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‘Not exactly adoring, though, is it...?’ he mused. ‘When it comes to accolades...?’
He enjoyed the way she blushed. It was something he had never noticed before. Like a wayward horse tugging at its reins, his mind broke its leash and zoomed back to the picture of her in those shorts, long legs going on for ever, full breasts bouncing braless in that small top.
Great body sternly kept under wraps because she had learned lessons from having a mother who was too ready to flaunt hers.
Had she ever flaunted her body for a man?
‘I don’t have to be a member of your fan club to appreciate that you’re talented at what you do.’
She wanted to tell him that this was hardly appropriate conversation, but she suspected that he didn’t give a damn what was appropriate and what wasn’t. He did what he wanted to do because he could.
If she annoyed him too much she would probably find herself next to George on a trip to never-never land.
‘But when it comes to anything that isn’t work-related your admiration levels drop off sharply—am I right?’ Her face was averted and he absently appreciated the fine delicacy of her profile. He had a sudden urge to release her long chestnut-brown hair from its ridiculous clips and pins.
‘I suppose I have different standards to you when it comes to relationships,’ she said eventually, when the silence was threatening to overwhelm her. She wasn’t looking at him, but she could feel his dark eyes boring into the side of her face.
What was this all about? He didn’t give a hoot what she thought about his personal life. Maybe he was irritated because she was being a little more forthcoming than he was used to, but her outspokenness probably amused him.
She was providing him with a different taste sensation—why not try it?
‘And tell me what those standards are...’
Kate swung to look at him and discovered that he was leaning towards her, far too close for comfort.
Dark, dark eyes with ridiculously long eyelashes clashed with hers and the breath caught in her throat. She inched back, furious with herself for feeling uncomfortable in his presence, for letting him get to her, when she had given herself a stern talk about all that nonsense before she had left her house.
‘I...’
‘You’re not going to dry up on me now, are you, Kate? When you’ve come this far?’
And just how had she managed to do that? she wondered. One minute they were striding through an airport and the next minute she had launched into a personal attack on his moral standards. Or as good as!
Trapped by her own idiocy, she frantically tried to think of a clever way to change the conversation, but he was waiting for her to say something. And not a sudden commentary on the weather or the state of the economy. No such luck. Why would he rescue her from her hideous discomfort when he could get a kick from pinning her to the wall and watching her wriggle like a worm on a hook?
‘I don’t approve of men who...use women. Maybe that’s the wrong word,’ she corrected hastily. ‘I mean I don’t approve of men who slide in and out of relationships, trying them on for size and then discarding the ones that don’t quite fit.’
‘And what about women who try men on for size?’
‘That doesn’t happen.’
‘No?’ He raised his eyebrows in a cool question. ‘Ever had a boyfriend, Kate?’
‘Of course I have!’ she said hotly. ‘And I don’t see what that has to do with anything!’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Where is this wonder guy now?’ He peered around him, as if at any moment the man in question would stride out from where he had been hiding behind a computer terminal.
‘We... It finished...’
‘Ah.’ Alessandro sat back and linked his fingers lightly on his lap. ‘So it didn’t work out?’
‘No, it didn’t,’ Kate said uncomfortably.
‘Was it a case of him using you ruthlessly before tossing you aside on the discarded heap?’
‘No!’ she cried, as flustered as a witness sitting in the box, being picked apart by the prosecution.
‘Well, what happened, in that case?’ And now his tone had changed. Very subtly. Because he’d discovered that he was curious about this mystery guy who hadn’t chucked her on his discards pile. ‘And don’t think about launching into a little sermon about it being none of my business. You don’t seem to have too many qualms about speaking your mind, so you can answer one or two questions of your own.’
‘We broke up.’ She shrugged and tore her eyes away from his lean, aggressive face. ‘The timing was wrong,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘I was very busy. I wasn’t in the right place to fully cultivate the relationship the way it deserved to be cultivated...’
‘Ah...so an amicable parting of ways...?’
Kate could have thought of other ways of describing their inevitable split. Amicable didn’t feature on the list.
‘So here’s the thing,’ he said, voice as smooth as silk and yet razor-sharp. ‘You seem to be under the impression that every relationship that doesn’t end in a walk up the aisle is a relationship that involves one person using the other. But life’s not like that. Yes, it may have been so for your mother, but your mother was a certain type of personality. Your mother—and I’m no expert on this—may have been searching for something, and the only way she could conduct her search was by offering what she had and hoping it got picked by the right kind of guy...’
‘You’re right. You don’t know my mother.’
‘Maybe your mother was fundamentally insecure,’ he carried on relentlessly. ‘But that doesn’t mean that everyone is like her. She’s not the benchmark.’
‘I never said she was.’
‘No?’
‘I should never have said anything,’ she breathed resentfully. ‘It’s awful when you tell someone something and they then proceed to use it against you like in a court of law.’
But didn’t he have a point? She refused to concede that he did, but her conscience nagged in a way it never had before. He had stripped her of her convenient black-and-white approach and she didn’t want that. It was easier to set a course when you weren’t distracted by grey areas and murky questions.
‘It’s not about the outcome,’ she muttered in a driven voice. ‘It’s about the intent.’
‘Explain.’
‘I don’t want to be having this conversation.’ She gazed at the tepid coffee in her cup and wished she had something to fiddle with. ‘Maybe we ought to find out whether we should be boarding. Or something.’
‘They’ll call us when it’s time for us to board the plane. Relax.’
She was as tense as a bowstring, her body rigid. So much emotion contained behind that bland exterior. He reached out and brushed his finger against the soft skin on the underside of her wrist and she tensed.
And he tensed.
Electric. Unexpected. A high-voltage charge that suddenly ran between them.
He withdrew his hand quickly. ‘You initiate conversations,’ he said coolly, ‘and when the going gets a little tricky you back away because you’re too scared to carry on. Weren’t you ever taught to finish what you start?’
The lazy teasing had gone, wiped out by that ferocious assault on his senses when he had casually touched her. Watching and speculating was one thing. But what he had felt just then, when he had briefly touched her...
It had felt like a loss of control. For a couple of seconds he had been knocked back by a reaction he had not expected. Curiosity had stoked his libido, but now...now he felt something as powerful as a depth charge. The shock of the unexpected jacked his responses into full alert. For once, toying with the idea of a woman in his bed seemed a dangerous adventure not to be undertaken.
‘Okay...’ Kate surreptitiously rubbed her wrist where his finger had been. ‘If you really want to know, there’s a difference between starting a relationship in the hope that it’ll develop into something and starting a relationship knowing that it’s going to crash and burn when you decide it’s time to move on.’
‘And I’m a crash-and-burn guy...?’
She shrugged and he stared her down, his dark eyes cool, his expression unreadable.
Was he storing away everything she said to be used at a later date? Did he even care one way or another what she said? She decided that, no, he probably didn’t. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would tolerate personal comments on his moral choices. She couldn’t picture any woman sitting him down with a cup of tea and sharing her opinions on his ethics and his principles. They might have a rant when he chucked them over for a new model, but that was different.
Yet here he was now, waiting for her to say something. If he didn’t care about her opinions he wouldn’t be allowing her this leeway. Would he?
‘Sort of... I guess... It’s not for me to say...’
‘Easy to make assumptions, isn’t it?’ he said softly. ‘You criticized me for making assumptions about how your background influenced you...yet here you are... A bit hypocritical, wouldn’t you say?’
The question hung in the air between them. Suddenly it felt as though they were the only two people sitting here. Background noise—not that there was much of that—faded, until she could almost hear the beating of her own heart.
It had been easy to tell herself that she could redefine the lines between them. Sitting here, she couldn’t understand how those good intentions had been swept aside so fast and so completely.
‘If you can’t take the heat,’ Alessandro drawled, ‘then you should stay out of the kitchen. You think it’s okay to offer your opinions on what you imagine my personal life is like...? Well, it’s a two-way street...’
He beckoned across a young girl who was on the hunt for empty plates and glasses and asked her to fetch him a cup of black coffee, and all the while his eyes remained fastened on Kate’s flushed face.
‘But I’m glad you brought this up,’ he continued, obviously not getting the vibes she was transmitting, ‘because, like I said, a week of constant silent disapproval isn’t what I need...’
‘I didn’t have to come,’ Kate muttered.
‘But here you are. And, incidentally, you actually did have to come. You had to come because I requested it. So, now we’re having this cosy little chat, let me fill you in on your misconceptions. I don’t pick women up and drop them, having led them up the garden path. I don’t make promises I have no intention of fulfilling in exchange for sex.’
Kate stared mutinously at the ground, wishing it would do her a favour and open up and swallow her.
She was being chastised. Like a misbehaving kid in a classroom.
‘Trust me—I don’t have to do that.’
Coffee was brought to him and Kate noticed the way the young girl half curtseyed and stared at him, goggle-eyed. He might make noises about not wanting to be treated like royalty, and laugh because maybe he really did mean it, but he was treated like royalty.
‘So you don’t leave any broken hearts behind you?’ she finally asked, prompted into filling the silence.
He looked at her thoughtfully.
‘Maybe I do,’ he mused. ‘But through no fault of my own.’
Kate’s mouth fell open. Talk about ditching responsibility! Her face must have revealed what was going through her head, but this time he relaxed, sipped the coffee that had been brought to him and smiled.
‘I don’t want commitment and I never pretend that I do,’ he said, and she bit down hard on the ready retort rising to her lips. ‘I lay my cards on the table from the start.’
‘And what would those cards happen to be?’ Kate asked politely. She thought that they probably came from the same deck that all commitment-phobes used.
‘No strings attached. I tell them from the outset that I’m in it for fun. I give them the opportunity to walk away.’
How considerate.
‘No sleepovers...no cosy nights in in front of the telly...no knick-knacks in the bathroom...’
‘That’s a lot of rules,’ Kate said truthfully. ‘And then what happens?’
‘What do you mean?’ Alessandro frowned in puzzlement, because how much clearer could he get with his explanation?
‘What if some of the rules get broken? I mean, what if one of your dates decides that she’d rather stay in than go out. But, no... I suppose those supermodel types love the camera, so why would they ever want to do something as boring as staying in...?’
Alessandro grinned but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Why would any woman want to go out when they had the option of staying in a bed with him? Kate could read that clearly from his wicked grin.
‘My rules don’t get broken,’ he murmured with soft assurance. ‘And if they do then it spells the end of a relationship. And now that we’ve cleared that up...’ He leaned forward to flip open his laptop, which had been resting on the table in front of them.
Now that he had cleared that up she was dismissed—along with her opinions.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u29a44239-142c-584d-bdfb-84b94218c41c)
IT WASN’T THE MOST relaxed of trips, even though it should have been. The first-class service was faultless. There seemed to be no end to the smiling girls waiting at the ready to bring whatever they were told to bring. They were, literally, primed to jump to attention. People paid a fortune—and they didn’t just get hot breakfasts in the first-class lounges. The bowing and scraping followed them onto the plane.
Kate had been on a one-week holiday with her mother three years previously. They had flown to Ibiza for a few days of sun and the flight over had been cramped and unpleasant. The airline staff had been abrupt and indifferent and it had been a relief to land and get off.
On this flight she had endless leg room. The seat could be transformed into a bed. There was champagne and wine and the food was of fine-dining standard.
But she shouldn’t have worn a suit. The pumps she could dispense with, but the skirt was horribly uncomfortable. Grey jogging bottoms had been thoughtfully provided in a sanitised plastic bag, along with a matching jumper, but she couldn’t bring herself to wear either.
The only saving grace was that Alessandro worked and dozed, leaving her to get on with the business of dreading the week ahead.
There was a lot to dread. High on the list was the fact that she could give herself a million stern lectures on keeping her distance but none of those words of wisdom counted for anything—because he seemed to have the power to seduce her into whatever conversation he happened to want at the time.
She could wave the folder she had on George in front of his handsome face, but if he wasn’t in the mood to get down to business then he just...didn’t.
And something about him propelled her into speech. The hatefully arrogant man could just tilt his head to one side, direct that devastating half smile on her and off she would go, blabbering on about stuff that didn’t concern him and pouring out confidences that she never shared with anyone.
Then he would grow bored and she would be dismissed—just like that.
If in the space of a few days and some snatched conversations she had managed to tell him about her insecure upbringing and how that had made her feel, not to mention her thoughts on men like him, then what was the week ahead going to bring?
And then there was the uncomfortable question of the way she couldn’t seem to stop herself from looking at him—and not in the harmless way an employee was supposed to look at her boss. Nothing about what he aroused in her felt appropriate.
What was that all about? Was it because she had been so careful to put things into boxes—to put men into boxes—that the first time one had slipped through the net, she had not had the necessary weaponry to deal with the intruder?
That calmed her. It was easy to picture him as an intruder, muscling his way past ‘Do Not Trespass’ signs, making inroads into places he had no right to be.
She could deal with intruders. Even metaphorical ones. So she might have been caught off guard? That didn’t mean that she was doomed to being caught off guard whenever she happened to be in his company. She might be inexperienced but she wasn’t a complete idiot!
