And if she’d had any doubts about her decision, they had evaporated the second he had touched her. Sooner. The second she had answered the door to him.
Driving through the snow flurries, she was oblivious to the gathering white around her because she was so immersed in her thoughts.
She had thought he had come to her because he hadn’t been able to bear the edge-of-the-cliff suspense that had developed between them, the agonising feeling of wanting something that was just beyond reach. She had thought that he had reached the end of his tether and had found the situation as frustrating as she had.
Yes, he had wanted her but he had come to her because he had wanted physical release and she couldn’t help but feel that any willing body might have done at a pinch. He had been dealt a bolt from the blue, had been given an overload of information, and the only way he had been able to process that had been through making love. He was an intensely physical man and it would have made complete sense to him to subdue whatever upset he had been feeling by sleeping with a woman, by losing himself in the act of sex.
It was painful for her to accept that if she hadn’t been there, he might have just had one of his many devoted fans flown up to sate his passing need.
And yet he had said that he still wanted her.
Laura knew that she should have killed that at source but she had cravenly succumbed to the pleasurable notion that their weird, fragile relationship might carry on for a little longer.
Now, as she neared the big house, she wondered whether that hadn’t just been pie in the sky, something he had said on the spur of the moment because he hadn’t been himself. People said all sorts of things when they weren’t themselves. He had let his guard slip with her and she knew instinctively that he hadn’t planned on that happening. He was a guy who liked complete and absolute control. His formidable control had been dealt a near lethal blow and he had, against all his better judgement, opened up to her. Partially. Enough for her to think that the best thing she could do now would be to pretend that everything was fine, that nothing had changed.
She wasn’t going to make noises about wanting him. She wasn’t going to let him think that he had to worry about her trying to manoeuvre him into a cubbyhole somewhere because he had made a mistake and said stuff he hadn’t meant to say.
She certainly wasn’t going to try to encourage him to open up to her, to really express what he felt about what he had been told by his father, the secrets that had been revealed, even though that was something she wanted more than anything.
And that, she thought, pulling to a stop in the courtyard, scared her.
She stared out at the falling snow and frowned. Of course she would be empathetic to anyone whose life had been blighted in the way Alessandro’s had been, but what she felt was more than detached empathy and that frightened her. The emotions running through her felt complicated and involved, and with a sigh of frustration she headed towards the house, knowing that the only way to deal with the situation was to ignore it.
So when she rang the doorbell and Alessandro opened the door, she smiled politely and informed him, in a bouncy voice, that she had come to help, if more help was needed, with some of the packing.
She was wrapped up in several layers but she made sure not to begin removing any of them just in case he told her that her help wouldn’t be needed.
‘I probably wouldn’t have come if I’d realised how fast the snow was falling,’ she chirruped, ‘but by the time my windscreen wipers were on full blast I was practically turning into your drive...’ It was an effort to meet those dark, penetrating eyes. He hadn’t shaved and he didn’t look as though he had run a comb through his hair, but instead of looking untidy he looked dangerously, heart-stoppingly sexy. She wanted to stare and stare. She felt the pulse beating frantically in her neck and her mouth was dry, so dry that she was finding it difficult to swallow.
He was in a pair of faded, low-slung jeans and an old rugby sweater, with just a pair of loafers on his feet. No socks. He couldn’t have looked more casual and yet more sophisticated.
Alessandro stared down at her, frowning because this was just the sort of unenthusiastic greeting he didn’t want. Not when he had spent most of the night consumed by her, thoughts of her, her smell, her taste, the feel of her under his hands, under his mouth, under his body. He had wanted, needed, to drown out his thoughts in her glorious body and he had, so what was wrong with expecting a little more of the teasing temptress when he wanted a repeat performance? Naturally, it would have been too much to maybe expect her to turn up wearing a fur coat with nothing underneath because that would have been utterly impractical and, besides, it wasn’t her style. But she could have made some attempt to collar him by the front door and drag him off to the nearest vacant room...