A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

‘By control, you mean you never allow yourself to really feel anything for anyone...’

‘Since when have you had this interest in what I feel or don’t feel and why?’

Laura blushed.

Since she had finally admitted to herself just how deeply she had fallen for him.

She shrugged. ‘We all try to find out what makes other people tick. It’s human nature.’

‘Really? I have yet to want to find out how any woman ticks.’ Except that wasn’t quite true, was it? He closed his mind to a line of querulous introspection he had no use for.

Laura pasted a smile on her face. No big surprise there. He slept with women, just as he was sleeping with her, but that was the extent of his involvement. As he’d said, he exercised control over his emotions and the things in life that didn’t require emotion were the things that garnered his dispassionate interest. Those were the things he wanted to pick apart and examine in detail.

That hurt and she hated that it hurt. When she was with him, she could feel all one hundred per cent of his fabulous interest focused on her and it stung to recognise that he would be the same in the company of any woman he wanted to bed.

She had fallen in love with a guy who had no interest in a future with her or with any woman. She was deceiving her grandmother and an old man she cared deeply for. On both scores she was behaving in a way that was completely against her nature. And now she was on a posh private jet off for a few days of complete seclusion with someone who was happy enough to promote a charade because it made life simpler all round for him. From every angle, she was vulnerable and she would have to at the very least try to curtail the fallout, and step one would be to make sure he didn’t get wind of just how deeply he affected her.

She thought about his reaction if he were to discover that this was so much more than just a fling for her.

He would be appalled, horrified, aghast. Or maybe...amused, comfortable with the thought that he could call all the shots, knowing that she would oblige. He wouldn’t see it as taking advantage of her. He would simply accept that she had fallen for him so that made her an easier conquest. He would exercise the instincts of the born predator. She wondered how many women had fallen in love with him in his chequered past.

‘You’ve never been tempted to have something more than a superficial relationship with anyone?’

‘Whoever said that my relationships were superficial?’ Alessandro asked, not liking the way that somehow made him appear shallow. Which he wasn’t. Simply practical, careful and controlled. ‘I’m a red-blooded man. I enjoy women and when I’m with a woman I’m with her and no one else. Unlike, might I add, the creep you went out with. What sort of man would you prefer? A man who was upfront and honest or a man who was willing to say whatever he thought would get you between the sheets, even if he had no intention of fulfilling any of the promises he made? And I’m presuming the creep you dated was full of promises.’

Laura flushed because, yes, Colin had had the big gestures down pat along with the flowery words and the overblown promises. But, between the two, surely there was a happy medium, the place that most people occupied? Except that wouldn’t be a place Alessandro would ever have occupied or even been tempted to explore.

She yawned and half closed her eyes because their conversation was going nowhere.

She didn’t think she would be able to sleep at all, not when she was travelling in a private jet with a man she was in love with and a wasp’s nest of uncomfortable thoughts buzzing around in her head, but, in fact, she slept soundly and only awoke when Alessandro nudged her and she opened her eyes to find him looking at her with amusement.

‘It’s unusual to have women fall asleep in my company,’ he quipped, still smiling as the plane began its descent.

‘I suppose they’re too busy trying to impress you.’ She struggled into a sitting position and transferred her eager eyes to the bright blue skies outside. Holiday excitement unfurled inside her and she shut the door on all the doubts that had been eating her up for the past few hours.

‘They would have spent the better part of the trip trying to get me into the bed in the private room.’