Then her parents had died so suddenly and, with everything around her going to pieces, she had fallen onto his sympathetic shoulder, which he had magnanimously told her she could cry on.
She had been grateful for the distraction but then, bit by bit, she had started to notice the way he had wanted to take over her life. He had seen the mess her finances had been in, her fall from grace, and he had slyly reminded her of her newly acquired far lower status amongst the peer group she had grown up with. He had become comfortable putting her down in front of them and, caught up in her own mix of sadness and confusion and misery, she had helplessly kept silent, gradually retreating from socialising, which hadn’t been that difficult because friends had begun showing their true colours and retreating from her.
Maybe it had been his way of exacting some kind of revenge because she had ignored him in the past.
But gradually she had realised that that was just the person he was. His need to control was absolute and he was someone who preyed on the weak. He had issues and Sophie felt that she had escaped in the nick of time.
If anything, the experience had made her stronger and she had learnt from it, which was why, now, with butterflies in her tummy at the prospect of seeing Niccolo, she felt so irritated and frustrated with herself.
They took the lift up to his suite of offices, and Sophie wasn’t sure what she had been expecting but she knew what sheshouldhave expected: luxury.
Still, she was unprepared for thelevelof luxury that confronted her when she emerged from the lift with Annalise attached to her like a little limpet, eyes wide and mouth open in awe.
She fiddled with the lanyard she had been given at the sprawling reception desk before they were ushered like royalty into the mirrored lift.
The expanse of pale wood seemed to go on for ever, broken by a clutch of sofas upholstered in vibrant yellow and clustered in a way that should have promoted an atmosphere of comfort and relaxation but instead made her feel a tad queasy because it was all so very elegant and picture perfect.
Beyond the furniture was a semi-circular mirrored desk, behind which two strikingly beautiful men seemed to be hard at work in front of oversized monitors.
It was a completely silent space. Beyond the foyer, the office meandered between clever glass partitions and long, low marble containers spilling over with plants. The desks were all occupied and there was the low buzz of conversation and an atmosphere of ferocious concentration and hard work.
Uninterrupted floor-to-ceiling glass drew the eye to the swirl of sky outside, and way down below, like a miniature Lego city, she could see the jagged contours of buildings and office blocks.
It was irresistible to a six-year-old. Annalise relinquished her hold of Sophie’s hand, sprinting to the bank of open glass with Sophie following in hot pursuit, and they were both laughing when they were shown to Niccolo’s private office space. It was up a short flight of steps, on either side of which the thin, pale railings were as delicate as a waterfall of crystal.
Nerves hit her as she saw him in his natural habitat, every inch the top dog in the cut-throat world of big money.
He wasn’t formally dressed. Instead he wore charcoal trousers and a white shirt cuffed to the elbows, with no sign of a tie.
‘I see Annalise has already taken herself off to see what’s outside?’ He half smiled and his eyes met hers over Annalise’s head as he stooped down to his daughter’s level to give her a brief hug. Then, as though thinking better of it, he scooped her up and carried her to the window so that she could peer outside—a bird’s eye view from the top of the world.
‘I couldn’t stop her.’
‘It’s the first time she’s been here.’ Niccolo looked at Sophie, his expression concealed behind lush lashes.
He’d spent the past couple of days keeping their meetings brief. As distractions went, he wasn’t usually open to any. Unfortunately, as distractions went, he was very much open to this particular one and he didn’t like the feeling.
With all the women he dated, he knew the lie of the land. He wasn’t interested in intellectual stimulation. He was interested in the business of enjoyment and so were they. He had never, to his knowledge, broken any woman’s heart, and there were times when he’d seriously doubted he’d broken his ex-wife’s.
He was generous to a fault when he was in a relationship. Except with his emotions. Work would always come for him, but he’d caught himself thinking about this particular woman at the most unexpected moments...during a high-level conference call...just before he switched off the light for bed...when he stopped for two seconds to gaze down absently at the view from his glass house...
Right now, she was dressed in an unalluring outfit of flowered overalls with a white T-shirt underneath and flat, tan sandals. She looked wholesome—free of make-up and extraordinarily pretty.
‘You kept promising, but you were always too busy,’ Annalise said, picking up the conversation after an exhaustive exploration of what the world looked like forty storeys up from every single window in Niccolo’s office.
Sophie looked between them, noted the wistful look on Annalise’s face and Niccolo’s dark flush, and wondered how it was that he was so protective of his daughter, clearly loved her so much and yet, in some ways, was so incapable of complete engagement.
But the conversation was swept aside, carried along by Annalise, whose chatter was a buffer against any personal tangents. There were questions about everything. The eye-wateringly expensive restaurant on the thirty-first floor, with its sweeping panoramic views, was, for Annalise,‘The best place I’ve ever been to in my whole life...and could we come again...please...?’
She had a photographic memory and spent some time listing every plant and flower Sophie had shown her, using their Latin names. She chatted breathlessly and with the enthusiasm of a child yearning for parental approval, and in fairness Niccolo did not stint when it came to that.
And yet...
Sophie was desperate to maintain the professionalism she knew she had to hang on to at all costs.
There was no room for curiosity, but he intrigued her, and she told herself that there was nothing wrong with that, in a way, because it was great at taking her mind off her problems. In his mansion, her frantic, depressing life seemed distant and manageable. Already bills had been cleared and what hadn’t would be. There was light at the end of the tunnel and somehow, strangely, not surrounded by all the memories, she could feel her head clearing.
Her nights were becoming more peaceful, and bit by bit she felt she was finding a way to piece together her broken life so that it would once again make sense.
