A Pawn in the Playboy's Game
Page 14
She wished she hadn’t covered up so well that for him to slide his hand onto her breast would have been a mission. She wished she hadn’t worn a bra in the expectation that their episode of lovemaking was something he might have wanted to put behind him. She wanted her whole body to be accessible. She didn’t want to be confined in tight jeans. She wanted baggy, loose-fitting jogging bottoms so that she could have parted her legs and his fingers would have easily found her wetness and eased the ache down there.
But in the absence of suitable clothing she kissed him, not even bothering to come up for air because she didn’t want to break the physical contact.
Alessandro had never tasted anything so sweet. He absently thought that she had a unique smell, light, clean, radiating the coldness from outside. It filled his nostrils and was as powerful on his senses as a drug.
Her breasts, pushing against his chest, were soft, abundant, begging to be touched. If they’d had guaranteed privacy, he wouldn’t have hesitated to rip off her clothes, because he ached to feel her naked skin against his.
She had a body a man could get lost in and the beauty of it was that she wasn’t even aware of her powerful sex appeal. The catwalk models he had always dated knew the power of their physical appeal and utilised it. No one was ever allowed to bypass them or to forget that they were stunning. They maximised their assets.
Laura Reid downplayed hers. She did her utmost to blend into the background. She hid her bountiful breasts and camouflaged the lush sexiness of her hips and legs.
He curved his hand over her bottom and massaged its fullness, then he swept the same hand between her legs and pressed hard so that his knuckles were kneading her, seeking to find that throbbing little bud underneath the thick denim.
It took them both a couple of seconds before they recognised the sharp rap of a walking stick on the floor, and as if one sharp rap wasn’t enough Roberto kept on rapping until they snapped apart and turned to look at him.
Laura felt the hot burn of embarrassment flood her. She was twelve years old again and her grandmother was ticking her off because she had sneaked downstairs to snitch a bar of chocolate in the middle of the night. She ran her trembling fingers through her hair but she couldn’t say anything because her vocal cords seemed to have seized up.
Roberto looked absolutely furious.
‘This will never do!’ His attention was not on her. It was on Alessandro, who, likewise, was temporarily lost for words as his father angrily tapped his way into the kitchen and stood in front of them like a judge about to sentence a couple of criminals.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I know what you’re like with the women, my boy, and Laura isn’t one of those strumpets you take to bed and then discard like a pair of old shoes!’
Alessandro raked his fingers through his hair and glared at his father. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You know exactly what I’m talking about!’ He slumped into one of the kitchen chairs and glared balefully at his son. ‘I really thought we were beginning to go somewhere with our relationship, son. But straight away I see that I’m never going to understand you.’ He fluttered his hand and looked defeated.
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Alessandro said, and Roberto eyed his son with a glimmer of doubt.
‘I come in here and you’re making a pass at this young girl!’
‘I’m here, Roberto.’ Laura finally found her voice and interrupted him before he could resume his attack on Alessandro. ‘And it...er...takes two to...er...tango...’
‘Nonsense!’ Roberto swept aside the interruption while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on his son. ‘You don’t know Alessandro like I do,’ he declared, his voice rising along with his colour.
‘Please, Roberto...’ She rested her hand anxiously on his shoulder and looked at Alessandro. ‘Have you forgotten that you’ve recently had a stroke?’
‘Not likely to when I’m packing up to move because I’m too infirm to stay anywhere that has more than three bedrooms!’ He was still staring at Alessandro and he finally said, ‘What do you mean when you tell me that I’ve got it all wrong? Fancy explaining yourself, lad?’
‘You think you know me,’ Alessandro said quietly, defusing the heated atmosphere in a way that Laura could only admire because she had a feeling that giving way like this was just not his style. His physical stillness permeated the room, calming the situation. ‘And I admit that my behaviour with women might have seemed a little on the cavalier side...’
Roberto snorted and raised his eyebrows with open cynicism. ‘Seemed? Seemed?’
‘But I realise that Laura isn’t—’
‘One of those fly-by-night trollops you have one-night stands with? Might be old, son, but I ain’t stupid!’
‘I never thought you were. What I’m saying...’ He had managed to get himself back in order while, standing to one side, Laura felt as dishevelled as she had fifteen minutes earlier when Roberto had walked in on them.
Alessandro sighed heavily and threw her a very quick look before focusing on his father once more. ‘What I’m saying is that this is...different...’
Laura’s mouth fell open.
‘Laura and I have a very special connection. She’s not one of my fly-by-night trollops.’ Alessandro thought wryly that some of the catwalk models he’d dated, whose faces adorned high-end fashion magazines, would have been appalled to have been described as fly-by-night trollops.
‘Special connection?’ He humphed and looked between them.
‘This is serious,’ Alessandro said gravely, and Laura made an effort to rescue her jaw from where it had fully dropped to the floor. Her feet remained nailed down as he moved smoothly to where she was standing and linked his fingers through hers in a gesture that was oddly chaste.
‘How serious?’ Roberto asked, eyes narrowed, his voice still bearing the traces of lingering scepticism, and Laura, frankly, couldn’t blame him. She only hoped that he didn’t turn to her for confirmation of what Alessandro had said, because she had no idea where this was going.
Although she did know where it had come from.
He and his father had arrived at a fragile truce after more than two decades of a civilised but frosty relationship. A door, formerly closed, had opened between them. Not fully but enough, and she guessed that Alessandro wasn’t about to jeopardise that now. Throw into the mix the fact that Roberto’s health was not as robust as it might have been, and she could understand why Alessandro might have found himself in an impossible situation.
‘Very serious,’ Alessandro said seriously.
‘In that case, I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt!’ He eyed Laura. ‘Edith know about this?’
‘No,’ Laura said truthfully. As far as she was aware, her grandmother didn’t even know that she and Alessandro had anything going on between them but a purely working relationship, but who knew?
‘Then if you lovebirds will excuse me...might just go and fill her in.’ He waved his hand between them and headed out of the kitchen, leaving in his wake utter and complete silence, which Laura was the first to break.
‘What the heck did you just go and do?’ she cried, pulling away from him to stand by the table, arms tightly clasped around herself.
Alessandro took his time answering. ‘I salvaged your reputation,’ he drawled, with such barefaced arrogance that she was momentarily stunned.
‘You salvaged my reputation by pretending that we have some sort of serious relationship that’s actually going somewhere?’ She laughed shortly, although her heart did a treacherous little flip inside her. She didn’t want a serious relationship with him...did she? A fine film of perspiration broke out on her skin. This wasn’t what this was about. This was about lust. Lust was simple. Anything more than that was a dangerous minefield.
‘Did you...’ he turned to face her ‘...really want me to shatter those illusions?’
‘Maybe not, but to lead him on like that...’
‘It’s not a complete lie. We do have a relationship.’
‘Of sorts, Alessandro. We have a relationship of sorts.’ And she wasn’t going to make the mistake of turning that into anything else. ‘We have the sort of relationship that’s going to fizzle out the minute you leave here and return to London. That’s something we both knew from the very beginning.’ She was proud of the way her voice was low but calm, urgent but composed.
‘Let’s get past the moral high ground,’ he drawled with infuriating arrogance. ‘There was also the issue of my father’s health. He hasn’t been a well man. I had several conversations with his consultant when he had his stroke a few months ago, and I was told that lack of stress was the safest route to ensuring that his health continued to improve.’
‘That’s rich, considering you came here to yank him away from everything he was accustomed to.’
Alessandro flushed darkly. ‘When I decided to move him down to London, I wasn’t aware of the extent of the ties he had built up in the community.’
Laura reddened because she knew that. Everything had been straightforward when he had made the decision to move Roberto. He could never have foreseen the way events would unfold.
‘It’s bad enough that your father thinks that we’re involved but it’s only going to be worse when he tells my grandmother. She spent so long clucking around me when I returned to Scotland that she’s going to think you’re a knight in shining armour who’s come swooping in to rescue me. I can’t think of anyone less like a knight in shining armour,’ she finished glumly, for good measure, missing the irritated frown that darkened his face.
‘Well, here we are,’ he said silkily. ‘For better or for worse.’
‘And where do we go from here?’
‘Like I said to you earlier, let’s just go with the flow.’ He shot her a wicked smile, which she did her best to ignore, and walked slowly towards her. ‘We may not end up walking up the aisle in happily married bliss but we’re good together. Let’s not think beyond that.’ To prove his point, he touched her cheek and, with satisfaction, watched the way her eyelids fluttered. ‘When the time comes, we break up and there will be no fuss. Relationships end, even those that begin with high hopes...so, until that happens, let’s take this golden opportunity to enjoy one another.’
No strings attached...and no hiding... He made it sound so simple. So why, Laura wondered, did it feel so dangerous?
CHAPTER NINE
A PROPER HOLIDAY!
Roberto and Edith had confronted them an hour later and announced that that was what they should do. Despite the snow, the serious relationship had been compelling enough for Roberto to get in touch with his occasional driver, who had brought Edith to the manor house post-haste.
Laura had been horrified.
She was still reeling from the shock of Alessandro’s deception and the ease with which he had accepted their fling as something that would now carry on until, presumably, he got fed up and decided to call it a day. He just went right ahead and assumed that the ball was in his court, that he called the shots, and now the way had been paved for the whole thing to cost him a lot less effort.
For Alessandro, fabricating a so-called serious relationship to appease his father made perfect sense. Indeed, it was an improvement on trying to figure out the details of how they could conduct a sexual liaison behind Roberto’s back.
The situation had moved so swiftly that Laura felt as though she had inadvertently stepped onto a roller coaster and was now being swung in sickening circles hundreds of metres above the ground.
Her life had been so orderly before he had crash-landed into it. She had been contentedly doing her teaching job and getting over her awful experience in London. The peace of Scotland had been a soothing balm for her fraught nerves and if she hadn’t asked herself any questions about how long she could continue leading a life of relative contentment before restlessness began to set in, it was because she had chosen not to.
And then suddenly there he was, the missing son whom she had never seen, bringing with him just the sort of dark excitement she had sworn to stay well away from.
Worse—bringing the sort of dark excitement she had never dreamed possible. It overshadowed everything Colin had represented. He had turned those dark, lazy, arrogant eyes on her and her peaceful world had been shattered into smithereens.
It was so simple for him. He took what he wanted. Just the sort of guy she should have run from and kept on running from until she ran out of breath and found herself a nice little hole to hide in.
But what had she done instead? She had let those eyes settle on her, mesmerise her, get her thinking all sorts of things about the perfectly adequate life she had been content to lead.
Wasn’t it better to live a little? To take a chance? Why fight the overwhelming attraction she felt for him? Why store up regret for missed opportunities? Why not get out of her comfort zone?
He had infected her with his cavalier way of thinking and she had yielded mindlessly.
She could control physical attraction, she had argued. If anything, it would do her good not to pigeonhole herself.
She’d never expected that she would become so entangled in his narrative to the extent that she lost track of her own.
And here she was now. Involved in a charade of a relationship for the benefit of her grandmother and his father. He might be able to take that in his stride but she wasn’t fashioned from such stern stuff.
Guilt nagged at the edges of her consciousness and she surfaced to find that a long weekend was being planned around her. A cup of tea had found itself in her hand and she sipped some hurriedly as she tried to gather herself and focus.
‘That house of yours!’ Roberto was booming with authority. ‘Made a big deal of it in the newspapers a few years ago! Bought with some of the petty cash from that oil-refinery deal of yours! Somewhere hot...escapes me where...’
‘The Caribbean,’ Alessandro filled in succinctly, amused and still startled at just how much information his father had gathered about him over the years. He looked at Laura, who was gulping down her tea as though her life depended on it.
‘Bet you’ve never stepped foot in the place!’ His father looked at him shrewdly and Alessandro decided on the spot that that was precisely where he would take her.
Why not?
He didn’t like the way he couldn’t stop thinking of her. He’d had enough upheavals of late without his work life suffering further because it was constantly being interrupted with visions of her in his arms, naked and spreading her legs, begging for him. He needed to get her out of his system, and once he’d done that he would allow a decent interval before letting slip that things, sadly, had not worked out. Life. What could you do?
In the meanwhile, a few days of uninterrupted sex should do the trick.
If she didn’t decide to throw obstacles in the way, and from the lo
ok of her stubborn little mouth, he wasn’t sure.
He banked down a spurt of irritation. ‘It’s been hard to find the time,’ he murmured. ‘Of course, it hasn’t been entirely unused. I reward top employees with the occasional holiday there. But you know what? I think a few days’ relaxation in the sun wouldn’t be a bad idea...’
‘But what about the house? The move? All the packing left to do?’ Belatedly, she remembered that she was supposed to have found the love of her life, and she tempered her borderline refusal with a smile. ‘Just saying...’
‘Taking those objections in order,’ Alessandro informed her comfortably, ‘the house is progressing smoothly, the move is scheduled to take place within the next three weeks and as for the packing...well, we’ve covered the better part of anything too valuable for the removal men. Why don’t we let my father and Edith take it from here? They may want to spend some time together without having us around as chaperones...’
‘I’m not sure about clothes...stuff for warm weather...’
Alessandro shrugged his shoulders as though that particular objection wasn’t worth answering. ‘Don’t tell me you only have a wardrobe of winter gear. I won’t believe you.’ He slanted her a smile of amused, indulgent warmth. ‘It may rain and snow a lot in Scotland but summer still occurs once a year. Correct me if I’m wrong. Shorts and T-shirt weather? Anyway, there are one or two shops on the island, if memory serves me. I may not have been there for a couple of years but I distinctly remember them catering lavishly for the tourists. Leave tomorrow morning, return Sunday evening. What could be more relaxing?’
Laura thought that it might have been very relaxing if they weren’t going to be labouring under a cloud of deception. As it stood, she could think of a million more relaxing ways of spending a weekend.