A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

Sometimes, though, it was impossible to respond to him the way her head told her to. Sometimes he just got under her skin and no amount of rubbing could get rid of him.

‘Actually, I happen to like your grandmother very much,’ Alessandro admitted seriously. ‘I don’t know what I expected but she...she seems good for my father...’

‘And what did you expect?’

‘Someone a little more subservient. I’ll be honest, my father isn’t the easiest of men. I didn’t envisage that he would be...attracted...God, have I really said that?...attracted to someone as outspoken.’

‘What was your mother like?’

‘That remains one of life’s mysteries. It’s not a subject I have ever discussed with my father and it isn’t a subject I intend discussing with you.’ He’d tried with his father and had come up against a brick wall of uncooperative evasiveness. He’d stopped trying a long, long time ago.

Laura blushed. His voice had cooled. Sexual innuendo and flirting was fine. A serious conversation apparently wasn’t. Whatever he did, he did on his terms and that included how much he wanted to share of himself.

Not that it mattered. This wasn’t a show-and-tell, getting-to-know-you session.

‘She keeps him in line.’ Laura smiled. ‘They suit one another. She likes fussing over someone and he enjoys being fussed over. She tells him what he should and shouldn’t do and he’s like a little lamb when he’s with her.’

‘I can’t believe we’re talking about the same person. No matter, the point is...I may possibly have got it wrong when I decided that the only option was to move my father to London.’ He sipped some wine and looked at her over the rim of his glass. He really enjoyed the way she was so transparent, so lacking in artifice. ‘I hadn’t thought that the life he had built here for himself was so... Well, put it this way, I hadn’t thought that he’d built any life for himself here. It seems that I was wrong and I’m big enough to admit it.’

Laura couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes heavenwards and Alessandro frowned.

‘Oh, honestly!’ She sighed and laughed lightly, taking in his bemused expression. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever rolled their eyes or clicked their tongue at something you’ve said?’

‘I’ve just admitted that I may have been wrong. What’s the rolling of the eyes all about?’

‘You’re big enough to admit it? What was the other option? That you carry on pretending that he’s a lonely old man and drag him down to London rather than admit you’d got it wrong? We all misjudge situations once in a while.’ He was staring at her with a blank expression and she realised that didn’t apply to him. That just wasn’t how his world worked. In Alessandro’s world misjudging of situations didn’t happen but, then, his world was all about stuff that could be measured. Deals, money, business...things that were a million miles away from emotions, feelings and lives, things where misjudgement happened all the time. ‘Okay,’ she said slowly, ‘so now you’ve recognised that, what happens next?’

‘He still needs to move out of that oversized mansion. I always wondered why he bought it in the first place. I am prepared to admit that remaining here might be for the best. The hunt will have to begin to find him somewhere a little more compact, a little more manageable...’

‘Aren’t you going to discuss this with your father?’

‘I’ll broach the topic. So...now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the weekend.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ She couldn’t give in to his flirting. She couldn’t let herself be overtaken by something as stupid and transitory as physical chemistry. She bristled at the thought that he felt he could just try to dictate how she should spend the little amount of time he designated to spending in a backwater he normally wouldn’t be caught dead in. She tried to rustle up Colin’s image in her head but all she could see were Alessandro’s far too knowing dark eyes focused on her with the sort of lazy intent that sent her nervous system into frantic overdrive.