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‘That may be, but it still brings me right back to my original query. I don’t want your absorption with all this to get in the way of your social life.’ He paused and looked at her in silence for a couple of seconds. ‘It’s easy for that to happen. You say your friends all work odd hours... In the nursing profession I suppose that’s an inevitable hazard?’
‘You get used to it.’
‘I assume that your social life dovetails naturally with what you do here. You don’t keep traditional hours. But what about family? More importantly, what about a significant...er...other?’
Sophie felt the slow creep of heat and colour invade her cheeks. Was it any of his business whether there was someone in her life or not?
No!
But if she were to give him the benefit of the doubt, could he perhaps just be showing a natural concern that she might be overwhelmed by events?
She might have told him that she would never have accepted working conditions she didn’t like, but working conditions that changed slowly over time fell into another category, didn’t they?
Maybe, now that he was her boss in all but name, he was simply doing what any astute employer would do and making sure that a valued employee didn’t have any gripes about the position they were in. The last thing he’d need would be for her to up sticks and decide to hand in her notice.
However, despite her stoic efforts to see the logic in the progression of this conversation, Sophie couldn’t help but feel embarrassed to death by her singledom. Her kid sister had had more boyfriends over the years than she had!
She looked at Alessio from under her lashes and shivered. The guy was pure, unadulterated sex on legs.Everything about him was physically compelling. It wasn’t simply the arrangement of his features...there was something else there that overpowered. The intelligence, the wit, the shrewdness in those fabulous dark eyes. The suggestion of a complex personality that intrigued.
She would have felt a lot more comfortable having this conversation with someone fatherly and sympathetic.
She knew that he was politely waiting for some kind of response, so eventually she shrugged and said, as nonchalantly as she could, ‘There’s no one in my life at the moment, so there’s no need to worry that I’ve somehow found myself stuck with duties I hadn’t banked on and having to make excuses to a guy, telling him that I’m not going to be around to cook his dinner after all. Not that I would be cooking his dinner.’
‘I admit that’s something of a relief,’ Alessio murmured, lowering his eyes.
‘And what about you?’
‘Come again?’
‘You? Now that you’re here, and it’s so important that Leonard’s affairs are sorted out, is there anyone who might distract you from the task at hand?’
‘Are you asking me whether there’s a woman in my life?’
Alessio angled his dark head and shot her a slow smile that made her toes curl. It also made her wish that she hadn’t risen to the mischievous little voice inside her that had propelled her to ask the question in the first place.
‘Women can be demanding,’ Sophie muttered vaguely.
‘Agreed.’
‘And with your father’s health issues...the worry...’
‘You want to make sure that I’ve got my mind on the task in hand and don’t feel the need to rush between London and Harrogate because I have a woman waiting in the wings, demanding my undivided attention?’
‘Naturally no one expects you to devote one hundred per cent of your time and energy to this...’
‘I’m afraid it’s a big job. Not something I can dip in and out of. I think I may be here longer than the original week I planned, having had a look at the chaos at the company.’
‘But how on earth are you going to be able to do that?’
The dynamic in the house had changed with Alessio’s arrival, and Sophie was privately alarmed at the prospect of him being around indefinitely. How on earth was her nervous system going to stand it? He did things to her she didn’t like. He made her aware of her sexuality, which was something she had put on the back burner to be brought out at some later date.
A lifetime of inherited caution when it came to the opposite sex had ended up being an enemy of adventure when it came to putting herself out there...experimenting with sex and the messy business of relationships. It had been easier to step back completely, to hand herself over to making money so that she could sort out the financial obligations of her family. And then all the stuff with Leonard had made it impossible for her to do anything other than focus on her job.
None of which had prepared her for the effect Alessio was having on her. It was as though his presence in the house and the vitality he radiated in his aggressive masculinity had awakened something in her she had hardly been aware existed.
‘The worldwide web,’ Alessio said succinctly. ‘You’d be surprised how much can be done remotely. The problem here is that it’s a hands-on situation. It involves interviewing people and asking questions, identifying the dead wood and extracting it. You can’t do any of that from a distance on a computer. But, to get back to your original question, no, there’s no one waiting in the wings in London, tapping her watch and asking me when I’ll be home...’
‘Of course you could always bring your partner here to stay,’ Sophie mumbled indistinctly.
