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Looking at him now, mesmerised against her will, Sophie tried and failed to imagine him laughing or crying or showing any emotion. Certainly, on the few occasions when she’d seen him with his father, none had been in evidence.
She thought of Leonard and those meticulously and lovingly collected articles about his son and she hardened inside—because Alessio had certainly never repaid his father’s devotion with any show of affection...none that she’d ever witnessed at any rate.
‘How?’ she asked flatly. ‘How would you have known when you never visit?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
This was the first time Sophie had ever really spoken to Alessio, aside from polite utterances in the company of his father, after which she had faded away into the role of practically invisible carer, there to do a job and not contribute to the conversation. Now she felt as though there was a dam inside her, waiting to burst.
She had survived years of having to make herself heard by people in positions of authority, which, in the beginning, as a shy, gawky teenager, had been alien to her. Her sister had always been the bubbly, outgoing one, who captured attention because she was so small and pretty, with her blonde hair and baby blue eyes. But circumstances had foisted a personality upon Sophie that had become ingrained. She had learned to stick up for herself and to have a voice, and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t exercise that voice now. Because after all Alessio, for all his money and power, wasn’t the one who paid her salary, was he?
She uneasily wondered how many more pay-cheques would be coming her way, all things considered, and then decided that that was all the more reason to tell this arrogant, odious guy exactly what she thought.
If she’d read him correctly, then he was the sort of man rarely confronted by people who spoke their mind.
‘The last time you came to see your father was over five months ago.’
‘Do I detect a note of criticism in your voice, Miss Court?’
‘I think it’s amazing that you seem surprised by what I’ve come to say. I think it’s even more amazing that you actually expect to be in the loop when it comes to your father’s day-to-day life when you’re hardly around.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’
‘I’m only being honest.’
‘And remind me when I asked for your honesty?’ he gritted in a voice that could freeze water, as he stared at her with grim disbelief. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you mutter more than two words at a stretch, and yet you’ve suddenly decided to show up here uninvited and give me the benefit of your opinions.’
Sophie flushed and met his coldly discouraging gaze head-on and with silence.
‘So,’ he continued icily, ‘returning to the matter at hand. My father’s had another stroke. When exactly did this happen, and why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?’
His dark eyes were boring into her and they never left her face—even when the door was gently opened and his PA reminded him that he was due somewhere in under half an hour as she depositing a coffee pot on his desk. He dismissed her with a couple of words and a wave of his hand, and informed her that he was not to be disturbed until he said otherwise.
He clicked his tongue impatiently when Sophie didn’t immediately fill in the silence and answer his questions.
‘You have a duty of care to my father,’ he informed her acidly, ‘and part of that duty entails informing me of all matters pertaining to his health.’
‘He forbade me from doing so,’ Sophie returned bluntly, and then felt awful at the sight of the dark flush that spread across his sharp cheekbones.
She’d toughened up over the years because she’d had to, but since when had she lost the ability to empathise? Alessio might rub her the wrong way, and he might have little or no time for his father, but was it really in her remit to pass judgement on anyone? To be needlessly forthright? She’d struck a nerve, and if she could have swallowed those words back then she would have.
She might have needed strength to deal with what Fate had thrown at her, but she had also needed patience, understanding and love, and she’d always had those in abundance.
Those were the very qualities that had seen her look out for her younger sister, support her in her endeavours to become an actress, even though, personally, Sophie could not have thought of a less sensible road to travel down. They were also the qualities that had guided her through her darkest moments, when her mother had been a lost soul, unable to cope after her husband’s sudden death.
Both were settled now, but being tough had only been part of the answer when it had come to handling their adversities, so where had her sense of sympathy gone?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Because it’s not true?’
‘It was a tactless way of putting it and I can see that I’ve hurt you.’
Alessio stiffened.Hurt?He was incapable of being hurt. He had been hurt in the past—hurt by the death of his beloved mother, hurt by the indifference of his father towards him in the aftermath of that death. Dealing with those past hurts had toughened him...made him impregnable. His lips thinned in affront that the woman sitting opposite him might actually think herself capable of hurting him by anything she said.
He felt as though he might be seeing Sophie Court for the very first time, because on those other occasions she had been as quiet as a mouse, head bowed, voice subdued when he’d addressed her, with none of the fire on display now.
For the first time in a long time, he was discovering what it felt like to be in the presence of the unexpected. She might be dressed like a maiden aunt, but she certainly wasn’t behaving like one, and he narrowed his eyes and looked at her...reallylooked at her.
