The Uncompromising Italian

‘Probably not such a good idea.’ Lesley looked up at him. He was one of the few men with whom she could do that and, as she had quickly discovered, her breathing quickened as their eyes met. ‘Adolescents are fond of writing stuff down on bits of paper. If there is anything to be found, that’s probably where I’ll find it, and that’s just the sort of thing a cleaner would stick in the bin.’ She hesitated. ‘Don’t you communicate with your daughter at all? I mean, how could she get away with keeping her room—her rooms—as messy as this?’

Alessio took one final glance around him and then headed for the door. ‘Rachel has spent most of the summer here while I have been in London, only popping back now and again. She’s clearly intimidated the cleaners into not going anywhere near her rooms and they’ve obeyed.’

‘You’ve just popped back here now and again to see how she’s doing?’

Alessio stopped in his tracks and looked at her coolly. ‘You’re here to try and sort out a situation involving computers and emails. You’re not here to pass judgement on my parenting skills.’

Lesley sighed with obvious exasperation. She had been hustled here with unholy speed. He had even come with her to her office, on the pretext of having a look at what her company did, and had so impressed her boss that Jake had had no trouble in giving her the week off.

And now, having found herself in a situation that somehow didn’t seem to be of her own choosing, she wasn’t about to be lectured to in that patronising tone of voice.

‘I’m not passing opinions on your parenting skills,’ she said with restraint. ‘I’m trying to make sense of a picture. If I can see the whole picture, then I might have an idea of how and where to proceed.’ She had not yet had time since arriving to get down to the business of working her way through the emails and trying to trace the culprit responsible for them.

That was a job for the following day. Right now, she would barely have time to have dinner, run a bath and then hit the sack. It had been a long day.

‘I mean,’ she said into an unresponsive silence, ‘If and when I do find out who is responsible for those emails, we still won’t know why he’s sending them. He could clam up, refuse to say anything, and then you may still be left with a problem on your hands in connection with your daughter.’

They had reached the kitchen, which was a vast space dominated by a massive oak table big enough to seat ten. Everything in the house was larger than life, including all the furnishings.

‘They may have nothing to do with Rachel. That’s just another possibility.’ He took a bottle of wine from the fridge and two wine glasses from one of the cupboards. There was a rich smell of food and Lesley looked around for Violet, who seemed to be an invisible but constant presence in the house.

‘Where’s Violet?’ she asked, hovering.

‘Gone for the evening. I try and not keep the hired help chained to the walls at night.’ He proffered the glass of wine. ‘And you can come inside, Lesley. You’re not entering a lion’s den.’

It felt like it, however. In ways she couldn’t put her finger on, Alessio Baldini felt exciting and dangerous at the same time. Especially so at night, here, in his house with no one around.

‘She’s kindly prepared a casserole for us. Beef. It’s in the oven. We can have it with bread, if that suits you.’

‘Of course,’ Lesley said faintly. ‘Is that how it works when you’re here? Meals are prepared for you so that all you have to do is switch the oven on?’

‘One of the housekeepers tends to stick around when Rachel’s here.’ Alessio flushed and turned away.

In that fleeting window, she glimpsed the situation with far more clarity than if she had had it spelled out for her.

He was so awkward with his own daughter that he preferred to have a third party to dilute the atmosphere. Rachel probably felt the same way. Two people, father and daughter, were circling one another like strangers in a ring.

He had been pushed to the background during her formative years, had found his efforts at bonding repelled and dismantled by a vengeful wife, and now found himself with a teenager he didn’t know. Nor was he, by nature, a people person—the sort of man who could joke his way back into a relationship.

Into that vacuum, any number of gremlins could have entered.

‘So you’re never on your own with your daughter? Okay. In that case you really wouldn’t have a clue what was happening in her life, especially as she spends most of the year away from home. But you were saying that this may not have anything directly to do with Rachel. What did you mean by that?’

She watched him bring the food to the table and refill their glasses with more wine.

Alessio gave her a long, considered look from under his lashes.

‘What I am about to tell you stays within the walls of this house, is that clear?’

Lesley paused with her glass halfway to her mouth and looked at him over the rim with astonishment.

‘And you laugh at me for thinking that you might have links to the Mafia?’

Alessio stared at her and then shook his head and slowly grinned. ‘Okay, maybe that sounded a little melodramatic.’

Lesley was knocked sideways by that smile. It was so full of charm, so lacking in the controlled cool she had seen in him before. It felt as though, the more time she spent in his company, the more intriguing and complex he became. He was not simply a mega-rich guy employing her to do a job for him, but a man with so many facets to his personality that it made her head spin.

Worse than that, she could feel herself being sucked in, and that scared her.

‘I don’t do melodrama,’ Alessio was saying with the remnants of his smile. ‘Do you?’

‘Never.’ Lesley licked her lips nervously. ‘What are you going to tell me that has to stay here?’

His dark eyes lingered on her flushed face. ‘It’s unlikely that our guy would have got hold of this information but, just in case, it’s information I would want to protect my daughter from knowing. I certainly would not want it in the public arena.’ He swigged the remainder of his wine and did the honours by dishing food onto the plates which had already been put on the table, along with glasses and cutlery.

Mesmerised by the economic elegance of his movements, and lulled by the wine and the creeping darkness outside, Lesley cupped her chin in her hand and stared at him.

He wasn’t looking at her. He was concentrating on not spilling any food. He had the expression of someone unaccustomed to doing anything of a culinary nature for themselves—focused yet awkward at the same time.

‘You don’t look comfortable with a serving spoon,’ she remarked idly and Alessio glanced across to where she was sitting, staring at him. She wore a thin gold chain with a tiny pendant around her neck and she was playing with the pendant, rolling it between her fingers as she looked at him.

Suddenly and for no reason, his breathing thickened and heat surged through his body with unexpected force. His libido, that had not seen the light of day for the past couple of months, reared up with such urgency that he felt his sharp intake of breath.

She was not trying to be seductive but somehow he could feel her seducing him.

‘I bet you don’t do much cooking for yourself.’

‘Come again?’ Alessio did his best to get his thoughts back in order. An erection was jamming against the zipper of his trousers, rock-hard and painful, and it was a relief to sit down.

‘I said, you don’t look as though handling pots and pans comes as second nature to you.’ She tucked into the casserole, which was mouth-wateringly fragrant. They should be discussing work but the wine had made her feel relaxed and mellow and had allowed her curiosity about him to come out of hiding and to take centre stage.

Sober, she would have chased that curiosity away, because she could feel its danger. But pleasantly tipsy, she wanted to know more about him.

‘I don’t do much cooking, no.’

‘I guess you can always get someone else to do it for you. Top chefs or housekeepers, or maybe just your girlfriends.’ She wondered what his girlfriends looked like. He might have had a rocky marriage that had ended in divorce, but he would have lots of girlfriends.

‘I don’t let women near my kitchen.’ Alessio was amused at her disingenuous curiosity. He swirled his wine around in the glass and swallowed a mouthful.

With a bit of alcohol in her system, she looked more relaxed, softer, less defensive.

His erection was still throbbing and his eyes dropped to her mouth, then lower to where the loose neckline of her tee-shirt allowed a glimpse of her shoulder blades and the soft hint of a cleavage. She wasn’t big breasted and the little she had was never on show.

‘Why? Don’t you ever go out with women who like to cook?’

‘I’ve never asked whether they like to cook or not,’ he said wryly, finishing his wine, pouring himself another glass and keeping his eyes safely away from her loose-limbed body. ‘I’ve found that, the minute a woman starts eulogising about the joys of home-cooked food, it usually marks the end of the relationship.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lesley looked at him, surprised.

‘It means that the last thing I need is someone trying to prove that they’re a domestic goddess in my kitchen. I prefer that the women I date don’t get too settled.’