A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

In receipt of his father’s confidences, she had been just what he had needed.

And he knew that he wanted more of her.

His father was asleep by the time he got home. Tomorrow they would talk again. Laura had been right when she had said that she felt sorry for both of them and the time they had wasted, the years that had raced by during which he had been ignorant of the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of his past.

He had assumed that his father had been as remote with his wife as he had been with his son. He had been wrong. His father had been giddy with love and when he had lost her he had lost the will to carry on. Certainly, he had lost all desire to bond with the son who was a painful reminder of the woman he had loved and lost. He had buried himself in his work to the exclusion of everything else, using it as a crutch to get him through the loneliness.

For once Alessandro went to bed without first checking his emails, making sure that everything that should be happening in his company was happening.

* * *

His father was already up and about by the time he hit the kitchen the next morning, and there were two black leather boxes on his side of the table.

‘More where those came from,’ Roberto said gruffly. ‘And don’t just stand there staring at them, my boy! Open them up! Should have given them to you a long time ago.’

Alessandro looked at his father, who was busying himself with the kettle and a mug, fetching stuff from one of the kitchen cupboards. ‘Well...’ Roberto turned around, studiously keeping his eyes averted, and waved an impatient hand ‘...what are you waiting for? Be dead by the time you make your mind up! Want you to get to know your mother. Should have done it a long time ago. Would have, but...’

‘Time runs away,’ Alessandro finished succinctly. ‘Don’t worry. I intend to look at all those photos.’

‘Forgive me, boy?’

Alessandro had never thought he would be having this conversation with his father or hearing those words, and something deep in the core of him shifted. ‘Depends...’ he drawled.

‘On what, eh?’

‘On how cooperative you are about moving into the cottage before the greenhouse has been built to your absolute specifications...because that’s proving a little trickier than you’d expect...’

Roberto relaxed, shot him a gruff smile. ‘I’m an old man. Not sure I can make compromises with my tomatoes and orchids. I’ll give it my best shot, though.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

LAURA DIDN’T KNOW what to expect when she came to the house the following morning.

A bitter wind had got up and light flurries of snow speckled a yellow-grey sky. Winter had been strangely polite for the past few weeks but now she could feel it getting ready to make up for lost ground. It was always the way in this part of the world. No civilised, rainy, fairly temperate winters but brutal, freezing-cold ones punctuated by blizzards and dense snowfalls.

She had left her grandmother sorting out the log pile with the radio on full blast and she was relieved that she was on her own. She needed time to get her thoughts in order.

The night before had shaken her. She hadn’t expected Alessandro to show up at the house. The way they had spent so much time circling around one another...sharing the odd thrilling touch when Roberto’s attention had happened to be elsewhere... It had turned into an almost surreal situation. The reality of their one kiss had become imbued with a dreamlike quality and sometimes she had questioned whether it had really happened or not.

She had wondered if they would ever make love. Or was this just a game they would play, almost getting there but not quite, until the time came when he disappeared over the horizon, never to be seen again or else to be seen only in passing?

She had known that if he disappeared over that horizon, then that would be it. He would fall back into his London life and she would become an almost-there non-experience that he would look back upon with...

She didn’t know. Mild regret? Relief? Amusement?

The longer they had circled one another, sharing fleeting glances, the more she felt that they would never make love, even though it was what she had wanted more than anything else.

So when he had turned up unannounced, she had been thrilled, apprehensive, seized with soaring excitement.