The finer details, she would leave for Alessio to discover. In the meantime, not quite knowing what to do with herself, she went outside and tried to get her thoughts in order.
Where did she go from here? She had always been in control of her life; she had always been proud of the fact that she knew where she was heading. She hadn’t stopped for a minute to think that something as crazy as falling in love could ever derail her plans because she had always assumed that she would fall in love with someone who slotted into her life without causing too much of a ripple. She hadn’t been lying when she had told Alessio that the kind of guy she imagined for herself would be someone very much like her.
How could she ever have guessed that the wrong person would come along and throw everything into chaos?
And what did she do now?
Still thinking, she felt rather than saw Alessio behind her and she turned around. Even in the darkness he had the bearing of a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and she instinctively walked towards him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
Alessio felt like he could hold onto her for ever. Wrong-footed by the intensity of that feeling, he pulled her closer and covered her mouth with his. His hand crept up underneath the tee-shirt and Lesley stepped back.
‘Is sex the only thing you ever think about?’ she asked sharply, and she answered the question herself, providing the affirmative she knew was the death knell to any relationship they had.
He wanted sex, she wanted more—it was as simple as that. Never had the gulf between them seemed so vast. It went far beyond the differences in their backgrounds, their life experiences or their expectations. It was the very basic difference between someone who wanted love and someone who only wanted sex.
‘How is Rachel?’ She folded her arms, making sure to keep some space between them.
‘Shaken.’
‘Is that all you have to say? That she’s shaken?’
‘Are you deliberately trying to goad me into an argument?’ Alessio looked at her narrowly. ‘I’m frankly not in the mood to soothe whatever feathers I’ve accidentally ruffled.’ He shook his head, annoyed with himself for venting his stress on her, but he had picked something up—something stirring under the surface—even though, for the life of him, he couldn’t understand what could possibly be bugging her. She certainly hadn’t spent the past hour trying and failing to get through to a wayward teenager who had sat in semi-mute silence absorbing everything that was being said to her but responding to nothing.
He was frustrated beyond endurance and he wondered if his own frustration was making him see nuances in her behaviour that weren’t there.
‘And I’m frankly amazed that you could talk to your daughter, have this awkward conversation, and yet have so little to report back on the subject.’
‘I didn’t realise that it was my duty to report back to you,’ Alessio grated and Lesley reddened.
‘Wrong choice of words.’ She sighed. Here were the cracks, she thought with a hollow sense of utter dejection. Things would go swimmingly well just so long as she could disentangle sex from love, but she was finding that she couldn’t now. She spiked her fingers through her short hair and looked away from him, out towards the same black sea which his villa down the road overlooked.
She could see the way this would play out: making love would become a bittersweet experience; she would be the temporary mistress, making do, wondering when her time would be up. She suspected that that time would come very quickly once they returned to England. The refreshing, quirky novelty of bedding a woman with brains, who spoke her mind, who could navigate a computer faster than he could, would soon pall and he would begin itching to return to the unchallenging women who had been his staple diet.
Nor would he want a woman around who reminded him of the sore topic of his daughter and her misbehaviour, which had almost cost him a great deal of money.
‘Would it be okay if I went to talk to her?’ Lesley asked, and Alessio looked at her in surprise.
‘What would you hope to achieve?’
‘It might help talking to someone who isn’t you.’
‘Even though she sees you as the perpetrator of the “searching the bedroom” crime? I should have stepped in there and told her that that was a joint decision.’
‘Why?’ Lesley asked with genuine honesty. ‘I guess you had enough on your plate to deal with and, besides, I will walk away from this and never see either of you again. If she pins the blame on me, then I can take it.’
Alessio’s jaw hardened but he made no comment. ‘She’s still in the dining room,’ he said. ‘At least, that’s where I left her. Claudia has disappeared to bed, and frankly I don’t blame her. In the morning, I shall tell her that my daughter has agreed that the best thing is to return to England with me.’
‘And school?’
‘As yet to be decided, but it’s safe to say that she won’t be returning to her old stamping ground.’
‘That’s good.’ She fidgeted, feeling his distance and knowing that, while she had been responsible for creating it, she still didn’t like it. ‘I won’t be long,’ she promised, and backed away.
Like a magnet, his presence seemed to want to pull her back towards him but she forced herself through to the dining room, little knowing what she would find.
She half-expected Rachel to have disappeared into another part of the house, but the teenager was still sitting in the same chair, staring vacantly through the window.
‘I thought we might have a chat,’ Lesley said, approaching her warily and pulling a chair out to sit right next to her.
‘What for? Have you decided that you want to apologise for going through my belongings when you had no right?’
‘No.’
Rachel looked at her sullenly. She switched on her mobile phone, switched it off again and rested it on the table.
‘Your dad’s been worried sick.’
‘I’m surprised he could take the time off to be worried,’ Rachel muttered, fiddling with the phone and then eventually folding her arms and looking at Lesley with unmitigated antagonism. ‘This is all your fault.’
‘Actually, it’s got nothing to do with me. I’m only here because of you and you’re in this position because of what you did.’
‘I don’t have to sit here and listen to some stupid employee preach to me.’ But she remained on the chair, glaring.
‘And I don’t have to sit here, but I want to, because I grew up without a mum and I know it can’t be easy for you.’
‘Oh puh...lease....’ She dragged that one word out into a lengthy, disdainful, childish snort of contempt.
‘Especially,’ Lesley persevered, ‘As Alessio—your father—isn’t the easiest person in the world when it comes to touchy-feely conversations.’
‘Alessio? Since when are you on first-name terms with my father?’
‘He wants nothing more than to have a relationship with you, you know,’ Lesley said quietly. She wondered if this was what love did, made you want to do your utmost to help the object of your affections, to make sure they were all right, even if you knew that they didn’t return your love and would happily exit your life without much of a backward glance.
‘And that’s why he never bothered to get in touch when I was growing up? Ever?’
Lesley’s heart constricted. ‘Is that what you really believe?’
‘It’s what I was told by my mum.’
‘I think you’ll find that your father did his best to keep in touch, to visit... Well, you’ll have to talk to him about that.’
‘I’m not going to be talking to him again.’
‘Why didn’t you come clean with your dad, or even one of the teachers, when that boy started threatening you?’ She had found a couple of crumpled notes and had quickly got the measure of a lad who had been happy to extort as much of Rachel’s considerable pocket money as he could by holding it over her head that he had proof of the one joint she had smoked wit
h him and was willing to lie to everyone that it had been more than that. When the pocket money had started running out, he must have decided to go directly to the goose that was laying the golden eggs: pay up or else he would go to the press and disclose that one of the biggest movers and shakers in the business world had a druggie teenage daughter. ‘You must have been scared stiff,’ she mused, half to herself.
‘That’s none of your business.’
Some of the aggression had left her voice. When Lesley looked at her, she saw the teenage girl who had been bullied and threatened by someone willing to take advantage of her one small error of judgement.
‘Well, you dad’s going to sort all of that out. He’ll make the whole thing go away.’ She heard the admiring warmth in her voice and cleared her throat. ‘You should give him a chance.’
‘And what’s it to you?’
Lesley blushed.
‘Oh, right.’ She gave a knowing little laugh and sniffed. ‘Well, I’m not about to give anyone a chance, and I don’t care if he sorts that thing out or not. So. He dumped me and I had to traipse around with my mum and all her boyfriends.’
‘You knew your mum...err...? Well, none of my business.’ She stood up. ‘You should give your dad a chance and at least listen to what he has to say. He tried very hard to keep in touch with you but, well, you should let him explain how that went—and you should go get some sleep.’
She exited the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Had she got through to Rachel? Who knew? It would take more than one conversation to break down some of those teenage walls, but several things had emerged.
Aside from the fact that everything was now on the table—and, whether she admitted it or not, that would have come as a huge relief to Rachel—it was clear that the girl had had no idea just how hard her father had tried to keep in touch with her, how hard he had fought to maintain contact.
And Alessio had no idea that his daughter was aware of Bianca’s wild, promiscuous temperament.
Join those two things together, throw into the mix the fact that Rachel had kept a scrapbook of photos and cuttings, and Lesley suspected that an honest conversation between father and daughter would go some distance to opening the door to a proper relationship.
And if Rachel was no longer at a boarding school, but at a day school in London, they would both have the opportunity to start building a future and leaving the past behind.
She went outside to find Alessio still there and she quietly told him what she had learned during the conversation with his daughter.
‘She thinks you abandoned her,’ she reinforced bluntly. ‘And she would have been devastated at the thought of that. It might explain why she’s been such a rebel, but she’s young. You’re going to have to take the lead and lower your defences if you want to get through to her.’
Alessio listened, head tilted to one side, and when she had finished talking he nodded slowly and then told her in return what he intended to do to sort the small matter of a certain Jack Perkins. He had already contacted someone he trusted to supply him with information about the boy and he had enough at his disposal to pay a visit to his parents and make sure the matter was resolved quickly and efficiently, never again to rear its ugly head.
‘When I’m through,’ Alessio promised in a voice of steel, ‘That boy will think twice before he goes near an Internet café again, never mind threatening anyone.’
Lesley believed him and she didn’t doubt that Jack Perkins’ life of crime was about to come crashing down around his head. It had transpired that his family was well-connected. Not only would they be horrified at what their son had done, and the drug problems he was experiencing, but his father would know that Alessio’s power stretched far; if he were to be crossed again by a delinquent boy, then who knew what the repercussions would be?
The problem, Alessio assured her, would wait until he returned to the UK. It wasn’t going anywhere and, whilst he could hand over the business of wrapping it up to a trusted advisor and friend, he would much rather do it himself.
‘When I’m attacked,’ he said softly, ‘Then I prefer to retaliate using my own fists rather than relying on my bodyguards.’
Everything, Lesley thought, had been neatly wrapped up and she was certain that father and daughter would eventually find their way and become the family unit they deserved to be.
Which left her...the spectator whose purpose had been served and whose time had come to depart.
They drove in silence back to Alessio’s villa. He planned on returning to his mother-in-law’s the following morning and he would talk to his daughter once again.
He didn’t say what that conversation would be, but Lesley knew that he had taken on board what she had said, and he would try and grope his way to some sort of mutual ground on which they could both converse.
Alessio knew that, generally speaking, the outcome to what could have been a disaster had been good.
Jack Perkins had revealed problems with his daughter that would now be addressed, and Lesley’s mediation had been pretty damn fantastic. How could his daughter not have known that he had tried his hardest? He would set her straight on that. He could see that Rachel had been lost and therefore far too vulnerable in a school that had clearly allowed too much freedom. He might or might not take them to task on that.
‘Thanks,’ he suddenly said gruffly as they pulled up into the carport at the side of the villa. He killed the engine and looked at Lesley. ‘You didn’t just sort out who was behind this but you went the extra mile, and we both know, gentle bribe or no gentle bribe, you didn’t have to do that.’ Right now, all he wanted to do was get inside the villa, carry her upstairs to the bedroom and make love to her. Take all night making love to her. He had never felt as close to any woman.
No, Lesley thought with a tinge of bitterness, she really had had no need to go the extra mile, but she had, and it had had nothing to do with bribes, gentle or otherwise.
‘We should talk,’ she said after a while.
Alessio stilled. ‘I thought we just had.’
Lesley hopped out of the car, slammed the door behind her and waited for him. Just then, in the car, it had felt way too intimate. Give it just a few more seconds sitting there, breathing him in, hearing that lazy, sexy drawl, and all her good intentions would have gone down the drain.
‘Want to tell me what this is all about?’ was the first thing he asked the second they were inside his villa. He threw the car keys on the hand-carved sideboard by the front door and led the way into the kitchen where he helped himself to a long glass of water from a bottle in the fridge. Then he sat down and watched as she took the seat furthest away from him.
‘How long,’ she finally asked, ‘Do you plan on staying here?’
‘Where is that question leading?’ For the first time, he could feel quicksand underneath his feet and he didn’t like it. He wished he had had something stronger to drink; a whisky would have gone down far better than a glass of water. He didn’t like the way she had sat a million miles across the room from him; he didn’t like the mood she had been in for the past few hours; he didn’t like the way she couldn’t quite seem to meet his eyes. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he muttered when she didn’t say anything. ‘At least until the end of the week. Rachel and I have a few things to sort out, not to mention a frank discussion of where she will go to school. There are a lot of fences to be mended and they won’t be mended overnight; it’ll take a few days before we can even work out where the holes are. But what has that got to do with anything?’
‘I won’t be staying on here with you.’ She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. ‘I do realise that I promised I would stay the week, but I think my job here is done, and it’s time for me to return to London.’
‘Your job here is done?’ Alessio could not believe what he was hearing.
‘Yes, and I just want to say that there’s every chance that you and your daughter will find a happy solution to the difficulties you
’ve been experiencing in your relationship.’
‘Your job here...is done? So you’re heading back?’
‘I don’t see the point of staying on.’
‘And I don’t believe I’m hearing this. What do you mean you don’t see the point of staying on?’ He point-blank refused to ask what about us? That was not a question that would ever pass his lips. He remembered what she had said about wanting to head back out there, get into the thick of the dating scene—now that she had used him to reintroduce her to the world of sex; now that she had overcome her insecurities, thanks to him.
Pride slammed in and he looked at her coldly.
‘What we have, Alessio, isn’t going anywhere. We both agreed on that, didn’t we?’ She could have kicked herself for the plaintive request she heard in her voice, the request begging him to contradict her. ‘And I’m not interested in having a fling until we both run out of steam. Actually, probably until we get back to London. I’m not in the market for a holiday romance.’
‘And what are you in the market for?’ Alessio asked softly.
Lesley tilted her chin and returned his cool stare. Was she about to reveal that she was in the market for a long-term, for ever, happy-ever-after, committed relationship? Would she say that so that he could naturally assume that she was talking about him? Wanting that relationship with him? It would be the first conclusion he would reach. Women, he had told her, always seemed to want more than he was prepared to give. He would assume that she had simply joined the queue.
There was no way that she would allow her dignity to be trampled into the ground.
‘Right now...’ her voice was steady and controlled, giving nothing away ‘...all I want is to further my career. The company is still growing. There are loads of opportunities to grow with it, even perhaps to be transferred to another part of the country. I want to be there to take advantage of those opportunities.’ She thought she sounded like someone trying to sell themselves at an interview, but she held her ground and her eyes remained clear and focused.
THE UNCOMPROMISING ITALIAN Page 13