‘What case?’ His mind still on Lindsay Lockheart, Alessio snapped out the words and his junior colleague blinked in confusion, glancing back towards the meeting room as if checking there hadn’t been some mistake.
‘Well—that case,’ he muttered awkwardly. ‘He was hoping you’d take it on—at the moment his wife is so angry about his affair that she’s threatening to take him to the cleaners.’
‘Good for her.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Unable to hide his astonishment, his colleague fumbled with the file in his hands. ‘You—I don’t—he wants your advice.’
‘Enrico,’ Alessio’s voice was cool. ‘How old are those children?’
Clearly startled by the question, the man checked the file. ‘The older girl is eight, the other one is a baby. Two little girls.’
Two little girls. Two little girls, whose lives were being smashed to pieces.
His mind on Lindsay Lockheart, Alessio took a deep breath.
‘She deserves every penny she can get. And my advice is that he should start thinking about his children and his responsibilities, instead of his own investments.’
Gaping at him, his junior colleague ran a finger around his collar as if it were strangling him. ‘So you want me to tell him—what exactly?’
Alessio couldn’t dispel the image of wide blue eyes and soft blonde hair.
‘Tell him to try couples counselling.’ His tone biting and sharp, he strode out of the lift and into his office, his body aching so badly it was almost a physical pain.
His personal assistant was hovering, looking harassed. ‘Your three o’clock meeting has been rescheduled.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there are too many journalists outside the building. You don’t want to go out there right now—it’s being dealt with.’
With an impatient frown, Alessio strode across to the window and stared down at the street below. Even from this height he could see the pack of photographers surrounding the front door of the Capelli offices.
‘For the past two weeks I’ve lived the life of a monk,’ he breathed. ‘What exactly are they after this time?’
‘Nothing new. Still the Lindsay Lockheart thing.’ His assistant put a neat pile of papers on his desk. ‘You asked for these—’
‘What Lindsay Lockheart thing?’
‘She’s been in the papers every day for the past two weeks.’
There was a brief, deadly silence while Alessio digested that information. ‘And you didn’t think it worth mentioning?’ His tone silky soft, he watched as the woman paled.
‘You’re not normally interested in what the tabloids have to say about your love life—’
‘You have precisely two minutes in which to produce a copy of e
very paper that has mentioned Lindsay Lockheart’s name in the last two weeks. You then have a further minute to get the head of PR into my office.’ Struggling to contain the volcanic eruption of his temper, Alessio strode to his desk and punched the number of Lindsay’s flat into his phone. Her ansaphone clicked on and he cut the connection angrily just as his secretary returned with the papers.
Was she screening calls?
He scanned each paper in grim silence, his temper rising with each line of newsprint he read. Then dropped them onto his desk and strode towards the door.
Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
Lindsay slammed the pillow over her head to shut out the insistent noise of the buzzer. Ever since she’d returned from the Caribbean, she’d had photographers camped on her doorstep. Trapped in her flat, she’d been unable to leave even to buy milk, but it didn’t matter because she couldn’t face food. She couldn’t summon the energy to move.
Every now and then her ansaphone clicked and her heart raced because she couldn’t stop hoping that it was him. But it never was. Every time the phone rang it was just another client cancelling an appointment.
Her business was ruined. Everything she was—everything she believed—had collapsed around her. It should have been a terrible blow but the awful thing was she didn’t even care.