‘Aren’t you going to ask us in?’ Mum said with a beaming smile.
‘Oh, right—sure,’ I said, and stood stiffly as they both crushed me in bear hugs and smacked noisy kisses on my cheeks.
Mum did a full circle of my sitting room once I’d closed the front door. ‘Poppet, the feng shui in here is dreadful.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘That mirror is facing the wrong way.’
‘How can it be facing the wrong way?’ I said. ‘It won’t reflect anything if I turn it around the other way.’
My mother gave me a despairing look. ‘It should be on that wall. It’s bad luck to have it facing that way. All the energy will drain out through the front door.’
This time I did roll my eyes. Twice. ‘Look, I’m about to go out, so why don’t you guys make yourselves comfortable and—?’
‘Out?’ My mother’s eyes were suddenly as bright as searchlights.
‘Yes. I have a parent-teacher meeting.’
‘Dressed like that?’ my father said.
I frowned. ‘What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘You look lovely. Like you’re going on a date or something.’
‘See?’ My mother said to my father. ‘I told you she’s seeing someone. A mother just knows these things.’
‘I am not seeing anyone,’ I said. ‘I’m just having dinner with…a friend.’
‘Don’t worry about us,’ my mother said. ‘We’ll make ourselves at home. I’ll make some kale and quinoa muffins for you. We can chat when you get back.’
I glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Erm…you don’t want to go and stretch your legs after being in the car all that time?’
‘It’s dark outside,’ my father said.
‘And it’s starting to rain,’ my mother chipped in.
‘Right… Well, then, you guys settle in while I put on some make-up,’ I said, and headed back to my room.
My mother followed and stood watching me as I applied a bit of powder and bronzer. I mentally prepared myself for one of her lectures on how using make-up was totally unnecessary and just a ploy for cosmetic companies to make loads of money out of women who felt insecure about their looks. But instead of lecturing me she handed me the bronzer brush like a scrub nurse hands a surgeon a scalpel.
‘What’s wrong, poppet?’ she said after a moment or two. ‘You seem so tense. I mean, more tense than normal.’
‘I’m fine.’ I put down the brush and picked up my mascara. It was almost empty, but I managed to get enough out to coat my lashes from practically invisible blonde to brown.
My mother tilted her head on one side as she took in my outfit. ‘You know, black really isn’t your colour. It washes you out too much. Have you got anything a little more colourful?’
She made a move towards my wardrobe but I cut her off at the pass. I moved so fast I was like greased lightning.
‘Don’t,’ I said, flattening my back against the wardrobe with my arms outstretched like I was guarding the Crown Jewels.
My mother looked at me oddly for a moment, and then with sparkling intrigue. ‘What on earth are you hiding in there?’
I worked hard to keep my expression clear of any of the dread I was feeling. The wedding dress was my skeleton in the closet. A taffeta and tulle skeleton of my hopes and dreams.
‘I’ve…erm…got your birthday present in there. I don’t want you to see it.’
My mother screwed up her forehead. ‘But it’s not my birthday until November.’
‘I know, but you know how I like to be super-organised.’
The doorbell sounded and my heart slammed against my breastbone. The choice between my mother rifling through my wardrobe or having my father answer the door to Alessandro was an easy one.
I snatched up my purse and dashed out of my bedroom—but my father was already doing the honours.
‘Well, howdy-do,’ he said to Alessandro, not just shaking his hand but clasping it between both of his as if Alessandro was the Prodigal Son. Or a big-time prophet. ‘So delighted to meet you. Well, well, well—look at you. A fine specimen of manhood. Mighty fine indeed. Jem hasn’t been on a date in years—or none that we’ve known about. I’m Charlie and that’s Annabel.’
Thankfully my mother had followed me out of my bedroom and now stood with her hands clasped to each side of her face. ‘Oh, my God! It’s him! It’s the man in my vision!’
I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me and spit me out in some other country. Outer Mongolia, preferably. Outer space would have been even better.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Clark…Mrs Clark,’ Alessandro said, somehow getting his hand out of the grip of my father’s and offering it to my mother. ‘I’m Alessandro Lucioni.’
‘Oh, please call me Annabel,’ my mother said. ‘We’re not married. We don’t believe in—’
‘Right, let’s go,’ I said, grabbing Alessandro by the arm and all but marching him out of the house before my mother read his mind, his palm, his aura, or whipped out a set of tarot cards and predicted his future.
‘Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!’ my mother called out in a singsong voice.
‘They seem like nice people,’ Alessandro said once we were in his car. ‘Do they live with you?’
‘God, no,’ I said barely able to suppress a shudder. ‘They’ve just dropped in to stay for a few days.’
I felt his glance come my way.
‘You don’t like it when they visit?’
I looked at my hands, gripping my evening purse. My knuckles were bone white. I forced myself to relax my grip but the tension was still in the rest of my body. It was like concrete setting along the column of my neck and spine. I get that way every time my parents land unannounced on my doorstep.
I’m a private person. I like my own space. My own routine and timetable. My parents have no concept of personal boundaries. It’s not that I don’t love my parents. But I like them in small doses—and preferably on neutral territory.
‘I would’ve liked a heads up first,’ I said. ‘They don’t seem to understand that I have a job that means the world to me. Their life is one big holiday. They flit from place to place like a couple of stoned butterflies. They drive me completely nuts. I’ll come home and find my furniture all rearranged because the feng shui isn’t right. Or my fridge and pantry will be cleaned out so there’s no processed food.’
I suddenly gasped.
‘Oh, my God!’
The car slowed as he applied the brakes. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I forgot to hide the steak.’
He glanced at me quizzically. ‘The steak?’
‘My parents are vegans,’ I said. ‘They were vegetarian before that. My sister and I used to sneak in a steak when they weren’t looking. I just bought the most delicious eye fillet. It cost me a fortune and now my mother will throw it in the rubbish.’ I groaned and banged my head against the headrest. ‘Why couldn’t I have normal parents?’
‘You don’t get to choose your family—only your friends.’ It was a well-used axiom, but the way he said it gave it a level of gravitas.
‘Tell me about it.’ I swivelled in my seat to look at him. ‘Tell me about your family.’
His expression got that boxed-up look on it. ‘I don’t want to ruin your appetite for dinner,’ he said. ‘How did Claudia go today?’
‘She was quiet in class, but she seems to be settling in,’ I said.
I explained about the speech therapist we had as a consultant to the school and how we would need his approval to engage her services.
‘Fine—do whatever needs to be done,’ he said. ‘I don’t care about the cost.’
‘For a kid you hadn’t met until a couple of weeks ago, you seem to really care,’ I said.
He lifted the shoulder nearest me in an indifferent shrug but it didn’t fool me for a second.
‘She’s an innocent child,’ he said. ‘She deserves a chance to be the best she can be, no matter what her
circumstances. As does any other child.’
I let silence slip past while I studied him covertly. He had a grimly determined look on his face. It etched his features into harsh lines that gave him an intimidating air. I liked the fact he was prepared to do anything to protect and provide for his niece. I didn’t want to like anything about him, but how could I not admire him for that? Didn’t I have the very same values?
‘Claudia is a little behind academically, but that’s probably because of her language difficulties,’ I said. ‘I’m working on a special programme for her. She’ll get extra tuition from me, and from Jennifer at the boarding house.’
There was a long silence as the car’s tyres swished over the rain-lashed roads.
‘My sister has a drug problem,’ Alessandro said heavily. ‘She’s had it since she was sixteen.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
He flicked me a bleak look. ‘I blame myself for not doing more to protect her.’
I frowned. ‘But how can it be your fault? You’re not her parent. You’re her brother. Besides, sometimes teenagers do stuff regardless of the parenting they’ve received.’
He let out a jagged-sounding sigh. ‘I spent most of my life resenting her. My father spoilt her. She could have anything and do anything she wanted. There were no boundaries.’
‘Wasn’t he like that with you?’
He gave a scornful laugh that had a sharp edge of bitterness to it. ‘No.’
There was a lot of information in that one word, I thought. Not just the way he said it, as if spitting out something vile-tasting, but also the way his body was set. His hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly I could see each of the tendons bulging on the backs of his hands. And there was a storm of suppressed anger in his gaze as it fixed on the road ahead.
I had an unbearable urge to reach out and touch him. To soothe the pain he was obviously feeling. It was unlike me to be so sympathetic—especially to someone who had hurt me so badly. I would have to watch myself. I wasn’t as armoured up as I wanted to be.
I shifted in my seat and held my purse a little tighter. ‘What was he like with you?’ I asked.
‘Tough.’ The tendons on his hands now looked like they were going to burst out of his skin. ‘Demanding. Strict.’ He paused for a beat. ‘Occasionally violent.’
I swallowed thickly. ‘That’s awful… It must’ve been so hard, having to live with him after your mother died.’
There was another swishing silence. I watched the windscreen wipers go back and forth like twin metronome arms. I couldn’t stop thinking about his childhood. How had he coped with his mother’s death? How had his sister coped? What responsibilities had Alessandro taken on that made him feel so guilty for his sister’s problems? How difficult must it have been to live with the man who had exploited his mother? Was that why he hadn’t told me anything of his childhood? Because it had been too bleak and lonely and Dickensian to verbalise?
‘He hated me for defending my mother,’ he said finally. ‘He believed a son should stick with his father, no matter what. He was of the opinion that women were inferior. That they only existed to service the needs of men.’
‘Yes, well, I’ve met a few of that type in my time.’ I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.
His eyes cut to mine. ‘I didn’t use you, Jem. I know it probably felt like it at the time, but I really wanted things to work out for us.’
I wanted to believe him. Even after all this time, and with all the simmering hurt that weighed me down so much, I still wanted to believe him. The foolish hope that refused to die annoyed the hell out of me. I thought I’d packed that part of myself away and thrown away the key.
‘So why didn’t you tell me about your ex-fiancée?’
He looked back at the road. ‘I wanted to put it behind me. To move on. I hated thinking about how I’d failed to make someone I cared about happy.’ He let out a whoosh of a breath. ‘But you’re right. I should have told you. It’s yet another regret I have to live with.’
‘How long had you been with her?’
‘All through my specialist training—which, looking back, was part of the problem,’ he said. ‘I was doing a PhD as well as my fellowship. Work and study took up most of my time. I invested in my career, not in our relationship. She got bored.’
I waited a beat before asking, ‘Did you love her?’
There was a pause that seemed to go on for ever, but it was probably only a second or two.
‘I think what I loved was being in a relationship,’ he said. ‘Coming from the background I had, I wanted the security of it. Knowing there was someone who wanted the same things in life. Who had the same values. Although on reflection her values were not the same as mine. It was only when I met you that I realised that.’
Did you love me?
The words were balanced on the end of my tongue like a terrified novice diver on the ten-metre springboard. But of course I didn’t say them. I sat there staring at my hands and wondering how different my life would have been if I hadn’t met him that day in Paris.
I would probably be married to some guy—a fellow teacher, perhaps—and living in the suburbs. I might even have a baby by now. I would have an ordinary life. A predictable, ordinary life that would have been exactly what I’d wanted right up until I met Alessandro. But meeting him had changed everything. It had changed me.
He had changed me.
He suddenly reached across the console and picked up my right hand. He brought it to his chest, holding it against the deep, steady throb of his heart.
‘There were so many times I wanted to call you. To apologise for how I handled things.’
I should have pulled my hand away, but something about the solid warmth of his chest and the husky honey depth of his voice stopped me. It occurred to me then that we had communicated more about our backgrounds in the last few minutes than we had in the whole month we’d been together. It was like we’d been pretending to be other people back then—happy, carefree people who didn’t have difficult relatives or issues from the past.
‘Why didn’t you?’ I said, but strangely not in the accusatory tone I’d intended to use.
His hand squeezed mine and I swear I felt the contraction as if his long, strong fingers had surrounded my heart.
‘The usual reasons,’ he said. ‘Pride. Stubbornness. Regret that I’d screwed up yet another relationship so why bother trying to salvage it. Stupid reasons.’
What was he saying? That he had loved me after all?
I could feel my resolve slipping like a silk wrap sliding off a bare shoulder. But then I pulled myself up short. So what if we were communicating now? As far as I was concerned it was too little, too late. I wasn’t handing out second chances. No way.
‘Careful, Alessandro,’ I said, with a return to my mother tongue: sarcasm. ‘You might fool me into thinking you were really in love with me back then.’
There was another beat or two of telling silence. A pulsing, simmering silence that made the air tighten.
‘Why haven’t you had a date in years?’ he asked.
I decided I was going to kill my father when I got home. I had it all planned. I would force-feed him my steak. I’d pump him full of chocolate and ice cream and frozen yoghurt. I would stuff a loaf of white bread down his throat. I would tie my mother up and make her watch. It would be death by a thousand processed calories.
‘I told you the other day. I’m a career girl. I don’t have time for a full-time relationship.’
‘What about a fling? Had any of those?’
‘Not recently—but, hey, if a guy comes along and offers me five million quid to open my legs I’ll do it. No problem.’
He threw me a hardened glance. ‘Don’t play the cheap hooker with me, Jem.’
I raised my brows in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Cheap? At five million? You could get a blow job around here for two hundred pounds.’
‘And you know that how?’ he asked, with a distin
ct curl of his lip.
I wasn’t sure what demon was riding on my back, but I wanted to push Alessandro into expressing some of the anger I could feel brooding in him. Or maybe it was my own anger I wanted to unleash. God knew I had enough of it.
How dared he tell me he had regrets over the way he’d handled things? I’d spent the last five years trying to forget him. How dared he waltz back into my life and apologise? To communicate, for pity’s sake? It was too late.
‘I’ve slept with men for money,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what a girl does when a guy pays for dinner?’
His jaw locked so tightly I heard his molars grind together. ‘I know what you’re doing.’
I glided a fingertip from the top of his shoulder down to his thigh. ‘What am I doing, big guy?’ I said in a smoky whisper.
He sucked in air through his nostrils. ‘Stop it. I’m driving.’
‘What if I don’t want to stop?’ I sent my fingertip closer to the swollen heat of him, tracing over the tented fabric of his trousers.
To tell you the truth I was a little shocked at myself, but I couldn’t seem to stop my wanton come-and-get-me behaviour. I was relishing in the rush of power it gave me. So far he had been the one with all the power. Now it was my turn to show him he had more than met his match.
He let out a muttered curse and turned the car into a side street so quickly I was thrown back against the seat.
But I wasn’t there for long.
The engine hadn’t even died when Alessandro’s strong arms pulled me towards him and his mouth came crashing down on mine.
CHAPTER SIX
HIS MOUTH TASTED of mint and anger and lust and longing. The same intense longing I could feel throbbing through my own veins. His lips moved over mine with devastating expertise, demanding I open to him with a bold stab of his tongue.
I had recklessly taunted the tiger and now I was experiencing the full force of his reaction. And, quite frankly, I was loving every pulse-racing second of it.
I received him with a sound of approval that came from somewhere deep inside me. I wound my arms around his neck, fisting my hands into the thickness of his hair, and kissed him back with all the pent-up passion that had been lying in hibernation for what seemed like most of my life.
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