the mainland. Arriving back at the apartment, she couldn’t help feeling a little relieved to find she had it to herself. She didn’t think she could face Elena, not after the appalling thoughts had been having about Reuben.

  She was just slipping out of her clothes for a shower before heading out for tea with La Stronza when the doorbell went. Grabbing her modelling robe, s
he ran down the stairs. Either it was Elena, having misplaced her key already, or another one of her secret fiancés, she thought to herself. But, she was wrong. It was Reuben.

  Rosanna stood, transfixed in surprise. It was as if she’d conjured him up out of her thoughts but, now he was here, she wasn’t at all sure what to say to him.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, sounding a little nervous.

  ‘Hello,’ she said back, sounding even more nervous than he did.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Elena isn’t in,’ she said quickly.

  ‘That’s okay. Actually, I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m on my way out,’ she said before realising how rude she sounded.

  ‘Oh.’

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  ‘You look like a model in that robe,’ he said.

  ‘I am. I mean - this is my modelling robe. I model,’ she explained very badly.

  ‘You do? I was going to suggest you do. You’ve got a great figure.’

  Rosanna’s mouth dropped open. Had he really just said that?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, looking down at his boots and kicking them against one another. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘No! It’s okay,’ she said, anxious that he shouldn’t think he’d offended her. ‘Elena didn’t mention I was a model, then?’

  ‘No. To be honest, she doesn’t really talk much about her family.’

  Rosanna nodded. ‘No. I don’t expect she does.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Again, she was surprised by his question. ‘Well, I’m not sure that’s for me to say. Especially not dressed in my modelling robe on the doorstep.’