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But he wasn’t uneasy. He took her hand and held it tightly, speaking seriously.
‘No, I’m not thinking that. I don’t think you could guess what I’m thinking.’
He was wrong. She could guess exactly. Because she was thinking the same thing.
It was unnerving to find such thoughts possessing her about a man she’d only just met, but she couldn’t help herself. And a part of her, the part that rushed to meet adventure, wasn’t sorry at all. True, another part of her counselled caution, but she was used to ignoring it.
But for the moment she must act with propriety, so she showed him the array of equipment that helped her to function.
‘I talk to the computer and it talks back to me,’ Celia said. ‘Plus I have a special phone, and various other things.’
He took her to lunch at a small restaurant next door, and he talked about his firm while she tapped information into a small terminal. Afterwards he began to walk her back to the office, but she stopped, saying, ‘I have to take Wicksy to the park.’
He went with her, watching, fascinated, as she plunged into her bag and brought out a ball.
‘If I throw it now, I won’t hit anyone, will I?’ she asked anxiously.
He assured her she wouldn’t, then wished he’d been more cautious. Instead of the ladylike gesture he’d expected, she put all her force into hurling the ball a great distance, so that a man contentedly munching sandwiches had to jump out of the way with an angry yell.
‘You told me it was safe,’ she said in mock complaint.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you could throw that far.’
With a bark of joy, Wicksy bounded after the ball, retrieved it and charged back to drop it at her feet. After another couple of throws he came to sit before her, his head cocked to one side, gazing up at her with a significant expression.
‘All right, let’s go,’ she said, taking the ball from his mouth and putting it away. ‘This next bit is rather indelicate, so you may want to go away.’
‘I’ll be brave,’ he said, grinning.
She found a spot under the trees, said, ‘OK, go on,’ and Wicksy obeyed while she reached into her bag for the scoop and plastic bag.
‘Would you like me to do that for you?’ he asked through gritted teeth.
‘That’s being gallant above and beyond the call of duty,’ she said, liking him for it. ‘But he’s my responsibility and I’ll wield the pooper-scooper.’
‘Well, I offered,’ he said, and something in the sound of the words told her he was grinning with relief.
When the business was complete they made their way back across the park.
At the door of her building he said, ‘I meant to tell you a lot more about my firm and our requirements, but there wasn’t time. Can I take you to dinner tonight and we can talk some more?’
‘I would like that.’
She spent the rest of the afternoon hard at work, for she wanted to impress him. Then she went home, showered, and put on a gold dress that she’d been told looked stunning with her red hair.
In the apartment next door lived Angela, a good friend who worked in a wholesale fashion house, and one of the few people Celia trusted enough to ask for help. Having called her in, she twisted and turned before her.
‘Will I do?’
‘Oh, yes, you’ll do, and then some. You look gorgeous. I was right to make you get that dress. And those sandals. Lord, but I envy you your long legs and your ankles. If you knew how rare it is for a woman to have ankles as slender as yours, and yet have perfect balance so that you can walk on them without wobbling! I could murder you for that alone.’
Celia chuckled. She owed Angela a lot, for it was she who’d taught her how to win the admiring glances that she knew followed her even without seeing them. Angela had decreed the colours that went with Celia’s red hair.
‘But what does it mean—red hair?’ Celia had asked.
‘It means you’ve got to be very careful what you wear with it. You’re lucky in your complexion, pale and delicate, the perfect English-rose style.’
‘What’s an English rose?’ Celia had asked at once.
‘Let’s just say men go for it. That’s what you’re hoping for, isn’t it?’
‘Certainly not. This is a business meeting to discuss strategy and forward planning.’
‘Boy, you really have got it bad.’
Celia laughed, but inwardly she could feel herself blushing. Her friend’s words were true. She had got it bad already.
When she opened the door to Francesco that evening she heard what she’d been hoping for—a brief hesitation that said he was taken aback by her appearance. She smiled at his wolf whistle and inclined her head in mock acceptance.
There was the tiniest hint of their future disagreements when he wanted her to leave Wicksy behind.
‘He goes with me everywhere,’ she said firmly
‘Surely he doesn’t have to? I’ll keep you safe.’
‘But I don’t want to be kept safe,’ she said, still smiling. ‘Wicksy treats me as an equal in ways that nobody else does.’
‘But you don’t need him if you’ve got me,’ he insisted. ‘Besides, restaurants don’t like dogs.’
‘There’s one two streets away that knows Wicksy and always welcomes him. Let’s not argue about it. Wicksy belongs with me and I belong with him.’
She kept her tone pleasant, but he must have sensed her determination because he yielded. She knew a twinge of disappointment. Understanding her need for independence was one of her silent ‘tests’ and he’d failed it. But there was time yet, and she was determined to enjoy her evening with him.
They walked the short distance to the restaurant, and settled down at their table to talk.
‘Did you have to bring that great folder in with you?’ he asked.
‘Of course. How else could I make my pitch? This is a working dinner, remember? I have several ideas that I think you’ll like.’
She talked for several minutes, illustrating her points by pushing various pages towards him. She’d earlier marked them with nail scissors, so that she could tell by feel which was which.
‘You seem to know everything about everything we’ve ever made,’ he said, awed.
‘I’ve been working hard.’
‘I can tell, but how on earth—’ he asked.
‘I accessed a lot of information about your firm on line this afternoon.’
‘And your computer delivers it vocally?’ he hazarded.
‘There is software that does that,’ she said vaguely.
In truth she’d got Sally to read it out to her, a method she sometimes used when she was short of time. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.
There were two conversations going on here, she realised. On the surface she sold her abilities, while he admired her work. It was pleasant, restrained, but beneath the surface they were sizing each other up.
Celia listened closely to every nuance of his voice. Without being deep, it had a resonance that excited her and made her want to touch him.
She’d chosen this restaurant and insisted on taking Wicksy because in that way she could keep some sort of control. The trouble was that she increasingly wanted to abandon control and hurl herself headlong into the unknown.
She sensed that he, too, was putting a brake on himself, but his caution was greater than hers. Francesco eased her away from the subject of work, and made her talk about herself.
‘How did your parents cope with you being blind?’ he asked.
‘Easily. They were both blind, too,’ she explained.
‘Mio Dio! How terrible!’ he said instinctively.
‘Not really. You’d be amazed how little you miss what you’ve never had. Since they couldn’t see, either, and I’m an only child, I had almost no point of comparison. The three of us formed a kind of secret society. It was us against the world because we thought everyone else was crazy. They thought we were crazy, too, because we wouldn’t conform to their ideas about how blind people ought to behave.
‘They met at university, where he was a young professor and she was one of his students. He writes books now, and she does his secretarial work. He says she’s more efficient than any sighted secretary because she knows what to watch out for. They used to say they fell in love because they understood things that nobody else did. So I grew up accepting the way we lived as normal, and I still do.’
There was a slight warning in her voice as she said the last words, but she didn’t make much of the point.
She managed to turn the conversation towards him. He told her about his family in Italy, his parents and his five brothers, the villa perched on the hill with the view over the Bay of Naples. Then he caught himself up, embarrassed.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘I don’t expect people to censor their speech because I’ve never seen the things they describe. If I did that I wouldn’t have any friends.’
‘And you’ve never seen anything of the world at all,’ he said in wonder. ‘That’s what I can’t get my head round.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is hard,’ she mused. ‘This morning my friend told me you had deep blue eyes, but I had to tell her I couldn’t picture them.’
In the brief silence she could sense him looking around, and strove not to smile.
‘Why—did she tell you that?’ he asked, almost nervously.
She assumed a wicked, breathy innocence. ‘You mean, it’s not true? Your eyes are really deep red?’
‘Only when I’ve had too much to drink.’
She laughed so much that Wicksy, dozing at her feet, pushed his snout against her, asking if all was well.
Something other than laughter was happening that evening. It was in the air between them. Another woman might have read it in his eyes. Celia sensed it with the whole of her being.
The talk drifted back to his family.
‘My mother’s English, but you’d never know it. At heart Signora Rinucci is a real Italian mamma, determined to marry all her sons off.’
‘Six sons? That’s quite an undertaking. How’s she doing?’
‘Four married, two left, But my brother Ruggiero has just got engaged. He’ll marry Polly fairly soon, and then Mamma will turn her firepower on me.’
So now he’d contrived to let her know that he wasn’t married, she thought, appreciating his tactics.
‘Don’t your parents do the same with you?’ he asked casually.
‘It’s the one thing they’ve never given me advice about,’ she said. ‘Except when Dad’s been at work in the kitchen Mum will say, “Never marry a man who cooks squid.” And she’s right.’
After a brief silence he said, ‘We have squid in the Bay of Naples. Best in the world, so the fishermen say.’
‘But you don’t cook it, do you?’
‘No, I don’t cook it,’ he assured her.
And then a strange silence fell, slightly touched by embarrassment, as though they’d both strayed closer to danger than they’d meant.
Celia found that she couldn’t be the one to break the silence, because she was so conscious of what had caused it, but his manner of breaking it brought no comfort. He offered her coffee and another glass of wine, his manner polite and impeccable. Earlier he’d been warm and pleasant. Suddenly only courtesy was left, and it had a hollow feel.
The truth began to creep over her, and with it a chill.
At her front door he said, ‘I’ll take your folder with me. I like your ideas, and I think we’ve got a deal, but I’ll know more when I’ve read it again.’
‘You’ve got my number?’
‘I made sure I got it. Good night.’
He didn’t even try to kiss her.
Now she knew the truth.
When he didn’t call her, she understood why. As though she was inside his head, she followed his thoughts, his dread of getting too close to a blind woman, his common sense advice to himself to back off now, before it was too late.
‘They all do it,’ she mused to Wicksy as they took their final walk one evening. She sat on a bench beneath the trees and felt him press against her. ‘We’ve both known it to happen before. Remember Joe? You never liked him, did you? You tried to tell me that he wouldn’t last, and you were right.’
His nose was cold and comforting in her hand.
‘Men are scared to become involved with me in case it disrupts their pleasant lives, their successful careers.’
The nose nudged gently.
‘I know,’ she said sadly. ‘We can’t blame them, can we? And maybe it’s better for him to be honest and retreat now rather than later.’
Another soft nudge.
‘It’s just that I thought this time it might have been different. I thought he was different. But he isn’t.’
There was a whine from beside her knee, with a distant air of urgency.
