Enthralled by Moretti

by Cathy Williams

  Remember that club, the one that got busted by the coppers....? Course, she’d been underage at the time and she hadn’t actually been doing drugs or anything—not like him and Shaunie and the rest of the gang. But those posh people at the law firm, they’d be really keen to know that she used to mix with a crowd who all had police records, wouldn’t they? Might even get to thinking that she had a police record! Wouldn’t that be funny? And, being honest, just the fact that she and he used to be mates would get them wondering, wouldn’t it?

  He had chuckled. ‘You know what they say about the smelly stuff sticking...’

  Her mobile rang now just as she was about to enter the office. Alessandro. She switched it off. There was no way that she could talk to him. Not just yet. But talk to him she would have to, because Brian Shepherd wasn’t going to go away until he got his wretched money which, as it turned out, was hardly what she would have called ‘loose change’. It was certainly more than she had set aside, which was precious little after her mortgage repayments had been made and the bills paid.

  Her life seemed to be unravelling at speed and she had to force herself not to succumb to the meltdown she knew was hovering just around the corner. She had weathered a lot of things and she would weather this as well. It would just take a little working out.

  By the time she pushed through the doors to their offices, she had glumly decided what needed to be done.

  Her first port of call was her boss’s office.

  Tony Grey was a short, round man in his fifties who would have been a dead ringer for Father Christmas were it not for the fact that he was almost entirely bald and his dark-grey eyes were way too astute for someone who spent all his time laughing and chuckling. In actual fact, Chase had never seen her boss laugh out loud, but he had always been fair and supportive. She would miss that.

  She would have to hand in her notice. She had come to that conclusion as she had left her house. Brian Shepherd wouldn’t just do what he threatened; he would go further if she didn’t do as he asked. Hadn’t he been banged up for nearly killing someone in a bar brawl when he was fourteen? What if he took it into his head to release his explosive temper on her if she didn’t play ball? If he could nearly kill someone at the age of fourteen because they’d accidentally knocked into him without saying sorry, then he could certainly kill her if he wanted money from her and she refused to pay. She loathed the thought of having to yield in a situation like this but pride was no match for sheer common sense.

  Well, on the bright side, she would find a company specialising more in the pro bono work she enjoyed and, even if Brian hunted her down there, he would be able to see for himself that it wasn’t a money-making machine.

  She still couldn’t work out how he had discovered her whereabouts but there was no point wasting time trying to figure that out. With social-networking sites stretching their tentacles into every area of everyone’s lives, it wouldn’t have been beyond the wit of man for him to ferret her out the second he’d figured he could get money from her.

  ‘My dear,’ Tony said when she had explained that she would have to hand in her notice for personal reasons. ‘Are you sure this is really what you want to do? You’re on course to go far with this firm. Your dedication is second to none.’

  But he assured her that, if he couldn’t persuade her to change her mind, then of course he would provide her with glowing references. With just that sympathy and fairness which she would miss so much, he also agreed that she could leave as soon as she had tied up loose ends on the cases she was currently working on so that they could be handed over in good order.

  She had no idea what he concluded her ‘personal reasons’ for leaving might be, but she suspected that health issues might be at the heart of it, and he was right in a way. She certainly wasn’t feeling very well at the moment. Not when she considered the way her nicely controlled life had been turned upside down.

  Alessandro... She thought that this might not be as similarly smooth sailing. She ignored a further two calls from him, only picking up his last just as she was about to leave the office on the dot of five. Clock watching had never been her style, but tying up loose ends was a dismal procedure. Nor was she up to chatting to all and sundry about her decision to leave.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve phoned three times!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was...busy.’ Just the sound of his voice sent little ripples of awareness racing up and down her spine as she took the lift to the ground floor and emerged into yet another cool and overcast day to do battle with public transport.

  ‘Busy doing what?’

  ‘I, well, I’ve handed in my notice at Fitzsimmons.’

  For a few seconds, Alessandro debated whether he had heard her correctly. But there was something in her voice, a tell-tale tremor that she couldn’t quite conceal; a nuance which he felt that only he would have been able to pick up. Something was different, wrong, a little off-kilter.

  He stood up, restlessly moving away from his desk towards the windows and absently looking down. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Can we meet? I can...um...come to your office.’

  ‘I can think of a better venue.’

  ‘I’d rather your office, Alessandro.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded bluntly. ‘And please don’t tell me nothing. You tell me you’ve handed in your notice, even though you’ve expressed nothing but satisfaction at your job there, and now...you want to meet me in my office?’

  ‘Please.’

  Alessandro sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his hair. He was getting a very bad vibe about whatever the hell was going on but he acquiesced. Whatever was happening, he would be able to get it out of her and things would return to normal. He was nothing if not wholly confident in his ability to take her mind off things.

  ‘I’d rather not parade my personal life in front of my employees,’ he drawled. ‘And you may be scuttling out of the office because you’ve handed in your notice and lost momentum in your job, but my people are all still at their desks. If you can’t wait until later and meet me somewhere private, then I can see you in forty-five minutes at that brasserie round the corner from my office. You know the one?’

  She did. She made her way there slowly, forgoing the speed and ease of a black cab in favour of a laborious trip by public transport. It suited her mood.

  How had life changed so fast in such a brief moment in time? As she neared the brasserie, she felt a sickening lurch of déjà vu. Eight years ago she had met Alessandro here with one thing and one thing only in her head—the need to get rid of him. She had walked towards a conversation she had known would break her in half and she was doing the same thing now. History was repeating itself. But it was so much worse this time, she would be taking so many more regrets with her when she was finished saying what she had to say.

  * * *

  Sitting at the back of the brasserie, nursing an extremely early glass of red wine, Alessandro had been waiting for ten minutes. He had been unable to get down to work after her phone call. He would never have imagined himself as one of those sensitive, intuitive sorts but something wasn’t right and, however much he told himself that he could sort out whatever the hell it was that was eating her up, he was still vaguely uneasy.

  And yet, why should he be? They had parted company the day before and everything had been just fine and dandy. There’d been no inconvenient intuition then. So, really, what could have materially changed since then?

  He spotted her the second she walked through the door. For the briefest of moments he felt a sharp, inexplicable pang of nostalgia for the carefree girl in shorts and tee-shirts who had been his companion for the past few days. She was in full lawyer mode: prissy grey suit, even prissier white blouse, black pumps. He wondered how long he could wait before he ripped the whole lot off her and bedded
her.

  On cue, his erection pushed hard against the zip of his trousers and he shifted position uncomfortably to release some of the insistent ache in his groin.

  He had not expected this crazy lust to be an ongoing situation after the countless times they had now slept together. He had assumed she would be more than just disposable: he would take what had once been denied him and then discard her without preamble. It wasn’t working out quite as he had envisaged, but he shrugged that off. The unexpected could sometimes be a good thing and getting turned on by her on a semi-permanent basis was definitely not to be sneezed at, especially for him, a man whose tastes had become lamentably jaded over time.

  He watched with masculine appreciation as she glanced around her. Already he was undressing her in his mind. Slowly. Revealing those generous pale breasts inch by succulent inch; exposing the pink nipples to take them one at a time in his mouth as they pouted temptingly up at him.

  He pictured the prissy grey skirt hitting the ground, followed by whatever suitably functional underwear she happened to be wearing... He could almost taste the honeyed sweetness between her legs, hear her broken little whimpers of pleasure as his tongue found her sweet spot and worked it until the broken little whimpers became moans and cries of pleasure. The more horny he became, just sitting and watching her and letting his imagination run wild, the faster he knew he would have to sort out whatever was on her mind just so that he could get her back to his place. They might not even be able to make it to the bedroom.

  He grinned as she spotted him and lazily attracted the waitress’s attention without taking his eyes off Chase’s face. Her looks were really quite startling. There was a sexiness to her, a perfection to her features, that made her naturally guarded expression all the more beguiling. He could see other men surreptitiously following her with their eyes as she weaved her way towards him.

  ‘Alessandro...’ Chase said weakly. She could feel her heart thumping like a sledgehammer inside her.

  ‘So you’ve handed in your notice.’ He broke off to order her a cappuccino. ‘And you don’t look very happy about it.’

  ‘I...I...’ She could barely string two words together. This was so much worse than she had envisaged. There was just no way that she could pretend to be cool, calm and collected. Her nerves were all over the place.

  ‘Sit down. Tell me about it. Why?’

  ‘I...I didn’t have much of a choice,’ she admitted truthfully. ‘Personal reasons.’

  ‘What personal reasons?’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

  ‘Are you ill?’ He felt a sudden mixture of fear and irrational panic. ‘Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘No,’ she said, waving a wistful goodbye to what could have been a fantastic excuse. As if lies hadn’t landed her here in the first place. ‘No, I’m not ill.’

  ‘Then what? What personal reasons, and why don’t you want to discuss them?’ Alessandro scowled. Since when had he ever been interested in women’s life stories? Mysteries dangling at the end of a line like bait to hook him in had always left him cold.

  He eyed her narrowly as a new thought began to take shape in his head. ‘If you’re not ill,’ he said slowly, ‘and yet you’ve reluctantly had to hand in your notice, then there’s only one explanation that springs to mind...’

  Temporarily diverted, Chase looked at him in bafflement. ‘Is there?’

  ‘Someone’s made a pass at you. Who is it?’ His voice was low and controlled but he clenched his fists. The second he had a name, he would personally make it his business to make sure that the culprit paid.

  ‘Made a pass at me?’

  ‘Even wearing that starchy suit, you’re still sexy as hell, Chase. And I won’t be the only one who can see that. So, spill the beans. Tell me who it is. Your boss? One of your colleagues? What did he do? Did he touch you inappropriately? Try to feel you up?’

  He imagined one of those rich kids thinking that he could have a go at the sexiest woman in the office and he was overwhelmed by an explosive rage. He had met enough twenty-something lawyers in his time to know that the majority of them thought that they were studs.

  ‘No one touched me, Alessandro! And no one tried to feel me up! Do you think that I’m so feeble that I would allow anyone to get away with that? Do you think that I’m incapable of taking care of myself?’ But his show of possessiveness touched her. She folded her hands on her lap to stop herself from reaching out and covering his hand with her own.

  ‘Then what’s going on?’ Looking at her, it was clear that she could barely meet his eyes. She was fidgeting nervously with the handle of her coffee cup. Alessandro felt that he could do with the entire bottle of wine, never mind one careful glass. Instead he ordered a black coffee while he tried to sift through some plausible explanation for her behaviour in his mind. ‘You’re not...pregnant, are you?’ It was a thought that only now occurred to him.

  Chase glanced up at his face, suddenly ashen, and for a few moments anger replaced gnawing anxiety and dread. It was obvious from his expression that the mere suggestion of pregnancy had knocked him for six. ‘And what if I was?’ she queried boldly. ‘What if I told you that there was a mini-Alessandro taking shape right now inside me?’

  She fancied she could see the colour drain away from his face as she allowed him time to absorb the full horror of that scenario. ‘Don’t worry, Alessandro. I’m not pregnant. I told you once that I’m not a complete idiot.’

  For a few fleeting seconds, Alessandro had found himself ripped out of his comfort zone, staring down the barrel of a gun. She was having his baby. His baby. The gun barrel, strangely, was less of a threat than he might have imagined.

  ‘Accidents happen,’ he said grimly.

  ‘Oh, Alessandro...’ She sighed and sat back, head tilted up, eyes half-closed as the inescapable hurtled towards her with the deadly force of a bomb. ‘I’m healthy, there’s no mini-Alessandro on the way and no one’s made a pass at me at work. And I wish there was some other way of saying this but there isn’t...’ She straightened and took a deep breath. ‘I need to ask you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need to...borrow some money from you.’

  Deathly silence greeted this request. Chase didn’t dare look at Alessandro. What choice did she have? she wondered helplessly. Brian wasn’t going to go away until he had his money and she simply didn’t have it. If she got it, gave it to him and then convinced him that she had broken up with Alessandro, then he would go away. If she didn’t, then she was, frankly, scared of what he might do. Scared of all the old horrors landing on her doorstep once again.

  ‘Tell me I’m not hearing this.’

  ‘I’m sorry and, naturally, I’ll pay you back every penny of what I borrow. With interest.’

  Alessandro laughed mirthlessly. ‘So finally,’ he said in a lethally soft voice, ‘the real face of Chase Evans is revealed. I’m surprised you managed to keep it hidden for so long.’ He felt as though he had been punched in the gut. This wasn’t just anger; this was a level of hurt that he could barely acknowledge even to himself. He didn’t know who he loathed more—himself for having been conned a second time, or her for having been the one to do the conning.

  ‘What do you need the money for?’ He could scarcely credit that he was willing to hear her out, willing to give her an explanation that would allow him to make sense of the situation. That window of willingness died the second she looked at him and said steadily,

  ‘I’m sorry. That’s...none of your business.’ The harshest of words, yet they would provide the clean break.

  ‘Right. So...when did you decide that you could screw me for money?’ he asked in the same ultra-controlled voice that was far more intimidating than if he had stood up and shouted at her. ‘Was it when you came to my house? Or was it when we went to Italy a
nd you saw just how much I had? Tell me. I’m curious.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Alessandro. I wouldn’t be sitting here asking you for money if...if...I didn’t have to.’

  ‘And yet you refuse to tell me what you want the money for.’ He threw up his hands in rampant frustration as she greeted this with stubborn silence. ‘Are you in some sort of debt? Hell, Chase, just be bloody straight with me!’

  ‘I told you, it’s none of your business. If you don’t want to lend me the money, then just say so.’ Her heart was breaking in two.

  ‘And, just for the record, how much money do you fancy you can bleed me for?’

  She named the figure and watched as he threw his head back and roared with laughter, except there was no humour there. He was laughing with incredulity and his dark eyes were as hard and cold as the frozen depths of a glacier.

  ‘Well...?’ Chase cleared her throat and valiantly met his eyes.

  ‘No explanations, no excuses, not even of the make-believe variety... Sorry, not good enough.’ He signalled to the waitress for the bill. ‘And consider this conversation over.’ Hell, the woman could act. She was as white as a sheet and her hands were shaking—remarkable performance. He felt something painful twist inside him, an iron fist clenching on his intestines, and staunched it down.

  ‘I think we can say that our unfinished business has been concluded. If you ever get it into your head to descend on me, either at my offices or at my house, I assure you I will have you forcibly removed either by the police or by my security personnel. Do you read me?’

  Chase nodded. Had she expected him to part with cash just because she’d asked? Because she’d offered to pay him back? Was there some part of her that had hoped he might know her well enough by now to give her the benefit of the doubt? She couldn’t tell him the truth. How could she? She was boxed in with no room to manoeuvre.

  ‘I understand,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Question.’ Alessandro was furious with himself for not walking away without a backward glance. He was even more furious with himself for the unwilling tug of compassion he was feeling for a woman who was nothing more or less than a gold-digger with great acting ability. And, underneath that maelstrom of emotion, he recognised the angry pain of disillusionment. ‘If you’re so desperate for money, why jack the job in?’