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When he handed me my wand of lip gloss our fingers touched. I felt a fizzing sensation that travelled all the way up my arm and somehow ended in a molten pool between my legs.
He led me to a quiet table in the shade of a leafy tree outside a café on the Rue de Seine and ordered sparkling mineral water for me and an espresso for himself. We talked for two hours but it felt like two minutes.
He told me how he had grown up in Sicily but had studied and trained in London, and was spending that year working at Paris’s top cardiac centre to complete his PhD before heading back to London. Most surgeons found the specialty hard enough, but he’d taken on even more study.
He fascinated me. I was spellbound by his warm, intelligent brown eyes and his long-fingered hands that had so briefly touched mine. I thought of those hands, how they performed intricate surgery and saved countless lives. I sat there aching for him to touch me again. I must have communicated it silently, for he suddenly reached across the table and took my hand in his, stroking his thumb over the back of it as his eyes meshed with mine.
He didn’t have to say a word. I could see it in his gaze. I knew it was the same in mine. There was a connection between us that transcended the primal attraction of two healthy consenting adults. I had never felt a surge of lust so overpowering, and yet I could feel something else as well, which was less easily defined.
Looking back, I suspect I recognised some quality in him that spoke to the lonely outsider in me, which I prided myself on keeping well hidden. My mother would say it was fate, or kismet, or the planets aligning or something. My father would say it had something to do with our chakras being balanced. Whatever it was, the world seemed to carry on without us as we sat there gazing into each other’s eyes.
I gave myself a mental slap and pushed open the first dormitory door. ‘We sleep the Key Stage One and Two girls two to a room to encourage close friendship,’ I said. ‘The older girls can request single rooms, but we encourage sharing to maintain a sense of family.’
Alessandro gave the dormitory a cursory look before meeting my gaze. I wondered if he could see any trace of the nostalgia that had momentarily sideswiped me. His eyes moved back and forth between each of mine as if searching for something.
‘Are you happy, ma petite?’
I felt my knees weaken at the French endearment. I covered it quickly by pasting a poised and professional look on my face. I could not allow myself to be lured back into his sensual orbit. His voice, no matter what language he spoke—French, Italian, English or a combination of all three—made a frisson of delight shimmy down my spine.
I wondered if my voice had the same effect on him. Not flipping likely. I might have smoothed over my Yorkshire vowels after years of living in London, but even so there was no way anyone would want to listen to me reading the phone directory.
‘What’s wrong with Claudia’s mother?’ I asked, to steer the conversation away from my emotional health.
An impenetrable sheen came over his eyes and he turned away to look at the dormitory, with its two neatly made beds and the waist-high bookshelf that doubled as a bedside table between. There were two teddy bears in pink and purple tutus sitting side by side on the top. It might have been any bedroom in the suburbs except for the sound of schoolchildren playing in the playground outside.
‘She’s receiving treatment for a protracted illness,’ he said after a long moment.
Something in my stomach slipped. ‘Terminal?’
‘I hope not.’
I bit my lip as I thought of six-year-old Claudia losing her mother. My mother—both my parents, actually—drove me nuts, but I couldn’t imagine not having her around any more.
What would it do to a little girl so young to have no one but her uncle to watch out for her? Who would help her with the issues of growing up? Who would tell her about the birds and the bees, not to mention the blowflies who could destroy her innocence in …? Well, I’m not going to go there. Who would she turn to when the world seemed to be against her? Or when she got her heart broken for the first time? Who would hold her and tell her they loved her more than life itself?
‘What about Claudia’s father?’ I asked.
Alessandro’s top lip developed an unmistakable curl of disdain. ‘He’s not in the picture. Never has been. Claudia has never met him.’
‘What about grandparents?’
The line of his mouth tightened until it was almost flat. ‘There are none on either side.’
None? Or none he wanted to acknowledge? I wondered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister five years ago?’ I said.
He drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. I watched as his broad shoulders went down on the long exhale and what looked like a tiny flicker of pain passed over his features.
‘We weren’t in contact at that point.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘It sounds it.’
He gave me a level look. ‘It’s important to me that Claudia settles in as quickly and seamlessly as possible.’
‘What have you told her about her mother’s illness?’
He held my gaze for a moment before he looked away again. He let out another long breath. ‘Not much. I didn’t want her overburdened with worry about things she can’t change. She’s a sensitive child.’
‘Then she’ll join the dots for herself but probably come up with the wrong picture,’ I said. ‘You should be honest with her. Kids are much more resilient than you realise.’
His eyes collided again with mine, one of his brows going up in an arc. ‘Are they?’
It was a pointed question that hung suspended in the air.
I found myself going back in time to my own childhood, thinking of all the times when a bit of resilience would have come in handy. My parents’ hippie lifestyle was fine for them, but it hadn’t been fine for me or for my younger sister Bertie. So many times I’d had to take on a parenting role for Bertie’s sake because our parents were missing in action, so to speak.
It’s not that they weren’t loving parents—if anything they were too indulgent. We didn’t have any proper boundaries—not just to keep us in line, but also to give others a clear message that someone was watching out for us. Mum and Dad were dreamers—drifters who never stayed in one place long enough to put down roots—which meant Bertie and I had little stability during our childhood. We would no sooner make friends at one place before we’d be shuffled on to another location where some visionary guru was setting up a new lifestyle commune our parents were keen to join.
I was always watching out for Bertie, who got bullied a lot. I did too, until I learned to stand up for myself. I had to pretend to be tougher than I really was in order to survive. It’s a good skill to have, but it has its downside. After all those years of playing tough it’s hard to find my soft centre. It’s been bricked in, like a vault cemented into a wall. I don’t know if you can call that resilience or not.
I stopped thinking about my childhood and started speculating on Alessandro’s. Was that why he had posed the question? Was there something about his childhood that made him sceptical of a child’s ability to cope with what life dished up? I had always seen him as a strong, invincible sort of person. He had brushed off his ‘orphan’ status with a casual it-happened-a-long-time-ago-and-I’m-over-it shrug. But what had made him pretend to be alone in the world?
I didn’t think it had been to garner sympathy. He was too self-reliant to want or need anyone else’s comfort. That was what I’d found so attractive about him. He didn’t care what people thought of him other than in a professional sense. He’d told me he wasn’t out to win a popularity contest but to save lives. He got on with his life as if other people’s opinions were irrelevant.
I secretly envied him as I’d spent so much of my life trying to fit in. I’d learned to morph into whatever I needed to be in order to belong. My chameleon-like behaviour had turned me into someone I didn’t always like, but I wasn’t sure how to go back to being the warm and friendly and open girl I had once been. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to be that girl any more. That girl had got herself into trouble, and the last thing I wanted to attract was trouble.
Alessandro might have been in any sort of career and I would still have been attracted to him. I had been totally swept away by him—charmed and captivated by his take-charge, can-do attitude, which was so at odds with the way I had been raised. He was goal-orientated and disciplined. He didn’t dream or drift aimlessly, or wait for someone else to tell him what he should do. He made plans and set about fulfilling them. He hadn’t let his background or lack of family money stop him from becoming one of London’s top heart specialists. He had laid down a career path as a young boy and got on with making it happen.
His intelligence was the biggest turn-on for me. I don’t mean his doctor status, because that sort of thing doesn’t impress me. I loved it that he was well read and well informed on topics I had barely even thought of before. But it was the physical intensity between us that took me completely by surprise. I had never considered myself a sensual person. The event I refuse to talk about put paid to that when I was thirteen. I wasn’t the touchy-feely sort. I didn’t hug or kiss. I didn’t seek affection and I didn’t give it—unless there was no avoiding it, like at Christmas and on birthdays.
But with Alessandro I embraced my sexuality. I celebrated my womanhood with every cell of my body. I bloomed and burned and blazed under his touch. I discovered things about my body I had no idea it was capable of—wickedly delightful things that left my skin tingling for hours afterwards. I loved exploring the hard contours of Alessandro’s body. I just about crawled into his skin once I lost my first flutter of fear.
I had never seen a man more beautifully made. Although I’m not a doctor like my sister Bertie, who sees naked men all the time, I’ve seen a few. My parents went through a naturalist stage when I was in my early teens, so the male form is no stranger to me. Talk about embarrassing … Most of those men had the sort of bodies one would think they would be desperate to cover up with clothes—layers and layers of them. But, no, it was all out on show. However, none of the men I had seen in their birthday suits had looked anywhere as perfect as Alessandro. He wasn’t gym-obsessed perfect, but rather healthy and virile and in-his-prime perfect.
I had to give myself another mental slap to keep my mind on the conversation. Images of his naked body were flooding my brain to such a degree I could feel warmth blooming in my cheeks. I rarely blush. I lost my innocence a long time ago. But something about Alessandro’s penetrating gaze made me feel as if he could see exactly where my mind was taking me.
I realised then with a little jolt that the intimacy we’d shared would always be between us. We had ‘A History’. It wasn’t as if I could wipe it away, like I do the day’s lesson from the whiteboard in the classroom. There was a permanent record of it in my flesh.
I was tattooed with his touch, indelibly marked, so that when any other man touched me I automatically compared it to Alessandro’s and found it sadly lacking. It’s basically why I haven’t bothered dating. I don’t see the point. Quite frankly, I could do without being reminded I’m basically dead from the waist down with anyone else.
‘I’ll … erm … show you the bathrooms,’ I said, and made to turn away.
But his hand stalled me again. I had folded my arms across my body, which meant his hand was tantalisingly close to my breasts. I felt the stirring tingle of my flesh, as if my breasts had picked up his proximity like some sort of finely tuned radar.
My breath stalled somewhere in the middle of my throat. I brought my gaze up to his. His eyes were so dark it was impossible to make out his pupils. A girl could get lost in those eyes. Disappear and never be found again.
My gaze went to his mouth as if of its own volition. My stomach did a rollercoaster loop and drop as I recalled how his lips had felt against mine. The taste of him, the feel of him, the sensual power of him had made everything so tight and bound up inside me unwind. His lips were evenly shaped—neither too thick or too thin. He had shaved that morning, but even so I could see the urgent pinpricks of stubble surrounding his mouth and on his lean jaw.
My fingers twitched to slide over it, to remind myself of the erotic feel of his prickly male skin against the softness my female flesh.
I dragged in a ragged breath and brought my gaze back to his, but he was now looking at my mouth, a small frown tugging at his brow. I ran the tip of my tongue over my lips and my stomach did another crazy somersault as I saw his sexily hooded eyes follow its pathway.
I swear to God someone had sucked all the oxygen out of the air. I was finding it hard to breathe. I was standing there as if I’d been snap freeze-dried. I couldn’t have move if I’d tried.
His hand reached out and ever so gently cupped my cheek. A shiver of reaction coursed through me, but for some reason I still didn’t move away. It was like I was under his spell. Totally under his control, with no will to snap out of it. The pad of his thumb moved over the circle of my chin, not quite touching my lower lip but close enough for it to go into raptures of tingling, fizzing anticipation. His eyes remained focused on my mouth, as if he too were recalling how it had felt against his.
Was he going to kiss me? Would I allow him to? I was in a conundrum. I wanted to feel his mouth on mine if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I’d been imagining it had felt far more amazing than it actually had. I guess I also wanted to prove to myself that I could resist him. That I could withstand the commanding pressure of his mouth and not melt into a pool of mush.
But another shockingly traitorous part of me wanted to close the distance between our mouths and give myself up to the storm of passion I could feel building inside my body. It was surging through my blood, firing up all my senses, making me giddy with longing. A longing I could feel pounding deep in my core. The relentless ache of it was part pleasure, part pain. It had been so long since I’d felt desire I was shocked at how powerful it was.
I realised then how base I was. How utterly primal my urges were that, for all my prim and proper fastidiousness, I was as earthy and lust driven as anyone else.
Alessandro’s thumb pressed against my lower lip and I all but whimpered. I smothered it as best I could but I saw the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as they meshed with mine.
‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he said.
The fact he’d issued it as a command rather than asked me was enough to break the spell. I stepped out of his light hold and sent him an icy glare.
‘The staff at Emily Sudgrove are prohibited from fraternising with the parents or guardians of the girls,’ I said.
That wasn’t strictly true, but it sounded like it could be. I hoped he wouldn’t find out about Kate McManus, a young widow who had recently started dating our Physical Education teacher, Rob Canning. We were delighted with the budding romance, because Rob had gone through a really painful divorce a few years ago and Kate was the only woman he’d dated since.
‘Are you involved with someone?’ Alessandro said.
I put on my best haughty look. Bertie reckons no one can do haughty better than me. I can arch my brows and look down my nose and send sparks of scorn from my gaze like a blue-blooded aristocrat staring down an impudent underling.
‘I have no idea what makes you think you have the right to ask me such an impertinently personal question, Dr Lucioni,’ I said.
His mouth tipped up at one corner, as if he found me amusing rather than threatening. ‘So that’s a no,’ he said.
I wished I could deny it, but he would only have to ask around to find out my dating track record was abysmal. My life was a cycle of work, eat and sleep. I occasionally threw in a bit of exercise to break it up a bit. But the fact is I love my job. I don’t want to be distracted from it. As far as I can see, having a relationship is one big time suck.
I didn’t have the time or the inclination to be someone’s date for a few weeks or months, until they found someone more attractive or more interesting. I had much more important things to do with my time. I was proud of the work I did with the girls—especially the ones who struggled to fulfil their high-flying, high-achieving parents’ dreams for them. I spent a lot of time planning lessons and writing up programmes and exercises.
I’m not a chalk-and-talk teacher. I’m interactive and creative and I thrive on seeing the girls in my charge blossom and play to their strengths. I would much rather give my girls an A for effort and attitude than an A for academic prowess.
My mother laments the fact that my life has no balance but who is she to talk? She hasn’t held down a job since before Bertie and I were born. Nor has my father. They’ve lived on their parents’ trust funds while meditating their mostly peaceful way around the country. I say ‘mostly’ because there was one occasion a couple of years back when I had to bail both of them out of a county court after a forestry expansion protest got a little ugly. It was quite a while before I could turn on the television without expecting to see an image of my parents chained to a tree, dressed in hemp clothing and waving placards.
Lately even Bertie has been banging on about me finding someone now she’s got herself engaged to a fellow doctor. I must admit when I met her fiancé I did feel a teeny-weeny twinge of envy. The way Matt Bishop looked at my sister made me feel all squishy and gooey inside. But I quickly squashed the feeling. Bertie has always been a romantic, with her head in the clouds. I’m much more down to earth and practical. Believe me, I’ve had to be. Someone in our family had to have their head screwed on.
I pursed my lips at Alessandro. One thing I did have in common with my little sister was that I did not appreciate being laughed at.
‘You find it funny that I choose to be single?’ I said. ‘You’re currently single, are you not?’
His brows lifted slightly. ‘I didn’t realise you took such an interest and followed my love-life in the press.’
I could have kicked myself. I had as good as admitted to poring over every inch of the tabloids for news of him. Mind you, he kept a much lower profile than some others of his ilk. Being a celebrity doctor and a bachelor made men like him a juicy target for the press.
Every time I saw a photo of him with some gorgeous model-type I would seethe and quake with rage. It would reopen all the wounds I’d tried so hard to heal. It was like rock salt being pummelled into them.
But why he had never settled for long with anyone since me puzzled me. The ex he had been so keen to prove a point to had married the man she’d left Alessandro for—a high-profile businessman who was superduper wealthy. But I’d heard whispers in the press that the marriage was in trouble. Was he waiting for her to divorce her husband so they could be together?
I glowered at Alessandro as I stalked past to lead the way on the rest of the tour. I pointed out the bathrooms, and then the games room, and the juniors’ and the seniors’ common rooms. I spoke in a flat monotone, stripping my expression of anything other than excruciating boredom.
If he was annoyed by my little show of defiance he didn’t show it on his face. His expression was mostly blank, apart from that faraway look I caught a glimpse of now and again. Finally we made our way outside into the sunshine, where the children were playing just before the lunch break ended.
One of my pupils, a little girl called Harriet, came gambolling up with a cheeky grin on her freckled face. ‘Is that man your boyfriend, Miss Clark?’
I’m not one to blush easily, but right then I could feel heat spreading like a grass fire across my cheeks.
When I was a little kid I didn’t think teachers were anything but teachers. I didn’t think they had a personal life. To me they were like police or firemen or other authority figures. They didn’t seem like real people. Not so today’s kids. They know too damn much and way too early.
‘No, Harriet,’ I said. ‘Dr Lucioni is enrolling his niece into our school. I’m giving him a guided tour.’
Harriet scrunched up her face as she peered at Alessandro. ‘Are you a movie star?’
Alessandro’s smile at Harriet made something at the backs of my knees go fizzy.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
Harriet wasn’t convinced. ‘You look famous.’
‘Run along, Harriet,’ I said. ‘The bell is about to ring.’
As if I’d summoned it, the bell sounded, and Harriet scampered off to join the rest of the girls as they prepared to enter the building for the afternoon’s lessons.
I turned to face Alessandro. ‘That’s my cue as well. When shall I expect Claudia to come to class?’
‘I’ll bring her tomorrow.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘With a temporary nanny.’
‘Why didn’t you bring her with you today?’ I said. ‘It would’ve helped her to get her bearings. Meeting the other girls and so on.’
His eyes tethered mine in a lock that made my insides flutter as if a handful of flustered moths were trapped in the cavity of my stomach.
‘I thought it best for us to meet alone first,’ he said.
I didn’t think it was wise for me to ever be alone with him. I didn’t trust myself. He had a frightening way of dismantling my self-control with a look or a casual touch. My chin was still tingling from where his thumb had stroked. My wrist was still burning as if he had left a brand on my flesh. My inner core was still pulsating with the memory of how his body had moved within mine.
Again I wondered if he was remembering all we had shared in that brief mad fling I’d stupidly thought would last for ever.
His gaze was dark and bottomless … inscrutable, enigmatic. Mesmerising.
