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‘Playing hard to get?’
‘Most definitely. She’s interested but cautious. Historically her company has partnered with those with a longer track record than RI.’
‘What makes you think this will work?’ he asked, genuinely curious.
‘Because she will respect who you are and what you have done,’ she replied.
‘Why? You didn’t?’ he said, his tone darker than he’d intended. He hated losing his legendary control around her. Her compliment—intended or not—had grated, but not as much as the way she simply took his harsh retort as her due. Feeling disconcertingly mean, he was about to apologise when their driver pulled to a stop at the pedestrian area within Orvieto’s walls.
Instinctively after exiting the car, he came around the vehicle to open the door for Amelia. She was back in the clothes she’d travelled to Italy in and, despite the slight creases, she looked composed and collected. The way she had looked to him for the two years before Hong Kong. Because after? After Hong Kong, all he’d seen was lust and want and need.
Shaking off the thought, he saw her eyes soften as she looked into the old town in Orvieto.
‘What?’ he asked, curious to see the city through her eyes.
She gazed up at him, the answer on the tip of her tongue, but looked away as she answered him in a small voice. ‘We talked about coming here—my family—when I was younger.’
He tried to temper the anger that rose in him at the mention of her family—of her father. What was it about this woman that pushed buttons that had lain dormant for years? She cleared her throat as if aware of the impact of her words and slowly made her way towards the open square in the heart of Orvieto. He watched her go, letting her rebuild her armour piece by piece—because hewasn’ta monster.
Catching up with her a few moments later, he gestured with his head towards the shopping district where Gucci sat next to Ferragamo, Dolce and Gabbana rubbed shoulders with Tom Ford.
Her steps slowed, pulling his attention back to her.
‘Something wrong?’ he asked, his patience wearing thin.
‘I can’t... These shops...’ She stared at them with an expression that somehow merged shame and embarrassment. ‘I can’t afford them,’ she concluded on a whisper.
Fury etched his body into hard lines. He closed the distance between them in a stride, letting loose only a fraction of the anger that was almost constantly simmering beneath the surface whenever she was near.
‘What game are you playing now?’ he demanded.
Confusion blew her eyes wide open. ‘I don’t know what you mean—’
Outrage poured through him. He’d given her the détente she’d asked for, he was trusting her with so damn much and she wasstilltrying to pull the wool over his eyes. ‘I know exactly how much I pay my staff, so don’t try the “poor me” pity act,’ he forced out through clenched teeth.
Amelia took a step back from the overpowering wave of his frustration. Nostrils flaring and breathing hard, Alessandro looked pushed beyond an edge she’d never even seen him close to and that she had done this to such a powerful man filled her with shame, but also with an anger to match his own.
So instead of backing down, she stepped forward, stealing back some of that righteous indignation that had fuelled her for years.
‘Yes, you pay your staff very well, Alessandro, but how many of your staff have student loans to pay off?’ She jabbed an angry finger at him that he stared at in outrage. ‘How many of your staff have to pay not only for their own needs but those of their sisters?’ She stepped into him again, losing some of the control that restraint had given her. ‘How many of your staff have to pay for their mother’s rehab facility in South America? How many of your staff had to be a parent to their own mother and father when they were just fifteen years old?’
The shock in his gaze cut through her fury and she realised what she’d just revealed. She pulled back her hand, covering her mouth and shaking, and turned away. She heard the approach of two tourists so she crossed the cobbled street to lose herself in a shop window displaying an inconceivable amount of fridge magnets.
She forced herself to calm down—it wasn’t just her any more that she had to think of. But the venom in his tone—the anger. They wouldneverget past it. How on earth was she supposed to raise a child with a man who hated her?
How do you even know he wants to?
‘I didn’t...’ His voice behind her was thick and rough, like the crunch of gravel. He cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Isn’t that the point?’ she asked, feeling helpless. ‘I believe you said that you didn’t want to know or care.’
He had the good grace to look about as shamed as she’d seen him—which extended to the clench of a jaw she wanted to soothe, and the fisting of his palms she wanted to release. Seeing him anything other than determined and powerful felt wrong somehow, as if she’d caught a glimpse of a vulnerability that few saw.
He took a breath—for patience or strength, she couldn’t tell—and it emerged from his lips on a sigh that she felt gently against the nape of her neck.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, his tone an awkward shade of gentle.
She nodded and let him guide her away from the shop window, down the cobbled street, and towards a little café with seats overlooking the city walls and down into the stunning patchwork quilt of fields interspersed by the tall, thin cypress trees that made it look so different from England.
