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Breathtaking wealth bred breathtaking respect, and during the flight she and Leonard had been deferred to like royalty.
Leonard had promptly begun dozing, the second they were in the air, but Sophie had been too awestruck to do anything but guiltily revel in the novelty of being flown in spectacular style.
Now, as she disembarked from the obscenely lavish private jet, nerves that had been in abeyance returned with force.
‘He told me about this place.’ Leonard appeared next to her and they began to descend the metal stairs that had been put in place as soon as the jet had come to a stop. ‘He’s only had it for a few years. Wish he’d mentioned it sooner.’
‘Do you? Why?’
It was very cold, but bright, with blue skies turning indigo because the sun was fading fast.
‘Isabella always wanted a villa on Lake Garda. Used to go there when she was a child for the summer holidays.’
Leonard’s voice was gruff as they looked around to see someone approaching from a long, sleek black car. The driver they had been told to expect. Alessio was meeting them at the villa.
‘I always regretted not buying her what she wanted. She could have bought it herself, but she wanted me on board and, fool that I was, I was too wrapped up in work at the time to contemplate a holiday home. A life of little regrets...’ He turned to her, watery-eyed. ‘And a number of big ones. If I had known that Alessio had bought a place here... It could have been a bridge between us, maybe...a chance to think about things gone by. But enough of this nonsense. Let’s appreciate the scenery, my dear!’
They did.
The lights from a huddle of exquisite houses nestled around the glassy lake twinkled in the fading daylight, disappearing up the slopes of the mountains that rose like stern guardians around them.
They sat in companionable silence in the back seat of the luxury car that drove them quietly and swiftly towards their destination. By the time they got there the mountainous backdrop was a dark, brooding mass, and the colourful houses that dotted the water’s edge and clambered up the sides of the mountains were shadowy and indistinct.
Leonard was as good as asleep. It had been a long day. He was jostled awake as the sleek car slowed, and even in the gathering gloom they both fell silent at the spectacle that awaited them.
Wide black gates opened automatically, and the car slowly purred up a winding, uphill avenue bordered with trees. In the distance there were lights, and as the car moved on Sophie could see the outline of a magnificent white turreted villa, spectacularly lit against the dark night skies. Behind it, the mountains looked close enough to touch.
‘Oh, my...’ she breathed.
‘I’m impressed,’ Leonard murmured next to her, now alert and wide awake.
The front door was opened as the car swung in an arc to park directly outside and there he was, framed in the doorway, the man who had had her nerves skittering for the past few days.
He was dressed in black. Black long-sleeved polo, black jeans. He looked so sexy and so sophisticated that her heart began to hammer and she could only half focus on Leonard.
‘Anybody home?’ Leonard asked, nudging her.
When she looked at him, his bushy eyebrows were raised, and his eyes slid across to where Alessio was moving towards the car, then back to her flushed face.
‘I was just...just...’
‘Why don’t you help me out, my dear? It’s very rude to stare, and you’re staring at my son.’
‘Yes! Help you out... Of course!’
Sophie’s cheeks were on fire. Leonard could see far too much, and he was nowhere near tactful enough for her liking. He had warned her off his son once, and the last thing she needed was for him to get it into his head that she was bothered by Alessio...that she was attracted to him like one of those blondes he always seemed to be photographed with.
Flustered, she could barely meet Alessio’s eyes as he neared them, but she was aware of him with every fibre of her being.
‘How was the trip?’ he asked.
He moved to stand on the other side of Leonard and took his father’s left arm as she hooked his right through hers.
‘I’m not a complete invalid yet!’ Leonard fussed, but he allowed himself to be led into the magnificent house, and as the door closed behind them they both fell silent and looked around.
It was a vision of pale marble, deep rich wood and white walls. The villa stood solitary in its own grounds, surrounded by an army of tall conifers which gave it a serene, otherworldly atmosphere. It was almost as though they had been transported to another planet. Certainly Sophie had never seen anything quite like it, not even in the pages of the most wildly expensive house magazines she had flicked through in the past.
Her eyes drifted to the broad staircase that wound upwards, drawing the gaze to an uber-modern crystal chandelier that fell in a riot of glass teardrops from the ceiling.
