GRACIE chafed at Rocco de Marco’s high-handedness. She hitched up her chin and tried to ignore the tantalising smell of food. Even that alone was making her feel weak again with hunger.
‘Are you going to leave it in front of me until I eat it? Like an autocratic parent?’
Rocco leaned forward on the other side of the counter and Gracie fought not to move back. ‘I’m no parent and I’m no autocrat. Just eat.’
Gracie looked down to escape that blistering gaze and saw creamy mashed potato and what looked like succulent beef pieces in a stew of vegetables. This was no standard ready meal—this was from a fancy deli. Her stomach rumbled and she went puce.
Defiant to the end, even as she gave in and pulled back the covering she said waspishly, ‘I might have been vegetarian, you know.’
She heard a noise that sounded slightly strangled, but wouldn’t look at Rocco for fear of what she might see. She started transferring the food onto the plate, hating being under his watch but too hungry to stop.
After a moment he said, with over-studied politeness, ‘Forgive me for not checking with you first.’
She cast him a quick glance and something in her belly swooped. He’d been laughing at her. She hurriedly looked away again and concentrated on the food. Once the first succulent morsel of beef hit her mouth she was lost, and devoured the lot like a pauper who hadn’t eaten in weeks.
From out of nowhere a napkin and a glass of water materialised. Gracie wiped her mouth and took a long drink of water. Only then did she dare to look at Rocco again. He was staring at her, transfixed. She immediately felt self-conscious and wiped her mouth again. ‘What? Have I got food somewhere?’
He shook his head. His voice sounded rough. ‘When was the last time you ate?’
For a moment Gracie couldn’t actually recall. She fidgeted with the plate and mumbled, ‘Yesterday … lunchtime.’ But in fact she knew she hadn’t really eaten properly in days.
‘Where do you live?’
Gracie met Rocco’s dark and hard gaze. Something in his demeanour had changed. He was back into questioning mode. And then the full reality of her situation flooded back. She flushed and avoided his eyes. She felt like such a pathetic failure at that moment.
‘Gracie …’ he said warningly, and her insides flipped again at the way he said her name. It felt incredibly intimate.
She looked at him and squared her shoulders. She couldn’t go any lower in his estimation, and perhaps if he knew just how harmless she was he’d let her go?
‘I lived in Bethnal Green until this morning. But I lost my job two days ago and they wouldn’t give me my wages. I couldn’t give my landlord the full rent today, so he suggested I make it up to him in other ways.’
Gracie shuddered reflexively when she remembered his sweaty face, grabbing hands and acrid breath. Before she knew it Rocco had moved. She felt her right hand being picked up and he was inspecting the grazed and reddened knuckles. She’d forgotten, and winced slightly because they were still tender.
He speared her with a glance, ‘You hit him?’
She shrugged slightly, more mortified than ever now. She hated her instinct to fight. She’d had it ever since someone had picked on Steven when they’d been tiny. ‘He was backing me into a corner. I couldn’t get out.’
Still holding her hand, Rocco said grimly, ‘I suppose I should consider myself lucky you didn’t aim a swing at me too.’
Gracie looked up at his hard jaw and figured she would have broken her hand if she had. He was standing very close now, still cradling her hand. Her belly clenched and a coil of something hot seemed to stretch from her breasts right down to between her legs. And as if on cue she felt a throb, a pulse coming to life.
She pulled her hand away and started babbling. ‘I left my cases at Victoria train station in the left luggage. I should go and get them and find somewhere for the night.’
She was off the stool and backing away now, as if she’d forgotten for a moment why she was there in the first place, suddenly terrified at the weak longing that had sprung up inside her when Rocco had held her hand.
He continued to just look at her with his arms folded. ‘I told you before that you won’t make it to the next floor if you try to leave.’
Panic rose up, constricting Gracie’s voice. ‘You can’t keep me here. That would be kidnap. I only came to Steven’s office to try and find him. That’s all. I really don’t have an ulterior motive. I didn’t take anything and I didn’t know about the money.’
Rocco looked at the woman in front of him. Strange how his entire world had contracted down to her since he’d seen her in the lift. For a second that knowledge threatened to blast something open inside him, but Rocco reminded himself that she was providing him with the key to finding the culprit who’d had the temerity to think he could take advantage of him.
That was why he hadn’t thought about anything else.
It had nothing to do with the fact that just a moment ago, when he’d held her hand in his and seen her bruised knuckles, he’d felt rage within him at the thought of some faceless man threatening her.
To divert his mind away from those provocative thoughts, he asked, ‘Why did you lose your job?’
He could see her hands ball into fists. She was like a glorious feline animal, bristling and lashing out in defence, and a curious weakness invaded his chest. When he’d watched her eating ravenously he’d been mesmerised—first of all because he wasn’t used to seeing women eat like that, and also because it had reminded him of him. He would never forget what it was to be hungry.
‘I had issues with some of the customers.’
Rocco arched a brow and welcomed being forced to re-focus on the present. ‘Customers?’
She flushed pink. ‘I worked in a bar in a less than salubrious part of town.’ And then she said in a rush, ‘Just temporarily.’
Again Rocco felt a kind of rage growing within him—not at her, but for her. He could well imagine men finding her feisty allure something to challenge and harness. She was proving to be altogether far more of an enigma than she’d appeared that night just a week ago.
Out of nowhere, immediate and incendiary, Rocco had the desire to see her tamed and acquiescent, and he wanted to be the one to tame her. Sheer shock at the strength of that desire made Rocco blanch for a moment. Women like her should hold no appeal for him. It felt like a self-betrayal. Before she could see anything of his loss of composure, and wondering if he’d lost his mind completely, he strode forward and stopped in front of her, as if to prove to himself that he could stand in front of her and restrain himself from tipping her over his shoulder like some caveman. The surreal circumstances of their meeting and her connection to Steven Murray was causing this completely uncharacteristic response, that was all.
As implacable as a stone wall, he told her now, ‘You’re not leaving this apartment until your brother—’ He broke off and swore for a moment. ‘If he even is your brother, is found and brought to task for his actions. Now, give me the ticket for your bags and I’ll have them picked up.’
Scant minutes later Gracie found herself being shown into a sumptuously decorated guest bedroom. She still wasn’t entirely sure how she’d allowed herself to be bulldozed into submission, but on some very secret level she felt so tired. For the first time in her life she was being subservient to someone else and she couldn’t drum up the energy to fight it. She had no one to turn to and nowhere to go—literally. An uncharacteristic wave of loneliness washed over her.
‘There’s a bathroom through there, with a robe and toiletries. When your bags come I’ll bring them to you.’
Gracie looked around with wide eyes gritty with fatigue. Rocco was striding towards the door and she envied his seemingly unstoppable force. If she’d known there was a chance she might bump into him again there was no way she would have ever attempted to go to her brother’s office. She sighed. Too late for regrets now.
Rocco turned at the door, filling it with his broad frame. ‘We’ll discuss where we go from here in the morning.’
Some sliver of fight sparked within her. ‘You’ll let me walk out of this apartment. Because if you don’t—’
He cut her off. ‘You’ll what? Call the police?’ He shook his head and smiled with insufferable coolness. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sure you don’t want the police sniffing around your brother any more than I want the news leaked that I employed an inside trader.’
Silence grew and thickened between them. What could she say to refute that? He was absolutely right, and for deeper reasons than he even knew.
He inclined his head in a false gesture of civility. ‘Until the morning, Miss O’Brien.’
The door closed softly behind him and Gracie almost expected to hear a key turning in the lock, but she heard nothing. Experimenting, she went to the door and opened it softly. She nearly jumped three feet in the air when she saw Rocco lounging against the wall outside.
‘Don’t make me lock the door, because I will.’
Wanting to avoid any further questioning or scrutiny Gracie closed the door again hurriedly. She moved like an automaton to the window and looked out over the spectacular view, seeing nothing but her inward turmoil.
It had always been her and Steven—even when their mother had still been with them. And then when their nan had taken them in until she’d declared she couldn’t handle two children and had given them over to Social Services.
Their bond had been forged early, when their mercurial mother had cossetted Steven and treated Gracie harshly. One evening, when Gracie had been sent to bed with no dinner for some minor misdemeanour, Steven had crawled in beside her with some food which he’d hidden for her. They’d been four years old.
Steven had always been a target for bullies with his weedy, sickly frame and his thick glasses, so Gracie had got used to stepping in with raised fists. He’d been preternaturally bright, and Gracie knew now if they’d grown up in different circumstances he might well have been nurtured as a genius student. As it was he’d constantly been ahead of his classmates, and yet had patiently and laboriously helped Gracie through the torture of maths and science.
It was thanks to him she’d managed to scrape enough marks in her exams for art college. Even whilst he’d been in the midst of drug addiction and had given up studying himself he’d still been advanced enough to help her. Her belly clenched now when she thought of how Steven had protected her from far worse things than inexplicable maths.
She leant her forehead against the cool glass, and even though her mind was churning with sick worry for her brother she couldn’t get another face out of her head. A dark, compelling face with eyes so intense she shivered even now. And she couldn’t stop a wave of heat from spreading outwards from her core, threatening the cool distance she’d protected herself with for so long.
Rocco looked at the two battered bags that had been delivered a short time before. One was a backpack and the other an old-fashioned suitcase. The kind you might see in a movie from the 1940s about immigrants leaving Europe for America. She’d left her flat with just these? Rocco was used to women travelling with an entire set of matching luggage, complete with personally monogrammed initials. But then he didn’t need reminding that this woman was a world away from the ones he knew. He shook his head and picked up the bags. He’d long ago given up on the notion of sleeping tonight.
Opening the door to the guest bedroom silently, Rocco half expected to see Gracie standing on the other side, as obstinate and defiant as ever, but she wasn’t. In the gloom his eyes quickly picked out a shape on the bed. Standing still for a moment, he registered she was fast asleep.
Putting down the bags, he felt compelled to go closer. Gracie was lying on top of the covers in a white robe. She was curled up in the foetal position, legs tucked under themselves, hands under her chin. Her hair flowed out around her head like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, the curls long and wild.
Everything in him went still when her head moved and she said brokenly, ‘No, Steven … you can’t … please …’
That brought Rocco down to earth with a bang. Once again it was as if she’d exerted some kind of spell over him, making him forget for a moment who she was and why she was here. She was a thieving, lying nobody and her brother had had the temerity to think he could abuse Rocco de Marco’s trust.
Rocco stepped back and away from the curled-up shape on the bed, and ruthlessly clamped down on any tendrils of concern or unwelcome desire. He vowed there and then that he would not let her go until he was satisfied that she and Steven Murray had been brought to justice.
When Gracie woke in the morning she had the awful sensation of not knowing where she was or what day it was. Her surroundings were completely unfamiliar and scarily luxurious. She was lying on top of a massive bed, in a robe. Slowly, it all came back. Leaving her awful damp flat after nearly being mauled by her landlord, getting that worrying phone call from Steven, and then coming to his office to see if he might be there.
And then she remembered coming face to face with Rocco de Marco. Gracie groaned and put a pillow over her face. Rocco de Marco. Her stomach cramped at the vivid memory of his hands around her arms, the way they’d felt when he’d frisked her. The intense excitement in her blood at seeing him again.
Groaning even more, she sat up and saw that the curtains were still open. She now had the most jaw-dropping views out over London, with the Thames snaking like a brown coil through the grey and steel buildings.
She turned away from the view and something caught her eye. She saw her two battered bags just inside the bedroom door. Her face grew hot when she thought of Rocco coming in while she lay sleeping.
Feeling seriously at a disadvantage, Gracie scrambled out of bed and dragged the bags over. She pulled out some jeans and a T-shirt and found her sneakers. After washing her face she dragged her hair back into a knot at the back of her head and left the room.
The entire apartment was still and quiet. Gracie checked her watch. It was still early. Maybe Rocco wasn’t up yet? But even as she thought that she got to the doorway of the enormous kitchen and saw him sitting at a large chrome kitchen table. Her heart stopped. He was reading the distinctively pink Financial Times. His hair was damp and slicked back from that strong profile. Skin gleaming dark olive in the morning light. Immaculately dressed in a light blue shirt and royal blue tie.
And then he looked up, after taking a lazy sip from a small cup which should have looked ridiculous in his huge hand but didn’t. ‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ she echoed faintly, for all the world as if she’d been some benign overnight guest and not one step away from being locked in her room.
Rocco gestured with a hand to the kitchen. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to help yourself. I’m currently without a housekeeper.’
Gracie tore her eyes away from his raw masculine appeal and helped herself to some coffee and toast, which was already laid out. She hated that her hands were shaking. Very little had ever intimidated her, but this did.
She stood awkwardly at the huge island in the middle of the room until Rocco said, a little impatiently, ‘Come and sit down. I won’t bite.’
Gracie gritted her teeth and reluctantly picked up her coffee and plate and sat down at the other end of the table. She didn’t miss his sardonic look. She felt very pale and washed out next to his vibrant masculinity.
She swallowed her toast with an effort and wiped away some crumbs, studiously avoiding Rocco’s eyes, and nearly jumped out of her skin when he said, ‘I spent a little time investigating your brother last night, and the full picture is very interesting.’
Gracie went cold inside and put down her cup. Frantically she rewound events in her head and froze. She’d told Rocco Steven’s real name by revealing her own. She looked at him with wide eyes.
Rocco looked almost bored, but she could sense the underlying anger as tangibly as if he’d started shouting. ‘He’s got quite an impressive rap sheet. Three years in jail for carrying Class A drugs. Not to mention the fact that he forged papers to get a job in my company so we couldn’t find out about his past. His crimes are mounting, Gracie.’
Feeling desperate, Gracie blurted out, ‘He’s not like that. He really was trying to make a fresh start, to use his intelligence and turn his life around. He did a degree. There has to be some good reason for what he’s done—he wouldn’t have risked jail again.’
Rocco was impossibly grim. ‘I think a lot of people would agree that a million euros provides quite a good reason.’
Gracie sagged back into her chair and looked down at her pale hands. They were trembling and she clasped them together. Hot tears pricked at the back of her eyes. Rocco’s mention of the astronomical sum of money struck hard. She’d almost forgotten about it with everything else that had happened. How could Steven ever come back from this? He’d spend his whole life paying it back. And that was if he was lucky enough to get the chance.
She heard Rocco sigh but couldn’t look up, terrified he’d see her emotion. He said with palpable reluctance, ‘Nevertheless, I don’t think you’re about to phone him and tell him to give himself up?’
Willing the emotion down, Gracie looked up. Huskily she admitted, ‘I did speak to him yesterday, but he wouldn’t tell me where he was, or where he was going, and when I tried to call him back his phone was switched off. I think he’s thrown it away.’ She omitted to mention that he’d said he’d try to contact her when he could. Gracie vowed then that if that happened she’d tell Steven to stay away and never come back …
Rocco stood up and held out a hand. ‘Give me your phone.’
Gracie’s mouth opened and closed. Feeling bullish now, she said, ‘Why?’
Rocco’s mouth tightened. ‘Because I don’t believe you. Because I think you’ll make every attempt to get in touch with your brother and warn him to stay away. And because if he does try and contact you then we’ll have him.’