Page 234 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

He’d kept the bedroom door open so she could call if she needed him. His voice had carried into the room from his office. The words of his conversations had been indistinguishable but the effect of them a torment. She’d never known a distant voice could soak through skin and squeeze a heart.

His laughter was as forced as the bonhomie they were both faking. ‘No more pasta?’

She made herself smile. ‘Only if you want to kill me off.’

More forced laughter. ‘You will be pleased to know the storm is expected to ease soon. I am making arrangements for a snowplough to be sent to collect Bernard in the morning.’

‘The chef?’

He nodded. ‘And some cleaners.’

‘You’remaking the arrangements?’

He preened. ‘I know. There is no end to my talents.’

She only had to half force a snigger at this. ‘How are Christina and Patrick doing?’

‘They are improved but they are not recovering as quickly as you...’ A line creased his forehead. ‘Youarestill feeling improvement?’

‘I’m getting stronger by the hour.’

His head inclined.‘Bene.’He straightened and made to leave.

‘I’m going to take a quick bath if that’s okay?’ she said quickly, before she lost her nerve. For someone who showered twice daily, Victoria was acutely aware she hadn’t bathed since falling ill. While her strength was increasing by the hour, her yearning to feel clean was accelerating by the minute.

There was a slight stiffening of Marcello’s shoulders. The air, already laden with tension, thickened. ‘You are sure you feel strong enough?’

She nodded.

He lifted his stiff shoulders into a shrug. ‘Help yourself to whatever you need. Clean T-shirts are in drawers to the left of the dressing room door. I would offer you jeans to wear too but...’

He didn’t need to finish his sentence. They both knew they were both thinking it. There was no way Victoria was going to get a pair of jeans designed for his snake hips past her curves.

His breathing had become heavy. His throat moved before another taut smile curved his cheeks. ‘Food in an hour?’

‘If I must.’

The smile widened into something more genuine. He tapped the side of his forehead with two of his fingers. ‘Do not drown.’

‘I’ll try not to.’

Victoria had never been in Marcello’s dressing room before. She’d seen glimpses of it but those glimpses had failed to convey its vastness. Stepping into it reminded her of walking into that tailor’s shop on Bond Street with him. The difference was in size. Marcello’s dressing room had twice the floor space. It smelled crisper too. Unthinkingly, she rubbed her nose into the collar of his robe and breathed in the underlying scent of his cologne. She’d put it on only to cover her flesh and make it easier for the two of them to be with each other. After spending days in his T-shirt, she hadn’t expected to feel such intimacy wearing his robe. Hadn’t expected it to feel like an embrace.

Expelling the breath, she closed her eyes.

If Marcello was right and the storm did ease overnight, then that meant it should soon be safe for her to leave. If she continued improving as she was then, come the morning, she would dig her clothes out of the laundry pile Marcello had added them to. Get a lift on the snowplough. Return to her apartment. Hope the physical distance from him gave her the head space needed to decide what she should do next.

Resign officially or stay and hope for the best?

She couldn’t think clearly in Marcello’s home, wearing his clothes and feeling his presence like a vibration in her skin.

Selecting a grey T-shirt, she left the dressing room for his en suite. Another room stamped as essentially Marcello. As masculine a bathroom as could be imagined. Charcoal tiled walls. Hard black flooring. A huge walk-in shower that could be mistaken for a cave. Even the chaise longue that separated the shower side from the rolltop bath was black leather, and as she poured the citrus-scented bubble bath into the gushing water, it came to her again that he hadn’t marked every single part of his apartment with his own stamp for aesthetic reasons, but as a warning to the many women he’d invited into it.

Do not get close.

Marcello tried to focus on the food he’d selected and laid out before him on the kitchen island. Tried not to think that at this exact moment, Victoria was naked in the bath.

In the back of his mind had been the unacknowledged knowledge that at some point Victoria would feel well enough to want to shower. A shower would have been hard enough to handle. A bath was a whole different level of torture.

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