Jo nodded. ‘I’m sure. He waved a photo under my nose, but I didn’t really look because he scared me and I wanted to get away. But I did glimpse rose-gold hair like yours.’
She stopped at Ida’s quick intake of breath.
‘Was he working for you?’ Ida spun around. Those light green eyes snared his with an intensity he felt to the soles of his feet. ‘Cesare?’
He shook his head. ‘No. My investigators located you a while ago, but they had instructions not to approach.’
Because this was business he preferred to conduct in person. He’d only arrived in Britain today, ostensibly for commercial reasons, but the most compelling was to settle things with Ida.
‘So if he doesn’t work for you...’
He saw her swallow and reach for the back of a chair, fingers gripping so tight they looked bloodless.
‘What did he look like, Jo, do you remember?’
‘Not nice,’ came the immediate answer. ‘That’s why I remember so well. Short-cropped hair and a nose that had been broken a couple of times. He wore a suit, but he was so bulky his arms were like hams, and he looked like he had no neck.’ She paused, her breath hitching. ‘He had a voice like the bottom of a gravel pit, and I didn’t like the way he looked at me.’
Ida sank onto the spindly chair. The movement was so abrupt Cesare guessed her knees had folded involuntarily.
He moved forward but made room for Jo to crouch before her. ‘Maddy? Ida...are you okay?’
Clearly the answer was no. He saw a shudder rack her whole frame. Yet to his surprise Ida nodded, her mouth drawing up in a weak approximation of a smile.
‘Of course. I just got a surprise.’
‘It’s someone you know,’ Cesare interjected.
She kept her eyes on her flatmate. ‘Just someone from the past I’d rather not run into.’
Which meant, since she hadn’t used her real name in four years, that it was someone from before their wedding. An ex-boyfriend? Surely not with that description.
‘Time enough to worry about him tomorrow,’ she added, her false cheer so jarring that Cesare’s hackles rose.
‘I haven’t seen the guy since,’ Jo offered. ‘Maybe he’s left the area.’
Cesare crossed his arms, taking in the contradiction of Ida’s hunched shoulders and fake smile. It was obvious she didn’t want anyone prying and discovering her secrets.
It seemed his dear wife had more than one skeleton in her closet.
Technically he didn’t need to uncover those secrets. He could finalise what he’d come to do quickly and be gone.
Yet from the first, Ida with her machinations and mysteries had got under his skin like a burr under a saddle. If he intended to eradicate her from his life, he needed to lay those truths completely bare so he could move on.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be sorted as quickly as he’d planned.
Ida shifted on the limousine’s soft leather seat, her limbs stiff with stress and the effort of fighting a chill that seemed to come from her bones. She wrapped her arms around her torso and folded her legs together.
Too late she’d realised her mistake in leaving the flat in the clothes she’d worn to the club. But she’d been too dazed to think of changing.
She should have demanded they talk in her flat as planned. She didn’t like the idea of going tohissuite, being onhisterritory.
But she’d shied away from reliving her embarrassing history with him before anyone, even a friend like Jo. Ida felt scraped raw whenever she thought of their catastrophic wedding day, her naïvety and Cesare’s expression as he’d shredded her tentative hopes. His scorn had been like acid on soft flesh and her even softer heart.
On top of that, the news that her grandfather’s henchman was searching for her had scrambled her brain. Jo’s description fitted Bruno perfectly. It was hard to think when fear gripped her lungs like a vice.
She swallowed, her throat scratchy as if lined with emery. Bruno.
The man who for years had either looked right through her or, occasionally, directly at her like a starving bulldog slavering over a piece of meat.