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‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You can’t start conversations you don’t intend to finish. So, where will you be going to meet Mr Right? I’m taking it you intend to start hunting when we return to England, or will you be looking around Italy for any suitable candidates?’
‘Are you upset because I said what I said?’
‘Why would I be upset?’
‘I have no idea,’ Lesley said as flippantly as she could. ‘Because we both know that what we have isn’t going to last.’ She allowed just a fraction of a second in which he could have contradicted her, but of course he said nothing, and that hurt and reinforced for her the position she held in his life. ‘And of course I’m not going to be looking around Italy for suitable candidates. I haven’t forgotten why I’ll be there in the first place.’
‘Good,’ Alessio said brusquely.
But the atmosphere between them had changed, and when he flipped open his lap-top and began working Lesley took the hint and excavated her own lap-top so that she too could begin working, even though she couldn’t concentrate.
What she had said had put his nose out of joint, she decided. He wanted her to be his, to belong to him for however long he deemed it suitable, until the time came when he got bored of her and decided that it was time for her to go. For her to talk to him about dating other men would have been a blow to his masculine pride, hence his reaction. He wasn’t upset, nor was he jealous of these imaginary men she would soon be seeking out. If they existed.
Her thoughts drifted and meandered until the plane began its descent. Then they were touching down at the airport in Liguria and everything vanished, except the reason why they were here in the first place.
Even the bright sunshine vanished as they stepped out and were ushered into a chauffeur-driven car to begin the journey to his house on the peninsula.
‘I used to come here far more frequently in the past,’ he mused as he tried to work out the last time he had visited his coastal retreat.
‘And then what happened?’ It was her first time in Italy and she had to drag her eyes away from the lush green of the backdrop, the mountains that reared up to one side, the flora which was eye-wateringly exuberant.
‘Life seemed to take over.’ He shrugged. ‘I woke up to the fact that Bianca had as little to do with this part of Italy as she possibly could and, of course, where she went, my daughter was dragged along. My interest died over a period of time and, anyway, work prohibited the sort of lengthy holidays that do this place justice.’
‘Why didn’t you just sell up?’
‘I had no pressing reason to. Now I’m glad I hung onto the place. It may have been a bit uncomfortable had we been under the same roof as Rachel and Claudia, given the circumstances. I hadn’t planned on saying anything to my mother-in-law about our arrival, but in all events I decided to spare her the shock of a surprise visit—although I’ve told her to say nothing to Rachel, for obvious reasons.’
‘Those reasons being?’
‘I can do without my teenage daughter scarpering.’
‘You don’t think she would, do you? Where would she go?’
‘I should think she knows Italy a lot better than I do. She certainly would have friends in the area I know nothing about. I think it’s fair to say that my knowledge of the people she hangs out with isn’t exactly comprehensive.’ But he smiled and then stared out of the window. ‘I shudder to think of Claudia trying to keep control of my daughter on a permanent basis.’
The conversation lapsed. The sun was setting by the time they finally made it to his house, which they approached from the rear and which was perched on a hill top.
The front of the house overlooked a drop down to the sea and the broad wooden-floored veranda, with its deep rattan-framed sofas, was the perfect spot from which you could just sit and watch the changing face of the ocean.
Only when they had settled in, shown to their bedroom by a housekeeper—yet another employee keeping a vacant house going—did Alessio inform her that he intended visiting his mother-in-law later that evening.
‘It won’t be too late for her,’ he said, prowling through the bedroom and then finally moving to the window to stare outside. He turned to look at her. In loose-fitting trousers and a small, silky vest, she looked spectacular. It unsettled him to think that, even with this pressing business to conclude, she had still managed to distract him to the point where all he could think of was her returning to London and joining the singles scene.
He wouldn’t have said that his ego was so immense that it could be so easily bruised, but his teeth clamped together in grim rejection of the thought of any man touching her. Since when had he been the possessive type, let alone jealous?
‘It will also allow Rachel to sleep on everything, give her time to put things into perspective and to come to terms with returning with us on the next flight over.’
‘You make it sound as though we’ll be leaving tomorrow.’ Lesley hovered by the bed, sensing his mood and wondering whether it stemmed from parental concern at what was to come. She wanted to reach out and comfort him but knew, with unerring instinct, that that would be the last thing he wanted.
Yet hadn’t he implied that they would be in the country for at least a week? She wondered why the rush was suddenly on to get out as quickly as possible. Did he really think that she had been using him? Had he decided that the sooner he was rid of her, the better, now that she had bucked the trend of all his other women and displayed a lack of suitable clinginess?
Pride stopped her from asking for any inconvenient explanations.
‘Not that it matters when we leave,’ she hastened to add. ‘Would I have time to have a shower?’
‘Of course. I have some work I need to get through anyway. I can use the time to do that and you can meet me downstairs in the sitting room. Unlike my country estate, you should be able to find your way around this villa without the use of a map.’
He smiled, and Lesley smiled back and muttered something suitable, but she was dismayed to feel a lump gathering at the back of her throat.
The sex between them was so hot that she would have expected him to have given her that wolfish grin of his, to have joined her in the shower, to have forgotten what they had come here for...just for a while.
Instead, he was vanishing through the door without a backward glance and she had to swallow back her bitter disappointment.
Once showered, and in a pair of faded jeans and a loose tee-shirt, she found him waiting for her in the sitting room, pacing while he jangled car keys in his pocket. The chauffeur had departed in the saloon car in which they had been ferried and she wondered how they were going to get to Claudia’s villa, but there was a small four-wheel-drive jeep tucked away at the side of the house.
She had all the paperwork in a backpack which she had slung over her shoulder. ‘I hope I’m not underdressed,’ she said suddenly, looking up at him. ‘I don’t know how formal your mother-in-law is.’
‘You’re fine,’ Alessio reassured her. A sudden image of her naked body flashed through his head with such sudden force that his heart seemed to skip a beat. He should have his mind one hundred per cent focused on the situation about to unravel, he told himself impatiently, instead of thinking about her and whatever life choices she decided to make. ‘Your dress code isn’t the issue here,’ he said abruptly and Lesley nodded and turned away.
‘I know that,’ she returned coolly. ‘I just wouldn’t want to offend anyone.’
Alessio thought that that was rather shutting the door after the horse had bolted, considering she had had no trouble in offending him, but it was such a ridiculous thought that he swept it aside and offered a conciliatory smile.
‘Don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing,’ he told her in a low voice. ‘You didn’t have to come here.’
‘Even though you made sure I did by dangling that carrot of a fabulous new big job under my boss’s nose?’ She was still edgy at his dismissive attitude towards her but, when he looked at her like that, his dark eyes roving over her face, her body did its usual thing and leapt into heated response.
As if smelling that reaction, Alessio felt some of the tension leave his body and this time when he smiled it was with genuine, sexy warmth.
‘I’ve always liked using all the tools in my box,’ he murmured and Lesley shot him a fledgling grin.
His black mood had evaporated. She could sense it. Perhaps now that they were about to leave some of his anxiety about what lay ahead was filtering away, replaced by a sense of the inevitable.
At any rate, she just wanted to enjoy this return to normality between them. For that little window when there had been tension between them, she had felt awful. She knew that she had to get a grip, had to put this little escapade into perspective.
She would give herself the remainder of what time was left in Italy and then, once they returned to the UK, whatever the outcome of what happened here, she would return to the life she had temporarily left behind. She had already laid the groundwork for a plausible excuse, one that would allow her to retreat with her dignity and pride intact.
It was time to leave this family saga behind her.
