by Penny Jordan
It had simply never occurred to her that she would be so attracted to Alessandro, or so helplessly unable to resist the tug of that attraction. The Alessandro Leopardi she had built up inside her head from what Leo had told her about him and, more importantly, from what she had decided he must be like after he had repeatedly rejected her job applications, refusing to acknowledge how well qualified she was to work for him, bore no resemblance to the man who had held her in his arms earlier or the man she was with now.
She tried and failed to imagine either her father or her brothers making the kind of offer that Alessandro had made just now with regard to her arachnophobia. They loved her—of course they did. But their father’s robust, competition-focused parenting had affected them all—as Leonora had come to recognise once she had gone out into the wider world to earn her own living. Watching the fathers of her pupils, it had become obvious to her that many of them treated their young daughters very differently from the way they dealt with their young sons.
It was, of course, to her father’s credit that he had insisted on treating all of them absolutely equally—he had done his best for them, and it couldn’t have been easy losing their mother when they had been so young. They had all suffered. How could they not have? But Leonora suspected that her loss had been the greater. Without a female role model to guide her and teach her how to grow into her femininity she had felt so sad, and even a little envious of the way other fathers parented their little girls. Leonora had come to recognise, as she had watched small girls flirting outrageously with their fathers, that they were being gently taught the appropriate ways of using their feminine gifts in a way that she never had.
It was true that she had learned to moderate the straightforward and outspoken directness her father had taught them all, and it was true that doing so had made her feel more comfortable within herself. But when it came to flirting she felt as clumsy as a would-be juggler, trying to put on an act and having everything come crashing down all around her instead of keeping everything spinning effortlessly in the air. And that sent her straight back to the defensive habit of playing the brash tomboy, and watching men recoil from her.
Watching her, and seeing the shadows chasing one another through her eyes, Alessandro discovered that he wanted to know what was causing them. Uniquely, in his experience with her sex, she said very little about herself. He knew the basics, of course—he should, given the number of times she had submitted job applications to him—but even in the section allowed for personal comments about aspirations and hopes her words had been blunt, sometimes to the point of aggression, and had focused only on her fierce professional desire. And yet earlier tonight in his arms her response to him had been intense; her passion had meshed with his own desire instead of competing with it.
She had not, as he might have expected her to do, tried to control their intimacy. Instead—surprisingly, given what he knew about her—she had waited for him to take the lead. Why? Because she’d believed she would have a better chance of getting her own way later if she did? She was going to be disappointed if she thought he would change his mind and give her a job. Yes, she was well qualified—far better than many of his pilots—but her presence amongst them would cause trouble.
Had she been plainer in looks or less plain in opinion he might have been tempted to break his own rule, simply because of her qualifications, but it was obvious to him that she would create chaos amongst his existing pilots. There would be those who would champion her because of her looks and those who would oppose her because of the competitive streak in her nature which came across so clearly in her applications. Either way it would have led to the kind of fall-out that wasn’t just divisive but was also, in his opinion, potentially dangerous. When he hired a pilot he needed him to be totally focused on his work. Not focused on a woman like Leonora.
If she could get under his skin, when he prided himself on being immune to any kind of female manipulation, then what chance did his pilots have?
But what he wanted to know even more was why she was so intent on securing a job with his airline, and if he was right to suspect that, having failed to do so via her professional pilot’s skills, she was now attempting to do it via a very different set of skills. What would happen if he did try to dig a bit deeper?
There was only one way to find out, Alessandro told himself as he thrust back the bedclothes and stood up. Normally he slept completely naked, but tonight after his shower he’d put on fresh underwear—not that he had imagined for one minute that he would be called upon to take on anti-spider-invasion duties, he thought humorously.
He started to make his way towards the window, stopping at Leonora’s side of the bed to say, in a deliberately light voice, ‘You never mentioned your arachnophobia on your many CVs, as far as I can remember.’
‘My brothers have teased me so much all my life about it that I’ve developed a second phobia about admitting it to anyone.’ Leonora tried to joke back as she sat up in the bed, drawing up her knees protectively, just in case the spider was about, but it was hard to concentrate on exchanging light-hearted banter when Alessandro was standing so close to her wearing so little.
His body was superbly muscled, tapering downwards from his shoulders in an athletic male V shape. His chest was lightly covered with the dark hair she had already seen, which she could now see also arrowed downwards across his flat belly to disappear beneath the top of his underwear. Underwear which, though perfectly respectable, nevertheless revealed just how very much of a man he was. Her eyes rounded slightly and she tried to drag her gaze away. He was magnificently male, she thought, gulping back a treacherous sigh of longing. What would it be like to be the kind of woman who felt confident enough to touch him there intimately—to hold him and know him? Her face burned hot at the danger of her own out-of-control thoughts. She prayed that he hadn’t noticed she hadn’t been able to help looking at him.
Alessandro had noticed, but he was more concerned about controlling his body’s reaction to her look than he was about the look itself. How could one look from a woman he had every reason to suspect was trying to manipulate him arouse him so immediately when he normally had no difficulty whatsoever in resisting women coming on to him far more strongly?
As he turned away from her towards the window, he reminded himself of what he was supposed to be doing and said, ‘I know that most boys go through a stage when it affords them a huge amount of pleasure to tease girls, but I should have thought that your parents—especially your mother—would have intervened once they realised you had a very real phobia.’
‘Our mother died when I was eight. She was killed by a speeding car when she was on her way to collect us all from school. Dad thought the best way for me to get over my fear was to be embarrassed into not being afraid. He always encouraged us to be competitive with one another, and I think he thought that if the boys teased me—especially Piers, because he’s the eldest—then I’d do anything to prove that I wasn’t afraid. I did try.’ She gave a small defeated shrug of her shoulders. ‘I hated conceding defeat and being called a cry-baby. But I just could not stop being afraid.’
Alessandro was glad that he had his back to her—and not just because her earlier visual focus on his sex had aroused him. Now he had something else he didn’t want her to see for his own protection. Pity and anger filled him in a fierce surge of unexpected and unwanted emotion. He had to bite back on an instinctive criticism of her father for not handling things better. Even if she herself was not aware of how much she was giving away, he had heard in her voice a defensive awareness that she knew she had been let down, but equally he knew that she would defend her father and her brothers against anyone’s criticism.
‘It must have been hard for you, growing up without your mother,’ he commented, when he had control of himself.
‘No harder than it was for my brothers, or than it must have been for you and your brother
s,’ Leonora responded instantly.
They looked at one another. How well he understood what she was feeling, Alessandro recognised. For reasons he didn’t want to analyse too closely, he couldn’t bring himself to push her any harder. Not because she aroused any kind of tender feelings within him, he assured himself. No, it was because he believed he owed it to himself not to take an unfair advantage of her when she was so obviously vulnerable. He had a far too clear mental image of her as a girl, all sharp-angled pre-pubescent limbs, and with the defensive competitiveness that would have come from the parenting she had described—a girl growing up in a male environment without her mother.
Grimly Alessandro forced it away. That wasn’t how he wanted to think of her. After all, no doubt at some stage she would have learned to twist her father round her little finger, and her brothers too. And yet he couldn’t quite banish his awareness of how difficult her childhood must have been. Just like his own? No. They were two very different people with nothing in common. Nothing? So they were both second children—motherless second children. That meant nothing. Nothing at all.
He pulled back the curtain to check the window, which was slightly open. He closed it firmly and then checked the wall and the floor around it, before turning to tell Leonora, ‘It’s closed now, and I can’t see any sign of an intruder.’
Leonora nodded her head, and let her breath escape on a leaky sigh of relief.
‘Thank you. I know that you must think me foolish, even though you haven’t said so.’
‘Foolish for being afraid of spiders—no. But foolishly reckless in other ways, perhaps yes.’
That was as close as he was going to get to warning her that he had his suspicions about her. If she had any sense she would immediately abandon any attempts she might be thinking of making to start a battle between them that she was not going to win. He would never, ever let anyone manipulate him into letting them win—at anything. And she was no exception, shared family position or not.
Foolishly reckless in other ways? What exactly did he mean by that? Leonora didn’t know, but she did know that he wasn’t paying her a compliment. The tough façade Leonora usually presented to the world should have her challenging him and arguing with him, whilst affecting not to care what he thought, but the private inner Leonora was acutely sensitive to his criticism, and unwilling to risk further hurt by asking for an explanation of it.
Alessandro dropped the curtain and was just about to head back to the bed when, without intending to do any such thing, he stopped and said, ‘I can’t see any sign of your friend, but if it would make you feel more comfortable I’m quite prepared to swap sides of the bed with you and sleep on your side, seeing as it is closer to the window.’
What on earth had made him make that offer? He shouldn’t be pandering to her fears. She’d think that she had some kind of hold on him, that he wanted to please her, and that wasn’t the case at all.
Astonishment and gratitude had Leonora staring at him, unable to conceal how she felt. She wasn’t used to being treated like this, and she certainly hadn’t expected to be treated in such a way by Alessandro.
‘Would you?’ She couldn’t conceal her wonderment. ‘That would be really kind.’
She was overdoing the wide-eyed ‘you are wonderful’ stuff so much that if he could have done he would have withdrawn his offer, Alessandro decided. Instead he simply shrugged and told her brusquely, ‘Hardly that. I’d simply like to get some sleep.’
Instantly the light died from Leonora’s eyes, to be replaced with self-conscious chagrin. Of course he wasn’t doing it for her—and of course he wanted to get some sleep. She didn’t trust herself to apologise. She knew he’d be able to tell from her voice how mortified she felt. Instead she moved over to his side of the bed and then tensed, immediately aware of how the scent of his skin clung to the place where he had been lying. Surely if her fear of the spider didn’t keep her awake then having to sleep here, lying in Alessandro’s body warmth and scent, was bound to do so.
Deliberately she lay with her back towards Alessandro, but of course that didn’t stop her from knowing the minute he got into the bed from the dip in the mattress. Closing her eyes, she fought not to be conscious of him—which, oddly, was even harder now than it had been earlier. Perhaps because the verbal intimacy they had shared had in its own way made her feel every bit as vulnerable as the sexual intimacy between them earlier?
She felt the bed dip again. He was moving towards her. Was he going to carry out the threat he had made earlier, about proving to her that she wanted him? Breathless anticipation seized her, obliterating the anxiety she knew she should feel. He was right next to her. She could feel the heat from his body. In fact she could feel his body too, where his leg touched her own. A shower of lava-hot longing spilled through her.
He reached round her, his head above her own as he lifted his hand—to turn her to him? Molten desire stirred the heavy arousal in her lower body, and instinctively she started to turn towards him. Only to hear him say, ‘You may want to sleep with the light on, the better to spy on your friend, but I’m afraid I do not.’ He reached up and switched off the bedside light she had forgotten was on, and then moved away from her.
It could have been worse, she reassured herself after he had returned to his own side of the bed. He could have realised how she was feeling—or, even worse again, she could actually have turned to him and reached out for him. How humiliating that would have been. At least this way all she had to contend with was the ache of her desire, not the ache of a bruised heart. A bruised heart? How could Alessandro bruise her heart? He didn’t mean anything to her. Did he? No, of course he didn’t.
But lying beneath him as he’d reached over her to switch off the light had filled Leonora with the most potent surge of longing that just would not go away. All she could think about was what it would be like not just to share the sensual intimacy of sex with him, but also to feel the tender warmth of his arms and the security of his protection. What was the matter with her? Such thoughts were inappropriate and unwanted—and what was worse they were also dangerous and painful.
* * *
What the hell was the matter with him? Alessandro asked himself angrily as he lay staring into the darkness, fighting down his need to cross the distance that separated him from Leonora. No matter how much he hated having to admit it, he ached to take her in his arms and caress her back to the responsive, eager woman he had held earlier in the evening.
It was an intensity that was wholly unfamiliar to him. He wasn’t some callow youth. The fact that he was sharing a bed with Leonora should not have been a signal to his body to hunger for her. He’d been too long without sex—that was his problem. There was nothing personal in the potent mix of emotional and physical need that was now gripping him. He’d spent too much time working and not enough time playing, and he’d let her get under his skin and arouse a dangerous curiosity about her—something he would normally never have allowed to happen. Something that would not have happened if he hadn’t been obliged by family duty to come here to the castello in the first place.
Returning to his childhood home had brought back too many unwanted memories. That was how Leonora had been able to arouse his sympathy. Listening to her talk about her childhood had taken him far too close to the misery of his own. At least her father had loved her in his own way—unlike his father, who had never loved him and had said so. Nothing had changed there. His father’s hostility towards him was still there, underpinned by angry contempt. With his own sons he would behave very differently, Alessandro thought. They would all be loved equally and individually, each one of them uniquely precious to him and valued by him, and so would his daughters.
Sons and daughters? What on earth was he thinking? He’d already decided that it was unlikely that he would be a father, since he doubted that he’d ever meet a woman he could trust enough to make
the kind of commitment that would lead to them having children. Perhaps it was old-fashioned of him, but he’d want his children to be born into a marriage that would last a lifetime—for their sakes more than for his own. He liked beautiful women, and felt no shame in his preference, but it seemed to him that modern women treated their beauty as a commodity they could sell to the highest bidder for their own advantage, going from marriage to marriage and collecting an impressive portfolio of divorce settlements on the way—just as Sofia had done.
Leonora Thaxton was less ambitious. No doubt she would be content to exchange her body for a pilot’s job with his airline. And the way he was aching for her right now, maybe it would be worth giving her a job, Alessandro thought grimly. He knew, of course, that he would do no such thing. His pride would never allow it, and more importantly neither would his duty towards his passengers and customers. He had been too long without a lover—that was all. It was impossible for him to allow himself to want a woman he knew was simply using him.
* * *
It was a long time before Leonora finally fell asleep, and an even longer time before Alessandro did the same, promising himself that he was going to play Leonora at her own game. Before the weekend was over he intended to prove to her that he could make her want him far more than she could make him want her. No matter how hard she tried to manipulate him she wasn’t going to win—and she wasn’t going to get a job with his airline either.
CHAPTER TEN
THE BED ON which they both lay naked was high, draped with richly sensuous silk fabric. But its touch against her flesh was nowhere near as sensuously erotic as his touch, nor could the whisper of the fabric’s kiss compare with the fierce passion of his kiss.
His face was in the shadows, but she knew its features by heart—from the burning intensity of his dark eyes through the arrogance of his profile to the explicit sensuality of his mouth. Excited pleasure curled and then kicked through her. Simply looking at him awoke and aroused the woman in her in a way and at a level that no other man ever could. Just as she was the only woman who was woman enough to truly complement him as a man. They were made for one another, a perfect match, and they both knew it. Only here, with him, could she truly be herself and let down her guard to share her longing and her love.