Italy, he had told her, was his home and, hell, why not. It was a nice time of year over there and he had just closed a massive deal. She could see his house. His casual tone of voice down the end of the line had told her that it wasn’t a big deal. He would be going over there himself, she figured, with her or without her, but he would take her along because, as far as he was concerned, she had yet to fulfil her side of the bargain. Lying naked in his arms, tense as a plank of wood, didn’t count.
Had they had sex, she was sure that he would not have suggested the Italy trip. Revenge lay behind his motivation and revenge was an emotion that could be sated very quickly. Certainly, a week of her would be enough. Did she deserve that? Maybe she did, in his eyes, and she would never disabuse him of the complicated story behind her lies because that would open up a whole new can of worms far worse than the one she was dealing with.
‘Isn’t that the old hoary line used by men?’ Alessandro queried, moving towards the check-in girl at the first class desk. It occurred to him that he would have quite enjoyed having her at his beck and call and put that down to a caveman instinct he’d never known he possessed. Or maybe he only possessed it when the chase was still on, and only with her because she hadn’t followed the pattern of the women he slept with.
‘You’re very chauvinistic, Alessandro. Women who have careers can’t just jettison them the second something better comes along. As it is, I’ll have a mountain of work to get down to when I get back. I shouldn’t really be here at all, even if I am due time off.’
‘Are you telling me that being with me is more compelling than your career?’
‘I’m not saying anything of the sort!’
‘You work too hard.’
‘How else am I expected to get on?’
‘What are you expecting to get on to?’ They had checked in and were now heading through Passport Control, towards the first class lounge. Years ago he had considered the possibility of a private jet, if only to cut down on the inconvenience of a bustling airport, but had ditched the idea, because who needed to be responsible for such a vast personal carbon footprint when it could be avoided? Shame, though, because, had he had one, he could have introduced her to some creative ways of passing time twenty thousand miles up without an audience of prying eyes.
‘I’d like to head up my own pro bono department. Maybe even branch out on my own and concentrate on that area. Bring in a few other employees...who knows?’
‘And what about another prance up the aisle? Is that up there on the agenda? Surely your parents would want to hear the patter of little feet when you visit them in Australia? Or do visits to Australia get in the way of your career?’
Chase temporarily froze. The passing lie was not one on which she wanted to dwell. She wanted no reminders of her non-existent family. She knew that the last thing he would want to discuss would be her ex or her past treachery. His only goal was to get her into bed; her only goal was to put this murky, tangled, haunting past to rest. He was motivated by revenge, she by a need for closure. It was a straightforward situation. She needed no reminders of white lies that had been told and could not now be un-told.
How would he react were he to know that, not only had she once lied to him about her marital status, not only had she dumped him in a way that now made her cringe with guilt and shame even though she knew that it just couldn’t have been helped at the time, but that her entire past was as substantial as gossamer?
‘Australia is a long way away...’ she muttered vaguely.
‘Yes. I know. I’ve been there. You’ve never told me which part of Australia they live in. It’s a big place.’
‘You wouldn’t have heard of it.’ She could feel beads of perspiration break out all over her body. ‘It’s just a small town on the outskirts of...um...Melbourne. Look, I really don’t want to talk about this. Discussing personal issues isn’t what we’re about, is it?’ Never had she realised how being trapped in a lie could prove as painful as walking on a bed of burning coals.
‘No,’ Alessandro said shortly. ‘It’s not.’ He looked at her blank eyes and tight smile and felt a surge of rage that the thing most women gave naturally to him—the desperate openness which they always seemed to hope could suck him into something permanent and committal—was the one thing Chase steadfastly refused to give. It angered him that he was even going down the road of quizzing her because it reflected a series of inner challenges that he knew were inappropriate. The challenge to get her into bed so that he could assuage the treachery he felt had been done to him had been replaced by the challenge to get her into bed willingly and hot for him; the challenge to wipe her ex out of her head when they finally had sex, the challenge to get into her head, to know what made her tick.