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Besides, she had added, making sure to forestall any objections, she never got the chance to leave London. She had never been to stay at a country estate in her life before. It would be marvellous if she could take advantage of the wonderful opportunity he had given her by working outdoors so that she could enjoy being in the countryside, especially given that the weather was so brilliant.
He had acquiesced although when he had looked at her she had been sure that she could detect a certain amount of amusement.
Now, in a break with this routine, Lesley had decided to start on Rachel’s rooms.
She had gone over all of the emails with a fine toothcomb and had found no evidence that the mystery writer was aware of Bianca’s past.
She looked around room number one and wondered where to begin.
As per specific instructions, Violet had left everything as it was and Lesley, by no means a neat freak, was not looking forward to going through the stacks of dispersed clothes, books, magazines and random bits of paper that littered the ground.
But she dug in, working her way steadily through the chaos, flinging clothes in the stainless-steel hamper she had dragged from the massive bathroom and marvelling that a child of sixteen could possess so much designer clothing.
This was what money bought: expensive clothes and jewellery. But no amount of expensive clothes and jewellery could fix a broken relationship and, over the past two days, she had seen for herself just how broken the relationship between father and daughter was.
He kept his emotions under tight control but every so often there were glimpses of the man underneath who was confused at his inability to communicate with his daughter and despairing of what the future held for them.
And yet, he wanted to protect her, and would do anything to that end.
She began rifling through the pockets of a pair of jeans, her mind playing with the memory of just how weirdly close the past couple of days had brought them.
Or, at least, her.
But then, she thought ruefully, she was handicapped by the fact that she found him attractive. She was therefore primed to analyse everything he said, to be super-attentive to every stray remark, to hang onto his every word with breathless intensity.
Thank God he didn’t know what was going through her head.
It took her a couple of seconds before the piece of paper she extracted from the jeans pocket made sense and then a couple more seconds before the links she had begun to see in the emails began to tie up in front of her.
More carefully now, she began feeling her way through the mess, inspecting everything in her path. She went over the clothes she had carelessly chucked into the hamper just in case she had missed something.
Had she expected to find anything at all like this, searching through a few rooms? No; maybe when she got to the computer or the tablet, or whatever other computer gadgets might be lying around.
But scribbles on a bit of paper? No. She thought that teenagers were way beyond using pens and paper by way of communication.
What else might she find?
She had lost that initial feeling of intruding in someone else’s space. Something about the messiness made her search more acceptable.
No attempts had been made to hide anything and nothing was under lock and key.
Did that make a difference? In a strange way it did, as did the little things lying about that showed Rachel for the child she still was, even if she had entered the teenage battleground of rebellion and disobedience.
Her art book was wonderful. There were cute little doodles in the margins of her exercise books. Her stationery was very cute, with lots of puppy motifs on the pencil cases and folders. It was at odds with the rest of what was to be found in the room.
An hour and a half into the search, Lesley opened the first of the wardrobes and gasped at the racks of clothes confronting her.
You didn’t need to be a connoisseur of fine clothing to know that these were the finest money could buy. She ran her hands through the dresses, skirts and tops and felt silk, cashmere and pure cotton. Some of them were youthful and brightly coloured, others looked far too grown-up for a sixteen-year-old child. Quite a few things still had tags attached because they had yet to be used.
As she pushed the clothes at the front aside, she came across some dresses at the back that were clearly too old for a sixteen-year-old; they must have belonged to Rachel’s mother. Lesley gently pulled a demure black dress from the selection and admired the fine material and elegant cut of the design. She knew that it was wrong to try on someone else’s clothes but she lost her head for a moment and suddenly found herself slipping into the gorgeous creation. As she turned to look at herself in the mirror, she gasped.
Usually she was awkward, one of the lads, at her most comfortable when she was exchanging banter; yet the creature staring back at her wasn’t that person at all. The creature staring back at her was a leggy, attractive young woman with a good figure, good legs and a long neck.
She spun away from the mirror suddenly as she heard the door open and saw Alessio look at her in shock.
‘What are you doing here?’ She felt naked as his eyes slowly raked over her, from the top of her head, along her body and then all the way back again.
Alessio couldn’t stop looking at her. He had left the office to stretch his legs and had decided to check on how Lesley’s search was coming along. He hadn’t expected to find her in a stunning cocktail dress, her legs seeming to go on for ever.
‘Well?’ Lesley folded her arms defensively, although what she really wanted to do was somehow reach down and cover her exposed thighs. The skirt should have been a couple of inches above the knee but, because she was obviously taller than Rachel’s mother had been, it was obscenely short on her.
‘I’ve interrupted a catwalk session,’ he murmured, walking slowly towards her. ‘My apologies.’
‘I was... I thought...’
‘It suits you, just in case you’re interested in what I think. The dress, I mean. You should reveal your legs more often.’
‘If you would please just go, I’ll get changed. I apologise for having tried on the dress. It was totally out of order, and if you want to give me my marching orders then I would completely understand.’ She had never felt so mortified in her entire life. What must he be thinking? She had taken something that didn’t belong to her and put it on, an especially unforgivable offence, considering she was under his roof in the capacity of a paid employee.
His ‘catwalk’ comment struck her as an offensive insult but there was no way she was going to call him out on that. She just wanted him to leave the room but he showed no signs of going.
‘Why would I give you your marching orders?’ She was bright red and as stiff as a plank of wood.
Any other woman would have been overjoyed to be the centre of his attention, as she now was, but instead she was staring straight ahead, unblinking, doing her utmost to shut him out of her line of vision.
He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted this one right now. Mind and body fused. This wasn’t just another of his glamorous, sex-kitten women. This thinking, questioning, irreverent creature was in a different league.
The attraction he had felt for her, which had been there from the second they had met, clarified into the absolute certainty that he wanted her in his bed. It was a thought he had flirted with, dwelled on; rejected because she’d challenged him on too many levels and he liked his women unchallenging.
But, hell...
‘Please leave.’
‘You don’t have to take off the dress,’ he said in a lazy drawl. ‘I’d quite like to see you working in that outfit.’
‘You’re making fun of me and I don’t like it.’ She had managed to blank him out, so that she was just aware of him on the periphery of her vision, but she could still feel his power radiating outwards, wrapping around her like something thick, suffocating and tangible.
She felt like something small and helpless being circled by a beautiful, dangerous predator.
Except he would never hurt her. No; his capacity for destruction lay in his ability to make her hurt herself by believing what he was saying, by allowing her feelings for him get the better of her. She had never realised that lust could be so overwhelming. Nothing had prepared her for the crazy, inappropriate emotions that rode roughshod over her prized and treasured common sense.
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Alessio said softly. Then he reached out and ran his hand along her arm, feeling its soft, silky smoothness. She was so slender. For a few seconds, Lesley didn’t react, then the feel of his warm hand on her skin made her stumble backwards with a yelp.
His instincts had been right. How could he have doubted himself? The electricity between them flowed both ways. He stepped back and looked at her lazily. Her eyes were huge and she looked very young and very vulnerable. And she was still wobbling in the high stilettos; that was how uncomfortable she was in a pair of heels. He was struck with a pressing desire to see her dolled up to the nines and, with an even more contradictory one, to have her naked in his arms.
‘I’ll leave you to get back into your clothes,’ he said with the gentleness of someone trying to calm a panicked, highly strung thoroughbred. ‘And, to answer your question as to what I’m doing here, I thought I would just pop in and see if your search up here was being fruitful.’
