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‘So I had assumed. What is it doing there? This is no place for a baby!’
A child that age should be at home, not being dragged around at this hour of the day? What kind of mother was this girl? Irresponsible, obviously!
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said again, swallowing, hoping some more abject servility would soften his annoyance at finding her cleaning when he was in residence. Clearly he was furious his pristine apartment was being cluttered up by something as messy as a baby. She bent to pick up her cleaning box, cast a swift glance around the bathroom to make sure it was decent, and said, as meekly as she could manage, ‘I’ll go now, sir. I’m very sorry for having disturbed you.’
She made for the door and he stood aside to let her pass. It was uncomfortable passing him so close. He was so immaculately attired, obviously freshly washed and showered, and she had just spent several hours cleaning. She was dirty and sweaty, and she had a horrible feeling she smelt as bad as she felt. She hurried out to Benji, who, blessedly, was still asleep, and made to scoop up his chair.
‘Wait!’
The order was imperative, and Magda halted instinctively, Benji a heavy weight on her arm. Hesitantly she turned round.
The man was looking at her. Staring at her.
Magda froze, as if she were a rabbit caught in headlights. Or rather an antelope realising a leopard had just come out of the undergrowth.
Oh, help, she thought silently. Now what?
Rafaello let his gaze rest on the girl. She was slightly built, drab in the extreme, with hair the colour of mud and unmemorable features. She also—his nose wrinkled in disdain—smelt of sweat and cleaning fluids. There was a smut of dirt on her cheek. She looked about twenty or so.
He found himself glancing at her hands. They were covered by yellow rubber gloves. He frowned. His gaze went back to her face. She was looking at him with a look of deepest apprehension.
‘You don’t have to bolt like a frightened rabbit,’ he said. Deliberately he made his voice less brusque, though it didn’t seem to alter her expression a jot. She still stood there, poised for flight, baby in one hand, cleaning materials in the other.
Rafaello took a couple of steps towards her.
‘Tell me—are you married?’
The brusqueness was back in his voice. He didn’t mean it to be, but it was. It was because part of his mind was telling him that he was completely mad, thinking what he was thinking. But he was thinking it all the same…
A blank look came into the girl’s eyes, as if he had asked her an unintelligible question.
‘Well?’ demanded Rafaello. The woman seemed beyond answering him.
Jerkily, the woman shook her head, her eyes still with that fixed, blank look to them. Rafaello’s gaze focussed on her more intently. So, she wasn’t married—he hadn’t thought so, even without being able to see if she wore a wedding ring. And despite the baby.
His eyes glanced across to the sleeping infant. He wasn’t any good at telling the ages of babies, but this one looked quite big. Too big for that chair, in fact. It was dark-haired, head lolling forward, totally out for the count.
But a baby was good—however irresponsible the mother! A baby was very good, he mused consideringly. So was the rest of her. Once again his eyes flickered over her, taking in the full drabness of her appearance, and he thought he could see her wince.
‘Boyfriend?’
Her eyes widened and then went even blanker. With the same jerky movement she shook her head. She also, Rafaello spotted, edged very slightly closer to the front door. He frowned. Why was she being so jumpy?
‘I have a business proposition to put to you.’ His voice was clipped as he banked down the anger at his predicament that still roiled within him like an injured tiger.
A noise came from her that might have been a whimper, but that seemed unlikely since there was no reason for such a sound. Rafaello walked to the door leading into the kitchen and held it open with the flat of his hand.
‘In here.’ He gestured.
The strangled croaking noise came again, and this time the woman definitely shrank back towards the door.
‘I have to go!’ Her voice came out high and squawky. ‘I’m very sorry!’
Rafaello frowned again. Just then a door slammed on the upper floor. The next moment Amanda was descending as fast as her four-inch heels and very tight short skirt would permit. As she saw the tableau below her face lit up with a vicious smile.
‘Why, Raf, darling,’ she purred venomously, ‘how galling for you. “The first woman I see”.’ She gave a bad imitation of his Italian accent. ‘And that’s what you get. Bad luck.’
The man’s accented voice answered the woman. He was purring, too, but it was the purr of a big cat, and it made the hairs stand up on the nape of Magda’s neck.
‘Yes, indeed, Amanda, cara, and she is just perfect for me.’
The look that crossed the other woman’s face was a picture. Fury mingled with disbelief.
‘You’re joking. You have to be.’
For his answer, Rafaello simply lifted one darkly arched eyebrow and gave the woman a mocking look.
‘Your taxi will be waiting downstairs, cara. Time to go.’
For a moment the woman just stood there, fizzing with fury. Then with a tightening of her face she marched to the front door, shoved Magda aside, and flung it open.
‘Wait!’ squawked Magda, and tried to rush after her. What possible reason could the apartment owner have for wanting to know if she were married or had a boyfriend? No good ones she could think of—and plenty that were bad. She’d heard enough stories from other cleaners about men who liked forcing their attentions on vulnerable women in lowly jobs.
‘Get away from me, you disgusting creature,’ snapped the other woman. She stormed off. Desperately Magda tried to catch the front door, but it was taken from her abruptly.
‘I said I had a business proposition for you. Have the courtesy to hear me out.’ The accented voice dropped into a sardonic range. ‘It could be to your financial advantage.’
Magda flung him a terrified look. Oh, God, she was right. He was about to make some kind of obscene proposition. ‘No, thank you—I don’t do that sort of thing.’
The man frowned again. ‘You do not know what I am about to ask you,’ he countered brusquely.
‘Whatever it is, I don’t do it. I’m just a cleaner. It’s all I do.’ Her voice was a squawk again. ‘Please, let me go—please. I do the cleaning. That’s all.’
The man’s expression changed suddenly, as if he finally realised the reason for her near panic.
‘You misunderstand me.’ His voice was arctic. ‘The business proposition I want you to consider has nothing to do with sex.’
Magda stared at him, taking in his expensive male gorgeousness. Reality came back with a vengeance. Of course a man like him would not sexually proposition a woman like her. Seeing herself through those disdainful eyes, suddenly she felt as if she were two inches high. Mortification flooded through her.
Abruptly, she felt the weight of her cleaning box taken from her.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ said the man, ‘and I will explain.’
Magda sat, completely frozen, on one of the high stools set against the kitchen bar. Benji miraculously slept on, snug in his baby chair on the floor.
‘Say…say that again?’ she asked faintly.
‘I will pay you the sum of one hundred thousand pounds,’ the man spelt out in clipped, accented tones, ‘for you to be married to me—quite legally—for six months, at the end of which period we shall file for divorce by mutual consent. You will need to accompany me to Italy for…legal reasons. Then you will return here, and your living expenses will be paid by me. On our divorce you will receive one hundred thousand pounds, no more. Do you understand?’
No, thought Magda. I don’t understand. All I understand is that you’re nuts.
But it seemed unwise to point this out to the man sitting on the other side of the bar from her. She was acutely, utterly uncomfortable being here. And not just because the man was making such an absurd proposition to her.
It was also because he was, quite simply, the most devastating male she had ever seen—inside or outside the covers of a glossy magazine. He had lean, slim looks, very Italian, but with an edge about him that kept his heart-stoppingly handsome face from looking soft. He had beauty, all right, but it was male beauty, honed and planed, and the long eyelashes swept past obsidian eyes that had an incredibly dangerous appeal to them.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
The question caught her on the hop, interrupting her rapt, if surreptitious gazing at him, and all she could do was open her mouth and then close it again.
A tight, humourless smile twisted at his mouth, changing the angles of his face. Something detonated deep inside Magda, but she had no time to pay any attention to it. He was speaking again.
‘I would be the first to concede the situation is…bizarre. But, nevertheless—’ he spread his hands above the bar, and Magda noticed how beautiful they were, long and slender, with a steely strength to them despite their immaculate manicure ‘—I do, as it happens, require a wife at very short notice, for a very particular purpose. Perhaps I should point out,’ he went on, in a voice that made her feel ashamed of her own lack of physical appeal in the presence of a man with such a super-abundance of it, ‘that the marriage will be in name only. Tell me, do you have a passport?’
Magda shook her head. A look of irritation crossed the man’s face, then he moved his right hand dismissively. ‘No matter. These things can be arranged in time. Now, what about your child’s father? Is he still on the scene?’
Magda tried to think what on earth to say, but failed miserably.
‘I thought not.’ The expression of unconcealed disdain for her child’s fatherless state silenced her even more than her inability to provide an answer under such circumstances. ‘But that is all to the good,’ he swept on. ‘He will not interfere.’
A dark glance swept over her, as if he were making some kind of final internal decision. ‘So, altogether, I can see no obstacles to what I propose—you are clearly extremely suitable.’
Panic struck Magda. He was sweeping ahead, dragging her along as if she were nothing more than a tin can rattling on a piece of string behind a racing car. She had to stop all this right now. It was too absurd for words.
‘Please,’ she cut in, ‘I’m not suitable at all, really. And I’m sorry, but I have to go now. I have other apartments to clean and I’m running late—’
She didn’t, this was the last one, but there was no need to let him know that.
His voice came silkily.
‘If you accept my proposition you will never clean another apartment in your life. For a woman of your background you will live in comfortable circumstances—if you are financially prudent—for several years simply on what I shall pay you for six months of your life.’
Emotions warred inside Magda. Uppermost was umbrage at the way he had said so disdainfully ‘a woman of your background’, as though she came from a different species of humanity. But beneath that, forcing its way to the surface, was something more powerful.
Temptation.
Comfortable circumstances…
The phrase jumped out at her. What on earth had the man said—something about a hundred thousand pounds? It couldn’t be true. The thought of so much money was beyond her. With a hundred thousand pounds she could move out of London, buy a flat, even a little house, stop having to depend on state income support, stop work, look after Benji properly…plan for the future.
For a moment, so intense that it hurt, she had a vision of herself and Benji in a nice little house somewhere, with a little garden, on a nice road, and nice families all around. Nothing spectacular, just normal and ordinary and…nice. Somewhere decent to bring him up. Somewhere that was a real home.
She saw herself in the kitchen, baking cakes, while she watched Benji tricycle round a little paved patio, with a swing-set on the lawn beyond, a cat snoozing on the windowsill, washing hanging on the line. With next-door neighbours who had children, and hung up their washing, and baked cakes. Who lived normal, ordinary lives.
An ache of longing so deep inside it made her feel weak swept through her.
Across the bar, Rafaello’s dark eyes narrowed. She was taking the bait; he could see. It had been hard work to get her to this point—far harder than he had envisaged. But at last she was responding.
And the more time and effort he put into persuading her, the more he was convinced she was perfect for the job.
Dio, but his father would be apoplectic! His son presenting him with a bride who had a fatherless kid in tow and who cleaned toilets for a living. Who looked as drab and plain as the back end of a bus. That would teach him to try and force his hand—
Magda saw the gleam of triumph in the obsidian eyes and quailed. She must be insane even to think of thinking about what he had offered her! A hundred thousand pounds—it was ridiculous. It was absurd. Almost as absurd as the notion of a female like her marrying a man like that…for whatever lunatic reason.
‘I really do have to go,’ she said with a rush, and got to her feet. As she did so she must have jogged Benji’s chair, because he gave a sudden start and woke up. Immediately he gave out a little wail. Magda stooped down and cupped his cheek. ‘It’s OK, Benji. Mum’s here.’
The wail stopped, and Benji reached out one of his little hands and patted her face. Then, promptly, he started wriggling mightily, trying to free himself from his bonds.
‘It’s all right, muffin, we’re just going.’ She hefted him up onto her arm, shifting her leg to balance the weight. She picked up her cleaning box with her other hand.
‘I’ll…er…let myself out…’ she said awkwardly to the man who had just asked her to marry him, and who was still sitting on the other side of the bar, watching her through assessing eyes.
‘A hundred thousand pounds. No more cleaning. No more having to take your son around like this. It’s no life for him.’
His words fell like stones into her conscience—pricking it and destroying it at the same time.
‘This isn’t real,’ she said suddenly, her voice sounding harsh. ‘It can’t be. It’s just nuts, the whole thing!’
The thin, humourless smile twisted his mouth again. ‘If it’s any comfort, I feel the same way. But—’ he took a deep, sharply inhaled breath ‘—if I don’t turn up next month with a wife, everything I have worked for will be wasted. And I will not permit that.’
There was a chill in his words as he finished that made her shiver. But what could she say?
Nothing. She could only go. At her side, Benji wriggled and started to whimper.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said helplessly, but whether to Benji or this unbelievable man with his unbelievable proposition, she didn’t know.
Then she got out of the apartment like a bat out of hell.
Music thumped through the thin walls of the bedsit, pounding through Magda’s head. She’d had a headache all day, ever since finally making her escape from that madman’s apartment.
But what he had said to her was driving her mad as well. She kept hearing it in her head—a hundred thousand pounds, a hundred thousand pounds. It drummed like the bass shuddering through from next door, tolled like a bell condemning her to a life of dreary, grinding, no-hope poverty.
Would she ever get a decent home of her own? The council waiting list was endless, and in the meantime she was stuck here, in this bleak, grimy bedsit. When Benji had been a baby it hadn’t been so bad. But now that he was getting older his horizons were broadening—he needed more space; he needed a proper home. This wasn’t a home—it never could be—it was barely a roof over their heads.
Not that she was ungrateful. Dear God, single mothers in other parts of the world could die in a gutter with their children without anyone caring. At least here, the state system, however imperfect, provided an umbrella for her. Not that she hadn’t been pressed to give Benji up for adoption.
‘Life as a single mother is very hard, Miss Jones,’ the social worker had said to her. ‘Even with state support. You will have a much better chance to make something of yourself without such an encumbrance.’
Encumbrance. That was the word that had done it. Made her stand up, newborn baby in her arms, and say tightly, ‘Benji stays with me!’
Encumbrances. She knew all about them.
She’d been one herself. An encumbrance so great that the woman who had given birth to her had left her to die in an alley.
Well, no one, no one—neither man nor God—was going to take Benji from her!
Through the wall the music pounded, far too loud. None of the residents dared complain. The man with the ghetto-blaster was on drugs, everyone knew that, and could turn ugly at the drop of a pin. Eventually he would turn it off, but often not till the early hours. No wonder Benji had broken sleep patterns.
Knowing there was no way she could get him to sleep, even though it was gone eight in the evening, Magda let him play. He was sitting beside her on the lumpy bed, quite happily posting shapes through the holes in a plastic tower and gurgling with pleasure every time he got it right. It was a good toy, and Magda had been pleased to find it in a charity shop. All Benji’s toys and clothes—and her own clothes and possessions—came from charity shops and jumble sales.
