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The silence stretched, and when Sophie finally finished her inspection and looked at Alessio it was to find him looking right back at her with amusement.
‘The trip was fine, thank you,’ she said, belatedly answered his question.
Leonard took over, moving forward at a sprightly pace and demanding a full tour of their surroundings, while muttering just loudly enough to be heard that he hoped something likethiswasn’t what he would return to when work had been done on his house.
Alessio responded in good humour and his dark eyes held Sophie’s briefly in a wry, conspiratorial look that made her flush. ‘I think that I’ve got the message loud and clear about how little you want things changed.’
‘Nothing wrong with that, my boy!’ Leonard declared, huffing, and moved on to peer into rooms, taking his time with his inspection.
‘We all find our perfect moment in time and stick to it,’ Alessio murmured, moving to stand behind his father and towering over him, even though Leonard was by no means a short man.
‘Quite right...quite right.’
Standing behind them, and to one side, Sophie wondered what Alessio’s perfect moment in time was. Judging from the remote splendour of this villa, she wondered whether he hadeverfound his perfect time. There was certainly nothing personal on display here—nothing that would indicate anything other than a house designed and kitted out to suit a man who had money to burn but no time to relax. But, my, it was an impressive place.
She strolled towards the back of the house, in Leonard’s nosy wake, and could make out, through a bank of imposing columns, a wide porch, broad enough to house several sitting areas, and then, down a shallow bank of steps, the faraway glimpse of what looked like a swimming pool.
‘Who looks after this place when you’re not here, son?’ Leonard asked. He had shrugged off Sophie’s helping hand and was slowly backtracking his way past the winding staircase towards, she assumed, the kitchen.
‘I have a couple who check in daily.’
‘Damned waste of money,’ Leonard growled, and Sophie, glancing across to Alessio, saw a smile tugging the corners of his mouth.
‘I have the money,’ he said, without batting an eye, ‘so it’s my choice what I do with it.’
‘Your mother used to come here as a girl,’ said Leonard, pushing open another door.
Sure enough, they were in a kitchen the size of a football field. There was more splendid white-blonde wood, and a huge range cooker in brushed steel that seemed madly excessive for a guy with no interest in cooking.
‘I know,’ Alessio said softly. ‘I’ve seen pictures.’
Father and son exchanged mutually cautious looks and the conversation wasn’t developed. Watching from the sidelines, Sophie felt a twinge—a stirring of hope—that bridges might be crossed even though what had happened between them was only her concern insofar as it might or might not affect Leonard’s stress levels while he was here.
‘The couple’, it seemed, did more than look after the house in Alessio’s absence. One half of the equation—the husband, as it turned out—was an excellent chef, and they were told he would be preparing all their meals. His wife would take care of the laundry and the cleaning.
‘Think it’s going to be stress-free enough for my father?’ Alessio asked later, when dinner had been eaten and dishes cleared and the practically invisible smiling housekeeper had tidied up behind them.
They had remained in the kitchen. It was as impersonal as the rest of the villa, with none of the clutter of Leonard’s kitchen on display. The table was a gleaming granite-topped affair, and Sophie was perched at one end and Alessio at the other. With Leonard no longer in the kitchen with them, she was a little flustered when he shifted to move closer to where she was sitting.
‘So...?’ he drawled, lazing back in the chair and watching her with close attention. ‘I was half expecting the pair of you to stay put.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The so-calledpussycatcan be a stubborn mule, and I envisaged him digging his heels in and giving you strict instructions to turn away anyone coming to the door with a bag of tools and some tubs of paint.’
‘You’re so sarcastic...’
Sophie fiddled with the stem of her wine glass, wanting to peel her eyes away but riveted by his magnetic sex appeal. He had shoved the sleeves of his figure-hugging tee to the elbows, and her eyes disobediently drifted to the silky dark hair on his forearms and the flex of muscle visible under the shirt.
Her throat went dry as he hooked his foot under one of the chairs and dragged it closer, so that he could relax with his feet up on it.
‘I’m realistic, Sophie. My father doesn’t want anything touched in the house. I appreciate that he wants to keep his memories intact, but I’ve done my best to persuade him that it would be a pointless exercise if the house ended up going to rack and ruin, at which point the renovations needed would be so extreme that he would have to kiss sweet goodbye to anything being left in place. But I still wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t backtrack the minute I wasn’t around.’
‘Well, you must have done a good job of convincing him, because there wasn’t a moment when he had any doubts that the work would happen.’ She paused and tilted her head to one side. ‘In fact, he seems quite content at the moment...even if he’s grumbling about everything.’ She smiled. ‘It’s funny, but when I look back on the past few months I can see all the signs of someone who was very anxious. Leonard was quiet when he usually isn’t, and there were so many times when I had to say something twice before he even realised that I was speaking to him.’
‘My father can be difficult,’ Alessio murmured.
‘That’s not being difficult!’ Sophie laughed. ‘He had stuff on his mind and no one to share it with.’
