‘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.