The Uncompromising Italian

‘And mediation skills are so important when one is growing up,’ Alessio murmured.

Basking in her new-found revelations, Lesley smiled. ‘No, they’re not,’ she admitted with more candour than she’d ever done to anyone in her life before. ‘In fact, I can’t think of any skill a teenage girl has less use for than mediation skills,’ she mused. ‘But I had plenty of that.’ She leaned back and half-closed her eyes. When she next spoke it was almost as though she was talking with no audience listening to what was being said.

‘My mum died when I was so young, I barely remember her. I mean, Dad always told us about her, what she was like and such, and there were pictures of her everywhere. But the truth is, I don’t have any memories of her—of doing anything with her, if you see what I mean.’

She glanced sideways at him and he nodded. He had always fancied himself as the sort of man who would be completely at sea when it came to listening to women pour their hearts out, hence it was a tendency that he had strenuously discouraged.

Now, though, he was drawn to what she was saying and by the faraway, pensive expression on her face.

‘I never thought that I missed having a mother. I never knew what it was like to have one and my dad was always good enough for me. But I can see now that growing up in a male-only family might have given me confidence with the opposite sex but only when it came to things like work and study. I was encouraged to be as good as they were, and I think I succeeded, but I wasn’t taught, well...’

‘How to wear make-up and shop for dresses?’

‘Sounds crazy but I do think girls need to be taught stuff like that.’ She looked at him gravely. ‘I can see that it’s easy to have bags of confidence in one area and not much in another,’ she said with a rueful shake of her head. ‘When it came to the whole game-playing, sexual attraction thing, I don’t think I’ve ever had loads of confidence.’

‘And now?’

‘I feel I have, so I guess I should say thank you.’

‘Thank you? What are you thanking me for?’

‘For encouraging me to step out of the box,’ Lesley told him with that blend of frankness and disingenuousness which he found so appealing.

Alessio was momentarily distracted from the headache awaiting him in Italy. He had no idea where she was going with this but it had all the feel of a conversation heading down a road he would rather not explore.

‘Always happy to oblige,’ he said vaguely. ‘I hope you’ve packed light clothes. The heat in Italy is quite different from the heat in England.’

‘If I hadn’t taken on this job, there’s not a chance in the world that I would ever have met you.’

‘That’s true enough.’

‘Not only do we not move in the same circles, we have no interests in common whatsoever.’

Alessio was vaguely indignant at what he thought might be an insult in disguise. Was she comparing him to the ‘soul mate’ guy she had yet to meet, the touchy-feely one with the artistic side and a love of all things natural?

‘And if we had ever met, at a social do or something like that, I would never have had the confidence to approach you.’

‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this.’

‘Here’s what I’m saying, Alessio. I feel as though I’ve taken huge strides in gaining self-confidence in certain areas and it’s thanks in some measure to you. I could say that I’m going to be a completely different person when I get back to the UK and start dating again.’

Alessio could not believe what he was hearing. He had no idea where this conversation had come from and he was enraged that she could sit there, his lover, and talk about going back on the dating scene!

‘The dating scene.’

‘Is this conversation becoming a little too deep for you?’ Lesley asked with a grin. ‘I know you don’t do deep when it comes to women and conversations.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘Well, you’ve already told me that you don’t like encouraging them to get behind a stove and start cooking a meal for you, just in case they think, I don’t know, they have somehow managed to get a foot through the door. So I’m guessing that meaningful conversations are probably on the banned list as well.’

They were. It was true. He had never enjoyed long, emotional conversations which, from experience, always ended up in the same place—invitations to meet the parents, questions about commitment and where the relationship was heading.

In fact, the second that type of conversation began rearing its head, he usually felt a pressing need to end the relationship. He had been coerced into one marriage and he had made a vow never to let himself be railroaded into another similar mistake, however tempting the woman in question might be.

He looked into her astute, brown eyes and scowled. ‘I may not be looking for someone to walk down the aisle with, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not prepared to have meaningful discussions with women. I’m also insulted,’ he was driven to continue, ‘That I’ve been used as some kind of trial run for the real thing.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lesley was feeling good. The vague unease that had been plaguing her ever since she had recognised how affected she was by Alessio had been boxed away with an explanation that made sense.

Sleeping with him had opened her eyes to fears and doubts she had been harbouring for years. She felt that she had buried a lack of self-confidence in her own sexuality under the guise of academic success and then, later on, success in her career. She had dressed in ways that didn’t enhance her own femininity because she had always feared that she lacked what it took.

But then she had slept with him, slept with a man who was way out of her league, had been wanted and desired by him, and made to feel proud of the way she looked.

Was it any wonder that he had such a dramatic effect on her? It was a case of lust mixed up with a hundred other things.

But the bottom line was that he was no more than a learning curve for her. When she thought about it like that, it made perfect sense. It also released her from the disturbing suspicion that she was way too deep in a non-relationship that was going nowhere, a relationship that meant far more to her than it did to him.

Learning curves provided lessons and, once those lessons had been learnt, it was always easy to move on.

Learning curves didn’t result in broken hearts.

She breathed in quickly and shakily. ‘Well?’ she flung at him, while her mind continued to chew over the notion that her involvement with him had been fast and hard. She had been catapulted into a world far removed from hers, thrown into the company of a man who was very, very different from the sort of men she was used to, and certainly worlds apart from the sort of man she would ever have expected herself to be attracted to.

But common sense had been no match for the power of his appeal and now here she was.

When she thought about never seeing him again, she felt faintly, sickeningly panicked.

What did that mean? Her thoughts became muddled when she tried to work her way through what suddenly seemed a dangerous, uncertain quagmire.

‘I mean that you used me,’ Alessio said bluntly. ‘I don’t like being used. And I don’t appreciate you talking about jumping back into the dating scene, not when we’re still lovers. I expect the women I sleep with to only have eyes for me.’

The unbridled arrogance of that statement, which was so fundamentally Alessio, brought a reluctant smile to her lips.

She had meant it when she had told him that under normal circumstances they would never have met. Their paths simply wouldn’t have crossed. He didn’t mix in the same circles as she did. And, even if by some freak chance they had met, they would have looked at one another and quickly looked away.

She would have seen a cold, wealthy, arrogant cardboard cut-out and he would have seen, well, a woman who was nothing like the sort of women he went out with and therefore she’d have been invisible. But the circumstances that had brought them together had uniquely provided them with a different insight into one another.

She had seen beneath the veneer to the three-dimensional man and he had seen through the sassy, liberal-minded, outspoken woman in charge of her life to the uncertain, insecure girl.

She was smart enough to realise, however, that that changed nothing. He was and always would be uninterested in any relationship that demanded longevity. He was shaped by his past and his main focus now was his daughter and trying to resolve the difficult situation that had arisen there. He might have slept with her because she was so different from what he was used to and because she was there, ready and willing but, whereas he had fundamentally reached deep and changed her, she hadn’t done likewise with him.

‘You’re smiling.’ Alessio was reluctant to abandon the conversation. When, he thought, was this dive back into the dating scene going to begin? Had she put time limits on what they had? Wasn’t he usually the one to do that?

‘I don’t want to argue with you.’ Lesley kept that smile pinned to her face. ‘Who will you introduce me as when we get to Italy?’

‘I haven’t given it any thought. Where is all this hectic dating going to take place?’