‘Barry—’
‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he urged, dropping down athletically into a crouch in front of her swivel chair so that they could meet eye to eye. ‘I won’t lay a finger on you...I promise!’
‘Give over, Barry,’ Daisy groaned.
‘So I used to show off a little when I first started here but that was three years ago,’ Barry stressed with a winning smile as he reached for her hands. ‘I’ve grown up since then. I don’t boast about my one-night stands any more. I know you’re not impressed by how fast I drive my Porsche. I think I could even be faithful for you’
Daisy studied him and experienced a very, very faint stab of remorse. Deep down inside, she had always known why she had loathed Barry on sight. In build, colouring and brash confidence, he reminded her just a little of Alessio as a teenager. Poor Barry. He had been chasing her for so long that it was a running office joke. ‘Sorry—’ she began.
‘Daisy...’
Releasing her fingers, Barry vaulted upright. Daisy might have got whiplash if Alessio hadn’t spun her chair round so fast that she saw whirling lights instead.
‘Lunch,’ Alessio drawled with definite aggression.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Daisy muttered out of the corner of her mouth as she turned her chair back to her desk. ‘Go away...’
‘Mr Leopardi?’ Barry cleared his throat after a lengthy pause. ‘We spoke on the phone last week—’
‘You may inform your superior that Miss Thornton won’t be returning to work here,’ Alessio interposed, smooth as glass. ‘She’ll be far too busy roasting in the fires of eternity as my wife.’
‘Your... your wife?’ Barry spluttered incredulously.
Ignoring him, Alessio lifted Daisy’s slim handbag from the desk and studied it with scepticism. ‘Where’s all the rest of the junk?’
‘Junk?’ Daisy’s voice fractured as she rose jerkily upright, unable to believe that he had made such an announcement in front of the entire office.
‘Daisy, you couldn’t get through one day with a purse this tiny. This is for show. Somewhere else there has to be a holding tank for the hundred and one things you have to keep within reach. Ah...’ With unhidden satisfaction, Alessio reached below the desk and lifted the large, battered leather holdall he had espied. ‘Yours? How often do you feed the purse? Hourly? Half-hourly?’
‘I’ll be back after lunch, Barry,’ Daisy said frigidly, striving to regain control of the situation but quite shattered by the manner in which Alessio was behaving. Barry simply gaped at her.
‘You won’t be,’ Alessio drawled, running at speed through the drawers of her desk, extracting a small teddy bear, a single shoe, three fat romantic novels, two hairbrushes and several packets of tights. He stuffed the lot into the leather holdall. ‘Have you a coat? One? Two?’
‘I’ll see to that.’ Joyce giggled into the resounding silence and crossed the room to a cupboard, to emerge with two umbrellas, a coat, a jacket and a pair of red stiletto-heeled ankle-boots which had sent Barry into such paroxysms of lust that Daisy had stopped wearing them out of pity.
‘I’ll be back,’ Daisy said defiantly.
‘You’re not the Terminator,’ Alessio dropped in with gentle satire as he curved a hand round her elbow and marched her out into the fresh air, Joyce following in their wake. ‘Didn’t the toy boy ever figure out how to derail you? Take you by surprise and you’re as helpless as a tortoise turned on its back, cara.’
‘Was it love at first sight?’ Joyce prompted with dreamily intent eyes as she passed Daisy’s possessions over to the chauffeur.
‘Is that when you feel like you’ve been run over by a tank?’ Alessio enquired with a deeply reflective air. ‘That magical but gut-wrenching moment when you realise that nothing is ever going to be the same again? It was more like having a very large rock dropped on me from a height. The earth may have moved but I wasn’t fast enough on my feet.’
Daisy studied him in disbelief.
‘I suppose men feel they have to fight it,’ Joyce sighed philosophically. ‘But you didn’t fight for long, did you?’