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‘Jackson was kind enough to provide me with the information.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ she retorted, bristling as she thought back to her colleagues at work and their reactions to Alessandro descending from Mount Olympus to grace them with his presence. ‘People have been talking...’
She reddened, but now that it was out what choice did she have but to stand her ground and say what was on her mind? Besides, he was in her territory now. If she couldn’t speak freely in her own house, then where could she? He might be the ruler of all he surveyed in his towering glass house in the City, but he wasn’t out here.
She quailed. Did he have to look so...so ruler-like even when he wasn’t in his domain? She wished he would just look a little more normal, a little less...intimidating. Or sexy. Take your pick.
She suddenly felt her youth, her lack of experience.
‘Talking?’ Alessandro tilted his head to one side and looked at her intently. ‘Talking about what? And who are these “people” who have been talking?’
‘I maybe shouldn’t have brought this up...’ she began, chickening out.
‘But you did, and now that you have you might as well finish. And for God’s sake don’t launch into any full-blown apologies when you’ve said what you want to say.’
‘You seldom come down to our floor. In fact, I can only think of one time when you actually came to see me in my office, and George was there as well. Suddenly you’ve been appearing out of the blue and people...well, people have been wondering what’s going on. They think... I don’t know what they think... But I don’t want them to think it. Whatever it is.’
‘So these people think something...you’re not sure what...and you don’t want them to think it...?’
‘I’m a very private person. Always have been.’
Except for one night in a restaurant, when I spilled my guts about my background to you...
‘I’m at a loss as to what I can do to resolve this issue...’
He spread his arms wide in a typical gesture that was at once rueful and ridiculously phoney, because there was just a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth that made her feel like an idiot. His brows knitted in a frown which was also phoney.
‘I guess you must think that Jackson thinks something too...although who knows for sure...?’
‘It’s all well and good for you to sit there sniggering, but I’m the one who has to live with other people’s stupid speculations!’
‘That’s office life for you. Maybe you should climb out of your ivory tower and experience it. And don’t worry about Jackson, by the way. Whatever he might think, or not think, he’ll keep it to himself.’
Kate gritted her teeth together and remembered diplomacy. He was rich, and immune to the opinions of other people. Not that there would be many people willing to shoot their mouths off at him. The man was unbearably arrogant in his self-confidence. And he talked about her living in an ivory tower!
‘Maybe I should,’ she said, with a tight, forced smile.
‘You look as though you’ve swallowed a lime.’ Alessandro grinned. He hadn’t noticed her freckles before, or the fact that her dark hair was more chestnut than brown, and golden at the ends.
‘I’m going to change. If you want something to drink there’s an opened bottle of wine in the fridge, or you can make yourself tea or coffee. It’s not a big kitchen. I’m sure you’ll be able to find what you need.’
With that she swung round and headed to her bedroom, fuming at the way he had invaded her privacy, fuming at the way he saw fit to say exactly what happened to be on his mind, fuming at her evening, which she had had neatly planned and which would now be spent in a state of edge-of-the-seat nervous tension.
She got to her bedroom and gazed at her mutinous reflection in the mirror. Her colour was up. Her hair was not in the neat little bun he was accustomed to seeing. The ponytail was coming undone and wisps of long brown hair trailed around her face. Which was completely bare of make-up...
She peered at the freckles which had always made her look so young.
Freckles, dishevelled hair, a pair of shorts that she would never in a million years have worn had she known that he—or anyone else, for that matter—would be turning up on her doorstep, and a small stretch top with no bra. The top might be navy blue, but she had generous breasts and it was perfectly obvious that they were not constrained.
If she half squinted and stood back just a tiny bit...well, she might pass muster as one of those cocktail waitresses she scorned. Small clothes, busty, legs everywhere, hair everywhere...
In the rational part of her mind Kate knew that it was just her imagination playing tricks on her. She wasn’t dressed any differently from any young woman hanging around in her own home on a balmy summer evening.
But this was her tender spot—the place where her imagination took flight. She was ultrasensitive to any suggestion that she and her mother had anything in common when it came to the way they saw themselves and their bodies. Her mother had always been a benchmark as to how she, Kate, would never conduct herself.
She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and hurriedly removed the offending attire, replacing the shorts and cropped top with a pair of jeans and a very sensible baggy tee shirt which revealed nothing but a faded logo on the front. She neatened up the ponytail, but drew the line at turning it into a bun.
When she made it back to the kitchen it was to find Alessandro well ensconced at her kitchen table, a glass of wine next to him, long legs extended to one side, relaxing back with his hands folded behind his head.
‘I like your place.’ He watched as she hovered for a few seconds by the kitchen door, the very picture of the disgruntled and reluctant host. ‘Cool, airy, light colours... And nice that it’s not in a big, impersonal block of flats as well. I take it there’s just the one other flat above you...?’
‘You’ve been poking around...’ she said, eyes narrowed.
‘You disappeared to change your clothes. What else was I supposed to do?’
‘You were supposed to make yourself a cup of tea and stay put.’
‘Wine seemed a better alternative. I try and avoid caffeine after six. You look nothing like her, you know.’
Kate stiffened. She took a couple of steps into the kitchen with about the same enthusiasm as someone entering a lion’s den. This was her house and her kitchen, and yet he seemed to dominate it with his presence, making her feel as if she needed to ask permission to open the fridge.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ She helped herself to a glass of wine and took up position at the opposite end of the table. ‘And I would rather not get into any of that.’
‘Any of what? If you don’t know what I’m talking about?’
He slung his long body out of the chair and headed to the fridge, opened the door and peered inside.
‘I see you’re a very healthy eater,’ he said conversationally, helping himself to the bottle of wine and bringing it back to the table, where he proceeded to pour himself another glass. ‘Although the box of chocolates is a giveaway of a more...decadent nature...’
‘If you give me five minutes, I’ll go and fetch the file on George.’
‘But returning to what I said...’ This time his dark eyes were thoughtful, serious. ‘And that remark you so adroitly tried to avoid. You’re nothing like your mother. I looked at some of the pictures you have framed in your sitting room...’
‘You shouldn’t have come here and you shouldn’t have nosed around...’ For a few appalling seconds, Kate felt as though her little world was in the process of being tilted on its axis. ‘I should never have told you any of that stuff.’
‘Why? Is there something wrong with confiding in other people?’
‘Do you?’ She turned the question right back at him. ‘Do you run around spilling your guts to all and sundry? What about all those models you go out with? Do you get deep and personal with them? Do you hold hands and sob over a bottle of wine while you pour your soul out?’
This was what it felt like to lose control. She had always had control, and now here she was, sitting at her own kitchen table, losing it with a guy who had the power to terminate the career she had so carefully built.
And the worst of it was that she didn’t want to retract the accusation.
She was aware of him with every pore of her being. He swamped her. When she breathed she felt that she was breathing in his clean, masculine scent. When she leaned forward she could feel his personality wrap around her like tendrils of ivy.
She felt...alive.
But not, she told herself uneasily, in a good way. There was nothing about Alessandro Preda that could make her feel anything in a good way. She felt alive in a very, very annoying way.
‘At least you’re not apologizing for asking that daring question,’ Alessandro drawled.
So she had ditched the shorts and the cropped top, but the jeans and the baggy shirt did nothing to reduce her sex appeal. Now he had seen that body shorn of its camouflage outfits the image was imprinted in his brain with the force of a branding iron.
‘And you’re right. I don’t tend to do the personal touchy-feely business with the women I go out with. I can’t recall pouring my soul out and sobbing in recent times.’ His mouth twitched with amusement. ‘In that we’re strangely alike. But you wear your defence system on the outside. You cover up from neck to ankle but there’s no need. You’re not your mother. You may want to make sure you don’t follow in her footsteps, but you don’t have to dress like a spinster schoolteacher to do that.’
‘How dare you come here and try and analyze me?’ Tears stung the back of her throat but thankfully she was far too reticent a person to allow them access.
‘I’m not trying to analyze you,’ Alessandro told her in just the sort of gentle voice that she knew might prove her undoing if she let it. ‘Don’t you feel a little trapped by all the hoops you make yourself jump through?
‘I don’t feel trapped by anything. This is the life I’ve chosen to lead. You have no idea what it’s like to be...insecure when you’re growing up...’
‘How do you know that?’ Alessandro asked softly.
Her eyes widened. She paused for thought. How did she know that? Because of who he was? Rich. Powerful. Confident. Arrogant. Those were not the hallmarks of someone whose upbringing had been anything but exemplary. Besides, he was the sole issue of the union of two wealthy families. If you looked him up on the internet—which she never had—you would discover that. She had overhead one of the giggly girls from the legal department imparting that titbit one day in the office restaurant. He occupied a stratosphere that was quite unlike hers. Actually, quite unlike most peoples.
‘But you were right when you said that we’re here to talk about Cape.’
For a minute there Alessandro had felt the pull to trade one set of confidences for another. He didn’t know where that had come from, but it wasn’t something he was going to give in to. Probably hearing her talk about her mother had naturally led him to think about his own parents. They too lived on the coast—probably not a million miles away from her mother. Small world...
‘Of course. I’ll just go and fetch the file I’ve compiled. I’ve summarized all my findings. I thought it might be easier for you to go through rather than follow the trail piecemeal.’
‘Highly efficient, and just what I would expect of you!’
Kate frowned, but before she could rise to the bait he interceded with a grin.
‘And, before you jump down my throat, I wasn’t being sarcastic...’
‘I wasn’t about to imply that you were.’ But she had been. And that made her feel a little uneasy. Either she was as transparent as a pane of glass, which was a bad thing, or else he could read her mind—which was a bad thing.
And what had he meant when he had hinted that it wasn’t true that he wouldn’t know what it might feel like to have an insecure background?
She felt her pulse race at the thought of him confiding in her and had to yank herself back to the reality that, when all was said and done, he was her boss and they had nothing in common.
Maybe he was right about that ivory tower, she thought feverishly as she fetched the file and headed back to the kitchen. Not as it applied to her in an office scenario but as it applied to her in a life scenario. Maybe she had lived life in the safe middle lane for too long. Maybe she had detached herself too much from the highs and lows of getting involved with people...with men. Maybe that was why she was behaving like this with him: disobeying common sense and flirting with something dangerous...
Flirting with an impossible attraction.
Shoot me in the head first, she thought.
But she had to take a deep, steadying breath before she pushed open the door and stepped inside where, thankfully, he was still in the same place and not snooping through the kitchen drawers and making himself even more at home.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked politely, and Alessandro raised his eyebrows.
‘I don’t need sobering up,’ he told her drily. ‘So no, thank you. Besides, what did I tell you about caffeine after six?’
‘Yes, you did say that—but I do remember you helping yourself to several cups of strong black coffee a few months ago, when we were working with George and a couple of others on that deal late into the night...’
‘I didn’t realize that you had been keeping a watch on what I was eating and drinking...’
God, but she was sexy when she blushed like that and looked away, as though she was in danger of giving away state secrets if she met his eyes. He felt himself stir again, aroused by images that had no place in his head.
He waved his hand for her to hand over her findings and started reading. There wasn’t a great deal to get through—less than he had been expecting.
‘So all in all,’ he said slowly, raising his eyes to hers, ‘he hasn’t been at it for very long...’
‘Which I think is in his favour...’
‘We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. The fact is that the man has stolen from me...’
‘He must have had a reason.’
‘Of course he must have had a reason. Greed. Possibly linked to a debt which had to be paid off. My money is on a gambling debt. Unless you’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary? Vodka bottles in his desk drawer, perhaps?’
‘I can’t imagine that George is a gambler,’ Kate persisted, thinking furiously, trying to remember if she had noticed anything unusual about his behaviour over the past six months and coming up with nothing. ‘And he certainly isn’t an alcoholic, if that’s what you’re implying!’
‘How would you know, unless you socialize with him out of work? On a regular basis?’
‘He’s a good guy.’
‘Who has just happened to steal over a hundred grand from me over a five-month period. His halo’s slipping slightly, wouldn’t you agree? Still, he will have the opportunity to explain his borderline saintly status to a court of impartial jurors, and you are more than welcome to sign on as a character witness.’
‘Sometimes—’ She swallowed back something she would instantly regret saying and took a deep breath. ‘Surely you could at least hear what he has to say before you condemn him and throw away the key...?’
Could he? Well, under any other circumstances there would be no question as to what course of action he would take. There could never be any excuse for fraud. Life was full of people forgiving the idiocy of other people, but in the end idiots deserved the punishment they got. The feckless deserved their fate.
He looked at that earnest face. That beautiful, earnest face. She should be as tough as nails—immune to feelings of empathy given her background. But she wasn’t.
She was complex, intriguing, quirky... And all of this despite the fact that she was so desperate to be just the opposite.
He liked that.
Was there anything wrong with that?
When it came to women he had always been able to have what he wanted. This woman introduced a challenge to his jaded appetite and what was wrong with that? What was wrong if he wanted to explore that just a little bit further?
‘I could...’ he admitted, watching her carefully. ‘Everyone has a story to tell...’
‘I know!’
She hazarded a smile, leaned forward.
‘You think I’m mad, but I just know that George isn’t a bad guy. He...he’s actually one of the kindest men I’ve met in my entire life! Although...’ She laughed, and the sound was light and infectious, ‘Compared to some of the guys I’ve had the misfortune to meet, thanks to my mother, that’s not hard! Not that any of them threatened me in any way,’ she added hurriedly, ‘but I certainly grew up having first-hand knowledge of how scummy guys can be...’
She smiled shyly at him, marvelling that underneath that forbidding exterior and arrogant self-assurance he might not be quite as unrelenting as she’d thought.
‘I’m really glad you’re prepared to at least listen to what he has to say.’
Alessandro made a non-committal sound under his breath and smiled at her lazily. ‘And wouldn’t it be so much fairer if I had this discussion with him face to face? Outside the office? After all, the last thing I want is for the world to see him being marched out in handcuffs...’
