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This was Kate’s life, built with her own blood, sweat and tears, and her mother had her own life. In Cornwall. Far away. Separate.
‘What about it?’ She shoved her work laptop into a leather briefcase and reached for the grey jacket she had slung over the back of her chair.
Grey jacket, grey calf-length skirt, flat, sensible patent pumps and, yes, definitely tights. Not stockings. Tights. Possibly of the support variety. Who knew? It was impossible to tell what sort of figure she had under the prim ensemble. Not fat, not thin, tall... The shirt managed to hide everything up top and the skirt did a similar job with everything down below.
And why the hell was he looking anyway?
‘How long have you been here? In it?’
Kate paused and frowned. ‘A little over six months. To start with I was moved in here because I was working late on a couple of very big clients and George thought that the quiet would help concentration. Not that it’s a mad house outside. It isn’t. And then, when I was promoted, I was offered it. I snapped it up.’
She reached for her briefcase, slung her black bag over her shoulder and straightened her skirt.
‘Thanks very much for your offer of a ride home, but there are one or two things I need to collect on the way so I shall take the Tube.’
‘What things?’
‘Things... Food items. I need to stop off at the corner shop.’
Alessandro heard irritation behind her calmly spoken words. This was something he wasn’t used to, and he was as bemused by his own reaction to it as he had been by his earlier curiosity as to what lay underneath the prissy work clothes.
‘Not a problem.’ He waved aside her objection. ‘I’ve sent my driver home and I have my own car. Far more convenient if you load whatever you need to buy into my car rather than having to walk with it back to your house.’
‘I’m accustomed to walking home with my groceries.’
Alessandro looked at her narrowly. He wouldn’t have taken her for being skittish, but there was something skittish about her now. And why turn down a ride home? With him?
‘It would be useful for us to decide how to approach this delicate problem with George Cape and whatever money he’s been siphoning off.’
‘If he’s been siphoning off any. And I was under the impression that you had already decided what you would do if you found out that he had taken money from you...throw him in prison and chuck away the keys.’
‘Let’s hope I’ve got it wrong, in that case, and he’ll be spared the prison sentence.’ He stepped aside, leaving her just sufficient room to brush past him through the door, switching off the lights in her wake. ‘You’ve been in this office for six months and this is the first time it’s struck me that there’s nothing personal in here at all. Nothing.’ Kate flushed. ‘It’s an office,’ she said briskly, stepping in front of him, briefcase in one hand, bag over her shoulder, head held high and deliberately averted from him. ‘Not a boudoir.’
‘Boudoir...nice word. Is that where you stash all your personal mementoes? In your boudoir?’
Kate heard the amusement in his voice and turned to him angrily. Get a grip, she told herself sternly. Don’t let the man rattle you. Green flashing eyes clashed with his oh-so-dark ones and she felt herself sinking into his gaze, had to yank herself firmly back to reality.
Alessandro Preda had a reputation with women. Even if the gossip hadn’t reached her ears, one glance at any news rag would have informed her of that reputation.
He used women. He was always being snapped with models draped on his arm, gazing up at him adoringly. Lots of models. A different model for every month of the year. He could have started his own agency with the number of them he ran through. She wondered whether some of those models had been like her mother—sad creatures, blessed with spectacular looks but not enough common sense to know how to use what they had been given. Hanging on. Hoping for more than would ever be on the agenda.
‘Shall I email you my findings?’ Underneath the scrupulous politeness her voice could have frozen fire. She pressed the button to summon the lift and stared at him, as rigid as a plank of wood.
Alessandro had never seen anyone so uptight in his entire life.
This went way beyond self-control—way beyond a certain amount of composure.
What was her story? And didn’t she know that all those ‘No Trespassing’ signs she’d erected around herself were enticing beacons to a man like him?
He was thirty-four years old, and he wasn’t sure whether to be proud or simply accepting of the fact that he had never had to try very hard for a woman. They offered themselves to him.
But Ms Kate Watson had issues with him. He didn’t know what they were, but he did know that they constituted a challenge—and since when had he ever been a man to turn down a challenge?
If he had, he certainly wouldn’t have ended up in the exalted position of power that he had.
He suppressed the onslaught of thoughts that always managed to put him in a foul mood.
‘I don’t think so.’ He stepped back as the lift doors slid open, allowing her to edge past him, making sure she kept her distance as much as she could, doing her utmost to be casual about it. ‘Emails can be intercepted.’
‘Aren’t you being a bit cloak and dagger about all of this?’
Kate addressed the long metal case in the lift containing the various buttons, but she was acutely aware of him right next to her, of the warmth of his body wafting through the air and settling around her like a dangerous cloak that she wanted to shake off. She couldn’t remember him having this sort of effect on her before, but then they had usually been in a room with other people around—not heading down in a lift, just the two of them.
She was alive to his presence in a way that made her whole body feel uncomfortable.
Alessandro stared at that pale averted profile. She was a beautiful woman, he realized with sudden surprise. It was something that wasn’t immediately apparent, because she was at such pains to play down her looks, but studying her now he saw her features were perfect. Her nose was small and straight, her lips oddly full and sexy, her cheekbones high and sharp. Maybe the severity of her hairstyle accentuated all of that.
He wondered how long her hair was. Impossible to tell.
She swung round sharply and he straightened, flushing guiltily at being caught red-handed staring at her. Not very cool.
‘I doubt George is going to do a runner if he gets wind that you’re on to him. And that’s if he’s guilty of anything at all!’
‘Why are you so keen to protect him?’
‘I’m not keen to protect him. Just being fair. Innocent until proved guilty, and all that.’
The lift doors opened with a purr and she stepped out into the vast marbled foyer that still impressed her after nearly two years.
She wasn’t protecting George Cape. Or was she? When she thought of George, a little guy staring down the barrel of a gun and not even realizing it, she thought of her own vulnerable mother, who had lived most of her life staring down the barrel of a gun and not realizing it, and when she thought about her mother she felt her heart constrict.
Which, of course, was not going to do. Least of all with a man like Alessandro Preda. And naturally she could see his point of view.
‘Commendable,’ Alessandro murmured. ‘So we begin on Monday. The hunt to find out whether Cape is guilty of fraud or stupidity. Either way, he will doubtless end up being sacked. Now, where do you live...? My car’s in the underground car park.’
CHAPTER TWO (#u29a44239-142c-584d-bdfb-84b94218c41c)
IT HAD TAKEN a lot for Kate not to get in touch with George Cape over the weekend. Was he guilty of fraud? It was hard to believe. He was a true gentleman, courteous and kind, and he had taken her under his wing when she had started working for him. That said, he had not been his usual self over the past three months. Was there an explanation there somewhere?
She had looked through the files. Thankfully, no dummy companies had been set up—which she hoped ruled out fraud on a systematic large-scale basis. But the odd entries were definitely there, and...
She sighed and looked at her watch. She had managed to put off Alessandro the previous Friday evening, but he would be expecting her in his office now. At nearly seven p.m., the offices were again practically empty—aside from a few hard-core, nose-to-the-grindstone employees who barely glanced in her direction as she briskly walked out of the office with her files towards the bank of lifts.
It had been a while since she had been in Alessandro’s office. Not since that tax problem that had needed sorting out. George and the head of finance had been there too, but there had been a brief period when it had just been her, doing the grunt work with the numbers, and Alessandro, who had been covering other aspects of the problem, and he had ordered in food for both of them.
It had been one of the few occasions when they had been alone together and she could still vividly recall the way she had burned when she had glanced up at one point and their eyes had met.
He had very dark eyes, fringed with thick, dark lashes, and that day he had had the sort of brooding, thoughtful expression that sent shivers racing up and down her spine. Having him look at her had felt like a very physical experience and she hadn’t liked it.
And now that she was stepping into the lion’s den again she was determined to bring her wayward reactions to heel.
Unfortunately her rapidly beating heart was already letting the side down, and by the time she heard that deep, masculine drawl telling her to enter her palms were sweaty and her nerves were all over the place.
He was sprawled in his leather chair, hands folded loosely on his stomach.
‘Slight change of plan.’
They were his opening words and Kate stopped abruptly in her tracks. ‘I could always leave the files and we can discuss them another time.’ Disappointment warred with relief. ‘If you’re busy.’ Her eyes flickered away from their compulsive visual tour of his body.
‘We will discuss this over something to eat.’
That had her snapping to attention, and she looked at him with alarm. ‘There’s no need.’ She had already recalled the last time they had shared a meal in this setting, and a repeat performance was something she could do without. ‘I haven’t managed to speak to the computer department about getting hold of George’s password, but I don’t think we will need to do that.’ She took a few steps forward and thrust the files onto his desk. ‘There are no dummy companies. I’ve checked that out thoroughly. And—’
‘Over dinner.’
He slung his long body out of the chair and grabbed the jacket that had been tossed on the leather sofa by the wall. He didn’t bother to put it on, preferring to hook it over his shoulder with his finger, and then he continued.
‘I’ve asked you to work after hours. It’s only fair that I take you out to dinner. I mean, we do both have to eat...’
‘I hadn’t thought... This really won’t take very long...’
Alessandro had paused to stand in front of her, his lean, muscular body radiating a power that sapped her energy and threw her into a state of confusion. She resented both things. She was the consummate professional—a woman whose composed, efficient veneer was never dented. She had devoted her whole life to controlling the sort of feminine weakness that had reduced her mother to a victim over the years.
To combat the treacherous ache in her body she tightened her jacket around her, buttoning it and standing straighter—ramrod straight.
‘This is a man’s future we’re talking about,’ Alessandro’s keen eyes had noted all her little defence mechanisms: the way her lips had pursed, the tension in her shoulders, the buttoning of the jacket. ‘You wouldn’t want to write it off in a five-minute summary just because you happen to have a hot date for the evening, would you?’
‘I don’t have a hot date.’
The words left her mouth before she could drag them back, and it was no big deal but she still felt suddenly vulnerable and exposed. Her cheeks were burning as curious eyes lingered on her face.
‘I...I prefer to stay in on week nights,’ she gamely went on, even though she knew she should just shut up, because now he was staring at her with even more curiosity. ‘I often take work home with me. There’s a lot to get through and I know how easy it is for...for...things to pile up...’
‘You work late every evening, Kate. I don’t imagine anyone would expect you to take work home with you as well.’ He moved towards the door and opened it, standing back to allow her through. ‘Which is all the more reason for me to take you out for dinner, so that we can discuss this in less formal surroundings. I wouldn’t want you to see me as an unscrupulous boss who denies his employees a private life.’
Rattled, Kate walked briskly towards the lift. She turned to look at him. ‘But aren’t you?’
It was a daring question. One she shouldn’t have asked. He represented everything she didn’t like. In the normal course of events their paths would scarcely overlap. He rarely ventured down into the bowels of his offices, where the little people kept the wheels of his machinery well oiled and turning. But she didn’t like what he did to her, what he did to her prized self-control, and some wicked little devil inside her had pushed her to be more daring than she normally would have been.
‘Aren’t I what?’ He wondered how he had not noticed before the way her green eyes were the colour of polished glass.
Those polished-glass eyes slid sideways now.
‘Unscrupulous.’ Kate said eventually, although she still wasn’t looking at him as the lift carried them downstairs in what felt like a step out of routine that she didn’t want to take. Her heart was beating frantically inside her and she was thankful for the reliable armour of her neat starched suit. It gave her a confidence that was suddenly missing.
As they exited the building it was at least easier to talk to him when she was walking next to him and not staring directly at his face.
‘What I’m saying is I thought that in order to make it to the top you would have to be unscrupulous. No one ever gets to play in the Champions League unless they’re willing to...well...’
‘Crush everyone and everything in their path?’ He clasped her arm and turned her to face him.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘That’s not my style. There’s no need. And if this has to do with any decision I make about Cape, then you’re way off target. If Cape’s been defrauding my company then he’ll take the consequences. It’s an unfortunate truth that people must live and die by the decisions they make.’
‘That seems a little harsh.’
‘Does it?’ His eyes darkened but he released her arm, even though he didn’t immediately carry on walking. The crowds parted around them, shooting them curious looks.
Here, outside, it was very warm, and her suit of armour was beginning to feel more than a bit uncomfortable. Her skin prickled and she licked her lips nervously.
‘Not that it’s any of my business,’ she was quick to add. ‘Where are we going to eat?’
‘Is that your way of telling me that you’d like to bring this conversation to an end?’
‘I shouldn’t have said...what I said.’
‘You’re free to speak your mind.’
They began walking to a gastropub that was tucked down one of the tiny side streets close to his offices in the heart of the city.
‘Because it’s really just a family firm...?’ There was a smile in her voice as she tried to lighten the atmosphere.
‘You’ve got it. One big, happy family—just so long as all my family members behave themselves. When one of them steps out of line, then I’m afraid I have to rule with a firm hand.’
‘It’s a very big family.’
‘Which started small. And I suppose that’s why it’s important for me to take control when a situation such as the one we have now develops. I didn’t create this baby for anyone to get it into their heads that they could climb on my bandwagon and begin looting. Here we are.’
He pushed open the door into a space that was so dark it took Kate a couple of seconds for her eyes to adjust. Dark and refreshingly cool, and quaintly higgledy-piggledy.
‘This is not the sort of place I thought you would have liked,’ she blurted out impulsively, and Alessandro smiled.
‘I’m old friends with the man who owns it, and as a matter of fact coming here is something of an antidote to my frenetic pace of life. Why don’t you take your jacket off?’
‘I’m fine.’
Alessandro raised his eyebrows with mild disbelief. ‘I expect you’d like to get down to work immediately...bypass all the pleasantries...?’
‘I have all the files in my briefcase.’
‘I hate to curb your enthusiasm, but I could do with relaxing for five minutes before I begin to hear about what George Cape’s been up to. You might think I’m hard-line, but Cape’s been with my company for a quite a number of years. It’s regrettable that he could not have just approached me had he wanted a loan.’
She was spared the temptation of telling him that perhaps he needed to work on the whole family atmosphere approach by the arrival of the owner of the restaurant, who made a great fuss of Alessandro. They lapsed into rapid Italian and she covertly watched Alessandro, relaxed, gesticulating, grinning, showing her a natural warmth that was usually concealed under the forbidding exterior.
This would be the man who charmed women, she thought. The guy who could have any woman he wanted at the snap of a finger and made full use of the talent.
And, of course, none of those women were Plain Janes or, God forbid, downright unappealing.
