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He had put her on a pedestal, had formed a bond with her that was paternal and protective—hence his appalled horror at what had been a perfectly natural situation.
More or less...
‘He did seem shocked,’ Alessio conceded.
‘You could have just shut the door firmly behind you.’
‘Itwasshut, Sophie. He heard voices. He put two and two together. There’s only three of us in this villa, so it really didn’t take him long to work out what was going on.’
‘We should never have started this,’ Sophie whispered.
‘It’s too late to go down that road. We were caught red-handed, and I knew in that moment that I had to spare my father the stress of thinking that you had become one of my conquests. In case you haven’t noticed, his opinion of my love-life leaves a lot to be desired.’
‘Yes,’ Sophie muttered, thinking back to the many times Leonard had passed caustic remarks about the women his son chose to date and the speed of turnover.
‘He... It would have been different if he had interrupted me with another woman...’ Alessio raked his fingers through his hair and tilted her chin so that she was forced to look at him. ‘But he sees you as his... Well, in some ways as the daughter he never had, and as such he’s very protective of you.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘But nothing, Sophie. He got himself into a state, thinking that I might hurt you...’
‘The way you hurt other women?’
‘I don’t hurt other women. I have fun with them, and they have fun with me, and I treat them very well along the way.’ Alessio scowled. ‘Besides, we’ve been over this. I suppose I could have sat him down and told him that we entered into this from the same starting point, that we’re both adults who know what we’re doing, but in the heat of the moment the only thing I wanted to do was reassure him.’
‘I suppose I can appreciate that.’
She sighed. Was it idealistic to think that telling the truth was always the better idea? And since when could she hold herself up as a paragon of virtue on that front?
When she cast her mind back, wouldn’t she think of times when she had bent the truth to spare her mother undue worry? When she’d told her that everything was going to be fine? That the money was all okay? That the teachers were thrilled with Addy’s work? That she was working after school now and again for fun, and not because they were desperate for the cash?
That life was just fine and there was nothing to angst about?
So who was she to start preaching now?
Of course when he was presented with the unexpected Alessio was going to do his best to smooth things out. And wasn’t that agoodthing? Didn’t it show how far father and son had come that he would do anything to spare his father any undue worry?
‘I didn’t want him collapsing, Sophie.’
‘I understand. But now he thinks...’ She shook her head and tried a laugh on for size.
‘Is it all such a lie?’
‘What do you mean?’ Sophie’s heart picked up pace.
‘We’re an item, aren’t we?’
‘We are while we’re here.’
‘Let’s not get lost in the detail.’
‘Isn’t it a bit more than a detail?’
Had she hoped for something more? Had she hoped for a declaration that he wanted more than just a passing fling? She must have been mad... But here they were, stuck in a lie not of her making, and what on earth happened next?
‘What happens when we get back to real life, Alessio?’ she asked bluntly. ‘We can’t maintain this fiction. Leonard isn’t an idiot. He’s going to realise that you made the whole thing up.’
‘You tell me that I’ve made the whole thing up,’ Alessio purred, ‘but that’s not entirely true, is it?’
