‘Don’t tell me you’re getting too old for sex,’ she said to his averted back. ‘You’re only a year older!’ She wrapped her arms around his torso and then slipped her hands under the tee shirt, gently rubbing his flattened brown nipples with the tips of her fingers.
Alessandro shuddered, furious with himself for not being able to push her away when he knew that he had to. For both their sakes.
He felt the push of her breasts against him and turned round with a stifled moan, his big body arching back in denial of the primitive instincts he seemed unable to control.
He closed his eyes and shuddered again.
Nine months of seeing her, practically living with her, even though her college was over twenty miles away. Out towards the country because, she had told him often enough, big cities gave her a headache. Something about her was irresistible.
She took his hand and guided it to the strap of the black swimsuit which she was still wearing.
‘At least the cake wasn’t real,’ Megan murmured, already wet and hot for him. ‘Can you imagine if I’d emerged covered in Victoria sponge?’
She stood on tiptoe so that she could kiss his neck, and even though he wasn’t, as he usually was, devouring her with his hunger, he was responding. She could feel it in the tension of his muscles—and…She put her hand on him and shivered with pleasure at the very big, very hard indication of just how much he wanted her—even if, for some weird reason, he was trying to fight it.
‘Mind you,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘you would have had to lick it all off…’
The image was too powerful for Alessandro. He looked at her, at the deep cleavage inviting him to touch, promising him physical satisfaction of the kind he had never known in his life before.
I am, he thought with a strange feeling of helplessness, only a man, dammit!
He hooked his fingers under the straps of the swimsuit and ran them up and down against her smooth skin.
‘A man could lose himself in the thought of that,’ he said roughly, and all thoughts of talk vanished as he pulled down the straps and gazed at her breasts, large in comparison to her small frame, and perfectly formed. Milky-white and succulently heavy, with rose-pink nipples like discs, pouting provocatively at him.
He pulled her shakily towards the sofa and then, kicking off his shoes, lay down. He figured he had damn near found heaven as she moved on top of him, sitting just in the right spot, so that he could feel the friction of his hardness against her through his trousers. She leant forwards, letting her breasts dangle temptingly above his mouth, and with a groan of utter abandonment Alessandro took one of the proffered nipples into his mouth, losing himself in the sensation of tasting her. He suckled on it, then when he was finished lavished the same attention on the other.
He wanted her completely naked. With fierce, driven movements he rid her of the swimsuit, stopping her when she tried to pull the tee shirt over his head.
‘But I want to see you…’ Megan whimpered.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed her back, spreading her legs in one deft motion, and her protest died on her lips as she felt his tongue invade her, sliding and exploring her depths until she was squirming, turned on to the point where thinking became an impossibility.
‘Alessandro!’ She curled her fingers into his dark hair and tugged him up. She was breathing heavily, her eyes closed, and she felt him undo the zipper of his trousers so that he could free himself.
She wasn’t even entirely sure that he had removed his trousers before driving deep into her, his thrusting urgent, taking her by surprise.
It was quick, fierce lovemaking, and afterwards they were both breathless and spent. Alessandro was unusually quiet as he pushed himself away from her, so that he could get back into his jeans and then fetch a bottle of water from the fridge, which he proceeded to drink in one long swallow.
‘You need to get dressed, Megan, and then we’ll talk.’
Megan felt a chill of fear race up and down her spine, obliterating everything in its path.
Talk about what? she was desperate to ask, but his shuttered expression kept that question reined in, and she silently went to the bedroom and rescued the only items of clothing she kept at his place: a pair of jeans and a sweater.
When she returned, it was to find that he had taken up position by the table, so that when she sat down, facing him, it felt like an awkward interview.
‘If it’s about my cake surprise, you have my word I won’t do anything like that again. It’ll take more than one shampoo before my hair recovers from the masking tape. In fact, I’m going to have to sack my production manager.’
Alessandro didn’t return her grin. This was going to be a difficult conversation, made all the worse by the fact that they should never have made love. He had allowed himself a selfish luxury, one which he deeply regretted.
‘This isn’t about your cake surprise, Megan. This is about those three men who were here. I’ve been head-hunted.’ It had come as no great surprise to Alessandro. He was good. He had been head-hunted before, and had turned down all offers. With or without intervention, he was going to go places—although this particular intervention would be helpful in the near future.
‘Wow, Alessandro! That’s fantastic! We should celebrate…’ But it wasn’t a celebrating atmosphere. ‘You don’t look overjoyed.’
Alessandro shrugged. ‘Little do they realise it, but they will discover that they need me more than I need them.’
Megan laughed. ‘Well, no one could ever accuse you of not having a healthy ego, Alessandro.’
That wonderful laugh stirred something inside him which he chose to ignore.
‘I’ve been offered a job.’ He stood up, distancing himself from her. ‘In London.’
Those two words stilled the easy smile on her lips, replacing it with the cold hand of dread. ‘London? But you can’t go to London.’ What about us? ‘What about your Masters?’
‘It will have to take a back seat. I can finish it in my own time, but for the moment my future calls.’
She was trembling. She had banked on having him around for a few more months, at which point she would be able to cross the inevitable bridge. That bridge was now staring her in the face. Maybe, she thought, desperately salvaging the best possible take on the situation, they could carry on a long-distance relationship? It wouldn’t be ideal, but it could work. A few hours on the train every other weekend, and then there were the holidays…
‘When?’
‘Immediately.’ Alessandro allowed the finality of that word to settle between them like a rock sinking into deep, uncharted waters. It hurt to look at her distraught expression.
‘Immediately…as in immediately…?’
‘Just time to pack up my belongings—what little I have—and put my past behind me for good.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ she whispered. Thoughts and fears were whizzing around in her head and she was beginning to feel sick. ‘What…what about us…?’
Alessandro didn’t answer, and the silence stretched between them until she could almost hear it vibrating in the air.
‘We…we can still carry on seeing each other, can’t we? I mean, I know London’s a long way away, but loads of people have long-distance relationships. It might be romantic! Who knows? We could…um…meet up every so often…’ Her babbling trailed off into silence. More silence.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ Alessandro said flatly.
‘Why not? Wouldn’t you even be willing to give it a try?’ Desperation had crept into her voice, and she searched his face for the smallest sign of comfort. But she was looking at a stranger. His expression was closed and hard.
‘There’s no point, Megan.’
‘No point? No point? How can you say that, Alessandro? We’ve practically lived together for the better part of a year! How can you say that there’s no point in trying to stay together? I…we…Alessandro, I love you. I really do. You’re the guy I gave myself to…you know ho
w much that meant to me…’
Alessandro flushed darkly. ‘And I cherish that gift.’
He said it as though their relationship had already been consigned to the memory box.
‘Then tell me that you won’t walk away.’
‘I…I can’t say that, Megan.’ He embraced the room in one sweeping gesture with a look of distaste. ‘This…this was a chapter in my life, Megan, and it’s time for me to move on with the book.’
‘What you’re saying is that I’m a chapter in your life. You had your fun but all good things come to an end.’
‘All things do come to an end. And your life is here, Megan. Here with your family, with your teaching job out in the country. You know you hate the city. You’ve always said that. You told me that the only reason you ever ventured into Edinburgh in the first place was because your cousin had dragged you there, and that the only reason you kept coming back was to see me…If you think Edinburgh’s city living, then London is in a league of its own.’
‘You’re twisting everything I said to you! My life could be anywhere with you!’
‘No.’
He almost wished that she would cry. A crying female he could deal with, because crying females had always irritated the hell out of him. But she wasn’t a crier.
‘You’re a country girl at heart, Megan, and you would be miserable if I—or anyone else, for that matter—removed you from the open fields you enjoy. That aside…’ He paused, because he wanted to be completely honest with her. That much she deserved. ‘This step of my journey I must take alone. I’m about to devote myself to my career. I literally wouldn’t have time to spend…’
‘…taking care of a hopeless country bumpkin like me?’ Megan finished for him.
She stared down at her bare feet. The bright red nail polish she had applied to her toes earlier in the day was already beginning to flake. She would have to get rid of it. She actually hated bright red nail polish anyway. She had only put it on because it matched the Marilyn image she had wanted for her stupid, childish surprise cake gimmick.
‘Taking care of any woman.’ But maybe, he thought, there was some truth in her statement. Falling out of a box in front of three of the country’s top finance gurus might seem a bit of a joke to her, but this was going to be his life, and falling out of boxes just wasn’t going to cut it.
‘I don’t believe you.’ Megan held her ground stubbornly, determined to wade through every inch of pain until the picture was totally clear in her head. ‘You just don’t think that I’m good enough for you now you’re about to embark on this wonderful jet-setting career of yours. If I had been an…accountant, or…an economist, or someone more serious, then you wouldn’t be standing there, airbrushing me out of your life as though I’d never existed!’
‘What do you want me to say, Megan?’ He finally snapped, furious that she was making this already difficult situation even more difficult by demanding answers to hypothetical speculations. ‘That I can’t see myself in a permanent situation with someone who will probably still be fooling around and singing karaoke when she’s thirty-five?’
If he had extracted a whip from his back pocket and slashed it across her face it couldn’t have hurt more, and she stared at him mutely.
‘I apologise,’ he said brusquely. ‘That remark was entirely uncalled for. Why can’t you just accept that there are limitations to this relationship and always have been?’
‘You never mentioned anything about limitations before. You let me give you my undivided love and you never said a word about me not fitting the bill.’
‘Nor did I ever speak to you about a future for us.’
‘No,’ Megan agreed quietly. ‘No, you never did, did you?’
Alessandro steeled himself against the accusatory look in her big blue eyes. ‘I assumed you were aware of the differences between us as well as I was—assumed you knew that my intention was never to remain in Scotland, playing happy families in a cottage somewhere in the middle of nowhere.’
‘I assumed you cared about me.’
‘We had fun, Megan.’ He spun round and stared out of the grimy window to the uninspiring view two floors down. In the rapidly gathering dark the strip of shops opposite promised fish and chips, an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet every lunchtime, a newsagent and that was about it—because the other three shops were boarded up.
‘Fun?’
Alessandro ignored the bitterness that had crept into her voice. When he had first made love to her, had discovered that she was a virgin, he had felt a twinge of discomfort. In retrospect, maybe he should have walked away at that point, rather than allowing her to invest everything into him, but he had been weak and—face it—unable to resist her. He was now paying the price for that weakness.
‘You’re better off without me,’ he said roughly, as he continued to stare outside. ‘You have all you need right here. You’ll teach at that school of yours, only a short distance away from all your family, and in due course you’ll find a guy who will be content with the future you have mapped out.’
Megan had thought that the future she had mapped out for herself had included him!
‘Yes,’ she said dully. He wasn’t even looking at her. He had already written her out of his life and was ready to move on. ‘Why did you make love with me just now if you intended to get rid of me?’ she asked. ‘Was it a one-last-time session for poor old Megan before you sent her on her way?’
Alessandro spun round, but he didn’t make a move towards her. ‘It was…a…mistake…’ And never again would he allow his emotions to control his behaviour.
He gripped the window sill against which he was leaning and reminded himself that, however much she was hurting now, she was still a kid and would bounce back in no time at all. She would even thank him eventually for walking away from her—would realise in time to come that they were worlds apart and whatever they had had would never have stayed the course of time. It was a reassuring thought.
Megan couldn’t bear to look at him. She stood up, staring at the ground as though searching for divine inspiration.
‘I think I’m going to leave now,’ she said, addressing her feet. ‘I’ll just check the bedroom. See if there’s anything of mine that I should take with me.’
He didn’t try to stop her rooting through his stuff. The lack of anything belonging to her now seemed ominous proof of her impermanence in his life. He had never encouraged her to leave any of her things at his place. Sure, she’s forgotten odd bits and pieces now and again, like the clothes she was currently standing in, but he’d always returned them.
The only things she had insisted on leaving were some of her CDs. She was voracious when it came to modern music, whereas he preferred more chilled sounds. Easy listening to the point of coma, she had teased him. Yet another example of those differences between them, which she had stupidly failed to spot but which he had probably noted and lodged away in his mind somewhere, to be brought out later and used in evidence against her.
Without looking in his direction, she quietly gathered her CDs and stuffed them in a plastic bag.
‘I think that’s about everything.’ Some CDs, a toothbrush, some moisture cream, some underwear. Precious little. ‘Good luck with the new job and the new life, Alessandro. I really hope it lives up to expectations and I’m sorry about the mess from the cake. You’ll have to get rid of that yourself.’
Alessandro nodded. He didn’t say anything because there was nothing left to say, and for the first time in his life he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Megan turned away, and was half-disappointed, half-relieved when he didn’t follow her. There was an emptiness growing inside her, and her throat felt horribly dry and tight, but there would be time enough to cry. Once she was back in her little room at college. Just one last look, though. Before she left for good. But when she turned around, it was to find that he was staring out of the window with his back to her.
CHAPTER ONE
MEGAN st
ooped down so that she was on the same level as the six-year-old, brown-haired, blue-eyed boy in front of her. Face of an angel, but spoiled rotten. She had seen many versions of this child over the past two years, since she had been working in London. It seemed to be particularly predominant at private schools, where children were lavished with all that money could buy but often starved of the things that money couldn’t.
‘Okay, Dominic. Here’s the deal. The show’s about to start, the mummies and daddies are all out there waiting, and the Nativity play just isn’t going to be the same without you in it.’
‘I don’t want to be a tree! I hate the costume, Miss Reynolds, and if you force me then I’m going to tell my mummy, and you’ll be in big trouble. My mummy’s a lawyer, and she can put people into prison!’ he ended, with folded arms and a note of irrefutable triumph in his voice.
Megan clung to her patience with immense difficulty. It had been a mad week. Getting six-year-old children to learn and memorise their lines had proved to be a Herculean feat, and the last thing she needed on the day before school broke up was a badly behaved brat refusing to be a tree.
‘You’re a very important tree,’ she said gently. ‘Very important. The manger wouldn’t be a manger without a very important tree next to it!’ She looked at her watch and mentally tried to calculate how much time she had to convince this tree to take his leading role on stage—a role which involved nothing more strenuous than waving his arms and swaying. She had only been at this particular school for a term, but she had already sussed the difficult ones, and had cleverly steered them away from any roles that involved speech.
‘I want my mummy. She’ll tell you that I can be whatever I want to be! And I want to be a donkey.’
‘Lucy’s the donkey, darling.’
‘I want to be a donkey!’
Tree; donkey; donkey; tree. Right now, Megan was heartily wishing that she had listened to her friend Charlotte, when she had decided to leave St Margaret’s and opted for another private school. Somewhere a little more normal. She could deal with normal fractious children. She had spent three years dealing with them at St Nick’s in Scotland, after she had qualified as a teacher. None of them had ever threatened her with prison.
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