AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Would it reassure you to know that I’ve spent the majority of my life having to fight women off, not the other way round?’ he boasted, before adding softly, ‘Control has never been an issue for me.’
He saw her bite her lip before turning her back on him.
‘I’m going to investigate the kitchen,’ she said. ‘See if I can find some tea.’
‘Or wine?’ he suggested, stretching his arms above his head and stifling a yawn. ‘It’s been a long day.’
Alessio sank down onto the small but sumptuous sofa before punching out a text to Lydia. He barely heard from his half-sister from one year to the next, and that suited him just fine, but it added to the already bizarre nature of the evening to see her reply come winging straight back.
Mamma’s asleep now. Papa and that woman have gone to the gatehouse. You should have stayed, Alessio, you know you should.
Why was that? he wondered cynically. So that she and her brother could abdicate all responsibility while continuing to display their resentment towards him at all times? But a lifetime of deliberately blanking their vitriol made him reply with restraint.
He wrote back.
Whatever you need, let me know. Tell her to speak to my lawyers in the morning.
It was a forlorn hope. But as he slid his phone back into his pocket he found himself thinking about Nicola again, unable to shift the serene image of her face from his memory. Those icy eyes and pale hair and that shuttered way she had of looking at him. Was it her cool attitude which had so captured his imagination, or the erotic flame which had scorched his senses during that single kiss?
The tension between them had been escalating as they had driven through the Tuscan hills, the unmistakable weight of sexual awareness hanging heavy in the air. Surely she must have felt it, too—as tangible as the heat of his blood and fierce beat of his heart. He had waited for some kind of acknowledgement—the subtle brushing of her arm against his perhaps—but she had just stared in silence at the darkened Italian countryside, keeping firmly to her side of the car.
His leant his head back and closed his eyes. He had offered her this job because he’d known she would be perfect for it, but now he recognised there had been more to it than that. She intrigued him. Her aloof manner turned him on—and she had spiked a powerful surge of desire which had lain dormant for so long. But he had meant what he’d said. Control had never been an issue. Just because he wanted to have sex with Nicola Bennett, didn’t mean he was going to, for wouldn’t that create more trouble than it was worth?
Yet here, in this upmarket cottage with nothing but the velvety darkness outside, he could feel reason being defeated by the irresistible lure of arousal. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d kissed him, or the musky scent of her desire perfuming the air as his fingers had explored her. His throat thickened as he remembered the way she had parted her soft thighs and remembered, too, his idiocy in ignoring that silent invitation. Like some old-fashioned fool he had insisted she open her eyes and look at him. He had wanted her to acknowledge him and say his name—as if that actuallymattered. And he had broken the enchantment. He had been left hard and full, and frustrated.
Just as he was now.
So deep was he in uncomfortable thought that he didn’t hear Nicola return and when he looked up, she was placing a bottle of wine on the streamlined table, along with a single glass and a steaming mug.
‘Here,’ she said, pushing the bottle and corkscrew towards him.
‘You aren’t going to join me?’
She shook her head and pointed towards her tea, her voice faintly repressive. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
She sat down beside him, though he noticed that she perched as far away as possible, and he watched as she bent to remove her espadrilles, his gaze inexplicably drawn to her unvarnished toenails.
The wine was good but failed to relax him—and since Nicola’s silence provided nothing in the way of diversion, Alessio couldn’t stop going back over the evening. The ugliness of his stepfather’s triumphant expression and his mother’s inevitable tears. Had the festering sore at the centre of their marriage burst open at last, spilling all its poison? he wondered bitterly.
‘Why the hell do women put up with toxic relationships?’ he demanded suddenly, but naturally Miss Cool didn’t react. She just tipped her head to one side and considered his question, as if he’d made a benign enquiry about the weather.
‘Usually because they’re poor and can’t afford to escape.’
Was it her total lack of curiosity which made him pursue the subject further? Or the anger still simmering inside him which needed some kind of outlet? ‘My mother isn’t poor,’ he said flatly. ‘If she walked out of that farce of a marriage tomorrow, she’d get a large enough settlement to enable her to live in relative luxury for the rest of her life. Even if she didn’t, I’d be happy enough to fund her lifestyle.’
‘Maybe she’s afraid of being lonely?’
‘You think cruelty is preferable to loneliness?’ he snapped.
Nicola met the angry blaze of his eyes, taken aback by the brutal candour of his questions, though this wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened. Sometimes people came into the gallery and let slip the most extraordinary things and she’d often wondered if it was because powerful billionaires had so few people they could confide in that they turned to her. Or whether it was a consequence of her ability to fade into the background—to be quiet and invisible—a convenient sounding board.
Yet this wasn’t an anonymous patron, venting his spleen. She was here because she was being paid. She and Alessio were trapped together miles from anywhere and, because she was far from indifferent to him and all that brooding sexuality, she needed to put some kind of boundaries in place. She ought to return to that perfect little kitchen on the pretext of making more tea—in the hope he might stop asking these harsh and bitter questions.
But the pain which had hardened his brilliant eyes was difficult to ignore, and a lifetime of trying to fix other people made Nicola want to reach out to him, even though every instinct warned her not to.
‘Talking can sometimes be cathartic,’ she observed slowly.
Frustratedly, he shook his head. ‘I should never have brought you here and subjected you to such a damned mess.’
