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Did he want to bring the conversation back to work? Not yet.
‘Maybe you think that I do...?’ he murmured in a lazy drawl.
‘I haven’t given that any thought at all,’ Kate lied. ‘I’m here to do a job, not to pry into other people’s lives.’
‘Your days must be very dull, in that case.’
‘Why? Why do you say that?’
‘Because it’s commendable to work hard, and to do a good job, but doesn’t everyone get a little titillation from office politics? The salacious gossip? The speculating...?’
‘Not me.’
Her voice was firm but her nerves were all over the place. She picked up the menu and stared at it but she could still feel his eyes on her.
‘I think I might have the fish.’
Alessandro didn’t bother to glance at the menu. He responded by keeping his eyes firmly fixed on her face while he beckoned with a slight raising of his hand and was rewarded when someone sprang to attention and hustled over.
How did he do that? Was there some poor sap hovering in the corner somewhere, waiting until the Mighty One beckoned him across?
Of course there would be. Money talked, and Alessandro Preda had a lot of it. Vast amounts.
People changed when they were around money. Common sense flew through the window. Subservience, slavishness and an awestruck inability to just act normally set in.
So she might feel something—a little insignificant twinge of awareness about the man—but that was natural. He was drop-dead gorgeous, especially when she was receiving the full, undiluted blast of his forceful personality. But she wasn’t and never would be one of those simpering airheads who turned to mush around him. And actually not just airheads. Lots of clever women—definitely two in the legal department—giggled at the mention of his name and projected crazy fantasies about him over lunch in the office restaurant. Several times Kate had had to stop her eyes from rolling skywards.
Her body might be a little rebellious, but thankfully she had her head firmly screwed on.
She politely waited as he ordered, said no to a top-up of wine, and then relented because at least it made her relax.
‘So, about George...’ She flicked open the file and felt the weight of his hand over hers.
‘In good time.’
‘Sorry. I thought you might have finished relaxing.’ Her heart was thumping so hard that she wondered if she might be having a mild panic attack. Or, worse, turning into one of those simpering airheads. Or even worse than that, one of those clever women whose brains went missing in action the second he came too close.
‘Only just beginning.’
He dealt her a slashing smile that did nothing to steady her disobedient body and she pursed her lips in response.
‘Perhaps I should have taken more of an interest in your career before...considering you’re one of my rising stars...’
‘I didn’t think you got involved in doing appraisals on anybody in your company,’ Kate responded politely. Boss/employee, she reminded herself. The boss got to ask all the questions and the employee got to ask none whatsoever.
‘True,’ Alessandro conceded.
He didn’t look at the waiter as he placed their food in front of them and then did some annoying perfect positioning of their plates. All he wanted the man to do was disappear. Because he was pleasantly invigorated and didn’t want to lose the moment. They were few and far between as it was.
‘I like to think that’s what my human resources people are all about. Although, in fairness, they probably work to rule like the rest of the occupants of your floor.’
‘Everyone works overtime in the winter months. It’s just that it’s summer and it’s baking hot outside—I guess they want to leave on time and enjoy the sunshine.’
‘But not you?’ Alessandro pointed out. ‘Nothing urgent out of hours waiting for you?’
‘I don’t think what I do outside work is actually any of your business—and I apologize right now if you think I’m being rude when I say that.’
‘No need for apologies. I just want to make sure. Do you feel the need to live in the office in order to get on?’
‘I...’
She tried to imagine living a life in which that mythical other half was right now whipping up something in the kitchen for her, anxiously consulting his watch if she was running late. She would have to do something about that—turn the passing thought into reality. She didn’t miss having a guy in her life now, but she would eventually. She wasn’t meant to be an island, and if she wasn’t careful she would wake up one day and find herself alone because she had sacrificed everything to her quest for security.
‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
‘Huh?’
‘You’re a million miles away,’ Alessandro drawled drily. ‘Simple question, really. I didn’t think it would have required that much deep thought.’
‘I...’
For a few seconds she nearly told him just how much deep thought that ‘simple question’ required. More than he could ever imagine because—like it or not—this man who saw his vast empire as a family affair was a man who came from money. How could he ever understand the drive inside her to fill all the gaps her upbringing had left?
‘Sorry... No. Of course I know that there’s no need for me to work long hours to get on—although, in fairness, I probably work fewer hours in winter than my colleagues.’
‘Ah, yes. Because you’re a creature of the night?’
And just like that Kate thought of her mother, of those jobs in dark bars earning money from tips, dancing and showing herself off in whatever nonsense she was told to put on. A creature of the night doing night-time jobs. Nothing like her.
‘Don’t you ever say that to me!’ she blurted out before she could stop herself. She was shaking with anger and stuck her hands under the table on her lap so that he couldn’t see that they were shaking.
‘Say what?’ Alessandro asked slowly, his sharp eyes narrowed on her flushed face. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ He frowned and saw her make a visible effort to gather herself. ‘Tell me what the problem is.’
‘There isn’t a problem. I’m sorry. I overreacted.’
‘Firstly, stop apologizing for everything you say that you think might offend me. I don’t take offence easily. And secondly...there is a problem. You went as white as a sheet and now you’re shaking like a leaf. What provoked that sudden bout of outrage?’
Curiosity dug deep. Underneath the calm surface, she was a hotbed of emotion and that intrigued him. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, crowding her.
‘You’re trying to think of a polite way of telling me that it’s none of my business, aren’t you?’
Kate shied away from his searching narrowed stare. She could feel the full force of his powerful personality like something raw and physical and it appalled and mesmerized her at the same time. This was evidence of the driving tenacity that had propelled him into the stratosphere of wealth and power and it went far, far beyond his formidable intelligence and his ambition.
She averted her face, her heart beating wildly. ‘My mother worked in a cocktail bar,’ she said flatly.
Why had she just come out with that? She never, ever went there with other people. Her past was a closed book to prying eyes.
‘Amongst other things. I have no idea why I’m telling you this.’ She looked at him accusingly from under lowered lashes. ‘I don’t usually confide in other people. I’m not usually a confiding kind of person. I know you think I’m strange, working long hours, but...’
‘But you crave financial security?’
‘Crave is a strong word.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘But maybe it’s the right one.’
She felt a weird sense of release at unburdening herself. When she was growing up, those sensitive teenage years had been an agony of embarrassment. She had made sure never to get too close to anyone. She hadn’t wanted them to find out that her mother worked as a cocktail waitress, brought men home who used her because of the way she looked, was a sad, desperate woman who knew only how to barter with her body to keep them going.
She’d loved her mother but she had been ashamed of her—and ashamed of being ashamed. And now here was her boss, Alessandro Preda, whose lifestyle repulsed her, who represented everything she found distasteful in a man, and the sympathy on his face was like a key unlocking her secrets. Stupid. Really stupid. And somehow dangerous...
‘My upbringing was...unsteady. Mum never seemed interested in holding down a normal office job. I can only remember her going out at night, leaving me with some friend or other when I was young, and then the minute I hit twelve I was on my own. I loved my mother...I love my mother...but I hated the way she earned a living. I hated thinking of her in stupid skimpy clothes, with men staring and trying to paw her. And she was always falling in love—always thinking that Mr Right was the next handsome guy who paid her some attention and told her she was beautiful.’
‘So when I called you a creature of the night...’
‘I’m sorry.’ Mortified, Kate stared at her empty wine glass and watched as he poured her some more wine. She hadn’t planned on drinking anything at all. Now she wondered how much she had inadvertently downed. Maybe the alcohol had loosened her tongue? She didn’t feel in the least bit tipsy, but why else would she have suddenly turned into a blabbering mess?
‘What did I tell you about apologizing?’
‘I work for you...’
‘Which doesn’t turn you into one of my subjects. Like I said, I have yet to attain royal status,’ Alessandro drawled. ‘Where does your mother live now?’
‘Cornwall.’ Kate shot him a quick glance and looked away just as fast.
He was just so sinfully good-looking! It shouldn’t do anything for her, because she was the last person on the planet to judge a guy by the way he looked, but her tummy was in knots and she had to force herself not to stare at that dark, brooding, interested face. She almost had the feeling that, given half a chance, he would be able to reach into her head and pull out her deepest, darkest thoughts.
‘She...she married twice. Her second husband, Greg, gave her sufficient money in their divorce for her to buy somewhere small, and she wanted to be by the sea.’
‘And your father?’
‘I had no idea I would be subjected to a question-and-answer session...’ But she had initiated this whole conversation, and there was a weary acceptance of that in her voice.
Alessandro had never had the slightest curiosity about the back stories of his women. He was curious now.
‘My father left soon after I was born. He was my mother’s first love and her only love—so she tells me.’ She cleared her throat and searched for the brisk, businesslike voice that was so much part and parcel of her persona. Sadly it was nowhere to be found. Just when she really felt she needed it. ‘I think she’s been trying ever since to replace him.’
‘And now?’
‘And now what?’
‘There’s someone in her life?’
Kate smiled and Alessandro felt the breath catch in his throat—a sudden, sharp, shocking reaction that came from nowhere. The woman was beautiful. Did she deliberately downplay that? This was a Pandora’s box. She worked for him, and they were here to discuss the future of an employee. Serious stuff. But for the life of him he didn’t want to let the conversation go.
‘I’m proud to announce that my mother has been a man-free zone for three years. I feel she might be cured of her addiction to looking for love in all the wrong places.’
‘And what about you?’ Alessandro murmured huskily. ‘Are you a man-free zone at the moment?’
His thoughts veered wildly into uncharted territory. He pictured her with a man. He pictured her with him. The face she chose to show the world was not the sum total of the person she was. In fact, scratch the surface and the cool, marble exterior gave way to swirling, unpredictable currents.
He had a driving, crazy urge to test those waters.
He had his own reasons, he knew, for the choices he had made and continued to make. His own parents and their all-consuming love had left little room for a kid and no room at all for common sense. Theirs had been a world with room only for each other, and their ridiculous choices had seen their joint family fortunes whittled away into nothing thanks to rash decisions, stupid blunders, irrational money-making ventures.
Control? They had had none of that. He did. He controlled every aspect of his life, including his love life, but suddenly all those beautiful, vapid, utterly controllable women who had cluttered his life seemed like safe, dreary options.
Insane. He had never mixed business with pleasure. Never. This woman was off limits.
But she had kick-started his libido and he felt the thrust of a powerful erection pressing against the zipper of his trousers, bulging and uncomfortable.
Kate detected something in his voice that sent the thrill of a shiver racing through her and desperately tried to squelch it.
How the heck had this happened? How had the conversation swerved from George and his misdeeds to questions about her private life? What on earth had possessed her to start sharing her life story like an idiot?
‘I’ve been very busy getting my career up and going,’ she said briskly. ‘I haven’t had time to cultivate relationships.’
‘All work and no play...’ Alessandro murmured. ‘Personally, I’ve always found that a little bit of play makes the work go a helluva lot faster.’
‘That approach doesn’t work for me. It never has.’ She winced at the tenor of her voice—cold, prim, defensive. ‘And now I think we ought to get the bill. I...it’s later than I expected... I don’t think it would be fair on George if we shoved our discussion of his plight into a few minutes tacked on to the end of a meal. I realize you’ve written him off as a master criminal, but I feel he deserves better than that.’
She automatically felt for the bun at the back of her head. Still firmly in place. Unlike the rest of her.
Alessandro mentally waved aside the topic of hapless George and his unfortunate wrongdoings. Tomorrow was another day. He would deal with that later. They would deal with that later. Right now...
‘What approach doesn’t work for you?’
Kate pretended to misunderstand his question.
‘Ah. You’ve decided to retreat behind your professional mask. Why?’
‘Because we didn’t come here to talk about me. We came to talk about George.’
‘But we didn’t,’ Alessandro pointed out with remorseless logic. ‘We didn’t end up talking about George, as it happens.’
‘And that was a mistake.’ She breathed a silent sigh of relief as the bill was brought to them, and then breathed an even bigger sigh of relief when the proprietor approached and began enthusiastically quizzing them on what they thought of their meal, his sharp black eyes dancing between the two of them.
So she hadn’t answered his question. And he wasn’t sure why he wanted to find out anyway. But he did. What was it they said about wanting what you couldn’t get?
He watched as she rose, terminating all personal conversation.
‘I shall get a taxi home,’ she told him firmly.
He ignored her. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
He ushered her out into a much cooler evening—suitable weather finally for her starchy suit and jacket. He made a call on his cell phone and his car, complete with driver, appeared from nowhere. It pulled over and he opened the passenger door for her. When she was inside, he leant down so that he was looking at her on eye level.
‘You’ll be happy to know that you’ll be spared my company.’
He grinned, and she had one of those intuitive moments of knowing that he knew exactly what had been going through her head.
‘I’ll get Jackson to drop you home and we can pick up where we left off at a later date.’
‘What later date?’ She worried at her lower lip. If she could stick a few definite meetings in her work diary then she would be able to get a handle on seeing him again. And over her dead body if it was going to be in another cosy little restaurant.
‘I’ll get back to you on that one.’
‘But don’t you want to get this mess sorted out as quickly as possible?’
‘You can keep an eye on all the business accounts for suspicious activity, but if there’s none then why not let George enjoy his last supper, so to speak?’ He stood up, slapped the hood of the sleek, black Maserati, and remained watching as it disappeared from view.
He hadn’t felt so invigorated for a long time.
And what, he wondered, was a guy to do about that?
CHAPTER THREE
FOR THE PAST few years Kate had seen her place of work as a refuge. There, she had felt in charge of her life, had worked hard at putting together all the building blocks that gave it definition and purpose.
Now she felt jumpy. On tenterhooks. Always on the lookout for Alessandro who, for the past couple of days, had often appeared to talk to her. About a client with a thorny tax problem, two overseas companies whose vast returns had generated questions about splitting them into smaller fragments, an acquisition that would mark a significant branching out from electronics, shipping and the leisure industry into publications...
‘Cape would normally handle this, but seeing that he’s on an extended holiday abroad, and seeing that that extended holiday is likely to become permanent, you’d better start getting acquainted with some of his responsibilities...’
This at five-thirty earlier today, when most of her colleagues had mentally switched off in preparation for leaving and had been all agog at the appearance of the big man.
She had kept as cool and collected as she could but her nerves had been all over the place. Surely the head of finance should be handling this situation? she had ventured, watching askance as he had perched on the side of her desk and then dragging her eyes away from his muscular thighs and the way the fine fabric of his trousers was stretched taut over them. But, no. Watson Russell was swamped by several huge ongoing deals—and besides, these matters would qualify as fairly small peanuts for him.
Afterwards, some of the girls had hovered, waiting for her to emerge from her office, and had proceeded to ply her with questions. None of the questions had had anything to do with work. They had wanted her opinion of him. As a hunk. Kate had made it a point never to engage in conversations like that, but she had been pinned to the wall and had found herself admitting that he was all right but not her type.
So how come he’s been around so much...is something going on...?
Argh! She had become just the sort of giggly, girly type she had never been, and it had left her all hot and bothered.
And he still hadn’t committed to a meeting so that he could look through what she had found out—which, as it turned out, was not very much at all. George had been dipping his hands in the till, but it hadn’t been going on for very long and the amounts, in the big scheme of things, weren’t that significant.
She would talk to Alessandro about that—try and find some compassion in him for the older man—but she didn’t hold out much hope.
Now, at home far earlier than she normally would have been, on yet another hot summer evening, Kate looked at her work computer with jaundiced eyes.
It wasn’t yet six and she couldn’t face sitting in front of her computer and picking up where she had left off during the day.
Wandering through her very nice little ground-floor flat, she had plenty of time to think about the social life she lacked.
The back door was flung open and she could smell the neighbours barbecuing. Aside from the pleasant couple with two kids living next to her, she had no idea who her neighbours were.
At work, having almost given up on asking her, two of her colleagues had invited her to go to the pub with them and she had felt a little surge of panic because...
Because her whole life was devoted to work.
How had that happened? Okay, she knew how, and she knew why, she just didn’t understand how it had all run away with her so that she had lost all her perspective.
Not only was her social life practically non-existent, but where was the guy she should be dating? Where was the exciting sex life she should be having?
She had had one boyfriend, three years previously, and he had fallen off the face of the earth because he had wanted more attention than she had been prepared to give. He hadn’t understood that she had been taking professional exams and had had to study when she wasn’t holding down the demanding job at the accountancy firm she had left as soon as she had qualified.
At the time she had been miffed—because how hard would it have been for him to just give her some breathing space? Surely it had been enough that they’d had fun on the weekends? But he had wanted more than just fun on the weekends.
So now here she was—alone. She wouldn’t have wanted to be with Sam still. No, in retrospect, he hadn’t been the man for her, even though he had ticked a lot of the right boxes. But shouldn’t she have moved on? Be having a good time finding his replacement? Somewhere?
She lived in London, for heaven’s sake!
Frustrated with the direction of her thoughts, she slammed shut the French doors at the back so that she couldn’t be reminded of what she was missing by the smell of barbecue wafting into her house.
Then she had a shower.
Then, in a pair of tiny shorts and a cropped top, she prepared to wait out the annoying train of thoughts that were suddenly bothering her.
For which she blamed her wretched boss, who had somehow managed to get under her skin, to make her feel somehow inadequate...
And as soon as she started thinking about Alessandro she found that she couldn’t stop.
He was just so alive and vital and brimming over with restless energy. Next to him, she felt like a pale, listless shadow, going through the motions of having a fulfilling life when she wasn’t.
Absorbed in pointless speculation, she was only aware of the doorbell when it was depressed with such insistency that she was forced to dash and pull open the door or else risk her neighbours complaining about noise pollution.
Alessandro Preda was the last person she’d expected to see standing on her doorstep. In fact she blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision and turn him into someone else. But, no, he was still there. Tall, dynamic, broad-shouldered, and way too exotically good-looking for London suburbia.
He didn’t say a word. Just looked at her. He had obviously come straight from work because he was still in his work trousers—charcoal grey, super conventional, and yet on him somehow not quite. But there was no jacket, and he had shoved the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, revealing muscled forearms liberally sprinkled with dark hair.
She seemed to have forgotten how to speak.
‘Are you going to ask me in?’
Alessandro eventually broke the silence. It took some effort. He had wanted to catch her by surprise, had been driven by sheer curiosity to see her somewhere—anywhere—that wasn’t to do with the office.
But he hadn’t expected this.
This wasn’t the starchy woman who occupied her own office three floors down in his building. Removed from the files, the computers, the telephones and the uninspiring range of suits in various shades of grey, this was a different woman altogether.
This was the woman he had glimpsed at the restaurant.
She was in a pair of shorts and a small top, and her hair was long and tied back in a ponytail that swung down her back.