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The Uncompromising Italian
CATHY WILLIAMS


THE UNCOMPROMISING ITALIANThe Italian you can’t refuseTo avoid exposing his greatest secret, billionaire Alessio Baldini needs the best – Lesley Fox. As challenging as she is alluring, Lesley stands firm against his unyielding nature.Tomboy Lesley is shocked by the extravagant excess of Alessio’s world. She may try to dislike him, but can’t stop her pulse racing when he’s near. To give in would be dangerous… and danger always has consequences.







Lesley spun away from the mirror suddenly as she heard the door open and saw Alessio look at her in shock.

‘What are you doing here?’ She felt naked as his eyes slowly raked over her, from the top of her head, along her body, and then all the way back again.

Alessio couldn’t stop looking at her. Any other woman would have been overjoyed to be the centre of his attention, as she now was, but instead she was staring straight ahead, unblinking, doing her utmost to shut him out of her line of vision.

He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted this one right now. Mind and body fused. This wasn’t just another of his glamorous sex-kitten women. This thinking, questioning, irreverent creature was in a different league.


CATHY WILLIAMS is originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband, Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their pet cat, Salem. She adores writing romantic fiction, and would love one of her girls to become a writer—although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another!


The Uncompromising Italian

Cathy Williams




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To my wonderful daughters.


Contents

Cover (#ue2ea60ea-94db-5bf0-9e72-ca0bce973e0b)

Excerpt (#u462b227e-89d6-5ba8-b59e-8b9a242af5a3)

About the Author (#u4218e87f-9c8b-55d1-aacc-303f5c0b96ba)

Title Page (#uc1201869-7420-545f-ae45-e5ad82df2b48)

Dedication (#u8e68bb0f-ac6a-5d7f-b71c-e66f11e71106)

CHAPTER ONE (#ub879936e-f55f-58eb-a444-0e79b437d4f3)

CHAPTER TWO (#uf0248a04-bf2e-54a2-9568-1d80c29b7d90)

CHAPTER THREE (#u084a2ffa-adab-51b0-9f46-5045d6371095)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_bbb2a741-115a-5b73-bbbd-1e4652549847)

LESLEY FOX SLOWLY DREW to a stop in front of the most imposing house she had ever seen.

The journey out of London had taken barely any time at all. It was Monday, it was the middle of August and she had been heading against the traffic. In all it had taken her under an hour to leave her flat in crowded Ladbroke Grove and arrive at a place that looked as though it should be plastered on the cover of a House Beautiful magazine.

The wrought-iron gates announced its splendour, as had the tree-lined avenue and acres of manicured lawns through which she had driven.

The guy was beyond wealthy. Of course, she had known that. The first thing she had done when she had been asked to do this job had been to look him up online.

Alessio Baldini—Italian, but resident in the UK for a long time. The list of his various companies was vast and she had skipped over all of that. What he did for a living was none of her business. She had just wanted to make sure that the man existed and was who Stan said he was.

Commissions via friends of friends were not always to be recommended, least of all in her niche sideline business. A girl couldn’t be too careful, as her father liked to say.

She stepped out of her little Mini, which was dwarfed in the vast courtyard, and took a few minutes to look around her.

The brilliance of a perfect summer’s day made the sprawling green lawns, the dense copse to one side lush with lavender and the clambering roses against the stone of the mansion facing her seem almost too breathtakingly beautiful to be entirely real.

This country estate was in a league of its own.

There had been a bit of information on the Internet about where the man lived, but no pictures, and she had been ill-prepared for this concrete display of wealth.

A gentle breeze ruffled her short brown hair and for once she felt a little awkward in her routine garb of lightweight combat trousers, espadrilles and one of her less faded tee-shirts advertising the rock band she had gone to see five years ago.

This didn’t seem the sort of place where dressing down would be tolerated.

For the first time, she wished she had paid a little more attention to the details of the guy she was going to see.

There had been long articles about him but few pictures and she had skimmed over those, barely noting which one he was amidst the groups of boring men in business suits who’d all seemed to wear the identical smug smiles of people who had made far too much money for their own good.

She grabbed her laptop from the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

If it weren’t for Stan, she wouldn’t be here now. She didn’t need the money. She could afford the mortgage on her one-bedroom flat, had little interest in buying pointless girly clothes for a figure she didn’t possess to attract men in whom she had scant interest—or who, she amended with scrupulous honesty to herself, had scant interest in her—and she wasn’t into expensive, long-haul holidays.

With that in mind, she had more than enough to be going on with. Her full-time job as a website designer paid well and, as far as she was concerned, she lacked for nothing.

But Stan was her dad’s long-time friend from Ireland. They had grown up together. He had taken her under his wing when she had moved down to London after university and she owed him.

With any luck, she would be in and out of the man’s place in no time at all.

She breathed in deeply and stared at the mansion in front of her.

It seemed a never-ending edifice of elegant cream stone, a dream of a house, with ivy climbing in all the right places and windows that looked as though they dated back to the turn of the century.

This was just the sort of ostentatious wealth that should have held little appeal, but in fact she was reluctantly charmed by its beauty.

Of course, the man would be a lot less charming than his house. It was always the way. Rich guys always thought they were God’s gift to women even when they obviously weren’t. She had met one or two in her line of work and it had been a struggle to keep a smile pinned to her face.

There was no doorbell but an impressive knocker. She could hear it reverberating through the bowels of the house as she banged it hard on the front door and then stood back to wait for however long it would take for the man’s butler or servant, or whoever he employed to answer doors for him, to arrive on the scene and let her in.

She wondered what he would look like. Rich and Italian, so probably dark-haired with a heavy accent. Possibly short, which would be a bit embarrassing, because she was five-eleven and a half and likely to tower over him—never a good thing. She knew from experience that men hated women who towered over them. He would probably be quite dapper, kitted out in expensive Italian gear and wearing expensive Italian footwear. She had no idea what either might look like but it was safe to say that trainers and old clothes would not feature on the sartorial menu.

She was fully occupied amusing herself with a variety of mental pictures when the door was pulled open without warning.

For a few seconds, Lesley Fox lost the ability to speak. Her lips parted and she stared. Stared in a way she had never stared at any man in her life before.

The guy standing in front of her was, quite simply, beautiful. Taller than her by a few inches, and wearing faded jeans and a navy-blue polo shirt, he was barefoot. Raven-black hair was combed back from a sinfully sexy face. His eyes were as black as his hair and lazily returned her stare, until she felt the blood rush to her face and she returned to Planet Earth with a feeling of sickening embarrassment.

‘Who are you?’

His cool, rich, velvety voice galvanised her senses back into working order and she cleared her throat and reminded herself that she wasn’t the type of girl who had ever been daunted by a guy, however good-looking he was. She came from a family of six and she was the only girl. She had been brought up going to rugby matches, watching the football on television, climbing trees and exploring the glorious countryside of wild Ireland with brothers who hadn’t always appreciated their younger sister tagging along.

She had always been able to handle the opposite sex. She had lived her life being one of the lads, for God’s sake!

‘I’m here about your... Er...my name’s Lesley Fox.’ As an afterthought, she stuck out her hand and then dropped it when he failed to respond with a return gesture.

‘I wasn’t expecting a girl.’ Alessio looked at her narrowly. That, he thought, had to be the understatement of the year. He had been expecting a Les Fox—Les, as in a man. Les, as in a man who was a contemporary of Rob Dawson, his IT guy. Rob Dawson was in his forties and resembled a beach ball. He had been expecting a forty-something-year-old man of similar build.

Instead, he was looking at a girl with cropped dark hair, eyes the colour of milk chocolate and a lanky, boyish physique, wearing...

Alessio took in the baggy sludge-green trousers with awkward pockets and the faded tee-shirt.

He couldn’t quite recall the last time he had seen a woman dressed with such obvious, scathing disregard for fashion.

Women always tried their very hardest when around him to show their best side. Their hair was always perfect, make-up always flawless, clothes always the height of fashion and shoes always high and sexy.

His eyes drifted down to her feet. She was wearing cloth shoes.

‘I’m so sorry to have disappointed you, Mr Baldini. I take it you are Mr Baldini and not his manservant, sent to chase away callers by being rude to them?’

‘I didn’t think anyone used that term any more...’

‘What term?’

‘Manservant. When I asked Dawson to provide me with the name of someone who could help me with my current little...problem, I assumed he would have recommended someone a bit older. More experienced.’

‘I happen to be very good at what I do.’

‘As this isn’t a job interview, I can’t very well ask for references.’ He stood aside, inviting her to enter. ‘But, considering you look as though you’re barely out of school, I’ll want to know a little bit about you before I explain the situation.’

Lesley held on to her temper. She didn’t need the money. Even though the hourly rate that she had been told about was staggering, she really didn’t have to stand here and listen to this perfect stranger quiz her about her experience for a job she hadn’t applied for. But then she thought of Stan and all he had done for her and she gritted back the temptation to turn on her heel, climb back into her car and head down to London without a backward glance.

‘Come on in,’ Alessio threw over his shoulder as she remained hovering on the doorstep and, after a few seconds, Lesley took a step into the house.

She was surrounded by pale marble only broken by the richness of a Persian rug. The walls were adorned with the sort of modern masterpieces that should have looked out of place in a house of this age but somehow didn’t. The vast hall was dominated by a staircase that swept upwards before branching out in opposite directions, and doors indicated that there was a multitude of rooms winging on either side, not that she wouldn’t have guessed.

More than ever, she felt inappropriately dressed. He might be casual, but he was casual in the sort of elegant, expensive way of the very wealthy.

‘Big place for one person,’ she said, staring around her, openly impressed.

‘How do you know I haven’t got a sprawling family lurking somewhere out of sight?’

‘Because I looked you up,’ Lesley answered truthfully. Her eyes finally returned to him and once again she was struck by his dark, saturnine good looks. And once again she had to drag her eyes away reluctantly, desperate to return her gaze to him, to drink him in. ‘I don’t usually travel into unknown territory when I do my freelance jobs. Usually the computer comes to me, I don’t go to the computer.’

‘Always illuminating to get out of one’s comfort zone,’ Alessio drawled. He watched as she ran her fingers through her short hair, spiking it up. She had very dark eyebrows, as dark as her hair, which emphasised the peculiar shade of brown of her eyes. And she was pale, with satiny skin that should have been freckled but wasn’t. ‘Follow me. We can sit out in the garden and I’ll get Violet to bring us something to drink... Have you had lunch?’

Lesley frowned. Had she? She was careless with her eating habits, something she daily promised herself to rectify. If she ate more, she knew she’d stand a fighting chance of not looking like a gawky runner bean. ‘A sandwich before I left,’ she returned politely. ‘But a cup of tea would be wonderful.’

‘It never fails to amuse me that on a hot summer’s day you English will still opt for a cup of tea instead of something cold.’

‘I’m not English. I’m Irish.’

Alessio cocked his head to one side and looked at her, consideringly. ‘Now that you mention it, I do detect a certain twang...’

‘But I’m still partial to a cup of tea.’

He smiled and she was knocked sideways. The man oozed sex appeal. He’d had it when he’d been unsmiling, but now...it was enough to throw her into a state of confusion and she blinked, driving away the unaccustomed sensation.

‘This isn’t my preferred place of residence,’ he took up easily as he led the way out of the magnificent hall and towards sprawling doors that led towards the back of the house. ‘I come here to give it an airing every so often but most of my time is spent either in London or abroad on business.’

‘And who looks after this place when you’re not in it?’

‘I have people who do that for me.’

‘Bit of a waste, isn’t it?’

Alessio spun round and looked at her with a mixture of irritation and amusement. ‘From whose point of view?’ he asked politely and Lesley shrugged and folded her arms.

‘There are such extreme housing problems in this country that it seems crazy for one person to have a place of this size.’

‘You mean, when I could subdivide the whole house and turn it into a million rabbit hutches to cater for down and outs?’ He laughed drily. ‘Did my guy explain to you what the situation was?’

Lesley frowned. She had thought he might have been offended by her remark, but she was here on business of sorts, and her opinions were of little consequence.

‘Your guy got in touch with Stan who’s a friend of my dad and he... Well, he just said that you had a sensitive situation that needed sorting. No details.’

‘None were given. I was just curious to find out whether idle speculation had entered the equation.’ He pushed open some doors and they emerged into a magnificent back garden.

Tall trees bordered pristine, sprawling lawns. To one side was a tennis court and beyond that she could see a swimming pool with a low, modern outbuilding which she assumed was changing rooms. The patio on which they were standing was as broad as the entire little communal garden she shared with the other residents in her block of flats and stretched the length of the house. If a hundred people were to stand side by side, they wouldn’t be jostling for space.

Low wooden chairs were arranged around a glass-topped table and as she sat down a middle-aged woman bustled into her line of vision, as though summoned by some kind of whistle audible only to her.

Tea, Alessio instructed; something cold for him, a few things to eat.

Orders given, he sat down on one of the chairs facing her and leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees.

‘So the man my guy went to is a friend of your father’s?’

‘That’s right. Stan grew up with my dad and when I moved down to London after university... Well, he and his wife took me under their wing. Made room for me in their house until I was settled—even paid the three months’ deposit on my first rental property because they knew that it would be a struggle for my dad to afford it. So, yeah, I owe Stan a lot and it’s why I took this job, Mr Baldini.’

‘Alessio, please. And you work as...?’

‘I design websites but occasionally I work as a freelance hacker. Companies employ me to see if their firewalls are intact and secure. If something can be hacked, then I can do it.’

‘Not a job I immediately associate with a woman,’ he murmured and raised his eyebrows as she bristled. ‘That’s not meant as an insult. It’s purely a statement of fact. There are a couple of women in my IT department, but largely they’re guys.’

‘Why didn’t you get one of your own employees to sort out your problem?’

‘Because it’s a sensitive issue and, the less my private life is discussed within the walls of my offices, the better. So you design websites. You freelance and you claim you can get into anything.’

‘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 (#ulink_9e64b69f-a1ef-5ff1-bd49-9d0ba8300ba1)

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 decorated. 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.

The leather was warm from where he had been sitting, and the heat seemed to infiltrate her entire body as she took his place in front of the computer screen. When he leaned over to tap on the keyboard, she felt her breathing become rapid and shallow and she had to stop herself from gasping out loud.

His forearm was inches away from her breasts and never had the proximity of one person’s body proved so rattling. She willed herself to focus on what he was calling up on the screen in front of her and to remember that she was here in a professional capacity.

Why was he getting to her? Perhaps she had been too long without a guy in her life. Friends and family were all very good, but maybe her life of pleasant celibacy had made her unexpectedly vulnerable to a spot of swarthy good looks and a wicked smile.

‘So...’

Lesley blinked herself back into the present to find herself staring directly into dark, dark eyes that were far too close to her for comfort.

‘So?’

‘Email one—a little too familiar, a little too chatty, but nothing that couldn’t be easily ignored.’

Lesley looked thoughtfully at the computer screen and read through the email. Her surroundings faded away as she began studying the series of emails posted to him, looking for clues, asking him questions, her fingers moving swiftly and confidently across the key board.

She could understand why he had decided to farm out this little problem to an outside source.

If he valued his privacy, then he would not want his IT division to have access to what appeared to be vaguely menacing threats, suggestions of something that could harm his business or ruin his reputation. It would be fodder for any over-imaginative employee, of which there were always a few in any office environment.

Alessio pushed himself away from the desk and strolled towards one of the comfortable, deep chairs facing her.

She was utterly absorbed in what she was doing. He took time out to study her and he was amused and a little surprised to discover that he enjoyed the view.

It wasn’t simply the arrangement of her features that he found curiously captivating.

There was a lively intelligence to her that made a refreshing change from the beautiful but intellectually challenged women he dated. He looked at the way her short chocolate-brown hair spiked up, as though too feisty and too wilful to be controlled. Her eyelashes were long and thick; her mouth, as he now saw, was full and, yes, sexy.

A sexy mouth, especially just at this very moment, when her lips were slightly parted.

She frowned and ran her tongue thoughtfully along her upper lip and, on cue, Alessio’s body jerked into startling life. His libido, which had been unusually quiet since he’d ended his relationship with a blonde with a penchant for diamonds two months ago, fired up.

It was so unexpected a reaction that he nearly groaned in shock.

Instead, he shifted on the chair and smiled politely as her eyes briefly skittered across to him before resuming their intent concentration on the computer screen.

‘Whoever’s sent this knows what they’re doing.’

‘Come again?’ Alessio crossed his legs, trying to maintain the illusion that he was in complete control of himself.

‘They’ve been careful to make themselves as untraceable as possible.’ Lesley stretched, then slumped back into the chair and swivelled it round so that she was facing him.

She stuck out her legs and gazed at her espadrilles. ‘That first email may have been chatty and friendly but he or she knew that they didn’t want to be traced. Why didn’t you delete them, at least the earlier ones?’

‘I had an instinct that they might be worth hanging onto.’ He stood up and strolled towards the French doors. He had intended this meeting to be brief and functional, a blip that needed sorting out in his hectic life. Now, he found that his mind was stubbornly refusing to return to the matter in hand. Instead, it was relentlessly pulled back to the image he had of her sitting in front of his computer concentrating ferociously. He wondered what she would look like out of the unappealing ensemble. He wondered whether she would be any different from all the other naked women who had lain across his bed in readiness for him.

He knew she would—instinct again. Somehow he couldn’t envisage her lying provocatively for him to take her, passive and willing to please.

No. That wasn’t what girls with black belts in karate and a sideline in computer hacking did.

He played with the suddenly tempting notion of prolonging her task. Who knew what might happen between them if she were to be around longer than originally envisaged?

‘What would you suggest my next step should be? Because I’m taking from the expression on your face that it’s not going to be as straightforward as you first thought.’

‘Usually it’s pretty easy to sort something like this out,’ Lesley confessed, linking her hands on her stomach and staring off at nothing in particular. The weird, edgy tension she had felt earlier on had dissipated. Work had that effect on her. It occupied her whole mind and left no room for anything else. ‘People are predictable when it comes to leaving tracks behind them, but obviously whoever is behind this hasn’t used his own computer. He’s gone to an Internet café. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes to a variety of Internet cafés, because we certainly would be able to trace the café he uses if he sticks there. And it wouldn’t be too much of a headache finding out which terminal is his and then it would be a short step to identifying the person... I keep saying he but it might very well be a she.’

‘How so? No, we’ll get to that over something to drink—and I insist you forfeit the tea in favour of something a little more exciting. My housekeeper makes a very good Pimm’s.’

‘I couldn’t,’ Lesley said awkwardly. ‘I’m not much of a drinker and I’m...err...driving anyway.’

‘Fresh lemonade, in that case.’ Alessio strolled towards her and held out his hand to tug her up from the chair to which she seemed to be glued.

For a few seconds, Lesley froze. When she grasped his hand—because frankly she couldn’t think of what else to do without appearing ridiculous and childish—she felt a spurt of red-hot electricity zap through her body until every inch of her was galvanised into shrieking, heightened awareness of the dangerously sexy man standing in front of her.

‘That would be nice,’ she said a little breathlessly. As soon as she could she retrieved her scorching hand and resisted the urge to rub it against her trousers.

Alessio didn’t miss a thing. She was a different person when she was concentrating on a computer. Looking at a screen, analysing what was in front of her, working out how to solve the problem he had presented, she oozed self-confidence. He idly wondered what her websites looked like.

But without a computer to absorb her attention she was prickly and defensive, a weird, intriguing mix of independent and vulnerable.

He smiled, turning her insides to liquid, and stood aside to allow her to pass by him out of the office.

‘So we have a he or a she who goes to a certain Internet café, or more likely a variety of Internet cafés, for the sole reason of emailing me to, well, purpose as yet slightly unclear, but if I’m any reader of human motivation I’m smelling a lead-up to asking for money for information he or she may or may not know. There seem to be a lot of imponderables in this case.’

They had arrived at the kitchen without her being aware of having padded through the house at all, and she found a glass of fresh lemonade in her hands while he helped himself to a bottle of mineral water.

He motioned to the kitchen table and they sat facing one another on opposite sides.

‘Generally,’ Lesley said, sipping the lemonade, ‘This should be a straightforward case of sourcing the computer in question, paying a visit to the Internet café—and usually these places have CCTV cameras. You would be able to find the culprit without too much bother.’

‘But if he’s clever enough to hop from café to café...’

‘Then it’ll take a bit longer but I’ll get there. Of course, if you have no skeletons in the cupboard, Mr Baldini, then you could just walk away from this situation.’

‘Is there such a thing as an adult without one or two skeletons in the cupboard?’

‘Well, then.’

‘Although,’ Alessio continued thoughtfully, ‘Skeletons imply something...wrong, in need of concealment. I can’t think of any dark secrets I have under lock or key but there are certain things I would rather not have revealed.’

‘Do you honestly care what the public thinks of you? Or maybe it’s to do with your company? Sorry, but I don’t really know how the big, bad world of business operates, but I’m just assuming that if something gets out that could affect your share prices then you mightn’t be too happy.’

‘I have a daughter.’

‘You have a daughter?’

‘Surely you got that from your search of me on the Internet?’ Alessio said drily.

‘I told you, I just skimmed through the stuff. There’s an awful lot written up about you and I honestly just wanted to cut to the chase—any articles that could have suggested that I needed to be careful about getting involved. Like I said, I’ve fine-tuned my search engine when it comes to picking out relevant stuff or else I’d be swamped underneath useless speculation.’ A daughter?

‘Yes. I forgot—the “bodies under the motorway” scenario.’ He raised his eyebrows and once again Lesley felt herself in danger of losing touch with common sense.

‘I never imagined anything so dramatic, at least not really,’ she returned truthfully, which had the effect of making that sexy smile on his face even broader. Flustered, she continued, ‘But you were telling me that you have a daughter.’

‘You still can’t erase the incredulity from your voice,’ he remarked, amused. ‘Surely you’ve bumped into people who have had kids?’

‘Yes! Of course! But...’

‘But?’

Lesley stared at him. ‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re making fun of me?’ she asked, ruffled and red-faced.

‘My apologies.’ But there was the echo of a smile still lingering in his voice, even though his expression was serious and contrite. ‘But you blush so prettily.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life!’ And it was. Ridiculous. ‘Pretty’ was something she most definitely was not. Nor was she going to let this guy, this sex God of a man—who could have any woman he wanted, if you happened to like that kind of thing—get under her skin.

‘Why is it ridiculous?’ Alessio allowed himself to be temporarily side-tracked.

‘I know you’re probably one of these guys who slips into flattery mode with any woman you happen to find yourself confined with, but I’m afraid that I don’t go into meltdown at empty compliments.’ What on earth was she going on about? Why was she jumping into heated self-defence over nonsense like this?

When it came to business, Alessio rarely lost sight of the goal. Right now, not only had he lost sight of it, but he didn’t mind. ‘Do you go into meltdown at compliments you think are genuine?’

‘I...I...’

‘You’re stammering,’ he needlessly pointed out. ‘I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’

‘I don’t...err...feel uncomfortable.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

Lesley stared helplessly at him. He wasn’t just sinfully sexy. The man was beautiful. He hadn’t looked beautiful in those pictures, but then she had barely taken them in—a couple of grainy black-and-white shots of a load of businessmen had barely registered on her consciousness. Now, she wished she had paid attention so that she at least could have been prepared for the sort of effect he might have had on her.

Except, she admitted truthfully to herself, she would still have considered herself above and beyond being affected by any man, however good-looking he might happen to be. When it came to matters of the heart, she had always prided herself on her practicality. She knew her limitations and had accepted them. When and if the time came that she wanted a relationship, then she had always known that the man for her would not be the sort who was into looks but the sort who enjoyed intelligence, personality—a meeting of minds as much as anything else.

‘You were telling me about your daughter...’

‘My daughter.’ Alessio sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his dark hair.

It was a gesture of hesitancy that seemed so at odds with his forceful personality that Lesley sat up and stared at him with narrowed eyes.

‘Where is she?’ Lesley looked past him, as though half-expecting this unexpected addition to his life suddenly to materialise out of nowhere. ‘I thought you mentioned that you had no family. Where is your wife?’

‘No sprawling family,’ Alessio amended. ‘And no wife. My wife died two years ago.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘There’s no need for tears and sympathy.’ He waved aside her interruption, although he was startled at how easily a softer nature shone through. ‘When I say wife, it might be more accurate to say ex-wife. Bianca and I were divorced a long time ago.’

‘How old is your daughter?’

‘Sixteen. And, to save you the hassle of doing the maths, she was, shall we say, an unexpected arrival when I was eighteen.’

‘You were a father at eighteen?’

‘Bianca and I had been seeing each other in a fairly loose fashion for a matter of three months when she announced that her contraceptive pill had failed and I was going to be a father.’ His lips thinned. The past was rarely raked up and when it was, as now, it still brought a sour taste to his mouth.

Unfortunately, he could see no way around a certain amount of confidential information exchanging hands because he had a gut feeling that, whatever his uninvited email correspondent wanted, it involved his daughter.

‘And you weren’t happy about that.’ Lesley groped her way to understanding the darkening of his expression.

‘A family was not something high on my agenda at the time,’ Alessio imparted grimly. ‘In fact, I would go so far as to say that it hadn’t even crossed my radar. But, naturally, I did the honourable thing and married her. It was a match approved by both sides of the family until, that is, it became apparent that her family’s wealth was an illusion. Her parents were up to their eyes in debt and I was a convenient match because of the financial rewards I brought with me.’

‘She married you for your money?’

‘It occurred to no one to do a background check.’ He shrugged elegantly. ‘You’re looking at me as though I’ve suddenly landed from another planet.’

His slow smile knocked her sideways and she cleared her throat nervously. ‘I’m not familiar with people marrying for no better reason than money,’ she answered honestly.

Alessio raised his eyebrows. ‘In that case, we really do come from different planets. My family is extremely wealthy, as am I. Believe me, I am extremely well versed in the tactics women will employ to gain entry to my bank balance.’ He crossed his legs, relaxing. ‘But you might say that, once bitten, twice shy.’

She made an exceptionally good listener. Was this why he had expanded on the skeleton brief he could have given her? Had gone into details that were irrelevant in the grand scheme of things? He hadn’t been lying when he had told her that his unfortunate experience with his ex had left him jaded about women and the lengths they would go to in order to secure themselves a piece of the pie. He was rich and women liked money. It was therefore a given that he employed a healthy amount of caution in his dealings with the opposite sex.

But the woman sitting in front of him couldn’t have been less interested in his earnings.

His little problem intrigued her far more than he did. It was a situation that Alessio had never encountered in his life before and there was something sexy and challenging about that.

‘You mean you don’t intend to marry again? I can understand that. And I guess you have your daughter. She must mean the world to you.’

‘Naturally.’ Alessio’s voice cooled. ‘Although I’ll be the first to admit that things have not been easy between us. I had relatively little contact with Rachel when she was growing up, thanks to my ex-wife’s talent for vindictiveness. She lived in Italy but travelled extensively, and usually when she knew that I had arranged a visit. She was quite happy to whip our daughter out of school at a moment’s notice if only to make sure that my trip to Italy to visit would be a waste of time.’

‘How awful.’

‘At any rate, when Bianca died Rachel naturally came to me, but at the age of fourteen she was virtually a stranger and a fairly hostile one. Frankly, a nightmare.’

‘She would have been grieving for her mother.’ Lesley could barely remember her own mother and yet she still grieved at the lack of one in her life. How much more traumatic to have lost one at the age of fourteen, a time in life when a maternal, guiding hand could not have been more needed.

‘She was behind in her schoolwork thanks to my ex-wife’s antics, and refused to speak English in the classroom, so the whole business of teaching her was practically impossible. In the end, boarding school seemed the only option and, thankfully, she appears to have settled in there with somewhat more success. At least, there have been no phone calls threatening expulsion.’

‘Boarding school...’

Alessio frowned. ‘You say that as though it ranks alongside “prison cell”.’

‘I can’t imagine the horror of being separated from my family. My brothers could be little devils when I was growing up but we were a family. Dad, the boys and me.’

Alessio tilted his head and looked at her, considering, tempted to ask her if that was why she had opted for a male-dominated profession, and why she wore clothes better suited to a boy. But the conversation had already drifted too far from the matter at hand. When he glanced down at his watch, it was to find that more time had passed than he might have expected.

‘My gut feeling tells me that these emails are in some way connected to my daughter,’ Alessio admitted. ‘Reason should dictate that they’re to do with work but I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t approach me directly about anything to do with my business concerns.’

‘No. And if you’re as above board as you say you are...’

‘You doubt my word?’

Lesley shrugged. ‘I don’t think that’s really my business; the only reason I mention it is because it might be pertinent to finding out who is behind this. ’Course, I shall continue working at the problem, but if it’s established that the threat is to do with your work then you might actually be able to pinpoint the culprit yourself.’

‘How many people do you imagine work for me?’ Alessio asked curiously, and Lesley shrugged and gave the matter some thought.

‘No idea.’ The company she worked for was small, although prominent in its field, employing only a handful of people on the creative side and slightly fewer on the admin side. ‘A hundred or so?’

‘You really skimmed through those articles you called up on your computer, didn’t you?’

‘Big business doesn’t interest me,’ she informed him airily. ‘I may have a talent for numbers, and can do the maths without any trouble at all, but those numbers only matter when it comes to my work. I can work things out precisely but it’s really the artistic side of my job that I love. In fact, I only did maths at university because Shane, one of my brothers, told me that it was a man’s subject.’

‘Thousands.’

Lesley looked at him blankly for a few seconds. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Thousands. In various countries. I own several companies and I employ thousands, not hundreds. But that’s by the by. This isn’t to do with work. This is to do with my daughter. The only problem is that we don’t have a great relationship and if I approach her with my suspicions, if I quiz her about her friends, about whether anyone’s been acting strangely, asking too many questions...well, I don’t anticipate a good outcome to any such conversation. So what would you have done if you hadn’t done maths?’

Time had slipped past and they were no nearer to solving the problem, yet he was drawn to asking her yet more questions about herself.

Lesley—following his lead and envisaging the sort of awkward, maybe even downright incendiary conversation that might ensue in the face of Alessio’s concerns, should he confront a hostile teenager with them—was taken aback by his abrupt change of topic.

‘You said that you only did maths because your brother told you that you couldn’t.’

‘He never said that I couldn’t.’ She smiled, remembering their war of words. Shane was two years older than her and she always swore that his main purpose in life was to annoy her. He was now a barrister working in Dublin but he still teased her as though they were still kids in primary school. ‘He said that it was a man’s field, which immediately made me decide to do it.’

‘Because, growing up as the only girl in a family of all males, it would have been taken as a given that, whatever your brothers could do, you could as well.’

‘I’m wondering what this has to do with the reason I’ve come here.’ She pulled out her mobile phone, checked the time on it and was surprised to discover how much of the day had flown by. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to sort things out for you immediately. I’d understand perfectly if you want to take the matter to someone else, someone who can devote concentrated time to working on it. It shouldn’t take too long, but longer than an hour or two.’

‘Would you have done art?’ He overrode her interjection as though he hadn’t heard any of it and she flung him an exasperated look.

‘I did, actually—courses in the town once a week. It was a good decision. It may have clinched me my job.’

‘I have no interest in farming out this problem to someone else.’

‘I can’t give it my full-time attention.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ she said patiently, ‘I have a nine-to-five job. And I live in London. And by the time I get back to my place—usually after seven, what with working overtime and then the travel—I’m exhausted. The last thing I need is to start trying to sort your problem out remotely.’

‘Who said anything about doing it remotely? Take time off and come here.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A week. You must be able to take some holiday time? Take it off and come here instead. Trying to sort this out remotely isn’t the answer. You won’t have sufficient time to do it consistently and also, while this may be to do with unearthing something about my own past, it may also have to do with something in my daughter’s life. Something this person thinks poses a risk, should it be exposed. Have you considered that?’

‘It had crossed my mind,’ Lesley admitted.

‘In which case, there could be a double-pronged attack on this problem if you moved in here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My daughter occupies several rooms in the house, by which I mean she has spread herself thin. She has a million books, items of clothing, at least one desk-top computer, tablets... If this has to do with anything Rachel has got up to, then you could be on hand to go through her stuff.’

‘You want me to invade her privacy by searching through her private things?’

‘It’s all for the greater good.’ Their eyes locked and she was suddenly seduced by the temptation to take him up on his offer, to step right out of her comfort zone.

‘What’s the point of having misplaced scruples? Frankly, I don’t see the problem.’

In that single sentence, she glimpsed the man whose natural assumption was that the world would fall in line with what he wanted. And then he smiled, as if he had read her mind, and guessed exactly what was going through it. ‘Wouldn’t your company allow you a week off? Holiday?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Then what is? Possessive boyfriend, perhaps? Won’t let you out of his sight for longer than five minutes?’

Lesley looked at him scornfully. ‘I would never get involved with anyone who wouldn’t let me out of his sight for longer than five minutes! I’m not one of those pathetic, clingy females who craves protection from a big, strong man.’ She had a fleeting image of the man sitting opposite her, big, strong, powerful, protecting his woman, making her feel small, fragile and delicate. She had never thought of herself as delicate—too tall, too boyish, too independent. It was ridiculous to have that squirmy sensation in the pit of her stomach now and she thanked the Lord that he really couldn’t read her mind.

‘So, no boyfriend,’ Alessio murmured, cocking his head to one side. ‘Then explain to me why you’re finding reasons not to do this. I don’t want to source anyone else to work on this for me. You might not have been what I expected, but you’re good and I trust you, and if my daughter’s possessions are to be searched it’s essential they be searched by a woman.’

‘It wouldn’t be ethical to go through someone else’s stuff.’

‘What if by doing that you spared her a far worse situation? Rachel, I feel, would not be equipped to deal with unpleasant revelations that could damage the foundations of her young life. Furthermore, I won’t be looking over your shoulder. You’ll be able to work to your own timetable. In fact, I shall be in London most of the time, only returning here some evenings.’

Lesley opened her mouth to formulate a half-hearted protest, because this was all so sudden and so out of the ordinary, but with a slash of his hand he cut her off before any words could leave her mouth.

‘She also returns in a few days’ time. This is a job that has a very definite deadline; piecemeal when you get a chance isn’t going to cut it. You have reservations—I see that—but I need this to be sorted out and I think you’re the one to do it. So, please.’

Lesley heard the dark uncertainty in his voice and gritted her teeth with frustration. In a lot of ways, what he said made sense. Even if this job were to take a day or two, she would not be able to give it anything like her full attention if she worked on it remotely for half an hour every evening. And, if she needed to see whether his daughter had logged on to other computer devices, then she would need to be at his house where the equipment was to hand. It wasn’t something she relished doing—everyone deserved their privacy—but sometimes privacy had to be invaded as a means of protection.

But moving in, sharing the same space as him? He did something disturbing to her pulse rate, so how was she supposed to live under the same roof?

But the thought drew her with the force of the forbidden.

Watching, Alessio smelled his advantage and lowered his eyes. ‘If you won’t do this for me...and I realise it would be inconvenient for you...then do it for my daughter, Lesley. She’s sixteen and vulnerable.’


CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_e8c09720-8a3a-52cd-9077-10202b7898bf)

‘THIS IS IT...’

Alessio flung back the door to the suite of rooms and stood to one side, allowing Lesley to brush past him.

It was a mere matter of hours since he had pressed home his advantage and persuaded her to take up his offer to move into the house.

She had her misgivings, he could see that, but he wanted her there at hand and he was a man who was accustomed to getting what he wanted, whatever the cost.

As far as he was concerned, his proposition made sense. If she needed to try and hunt down clues from his daughter’s possessions, then the only way she could do that would be here, in his house. There was no other way.

He hadn’t anticipated this eventuality. He had thought that it would be a simple matter of following a trail of clues on his computer which would lead him straight to whoever was responsible for the emails.

Given that it was not going to be as straightforward as he first thought, it was a stroke of luck that the person working on the case was a woman. She would understand the workings of the female mind and would know where to locate whatever information she might find useful.

Added to that...

He looked at Lesley with lazy, brooding eyes as she stepped into the room.

There was something about the woman. She didn’t pull her punches and, whilst a part of him was grimly disapproving of her forthright manner, another part of him was intrigued.

When was the last time he had been in the company of a woman who didn’t say what she wanted him to hear?

When had he ever been in the company of any woman who didn’t say what she wanted him to hear?

He was the product of a life of privilege. He had grown up accustomed to servants and chauffeurs and then, barely into adulthood, had found himself an expectant father. In a heartbeat, his world had changed. He’d no longer had the freedom to make youthful mistakes and to learn from them over time. Responsibility had landed on his doorstep without an invitation and then, on top of that, had come the grim realisation that he had been used for his money.

Not even out of his teens, he had discovered the bitter truth that his fortune would always be targeted. He would never be able to relax in the company of any woman without suspecting that she had her eye to the main chance. He would always have to be on his guard, always watchful, always making sure that no one got too close.

He was a generous lover, and had no problem splashing out on whatever woman happened to be sharing his bed, but he knew where to draw the line and was ruthless when it came to making sure that no woman got too close, certainly not close enough ever to harbour notions of longevity.

It was unusual to find himself in a situation such as this. It was unusual to be in close personal confines with a woman where sex wasn’t on the menu.

It was even more unusual to find himself in this situation with a woman who made no effort to try and please him in any way.

‘I was expecting a bedroom.’ Lesley turned to look at him. ‘Posters on the walls, cuddly toys, that sort of thing.’

‘Rachel occupies one wing of the house. There are actually three bedrooms, along with a sitting room, a study, two bathrooms and an exercise room.’ He strolled towards her and looked around him, hands shoved in the pockets of his cream trousers. ‘This is the first time I’ve stepped foot into this section of the house since my daughter returned from boarding school for the holidays. When I saw the state it was in, I immediately got in touch with Violet, who informed me that she, along with her assistants, were barred from entry.’

Disapproval was stamped all over his face and Lesley could understand why. The place looked as though a bomb had been detonated in it. The tiled, marble floor of the small hallway was barely visible under discarded clothes and books and, through the open doors, she could see the other rooms appeared to be in a similar state of chaos.

Magazines were strewn everywhere. Shoes, kicked off, had landed randomly and then had been left there. School books lay open on various surfaces.

Going through all of this would be a full-time job.

‘Teenagers can be very private creatures,’ Lesley said dubiously. ‘They hate having their space invaded.’ She picked her way into bedroom number one and then continued to explore the various rooms, all the time conscious of Alessio lounging indolently against the wall and watching her progress.

She had the uneasy feeling of having been manipulated. How had she managed to end up here? Now she felt involved. She was no longer doing a quick job to help her father’s pal out. She was ensconced in the middle of a family saga and wasn’t quite sure where to begin.

‘I will get Violet to make sure that these rooms are tidied first thing in the morning,’ Alessio said as she finally walked towards him. ‘At least then you will have something of a clean slate to start on.’

‘Probably not such a good idea.’ Lesley looked up at him. He was one of the few men with whom she could do that and, as she had quickly discovered, her breathing quickened as their eyes met. ‘Adolescents are fond of writing stuff down on bits of paper. If there is anything to be found, that’s probably where I’ll find it, and that’s just the sort of thing a cleaner would stick in the bin.’ She hesitated. ‘Don’t you communicate with your daughter at all? I mean, how could she get away with keeping her room—her rooms—as messy as this?’

Alessio took one final glance around him and then headed for the door. ‘Rachel has spent most of the summer here while I have been in London, only popping back now and again. She’s clearly intimidated the cleaners into not going anywhere near her rooms and they’ve obeyed.’

‘You’ve just popped back here now and again to see how she’s doing?’

Alessio stopped in his tracks and looked at her coolly. ‘You’re here to try and sort out a situation involving computers and emails. You’re not here to pass judgement on my parenting skills.’

Lesley sighed with obvious exasperation. She had been hustled here with unholy speed. He had even come with her to her office, on the pretext of having a look at what her company did, and had so impressed her boss that Jake had had no trouble in giving her the week off.

And now, having found herself in a situation that somehow didn’t seem to be of her own choosing, she wasn’t about to be lectured to in that patronising tone of voice.

‘I’m not passing opinions on your parenting skills,’ she said with restraint. ‘I’m trying to make sense of a picture. If I can see the whole picture, then I might have an idea of how and where to proceed.’ She had not yet had time since arriving to get down to the business of working her way through the emails and trying to trace the culprit responsible for them.

That was a job for the following day. Right now, she would barely have time to have dinner, run a bath and then hit the sack. It had been a long day.

‘I mean,’ she said into an unresponsive silence, ‘If and when I do find out who is responsible for those emails, we still won’t know why he’s sending them. He could clam up, refuse to say anything, and then you may still be left with a problem on your hands in connection with your daughter.’

They had reached the kitchen, which was a vast space dominated by a massive oak table big enough to seat ten. Everything in the house was larger than life, including all the furnishings.

‘They may have nothing to do with Rachel. That’s just another possibility.’ He took a bottle of wine from the fridge and two wine glasses from one of the cupboards. There was a rich smell of food and Lesley looked around for Violet, who seemed to be an invisible but constant presence in the house.

‘Where’s Violet?’ she asked, hovering.

‘Gone for the evening. I try and not keep the hired help chained to the walls at night.’ He proffered the glass of wine. ‘And you can come inside, Lesley. You’re not entering a lion’s den.’

It felt like it, however. In ways she couldn’t put her finger on, Alessio Baldini felt exciting and dangerous at the same time. Especially so at night, here, in his house with no one around.

‘She’s kindly prepared a casserole for us. Beef. It’s in the oven. We can have it with bread, if that suits you.’

‘Of course,’ Lesley said faintly. ‘Is that how it works when you’re here? Meals are prepared for you so that all you have to do is switch the oven on?’

‘One of the housekeepers tends to stick around when Rachel’s here.’ Alessio flushed and turned away.

In that fleeting window, she glimpsed the situation with far more clarity than if she had had it spelled out for her.

He was so awkward with his own daughter that he preferred to have a third party to dilute the atmosphere. Rachel probably felt the same way. Two people, father and daughter, were circling one another like strangers in a ring.

He had been pushed to the background during her formative years, had found his efforts at bonding repelled and dismantled by a vengeful wife, and now found himself with a teenager he didn’t know. Nor was he, by nature, a people person—the sort of man who could joke his way back into a relationship.

Into that vacuum, any number of gremlins could have entered.

‘So you’re never on your own with your daughter? Okay. In that case you really wouldn’t have a clue what was happening in her life, especially as she spends most of the year away from home. But you were saying that this may not have anything directly to do with Rachel. What did you mean by that?’

She watched him bring the food to the table and refill their glasses with more wine.

Alessio gave her a long, considered look from under his lashes.

‘What I am about to tell you stays within the walls of this house, is that clear?’

Lesley paused with her glass halfway to her mouth and looked at him over the rim with astonishment.

‘And you laugh at me for thinking that you might have links to the Mafia?’

Alessio stared at her and then shook his head and slowly grinned. ‘Okay, maybe that sounded a little melodramatic.’




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