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‘No...’ She paused, then added with heartfelt honesty, ‘But thanks for asking and I mean that.’ She half smiled and belatedly began to pick at the tapas, because she was ravenous. ‘You’d be surprised how strong you need to be when you’re a nurse. There’s a lot of lifting involved, but we’re all trained in how to do it in the most efficient and least damaging way possible.’
‘What else do you do?’ Alessio asked abruptly, and Sophie looked at him with surprise.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re...how old?’
‘Twenty-nine,’ she said awkwardly.
‘You’re twenty-nine years old and yet you’re content to work full-time for my father. He hasn’t needed round-the-clock care for all these years, surely. So, that being the case, what do youdo? You’re young. Don’t you find the work lacking in stimulation?’
Sophie stiffened. His voice was genuinely curious, and that was what made it all the more insulting.
Twenty-nine years old and willing to spend most of her days with an old man. An old and very interestingman, but an old man all the same. And she had more than sufficient time off, and saw her nursing friends as often as she could, catching them when they weren’t on awkward shifts...having a laugh with them and watching from the sidelines as they all began to get involved in serious relationships.
That was a world she was not tempted to enter. She’d seen what love could do. She wasn’t her mother—of course not. She hoped she had more inner strength. But who knew? She couldn’t bear to think about losing herself in anyone to the point where she became so reliant on them that if they were snatched away her life would collapse into pieces.
Was that being wise and cautious? Or had she become accustomed to running scared? She didn’t know. Maybe she would go there one day, but it would be with someone who was more of a friend...someone who wouldn’t get to her enough to topple her world if things didn’t work out.
Was she content to work for an old man because, subconsciously, it prevented her from tackling the real world and dipping her toes into the unpredictable business of dating? Her last boyfriend had been a nice guy, but they had broken up years previously. He had wanted more than she was capable of giving. Was that to be her destiny?
It didn’t scare her. Never finding true love didn’t scare her. Finding it and losing it did.
Still, those mildly curious eyes on her were unsettling.
‘Is it any less stimulating than working behind a computer in an office?’ she retorted sharply, her bristles up.
She was uncomfortably aware that she’d thought nothing of telling him what she thought of him, and yet now she was resentful and defensive because he was repaying the favour. He’d struck a nerve without even realising it.
‘I... I’m not held prisoner at your father’s house,’ she expanded, talking into a silence that was getting on her nerves. ‘I see a lot of my friends who are in the nursing profession.’
‘And you don’t miss being out there with them?’
Sophie paused, but only fractionally. ‘They’re rushed off their feet all the time,’ she said truthfully. ‘They work shifts and they don’t get paid enough.’
‘Youareextremely well-compensated,’ Alessio murmured, tilting his head to one side and pushing his plate away with one finger, so that he could relax back in his chair. ‘Money means a lot to you?’ He leaned forward again, voice low, eyes coolly assessing. ‘Underneath the care and concern, have you come here to tell me about my father’s financial situation because you fear you could lose your job if there’s no money to pay you?’
‘No!’ She felt the sting of colour in her cheeks.
But wasn’t the money more or less essential? She was paid a small fortune compared to all her friends, and that money disappeared down the drain. She helped her sister out, because acting jobs were few and far between and the temp work Addy did so that she could go to auditions at the drop of a hat didn’t pay very much. And of course there was her mother...now living in Somerset with the family home sold. But there was still a mortgage, and someone had to pay it. Thank goodness it was small.
‘Where are you staying?’ he queried in an abrupt change of subject.
Sophie blinked and stared at him in silence for a few seconds, before naming a cheap chain hotel in a reasonably seedy part of South-west London.
‘It’s all I could afford,’ she blurted out when he frowned, which only made his frown deepen.
‘Surely not? I don’t believe that. Like I said, I happen to know how much you’re paid.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I insisted on handling the matter and paying the salary. I wanted to make sure my father didn’t decide to get rid of you on the spur of the moment.’
‘I wasn’t aware...’
‘Why would you be? I recognised at the time that he needed help after his first stroke. He insisted on choosing the right candidate himself, and I wanted to make sure that whoever got the job would be paid enough that he or she would think twice about leaving. My father, I imagine, isn’t the easiest of people to handle.’
‘He’s a pussycat,’ Sophie inserted absently, dwelling on what he had said about being responsible for her pay-cheque and wishing she hadn’t been so quick to speak her mind when she’d confronted him.
