Dante's Unexpected Legacy(32)

                By supreme effort of will Rose detached herself, her eyes glittering hotly. ‘That’s what you said last time.’

                He frowned. ‘At the airport in Pisa?’

                ‘No. When you left my bed after the wedding.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Goodbye, Dante. Thank you for dinner.’

                ‘Tell me, Rose,’ he demanded angrily, ‘why did you accept my invitation tonight? At one moment I think we are friends, but then in the blink of the eye I am enemy again.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘It amazes me that you agreed to my company in Firenze.’

                It had amazed Rose at the time. ‘I was alone in a foreign country, remember?’ She eyed him narrowly. ‘If it comes to that, why did you offer? Did Charlotte ask you to take pity on me?’

                Dante looked down his nose again. ‘I felt pity without being asked.’

                Rose glared at him, incensed. ‘So Saint Dante escorted Charlotte’s little friend out of the goodness of his heart!’

                He raised a shoulder. ‘You could say that, yes. Though I am no saint.’

                ‘No. Neither am I. As you have discovered for yourself since meeting up with me again, my disposition has deteriorated.’ She felt sudden shame. ‘So have my manners.’

                Dante’s smile stopped short of his eyes. ‘You have reason. You work hard with no husband to provide for your daughter, and you do well. She is a credit to you.’

                ‘But Bea has a temper, too, which is definitely down to me, because her father—’ She stopped dead at the sharp look Dante gave her.

                ‘Her father is of better disposition?’

                She nodded, flushing.

                ‘You know this from just one night?’ he demanded. ‘Rose, I think you know much more than that, so why do you not contact him? He deserves to know the truth.’

                She took a leaf from Dante’s book and stared down her nose at him. ‘It’s absolutely none of your business, Dante Fortinari.’

                He stiffened, and inclined his head with hauteur. ‘You are right. It is not. Goodbye, Rose.’

                He strode from the room and straight out of the house. Rose gave a choked sob as she heard the outer door close, and then began to cry in earnest as Dante drove away. She curled up in a heap on the sofa, and for the first time in years gave way to engulfing, bitter tears that only died down at last when she remembered the dress. Head thumping, stomach suddenly unhappy after the rich dinner, she trudged upstairs, hung up her dress and pulled on her bathrobe. She took off her make-up and pressed a wet cloth to her swollen eyes then stiffened, heart hammering, at the sound of the doorbell. Rose raced down the stairs, almost falling in her haste to wrench open the door, and found Dante holding out something that caught the light.

                ‘Your earring, Rose. It came off in the car, I think.’

                ‘Oh. Thank you.’ She swallowed convulsively, trying to blink away the black spots dancing in front of her eyes. ‘Dante I’m...I’m so sorry, but—’ She uttered a sick little moan and would have crumpled in a heap if he hadn’t sprung to catch her.

                Rose came round on the sofa with Dante leaning over her, an expression of desperate anxiety on his face as he bombarded her with a flood of questions she couldn’t understand.

                ‘English,’ she croaked, and his eyes lit with a smile so brilliant she closed her own in defence.