A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

by Cathy Williams

  The night before had shaken her. She hadn’t expected Alessandro to show up at the house. The way they had spent so much time circling around one another...sharing the odd thrilling touch when Roberto’s attention had happened to be elsewhere... It had turned into an almost surreal situation. The reality of their one kiss had become imbued with a dreamlike quality and sometimes she had questioned whether it had really happened or not.

  She had wondered if they would ever make love. Or was this just a game they would play, almost getting there but not quite, until the time came when he disappeared over the horizon, never to be seen again or else to be seen only in passing?

  She had known that if he disappeared over that horizon, then that would be it. He would fall back into his London life and she would become an almost-there non-experience that he would look back upon with...

  She didn’t know. Mild regret? Relief? Amusement?

  The longer they had circled one another, sharing fleeting glances, the more she felt that they would never make love, even though it was what she had wanted more than anything else.

  So when he had turned up unannounced, she had been thrilled, apprehensive, seized with soaring excitement.

  And if she’d had any doubts about her decision, they had evaporated the second he had touched her. Sooner. The second she had answered the door to him.

  Driving through the snow flurries, she was oblivious to the gathering white around her because she was so immersed in her thoughts.

  She had thought he had come to her because he hadn’t been able to bear the edge-of-the-cliff suspense that had developed between them, the agonising feeling of wanting something that was just beyond reach. She had thought that he had reached the end of his tether and had found the situation as frustrating as she had.

  Yes, he had wanted her but he had come to her because he had wanted physical release and she couldn’t help but feel that any willing body might have done at a pinch. He had been dealt a bolt from the blue, had been given an overload of information, and the only way he had been able to process that had been through making love. He was an intensely physical man and it would have made complete sense to him to subdue whatever upset he had been feeling by sleeping with a woman, by losing himself in the act of sex.

  It was painful for her to accept that if she hadn’t been there, he might have just had one of his many devoted fans flown up to sate his passing need.

  And yet he had said that he still wanted her.

  Laura knew that she should have killed that at source but she had cravenly succumbed to the pleasurable notion that their weird, fragile relationship might carry on for a little longer.

  Now, as she neared the big house, she wondered whether that hadn’t just been pie in the sky, something he had said on the spur of the moment because he hadn’t been himself. People said all sorts of things when they weren’t themselves. He had let his guard slip with her and she knew instinctively that he hadn’t planned on that happening. He was a guy who liked complete and absolute control. His formidable control had been dealt a near lethal blow and he had, against all his better judgement, opened up to her. Partially. Enough for her to think that the best thing she could do now would be to pretend that everything was fine, that nothing had changed.

  She wasn’t going to make noises about wanting him. She wasn’t going to let him think that he had to worry about her trying to manoeuvre him into a cubbyhole somewhere because he had made a mistake and said stuff he hadn’t meant to say.

  She certainly wasn’t going to try to encourage him to open up to her, to really express what he felt about what he had been told by his father, the secrets that had been revealed, even though that was something she wanted more than anything.

  And that, she thought, pulling to a stop in the courtyard, scared her.

  She stared out at the falling snow and frowned. Of course she would be empathetic to anyone whose life had been blighted in the way Alessandro’s had been, but what she felt was more than detached empathy and that frightened her. The emotions running through her felt complicated and involved, and with a sigh of frustration she headed towards the house, knowing that the only way to deal with the situation was to ignore it.

  So when she rang the doorbell and Alessandro opened the door, she smiled politely and informed him, in a bouncy voice, that she had come to help, if more help was needed, with some of the packing.

  She was wrapped up in several layers but she made sure not to begin removing any of them just in case he told her that her help wouldn’t be needed.

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have come if I’d realised how fast the snow was falling,’ she chirruped, ‘but by the time my windscreen wipers were on full blast I was practically turning into your drive...’ It was an effort to meet those dark, penetrating eyes. He hadn’t shaved and he didn’t look as though he had run a comb through his hair, but instead of looking untidy he looked dangerously, heart-stoppingly sexy. She wanted to stare and stare. She felt the pulse beating frantically in her neck and her mouth was dry, so dry that she was finding it difficult to swallow.

  He was in a pair of faded, low-slung jeans and an old rugby sweater, with just a pair of loafers on his feet. No socks. He couldn’t have looked more casual and yet more sophisticated.

  Alessandro stared down at her, frowning because this was just the sort of unenthusiastic greeting he didn’t want. Not when he had spent most of the night consumed by her, thoughts of her, her smell, her taste, the feel of her under his hands, under his mouth, under his body. He had wanted, needed, to drown out his thoughts in her glorious body and he had, so what was wrong with expecting a little more of the teasing temptress when he wanted a repeat performance? Naturally, it would have been too much to maybe expect her to turn up wearing a fur coat with nothing underneath because that would have been utterly impractical and, besides, it wasn’t her style. But she could have made some attempt to collar him by the front door and drag him off to the nearest vacant room...

  After a night of beyond-fantastic sex, safe in the knowledge that he hadn’t yet lost interest, there wasn’t a single woman he could think of who wouldn’t have been planning just how to hold and maintain his interest. Any woman would have shown up in her sexiest house-clearing clothes, feather duster in hand and a very good idea of what she was going to do with it.

  A quick glance was enough to tell him that underneath her layers and layers and yet more layers of clothes Laura was probably fully kitted out in her most sensible underwear. He didn’t imagine she even owned a feather duster, and if she had it would have been used strictly for dusting.

  So they weren’t going to get wrapped up in any sort of happy-ever-after scenario, but nevertheless...

  He leaned nonchalantly against the door frame and folded his arms. ‘There’s always time to back up and leave the way you came,’ he said coolly. ‘Wouldn’t want you to be trapped here by falling snow. Happens in this part of the world. I’ve been told often enough by my father.’

  Laura’s eyes skittered away and she felt a lump form at the back of her throat.

  ‘You don’t want me here, in other words,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Come in.’ He stepped aside, allowing her to brush past him. Was she going to pretend that they hadn’t made love? he wondered. The mere thought that she might go down that road staggered him.

  ‘Where’s Roberto? I’d love to go and have a chat with him. I haven’t seen him properly to talk to for a while.’ She glanced beyond his shoulder because it gave her eyes time to take a rest from their compulsive staring.

  ‘He’s in his greenhouse, having a quick chat to his plants to make sure they’re up for the upheaval of moving.’ Roberto? Roberto? She shouldn’t be asking about his father! She should be taking advantage of their brief window of privacy to source the nearest empty room!

  Women chased Alessandro. He had never
really had any need to try. He had the looks, he had the money and he had that all-important invisible aphrodisiac called power. He had always been able to enjoy his position of strength from the top of his ivory tower, safe in the expectation that people would come to him and never, ever the other way around.

  He had trained himself to enjoy his formidable independence, had liked the fact that he had never had to adjust any part of his life to accommodate anyone else.

  His boarding-school experience, pleasant though it had been, had turned him into someone who needed no one and sought no one’s approval. The one thing to be said for an absolute lack of family life was that it gave you strength of character, and as far as Alessandro was concerned, that was more important than anything else.

  So it was as frustrating as hell to now find himself on the back foot while she continued to frown and scour the hallway as if he had deliberately hidden his father from her.

  ‘Perhaps I could go see him, take him a cup of tea before we get down to the business of clearing...’

  There was nothing she had just said that Alessandro was interested in hearing.

  ‘How is he dealing with...? How are you both dealing with everything that’s happened? I hope you don’t mind but I’ve told my grandmother some of what you said to me, and it seems that she did know bits and pieces...’

  Alessandro relaxed. This was more like it. Sympathy...tears glistening in eyes...a trembling hand gently laid on his arm...

  Under any other circumstances he would have been repelled at having his private life regurgitated for the purposes of speculation. It had to be said, though, that he would never have confided in anyone else and the only reason he had felt the need to confide in Laura was because of her connection to his father. And the fact that she was raising the subject now...well, he wasn’t going to shoot her down in flames, even though he wasn’t about to oblige her by launching into some long, tear-jerking, over-sentimental nonsense. In fact...

  ‘He’s fine. We’re both fine. It’s been...an eye-opener, hearing what my father has had to say.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘I always wondered why the kitchen was so full of old furniture. It seems that when my father moved from the cottage where he and my mother lived, the kitchen furniture, along with the oven, were the only reminders he took of the life he left behind.’ He frowned, not sure whether he had intended saying so much.

  ‘I always wondered where he had lived before and how it was he never, ever spoke about it...’

  ‘Cup of coffee?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of coffee before we kick-start the day.’

  ‘Right. Sure.’ Message received loud and clear. He wasn’t going to take her into his confidence again. Why should he? She was a fling and flings didn’t qualify for that kind of depth. ‘Maybe I could pop out...see your dad...’

  ‘He’ll be in shortly,’ Alessandro said irritably, spinning on his heel and making for the kitchen. ‘You don’t need to fuss around him like a mother hen, Laura. When he goes to his greenhouse it’s because he needs downtime on his own, not because he wants a queue of people lining up to bring him cups of tea and bracing chats.’

  ‘You’re so sarcastic,’ she muttered, following him and divesting herself of some of her clothes on the way. By the time she made it to the kitchen door she was down to her fleece. How was it that her casual managed to look so charity shop? The jeans were okay but it was really cold out and she had worn her thermal knee-high socks, pulled up over the skinny jeans, both of which were tucked into her fur-lined boots. She knew she looked a sight. She had bunched her hair up into a woolly hat and now it was released into all its crazy glory.

  Was he looking at her and wondering how on earth he had been idiotic enough to have ever found her attractive?

  He’d made absolutely no mention of renewing any kind of relationship and that, she told herself, was probably for the best.

  So why did she feel sick and hollow inside?

  He had his back to her as he made them both a cup of coffee and when he turned around she made sure to school her features into the polite smile of someone whose thoughts were far removed from sex.

  ‘Come again?’ Alessandro sauntered towards her. Her fleece was an unappealing shade of green but the jeans were nicely tight and even the strange socks halfway up her calves did nothing to detract from the bolt of pure lust that ripped through him.

  In his head, he had a perfectly good image of what she looked like underneath the layers. He could recreate the taste of her and the feel of her with no trouble at all.

  ‘Nothing,’ she muttered, taking the mug from him and sidling across to the table, where she sat, blowing on the hot coffee and keeping her eyes pointedly averted.

  ‘Tell me what game we’re playing,’ Alessandro drawled, moving to perch on the table right next to where she was sitting so that she was forced to look up at him.

  ‘Game?’ Laura parroted feebly.

  ‘Because if it’s the game of playing hard to get, you can scrap it before it begins.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’

  ‘I’m talking about the polite semi-stranger act you’re busy trying to perfect.’

  ‘I’m not about to start chasing you, Alessandro.’ Laura abandoned the tactic of pretending to misunderstand what he was saying. ‘And I’m not playing hard to get. I don’t play games!’ She glared at him.

  ‘So are we going to both make-believe that last night didn’t happen? Shall we enter a conspiracy of silence?’

  ‘I know what you’re like and I’m not going to be one of those women who gets clingy in the aftermath of sex.’

  ‘What am I like?’

  ‘You run away from forming relationships faster than a speeding bullet,’ she told him bluntly. ‘I bet the second a woman starts making plans, you start wondering where the nearest exit is.’

  Alessandro laughed, his dark eyes roving over her flushed face appreciatively. ‘I like your sense of humour,’ he murmured in a voice that was the equivalent of oozing, liquid chocolate, the sort of voice that made her knees feel like jelly and turned her brains into instant mush.

  ‘And I happen to be very good at forming relationships, although, admittedly, they’re not of the lasting kind. But that’s not relevant with us, is it? You know the measure of me, and after your mistake with a married man you’re hardly on the lookout for someone who’s not talking long-term. Did you...?’ A sudden thought flashed through his head, leaving a sour taste in its wake. ‘Did you love the guy?’

  ‘Colin?’ She was disconcerted by the question because she didn’t think that Alessandro was the sort of man prone to showing much interest in what women had to say about their past relationships. In keeping with someone who planned nothing in advance, because who knew when someone better looking might come along and steal the limelight, she took him for a guy who lived totally for the present. At least in the arena of relationships.

  ‘I thought I did,’ she confessed, when the silence threatened to become uncomfortable. ‘But I was just swept away by someone cute who knew how to play me. I think I fell in love with the feeling of being in love.’ And, in fact, she hardly thought about him and now, sitting here, she could barely remember what he had looked like. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that that’s the problem with love. It doesn’t exist so it’s best to avoid it altogether and just hop in the sack with people you fancy.’

  Alessandro smiled slowly and watched as hectic colour invaded her cheeks.

  ‘Would you follow my advice if I told you that?’

  ‘You might not believe in love, but I do.’

  ‘Yet you hopped in the sack with me.’

  ‘You don’t have to look so smug about it.’

  ‘I like the thought of you just not being abl
e to help yourself...’ He calmly set his mug down on the table and traced the contour of her jaw with a finger.

  ‘That’s so arrogant,’ Laura told him unevenly.

  ‘I know. I’m arrogant. I want to kiss you and I’m arrogant enough to think that you’d probably like to kiss me back. Am I right? Or are you going to stand up and slap me across my face?’

  ‘Has anyone ever done that?’

  ‘No.’ He was smiling at her in a way that made her whole body feel as though it had been plugged into a light socket.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m attracted to you,’ she said with devastating honesty.

  ‘That’s a line of introspection you shouldn’t bother wasting time with. There’s no mileage in it. Go with the flow.’ He tugged her hair gently and she stood up on shaky legs.

  She wasn’t just attracted to him, she thought, she was mesmerised by him. Was it because he was so out of her league? Or because the circumstances that had brought them together were so surreal? Or was he just so sinfully, unfairly good-looking that he just went around mesmerising women?

  She linked her arms loosely around his neck and stepped between his legs. His body heat flooded her and she hiccuped a sigh of guilty pleasure.

  They kissed slowly, taking their time. She pulled away briefly and glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘What if your father walks in?’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know his habits. He heads out to his greenhouse and stays there for a couple of hours. I only just ventured inside the place a few days ago and found that he’s set it up like a room. The only thing it lacks is a bed. He’s got a chair there, a table with books. It’s life in a jungle without having to pay the airfare...’

  Laura giggled. She didn’t want to talk about Roberto. She wanted to feel his lips on hers again and she moved closer, rubbing herself against his chest and kissing him as slowly as he had kissed her. His tongue inside her mouth was driving her half-crazy because she could recall what it had felt like to have it on her breasts, teasing her nipples and then sliding into her, flicking against her clitoris until she had been so close to coming she could have screamed.