A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

She had fled London and had welcomed the soothing balm of being back in Scotland. Her grandmother’s temporary frailty had been a distraction and then she had busied herself applying for the teaching job and familiarising herself with the school and the pupils. She had congratulated herself on having a new life and leaving behind a miserable situation. She had told herself that it was better to lead a quiet, contented, uneventful life than one in which she ended up being hurt. She would never be hurt again. She would never allow herself to be hurt again.

But had she been living?

Alessandro made her question her resolutions. Going to London in the first place had been a huge adventure for her, then Colin had appeared on the scene and everything had gone pear-shaped. She had obeyed her first instinct to run away, back to safety.

Anyone else might have just seen that as an obstacle to be surmounted. She was only twenty-six and he hadn’t been the great love of her life, as time had revealed! Anyone else would have carried on, trusting that the next adventure would turn out a bit better.

Instead, she had retreated and she now wondered whether that hadn’t become part of her make-up over time. Had the loss of her parents made her fearful? So careful that it had become a handicap? And was that fearfulness going to follow her for the rest of her life?

Alessandro, with his dark, sinful temptation, made her question the choices she had made.

What would happen if she accepted the gauntlet he had flung at her feet? Would she go up in flames? Would the world stop turning?

Of course not!

But maybe she would be able to re-enter the world without wearing so much protective garb around her that she could barely move, never mind live. She couldn’t let one poor experience blind her to what life had to offer, could she?

And Alessandro, in a weird way, might pose a danger because she was physically attracted to him, but physical attraction was like a virus that struck hard and then blew over—in another way, he couldn’t have been a safer bet. He wasn’t luring her on with the pretence of a relationship, as Colin had. And she was never going to fall for him. The guy for her really would be someone who shared her beliefs and values and wasn’t motivated by money and power.

‘Are you going to carry on staring at me? Or shall we move the conversation along?’

Laura started and reddened. ‘I’ll get the time off, although I’m not sure myself where his possessions are kept. I mean the ones he wouldn’t want a team of removal men to manhandle, and I’m sure he’ll insist on doing it himself. He’s very proud. Doesn’t like accepting help.’

‘You knew where to find a scrapbook.’ Alessandro clenched his jaw and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. For a second his formidable self-control seemed to desert him but it was only a fleeting sensation, then he met her green eyes squarely. ‘I expect,’ he told her drily, ‘the rest of his stuff might be in the same cubbyhole. People are nothing if not predictable.’

‘It wasn’t in a cubbyhole. It was in his bedside drawer. I went to fetch some tablets for him shortly after his operation. It fell out. Maybe he’d been looking through it.’

Alessandro didn’t want to feel any softening towards his father. The time for that had come and gone years and years ago. He knew Roberto Falcone for what he was, an unforgiving man who had probably never wanted a child in the first place, a man who kept his past a secret, even though, as a kid, Alessandro could remember asking him for details of his mother until eventually he’d given up. They had retreated into their own worlds and it was a relationship that worked for both of them. There was no room for any sudden curiosity about a scrapbook his father had kept over the years.

‘You’re quite the Good Samaritan, aren’t you?’ he murmured softly.

This was where he felt comfortable. He could relax when he was playing a game of seduction and he was certainly relaxed when he noticed the shell-pink colour that rose to her cheeks at his change of tone.

He reached out and delicately brushed a tendril of hair from her face and then he left his finger there, tracing her soft cheek until he was trailing it along her mouth.

This was where he was supposed to be.