A Scandal Made At Midnight

CHAPTER FOUR

SHEREALLYNEEDEDto pinch herself. Liane glanced out of the window of the private jet at the cerulean sky, a few fleecy clouds scudding by. In a little over an hour they were going to be landing in Los Angeles. How crazy was that? Forty-eight hours ago Alessandro Rossi had stepped on her toes. Now she was in his private plane, about to jet around the world. Not that he’d looked at her once since taking off. Or even Ella, for that matter. It was as if, once this bizarre deal had been agreed, they’d both more or less ceased to exist.

She glanced at Ella, who was sprawled in the wide leather seat across from her, fingers flying over her phone as usual. Liane almost wished she was interested in social media the way Ella was, anything to distract her from her own circling thoughts, the uneasy, anxious restlessness coursing through her.

Why had Ella insisted she come along on this crazy trip? And why had she agreed? Of course she knew the answers to both questions—Ella had always counted on her common sense, and she’d agreed because she never said no to her sister.

And because you wanted to spend more time with Alessandro Rossi.

Even if he wasn’t looking at her. Even if he almost certainly hadn’t thought about her once since suggesting this plan.

Unable to keep herself from it, Liane glanced at the seat diagonally from hers, where Alessandro was poring over some papers on the table in front of him, dark, straight brows drawn together over those hooded eyes. His lashes fanned his cheeks as he read—thick, dark velvety lashes that still somehow made him look masculine. Strange, that. He shifted in his seat, recrossing his legs, and Liane breathed in the citrusy tang of his aftershave.

She turned back to the window, determined to focus on the blue sky and not the man across from her, whose very presence made her senses swim. A party tonight in Los Angeles, and another in London two days after that—it made her head spin. Her mother had been stunned by the sudden turn of events, but also unbearably, pragmatically hopeful.

‘This is your chance to make a good match, Liane!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘Finally, you can find yourself a husband. Do not waste this opportunity. Make the most of yourself, if you can.’

‘Alessandro Rossi doesn’t have eyes for me, Maman,’ Liane had told her, trying to sound rueful rather than forlorn.

‘Not Rossi, of course,’ Amelie dismissed. ‘He’s above your league, to be sure.’ Liane did her best not to look stung; she knew her mother was only speaking the truth in her usual blunt way. Alessandro Rossi was way, way above her league. ‘But someone else, perhaps?’ Amelie suggested. ‘Someone who works for him, an assistant or acquaintance? You are bound to meet many eligible men in your travels. You must keep your eye out, and make sure to look your best. I will pack the blue gown.’

Circa nineteen eighty-three, Liane had thought with a shudder. Her mother was well-intentioned if decidedly misguided. ‘And what if I don’t want to get married?’ she’d asked, half teasing. ‘What if I don’t want to hook a man like a fish?’ Not that she even could. She wouldn’t even know how to try. She’d always hoped one day a man might sweep into her life, and her into his arms. She wouldn’t have to go looking for love because it would find her, bowl her over.

‘Bah.’ Her mother waved her hand in dismissal. ‘What else would you do with a man?’

The memory made Liane both sigh and smile now. Despite her mother’s near-constant criticism, she felt sorry for her, soured by two expedient marriages that hadn’t turned out to be so expedient after all. Her own father had been a lovable gambler, and Robert Ash had been extravagant in his largesse and hopeless with money. Amelie had been left nearly destitute—twice. No wonder she had become both bitter and pragmatic, taking out her disappointments on her daughters. Manon had learned not to care, but Liane still had to work not to let it hurt.

She wasn’t sure whether her mother had been deeply in love with either of her husbands, but she suspected she’d at least felt some affection for them. Not the fairy tale, though, she thought with a sigh. Perhaps such epic love stories, glass slippers included, were really only for fiction. She certainly hadn’t seen any evidence for them, just the manufactured appearance of them on social media, and yet still, she knew, she secretly yearned for it to happen to her one day. Not the glass slipper, but the Prince. The sweet and sure certainty of finding a man who understood her, who loved her, who saw her truly. She didn’t necessarily believe there was only one man out there for her, but she hoped there was at least one. Somewhere. Some day...but not, she reminded herself, today.

‘How many views now?’ she asked her sister, and Ella looked up from her phone.

‘Six hundred thousand. It’s insane.’ She glanced at Alessandro, her eyes full of humour. ‘How come you’re so famous?’

‘Because my family is one of Italy’s oldest noble lines and has been foremost in European investments for one hundred years,’ he replied without looking up from the papers he was reading.

‘And yet you need me.’ Ella’s voice was full of laughing flirtatiousness.

Alessandro looked up then, one eyebrow quirked. ‘Consider this more of a social experiment than anything born of true necessity, Miss Ash. The Rossi hotels are merely one branch of the business as a whole.’ He shrugged, returning his gaze to his papers. ‘My fortune is hardly dependent upon them, but naturally I wish them to succeed, and if engagement with social media is necessary...’ A pause as he made a tick on one of the papers. ‘Then so be it.’

‘Oh, and here I thought I was saving the day,’ Ella teased.

Alessandro gave her a level look before one corner of his mouth reluctantly kicked up, making Liane’s heart flipflop even though he wasn’t looking at her. Ella’s smile widened and she batted her eyelashes with her usual laughing drama before turning back to her phone.

Excusing herself with a murmur, Liane rose from her seat. Alessandro had invited them to explore the jet when they’d first boarded, but Liane had been too overawed to do anything but sit down and buckle up. Now she left the main cabin for the ones beyond, curiosity warring with an uneasy restlessness at being here at all.

She certainly didn’t need a front row seat to the quips flying between Alessandro and Ella. Alessandro might have said he had no interest in romance, but Liane was quite sure Ella could convince him otherwise if she chose to—and why wouldn’t she?

The cabin beyond the main seating area was styled as an office, complete with a wide mahogany desk, the curved walls lined with specially built bookcases. Liane trailed her finger along the titles—classics of philosophy, poetry and history in a variety of languages. She wondered if Alessandro had read them all or if they were just for show. She selected a volume of poetry and let the book fall open naturally to a well-worn marked page—Demain, dès l’aube, by Victor Hugo. Slowly she read the familiar lines:

Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne, Je partirai.

‘“Tomorrow at dawn, when the countryside brightens, I will depart.”’

Liane nearly jumped out of her skin as she heard Alessandro huskily quote the poem, his voice seeming to caress every syllable. He’d come into the room without her even realising, close enough to see the page she was reading, and, embarrassed, she realised she was snooping and he knew it.

‘You know the poem?’ she asked, clumsily closing the book and putting it back on the shelf.

‘Very well.’ He paused and then continued softly, ‘“Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.”’

‘“You see,”’Liane translated, her voice as soft as his, ‘“I know you will wait for me. I will go through the wood, I will go past the mountains.”’ She shook her head slowly. ‘You speak French?’

The smile that quirked his mouth seemed almost tender as his gaze swept over her, leaving a heated, tingling awareness in its wake. ‘Mais oui.’

She laughed a bit unevenly, shocked at how a single look turned her weak at the knees, filled her with a yearning she was afraid to name. He gave a playful grimace of acknowledgement. ‘Actually, I only have schoolboy French. I can’t speak or write it, really. But it’s a beautiful language.’ The observation felt strangely intimate, as if he were complimenting her and not her French. When she dared look at him his gaze was pensive, lingering. Something in her trembled and ached.

‘Yet you’re able to quote Hugo?’ she managed as she clasped her hands together in front of her in an attempt to calm her fluttering nerves. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘I always liked that poem.’