A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

‘Let’s get past the moral high ground,’ he drawled with infuriating arrogance. ‘There was also the issue of my father’s health. He hasn’t been a well man. I had several conversations with his consultant when he had his stroke a few months ago, and I was told that lack of stress was the safest route to ensuring that his health continued to improve.’

‘That’s rich, considering you came here to yank him away from everything he was accustomed to.’

Alessandro flushed darkly. ‘When I decided to move him down to London, I wasn’t aware of the extent of the ties he had built up in the community.’

Laura reddened because she knew that. Everything had been straightforward when he had made the decision to move Roberto. He could never have foreseen the way events would unfold.

‘It’s bad enough that your father thinks that we’re involved but it’s only going to be worse when he tells my grandmother. She spent so long clucking around me when I returned to Scotland that she’s going to think you’re a knight in shining armour who’s come swooping in to rescue me. I can’t think of anyone less like a knight in shining armour,’ she finished glumly, for good measure, missing the irritated frown that darkened his face.

‘Well, here we are,’ he said silkily. ‘For better or for worse.’

‘And where do we go from here?’

‘Like I said to you earlier, let’s just go with the flow.’ He shot her a wicked smile, which she did her best to ignore, and walked slowly towards her. ‘We may not end up walking up the aisle in happily married bliss but we’re good together. Let’s not think beyond that.’ To prove his point, he touched her cheek and, with satisfaction, watched the way her eyelids fluttered. ‘When the time comes, we break up and there will be no fuss. Relationships end, even those that begin with high hopes...so, until that happens, let’s take this golden opportunity to enjoy one another.’

No strings attached...and no hiding... He made it sound so simple. So why, Laura wondered, did it feel so dangerous?

CHAPTER NINE

A PROPER HOLIDAY!

Roberto and Edith had confronted them an hour later and announced that that was what they should do. Despite the snow, the serious relationship had been compelling enough for Roberto to get in touch with his occasional driver, who had brought Edith to the manor house post-haste.

Laura had been horrified.

She was still reeling from the shock of Alessandro’s deception and the ease with which he had accepted their fling as something that would now carry on until, presumably, he got fed up and decided to call it a day. He just went right ahead and assumed that the ball was in his court, that he called the shots, and now the way had been paved for the whole thing to cost him a lot less effort.

For Alessandro, fabricating a so-called serious relationship to appease his father made perfect sense. Indeed, it was an improvement on trying to figure out the details of how they could conduct a sexual liaison behind Roberto’s back.

The situation had moved so swiftly that Laura felt as though she had inadvertently stepped onto a roller coaster and was now being swung in sickening circles hundreds of metres above the ground.

Her life had been so orderly before he had crash-landed into it. She had been contentedly doing her teaching job and getting over her awful experience in London. The peace of Scotland had been a soothing balm for her fraught nerves and if she hadn’t asked herself any questions about how long she could continue leading a life of relative contentment before restlessness began to set in, it was because she had chosen not to.

And then suddenly there he was, the missing son whom she had never seen, bringing with him just the sort of dark excitement she had sworn to stay well away from.

Worse—bringing the sort of dark excitement she had never dreamed possible. It overshadowed everything Colin had represented. He had turned those dark, lazy, arrogant eyes on her and her peaceful world had been shattered into smithereens.

It was so simple for him. He took what he wanted. Just the sort of guy she should have run from and kept on running from until she ran out of breath and found herself a nice little hole to hide in.