A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

‘Don’t you want me to meet the...ah...woman in your life?’ Alessandro looked at his father and marvelled, yet again, at how simple conversation could end up feeling so tortured.

Not that strides forward hadn’t been made. Ever since Laura had confided, a few days ago, about the dilemma with the tie, Alessandro had loosened up a little, had found it easier not to let his hackles rise after three seconds.

He had been invited to go over his father’s company accounts and over dinner, the night before, they had actually managed a halfway decent conversation about the gradual sale of some of his father’s interests now that he was fully retired.

Business was a safe topic of conversation and it was a damn sight more stimulating than the leaden silence that usually settled between them and to which they had become accustomed over the years.

‘Old men don’t have women.’ Roberto adjusted his navy tie and eyed his gleaming shoes with a jaundiced eye. ‘They have companions, my boy! Don’t see why the sudden interest in meeting Edith anyway! Never had much time for what was going on in my life in the past!’

‘But I wasn’t trying to convince you to leave these goings-on before, was I?’ Alessandro pointed out, because his father had developed an annoying and efficient habit of sweeping all talk of his move to London under the carpet.

‘Must be missing your women in London...’ Roberto said slyly. ‘Must be hordes of ’em walking up and down outside your house, waiting for you to return... Nothing better to do with themselves, judging from the couple I met! Certainly couldn’t get a job anywhere! Not with sawdust for brains!’

Alessandro, standing by the imposing Victorian fireplace, half smiled to himself because right now the last thing he was missing were women in London. Right now, this felt like a game and it was an exciting one. All he needed was the one woman right here on his doorstep, thank you very much.

‘I’m doing just fine,’ he murmured and missed the sharp look his father threw at him.

‘Ever think of settling down?’

Alessandro looked at his father, shocked at this unexpected departure from their normal regime of polite conversation.

‘Not if I can help it,’ he said smoothly.

‘You should,’ Roberto grizzled. ‘Marriage makes a man.’

Saved by the doorbell, Alessandro didn’t get a chance to quiz him on that because he had no idea what the quality of his father’s marriage had been, but he could only assume that it had been a dictatorship in which his long-suffering mother had had to put up with the same sort of silent treatment from a man who had only spoken when absolutely necessary. He had a mental picture of two people moving around one another in silence.

Except...how much did he actually know for sure? He was about to answer the door to a friend in her twenties he had never known existed and a woman who was his father’s girlfriend, someone else whose existence he had known nothing about.

Opening the front door, Alessandro dispelled the unsettling feeling of the floor shifting under his feet.

* * *

Laura had prepared her grandmother by telling her that Roberto’s son wanted to meet her.

‘I wondered when I’d get to meet him,’ Edith had replied crisply. ‘About time Roberto and his son sorted themselves out! Communication! That’s all it takes!’

Laura had been too busy thinking her own thoughts to pay much attention to that remark.

What to wear? What did a girl wear when she was about to see a guy to whom she was stupidly attracted, a guy who had made her insides flip over with one kiss, a guy she most certainly did not want to have a fling with...

But was still driven to impress?

It was freezing cold outside but she wore a short-sleeved, deep blue, tight-fitting top with more of a plunging neckline than she would normally feel comfortable wearing and a long, black skirt with ballet pumps. Of course, she had to layer up and she could see her grandmother looking curiously at her dressy get-up, but it was no big deal. When someone invited you to dinner at their house, it was customary to show up in something other than jeans and a shapeless woollen jumper! She left her hair loose and it tumbled down her back, held back from her face with two blue clips on either side.