The Uncompromising Italian

With this situation, he had been forced to reveal more about those thoughts to her than he ever had to anyone else. She was certain of that.

The down side was that, for a proud man, the necessity of having to confide thoughts normally hidden would eventually be seen as a sign of weakness.

The sympathetic, listening ear would only work for so long before it turned into a source of resentment.

But did that matter? Really? They wouldn’t be around one another for much longer and right here, right now, in some weird, unspoken way, he needed her. She felt it, even though it was something he would never, ever articulate.

Those cuttings had moved him beyond words. He was trying hard to control his reaction in front of an audience; that was evident in the thickness of the silence.

‘You’ll have to return that scrap book to where you found it,’ he said gruffly when the silence had been stretched to breaking point. ‘Leave it with me overnight and I’ll give it to you in the morning.’

Lesley nodded. Her hand was still on his arm and he hadn’t shrugged it away. She allowed it to travel so that she was stroking upwards, feeling the strength of his muscles straining under the shirt and the definition of his shoulders and collarbone.

Alessio’s eyes narrowed on her.

‘Are you feeling sorry for me?’ His voice was less cold than it should have been. ‘Is that a pity caress?’

He had never confided in anyone. He certainly had never been an object of pity to anyone, any woman, ever. The thought alone was laughable. Women had always hung onto his every word, longed for some small indication that they occupied a more special role in his life than he was willing to admit to them.

Naturally, they hadn’t.

Lesley, though...

She was in a different category. The pity caress did not evoke the expected feelings of contempt, impatience and anger that he would have expected.

He caught her hand in his and held on to it.

‘It’s not a pity caress.’ Lesley breathed. Her skin burned where he was touching it, a blaze that was stoked by the expression in his eyes: dark, thoughtful, insightful, amused. ‘But I know it must be disconcerting, looking through Rachel’s scrap book, seeing pictures of yourself there, articles cut out or printed off from the Internet.’ He still wasn’t saying anything. He was still just staring at her, his head slightly to one side, his expression brooding and intent.

Her voice petered out and she stared right back at him, eyes wide. She could barely breathe. The moment seemed as fragile as a droplet of water balancing on the tip of a leaf, ready to fall and splinter apart.

She didn’t want the moment to end. It was wrong, she knew that, but still she wanted to touch his face and smooth away those very human, very uncertain feelings she knew he would be having; feelings he would be taking great care of to conceal.

‘The scrap book was just lying there,’ she babbled away as she continued to get lost in his eyes. ‘On the bed. I would have felt awful if I had found it hidden under the mattress or at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, but it was just there, waiting to be found.’

‘Not by me. Rachel knew that I would never go into her suite of rooms.’

Lesley shrugged. ‘I wanted you to see that you’re important to your daughter,’ she murmured shakily, ‘Even if you don’t think you are because of the way she acts. Teenagers can be very awkward when it comes to showing their feelings.’ He still wasn’t saying anything. If he thought that she felt sorry for him, then how was it that he was staying put, not angrily stalking off? ‘You remember being a teenager.’ She tried a smile in an attempt to lighten the screaming tension between them.

‘Vaguely. When I think back to my teenage years, I inevitably end up thinking back to being a daddy before I was out of them.’

‘Of course,’ Lesley murmured, her voice warm with understanding. At the age of fourteen, not even knowing it, he would have been a mere four years away from becoming a father. It was incredible.

‘You’re doing it again,’ Alessio said under his breath.

‘Doing what?’

‘Smothering me with your sympathy. Don’t worry. Maybe I like it.’ His mouth curved into a wolfish smile but underneath that, he thought with passing confusion, her sympathy was actually very welcome.

He reached out and touched her face, then ran two fingers along her cheek, circling her mouth then along her slender neck, coming to rest at the base of her collarbone.

‘Have you felt what I’ve been feeling for the past couple of days?’ he asked.

Lesley wasn’t sure she was physically capable of answering his question. Not with that hand on her collarbone and her brain reliving every inch of its caress as it had touched her cheek and moved sensuously over her mouth.

‘Well?’ Alessio prompted. He rested his other hand on her thigh and began massaging it, very gently but very thoroughly, just the one spot, but it was enough to make the breath catch in her throat.

‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’ As if she didn’t know. As if she wasn’t constantly aware of the way he unsettled her. And was she conscious that the electricity flowed both ways? Maybe she was. Maybe that was why the situation had seemed so dangerous.

She had thought that she needed to get out because her attraction to him was getting too much, was threatening to become evident. Maybe a part of her had known that the real reason she needed to get out was because, on some level, she knew that he was attracted to her as well. That underneath the light-hearted flirting there was a very real undercurrent of mutual sexual chemistry.

And that was not good, not at all. She didn’t do one-night stands, or two-day stands, or ‘going nowhere so why not have a quick romp?’ stands.

She did relationships. If there had been no guy in her life for literally years, then it was because she had never been the kind of girl who had sex just for the sake of it.

But with Alessio something told her that she could be that girl, and that scared her.

‘You know exactly what I mean. You want me. I want you. I’ve wanted you for a while...’

‘I should go up to bed.’ Lesley breathed unevenly, nailed to the spot and not moving an inch despite her protestations. ‘Leave you to your thoughts...’

‘Maybe I’m not that keen on being alone with my thoughts,’ Alessio said truthfully. ‘Maybe my thoughts are a black hole into which I have no desire to fall. Maybe I want your pity and your sympathy because they can save me from that fall.’

And what happens when you’ve been saved from that fall? What happens to me? You’re in a weird place right now and, if I rescue you now, what happens when you leave that weird place and shut the door on it once again?

But those muddled thoughts barely had time to settle before they were blown away by the fiercely exciting thought of being with the man who was leaning towards her, staring at her with such intensity that she wanted to moan.

And, before she could retreat behind more weak protestations, he was cupping the back of her neck and drawing her towards him, very slowly, so slowly that she had time to appreciate the depth of his dark eyes; the fine lines that etched his features; the slow, sexy curve of his mouth; the length of his dark eyelashes.

Lesley fell into the kiss with a soft moan, part resignation, part despair; mostly intense, long-awaited excitement. She spread her hand behind his neck in a mirror gesture to how he was holding her and, as his tongue invaded the soft contours of her mouth, she returned the kiss and let that kiss do its work—spread moisture between her legs, pinch her nipples into tight, sensitive buds, raise the hairs on her arms.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she muttered, breaking apart for a few seconds and immediately wanting to draw him back towards her again.

‘Why not?’

‘Because this isn’t the right reason for going to bed with someone.’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He leaned to kiss her again but she stilled him with a hand on his chest and met his gaze with anxious eyes.

‘I don’t pity you, Alessio,’ she said huskily. ‘I’m sorry that you don’t have the relationship with your daughter that you’d like, but I don’t pity you. And when I showed you that scrap book it was because I felt the contents were something you needed to know about. What I feel is...understanding and compassion.’

‘And what I feel is that we shouldn’t get lost in words.’

‘Because words are not your thing?’ But she smiled and felt a rush of tenderness towards this strong, powerful man who was also capable of being so wonderfully human, hard though he might try to fight it.

‘You know what they say about actions speaking louder...’ He grinned at her. His body was on fire. She was right—words weren’t his thing, at least not the words that made up long, involved conversations about feelings. He scooped her up and she gave a little cry of surprise, then wriggled and told him to put her down immediately; she might be slim but she was way too tall for him to start thinking he could play the caveman with her.

Alessio ignored her and carried her up the stairs to his bedroom.

‘Every woman likes a caveman.’ He gently kicked open his bedroom door and then deposited her on his king-sized bed.