‘He didn’t say, and I didn’t like to pry,’ I said. ‘I got the feeling it was painful for him to discuss.’
‘Poor little kid.’ Lucy sighed. ‘But is boarding school the right place for her?’
‘Al—Dr Lucioni is renovating his house,’ I said, just catching myself from saying his Christian name in time. ‘Claudia will live with him once it’s completed, or until her mother is out of hospital—whichever happens first.’
‘But if the kid’s mother’s in hospital and she’s boarding he won’t be able to take her to see her.’
I’d been thinking the very same thing. Years ago no one took children to visit their loved ones in hospital in the belief that it would terrify them or make them too upset. It was the same with funerals. Children were kept away in an effort to shield them. But children needed to process the same emotions that adults felt, with plenty of support at hand.
‘I know,’ I said to Lucy. ‘I guess he thinks it’s for the best. Perhaps the mother’s on a ventilator or something. That would be pretty distressing to see as a little kid.’
‘Maybe she’s in a psych ward?’ Lucy said.
A ghostly hand touched the back of my neck with icy fingers. Was that why Alessandro was keeping his little niece away? Was Claudia’s mother mentally unstable?
Mental illness is possibly the most difficult of all conditions for a child to understand. The impact of medication can often make things worse before it makes things better. It’s harrowing for everyone involved, let alone a small child who looks to their parent for safety and security.
I frowned into my cup and saw the tea-leaves had spilled out of the tea bag from all the jiggling. They’d made a weird swirly pattern on the bottom of my cup.
I couldn’t help wondering what my mother would make of it.
***
I stayed late at school—there was nothing unusual in that—to check that Claudia was settling in to the boarding house. I found her and Phoebe sitting on the floor of their bedroom with a bunch of Barbies in various states of dress and undress.
I didn’t interrupt them for long. As usual Phoebe was doing all the talking, but Claudia was handing her articles of clothing and tiny high-heeled shoes, and seemed to be enjoying herself. I suspected Phoebe’s friendly chatter relaxed Claudia as it took the pressure off her to speak. After all, there are speakers and there are listeners. Some people are much more comfortable doing all the talking. Others like to take time to listen and reflect. I suspected that even without her speech impediment Claudia would still be a reserved and reflective child.
On the way out I had a chat with Jennifer to make sure everything was going fine, and was reassured to hear Claudia had eaten a healthy after-school snack and had even smiled a couple of times at something Phoebe had said. I wondered if the boarding house was providing the sort of security and routine Claudia might have been missing in her life with her mother. I couldn’t let it go. I had to find out what was wrong with her mother.
But the only way I could do that was to meet with Alessandro. In private.
I found his address on the school’s computer system. I had his number on the business card he’d given me, but I didn’t want to give him a heads-up about me coming to visit. I wanted simply to show up. I know it was cynical of me, but I wanted to cold-call him to see if he really was renovating—not trying to keep some sexy little model-type a secret while his little niece languished at boarding school.
I know. I’m a hard case. But it’s his fault.
I drove about twenty minutes out of Bath into the countryside that makes England so famous. Verdant rolling fields, birds twittering in the hedgerows and late-afternoon sunlight casting everything in a golden hue that looked as picturesque as a postcard.
I turned up a tree-lined driveway that had a creamy-coloured Georgian mansion at the end of it. The trees’ overarching limbs with their fresh spring growth created a lime-green canopy overhead. It was like driving through a long, leafy tunnel.
The mansion, on closer inspection, was indeed in the throes of being renovated. Tradesmen’s tools such as ladders and sawhorses and scaffolding surrounded the building, and stonemasons had clearly been doing their thing. However, they weren’t currently doing their thing as it was way past knock-off time. The place looked deserted.
I parked the car and got out, waiting for a sign of anyone responding to my arrival. Not that my car gave anything like the roar Alessandro’s had done outside school that morning. My car is more of the coughing and spluttering type, although today was a good day. So far.
I stood there for five minutes… Well, it was probably closer to thirty seconds, but it felt like five years. In case you haven’t already guessed by now, I’m not the most patient person on the planet.
I walked across the gravel courtyard to the front door, my footsteps sounding like I was walking over bubble wrap in spiky heels. There was a brass doorbell on the left-hand side of the door, which I noted needed a good polish. It made no sound at all that I could tell from where I was standing. I gave the door a rap with my knuckles but—unlike in all those period dramas my sister loves watching—no uniformed butler answered my summons.
I looked at the door for a moment before reaching out and turning the doorknob. The door opened with a ghostly creak that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The sensible, law-abiding side of my brain was asking, What the hell are you doing trespassing on private property? But the other side was saying, Go on. Have a good old snoop. You know you want to.
I stepped over the threshold and peered around in the failing light. Thousands of dust motes were floating in the air, as if my entry had disturbed them from a century-long slumber. I stepped further inside, and the floorboards announced my presence with a screech of protest. It gave me such a fright that I let go of the doorknob and a tiny gust of wind—it might even have been a ghost, but don’t tell my mother I said that—closed the door behind me with a snap that sounded as loud as a rifle shot.
My heart was suddenly not where it was supposed to be. It had leapt from my chest to my throat and was fluttering there like a pigeon stuck in a pipe. I gave myself a good old talking-to and reached for the doorknob. It wouldn’t budge. I rattled it a couple of times. I turned it this way and that. I tugged on it. Then I put both hands on it and rattled it some more.
The rattles echoed throughout the foyer like chains in a dungeon. I could feel perspiration breaking out between my shoulder blades even though the temperature inside the house was cool. Ghost cool, if you were the type to believe in all that nonsense—which, of course, I wasn’t. I knew for sure that my parents’ seances were staged. I’d seen my father’s finger pushing the glass across the board. I’d pushed the thing myself, to spell out ‘this sucks’ when my mother had pressured me to join in the last time I visited.
I pulled on the doorknob with one almighty tug and stumbled backwards as it came off in my hands. I regained my balance and stood staring down at the brass ball of the doorknob as if it were a hand grenade.
I tried to put it back where it belonged, but part of the mechanism had come away with the knob. My heart began its frantic flapping up in my throat again. I was trapped inside Alessandro Lucioni’s house and night was falling. How on earth was I going to get out? What if he found me skulking around in there? I would look like a complete nutcase. A stalker. A prowler. A first-class idiot.
The windows. Of course! I put the doorknob down on the dust-ridden surface of a hall table and went to the nearest windows, which were in a reception/drawing room off the hall. I tried the catches but they looked like they had all been painted over. None of them would budge at all.
I went to the next room along but, while I was able to get one catch undone, the sash of the window must have been broken because it wouldn’t lift up. I let out a very rude word—and turned around to see a tall, silent figure framed in the doorway. This time my heart almost leapt out of my throat and bounced along the floor. Then I realised it wa
s Alessandro, and not some ghostly spectre from the past.
But then, he was a spectre from the past.
‘You scared the freaking hell out of me!’ I said.
He cocked an eyebrow in a wry manner. ‘Same.’
Quite frankly, I was annoyed he wasn’t showing any of the fear or shock he’d alleged I’d caused him. My heart was still hammering so fast I could feel it in my fingertips, and my stomach was like a butter churn set on too fast a speed.
When I’m cornered I always go on the offensive. ‘What sort of place is this?’ I said. ‘It’s not safe for an adult, let alone a child. You should have hazard signs up, with skulls and crossbones on them. How on earth are you going to have this house ready in a month? Have you got rocks in your head?’
He moved further into the room. It was a large room. A very large room. But when he entered it felt like we were in a dolls’ house. Or maybe even a matchbox. He came to stand in front of me. I resisted the urge to back away. There wasn’t anywhere to go other than through the window that had stubbornly refused to provide me with an escape route.
The closer he got the more my heart raced. Boom. Boom. Boom. It was not just pounding in my fingertips but between my legs as well. I could feel the memory of him pulsing through me, heating me inside out. My flesh was hungry, starved, just about gagging for his touch. I could feel its restiveness against the covering of my clothes, as if my body couldn’t wait to get naked and feel his wickedly clever hands gliding over every inch of it.
His eyes were dark and inscrutable as they held mine. ‘Why are you sneaking around my house?’
I gave him an affronted look. ‘I wasn’t sneaking. I called on you but no one answered the door.’
‘So you let yourself in?’
The way he said it made it sound like I’d committed a crime. But then, breaking and entering was—and I was guilty on both counts. I’d entered his house and I’d broken his door.
‘I was just taking a look around,’ I said, quickly thinking on my feet. ‘I was checking to see if the place was suitable. We at Emily Sudgrove often do home visits.’
One of his dark brows went up again. ‘Unannounced?’
‘Well, yes, of course,’ I said. ‘We like to make sure our girls come from good homes. Safe homes.’ I emphasised the word ‘safe’.
Something in his gaze hardened to onyx. ‘I can assure you my niece’s safety is my primary concern, Miss Clark.’
It was kind of weird, having him call me Miss Clark—even though I’d been the one to insist on it. It was like we were each playing a role in a play. And right now it was feeling more and more like a melodrama. He was looking all stern and irritated, as if he wanted to remove me bodily from the premises, and I felt like a petty thief caught red-handed.
But I could also feel something else pulsing between us. Not just hostility, because that was coming mostly from me. I’m no mind-reader, but I got a sense that he was brooding over something that had nothing to do with our history. There was a wall around him—an invisible fortress that made him appear untouchable. It was like he was weighed down with something. It was in the way he held himself: the braced posture, the rigid set of his jaw, the guardedness about his expression and the shadows that came and went at the back of his eyes.
Was it concern about his sister and his niece? It was an enormous responsibility to be appointed in loco parentis. He was used to being a playboy, free to live his life without having to answer to anyone.
He walked back to the door of the drawing room and held it open in a pointed manner. ‘I have things to do. I trust you’ll make your own way out?’
I gave him a sheepish look. ‘Actually, I had a bit of a problem with your front door.’
A muscle ticked near the corner of his mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was anger or amusement. It was hard to tell from his expression.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, it sort of broke. That’s how I got locked in. That’s why I was in here, trying to get out of the window.’
It was definitely amusement, I decided. I could see the corners of his mouth twitching and a gleam had come into his darker-than-night eyes.
‘There is a back entrance.’
Now, why didn’t I think of that? I wondered. ‘Oh, right…well. Maybe I’ll go out that way.’
I made to go past him in the doorway but he put out his arm like a railway-crossing barrier.
‘When Beauty trespasses on the Beast’s property there’s a forfeit to pay,’ he said.
I wasn’t sure what version of Beauty and the Beast he was working from, but it certainly wasn’t the same as mine. I looked at the strongly corded muscles of his arm, blocking my escape. He was wearing a light grey cotton T-shirt that clung to his chest and shoulders like cling film. Every sculpted muscle was showcased to perfection—especially his pectorals and biceps. Oh, dear God, his biceps.
He had patches of perspiration on his chest and beneath his armpits, and his arms were dusty—as if he had been working on the house. How could someone look so good when they were so hot and sweaty? My insides did a little shuffling thing at the thought of those arms pinning me to a bed while he had his wicked, wonderfully heart-stopping way with me.
I made the mistake of lifting my gaze to his mouth. He hadn’t shaved since that morning and his stubble was rich and plentiful, reminding me of the way it had felt scraping along my skin in the past.
I had to curl my fingers into tight balls to stop myself from touching him. I surreptitiously breathed in the scent of him—that beguiling mix of citrus and hard-working male that was as intoxicating as a drug. Not that I’ve ever done drugs. I leave that sort of stuff to my parents.
I curled my fists even harder. So hard I could feel my nails digging into my palms—which is really saying something, as I don’t have any nails to speak of. I’ve been a nail-biter since… Well, since way back.
The urge to touch him was overwhelming. It was like my body was set on automatic. It wanted to do all the things it used to do. Touch him. Stroke him. Kiss him until we were tearing at each other’s clothes. My inner core was throbbing with need and he hadn’t even touched me.
Alessandro’s gaze went to my mouth. I knew that look so well. I hadn’t been able to erase that look from my memory even though I had so desperately tried. The smouldering heat of it, the electrifying erotic promise of it, was enough to make my girly bits shiver in rapture.
He lifted his hand and ever so slowly grazed my face with his knuckles. It was such a light touch, barely touching my face at all, but it was as if he had set alive every nerve beneath my skin with an electrode. I felt the pulse of it shoot like a hot wire straight to my core.
‘You should’ve left while you had the chance,’ he said, in a voice that sounded like it had been dragged over his gravel driveway before being swirled around in a pot of honey.
I could have pointed out that he hadn’t given me the chance to leave, but right then winning an argument wasn’t high on my list of priorities. I found myself transfixed by his mouth as it came inexorably closer to mine. My breath hitched and stuttered and then stalled. My heart leapt and then galloped as our breaths mingled in that infinitesimal moment before final touchdown.
My lips all but exploded with fiery sensation as his covered mine. The pressure of his mouth was not too hard nor too soft, but—to borrow from another popular fairy tale—just right. His tongue stroked along the seam of my mouth but he needn’t have bothered asking for entry. I was already opening to him with a sound of encouragement that was part whimper, part gasp of delighted surprise.
How could I have forgotten how wonderful his mouth tasted? It was like rediscovering a favourite flavour. My tastebuds tingled and danced and exploded with delight. My tongue met his, darting against it in a come-play-with-me action that made him growl deep at the back of his throat.
He took control of the kiss by spinning me around so my back was against the nearest wall, pinning my hands either side of my head as his mouth
supped and sucked on mine. The seductive pressure on my mouth incited me to arch my back and press my pelvis against his in a totally instinctive, utterly primal manner. I wanted to feel his response to me. The swell of his flesh, the arousal that signalled his need for me, which I desperately hoped was as fervent and out of control as mine.
It was.
He was hard and getting harder. I could feel the hardened swell of his erection growing against my body, making me ache with a bone-deep longing. I moved against him wantonly, urging him to take things to the next level. It had been so long since I’d felt desire like this. It was pulsing through me like a force I had no power to control.
There was an element of desperation about his kiss—as if he’d been waiting a long time to feast on my mouth and was making up for lost time. His tongue stabbed and stroked at mine, ramping up my desire until my whole body was trembling with it.
He reached for the tie at the back of my head and my hair fell in a mass of curls around my shoulders. He fisted one of his hands in my hair as he worked his magic on my mouth. The slight tug on the roots of my hair triggered a wave of intense longing deep in my womb.
His mouth moved from mine to blaze a hot, moist pathway down the sensitive skin of my neck. His stubble grazed, his teeth scraped, his tongue salved. I whimpered and melted against him. My legs were like two strands of overcooked fettuccine. I would have slithered to the floor if it hadn’t been for him holding me upright.
He moved further down to my décolletage; ruthlessly pulling aside the sensible cotton blouse I was wearing to access the upper curve of my breasts. His tongue licked the valley between before moving up in a fiery blast of heat over each of my curves in turn. He didn’t expose my nipples. He didn’t have to. They were doing their own little happy dance behind the lace cups of my bra.
His mouth came back to mine as he tugged my blouse out of the waistband of my cotton trousers so he could access my naked skin. I shuddered with delight as his hands glided over my waist and rib cage. His hands were slightly callused, and that added roughness gave his touch a primal, almost dangerous element to it that made my knees feel as weak and wobbly as a newborn foal on ice skates.
Italian Surgeon to the Stars Page 5