THE UNCOMPROMISING ITALIAN Read online

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said on a sigh. ‘I’m just not used to people distrusting me. I’m one of the most reliable people I know when it comes to keeping a secret.’

  ‘Really?’ Mere inches separated them. He could feel the warmth radiating from her body out towards his and he wondered again whether his instincts had been right when they had told him that she was not as unaffected by him as she would have liked to pretend.

  ‘Yes!’ She relaxed with a laugh. ‘When I was a teenager, I was the one person all the lads turned to when it came to confidences. They knew I would never breathe a word when they told me that they fancied someone, or asked me what I thought it would take to impress someone else...’

  And all the while, Alessio thought to himself, you were taking lessons in self-defence.

  Never one to do much prying into female motivations, he was surprised to find that he quite wanted to know more about her. ‘You’ve won your argument,’ he said with a slow smile.

  ‘You mean, you won’t be asking me to sign something?’

  ‘No. So there will be no need for you to live in fear that you will be flung into prison and the key thrown away if the mood takes me.’ His eyes dipped down to the barely visible swell of her small breasts under the baggy tee-shirt.

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Lesley told him sincerely. ‘I don’t know how easy I would have found it, working for someone who didn’t trust me. So I shall start first thing in the morning.’ She suddenly realised just how close their bodies were to one another and she shuffled a couple of discreet inches back. ‘If it’s all the same to you, you can point me in the direction of your computer and I’ll spend the morning there, and the afternoon going through your daughter’s rooms just in case I find anything of interest. And you needn’t worry about asking your housekeeper to prepare any lunch for me. I usually just eat on the run. I can fill you in when you return from London or else I can call you if you decide to stay in London overnight.’

  Alessio inclined his head in agreeable assent—except, maybe there would be no need for that.

  Maybe he would stay here in the country—so much more restful than London and so much easier were he to be at hand.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LESLEY WAS NOT finding life particularly restful. Having been under the impression that Alessio would be commuting to and from London, with a high possibility of remaining in London for at least part of the time, she’d been dismayed when, two days previously, he’d informed her that there had been a change of plan.

  ‘I’ll be staying here,’ he had said the morning after she had arrived. ‘Makes sense.’

  Lesley had no idea how he had reached that conclusion. How did it make sense for him to be around: bothering her; getting under her skin; just being within her line of vision and therefore compelling her to look at him?

  ‘You’ll probably have a lot of questions and it’ll be easier if I’m here to answer them.’

  ‘I could always phone you,’ she had said, staring at him with rising panic, because she’d been able to see just how the week was going to play out.

  ‘And then,’ he had continued, steamrollering over her interruption, ‘I would feel guilty were I to leave you here on your own. The house is very big. My conscience wouldn’t be able to live with the thought that you might find it quite unsettling being here with no one around.’

  He had directed her to where she would be working and she’d been appalled to find that she would be sharing office space with him.

  ‘Of course, if you find it uncomfortable working in such close proximity to me, then naturally I can set up camp somewhere else. The house has enough rooms to accommodate one of them being turned into a makeshift work place.’

  She had closed her mouth and said nothing, because what had there been to say? That, yes, she would find it uncomfortable working in such close proximity to him, because she was just too aware of him for her own good; because he made her nervous and tense; because her skin tingled the second he got too close?

  She had moved from acknowledging that the man was sexy to accepting that she was attracted to him. She had no idea how that could be the case, given that he just wasn’t the sort of person she had ever envisaged herself taking an interest in, but she had given up fighting it. There was just something too demanding about his physicality for her to ignore.

  So she had spent her mornings in a state of rigid, hyper-sensitive awareness. She had been conscious of his every small move as he’d peered at his computer screen, reached across his desk to get something or swivelled his chair so that he could find a more comfortable position for his long legs.

  She had not been able to block out the timbre of his deep voice whenever he was on the phone. She wouldn’t have been able to recall any of the conversations he had had, but she could recall exactly what that voice did to her.

  The range of unwanted physical sensations he evoked in her was frankly exhausting.

  So she had contrived to have a simple routine of disappearing outside to communicate with her office on the pretext that she didn’t want to disturb him.

  Besides, she had added, making sure to forestall any objections, she never got the chance to leave London. She had never been to stay at a country estate in her life before. It would be marvellous if she could take advantage of the wonderful opportunity he had given her by working outdoors so that she could enjoy being in the countryside, especially given that the weather was so brilliant.

  He had acquiesced although when he had looked at her she had been sure that she could detect a certain amount of amusement.

  Now, in a break with this routine, Lesley had decided to start on Rachel’s rooms.

  She had gone over all of the emails with a fine toothcomb and had found no evidence that the mystery writer was aware of Bianca’s past.

  She looked around room number one and wondered where to begin.

  As per specific instructions, Violet had left everything as it was and Lesley, by no means a neat freak, was not looking forward to going through the stacks of dispersed clothes, books, magazines and random bits of paper that littered the ground.

  But she dug in, working her way steadily through the chaos, flinging clothes in the stainless-steel hamper she had dragged from the massive bathroom and marvelling that a child of sixteen could possess so much designer clothing.

  This was what money bought: expensive clothes and jewellery. But no amount of expensive clothes and jewellery could fix a broken relationship and, over the past two days, she had seen for herself just how broken the relationship between father and daughter was.

  He kept his emotions under tight control but every so often there were glimpses of the man underneath who was confused at his inability to communicate with his daughter and despairing of what the future held for them.

  And yet, he wanted to protect her, and would do anything to that end.

  She began rifling through the pockets of a pair of jeans, her mind playing with the memory of just how weirdly close the past couple of days had brought them.

  Or, at least, her.

  But then, she thought ruefully, she was handicapped by the fact that she found him attractive. She was therefore primed to analyse everything he said, to be super-attentive to every stray remark, to hang onto his every word with breathless intensity.

  Thank God he didn’t know what was going through her head.

  It took her a couple of seconds before the piece of paper she extracted from the jeans pocket made sense and then a couple more seconds before the links she had begun to see in the emails began to tie up in front of her.

  More carefully now, she began feeling her way through the mess, inspecting everything in her path. She went over the clothes she had carelessly chucked into the hamper just in case she had missed something.

  Had she expected to find anything at all like this, searching through a few rooms? No; maybe when she got to the computer or the tablet, or whatever other computer
gadgets might be lying around.

  But scribbles on a bit of paper? No. She thought that teenagers were way beyond using pens and paper by way of communication.

  What else might she find?

  She had lost that initial feeling of intruding in someone else’s space. Something about the messiness made her search more acceptable.

  No attempts had been made to hide anything and nothing was under lock and key.

  Did that make a difference? In a strange way it did, as did the little things lying about that showed Rachel for the child she still was, even if she had entered the teenage battleground of rebellion and disobedience.

  Her art book was wonderful. There were cute little doodles in the margins of her exercise books. Her stationery was very cute, with lots of puppy motifs on the pencil cases and folders. It was at odds with the rest of what was to be found in the room.

  An hour and a half into the search, Lesley opened the first of the wardrobes and gasped at the racks of clothes confronting her.

  You didn’t need to be a connoisseur of fine clothing to know that these were the finest money could buy. She ran her hands through the dresses, skirts and tops and felt silk, cashmere and pure cotton. Some of them were youthful and brightly coloured, others looked far too grown-up for a sixteen-year-old child. Quite a few things still had tags attached because they had yet to be used.

  As she pushed the clothes at the front aside, she came across some dresses at the back that were clearly too old for a sixteen-year-old; they must have belonged to Rachel’s mother. Lesley gently pulled a demure black dress from the selection and admired the fine material and elegant cut of the design. She knew that it was wrong to try on someone else’s clothes but she lost her head for a moment and suddenly found herself slipping into the gorgeous creation. As she turned to look at herself in the mirror, she gasped.

  Usually she was awkward, one of the lads, at her most comfortable when she was exchanging banter; yet the creature staring back at her wasn’t that person at all. The creature staring back at her was a leggy, attractive young woman with a good figure, good legs and a long neck.

  She spun away from the mirror suddenly as she heard the door open and saw Alessio look at her in shock.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ She felt naked as his eyes slowly raked over her, from the top of her head, along her body and then all the way back again.

  Alessio couldn’t stop looking at her. He had left the office to stretch his legs and had decided to check on how Lesley’s search was coming along. He hadn’t expected to find her in a stunning cocktail dress, her legs seeming to go on for ever.

  ‘Well?’ Lesley folded her arms defensively, although what she really wanted to do was somehow reach down and cover her exposed thighs. The skirt should have been a couple of inches above the knee but, because she was obviously taller than Rachel’s mother had been, it was obscenely short on her.

  ‘I’ve interrupted a catwalk session,’ he murmured, walking slowly towards her. ‘My apologies.’

  ‘I was... I thought...’

  ‘It suits you, just in case you’re interested in what I think. The dress, I mean. You should reveal your legs more often.’

  ‘If you would please just go, I’ll get changed. I apologise for having tried on the dress. It was totally out of order, and if you want to give me my marching orders then I would completely understand.’ She had never felt so mortified in her entire life. What must he be thinking? She had taken something that didn’t belong to her and put it on, an especially unforgivable offence, considering she was under his roof in the capacity of a paid employee.

  His ‘catwalk’ comment struck her as an offensive insult but there was no way she was going to call him out on that. She just wanted him to leave the room but he showed no signs of going.

  ‘Why would I give you your marching orders?’ She was bright red and as stiff as a plank of wood.

  Any other woman would have been overjoyed to be the centre of his attention, as she now was, but instead she was staring straight ahead, unblinking, doing her utmost to shut him out of her line of vision.

  He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted this one right now. Mind and body fused. This wasn’t just another of his glamorous, sex-kitten women. This thinking, questioning, irreverent creature was in a different league.

  The attraction he had felt for her, which had been there from the second they had met, clarified into the absolute certainty that he wanted her in his bed. It was a thought he had flirted with, dwelled on; rejected because she’d challenged him on too many levels and he liked his women unchallenging.

  But, hell...

  ‘Please leave.’

  ‘You don’t have to take off the dress,’ he said in a lazy drawl. ‘I’d quite like to see you working in that outfit.’

  ‘You’re making fun of me and I don’t like it.’ She had managed to blank him out, so that she was just aware of him on the periphery of her vision, but she could still feel his power radiating outwards, wrapping around her like something thick, suffocating and tangible.

  She felt like something small and helpless being circled by a beautiful, dangerous predator.

  Except he would never hurt her. No; his capacity for destruction lay in his ability to make her hurt herself by believing what he was saying, by allowing her feelings for him get the better of her. She had never realised that lust could be so overwhelming. Nothing had prepared her for the crazy, inappropriate emotions that rode roughshod over her prized and treasured common sense.

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Alessio said softly. Then he reached out and ran his hand along her arm, feeling its soft, silky smoothness. She was so slender. For a few seconds, Lesley didn’t react, then the feel of his warm hand on her skin made her stumble backwards with a yelp.

  His instincts had been right. How could he have doubted himself? The electricity between them flowed both ways. He stepped back and looked at her lazily. Her eyes were huge and she looked very young and very vulnerable. And she was still wobbling in the high stilettos; that was how uncomfortable she was in a pair of heels. He was struck with a pressing desire to see her dolled up to the nines and, with an even more contradictory one, to have her naked in his arms.

  ‘I’ll leave you to get back into your clothes,’ he said with the gentleness of someone trying to calm a panicked, highly strung thoroughbred. ‘And, to answer your question as to what I’m doing here, I thought I would just pop in and see if your search up here was being fruitful.’

  Relieved to have the focus off her and onto work, Lesley allowed some of the tension to ooze out of her body.

  ‘I have found one or two things you might be interested in,’ she said with staccato jerkiness. ‘And I’ll come right down to the office.’

  ‘Better still, meet me outside. I’ll get Violet to bring us out some tea.’ He smiled, encouraging her to relax further. It was all he could do not to let his eyes wander over her, drink her in. He lowered his eyes and reluctantly spun round, walking towards the door and knowing that she wouldn’t move a muscle until he was well and truly out of the suite of rooms and heading down the staircase.

  Once outside, he couldn’t wait for her to join him. He was oblivious to his surroundings as he stared off into the distance, thinking of how she had looked in that outfit. She had incredible legs, an incredible body and it was all the more enhanced by the fact that she was so unaware of her charms.

  Five brothers; no mother; karate lessons when the rest of her friends were practising the feminine skills that would serve them well in later life. Was that why she was so skittish around him? Was she skittish around all men, or was it just him? Was that why she chose to dress the way she did, why she projected such a capable image, why she deliberately seemed to spurn feminine clothes?

  He found himself idly trying to work out what made her tick and he was enjoying the game when he saw her walking towards him with a sheaf of papers in her hand, all business as usual.
/>   ‘Thank you.’ Lesley sat down, taking the glass that was offered to her. She had been so hot and bothered after he had left that she had taken time out to wash her face in cold water and gather herself. ‘First of all—and I’m almost one-hundred-per-cent sure about this—our emailing friend has no idea about your wife or the sort of person she was.’

  Alessio leant closer, forearms resting on his thighs. ‘And you’ve reached that conclusion because...?’

  ‘Because I’ve been through each and every email very carefully, looking for clues. I’ve also found a couple of earlier emails which arrived in your junk box and for some reason weren’t deleted. They weren’t significant. Perhaps our friend was just having a bit of fun.’

  ‘So you think this isn’t about a blackmail plot to do with revelations about Bianca?’

  ‘Yes, partly from reading through the emails and partly common sense. I think if they involved your ex-wife there would have been some sort of guarded reference made that would have warned you of what was to come. And, whilst he or she knew what they were doing and were careful to leave as few tracks behind them as they could, some of those emails are definitely more rushed than others.’

  ‘Woman’s intuition?’ There was genuine curiosity in his voice and Lesley nodded slowly.

  ‘I think so. What’s really significant, though, is that the Internet cafés used were all in roughly the same area, within a radius of a dozen miles or so, and they are all in the general vicinity of where Rachel goes to school. Which leads me to think that she is at the centre of this in some way, shape or form because the person responsible probably knows her or knows of her.’

  Alessio sat back and rubbed his eyes wearily. Lesley could see the strain visible beneath the cool, collected exterior when he next looked at her. He might have approached this problem with pragmatism and detachment, as a job to be done—but his daughter was involved and that showed on his face now, in the worry and the stress.