Enthralled by Moretti

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Frank and Anne?’ Alessandro made a point of avoiding the scathing criticism in Chase’s eyes. He had absolutely nothing to feel bad about. He knew for a fact that there were vultures hovering over the place, waiting to pick it to pieces, and those vultures would not have parted with nearly as much cash as he was prepared to.

  ‘My dear friends. They help me here. As for me, perhaps a retirement place by the coast... So, I expect you would like to see the land, Mr Moretti? There’s a lot of it. My parents were both keen gardeners. Sadly, I haven’t had the money to look after it the way it deserves, but if the place is to be redeveloped then I’m sure you won’t find that a problem. Chase tells me you have grand plans for it to be an upmarket mall.’

  Alessandro marvelled that ‘an upmarket mall’ could be made to sound like ‘the tower of Babel’, although when he looked at the older woman there was no bitterness on her face.

  ‘It will bring a great deal of useful traffic to the community.’

  So he made money. It was what he did. It was what he had always done. And he was still doing it. He frowned as he remembered Chase’s barbed comment about his lifestyle.

  He had enough money to retire for the rest of his life and still be able to afford what most people could only ever dream of. So was he trying to make up for his parents’ excesses? He was angry and frustrated that he should even be thinking along these lines. His parents were long gone and he had barely known them. How could he have, when, from a toddler, he had been in the care of a succession of nannies who had all fallen by the wayside in favour of boarding school abroad?

  His parents had both been products of ridiculously wealthy backgrounds and their marriage had provided them with a joint income that they had both happily and irresponsibly squandered. Untethered by any sense of duty, and riding high on the hippie mentality that had been sweeping through Italy at the time, they had zoned out on recreational drugs, held lavish parties, travelled to festivals all over the world and bought houses which they had optimistically called ‘communes’ where people could ‘get in touch with themselves’. And then, to top it all off, they had seen fit to throw away yet more of their inheritance on a series of ill-advised schemes involving organic farming and the import of ethnic products, all of which had crashed and burned.

  Alessandro, barely through with university, had had to grasp what remained of the various companies and haul them back into profit when his parents had died in a boating accident in the Caribbean. Which he had done—in record time and with astounding success.

  So what if he had learnt from his parents that financial security was the most important thing in life? So what if nothing and no one had ever been allowed to interrupt that one, single, driving ambition?

  A woman in whom he had once rashly confided things that should have been kept to himself was certainly not going to make him start questioning his ethos.

  Beth was now chatting amicably about the wonderful advantages of the place being developed, which would bring much-needed jobs to the community. To Alessandro’s finely tuned ears, it sounded like forced enthusiasm. It was clear that she hated the thought of leaving the house, and he couldn’t help wondering what someone who had always been active in community life in London would do in the stultifying boredom of the seaside.

  It was after midday by the time they were standing outside the house saying their goodbyes. His chauffeur had returned for them but Chase pointedly made no move in the direction of the car.

  ‘I’ll make my own way back,’ she said politely.

  ‘Get in.’ Alessandro stood to one side and then sighed with exasperation as she continued to look at him in stubborn silence. ‘It’s baking hot out here,’ he said, purposefully invading her space by standing too close to her. ‘And that outfit isn’t designed for warm weather.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances on avoiding sunstroke.’

  ‘Which is something I would rather not have on my conscience.’

  ‘You don’t have a conscience!’

  ‘And you do?’

  Chase looked at him with simmering resentment. He didn’t look all hot and bothered. He looked as fabulous, cool and composed as he always did. Plus, he had charmed his way into Beth’s affections. She could tell. He hadn’t come on too strong, he had pointed out all the benefits of selling the place but in a perfectly reasonable way that no one would have been able to dispute. He was just so...damned persuasive! She hated it. And she hated the way she had found herself staring at him surreptitiously, hated the way her imagination had started playing tricks on her, hated the way she had had to fight against being seduced by the dark, deep, velvety tones of his voice.

  ‘You can drop me to the bus stop. It’s about a mile from here.’

  ‘Are you going back to your office? Perhaps I could go in, meet all these people you work with... Tell your boss what a great job you’ve done even though the shelter will be sold. At least you’ve got me to thank for a reasonably happy Beth.’

  ‘She’s not happy.’ Chase slid into the back seat, barely appreciating the terrific air conditioning as she grappled with the horror of having him invade her work space as well as having invaded her house. ‘And I’m going home, as a matter of fact. I have work I can do there.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that you try and avoid looking at me as much as possible,’ Alessandro said softly. ‘Why is that?’

  As challenges went, that was about as direct as they came. Avoid looking at him? She wanted to laugh at the irony because all she seemed to do was look at him—it was just that she was careful with her staring. She looked at him now and the silence seemed to go on for ever as he gazed right back at her. Her mouth had gone dry and, although she knew that she should be breaking this yawning silence with a suitably innocuous remark, her mind refused to play along.

  When he reached out and trailed one finger along her lips, she gasped with shock. There was a sudden, ferocious roaring in her ears and she couldn’t breathe. All the strategies she had adopted to keep him at arm’s length, to make him know that there was nothing whatsoever between them now aside from a brief, dubious past that no longer meant a thing, disappeared like mist on a hot summer’s day.

  She was no longer the lawyer with her life under control and he was no longer public enemy number one, the guy who could ruin everything she had built for herself in one fell swoop. She was a woman and he was a man and she still, against all rhyme or reason, wanted him with every incomprehensible, yearning ounce of her being.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She finally found her voice and pulled back.

  Alessandro smiled. If he had had any doubts that she was still attracted to him, then he had none now. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he murmured, obediently removing his hand and observing her neutrally. ‘Your friend really doesn’t want to leave her home. The memories...the experiences... I don’t see a bungalow on the coast cutting it, do you?’

  ‘No.’ Chase glared at him suspiciously. Her lips were burning from where he had touched them but she refused to cool them with her fingers.

  ‘So I have an interesting proposal to put to you. You’d like me to believe that you’re all bleeding heart and caring for the defenceless. Well, how would you like to prove it?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHASE DIDN’T ANSWER immediately. Alessandro slid back the partition and told the driver to deliver them to a well-known French restaurant. By the time that sank in, the car had already altered course.

  ‘What the heck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘We’re going to discuss my proposal over food. It’s lunchtime.’

  ‘And I’ve told you that I need to get back to do some work! Besides, I can’t imagine what sort of proposal you have for me that involves you kidnapping me!’

  ‘I like your use of language. Colourful.’

  Chase was still burning from whe
re his finger had touched her lips. Her mouth tingled.

  ‘What made your friend decide to go into the good Samaritan business?’

  Chase looked at him with unbridled suspicion. He was leaning indolently against the door and she got the feeling that it was all the better to see her. Like the big, bad wolf in the fairy story. ‘I don’t know what good it will do for you to hear Beth’s potted history.’

  ‘I’ve never known anyone who erects so many obstacles to complicate a perfectly harmless conversation.’

  ‘That’s because everyone kowtows to you, I imagine,’ Chase offered ungracefully. While he was supremely relaxed, legs slightly open, one arm along the back of the seat, the other hanging loosely over his thigh, she was as tense as a block of wood. Her legs were tightly pressed together. Her lips were tightly compressed. Her fingers were interlinked and white at the knuckles.

  ‘Rich people seem to have that effect,’ she continued, avoiding his speculative eyes. ‘I’ve seen it. They like throwing their weight around and they take it for granted that everyone is going to agree with everything they say.’

  ‘You’re getting all hot and bothered over nothing,’ Alessandro murmured with mild amusement. ‘The food at this restaurant is second to none. Have you been there? No? Then you should be looking forward to the experience. So why don’t you relax? Tell me about your friend.’

  ‘You didn’t seem that interested in her when you were downgrading the price of the place by a thousand pounds per minute.’

  ‘That was before I met her.’

  Every argument she engineered seemed to crash into a brick wall. He wasn’t interested in arguing with her. She, on the other hand, felt driven to keep arguing because something inside her was telling her that, if she didn’t, she might find herself in dangerously unchartered territory. She might start remembering how funny he could be, how thoughtful, how engaging.

  ‘She obviously comes from a fairly wealthy background,’ Alessandro murmured encouragingly. ‘And yet the road she decided to travel down wasn’t exactly the predictable one.’

  When he had first laid eyes on Chase after eight years, he had been shocked. And hard on the heels of that shock had come rage and bitterness. It seemed that he had badly underestimated the effect she had had on him. He hadn’t put her behind him after all. Had he succeeded in doing that, he would have felt nothing but indifference and contempt. So, yes, revenge had been an option but why make a third party suffer? Weren’t there other ways of handling a situation that had landed in his lap?

  Rage and bitterness were corrosive emotions and there was one very good way of permanently eliminating them. He smiled with slow, deliberate intent.

  Chase took note of that smile and wondered what the heck was going on.

  ‘She hasn’t had a...normal upbringing,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I know this because I knew her before this whole business with the shelter cropped up. Actually, she came to me when she was approached with your company’s interference because we were already friends.’

  ‘Interference? I’ll overlook your take on my generous offer to buy her out. How did you become friends? Oh no, don’t tell me—you were drawn to her because of your “care in the community” approach to life.’

  ‘I’m glad you think it’s funny to want to help other people!’

  ‘I don’t. I think it’s admirable. Like I said, I just find the sentiments hard to swallow when they’re coming from you.’

  ‘If I’m such an awful person, why are you taking me out to lunch? Why didn’t you let me find my own way back? The sale’s agreed. Your legal team could take it from here on in.’

  ‘But then I would miss out on the pleasure of watching you.’

  Chase flushed and wondered whether he was being serious or not. She told herself that she didn’t care and squashed the unwanted sliver of satisfaction it gave her when she thought of him watching her and enjoying it. Suddenly, it felt safer to talk about Beth than to sit in silence, as he looked at her, and speculate on all sorts of things that threw her into confusion.

  ‘Her parents were both really well off,’ she blurted out, licking her lips nervously and wishing he would just stop looking at her in that pensive, brooding way that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘They were missionaries. Beth says that as though it’s the most normal thing in the world.’

  She began to relax and half-smiled as she remembered the conversation they had had years ago when she had first met her. ‘I mean, they didn’t want to convert anyone, but they wanted to help people in the third world. They rented out their house, which is now the shelter, and took themselves off to Africa where they spent their own money on various irrigation and building projects. In fact, there’s a plaque dedicated to them in one of the little villages over there.’

  ‘Good people.’ Alessandro thought of his own feckless parents and marvelled at the different ways money could be spent.

  ‘They returned to London to live when Beth was a child. I think they wanted her educated over here. Maybe they thought that they had done what they had set out to do. At any rate, they found that they couldn’t just do nothing once they’d come back, so they did lots of volunteer work at various places. They were both in their fifties by then. They’d had Beth when they were quite old. Beth went to university and studied to become an engineer, but found herself drawn to helping others, and when her parents died and she inherited the house and land, the stocks and shares and stuff, she turned the house into a shelter and hasn’t looked back.’

  ‘So effectively it’s really the only house she’s ever lived in and the only work she’s ever done.’

  ‘Yes. So there you have it. I don’t suppose you can really understand what makes someone like Beth tick.’

  ‘Do me a favour and stop trying to pigeon-hole me because I happen to have a bit of money.’

  ‘A bit of money? You’re as rich as Croesus.’ They were now in front of the restaurant and Chase stared down at her formal working suit in dismay. ‘I don’t feel comfortable dining in a place like this wearing a suit.’

  ‘Don’t wear the jacket and undo the top three buttons of the shirt.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ She looked at him, her cheeks bright red, and he grinned at her. A full-on charming grin that knocked her sideways. It was that same grin that had turned her life on its head eight years ago and had made her continue to see him even though everything in her had been screaming at her to stop.

  ‘You heard me.’ He stepped out of the car and leaned through to give his driver instructions; when he straightened, it was to see that the prissy jacket, at least, had been left behind in the car.

  ‘What about the buttons?’ he asked, with the same sexy grin that made her toes curl and her skin feel tight and prickly.

  He didn’t give her time to think about it. With their eyes still locked, he undid the offending buttons. The softness of her skin under the starchy top... The glimpse of a cleavage... His breath caught sharply in his throat, mimicking hers.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Chase clasped the top and stumbled back a few steps.

  ‘Much better. After you?’

  Chase barely took note of the restaurant as they were ushered inside. She had been to a few fancy places since she had started working at Fitzsimmons. Her inclination to stare in awe had thankfully subsided. Nor was her mind in full working order just at the moment, not when her body was still in a state of heightened response at that intimate gesture of his undoing those buttons as though...as though she was his; as though they were the lovers they never, actually, ever had been.

  ‘You said you had a proposal to put to me,’ was the first thing she said tightly as soon as they were seated.

  Alessandro perused the menu and made a few helpful suggestions which Chase ignored.

  ‘This isn’t a social occasion,’
she said, choosing the first thing off the menu and shaking her head when he tried to entice her into a glass of wine.

  ‘But it could be,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Couldn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that eight years ago you were a married woman, albeit without my knowledge. Now, you’re not. Your husband is no longer around and, unless you have another one stashed up your sleeve somewhere...?’

  Caught unawares, Chase laughed shortly. ‘Marriage isn’t an institution I’ll be going near again. Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt.’

  Alessandro maintained a steady smile but his jaw hardened. ‘Still in mourning?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Too wrapped up with my career,’ Chase answered steadily.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, but no matter. It really doesn’t make any difference to the proposal I have in mind.’ So she was still wrapped up in the ex. Why else would she have been at pains to avoid his question? He harked back to his image of the man, good-looking in a thuggish sort of way, her type of guy.

  And yet, wrapped up or not in the past, she was still affected by him. He knew that with some highly developed sixth sense. As affected by him as he was, unfortunately, affected by her. She was an itch that needed to be scratched and he intended to do just that. Scratch the itch, and he would get her out of his system once and for all.

  ‘So what’s your proposal?’ Had she ordered crab mousse? It seemed so, as one was placed in front of her. She tucked into it without appetite.

  ‘Do you get as personally wrapped up with all your clients as you do with this particular one?’ Alessandro watched as she toyed with the starter in front of her.

  ‘I told you. I knew her before... She’s been a friend for years.’

  ‘She’s in her sixties.’

  ‘What does age have to do with anything?’ Chase looked at him defensively. Yes, she knew where this was going. Why was a young girl in her twenties friends with a woman in her sixties? Of course, age was no barrier to friendship. Many young people had friends who were much older than they were. What was the big deal? But Beth was one of her few friends, one of the few people in whom she had confided to some extent.