THE UNCOMPROMISING ITALIAN

by Cathy Williams

  ‘That’s right. Despite not being a man.’

  Alessio heard the defensive edge to her voice and his curiosity was piqued. His life had settled into a predictable routine when it came to members of the opposite sex. His one mistake, made when he was eighteen, had been enough for him to develop a very healthy scepticism when it came to women. The fairer sex, he had concluded, was a misconception of stunning magnitude.

  ‘So if you could explain the situation...’ Lesley looked at him levelly, her mind already flying ahead to the thrill of solving whatever problem lay in store for her. She barely noticed his housekeeper placing a pot of tea in front of her and a plate crammed with pastries, produced from heaven only knew where.

  ‘I’ve been getting anonymous emails.’ Alessio flushed as he grappled with the unaccustomed sensation of admitting to having his hands tied when it came to sorting out his own dilemma. ‘They started a few weeks ago.’

  ‘At regular intervals?’

  ‘No.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and looked at her earnest face tilted to one side... A small crease indented her forehead and he could almost hear her thinking, her mind working as methodically as one of the computers she dealt with. ‘I ignored them to start with but the last couple have been...how shall I describe them?...a little forceful.’ He reached for the pitcher of homemade lemonade to pour himself a glass. ‘If you looked me up, you probably know that I own several IT companies. Despite that, I confess that my knowledge of the ins and outs of computers is scant.’

  ‘Actually, I have no idea what companies you own or don’t own. I looked you up because I wanted to make sure that there was nothing dodgy about you. I’ve done this sort of thing before. I’m not looking for background detail, I’m generally looking for any articles that might point a suspicious finger.’

  ‘Dodgy? You thought I might be dodgy?’

  He looked so genuinely shocked and insulted that she couldn’t help laughing. ‘You might have had newspaper cuttings about suspect dealings, mafia connections...you know the sort of thing. I’d have been able to find even the most obscure article within minutes if there had been anything untoward about you. You came up clean.’

  Alessio nearly choked on his lemonade. ‘Mafia dealings...because I’m Italian? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.’

  Lesley shrugged sheepishly. ‘I don’t like taking chances.’

  ‘I’ve never done a crooked thing in my entire life.’ He flung his arms wide in a gesture that was peculiarly foreign. ‘I even buck the trend of the super-rich and am a fully paid-up member of the honest, no-offshore-scams, tax-paying club! To suggest that I might be linked to the Mafia because I happen to be Italian...’

  He sat forward and stared at her and she had to fight off the very feminine and girlish response to wonder what he thought of her, as a woman, as opposed to a talented computer whizz-kid there at his bidding. Suddenly flustered, she gulped back a mouthful of hot tea and grimaced.

  Wondering what men thought of her wasn’t her style. She pretty much knew what they thought of her. She had lived her whole life knowing that she was one of the lads. Even her job helped to advance that conclusion.

  No, she was too tall, too angular and too mouthy to hold any appeal when it came to the whole sexual attraction thing. Least of all when the guy in question looked like Alessio Baldini. She cringed just thinking about it.

  ‘No, you’ve been watching too many gangster movies. Surely you must have heard of me?’ He was always in the newspapers. Usually in connection with big business deals—occasionally in the gossip columns with a woman hanging onto his arm.

  He wasn’t sure why he had inserted that irrelevant question but, now that he had, he found that he was awaiting her answer with keen curiosity.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I guess you probably think that everyone’s heard of you, but in actual fact I don’t read the newspapers.’

  ‘You don’t read the newspapers...not even the gossip columns?’

  ‘Especially not the gossip columns,’ she said scathingly. ‘Not all girls are interested in what celebs get up to.’ She tried to reconnect with the familiar feeling of satisfaction that she wasn’t one of those simpering females who became embroiled in silly gossip about the rich and famous, but for once the feeling eluded her.

  For once, she longed to be one of those giggly, coy girls who knew how to bat their eyelashes and attract the cute guys; she wanted to be part of the prom set instead of the clever, boyish one lurking on the sidelines; she wanted to be a member of that invisible club from which she had always been excluded because she just never seemed to have the right code words to get in.

  She fought back a surge of dissatisfaction with herself and had to stifle a sense of anger that the man sitting opposite her had been the one to have generated the emotion. She had conquered whatever insecurities she had about her looks a long time ago and was perfectly content with her appearance. She might not be to everyone’s taste, and she certainly wouldn’t be to his, but her time would come and she would find someone. At the age of twenty-seven, she was hardly over the hill and, besides, her career was taking off. The last thing she needed or wanted was to be side-tracked by a guy.

  She wondered how they had ended up talking about something that had nothing at all to do with the job for which she had been hired.

  Was this part of his ‘getting to know her’ exercise? Was he quietly vetting her the way she had vetted him, when she had skimmed over all that information about him on the computer, making sure that there was nothing worrying about him?

  ‘You were telling me about the emails you received...’ She brought the conversation back to the business in hand.

  Alessio sighed heavily and gave her a long, considering look from under his lashes.

  ‘The first few were innocuous enough—a couple of one-liners hinting that they had information I might be interested in. Nothing worrying.’

  ‘You get emails like that all the time?’

  ‘I’m a rich man. I get a lot of emails that have little or nothing to do with work.’ He smiled wryly and Lesley felt that odd tingling feeling in her body once again. ‘I have several email accounts and my secretary is excellent when it comes to weeding out the dross.’

  ‘But these managed to slip through?’

  ‘These went to my personal email address. Very few people have that.’

  ‘Okay.’ She frowned and stared off into the distance. ‘So you say that the first few were innocuous enough and then the tenor of the emails changed?’

  ‘A few days ago, the first request for money came. Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot of requests for money, but they usually take a more straightforward route. Someone wants a sponsor for something; charities asking for hand-outs; small businesses angling for investment...and then the usual assortment of nut cases who need money for dying relatives or to pay lawyers before they can claim their inheritance, which they would happily share with me.’

  ‘And your secretary deals with all of that?’

  ‘She does. It’s usually called pressing the delete button on the computer. Some get through to me but, in general, we have established charities to which we give healthy sums of money, and all requests for business investment are automatically referred to my corporate finance division.’

  ‘But this slipped through the net because it came to your personal address. Any idea how he or she could have accessed that information?’ She was beginning to think that this sounded a little out of her area of expertise. Hackers usually went for information or, in some cases tried to attack the accounts, but this was clearly...personal. ‘And don’t you think that this might be better referred to the police?’ she inserted, before he could answer.

  Alessio laughed drily. He took a long mouthful of his drink and looked at her over the rim of the glass as he drank.

  ‘If you read the papers,’ he drawled, ‘you might discover that the police have been having
a few off-months when it comes to safeguarding the privacy of the rich and famous. I’m a very private man. The less of my life is splashed across the news, the better.’

  ‘So my job is to find out who is behind these emails.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘At which point you’ll...?’

  ‘Deal with the matter myself.’

  He was still smiling, with that suggestion of amusement on his lips, but she could see the steel behind the lazy, watchful dark eyes. ‘I should tell you from the offset that I cannot accept this commission if there’s any suggestion that you might turn...err...violent when it comes to sorting out whoever is behind this.’

  Alessio laughed and relaxed back in his chair, stretching out his long legs to cross them at the ankle and loosely linking his fingers on his stomach. ‘You have my word that I won’t turn, as you say, violent.’

  ‘I hope you’re not making fun of me, Mr Baldini,’ Lesley said stiffly. ‘I’m being perfectly serious.’

  ‘Alessio. The name’s Alessio. And you aren’t still under the impression that I’m a member of the Mafia, are you? With a stash of guns under the bed and henchmen to do my bidding?’

  Lesley flushed. Where had her easy, sassy manner gone? She was seldom lost for words but she was now, especially when those dark, dark eyes were lingering on her flushed cheeks, making her feel even more uncomfortable than she already felt. A burst of shameful heat exploded somewhere deep inside her, her body’s acknowledgment of his sexual magnetism, chemistry that was wrapping itself around her like a web, confusing her thoughts and making her pulses race.

  ‘Do I strike you as a violent man, Lesley?’

  ‘I never said that. I’m just being...cautious.’

  ‘Have you had awkward situations before?’ The soft pink of her cheeks when she blushed was curiously appealing, maybe because she was at such pains to project herself as a tough woman with no time for frivolity.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You intimated that you checked me out to make sure that I wasn’t dodgy...and I think I’m quoting you here. So are you cautious in situations like these... when the computer doesn’t go to you but you’re forced to go to the computer...because of bad experiences?’

  ‘I’m a careful person.’ Why did that make her sound like such a bore, when she wasn’t? Once again weirdly conscious of the image she must present to a guy like him, Lesley inhaled deeply and ploughed on. ‘And yes,’ she asserted matter-of-factly, ‘I have had a number of poor experiences in the past. A few months ago, I was asked to do a favour for a friend’s friend only to find that what he wanted was for me to hack into his ex-wife’s bank account and see where her money was being spent. When I refused, he turned ugly.’

  ‘Turned ugly?’

  ‘He’d had a bit too much to drink. He thought that if he pushed me around a bit I’d do what he wanted.’ And just in case her awkward responses had been letting her down, maybe giving him the mistaken impression that she was anything but one hundred per cent professional, she concluded crisply, ‘Of course, it’s annoying, but nothing I can’t handle.’

  ‘You can handle men who turn ugly.’ Fascinating. He was in the company of someone from another planet. She might have the creamiest complexion he had ever seen, and a heart-shaped face that insisted on looking ridiculously feminine despite the aggressive get-up, but she was certainly nothing like any woman he had ever met. ‘Tell me how you do that,’ he said with genuine curiosity.

  Absently, he noticed that she had depleted the plate of pastries by half its contents. A hearty appetite; his eyes flicked to her body which, despite being well hidden beneath her anti-fashion-statement clothing, was long and slender.

  On some subliminal level, Lesley was aware of the shift in his attention, away from her face and onto her body. Her instinct was to squirm. Instead, she clasped her hands tightly together on her lap and tried to force her uncooperative body into a position of relaxed ease.

  ‘I have a black belt in karate.’

  Alessio was stunned into silence. ‘You do?’

  ‘I do.’ She shrugged and held his confounded gaze. ‘And it’s not that shocking,’ she continued into the lengthening silence. ‘There were loads of girls in my class when I did it. ’Course, a few of them fell by the wayside when we began moving up the levels.’

  ‘And you did these classes...when, exactly?’

  In passing, Lesley wondered what this had to do with her qualifications for doing the job she had come to do. On the other hand, it never hurt to let someone know that you weren’t the sort of woman to be messed with.

  ‘I started when I was ten and the classes continued into my teens with a couple of breaks in between.’

  ‘So, when other girls were experimenting with make-up, you were learning the valuable art of self-defence.’

  Lesley felt the sharp jab of discomfort as he yet again unwittingly hit the soft spot inside her, the place where her insecurities lay, neatly parcelled up but always ready to be unwrapped at a moment’s notice.

  ‘I think every woman should know how to physically defend herself.’

  ‘That’s an extremely laudable ambition,’ Alessio murmured. He noticed that his long, cold drink was finished. ‘Let’s go inside. I’ll show you to my office and we can continue our conversation there. It’s getting a little oppressive out here.’ He stood up, squinted towards his gardens and half-smiled when he saw her automatically reach for the plate of pastries and whatever else she could manage to take in with her.

  ‘No need.’ He briefly rested one finger on her outstretched hand and Lesley shot back as though she had been scalded. ‘Violet will tidy all this away.’

  Lesley bit back an automatic retort that it was illuminating to see how the other half lived. She was no inverted snob, even though she might have no time for outward trappings and the importance other people sometimes placed on them, but he made her feel defensive. Worse, he made her feel gauche and awkward, sixteen all over again, cringing at the prospect of having to wear a frock to go to the school leaving dance, knowing that she just couldn’t pull it off.

  ‘I’m thinking that your mother must be a strong woman to instil such priorities in her daughter,’ he said neutrally.

  ‘My mother died when I was three—a hit-and-run accident when she was cycling back from doing the shopping.’

  Alessio stopped in his tracks and stared down at her until she was forced uncomfortably to return his stare.

  ‘Please don’t say something trite like I’m sorry to hear that.’ She tilted her chin and looked at him unblinkingly. ‘It happened a long time ago.’

  ‘No. I wasn’t going to say that,’ Alessio said in a low, musing voice that made her skin tingle.

  ‘My father was the strong influence in my life,’ she pressed on in a high voice. ‘My father and my five brothers. They all gave me the confidence to know that I could do whatever I chose to do, that my gender did not have to stand in the way of my ambition. I got my degree in maths—the world was my oyster.’

  Heart beating as fast as if she had run a marathon, she stared up at him, their eyes tangling until her defensiveness subsided and gave way to something else, something she could barely comprehend, something that made her say quickly, with a tight smile, ‘But I don’t see how any of this is relevant. If you lead the way to your computer, it shouldn’t take long for me to figure out who your problem pest is.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE OFFICE TO WHICH she was led allowed her a good opportunity to really take in the splendour of her surroundings.

  Really big country estates devoured money and consequently were rarely in the finest of conditions. Imposing exteriors were often let down by run-down, sad interiors in want of attention.

  This house was as magnificent inside as it was out. The pristine gardens, the splendid ivy-clad walls, were replicated inside by a glorious attention to detail. From the cool elegance of the hall, she bypassed a series of rooms, each magnificently de
corated. Of course, she could only peek through slightly open doors, because she had to half-run to keep up with him, but she saw enough to convince her that serious money had been thrown at the place—which was incredible, considering it was not used on a regular basis.

  Eventually they ended up in an office with book-lined walls and a massive antique desk housing a computer, a lap-top and a small stack of legal tomes. She looked around at the rich burgundy drapes pooling to the ground, the pin-striped sober wallpaper, the deep sofa and chairs.

  It was a decor she would not have associated with him and, as though reading her mind, he said wryly, ‘It makes a change from what I’m used to in London. I’m more of a modern man myself but I find there’s something soothing about working in a turn-of-the-century gentleman’s den.’ He moved smoothly round to the chair at the desk and powered up his computer. ‘When I bought this house several years ago, it was practically derelict. I paid over the odds for it because of its history and because I wanted to make sure the owner and her daughter could be rehoused in the manner to which they had clearly once been accustomed. Before, that is, the money ran out. They were immensely grateful and only suggested one thing—that I try and keep a couple of the rooms as close as possible to the original format. This was one.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Lesley hovered by the door and looked around her. Through the French doors, the lawns outside stretched away to an impossibly distant horizon. The sun turned everything into dazzling technicolour. The greens of the grass and the trees seemed greener than possible and the sky was blindingly turquoise. Inside the office, though, the dark colours threw everything into muted relief. He was right; the space was soothing.

  She looked at him frowning in front of the computer, sitting forward slightly, his long, powerful body still managing to emanate force even though he wasn’t moving.

  ‘There’s no need to remain by the door,’ he said without looking at her. ‘You’ll actually need to venture into the room and sit next to me if you’re to work on this problem. Ah. Right. Here we go.’ He stood up, vacating the chair for her.