With her own front door shut behind her, she allowed herself to consider clothes.
I need some more and now I can afford them, she mused.
Vincente would be in touch soon and they would spend another evening together, and perhaps another night. Pride demanded that she look her best. For tonight she had one dress that would do, and tomorrow she would seek out others.
Elise took it out, giving it a good shake, deciding that it needed ironing if she were to wear it tonight. Vincente was bound to call at any moment.
Right on cue, he called.
‘Did your meeting with Baltoni go well?’ he asked.
‘Very well, thank you.’
‘Am I in trouble for interfering?’
‘I guess you’re not.’ She laughed.
‘Good. I only want you to find Rome a pleasant place. When I return I shall try to persuade you that it is.’
‘Return?’
‘Yes, business calls me away. I have to go to Sicily for a few days. But, before I go, will you tell me-is all well with you?’
‘Yes, all is well with me.’
‘Good. Then I will call you when I return, but not until then. I know you think I can be rather overbearing, so I’ll leave you in peace until I’m back. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said slowly, hanging up.
Elise refused to pine for Vincente. That would be to give him too much importance, she assured herself. There was work to be done, public records to be consulted, seeking Angelo’s death certificate.
But several days’ searching revealed no Caroni who had died around that time. He might never have existed. In despair, she almost wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing.
Refusing to give up, she set out to perfect her Italian, partly by watching the television for hours, and partly by reading everything she could lay her hands on. She bought several daily papers and read them over coffee in a small garden restaurant a few doors down from her apartment.
She found that her Italian came back to her easily, and from the simpler papers she moved on to the financial publications.
As Vincente had told her, the Farnese corporation was huge. His grandfather had founded it, his father had tended it, but the real growth had come about after he’d died and Vincente had taken over. As she went through the newspapers Elise discovered item after item that testified as much to Vincente’s ruthlessness as to his business acumen. He seemed to succeed in everything he did.
His home, the Palazzo Marini, was on the outskirts of Rome. Once the home of aristocrats, it had fallen into disrepair when debts had forced the family to move out. His grandfather had purchased it, but it was Vincente who had renovated it, then used it as a conference centre and a backdrop for entertaining.
A search of the Internet revealed pictures taken at these gatherings, showing the restored glory of the Palazzo. Some of them also showed Vincente, magnificent in triumph.
Handsome devil, she thought reluctantly. Phone, damn you!
He’d been gone over a week now, and he’d kept his promise not to trouble her. At least, that was how he’d phrased it, she recalled. She might, if she were cynical, think it was a move in their game of staying one ahead, his way of showing that their night together had passed from his memory. Or his way of pretending that it had.
Did that mean he could read her thoughts, and knew that the memories of their voracious sex haunted her every moment? Did he suspect how she ached for him to return?
If so, he could just forget it.
Elise awoke one night to the ring of her doorbell, sounding as though someone was leaning on it. Flinging on a light robe, she hurriedly opened the door.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Vincente barely got the word out before she’d pulled him inside, seizing his head between her hands and positioning it where she could fasten her mouth on his. She was the aggressor, driving her tongue between his lips and using it to assault him deliciously. She had wanted this with all her being, and now she was going to make the most of it.
It was she who led the way to the bedroom, holding him tightly in case he tried to escape. Instead, he got ahead of her at the last minute, pulling her down on to the bed, stripping her night clothes from her while she struggled with his buttons. It took longer than they could bear, but at last they were free and she could draw him across her, opening her legs in welcome and emitting a fierce groan as he entered her.
No tenderness now, but vigour, power, plunging in deep, so driven by his need that he could do nothing but claim her fiercely again and again. This was just how she wanted it. With every movement inside her she groaned, the sound mounting until she exploded with a loud cry.
And still it wasn’t over because he stayed as he was, lying on top of her, enclosed within her, while his fingertips wandered over her breasts, teasing the nipples to firm peaks, and she wrapped her thighs about him, imprisoning him for her greater pleasure.
He was tireless, bringing her to climax again and again without weakening, until even his stamina ran out and he rolled away on to his back, gasping.
With difficulty, Elise propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over so that she could rest her head on his heaving chest. She had no strength to do more than that.
After a while their energy revived enough for them to get beneath the covers and go to sleep in each other’s arms.
By the time she awoke the sun was up. She lay for a while, drowsily content, only half believing what had happened the night before. Every nerve in her satiated body was relaxed and happy. She looked at his face, half darkened now with shadow, and ran her hand over the slightly scratchy surface, smiling with pleasure.
Sliding out from his arms, she slipped on her robe and went into the kitchen. As she made coffee she switched on the radio, just in time to hear a news item that made her prick up her ears. When she switched off the radio she considered for a moment before finishing the coffee and returning to the bedroom, a smile on her face.
Vincente was awake now, leaning back on the pillows with his hands behind his head.
‘I’ve just heard a really fascinating item of business news,’ Elise said. ‘Apparently your negotiations in Sicily have hit a bad patch. You were so enraged that you stormed out and returned to your hotel, where you are now incommunicado. No messages can get through to you, and you never come to the phone.’
He grinned. ‘Tonio’s doing well. He’s my assistant, and he has strict instructions to conceal the fact that I’m not there.’
Their eyes met. She didn’t have to ask any questions. He’d done this to be with her. She knew that and he knew she knew it.
‘How did you get away without being seen?’ she asked.
‘The hotel has an underground passage. The car took me to the airport, where my plane was waiting. Tonight I’ll go back the same way.’
‘I see. A shrewd business move. That’s very smart.’
‘I am very smart, aren’t I?’ he said, apparently considering this seriously. ‘With any luck, the other side will have given in by then, impressed by my stern refusal to negotiate.’
‘You’ll make any sacrifice for your business, won’t you?’
He grinned. ‘Come here.’
Elise called the agency to cancel the cleaners and they had twelve perfect hours, undisturbed by the world. She wouldn’t have believed herself capable of such recurring passion as she discovered that day. It was as though she’d been given a new body to replace the jaded, disillusioned one she’d had before. No matter how often he reached for her, she was ready for him, vibrantly alive as though the earlier times had never been.
What had happened, she wondered, to the beliefs with which she’d been reared-that sex was only beautiful as a part of love, and that to really enjoy it the two of you must grow close in heart and mind?
What she felt for Vincente was burningly intense, but it wasn’t love. Love was the sweet and tender feeling she’d known long ago, never to be repeated. The delirious pleasure she knew in Vincente’s embrace was something apart.
