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‘Maybe...’ he pulled her towards him ‘...I should be the one thanking you...’
CHAPTER NINE
[ALESSANDRO SWIVELLED HIS leather chair away from his desk towards the floor-to-ceiling windows through which, at several floors up, he had nothing more inspiring than an uninterrupted view of grey skies. In the week and a half since they had returned from Toronto the blue-sky summer had morphed into a more traditional London summer of leaden skies, intermittent drizzle and the low-level complaints of a nation who had become accustomed to going out without the back-up of brollies and cardigans.
His temper should have improved by now. It hadn’t. He scowled and allowed himself a few satisfying seconds of thinking that change might be on the way in the form of a very shapely, very sexy lawyer, who had been nestling in his little black book, waiting for him to get in touch after their brief meeting several months previously. At the time he had been involved with a frisky little redhead, but frisky was no longer on the agenda and the lawyer seemed a far more promising bet.
True to her word, Kate had shut the door on him the second they had taken off from the airport in Toronto.
‘It’s been fun,’ she had informed him, with a cheerful smile.
Thoughts of the sexy, shapely lawyer vanished as he remembered his response to that.
‘I’m not ready for the fun to end just yet,’ he had told her in a lazy drawl, absently noting that the suit was back in place.
And he hadn’t been. As far as he’d been concerned the fun had only just started—so why should it end the second they touched down at Heathrow Airport? His diet, when it came to women and sex, didn’t include self-denial, and he had seen no reason why that should change.
They had had an outrageously sexy week in Toronto, only just managing to squeeze in a brief visit to his potential client. It had been enough to secure the deal, and the remainder of their time in the city had been spent exploring the tourist attractions, getting more adventurous as her feet had healed, and making love. Surprisingly, he hadn’t tired of her. He had felt none of his usual irritation or mildly suffocating claustrophobia at being in a woman’s company even when they hadn’t been in a bed.
That being the case, why should they have called it a day? She hadn’t been of the same opinion.
He scowled and glanced at his watch. Every time he thought about the outcome of that conversation he wanted to hit something. She hadn’t only kindly, gently, told him that it was over, she had also carried on smiling, a little puzzled smile, as though she hadn’t quite understood why he wasn’t getting it.
His ground his teeth together in smouldering fury as he recalled that.
He’d had no idea that a little dented ego could prove so difficult to shift. Was he really so conceited that he couldn’t handle someone wanting to quit an affair before he was ready? Especially when he knew it was something that wasn’t destined for the long haul anyway?
Because it wasn’t. Simple as that. Kate Watson might have stepped out of her box, to do something that had never been on her agenda, but that didn’t change the fact that what she wanted in life was completely different from what he wanted.
She wanted a long-term, no-holds-barred relationship, and that came with all the trappings he had no time for. Getting wrapped up with someone wasn’t for him. Long-term, for him, would be something far more controllable—something that didn’t risk disrupting the primary focus in his life, which was his work, something that wasn’t...intrusive.
His cell phone buzzed.
Rebecca—or Red-Hot Rebecca, as she was called in certain legal circles. Long legs. Short hair. Good-looking with a seriously high-powered brain. Once upon a time, the seriously high-powered brain would not have been in his search engine, but now—yes, it definitely worked. In fact he couldn’t understand what he had seen in his previous girlfriends. He couldn’t envisage dating anyone now who didn’t have a brain. The long legs helped—as did the attractive short bob. And when he had bumped into her a few months ago she had left him in no doubt that she was up for some quality time together.
And she wouldn’t be on the hunt for romance and fairy-tale endings. She wouldn’t want to take him over. She was a career woman, on her way to becoming the youngest ever lawyer to take silk. She didn’t give the impression of someone who would be ready to jack all that in for a guy—any guy.
Big plus.
He picked up the call. She was on her way over. Opera was to be followed by a slap-up meal at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city. And then...who knew? Actually, he did.
His brain skidded to an inconvenient halt and veered off in a completely different direction.
Kate. In his bed at the hotel. Her long hair spread across the pillows, her arms resting lightly on her flat stomach as he undressed. Her eyes heavy with desire, turning him on until he could barely control himself—and that had been before he had even touched her.
Kate laughing, her hair blowing around her face, in the car they had rented so that he could show her some of the wild scenery that lay just a hop and a skip out of the city. She had insisted on taking a picnic and he had concurred, even though there had been a string of more-than-decent restaurants along the way.
Kate asking him gently about his past, trying to work out why he was anti-love and all its trials and tribulations... And him talking to her, telling her things he had never shared with anyone else...
He focused on that, pushing aside every other memory that threatened to rise to the surface.
He had been so damned wrapped up in the whole mind-blowing sex thing that he had dismissed her curiosity as an inconvenience rather than what he now knew it to be.
A way in.
It enraged him that even with that evidence of boundary-crossing he still hadn’t been able to get her out of his head—still found himself taking cold showers in the middle of the night.
He had made sure to stay clear of her ever since they had returned to London. She was back in the bowels of the office, several floors down, busy as a little bee, he presumed. Her promotion was now general knowledge, as was George Cape’s early retirement, which had been put down to him wanting to spend more time with his family during difficult times. Not untrue. Happy campers all round. Which was not what he had originally foreseen when this mess had erupted.
Kate: new job. Cape: retired with his dignity intact—a decision for which Alessandro had not catered but one with which he was pleased. Several members of the accounts team had been reshuffled, much to their individual satisfaction.
Unfortunately he didn’t feel like a happy camper, and it was getting on his nerves.
He was pinning a lot on the curative powers of Red-Hot Rebecca.
On the spur of the moment he dialled through to Kate’s cell phone, wanting to remind himself of what was history. He was branching out in a different direction with a different woman, and from nowhere came the urge to satisfy himself that he was over his brief liaison with Kate. Aside from which he had a couple of things to ask her. Rebecca would be more than happy to wait for five minutes for him downstairs if traffic was light and she arrived sooner than expected. She wasn’t the clingy sort who would throw a fit if he was a little late.
Her cell phone was answered immediately.
‘It’s Alessandro.’
On the other end of the line, Kate felt her heart skip a beat.
There had been no need for him to announce himself. She would have recognized that deep, dark, lazy drawl anywhere. And after nearly two weeks of trying to get it out of her head she found that it still did the same crazy things to her nervous system it had done when they had almost lived in each other’s company.
She had done the right thing in ending it. She knew that. He had wanted to carry on until he got bored, but she had noticed that he hadn’t put up much of a fight when she had swept past that interruption. Just as she had noticed that he had made no effort to try and contact her since they had arrived back in London.
He had delegated all the work for her hand-over to his financial director. She had got the message loud and clear. If she’d been up for a little more fun and frolics then he would have happily obliged, but the second she had refused he had shrugged, backed away and headed off in the opposite direction. No big deal.
Except for her it was all a big deal. She missed him. She missed everything about him. On paper, it didn’t make sense. On paper, the only thing that should have glued them together was the sex. But unfortunately life couldn’t be worked out on paper—even though she had spent years trying to make sure that it did.
Unfortunately for her the guy who made no sense was also the guy who had made her ridiculously happy. He was the guy who had bandaged her feet and carried her to that spot where they had had a picnic because he had told her that he didn’t want her feet to be aching when they headed back to the bedroom later. He was the guy who had made her laugh, and he had shown her a side of himself that was empathetic and considerate in the way he had dealt with George.
He was also the guy who had refused to discuss anything he considered too personal.
And what did that say? Several times she had tried to talk to him about his childhood, about his parents. After all, he knew all about hers! He might have confided a little, but beyond that little there had been no more on the table.
