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She reeled at her treacherous body, which demanded to know what it might feel like to savour that touch of his again, to feel his cool lips on hers. To feel more than that.
‘How much...um...longer do you see yourself being here...?’ Sophie asked, internally squirming at her private thoughts.
Alessio let that question nestle into the silence as he looked at her thoughtfully. In the space of just a little over an hour—which was how long he had been upstairs with his father—things had changed.
His father had opened up. A crack. Alessio had thought himself beyond having his ideas changed. He had spent a lifetime honing them, after all. But when Leonard had gruffly told him why he had rushed headlong into that catastrophic second marriage he had hung his head and roughly brushed away tears Alessio had never thought he’d witness in a million years...
New possibilities had started to emerge from his cast-iron beliefs.
‘Longer than I anticipated,’ he said now. ‘I hadn’t taken into account how fragile my father is. I’ve always thought of him as...not just tough as nails, but wily with it. Seems in my absence things have changed. I don’t want to jeopardise his recovery, and there’s plenty more on the way that might push things in that direction.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sophie asked in alarm.
‘I told you I’ve looked around this house...’ Alessio glanced around him briefly. ‘I’ve broached this subject in the past but been knocked back. Now, however, seems a good enough time to broach it again. If the company is being overhauled, then why not do the house?’
‘You’re really going to overhaul the house? I know you said that at the table...but Leonard seems so against it...’
‘Like I said earlier, it needs doing. I’ve spoken to my father now, told him all the problems he’ll be storing up if he puts off having essential work done, and I think he’s come round to the idea. Mostly because he doesn’t have a choice.’
‘He seemed very adamant that that wasn’t what he wanted...’
‘Well, as you’ve witnessed, he seems to think that if the bricks and mortar gets bashed about a little, then it’s somehow disrespectful to the memories stored inside them. But I’ve managed to persuade him that the memories are insidehim.The house is just a house.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
Sophie remembered how hard it had been for her mother to leave the house she had shared with her husband for so many years. Even though by then she had ploughed her way through her heartache and misery, the final act of saying goodbye to the four walls of that house had still represented a huge change and a frightening one.
Leonard wouldn’t be leaving his house, but he would face seeing it knocked about and brought up to date, perhaps remodelled in places. Because Alessio was right—there were structural issues in some of the rooms that would certainly need looking at.
She knew that life had been tough for Leonard in the past few years. He had been forced to walk away from running his company and then he’d had to deal with ill health—which had, in turn, affected his mental health.
‘He needed someone to lean on,’ she couldn’t resist saying, her voice cool. ‘He neededyouto be here.’
‘That wasn’t what he wanted at the time,’ Alessio grated.
‘So when is this work going to begin? What is it going to entail?’
‘It’s going to entail my father moving out for possibly a couple of weeks. There will be workmen in and out of all the rooms, and the dust and noise will be too much for him to endure.’
‘And he’sagreedto this?’
‘I’ve told him that there’s not much choice. It’s either get it done or watch the place slowly fall apart, until it becomes too difficult to patch it up the way he would like it to be. I’ll be keeping as much intact as possible. But there are a lot of historic features that need renovating badly—and quickly. The stained-glass windows on the landing are about to come crashing down because they need urgent re-leading.’
‘I’m not following you. Where is he going to move to? London? Leonard has always told me how much he hates London.’
‘Not that he’s actually been there more than a handful of times,’ Alessio returned drily. ‘But no. London isn’t what I have in mind.’
‘Then where?’
‘I have a place at Lake Garda in Northern Italy. It’s close enough to get there on my private jet in a matter of hours, so the trip shouldn’t be too taxing for him.’
‘Oh, right... Okay...’
‘If we plan on leaving in roughly a week’s time, it will give me sufficient time to get the ball rolling with my father’s company, so that I can instal some of my own people to tie up the loose ends. I’ll also have enough time for my PA to source the best crew available to get the job done here, and of course, there will have to be some time spent packing away anything valuable that needs to be protected. I suggest several of the more robust rooms in the West Wing would be suitable for that.’
‘Wait, hang on just a minute...We...?’
‘You don’t think that my father is going to be able to travel without you, do you? I’m assuming you have a passport that’s up to date?’
