A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

by Cathy Williams

  Enthusiastic to be in his company she most certainly was not. Tales of big, bad wolves sprang to mind, with him in the starring role of the big, bad wolf.

  Suddenly, it didn’t seem as amusing to tease her as it had done minutes before.

  Hell, she really cared about what sort of reputation she would get from just being seen with him! They’d done nothing and it was still bugging her.

  He toyed idly with the idea of telling her that it was better to be hung for a sheep than a lamb. If the entire village had nothing better to do than twitch their net curtains and speculate, then why not give them something to speculate about?

  ‘You’re not trying to run away from an awkward conversation, are you, Alessandro?’ She fell into a brisk walk to keep pace with his longer strides.

  Wherever he had come from, it hadn’t been from sitting behind a desk. He must have changed in his luxurious penthouse apartment before heading up. He oozed casual sex appeal in jeans and a jumper over which he was wearing a mega-expensive trench coat. When it came to practicality in cold Scottish weather, it scored a zero, but in terms of looking indecently good, it was a ten with room to spare.

  ‘I’ve never run away from anything in my life.’ He held the door open and she ducked under his arm. ‘And definitely not from idle, wagging tongues, but if you prefer, I’ll make sure I keep a healthy distance. What would you like to drink?’

  Laura breathed a sigh of relief that the pub was relatively empty and as it wasn’t in the village there was less chance of her being recognised, although wasn’t Alessandro right? Why should she care? She had cared so much about what had happened with Colin that she had packed her job in without thinking of the repercussions. She could have taken some time off, genuinely because her grandmother had needed her, and then returned to her job, not caring that she might bump into Colin, because he was a bastard so why should she? Not caring if some of her colleagues might have suspected what had been going on, because they hadn’t been her close friends so their opinion mattered but within reason.

  She could have remained in London because... Living here was fine but there were times when she did feel as though time had been frozen and she wasn’t moving forward. She could have quit her job and gone into teaching, but in London...

  No. She did not want to start thinking of what-ifs and if-onlys!

  ‘A cup of tea would be nice.’

  ‘Tea? It’s almost five-fifteen. We can have a glass of wine. I won’t tell if you don’t...’

  She smiled nervously at him but before she could work out a suitable negative response he was heading towards the bar, where the young girl serving behind the counter dropped what she’d been doing and flew over to take his order.

  However cool and detached he was with his father, and however forbidding he could be when he chose to, he could certainly pull the charm out when it suited him, Laura thought wryly. The poor girl could hardly pour the wine into the glasses and she was beetroot red.

  ‘So there’s a reason I decided to come up here early and pay you an unexpected visit.’ He angled his chair away from her so that he could stretch out his long legs.

  His voice was brisk and businesslike. He was keeping a healthy distance between them. She could have been at an informal job interview! Perfect, she thought with a twinge of treacherous disappointment, because his flirting was stupidly addictive.

  ‘Aside, that is, from wanting to see where you work...’ He grinned and then steepled his fingers to his lips. ‘But starting with Edith...’

  ‘Are you going to tell me that you think she’s after your father for his pot of gold?’ Laura bristled. She wondered whether she would stop being so attracted to him if she could somehow maintain a state of permanent low-level anger. If she was angry with him, then she couldn’t be attracted to him, could she?

  Sometimes, though, it was impossible to respond to him the way her head told her to. Sometimes he just got under her skin and no amount of rubbing could get rid of him.

  ‘Actually, I happen to like your grandmother very much,’ Alessandro admitted seriously. ‘I don’t know what I expected but she...she seems good for my father...’

  ‘And what did you expect?’

  ‘Someone a little more subservient. I’ll be honest, my father isn’t the easiest of men. I didn’t envisage that he would be...attracted...God, have I really said that?...attracted to someone as outspoken.’

  ‘What was your mother like?’

  ‘That remains one of life’s mysteries. It’s not a subject I have ever discussed with my father and it isn’t a subject I intend discussing with you.’ He’d tried with his father and had come up against a brick wall of uncooperative evasiveness. He’d stopped trying a long, long time ago.

  Laura blushed. His voice had cooled. Sexual innuendo and flirting was fine. A serious conversation apparently wasn’t. Whatever he did, he did on his terms and that included how much he wanted to share of himself.

  Not that it mattered. This wasn’t a show-and-tell, getting-to-know-you session.

  ‘She keeps him in line.’ Laura smiled. ‘They suit one another. She likes fussing over someone and he enjoys being fussed over. She tells him what he should and shouldn’t do and he’s like a little lamb when he’s with her.’

  ‘I can’t believe we’re talking about the same person. No matter, the point is...I may possibly have got it wrong when I decided that the only option was to move my father to London.’ He sipped some wine and looked at her over the rim of his glass. He really enjoyed the way she was so transparent, so lacking in artifice. ‘I hadn’t thought that the life he had built here for himself was so... Well, put it this way, I hadn’t thought that he’d built any life for himself here. It seems that I was wrong and I’m big enough to admit it.’

  Laura couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes heavenwards and Alessandro frowned.

  ‘Oh, honestly!’ She sighed and laughed lightly, taking in his bemused expression. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever rolled their eyes or clicked their tongue at something you’ve said?’

  ‘I’ve just admitted that I may have been wrong. What’s the rolling of the eyes all about?’

  ‘You’re big enough to admit it? What was the other option? That you carry on pretending that he’s a lonely old man and drag him down to London rather than admit you’d got it wrong? We all misjudge situations once in a while.’ He was staring at her with a blank expression and she realised that didn’t apply to him. That just wasn’t how his world worked. In Alessandro’s world misjudging of situations didn’t happen but, then, his world was all about stuff that could be measured. Deals, money, business...things that were a million miles away from emotions, feelings and lives, things where misjudgement happened all the time. ‘Okay,’ she said slowly, ‘so now you’ve recognised that, what happens next?’

  ‘He still needs to move out of that oversized mansion. I always wondered why he bought it in the first place. I am prepared to admit that remaining here might be for the best. The hunt will have to begin to find him somewhere a little more compact, a little more manageable...’

  ‘Aren’t you going to discuss this with your father?’

  ‘I’ll broach the topic. So...now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the weekend.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ She couldn’t give in to his flirting. She couldn’t let herself be overtaken by something as stupid and transitory as physical chemistry. She bristled at the thought that he felt he could just try to dictate how she should spend the little amount of time he designated to spending in a backwater he normally wouldn’t be caught dead in. She tried to rustle up Colin’s image in her head but all she could see were Alessandro’s far too knowing dark eyes focused on her with the sort of lazy intent that sent her nervous system into frantic overdrive.

  ‘I realise that there’s some sort of phys
ical attraction between us. I’m not going to deny that, but that doesn’t mean that either of us has to succumb to it and, furthermore, it’s insulting to think that you just come here and then feel that you can take what you want, never mind the consequences!’ She lowered her voice to a meaningful hiss. ‘You can’t!’

  Alessandro inclined his head to one side and the infuriating man didn’t say anything.

  She looked at her wine glass and realised that it was empty. How had that happened? She rarely drank unless she was out and certainly never at this crazy hour of the evening!

  ‘So you may think you’re some kind of saint who can wash his hands of relationships just because you’ve been kind enough to warn those poor women you date that you’re not in it for longer than a couple of days...’

  ‘Hmm... Days... Even for me that would be a rapid turnover.’

  Laura ignored him. ‘But I’m not one of those women!’

  ‘I never thought that you were.’

  ‘Because I don’t happen to be a six-foot-three catwalk model?’ she asked bitterly. She had felt so desirable when he had kissed her...nothing had prepared her for the onslaught of lust that would wipe out all her inhibitions as though they had never existed.

  But, then, the guy was a force to be reckoned with when it came to the art of seduction. One look at him would tell you that.

  ‘Because I’ve never had to employ such restraint with any woman in my life before.’

  ‘Well, that may be but it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend the weekend accommodating you!’ She tilted her chin at a stubborn angle and glared at him.

  ‘I think you’re getting all hot under the collar for no reason,’ Alessandro said mildly.

  ‘And I disagree!’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to arrange a convenient time to wage an assault on your maidenly virtue, tempting though that option is...’ He stared off into the distance, as though wrapped up in all sorts of pleasant thoughts, and then shook his head ruefully. ‘I was actually about to say that the weekend might be a good time to start trying to consolidate some of my father’s possessions in preparation for a move, should he agree, of course.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Disappointed?’

  Laura wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. No wonder he was sitting there grinning at her! ‘Relieved,’ she snapped.

  ‘Good! I will talk to my father this evening and who knows...something might well be sorted out before I leave.’

  And once sorted, his life would, of course, return to its normal hectic pace within the confines of his own comfort zone in London.

  Or...

  He gazed at her flushed face thoughtfully.

  Maybe not. The last thing he needed was to leave behind unfinished business...

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘DOWNSIZE? WHAT’S THE point of that? Not one for living in a rabbit hutch!’

  Alessandro remained silent. His loose-limbed posture in the chair facing Roberto smacked of utter relaxation. Only the stillness of his body betrayed his awareness of the fact that, as always, nothing was going to be easy when it came to his father.

  But, for once, he had converts to his cause. Laura and her grandmother had insisted on sitting in on the meeting with his father in a show of moral support, even though Alessandro had told them that it wouldn’t be necessary.

  ‘He can be a stubborn old fool,’ Edith had announced, as soon as she had been told of Alessandro’s decision and given it the green light. Not, Alessandro thought, that a green light from anyone was required, but Edith was not a woman any sane person would pick a fight with. ‘Digs his heels in and refuses to budge. Won’t be able to pull that one on me, though! I can be a stubborn old fool as well!’

  Alessandro had shrugged and so, later that evening, they had all headed up to the manor house, like gunslingers galloping into town to confront the local bad boy.

  ‘And don’t...’ Roberto wagged his finger at Edith a little later ‘...you start telling me that you agree with that son of mine!’

  ‘You put that finger away,’ Edith said in a clipped voice. ‘That son of yours is right and you know it! Who was it who told me not four months ago that he found walking from the kitchen to the bedroom “a bloody chore”? And I’m quoting a certain person here. He’s sitting not a million miles away, being a stubborn old fool, as I knew he would be!’

  Alessandro shot Laura a sideways glance, caught her eye, kept looking until she looked away and then settled down for the count.

  It was nearly six-thirty. Yet another unappetising dish prepared by Freya was bubbling away merrily in the oven and in a few minutes he would fetch a chilled bottle of wine, which he decided would be an excellent accompaniment to the thrilling battle of wills unfolding in front of him.

  He already knew what the outcome would be. His father might be able to argue for England but he would never be able to hold out against a determined Edith. The woman had missed her calling as a riot-control specialist in a prison block.

  At the moment she was reminding Roberto of every conversation they had ever had in which he had complained about the size of the house. There had been a lot, especially in recent months, and she had a very good memory.

  ‘And don’t you even bother telling me that you can always live in one wing of the house! Stuff and nonsense!’

  ‘You’re a harridan, woman! A harridan!’

  ‘And then there’s that garden so-called of yours! How big is it, exactly? Ten acres? What’s a man of your age doing with ten acres of garden? You’d need a car to get round the lot! I’ll wager you haven’t been to the lavender field since last year! And who told me that the greenhouse was getting a little out of control? You won’t let any of the gardeners in to tend the plants but you can’t tend them all on your own, admit it!’

  Alessandro looked at his father’s scowling face with amusement. He wore the harried look of someone who’d just found a hole in his defences and simultaneously discovered that he lacked the time and the necessary tools to do a patch-up job.

  He had never seen Roberto on the back foot. His father had always made a show of being in command. He had been a towering, forbidding and silent figure in Alessandro’s childhood, a largely absent one during his teenage years and a broodingly taciturn and borderline belligerent one as Alessandro had reached adulthood.

  That was not the same man sitting in the burgundy covered chair now, glowering at Edith before huffing into silence.

  ‘You’re a damned witch, woman!’ He looked at her and then said slyly, ‘Could you have an ulterior motive for trying to get me out of this house? I hear that house down the road from you is coming up for sale in the next month or so... You know the one I mean...those layabout softies from Edinburgh inherited it when old man Saunders died. Wouldn’t fancy getting your hands on me, would you?’

  ‘You should be so lucky!’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me...’ Alessandro stood up, flexed his muscles ‘...I’m going to get some wine and, Laura...’ he shot a glance at her, eyebrows raised ‘...why don’t you accompany me? You can check on whatever delight Freya’s shoved in the oven for us to eat. It’s been in there for the past four hours so whatever it’s meant to be it’ll probably emerge as baby food.’

  ‘Don’t you go thinking you’ve won this round, young man!’ Roberto banged his walking stick on the parquet flooring and glared at his son. ‘Won’t be browbeaten into doing what I don’t want to do and...’ he transferred his beady eyes to Edith, who wore the smug expression of the victor ‘...won’t be nagged into it, either!’

  Alessandro shrugged and left the room with the vague promise that the matter could be revisited over dinner. Behind him, Laura followed. She hadn’t said a word, leaving her grandmother to argue with Roberto. She had sat in her chair, her body rigid with
tension, her focus exclusively on Roberto, but she had been aware of his son with every pore in her body. Alessandro had relaxed back in the chair, his fingers lightly entwined on his stomach, his legs outstretched and loosely crossed at the ankles. She had sensed his alertness, his watchfulness... Her antennae had picked it up like a gazelle picking up the scent of a jungle cat.

  ‘I think,’ he drawled the minute they were in the kitchen, ‘that what we have in there is called a foregone conclusion. Maybe we should leave your grandmother to seal the deal and mop up the blood before we take the wine in. I can’t believe she got the better of my father! Memorable.’ He poured them both a glass of Chablis and watched as she went straight to the oven, removed whatever was being cremated in a cast-iron casserole pot, winced and then rested the pot on the hotplate.

  She was doing her best to avoid eye contact. Even when she took the glass of wine from him, those apple-green eyes skittered away hurriedly.

  For a few seconds she remained hovering before subsiding into one of the kitchen chairs and taking a long gulp from the long-stemmed glass.

  ‘It would have broken my grandmother’s heart if your dad left to live in London. I mean, I know Roberto is probably fond of this place, I know he’s lived in it for...well, for as long as any of us can remember, but I think he knows deep down that it’s far too big for him. Would you like me to find out whether the cottage at the end of the village will be coming up for sale?’ She risked a nervous glance at Alessandro, who was perched against the kitchen counter, staring at her with just the sort of concentration that could send her pulse flying to the four winds.

  ‘No need.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you give me the names of whoever owns the place, I’ll take it from there.’

  ‘But you won’t know who they are and they don’t actually live in the cottage. I believe it’s a brother and sister. I remember chatting to them when they came to Jim’s funeral.’ She grimaced. ‘They couldn’t wait to leave. Since then they’ve been down a couple of times to make sure the cottage is still standing but they haven’t done anything with it and I’m sure they won’t be interested in moving in.’