The Hidden

COLLECTION

March 2020

Hidden Desire

April 2020

Hidden Past

May 2020

Hidden Motives

June 2020

Hidden Passion

About the Authors

CATHY WILLIAMS is a great believer in the power of perseverance as she had never written anything before her writing career, and from the starting point of zero has now fulfilled her ambition to pursue this most enjoyable of careers. She would encourage any would-be writer to have faith and go for it! She derives inspiration from the tropical island of Trinidad and from the peaceful countryside of middle England. Cathy lives in Warwickshire with her family.

New York Times bestselling author MAISEY YATES lives in rural Oregon with her three children and her husband, whose chiselled jaw and arresting features continue to make her swoon. She feels the epic trek she takes several times a day from her office to her coffee maker is a true example of her pioneer spirit.

Award-winning author KAREN ROSE SMITH lives in Pennsylvania and has sold over eighty novels since 1991. Her romances have made both the USA TODAY list and the Amazon Contemporary Romance Bestseller list. Believing in the power of love, she envisions herself writing relationship novels and mysteries for a long time to come! Readers can e-mail Karen at www.karenrosesmith.com or follow her on Twitter @karenrosesmith and on Facebook.

Hidden Desire

Enthralled by Moretti

Cathy Williams

A Game of Vows

Maisey Yates

Fortune’s Secret Husband

Karen Rose Smith

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90685-6

HIDDEN DESIRE

Enthralled by Moretti © 2014 Cathy Williams A Game of Vows © 2012 Maisey Yates Fortune’s Secret Husband © 2016 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Enthralled by Moretti

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

A Game of Vows

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

Fortune’s Secret Husband

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Enthralled by Moretti

Cathy Williams

To my three wonderful daughters.

CHAPTER ONE

CHASE EVANS PUSHED aside the folder in front of her and glanced at her watch. For the fourth time. She had now been kept waiting in this conference room for twenty-five minutes. As a lawyer, she knew what this was about. Actually, even if she hadn’t been a lawyer she would have known what this was about. It was about intimidation. Intimidation by a juggernaut of a company that was determined to get its own way.

She stood up, flexed her muscles and strolled over to the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass that overlooked the teeming streets of the city.

At this time of year, London was swarming with tourists. From way up here, they appeared to be small little stick figures, but she knew if she went down she would join foreigners from every corner of the globe. You couldn’t escape them. You couldn’t escape the noise, the crowds and the bustle although here, in the opulent surroundings of AM Holdings, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were a million miles away from all that. It was deathly quiet.

Yet another intimidation tactic, she thought cynically. She had seen a lot in the past few years since she had been a practising lawyer, but the antics of this company took some beating.

She thought back to meeting number one, when they had imagined that buying up the women’s shelter would be a walk in the park. For meeting number one, they had sent their junior lawyer, Tom Barry, who had become embroiled in a tangle of logistics with which he had patently been unable to cope.

For meeting number two, they had dispatched a couple of more experienced guys. Alex Cole and Bruce Robins had come prepared, but so had she. Out of all the pro bono cases in which she specialised, the women’s shelter was dearest to her heart. If they had come prepared to wipe it out from under her feet, then she too had upped the stakes, pulling out obscure precursors and covenants that had sent them away scratching their heads and promising that they would be back.

Chase had had no doubt that they would. The shelter, or Beth’s House, as it was nicknamed, sat on prime land in West London, land that could earn any halfway canny speculator a great deal of money should it be developed. She knew, through contacts and back doors, that it had been targeted for development by the AM group. An ambitious transformation—from a women’s shelter to an exclusive, designer shopping mall for the rich and famous.

Well, over her dead body.

Staring down as the minutes of the clock ticked past and no one appeared, she knew that there was a very real possibility that she would have to let this one go, admit defeat. Yet for so many reasons she refused to let herself think that way.

After Alex and Bruce, her next meeting—this time with her boss by her side—had been with their top guy, Leslie Swift. He had cleverly countered every single magic act they had produced from their rapidly shrinking hat. He had produced by-laws, exemptions and clauses that she knew had been designed to have them running back to the drawing board. Now, alone in this sprawling conference room, Chase knew that she was in the last-chance saloon.

Once again she glanced at her watch before moving back to her seat at the thirty-seater table. Lord only knew who they would send this time to take her on. Maybe they would realise that she was mortally wounded and see fit to delegate her right back to the junior lawyer so that he could gloat at the woman who had sent him packing.

But she had one more trick up her sleeve. She wasn’t going to give up without a fight. The memory of giving up without fighting was too embedded in her consciousness for her ever to go down that road again. She had dragged herself away from a dark place where any kind of fighting had never been a good idea and she wasn’t about to relinquish any of the grit and determination that had got her where she was now.

Banishing all thoughts of a past that would cripple her if she gave it a chance, Chase Evans returned her attention to the file in front of her and the list of names and numbers she had jotted down as her final attempt to win her case.

‘Shall I tell Ms Evans how long she might be expected to wait?’

Alessandro Moretti glanced up at his secretary, who stared back at him with gimlet-eyed steeliness. She had announced Chase Evans’s arrival half an hour ago, longer, and had already reminded him once that the woman was waiting for him in the conference room. From anyone else, a second reminder would have been unthinkable. Alicia Brown, however, had been with him for five years and it had been clear from the start that tiptoeing around him wasn’t going to be on the cards. She was old enough to be his mother and, if she had never tiptoed around any of her five strapping boys, then she certainly wasn’t going to tiptoe around anyone. Alessandro Moretti included. He had hired her on the spot.

‘You can’t keep her waiting for ever. It’s rude.’

‘But then,’ Alessandro countered drily, ‘you’ve been with me long enough to know that I’m rude.’ But he stood up and grabbed his jacket from where he had earlier flung it on the long, low, black leather sofa that occupied one side of the office.

In the concrete jungle where fortunes were made and lost on the toss of a coin, and where the clever man knew how to watch his back because the knives were never far away, Alessandro Moretti, at the tender age of thirty-four, ranked as one of the elite pack leaders.

Well, you didn’t get to that exalted position by being soft and tender-hearted. Alessandro understood that. He was feared and respected by his employees. He treated them fairly; more than fairly. Indeed they were amongst the highest paid across the board in the city. In return, the line they trod was the line he marked. If he wanted something done, he expected it to be done yesterday. He snapped his fingers and they jumped to immediate attention.

So he was frankly a little put out that his team of lawyers had, so far, singularly failed in nailing the deal with the shelter. He couldn’t imagine that it was anything but routine. He had the money to buy them out and so he would. Why then, four months down the line, was he having to step in and do their job for them?

He had elaborate plans to redevelop the extensive land the place was sitting on. His price was more than fair. Any fool should have been able to go in, negotiate and come out with the papers signed, sealed and delivered.

Instead, in a day which was comprised of back-to-back meetings, he was having to waste time with a two-bit pro bono lawyer who had set up camp on the moral high ground somewhere and was refusing to budge. Did he really need to take valuable time out to demolish her? Because demolish her he most certainly would.

He issued a string of orders as he left his office and threw over his shoulder, as he was about to shut the door behind him, ‘And don’t forget how good I am at sacking people! So I’d better not find that you’ve forgotten any of what I’ve just told you! Because I don’t see your trusty notepad anywhere…’ He grinned and shut the door smartly behind him before his secretary could tell him what she thought of his parting shot.

He was carrying nothing, because as far as he was concerned he didn’t need to. He had been briefed on the woman’s arguments. He didn’t anticipate needing to strong-arm her at all into giving up. He had managed to unearth a couple of covenants barely visible to the naked eye that would subvert any argument she could put forward. Additionally, she had now been waiting for over forty minutes in a conference room that had been deliberately stripped bare of anything that could be seen as homely, comforting, soothing or in any way, shape or form, designed to put someone at ease.

He briefly contemplated summoning those losers who had not been able to do their job so that they could witness first hand how to do it, but decided against it.

One on one. Over and done with in fifteen minutes. Just in time for his next conference call from Hong Kong.

Having had plenty of time to mull over the intimidation tactics, Chase was standing by the window waiting for a team of lawyers. In bare feet, she was five-eleven. In heels, as she was now, she would tower over her opponents. The last one had barely reached her shoulders. Maybe, as a last resort, she could stare them down into submission.

She was gazing out of the window when she heard the door to the conference room opening behind her and she took her time turning round.

If they could keep her waiting in a room that had all the personality of a prison cell, then she could take her time jumping to attention.

But it wasn’t a team of lawyers. It wasn’t Tom Barry, Alex Cole, Bruce Robins or Leslie Swift.

She looked at the man standing by the door and she felt the colour drain from her face. She found that she couldn’t move from her position of dubious advantage standing by the window. Her legs had turned to lead. Her heart was beating so violently that she felt on the verge of a panic attack. Or, at the very least, an undignified fainting spell.

‘You!’ This wasn’t the strong, steady voice of the self-confident twenty-eight-year-old woman she had finally become.

‘Well, well, well…’ Alessandro was as shocked as she was but was much more adept at concealing his response and much faster at recovering.

And yet, as he moved slowly towards her, he was finding it almost impossible to believe his eyes.

At the speed of light, he travelled back in time, back to eight years ago, back to the leggy, gloriously beautiful girl who had occupied his every waking hour. She had changed, and yet she hadn’t. Gone was the waist-long hair, the jeans and sweater. In its place, the woman standing in front of him, looking as though she had seen a ghost—which he supposed she had—was impeccably groomed. Her shoulder-length bob was the same blend of rich caramel and chestnut, her slanting eyes were as green and feline as he remembered, her body as long and willowy.

‘Lyla Evans…’ He strolled towards her, one hand in his trouser pocket. ‘Should I have clocked the surname? Maybe I would have if it hadn’t been preceded by Chase…’ He was standing right in front of her now. She looked as though she was about to pass out. He hoped she wouldn’t expect him to catch her if she fell.

‘Alessandro… No one said… I wasn’t expecting…’

‘So I see.’ His smile was cold and devoid of humour. Of their own accord, his eyes travelled to her finger. No wedding ring. Not that that said very much, all things considered.

‘Will you be here on your own, or can I expect the rest of your team…?’ Chase tried desperately to regain some of her shattered composure but she couldn’t. She was driven to stare at the harsh, sinfully sexy contours of a face that had crept into her head far too many times to count. He was as beautiful as she remembered. More so, if that were possible. At twenty-six, he had been sexy as hell but still with the imprint of youth. Now he was a man, and there was nothing warm or open in his face. She was staring at a stranger, someone who hated her and who was making no attempt to mask his hatred.

‘Just me. Cosy, as it turns out. Don’t you think? So many years since last we saw one another, Lyla…or Chase, or whoever the hell you really are.’

‘Chase. My name is Chase. It always was.’

‘So the pseudonym was purely for my benefit. Of course, it makes sense, given the circumstances at the time…’

‘Lyla was my mother’s name. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit.’ She tottered over to the chair and collapsed on it. The stack of files in front of her, her briefcase, her laptop, they were all reminders of why she was in this conference room in the first place, but for the life of her she couldn’t focus on them. Her thoughts were all over the place.

‘So, shall we play a little catch-up, Lyla? Sorry…Chase? A little polite conversation about what we’ve been doing for the past eight years?’ Alessandro perched on the edge of the sprawling conference table and stared down at her: the one and only woman he had wasted time chasing, only to be left frustrated when she’d failed to fall into his bed. For that reason alone, she occupied a unique spot in his life. Add all the other reasons and she was in a league of her own.

‘I’d rather not.’

‘I bet. In your shoes, I’d plead the fifth as well.’

‘Alessandro, I know what you must think of me, but—’

‘I really don’t need to hear any sob stories, Lyla.’

‘Stop calling me that. My name is Chase.’

‘So you became a lawyer after all. I take my hat off to you—although, thinking about it, you did prove you were the sort of girl who would get what she wanted whatever the cost…’

Chase’s eyes flickered up to him. The expression on his face sent the chill of fear racing up and down her spine, yet how could she blame him? Their story had been brief and so full of things that had to be hidden that it was hardly surprising.

‘And I notice that there’s no telling wedding ring on your finger,’ he continued in the same mildly speculative voice that wouldn’t have fooled an idiot. ‘Did you dispose of the hapless husband in your ever-onwards and upwards climb?’

When he had met her—sitting there in the university canteen with a book in front of her, a little frown on her face, completely oblivious to everyone around her—she had knocked him sideways. It was more than the fact that she’d stood out, that she possessed head-turning looks; the world was full of girls who could turn heads. No, it had been her complete and utter indifference to the glances angled in her direction. He had watched as she had toyed with her sandwich before shoving it to one side and heading out. She had looked neither right nor left. The canteen could have been devoid of people.

Standing here now, looking at her, Alessandro could recreate that feeling of intense, incomprehensible attraction that had swept over him then as though it had been yesterday.

Significantly, she hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring then either.

‘I’m not here to talk about my past,’ Chase said, clearing her throat. ‘I’ve brought all the paperwork about the shelter.’

‘And I’m not ready to talk about that yet.’ He sat on one of the chairs alongside her and angled it away from the table so that he had a bird’s eye view of her as she stared down at the bundle of files and papers in front of her and pretended to concentrate. ‘So…’ he drawled. ‘You were about to tell me where the wedding ring’s gone…’

‘I don’t believe I was,’ Chase said coolly, gathering herself. Eyes the colour of bitter chocolate bored straight through her, bypassing the hard, glossy veneer she had taken so much time and trouble to build like a fortress around herself. ‘You might be curious about what I’ve been up to for the past few years, Alessandro, but I have no intention of satisfying your curiosity. I just want to do what I came here to do and leave.’

‘You came here to lose to me,’ Alessandro told her without preamble. ‘If you had any sense, you would recognise that and wave the white flag before I start lowering the price I’ve offered to pay for that place.’ He drew her attention to the clock on the wall. ‘With every passing minute, I drop my price by a grand, so make sure your argument’s a winning one, because if it’s not you’re going to find that you’re not working on behalf of your client.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘I can do whatever I like, Lyla…Chase…or shall I call you Mrs Evans? Or perhaps Ms…?’

‘This isn’t about us, Alessandro.’ She tried to claw the conversation back to the matter at hand, back to the shelter. ‘So please don’t think that you can use empty threats to—’

‘Look around you,’ Alessandro cut in lazily. ‘And tell me what you see.’

‘Where are you going with this?’

‘Just do as I ask.’

Chase looked around nervously. She could feel the jaws of a trap yawning around her, but when she tried to figure out what sort of trap she came up empty. ‘Big, bland conference room,’ she told him in a voice that hinted that she was already bored with the subject. When she looked around her, her eyes kept wanting to return to him, to look at his face and absorb all the small changes there. Seeing him now, she was beginning to realise that she had never entirely forgotten him. She had buried him but it had obviously been in a shallow grave.

‘I like it bland. It doesn’t pay to provide distractions when you want the people seated at this table to be focused.’

‘You like it bland…’

‘Correct. You see, I am AM Holdings. I own it all. Every single deal is passed by me. What I say goes and no one contradicts me. So, when I tell you that I intend to drop my price by a grand for every minute you argue with me, I mean it and it’s within my power to do it. Of course, you’re all business and you think you can win, in which case my threat will be immaterial. But if you don’t, well, after a couple of hours of futile arguing… Do the maths.’

Chase looked at him, lost for words. In view of what had happened between them, the deceit and the half-lies that had finally been her undoing, she was staring at a man who had been gifted his revenge. She should have done her homework on the company more thoroughly, but she had been handed the case after her boss had done the preliminaries himself, only to find that he couldn’t follow through for personal reasons. She had focused all her energies on trying to locate loopholes that would prevent the sale of the shelter to anyone rather than specifically to AM Holdings. Even so, would she have recognised Alessandro had his name cropped up? They hadn’t afforded much time for surnames.

‘Sounds ungentlemanly.’ Alessandro gave an elegant shrug and a smile that was as cold as the frozen wastelands. ‘But, when it comes to business, I’ve always found that being a gentleman doesn’t usually pay dividends.’

‘Why are you doing this? How could you think of punishing those helpless women who use the shelter because we…we…?’

‘Had an ill-fated relationship? Because you lied to me? Deceived me? Does your firm of lawyers know the kind of person you really are?’

Chase didn’t say anything but she could feel her nervous system go into overdrive. She had inadvertently stepped into the lion’s den; how far did revenge go? What paths would it travel down before it was finally satisfied? Alessandro Moretti owned this place. Not only was it within his power to do exactly as he said, to reduce the amount he was willing to pay for the shelter with each passing minute, but what if he decided actively to go after her?

‘Things weren’t what they seemed back then, Alessandro.’

‘The clock’s ticking.’ He relaxed and folded his hands behind his head. Against all odds, and knowing her for what she really was, he was irritated to discover that he could still appreciate her on a purely physical level. He had never laid a finger on her but, hell, he had fantasised about it until his head had spun, had wondered what she would look like underneath the student clothes, what she would feel like. By the time he had met her, he had already bedded his fair share of women, yet she had appealed to him on a level he had barely comprehended.

He hadn’t gone to the university intending to get involved with anyone. He had gone there as a favour to his old don, to give a series of business lectures, to get students inspired enough to know that they could attempt to achieve in record time what he had succeeded in achieving. Six lectures charting business trends, showing how you could buck them and still come out a winner, and he would be gone. He hadn’t anticipated meeting Lyla—or, as she now called herself, Chase—and staying on to give a further six lectures.

For the first time in his very privileged life, he had found himself in a situation with a woman over which he’d had little control and he had been prepared to kick back and enjoy it. For someone to whom things had always come easy, he had even enjoyed the hard-to-get game she had played. Of course, he had not expected that the hard-to-get game would, in fact, lead nowhere in the end, but then how was he to know the woman he had been dealing with? She had left him with the ugly taste of disillusionment in his mouth and now here she was…

Wasn’t fate a thing of beauty?

‘You’re not interested in reliving our…exciting past. So, sell me your arguments… And, by the way, that’s one minute gone…’

Feeling that she had stepped into a nightmare, Chase opened the top file with trembling fingers. Of course she could understand that he was bitter and angry with her. And yet in her mind, when she had projected into a future that involved her accidentally running into him somewhere, his bitterness and anger had never been so deep, nor had he been vengeful. He could really hurt her, really undo all the work she had done to get where she had.

She began going over some of the old ground covered in the past three meetings she’d had with his underlings, and he inclined his head to one side with every semblance of listening, before interrupting her with a single slash of his hand.

‘You know, of course, that none of those obstructions hold water. You’re prevaricating and it won’t work.’

Chase involuntarily glanced at the clock on the wall and was incensed that the meeting—all the important things that had to be discussed, things that involved the lives of other people—had been sidelined by this unfortunate, unexpected and worrying collision with her past.

And yet she lowered her eyes and took in the taut pull of expensive trousers over his long legs, the fine, dark hair that liberally sprinkled his forearms… Not even the unspoken atmosphere of threat in his cool, dark eyes could detract from the chiselled perfection of his face. He had the burnished colour of someone of exotic blood.

When she had first laid eyes on him, she had been knocked sideways. He hadn’t beaten about the bush. He had noticed her, he said, had seen her sitting in the university canteen. She had instinctively known that he had been waiting for a predictable response. The response of a woman in the presence of a man who could have whoever he wanted, and he wanted her. She had also known that there was no way she could go there. That she should smile politely and walk away, because doing anything else would have been playing with fire. But still she had hesitated, long enough for him to recognise a mutual interest. Of course, it had always been destined to end badly, but she hadn’t been able to help herself.

She tightened her lips as she realised just how badly things could go now, all these years later.

‘Okay, so you may have all the legalities in place, but what do you think the press would make of a big, bad company rolling in and bulldozing a women’s shelter? The public has had enough of powerful people and powerful companies thinking that they can do exactly as they like.’ This had been her trump card but there was no hint of triumph in her voice as she pulled it out of the bag.

‘I have names here,’ she continued in the gathering silence, not daring to risk a glance at him. ‘Contacts with journalists and reporters who would be sympathetic to my cause…’ She shoved the paper across to him and Alessandro ignored it.

‘Are you threatening me?’ he asked in a tone of mild curiosity.

‘I wouldn’t call it threatening…’

‘No? Then what exactly would you call it?’

‘I’m exercising leverage.’ It had seemed an excellent idea at the time, but then she hadn’t banked on finding herself floundering in a situation she couldn’t have envisaged in a million years. His dark eyes focused on her face made her want to squirm and she knew that her veneer of self-confidence and complete composure was badly undermined by the slow tide of pink colour rising to her face. ‘If you buy the shelter in a cloud of bad publicity, whatever you put up there will be destined to fail. It’s quite a small community in that particular part of London. People will take sides and none of them will be on yours.’

‘I bet you thought that you’d bring that out from up your sleeve and my lawyers would scatter, because there is such a thing as bad publicity being worse than no publicity. It’s a low trick, but then I’m not surprised that you would resort to low tricks.’ He leaned forward, rested both arms on the shiny conference table and stared directly at her. ‘However, let’s just turn that threat on its head for a minute…’

‘It’s not a threat.’

‘I have offered an extremely generous price for the purchase of the shelter and the land that goes with it. More than enough for another shelter to be built somewhere else.’

‘They don’t want to build another shelter somewhere else. These women are accustomed to Beth’s House. They feel safe there.’

‘You can wax lyrical to your buddies at the press that they’re being shoved out unceremoniously from their comfort zone. My people will counter-attack with a long, detailed and extremely enticing list of what they could buy for the money they’ll be getting from me. A shelter twice the size. All mod cons. An equal amount of land, albeit further out. Hell, they could even run to a swimming pool, a games room, a nursery…the list goes on.

‘So, who do you think will end up winning the argument? And, when it comes to light that I will be using the land for a mall that will provide much-needed jobs for the locals, well, you can see where I’m going with this…’ He stood up and strolled lazily towards the very same window through which she had been peering earlier.

Chase couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. Like an addict in the sudden presence of her drug of choice, she found that she was responding in ways that were dangerously off-limits. She shouldn’t be reacting like this. She couldn’t afford to let him into her life, nor could she afford to have any deep and meaningful conversations about their brief and ruined past relationship. Heck, it had only lasted a handful of months! And had never got off the starting block anyway.

‘So.’ Alessandro turned slowly to face her. With his back to the window, the light poured in from behind, throwing his face into shadows. ‘How are you feeling about your ability to win this one now?’

‘It’s Beth’s place; she’s comfortable there. Why do you think people fight to stay in their homes when a developer comes along promising to buy them out for double what their place is worth?’ But he would be able to sell it across the board. He had the money and the people to make sure that whatever message they wanted to get across would be successful. She knew Beth. Was she fighting to preserve something for reasons that were personal?

‘I can tell from your expression that you already know that you’re staring defeat in the face. By the way, it’s been nearly forty-five minutes of unconvincing arguing from you… So how much have you lost your client already? The games room? The nursery? The giant kitchen with the cosy wooden table where all those women can hold hands and break bread?’

‘I never thought that you were as arrogant as I now see you are.’

‘But then you could say that we barely knew anything about each other. Although, in fairness, I didn’t lie about my identity…’ He was unconsciously drawn to the way the sunlight streaming through the panes of glass caught the colours of her hair. Her suit was snappy and businesslike and he could tell that it had been chosen to downplay her figure. In his mind’s eye, he saw the tight jeans, the jumpers and trainers, and that tentative smile that had won him over.

Chase stared down at the folder in front of her. There was nothing left to pull out of the hat. Even if there was, this was personal. He was determined to win the final argument, to have the last word, to make her pay.

‘So I’m guessing from your prolonged silence that you’ll be breaking the happy news to… What’s her name? Beth?’

‘You know it is.’

‘And can you work out how much I’ll be deducting from my initial offer?’

‘Tell me you don’t really mean to go through with that?’

‘Lie, in other words?’ Alessandro walked towards her and perched on the edge of the table.

‘You can’t force them to sell.’

‘Have you had a look at their books? They’re in debt. Waiting to be picked off. It may be a caring, sharing place, but what it gains in the holding hands and chanting stakes it lacks in the accountancy arena. A quiet word in the right banker’s ear and they’ll be facing foreclosure by dusk. Furthermore, if it becomes widespread knowledge that they’re in financial trouble, the vulture developers will swoop in looking for a bargain. What started out as a generous offer from me would devolve into an untidy fire sale with the property and land going for a song.’

‘Okay.’ Chase recognised the truth behind what he was saying. How could this be the same man who had once teased her, entertained her with his wit, impressed her with the breadth of his intelligence…driven her crazy with a longing that had never had a chance to be sated?

‘Okay?’

‘You win, Alessandro.’ She looked at him with green eyes that had once mesmerised him right out of the rigidly controlled box into which he had always been accustomed to piling his emotional entanglements with the opposite sex. ‘But maybe you could tell me whether you would have been as hardline if I hadn’t been the person sitting here trying to talk you out of buying the shelter.’

‘Oh, the sale most certainly would have gone ahead,’ Alessandro drawled without an ounce of sympathy. ‘But I probably wouldn’t have tacked on the ticking clock.’

He strolled round to his chair and sat back down. His mobile phone buzzed, and when his secretary told him to get a move on because she could only defer his conference call for so long he informed her briefly that she would have to cancel it altogether. ‘And make sure the same goes for my meetings after lunch,’ he murmured, not once taking his eyes off Chase’s downbent head. He signed off just as Alicia began to launch into a curious demand to know why.

‘I don’t want to keep you.’ Chase began stacking all her files together and shoving them into her capacious brief case. She paused to look at him. Last look, she thought. Then I’ll never see you again. She found that she was drinking in his image and she knew, with resignation, that what she looked at now would haunt her in the weeks to come. It was just so unfair. ‘But I would like it if you could reconsider your…your…’

‘Lower offer? And save you the humiliation of having to tell your client that you single-handedly knocked the price down?’

Chase glared at him. ‘I never took you for a bully.’

‘Life, as we both know, is full of cruel shocks. I’ll admit that I have no intention of pulling out of this purchase, but you could recoup the lost thousands.’

‘Could I? How?’ She stared at him. At this point, the images of those wonderful additions to any other house Beth might buy vanishing in a puff of smoke, because of her, were proliferating in her head, making her giddy. She knew that the finances for the shelter were in serious disarray. They would need all the money they could get just to pay off the debts and wipe the slate clean.

‘We have an unfinished past,’ Alessandro murmured. ‘It’s time to finish it. I wouldn’t have sought out this opportunity but, now it’s here, I want to know who the hell you really are. Satisfy my curiosity and the full price is back on the table…’

CHAPTER TWO

SO WHERE WAS the jump for joy, the high five, the shriek of delight? For the sake of a little conversation, she stood to claw back a substantial amount of money. He might have expected some show of emotion, even if only in passing.

Alessandro didn’t take his eyes off her face, nor did he utter a word; the power of silence was a wonderful thing. Plus, he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. If she thought that she could somehow screw him for more than the agreed amount, then let her have all the silence in the world, during which she could rethink any such stupid notion.

‘I would need any assurances from you in writing,’ Chase finally said. He wanted to finish business between them? Didn’t he know that that was impossible? There were no questions she could ever answer and no explanations she could ever give.

‘You will be getting no such thing,’ Alessandro assured her calmly. ‘You take my word for it or you leave here with your wallet several shades lighter.’

‘There’s no point rehashing what happened between us, Alessandro.’

‘Your answer: yes or no. Simple choice.’

Chase stood up and smoothed down her grey skirt. She knew that she had a good figure, very tall and very slender. It was a bonus because it meant that she could pull off cheap clothing; she felt she needed simply to blend in with the other lawyers and paralegals in the company where she worked. Fitzsimmons was a top-ranking law firm and it employed top-ranking people; no riff-raff. Nearly everyone there came from a background where Mummy and Daddy owned second homes in the country. She kept her distance from all of them, but still she knew where they came from just by listening to their exploits at the weekends, the holidays they booked and the Chelsea apartments they lived in.

Thankfully, she was one of only two specialising in pro bono cases, so she could keep her head down, put in her hours and attend only the most essential of social functions.

She didn’t want her quiet life vandalised. She didn’t want Alessandro Moretti strolling back into it, asking questions and nursing a vendetta against her. She just couldn’t afford to have any cans of worms opened up.

Likewise, she didn’t want to feel this scary surge of emotion that made her go weak at the knees. Her life was her own now, under control, and she didn’t want to jeopardise that.

But where were the choices? Did she make Beth pay for what she didn’t want? Did she risk her boss’s disapproval when she turned up and recounted what had happened?

More than that, if she kept her lips tightly buttoned up, who was to say that Alessandro would conveniently disappear? The way those hard, black eyes were watching her now…

She sat back down. ‘Okay. What do you want to talk about? I mean, what do you want me to say?’

‘Now, you don’t really expect us to have a cosy little chat in a room like this, do you?’

He began prowling around the conference room: thick cream carpet aided and abetted the silence; cream walls; the imposing hard-edged table where the great and the good could sit in front of their opened laptops, conversing in computer-speak and making far-reaching decisions that could affect the livelihoods of numerous people lower down the food chain, often for the better, occasionally for the worst.

‘I mean, we have so much catching up to do, Lyla… Chase…’

‘Please stop calling me Lyla. I told you, I don’t use that name any more.’

‘It’s approaching lunchtime. Why don’t we continue this conversation somewhere a little more comfortable?’

‘I’m fine here.’

‘Actually, you don’t have a vote. I have five minutes’ worth of business to deal with. I trust you can find your way down to the foyer? And don’t…’ he positioned himself neatly in front of her ‘…even think of running out on me.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Chase tilted her chin and stood up to look him squarely in the eyes. As a show of strength, it spectacularly backfired because, up close and personal like this, she could feel all her energy drain out of her, leaving behind a residue of tumultuous emotions and a dangerous, scary awareness. Her nostrils flared as she breathed in the clean, woody, aggressively masculine scent of his cologne. She took an unsteady step back and prayed that he hadn’t noticed her momentary weakness.

‘No?’ Alessandro drawled, narrowing his eyes. ‘Because right now you look like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Why? It’s not as though I don’t already know you for a liar, a cheat and a slut.’ He had never addressed a woman so harshly in his life before but, looking at her here, taking in the perfection of a face that could launch a thousand ships and a body that was slender but with curves in all the right places, the reality of their past had slammed into him and lent an ugly bitterness to every word that passed his lips.

‘I notice you’re not defending yourself,’ he murmured. He didn’t know whether her lack of fight was satisfying or not. Certainly, he wished that she would look at him when he spoke, and he was sorely tempted to angle her face to him.

‘What’s the point?’ Chase asked tightly. ‘I’ll meet you in the foyer but…’ she looked at him with a spurt of angry rebellion ‘…I won’t be hanging around for an hour while you take your time seeing to last-minute business with your secretary.’

Alessandro’s eyes drifted down to her full, perfectly shaped mouth. He used to tease her that she looked as though she was sulking when it was in repose, but when she smiled it was like watching a flower bloom. He had never been able to get his fill of it. She certainly wasn’t smiling now.

‘Actually, you’ll hang around for as long as I want you to.’

‘Just because you want to…to…pay me back for…’

‘Like I said, let’s save the cosy chit-chat for somewhere more comfortable.’

Only when he left the room did Chase realise how tense she had been. She sagged and closed her eyes, steadying herself against the table.

She felt like the victim of a runaway truck. In a heartbeat, her life seemed to have been derailed, and she had to tell herself that it wasn’t so; that because Alessandro was the man with whom she was now having to deal, because their paths had crossed in such a shadowy manner, it didn’t mean that he was out to destroy her. His pride had been injured all those years ago and what he wanted from her now was answers to the questions he must have asked himself in the aftermath of their break-up. Not that they had ever really had a relationship.

Of course, she would have to be careful with what she told him, but once he was satisfied they would both return to their lives and it would be as if they had never met again.

She left the conference room in a hurry. It was almost twelve-thirty and there were far more people walking around than when she had first entered the impressive building. Workers were going out to lunch. It was a perfect summer’s day. There would be sandwiches in the park and an hour’s worth of relaxing in the sun before everyone stuck back on their jackets and returned to their city desks. Chase had always made sure to steer clear of that.

In the foyer, she didn’t have long to wait before she spotted Alessandro stepping out of the lift. As he walked towards her, one finger holding the jacket that he had tossed over his shoulder, she relived those heady times when she had enjoyed kidding herself that her life could really change. Every single time she had seen him, she had felt a rush of pure, adrenaline-charged excitement, even though all they ever did was have lunch together or a cappuccino somewhere.

‘So you’re here.’

‘You didn’t really expect me to run away?’ Chase fell into step alongside him. It was a treat not to tower over a guy but she still had to walk quickly to match his pace as they went through the revolving glass doors and out into the busy street.

‘No, of course I didn’t. You’re a lawyer. You know when diplomacy is called for.’ He swung left and began walking away from the busier streets, down the little side roads that gave London such character. ‘And, on the subject of your career, why don’t we kick off our catch-up with that?’

‘What do you want to know?’

Alessandro leaned down towards her. ‘Let’s really get into the spirit of this, Chase. Let’s not do a question-and-answer session, with me having to drag conversation out of you.’

‘What do you expect, Alessandro? I don’t want to be here!’

‘I’m sure you don’t, but you’re here now, so humour me.’

‘I…I…got a first-class degree. In my final year I was head-hunted by a firm of lawyers—not the ones I work for now, but a good firm. I was fast-tracked.’

‘Clever Chase.’

Chase recognised that it hadn’t been said as a compliment, although she could only guess at what he was implying. He loathed her so, whatever it was, she had no doubt that it would be offensive.

Yet, she was clever. In another place and another time, she knew that she would have been one of those girls who would have been said to ‘have it all’: brains and looks. But then, life had a way of counter-balancing things. At any rate, she had relied far more on her brains than she ever had on her looks. She had worked like a demon to get her A-levels, fought against all odds to get to a top university, and once there had doggedly spared no effort in getting a degree that would set her up for life. And all that against a backdrop that she had trained herself never to think about.

‘Thank you.’ She chose to misinterpret the tone of his voice. ‘So, I got a good job, did my training, changed companies…and here I am now.’

‘Fitzsimmons. Classy firm.’

‘Yes, it is.’ She could feel fine prickles of nervousness beading her forehead.

‘And yet, no designer suit? Don’t they pay you enough?’

Chase cringed with embarrassment. He had never made any secret about the fact that he came from money. Was that how he could spot the fact that her clothes were off the peg and ready to wear from a chain store? ‘They pay me more than enough,’ she said coolly. ‘But I prefer to save my money instead of throwing it away to a high-end retailer.’

‘How noble. Not a trait I would tend to associate with you.’

‘Can’t you at least try and be civil towards me?’ Chase asked thinly. ‘At any rate, most of my work is pro bono. It’s sensible not to show up in designer suits that cost thousands.’ It was what she had laughingly told someone at the firm ages ago and her boss had applauded her good sense.

They were now in front of an old-fashioned pub nestled in one of the quieter back alleys. There were gems like this all over London. When they entered, it was dark, cool and quiet. He offered her a drink and shrugged when she told him that she would stick to fruit juice.

‘So…’ Alessandro sat down, hand curved round his pint, and looked at her. He honestly didn’t know what he hoped to gain from this forced meeting but seeing her again had reawakened the nasty questions she had left unanswered. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. Or maybe we should pick it up at the end—at the point when you told me that you were married. Yes, maybe that’s the place we should start. After we’d been meeting for four months… Four months of flirting and you gazing at me all convincingly doe-eyed and breathless, then informing me that you had a husband waiting in the wings.’

Chase nursed her fruit juice. She licked her lips nervously. Her green eyes tangled and clashed with cold eyes the colour of jet. ‘I don’t see what the point of this is, Alessandro.’

‘You know what the point of it is—you’re going to satisfy my curiosity in return for the full agreed price for your shelter. It’s a fair exchange. Tell me what happened to the husband.’

‘Shaun…was killed shortly after I got my first job. He…he was on his motorbike at the time. He was speeding, lost control, crashed into the central reservation on the motorway…’

‘So you didn’t ditch him in the impersonal confines of a divorce court.’ Nor would she have. Alessandro downed a mouthful of beer and watched her over the rim of the glass. Not, as she had told him on that last day in exhaustive detail, when he’d been her childhood sweetheart and the love of her life. ‘And I take it you never remarried.’

‘Nor will I ever.’ She could detect the bitterness that had crept into her voice, but when she looked at him his expression was still as cool and unrelenting as it had been.

‘Is that because there’s no room for a man in the life of an ambitious, high-flying lawyer? Or because you’re still wrapped up with the man who was…let me try and remember… Oh, yes, I’ve got it: the only guy you would ever contemplate sleeping with. Sorry if you got the wrong idea, Alessandro. A few cappuccinos does not a relationship make, but it’s been a laugh…’

‘We should never have seen each other. It was a terrible idea. I never meant to get involved with anyone.’

‘But you didn’t get involved with me, did you?’ Alessandro angled his beautiful head to one side as he picked up an unspoken message he wasn’t quite getting.

What was there to get or not get? he thought impatiently. The woman had strung him along, led him up the garden path and then had casually disappeared without a backward glance. Hell, she had made him feel things… No, he wasn’t going to go there.

‘No! No, I didn’t. I meant…’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘You don’t understand. I shouldn’t even have even to you. I was married.’

‘So why did you? Were you riding high on the knowledge that you’d managed to net the rich guy all the groupie students were after?’

‘That’s a very conceited thing to say.’

‘I value honesty. I lost track of the number of notes I got from girls asking for some “extra tuition”.’

If there hadn’t been notes, she thought, then he surely would have clocked the stares he’d garnered everywhere he went. The man was an alpha male with enough sex appeal to sink a ship. Throw in his wealth, and it was little wonder that girls were queuing up to see if they could attract his attention. She’d never, ever been at the university longer than was strictly necessary but, if she had been, she knew that she would have become a source of envy, curiosity and dislike.

‘So was that why you decided to keep your marital status under wraps? To take the wedding ring off? To string me along with the promise of sex?’

‘I never said we would end up in bed.’

‘Do me a favour!’ He slammed his empty glass on the table and Chase jumped. ‘You knew exactly what you were getting into!’

‘And I didn’t think… I never thought…’

‘So you lied about the fact that you weren’t single or available for a relationship.’

‘If I remember correctly, you once told me that you weren’t interested in commitment, that you liked your relationships fast and furious and temporary!’

Alessandro flushed darkly. ‘Weak reasoning,’ he gritted cuttingly. ‘Did you lie because you thought that you might try me out for size? See whether I wasn’t a better bet than the stay-at-home husband? Is that why you strung me along for four months? Were you hedging your bets?’ He shook his head, furious with himself for losing control of the conversation, for actually caring one way or another what had or hadn’t been done eight years previously.

‘No, of course not! And Shaun was never a stay-at-home husband.’ Again, that bitterness had crept into her voice.

‘No? So what was he, then?’ Alessandro leaned forward, the simple shift of body weight implying threat. ‘Banker? Entrepreneur? If I recall, you were a little light on detail. In fact, if my memory serves me right, you couldn’t wait to get out of my company fast enough the very last time we met.’

Alessandro was surprised to find that he could remember exactly what she had been wearing the very last time he’d laid eyes on her: a pair of faded skinny jeans tucked into some cheap imitation-suede boots and a jumper which now, thinking about it, had probably belonged to the ‘childhood sweetheart’ husband. On that thought, his jaw clenched and his eyes darkened.

It hadn’t taken her long to spill out the truth. Having spent months of innocent conversation, tentative advances and retreats and absolutely no physical contact—which had been hell for him—she had sat down opposite him at the wine bar which had become their favourite meeting place; at a good bus ride away, it was far from all things university. With very little preamble, and keeping her eyes glued to his face while around them little clusters of strangers had drunk, laughed and chatted, all very relaxed in the run-up to Christmas, she’d informed him that she would no longer be seeing him.

‘Sorry,’ he recalled her saying with a brittle smile. ‘It’s been a laugh, and thanks for all the help with the economics side of the course, but actually I’m married…’

She had wagged her ring finger in front of him, complete with never-before-seen wedding band.

Shaun McGregor, she had said airily. Love of her life. Had known him since they were both fifteen. She had even pulled out a picture of him from her beaten-up old wallet and waxed lyrical about his striking good looks.

Alessandro had stared long and hard at the photo of a young man with bright blue eyes and a shaved head. There was a tattoo at the side of his neck; he’d probably been riddled with them. It had been brought home to him sharply just what a fool he had been taken for. Not only had she strung him along for fun, but he had never actually been her type. Her husband had had all the fine qualities of a first-rate thug.

‘Shaun did lots of different things,’ Chase said vaguely. ‘But none of that matters now, anyway. The fact is, I’m sorry. I know it’s late in the day to apologise, but I’m apologising.’

‘Why did you use a different name?’

‘Huh?’

‘You used the name Lyla. Not just with me, with everyone. Why?’

‘I…’ How could she possibly explain that she had been a different person then? That she had had the chance to create a wonderful, shiny new persona, and that she had taken it, because what she could create had been so much better than the reality. She had still been clever, and she had never lied about her academic history but, she had thought, what was the harm in passing herself off as just someone normal? Someone with a solid middle-class background and parents who cared about her? It hadn’t been as though she would ever have been required to present these mysterious and fictitious parents to anyone.

And she had always made sure never to get too close to anyone—until Alessandro had come along. Even then, at the beginning, she had had no idea that she would fall so far, so fast and so deep, nor that the little white lies she had told at the beginning would develop into harmful untruths that she’d no longer be able to retract.

‘Well?’ Alessandro prompted harshly. ‘You lied about your single status and you lied about your name. So let’s take them one at a time.’ He signalled to a waitress and ordered himself another glass of beer. There went the afternoon, was the thought that passed through his mind. There was little chance he would be in the mood for a series of intense meetings and conference calls later. He was riveted by the hint of changing expressions on her face. He felt that he was in possession of a book, the meaning of which escaped him even though he had read the story from beginning to end. Then he cursed himself for being fanciful, which was so unlike him.

‘Lyla was my mother’s name. I like it. I didn’t think there was anything wrong in using it.’

‘And so you stopped liking it when you decided to join a law firm?’

‘You said we weren’t going to do a question-and-answer session!’ Her skin burned from the intensity of his eyes on her. Alessandro Moretti, even as a young man in his mid-twenties, had always had a powerful, predatory appeal. There was something dangerous about him that sent shivers up and down her spine and drew her to him, even when common sense told her it was mad. He certainly hadn’t lost that appeal.

‘It was easier to just use my real name when I joined Edge Ellison, that first law firm. I mean, my Christian name.’

‘Why am I getting the feeling that there are a thousand holes in whatever fairy story you’re spinning me?’

‘I’m not spinning you a fairy story!’ Chase snapped. Bright spots of colour stained her cheeks. ‘If you want, I can bring my birth certificate to show you!’ Except that would suggest a second meeting, which was not something that was going to be on the cards.

But what would he do if he found out where she really came from? What would he do if he discovered that the solid, middle-class background she had innocently hinted at had been about as real as a swimming pool in the middle of the Sahara?

He might be tempted to have a quiet chat with the head of her law firm, she thought with a sickening jolt. Of course, she hadn’t lied about any of her qualifications, and she knew that she was a damned good lawyer. There was no way she could be given the sack for just allowing people to assume a background that wasn’t entirely true, yet…

Wounded pride and dislike could make a person do anything in their power to get revenge. What if he shared all her little white lies with the people she worked with—the posh, private-school educated young men and women who weren’t half as good as she was but who would have a field day braying with laughter at her expense? She was strong, but she knew that she was not so strong that she could survive ridicule at the work place.

‘I should be getting back to work.’ She drained the remainder of her orange juice and made to stand up.

Without thinking, Alessandro reached out and circled his hand around her wrist.

Chase froze. Really, it was the most peculiar sensation…as if her entire body had locked into place so that she was incapable of movement. His fingers around her wrist were as dramatic as a branding iron and she felt her heart pick up speed until she thought it might explode inside her.

‘Not so fast.’

‘I’ve answered all your questions, Alessandro!’

‘What the hell was in it for you?’

‘Nothing! I…just made a mistake! It was a long time ago. I was just a kid.’

‘A kid of twenty and already hitched. I didn’t think that kind of thing happened any more.’

‘I told you…we were in love…’ Chase looked away and shook her hand free of his vice-like grip. ‘We didn’t see the point of waiting.’

‘And your families both joined in the celebrations?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s dead now, anyway, so it doesn’t matter whether they joined in the celebrations or not.’

‘Spoken like a true grieving widow.’ Why did he keep getting this feeling that something was out of kilter? Was his mind playing tricks on him? Had his ego been so badly bruised eight years ago that he would rather look for hidden meanings than take her very simple tale of treachery at face value?

‘It’s been years. I’ve moved on.’

‘And no one else has surfaced on the scene to replace the late lamented?’

‘Why is this all about me?’ Chase belatedly thought that she might turn the spotlight onto him. If there was one thing to be said for going into law whilst simultaneously detaching yourself from most of the human race, it was that it did dramatic things to your confidence levels. Or maybe it was just her ‘flight or fight’ reflex getting an airing. She stared him squarely in the face and tried not to let the steady, speculative directness of his gaze get to her.

‘What about you?’ she asked coolly. ‘We haven’t said anything about what you’ve been up to…’

‘What’s there to say?’ Alessandro relaxed back, angling his body so that he could cross his legs. She really did have a face that made for compulsive watching. It was exquisite, yet with a guarded expression that made you wonder what was going on behind the beautiful mask. Even as a much younger woman, she had possessed that sense of unique mystery that had fired his curiosity and kept it for the duration of their strange dalliance.

And now, yet again, he could feel his curiosity piqued.

‘I’m an open book.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘I don’t hide who I am and I don’t make a habit of leading anyone down the garden path.’

‘And is there a special someone in your life? Is there a Mrs Moretti dusting and cleaning in a house in the country somewhere and a few little Moretti children scampering around outside? Or are you still only into the fast and furious relationship without the happy ending?’

‘My, my. You’ve certainly become acid-tongued, Chase.’

Chase flushed. Yes she had. And there were times when she stood back and wondered if she really liked the person she had become. Not that she had ever been soft and fluffy, but now…

‘I don’t like being trampled.’

‘And is that why you think I brought you here? To trample over you? Is that what you think I’m doing?’

Chase shrugged. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘We’re exchanging information. How could that possibly be described as trampling all over you? And, in answer to your question, there is no Mrs Moretti in a country house—and if there were, she certainly wouldn’t be dusting or cleaning.’

‘Because you have enough money to pay for someone to dust and clean for you. Are you still working twenty-four-seven? Surely you must have made enough billions by now to kick back and enjoy life?’

She used to listen, enraptured, as he’d told her about his working life: non-stop; on the go all the time. The lectures, he had said, were like comic relief, little windows of relaxation. She had teased him that, if giving lectures was his form of relaxation, then he would keel over with high blood pressure by the time he was thirty-five. She was annoyed to find herself genuinely curious and interested to hear what he had been up to. Having anything to do with Alessandro Moretti was even more hazardous now than it had been eight years ago.

‘None of my business,’ she qualified in a clipped voice. ‘Am I free to go now?’

Alessandro’s lips thinned. He had found out precisely nothing. None of his questions had been answered. His brain was telling him to walk away but some other part of him wanted more.

‘Why did you decide to concentrate on pro bono cases?’ He asked softly. ‘Surely with a first-class degree, and law firms head-hunting you, there were far more profitable things to do?’

‘I’ve never been interested in making money.’ He had stopped attacking her and she realised that she had forgotten how seductive he could be when he was genuinely interested in hearing what she had to say. He would tilt his head to one side and would give the impression that every word she uttered was of life-changing importance.

‘I’d always planned on becoming a lawyer, although the two other options that tempted me were Social Services and the police force.’ She blushed, because she didn’t think that she had confided that in anyone before—not that she did a lot of confiding anyway.

‘Social Services? The police force?’

‘So please don’t accuse me of being materialistic.’

‘I can’t picture you as a social worker, even less a policewoman.’

‘I should be getting back to work. I have a lot to do, and I’ll have to visit the shelter later today and tell them what the outcome of my meeting with your company was. They’ll be disappointed because they honestly don’t want to move premises, not when they’ve been such a reliable fixture in the area for such a long time, and not when the majority of the women who use their services are fairly local to the area. A big place with a swimming pool and a games room in the middle of nowhere is no good for anyone.’

‘What made the decision for you?’

Hadn’t he been distracted from asking her personal questions? Having lowered her guard for three seconds, Chase now felt as though she was handing over state secrets to the enemy, and yet what was the big deal? Was she so defensive because Alessandro was on the receiving end of her confidences? And wasn’t it possible that, the more secretive she was, the more curious he would become? She forced herself to relax and smile at him.

‘The hours,’ she confessed in a halting voice. ‘I didn’t want to think that I might be called out at any time of the day or night. I might work long hours at Fitzsimmons but I can control the hours I work.’

‘Makes sense. More to the point, I suppose both other options would have involved an element of danger, and even more so for someone like you.’

‘Someone like me?’ Immediately, Chase bristled at the implied insult. ‘And I suppose you’re going to launch into another attack on me? More criticism of me that I’m a liar and a cheat? Although I have no idea how that would have anything to do with being in the police force or working for the council! I get it that you’re angry and bitter about what happened between us, but attacking me isn’t going to change any of that!’

‘Actually,’ Alessandro murmured, ‘I meant that those two professions are the ones that are possibly least suited to a woman with your looks. You’re sexy as hell; how would that have played out for you if you had found yourself in a dangerous situation…?’ The lips he had never kissed and the body he had never touched…

Suddenly, his body jackknifed into sudden, shocking arousal. The sheer force of it took him by surprise. It pushed its way past his bitterness and anger and made a mockery of the answers he had told himself he demanded to hear. As his erection throbbed painfully against the zip of his trousers, his mind took flight in a completely different direction. He imagined her hand down there, her mouth wrapped around him…

Who the hell cared about answers when he was consumed with lust? He had to shift in the chair just to release some of the urgency that was becoming painful.

He was suffused with anger at his physical response to her. She represented everything he found most repellent, yet how was it that she could still manage to turn him on? Was his libido so wayward that it could defy cool judgement and rise to the challenge of the unavailable, the unacceptable…the out of bounds? He had never lost control when it came to any woman and he had dated some of the most spectacularly beautiful women in the world. So what the hell was going on here?

‘I never gave that side of things any thought at all.’ Chase was determined not to let that description of her take their conversation in a direction she most certainly didn’t want.

Her voice was cool, Alessandro noted, yet her colour was up. And she couldn’t meet his eyes. Now, wasn’t that telling?

He knew that the last thing he should contemplate doing was to pay any credence to whatever her expression was saying or, more to the point, whatever his disobedient body was up to, and yet…

‘You know what? I think I might like to see this shelter. Evaluate just how the land will play out for what I have in mind. I’m taking it you’ll be my escort…?’

CHAPTER THREE

FOR THE FIRST time in years Chase felt helpless. Three days ago she had walked into the imposing glass building that housed AM Holdings with a simple mission: save the shelter. She had been in control—the career woman, successful in what she did, in command of the situation. She had hoped for a favourable outcome but, had there not been one, she would have left with a clear conscience—she would have done her best.

And now here she was, hanging around by the window in her house, peering out at regular intervals for Alessandro, who had made good on his request to be shown the shelter.

‘What for?’ she had demanded at the time. ‘I don’t see the point. You’re just going to demolish it anyway so that you can put up a mall catering for rich people.’

‘Be warned,’ he had said, eyebrows raised, those midnight eyes boring straight through her, making her feel as though her whole body had been plugged into a socket. ‘Do-gooders and preachers have a monotonous tendency to become self-righteous bores. Naturally, I have details of the land somewhere but I want to see for myself what the layout is. Since you’re the one handling the deal, I can’t imagine that would be a problem. Or is it? Does our past history make it a problem for you?’

Yes. Yes, it does, she had thought with rising desperation. ‘No. Of course not. Why should it?’ she had answered with an indifferent shrug.

So here she was now and she felt as though control was slipping out of her grasp. She knew that under normal circumstances a lapse in her self-control would be easily dealt with but with Alessandro…

Her frustration and anger was underlined by a darker, more insidious emotion, a swirl of excitement that scared her. It felt like a slumbering monster slowly reawakening. Even though she had taken care to dress as neutrally as possible, in a navy-blue suit that was the epitome of sexlessness—and an impractical colour, given the wall-to-wall blue summer skies and hot sunshine—she still felt horribly vulnerable as she hovered in the sitting room waiting for him to show up.

She had informed him that she would meet him at the premises, but he had insisted on collecting her.

‘You can fill me in on the history of the place on the way,’ he had said smoothly. ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’

She had bitten her tongue and refrained from telling him that there was no point being forearmed when the net result would be a demolition derby. He was the guy with the purse strings and she had already seen first-hand how he could use that position to his own advantage. She had no desire to revive the ticking clock.

A long, sleek, black Jaguar pulled up outside the house just as she was about to turn away from the window and her attention was riveted at the sight of him emerging from the back seat, as incongruous in this neighbourhood as his car was.

He was dressed in pale-grey pinstriped trousers, which even from a distance screamed quality, and a white shirt, the sleeves of which he had rolled to the elbow.

For a few heart-stopping seconds, Chase found that she literally couldn’t breathe, that she was holding her breath. The mere sight of him was a full-on assault on all her senses. She watched as he looked around him, taking in his surroundings. She felt sure that this was the sort of neighbourhood he would be accustomed to telling his chauffeur to drive straight through and to make sure the car doors were locked. By no means was it in a dangerous part of London but neither was it upmarket. Well paid though she was, she wasn’t so well paid that she could afford to buy a house in one of the trendier areas and, unlike many of her associates, she didn’t have parents who could stick their hands in their pockets and treat her to one.

She dodged out of sight just as he turned to face the house and, when the doorbell rang, she took her time getting to it. Her heart was beating like a sledgehammer as she pulled open the door to find him lounging against the doorframe.

‘Right. Shall we go?’ she asked as her eyes slid away from his sinfully handsome face, returned to take a peek and slid away again. She gathered her handbag from where she had hung it on the banister and bent to retrieve her briefcase from the ground.

‘In due course.’ Alessandro stepped into the hallway and shut the front door behind him.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m coming in for a cup of coffee.’

‘We haven’t got time for that, Alessandro. The appointment has been made for ten-fifteen. With rush-hour traffic, heaven only knows how long it will take for us to get there.’

‘Relax. I got my secretary to put back the visit by an hour.’

‘You what?’

‘So this is where you live.’

Chase watched in horror as he made himself at home, strolling to peer into the sitting room, then onwards to the kitchen, into which he disappeared.

‘Alessandro…’ She galvanised herself into movement and hurried to the kitchen, to find him standing in the centre doing a full turn. It was a generous-sized kitchen which overlooked a small, private garden. It had been a persuading factor in her purchase of the house. She loved having a small amount of outdoor space.

‘Very nice.’

‘This is not appropriate!’

‘Why not? It’s hardly as though I’m a stranger. Are you going to make me a cup of coffee?’

Chase gritted her teeth as he sat down. The kitchen was large enough for a four-seater table and it had been one of the first things she had bought when she had moved in three years previously. She had fallen in love with the square, rough, wooden table with its perimeter of colourful, tiny mosaic tiles. She watched as he idly traced one long finger along some of the tiles and then she turned away to make them both some coffee.

‘Is this your first house?’ Alessandro queried when she had finally stopped busying herself doing nothing very much at the kitchen counter and sat down opposite him.

He hadn’t laid eyes on her in three days but he had managed to spend a great deal of time thinking about her and he had stopped beating himself up for being weak. So what if she had become an annoying recurring vision in his head? Wasn’t it totally understandable? He had been catapulted back to a past he had chosen to lock away. Naturally it would be playing on his mind, like an old, scratched record returned to a turntable. Naturally she would be playing on his mind, especially when she had remained just so damned easy on the eye.

‘What do you mean?’ Everything about Alessandro Moretti sitting at her kitchen table made her jumpy.

‘Is this the family home?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘The dearly departed… Is this the marital home?’

‘No, it’s not.’ She looked down. ‘Shaun and I… We, er, had somewhere else when we were together… When he died I rented for a couple more years until I had enough equity to put in as a deposit on this place.’

Alessandro thought of the pair of them, young love-birds renting together, while she had batted her eyelashes at him and played him for a fool. He swallowed a mouthful of instant coffee and stood up, watching as she scrambled to her feet.

‘Are you going to give me a tour of the place?’

‘There isn’t much to see. Two bedrooms upstairs; a bathroom. You’ve seen what’s down here. Shall we think about going?’

Alessandro didn’t answer. He strolled out of the kitchen, glancing upstairs before turning his attention to the sitting room. Why was she so jumpy? She had been as cool as a cucumber eight years ago when she had walked out on him, so why was she now behaving like a cat on a hot tin roof? Guilt? Hardly. A woman who could conduct an outside relationship while married would never be prone to guilt. Or remorse. Or regret.

Perversely, the jumpier she seemed to be, the more intrigued he became. He shoved one hand in his trouser pocket, feeling the coolness of his mobile phone.

‘For a cool-headed lawyer,’ he mused as he stared round the sitting room, ‘you like bright colours. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that the decor here suggests a completely different personality.’ He swung round to look at her as she hovered in the doorway, neither in the room nor out of it. ‘Someone fun…vibrant.’ He paused a fraction of a second. ‘Passionate…’

Chase flushed, and was annoyed with herself, because she knew that that was precisely the response he had been courting. He was back and he was intent on playing with her like a cat playing with a mouse, knowing that all the danger and all the power lay exclusively in his hands.

‘And yet,’ Alessandro drawled as he prowled through the room before gazing briefly out of the window which overlooked the little street outside, ‘there’s something missing.’

‘What?’ The question was obviously reluctantly spoken. As he began to walk towards her, she felt panic rise with sickening force to her throat. All at once she was overcome with a memory of how desperately she had wanted him all those years ago. Her eyes widened and her mouth parted on a softly indrawn breath.

Getting closer and closer to her, Alessandro thought he could touch the subtle change in the atmosphere between them. It had become highly charged and, for the first time in a very long time, he felt sizzlingly alive. Not one of the catwalk-model beauties he had slept with over the past few years had come close to rousing this level of forbidden excitement. The immediacy of his response shocked him, all the more so because he recognised that the last time he had felt like this was when he had been in the process of being duped by the very same woman standing in front of him now. Hatred and revulsion were clearly inadequate protection against whatever it was she had that was now pushing an erection to the fore.

The bloody woman had been elusive then, for reasons which he had later understood, and she was elusive now, this time for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand.

‘Are you afraid of me?’ he demanded harshly and Chase roused herself from the heated torpor that had engulfed her to stare up at him.

‘What makes you think that I’m afraid of you?’ She tried to insert some vigour into her voice but she could hear the sound of it—thin, weedy and defensive, all the things she didn’t want him to imagine she was for a second.

‘The way you’re standing in the doorway as though I might make a lunge for you at any minute!’

‘I can’t imagine you would do any such thing!’

Couldn’t she? It was precisely what he wanted to do: behave like a caveman and take her, because she was tempting the hell out of him!

‘I’m afraid of what you could do.’ She backtracked quickly as her mind threatened to veer down unexpected, unwelcome paths. ‘You’ve already shown that you’d be willing to punish Beth because you… Because of me.’

‘And yet here I am now. Do you think I’m the sort of man who reneges on what he’s said? I’ve told you that I intend to pay the full, agreed price. I’ll pay it.’ Not afraid of him? Like hell. She might not be afraid of him, but he was certainly making her feel uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to try and shimmy further away from him.

He extended one lean hand against the wall, effectively blocking any further scarpering towards the front door. He could smell her hair. If he lowered his head just a little, he would feel its softness against his face. Of their own accord, his eyes drifted to the prissy blouse and the even prissier navy-blue jacket. He was well aware that she was breathing quickly, her breasts rising and falling as she did her utmost to keep her eyes averted.

Just as quickly he pushed himself away, retreating from her space, and he watched narrowly as she relaxed and exhaled one long breath.

He wasn’t going to lose control. He had lost control once with her and he wasn’t about to become the sort of loser who made a habit of ignoring life’s lessons and learning curves.

‘I was going to say…’ He led the way to the front door and paused as she slung her handbag over her shoulder and reached for the case on the ground. ‘There’s something missing from your house.’ He opened the door for her and stood back, allowing her to brush past him. ‘Photos. Where are the pictures of the young, loving couple, from before your husband died? I thought I might have seen the happy pair holding hands and gazing adoringly up at one another…’

Chase walked towards the waiting car, head held high, but underneath the composed exterior she felt the ugly prickle of discomfort.

‘We didn’t do the whole church thing.’

‘Who said anything about a church?’

‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’ she burst out as soon as they were in the car. She had kept her voice low but she doubted the driver would have heard anything anyway. A smoked-glass partition separated the front of the car from the back. Presumably it was completely soundproof. The truly wealthy never took chances when it came to being overheard, not even in their own cars. Deals could be lost on the back of an overheard conversation.

Alessandro shifted his muscular body to face her. ‘Why are you getting so hot under the collar?’

‘I…I’m not. I…I don’t like to be surrounded by memories. I think it’s always important to move on. There are photos of me and Shaun, just not on show. Do you want to talk about the shelter? I…I’ve brought all the relevant information with me. We can go over it on the way.’ Sitting next to him in the back seat of this car induced the feeling of walls closing in. She fumbled with the clasp of her briefcase and felt his hand close over hers.

‘Leave it.’

Chase snatched her hand away. ‘I thought you wanted to pick me up so that we could talk about this deal.’

‘I’m more interested in the lack of photos. So, none of the husband. Presumably you have albums stashed away somewhere? But none of your family either. Why is that?’

Chase flushed. The adoring middle-class parents who lived in the country. She was mortified at how easily the lie had come to her all those years ago, but then she had been a kid and a little harmless pretence had not seemed like a sin.

Who wanted a rich, handsome guy to know that you have no family? That your mother had died from a drugs overdose when you were four and from that point on you’d been shoved from foster home to foster home like an unwanted parcel trying to find its rightful owner. How wonderful it had been to create a fictitious family, living in a fictitious cul-de-sac, who did normal things like taking an interest in the homework you were set and coming along to cheer at sports days, even if you trailed in last.

She had loved every minute of her storytelling until it had occurred to her that she had fallen in love with a man who didn’t really know a thing about her. The fact that she had been married was just one of the many facts she had kept hidden. By then, it had been too late to retract any of what she had said, and she hadn’t wanted to. She’d been enjoying their furtive meetings too much. Okay, so she knew that they would never come to anything, but she still hadn’t wanted them to end.

And now…

‘My parents…er…moved to Australia a few years ago.’ She hated doing this now but for the life of her she didn’t know what to do. At least, she thought, sending her non-existent parents on a one-way ticket to the other end of the world would prohibit him from trying to search them out.

Although, why on earth would he do that? The answer came as quickly as the question had: revenge. Find her weak spots and exploit them because he hated her for what he imagined she had done to him. She felt sick when she thought of the number of ways he could destroy her if he set his mind to it and if he had sufficient information in his possession.

‘Really?’

‘It was…um…always a dream of theirs.’

‘To leave their only child behind and disappear halfway across the world?’

‘People do what they do,’ she said vaguely. ‘I mean, don’t you ever want to disappear to the other end of the earth?’ Although she was making sure to stare straight ahead, she could feel his probing eyes on her, and she had to resist the temptation to lick her lips nervously.

‘I disappear there quite often, as it happens. But only on business.’

Chase could think of nothing worse than travelling the globe in the quest for more and more money and bigger and bigger deals. Stability, security and putting down roots had always been her number one priority. She had managed to begin the process, and she shuddered to think of him pulling up any of the roots she had meticulously put down over the past few years.

‘I’m surprised that after all these years you haven’t become tired of trying to make up for your parents’ excesses.’ It slipped out before she could think and Chase instantly regretted the momentary lapse. The last thing she wanted to do was establish any kind of shared familiarity. ‘My apologies,’ she said stiffly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

The reminder of just how much she knew about him underscored his bitterness with a layer of ice. He had never understood how that had managed to happen, how he had found himself telling her things he had never told anyone in his life before.

But then, she had been different. He had never met anyone like her in his life before. Still and yet wryly funny; guarded and yet so open in the way she gazed at him; composed and brilliant at listening. Between the inane yakking of the students—who, at the end of the day, were only a few years younger than him, even though he had been light years removed from them in terms of experience—and the pseudo-bored sophistication of the people he mixed with in his working life, she had been an oasis of peace. And, yes, he had told her things. For a relationship that struggled even to call itself a ‘relationship’, he had confided and, hell, where exactly had it got him?

He clenched his jaw grimly. ‘I’m really not interested in psychobabble,’ he told her.

‘That’s fair,’ Chase returned. ‘But if I’m not allowed to talk about your history then I don’t see why you should talk about mine.’ For starters, the last thing she needed was detailed questions about her so-called parents and where exactly they lived in Australia. And how dared he imply that they somehow didn’t care about her simply because they had fulfilled their lifelong dream of emigrating? She almost felt sorry for them…

She half-grinned at that and Alessandro’s eyes narrowed. What was going through her head? He had a fierce desire to know.

‘So the shelter…’ He interrupted whatever pleasant thought had made her smile.

‘The shelter…’ Chase breathed an inward sigh of relief because this was a subject she was more than happy to talk about. He ceased being a threat as she began to describe life at Beth’s House. She smiled at some of the anecdotes about the women who came and went. She told him about the plans Beth had had for upgrading the premises, and then assured him that he could see for himself what she was talking about as soon as he got there. She told him that he had a heart of stone for wanting to knock it down to build, of all things, a stupid mall for people who had more money than sense, but found it was impossible to generate an argument because he hadn’t taken her to task for voicing her opinion.

As a professional, a lawyer in charge of the brief, voicing opinions was not within her remit but she hadn’t been able to help herself.

By the time they made it to the shelter, her eyes were bright and there was colour in her cheeks. More to the point, her guard was down. Alessandro felt that he was watching the years falling away. He wasn’t about to be sucked into believing that she was anything but the liar she undoubtedly was, but he was certainly enjoying the hectic flush in her cheeks and the lively animation on her face.

They made it to the shelter on time. He immediately understood its potential for investment.

The large Victorian house, clearly in need of vast sums of money for essential repair, sat squarely in the midst of several acres of land. For somewhere that was accessible by bus and overland rail, it was a gem waiting to be developed.

The car swung through iron gates that were opened for them only after they had cleared security and they drove up to the house which was fronted by a circular courtyard, in the centre of which stood a non-functioning fountain.

‘Beth was left this property by her parents,’ Chase told him. ‘It’s another reason why she’s so reluctant to sell. It was her childhood home. She may have converted it into the shelter, but there are a truck load of memories inside.’

‘Is this when you begin to repeat your mantra that I have no heart and that my only aim in life is to make money at other people’s expense?’

‘If the cap fits…’ Chase muttered under her breath in yet another show of unprofessionalism that would have had her boss mopping his brow with despair.

Alessandro raised his eyebrows and she had the grace to blush before stepping out of the car into the sunshine.

Alessandro was more than happy to follow her lead. He had never been to a place like this before. They were greeted at the door by Beth, who was in her sixties, a woman with long, grey hair tied back in a ponytail and a warm, caring face. Whatever she felt for the big, bad developer who was moving in to sweep her inheritance out from under her feet, she kept it well hidden.

‘Some of the girls who come to us are in a terrible way,’ she confided as they toured the house which was laid out simply but effectively inside. ‘Chase knows that.’

‘And that would be because…?’

‘Because I’ve taken an interest in the place from the very start,’ Chase said quickly. ‘This sort of thing appeals to me. As I told you, I was very tempted to go into Social Services or the police force, some place where I would be able to do good for the community.’

Alessandro personally thought that it was priceless that she could come over all pious and saintly in his presence but he kept silent. He made all the right noises as he was shown through the house and introduced to girls who looked unbearably young, many of whom had nowhere else to go and were either pregnant or with a child.

‘I try and keep them busy,’ Beth told him as they went from room to room. ‘Most of them don’t see the point of continuing their education and it’s very difficult for a fifteen-year-old to go to classes when they have a baby to look after. Many of my dear friends are teachers and volunteer to hold classes for them. It’s truly remarkable the goodness that exists within us.’

Alessandro’s eyes met Chase’s over the older woman’s head and his lips twisted into a cynical smile. ‘It’s not a trait I see much of in my line of business,’ he said.

‘I’m sure,’ Beth concurred with a sad shake of her head. ‘Now, Chase tells me that you’re a very busy man.’

‘And yet,’ Chase inserted blandly, ‘he’s managed to make time to come here and see what you’re all about. Although, I guess that mostly has to do with him judging the potential for knocking down the house and developing the land as soon as the money changes hands.’

Alessandro was cynical enough to appreciate the underhand dig. No one could accuse her of giving up without a fight. Their eyes tangled and he gave a slight smile of amused understanding of where she was heading with that incendiary statement.

‘I will personally see to it that your…operation is transferred to suitable premises,’ he affirmed, raking fingers through his dark hair.

‘Not the same. Is it, Beth?’

‘I will certainly miss the old place,’ Beth agreed. ‘It may not seem much to you, Mr Moretti, but this is really the only house I’ve ever known. I’ve never married, never left the family house. You must think me a silly old woman, but I shall find it very difficult to move on. Well, in truth—and I haven’t said this to you, Chase, and you must promise me that you won’t breathe a word to anyone else—my thoughts are with retiring from the whole business once I move on. Of course, I shall make sure that some of the money I get from the sale goes towards another shelter—perhaps smaller than this—and Frank and Anne will run it.’

‘Frank and Anne?’ Alessandro made a point of avoiding the scathing criticism in Chase’s eyes. He had absolutely nothing to feel bad about. He knew for a fact that there were vultures hovering over the place, waiting to pick it to pieces, and those vultures would not have parted with nearly as much cash as he was prepared to.

‘My dear friends. They help me here. As for me, perhaps a retirement place by the coast… So, I expect you would like to see the land, Mr Moretti? There’s a lot of it. My parents were both keen gardeners. Sadly, I haven’t had the money to look after it the way it deserves, but if the place is to be redeveloped then I’m sure you won’t find that a problem. Chase tells me you have grand plans for it to be an upmarket mall.’

Alessandro marvelled that ‘an upmarket mall’ could be made to sound like ‘the tower of Babel’, although when he looked at the older woman there was no bitterness on her face.

‘It will bring a great deal of useful traffic to the community.’

So he made money. It was what he did. It was what he had always done. And he was still doing it. He frowned as he remembered Chase’s barbed comment about his lifestyle.

He had enough money to retire for the rest of his life and still be able to afford what most people could only ever dream of. So was he trying to make up for his parents’ excesses? He was angry and frustrated that he should even be thinking along these lines. His parents were long gone and he had barely known them. How could he have, when, from a toddler, he had been in the care of a succession of nannies who had all fallen by the wayside in favour of boarding school abroad?

His parents had both been products of ridiculously wealthy backgrounds and their marriage had provided them with a joint income that they had both happily and irresponsibly squandered. Untethered by any sense of duty, and riding high on the hippie mentality that had been sweeping through Italy at the time, they had zoned out on recreational drugs, held lavish parties, travelled to festivals all over the world and bought houses which they had optimistically called ‘communes’ where people could ‘get in touch with themselves’. And then, to top it all off, they had seen fit to throw away yet more of their inheritance on a series of ill-advised schemes involving organic farming and the import of ethnic products, all of which had crashed and burned.

Alessandro, barely through with university, had had to grasp what remained of the various companies and haul them back into profit when his parents had died in a boating accident in the Caribbean. Which he had done—in record time and with astounding success.

So what if he had learnt from his parents that financial security was the most important thing in life? So what if nothing and no one had ever been allowed to interrupt that one, single, driving ambition?

A woman in whom he had once rashly confided things that should have been kept to himself was certainly not going to make him start questioning his ethos.

Beth was now chatting amicably about the wonderful advantages of the place being developed, which would bring much-needed jobs to the community. To Alessandro’s finely tuned ears, it sounded like forced enthusiasm. It was clear that she hated the thought of leaving the house, and he couldn’t help wondering what someone who had always been active in community life in London would do in the stultifying boredom of the seaside.

It was after midday by the time they were standing outside the house saying their goodbyes. His chauffeur had returned for them but Chase pointedly made no move in the direction of the car.

‘I’ll make my own way back,’ she said politely.

‘Get in.’ Alessandro stood to one side and then sighed with exasperation as she continued to look at him in stubborn silence. ‘It’s baking hot out here,’ he said, purposefully invading her space by standing too close to her. ‘And that outfit isn’t designed for warm weather.’

‘I’ll take my chances on avoiding sunstroke.’

‘Which is something I would rather not have on my conscience.’

‘You don’t have a conscience!’

‘And you do?’

Chase looked at him with simmering resentment. He didn’t look all hot and bothered. He looked as fabulous, cool and composed as he always did. Plus, he had charmed his way into Beth’s affections. She could tell. He hadn’t come on too strong, he had pointed out all the benefits of selling the place but in a perfectly reasonable way that no one would have been able to dispute. He was just so…damned persuasive! She hated it. And she hated the way she had found herself staring at him surreptitiously, hated the way her imagination had started playing tricks on her, hated the way she had had to fight against being seduced by the dark, deep, velvety tones of his voice.

‘You can drop me to the bus stop. It’s about a mile from here.’

‘Are you going back to your office? Perhaps I could go in, meet all these people you work with… Tell your boss what a great job you’ve done even though the shelter will be sold. At least you’ve got me to thank for a reasonably happy Beth.’

‘She’s not happy.’ Chase slid into the back seat, barely appreciating the terrific air conditioning as she grappled with the horror of having him invade her work space as well as having invaded her house. ‘And I’m going home, as a matter of fact. I have work I can do there.’

‘I’ve noticed that you try and avoid looking at me as much as possible,’ Alessandro said softly. ‘Why is that?’

As challenges went, that was about as direct as they came. Avoid looking at him? She wanted to laugh at the irony because all she seemed to do was look at him—it was just that she was careful with her staring. She looked at him now and the silence seemed to go on for ever as he gazed right back at her. Her mouth had gone dry and, although she knew that she should be breaking this yawning silence with a suitably innocuous remark, her mind refused to play along.

When he reached out and trailed one finger along her lips, she gasped with shock. There was a sudden, ferocious roaring in her ears and she couldn’t breathe. All the strategies she had adopted to keep him at arm’s length, to make him know that there was nothing whatsoever between them now aside from a brief, dubious past that no longer meant a thing, disappeared like mist on a hot summer’s day.

She was no longer the lawyer with her life under control and he was no longer public enemy number one, the guy who could ruin everything she had built for herself in one fell swoop. She was a woman and he was a man and she still, against all rhyme or reason, wanted him with every incomprehensible, yearning ounce of her being.

‘What are you doing?’ She finally found her voice and pulled back.

Alessandro smiled. If he had had any doubts that she was still attracted to him, then he had none now. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he murmured, obediently removing his hand and observing her neutrally. ‘Your friend really doesn’t want to leave her home. The memories…the experiences… I don’t see a bungalow on the coast cutting it, do you?’

‘No.’ Chase glared at him suspiciously. Her lips were burning from where he had touched them but she refused to cool them with her fingers.

‘So I have an interesting proposal to put to you. You’d like me to believe that you’re all bleeding heart and caring for the defenceless. Well, how would you like to prove it?’

CHAPTER FOUR

CHASE DIDN’T ANSWER immediately. Alessandro slid back the partition and told the driver to deliver them to a well-known French restaurant. By the time that sank in, the car had already altered course.

‘What the heck do you think you’re doing?’

‘We’re going to discuss my proposal over food. It’s lunchtime.’

‘And I’ve told you that I need to get back to do some work! Besides, I can’t imagine what sort of proposal you have for me that involves you kidnapping me!’

‘I like your use of language. Colourful.’

Chase was still burning from where his finger had touched her lips. Her mouth tingled.

‘What made your friend decide to go into the good Samaritan business?’

Chase looked at him with unbridled suspicion. He was leaning indolently against the door and she got the feeling that it was all the better to see her. Like the big, bad wolf in the fairy story. ‘I don’t know what good it will do for you to hear Beth’s potted history.’

‘I’ve never known anyone who erects so many obstacles to complicate a perfectly harmless conversation.’

‘That’s because everyone kowtows to you, I imagine,’ Chase offered ungracefully. While he was supremely relaxed, legs slightly open, one arm along the back of the seat, the other hanging loosely over his thigh, she was as tense as a block of wood. Her legs were tightly pressed together. Her lips were tightly compressed. Her fingers were interlinked and white at the knuckles.

‘Rich people seem to have that effect,’ she continued, avoiding his speculative eyes. ‘I’ve seen it. They like throwing their weight around and they take it for granted that everyone is going to agree with everything they say.’

‘You’re getting all hot and bothered over nothing,’ Alessandro murmured with mild amusement. ‘The food at this restaurant is second to none. Have you been there? No? Then you should be looking forward to the experience. So why don’t you relax? Tell me about your friend.’

‘You didn’t seem that interested in her when you were downgrading the price of the place by a thousand pounds per minute.’

‘That was before I met her.’

Every argument she engineered seemed to crash into a brick wall. He wasn’t interested in arguing with her. She, on the other hand, felt driven to keep arguing because something inside her was telling her that, if she didn’t, she might find herself in dangerously unchartered territory. She might start remembering how funny he could be, how thoughtful, how engaging.

‘She obviously comes from a fairly wealthy background,’ Alessandro murmured encouragingly. ‘And yet the road she decided to travel down wasn’t exactly the predictable one.’

When he had first laid eyes on Chase after eight years, he had been shocked. And hard on the heels of that shock had come rage and bitterness. It seemed that he had badly underestimated the effect she had had on him. He hadn’t put her behind him after all. Had he succeeded in doing that, he would have felt nothing but indifference and contempt. So, yes, revenge had been an option but why make a third party suffer? Weren’t there other ways of handling a situation that had landed in his lap?

Rage and bitterness were corrosive emotions and there was one very good way of permanently eliminating them. He smiled with slow, deliberate intent.

Chase took note of that smile and wondered what the heck was going on.

‘She hasn’t had a…normal upbringing,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I know this because I knew her before this whole business with the shelter cropped up. Actually, she came to me when she was approached with your company’s interference because we were already friends.’

‘Interference? I’ll overlook your take on my generous offer to buy her out. How did you become friends? Oh no, don’t tell me—you were drawn to her because of your “care in the community” approach to life.’

‘I’m glad you think it’s funny to want to help other people!’

‘I don’t. I think it’s admirable. Like I said, I just find the sentiments hard to swallow when they’re coming from you.’

‘If I’m such an awful person, why are you taking me out to lunch? Why didn’t you let me find my own way back? The sale’s agreed. Your legal team could take it from here on in.’

‘But then I would miss out on the pleasure of watching you.’

Chase flushed and wondered whether he was being serious or not. She told herself that she didn’t care and squashed the unwanted sliver of satisfaction it gave her when she thought of him watching her and enjoying it. Suddenly, it felt safer to talk about Beth than to sit in silence, as he looked at her, and speculate on all sorts of things that threw her into confusion.

‘Her parents were both really well off,’ she blurted out, licking her lips nervously and wishing he would just stop looking at her in that pensive, brooding way that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘They were missionaries. Beth says that as though it’s the most normal thing in the world.’

She began to relax and half-smiled as she remembered the conversation they had had years ago when she had first met her. ‘I mean, they didn’t want to convert anyone, but they wanted to help people in the third world. They rented out their house, which is now the shelter, and took themselves off to Africa where they spent their own money on various irrigation and building projects. In fact, there’s a plaque dedicated to them in one of the little villages over there.’

‘Good people.’ Alessandro thought of his own feckless parents and marvelled at the different ways money could be spent.

‘They returned to London to live when Beth was a child. I think they wanted her educated over here. Maybe they thought that they had done what they had set out to do. At any rate, they found that they couldn’t just do nothing once they’d come back, so they did lots of volunteer work at various places. They were both in their fifties by then. They’d had Beth when they were quite old. Beth went to university and studied to become an engineer, but found herself drawn to helping others, and when her parents died and she inherited the house and land, the stocks and shares and stuff, she turned the house into a shelter and hasn’t looked back.’

‘So effectively it’s really the only house she’s ever lived in and the only work she’s ever done.’

‘Yes. So there you have it. I don’t suppose you can really understand what makes someone like Beth tick.’

‘Do me a favour and stop trying to pigeon-hole me because I happen to have a bit of money.’

‘A bit of money? You’re as rich as Croesus.’ They were now in front of the restaurant and Chase stared down at her formal working suit in dismay. ‘I don’t feel comfortable dining in a place like this wearing a suit.’

‘Don’t wear the jacket and undo the top three buttons of the shirt.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ She looked at him, her cheeks bright red, and he grinned at her. A full-on charming grin that knocked her sideways. It was that same grin that had turned her life on its head eight years ago and had made her continue to see him even though everything in her had been screaming at her to stop.

‘You heard me.’ He stepped out of the car and leaned through to give his driver instructions; when he straightened, it was to see that the prissy jacket, at least, had been left behind in the car.

‘What about the buttons?’ he asked, with the same sexy grin that made her toes curl and her skin feel tight and prickly.

He didn’t give her time to think about it. With their eyes still locked, he undid the offending buttons. The softness of her skin under the starchy top… The glimpse of a cleavage… His breath caught sharply in his throat, mimicking hers.

‘Don’t do that!’ Chase clasped the top and stumbled back a few steps.

‘Much better. After you?’

Chase barely took note of the restaurant as they were ushered inside. She had been to a few fancy places since she had started working at Fitzsimmons. Her inclination to stare in awe had thankfully subsided. Nor was her mind in full working order just at the moment, not when her body was still in a state of heightened response at that intimate gesture of his undoing those buttons as though…as though she was his; as though they were the lovers they never, actually, ever had been.

‘You said you had a proposal to put to me,’ was the first thing she said tightly as soon as they were seated.

Alessandro perused the menu and made a few helpful suggestions which Chase ignored.

‘This isn’t a social occasion,’ she said, choosing the first thing off the menu and shaking her head when he tried to entice her into a glass of wine.

‘But it could be,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Couldn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that eight years ago you were a married woman, albeit without my knowledge. Now, you’re not. Your husband is no longer around and, unless you have another one stashed up your sleeve somewhere…?’

Caught unawares, Chase laughed shortly. ‘Marriage isn’t an institution I’ll be going near again. Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt.’

Alessandro maintained a steady smile but his jaw hardened. ‘Still in mourning?’ he asked softly.

‘Too wrapped up with my career,’ Chase answered steadily.

‘You haven’t answered my question, but no matter. It really doesn’t make any difference to the proposal I have in mind.’ So she was still wrapped up in the ex. Why else would she have been at pains to avoid his question? He harked back to his image of the man, good-looking in a thuggish sort of way, her type of guy.

And yet, wrapped up or not in the past, she was still affected by him. He knew that with some highly developed sixth sense. As affected by him as he was, unfortunately, affected by her. She was an itch that needed to be scratched and he intended to do just that. Scratch the itch, and he would get her out of his system once and for all.

‘So what’s your proposal?’ Had she ordered crab mousse? It seemed so, as one was placed in front of her. She tucked into it without appetite.

‘Do you get as personally wrapped up with all your clients as you do with this particular one?’ Alessandro watched as she toyed with the starter in front of her.

‘I told you. I knew her before… She’s been a friend for years.’

‘She’s in her sixties.’

‘What does age have to do with anything?’ Chase looked at him defensively. Yes, she knew where this was going. Why was a young girl in her twenties friends with a woman in her sixties? Of course, age was no barrier to friendship. Many young people had friends who were much older than they were. What was the big deal? But Beth was one of her few friends, one of the few people in whom she had confided to some extent.

‘Nothing. It’s laudable. Although…’

‘Although what? I suppose you’re going to tell me that my friends should all be young and frivolous? That I should be spending my free time going to clubs and drinking instead of hanging out with a woman old enough to be my mother?’

‘Although…isn’t there something that suggests you shouldn’t be working for someone with whom you’re personally involved? I wasn’t going to lecture you on hanging out with anyone. You choose your own friends, Chase. Interesting, however, that you never seemed to have a lot of those when I knew you eight years ago.’

‘I…’ She stared at him and, as their eyes tangled, she had the strangest sensation that he could see what was going on in her head. ‘How would you know what friends I had or didn’t have? You were only around part of the time. We met occasionally. You didn’t know what I did in my spare time.’

Alessandro sat back as their food was placed in front of them. He was surprised to see that he had eaten his starter although he couldn’t even remember what he had ordered. She could barely meet his eyes and, again, he had the strangest feeling that there was something going on which he couldn’t quite see.

He cursed himself for even being curious. ‘True,’ he concurred. ‘And yet I remember a couple of occasions when kids from your course came up to you. You barely acknowledged them. Once they asked you if you were going to a party and you turned white and got rid of them as soon as you could.’ The memory came from nowhere, as though it had been lurking there, just waiting to be aired.

‘I…I had a husband.’

Alessandro found that he didn’t like thinking about her husband. In fact, the thought of that shaved head, the tattoos, set his teeth on edge.

‘Who would have been the same age as you were. Practically a teenager.’

It struck him that that was one of the things that had drawn him to her, the fact that she hadn’t acted like a typical teenager. She had been old beyond her years in ways he couldn’t quite pin down.

‘I’ve never been into clubs and partying.’

‘Never?’

‘Why the thousand and one questions, Alessandro?’ Her cheeks were bright red. Once upon a time she had actually enjoyed going out. She must have been fourteen or fifteen at the time, unsupervised, hanging out with older kids because most of the kids her age had had some form of parental control.

Schoolwork had been a breeze. She’d never had much need to bury her head in books. Absorbing information had come naturally to her. Oh yes, she had had plenty of time to go to clubs and parties. She frowned and wondered now whether she actually had enjoyed those parties, the dancing, the dim lights…and the confused, angry feeling that she shouldn’t be there, that there should be someone in her life who cared enough to try and stop her.

‘We’re here. Why don’t you just tell me what you want to say?’

‘How does saving your friend’s house sound to you?’

‘Saving her house? What are you talking about?’ Chase barely noticed that the starters had been removed, to be replaced with yet more exquisite food which she couldn’t remember ordering. Despite having said no, her wine glass had been filled, and with a small shrug she sipped some of the cold white wine which tasted delicious. ‘Are you going to build your mall around it?’

‘Somehow I don’t think that people on a quest for designer shoes would feel comfortable having to circumnavigate a shelter for women in need of help, do you?’

Chase thought about that and laughed. It was the first truly genuine laugh he had heard from her since they had met again and, God, how well he remembered the sound of it. Even back then, she hadn’t laughed a lot, and when she had it was the equivalent of the sun coming out from behind a cloud. It was exactly the same now and he looked at her with rampant male appreciation.

‘I know.’ She grinned and leaned towards him confidingly. ‘But wouldn’t it be a great ploy? They’d all feel so guilty that they would contribute bags of money just to clear their conscience before they went to the shop next door to buy the designer shoes! Beth would never have any financial problems in her life again!’

‘It would certainly be a solution of sorts to her financial problems,’ Alessandro concurred.

‘But you don’t mean that, do you?’ Her laughter subsided. She nibbled at the edges of her food and decided not to bother trying to second-guess what he had brought her here for.

‘Not quite what I had in mind but the image was worth it just to hear the sound of your laugh.’

‘Then what?’ She ignored the tingling those words produced inside her. ‘Will it involve getting any lawyers in? I can’t honestly make any far-reaching decisions without reference to my boss.’

‘How will he feel when you tell him that you’d had no option but to sell the place to me?’ Alessandro asked curiously and Chase gave it some thought.

‘A favourable outcome would have been for our client to hang on to the premises. The truth, however, is that our clients don’t earn the firm money. The big money comes from our corporate and international clients. Intellectual property lawyers, patent lawyers, even some family lawyers…they earn the big money. I’m just a little cog subsidised by the big-fee lawyers, and I’m there because Fitzsimmons is a morally ethical law firm that believes in putting back some of what they take.’

Alessandro wasn’t interested in hearing a long speech on the moral values of Fitzsimmons. ‘Wonderful,’ he said neutrally. ‘But this particular decision won’t require involvement from anyone else in your firm.’

‘Okay.’

‘Nor is it illegal.’ Alessandro read the suspicion in her eyes and looked at her with wry amusement. ‘However, yes, it will involve the house remaining in your friend’s possession. More than that, what if I told you that I would be prepared to pay off all her debts and inject sufficient cash to make sure she can keep the shelter going for a very long time to come?’

Chase gaped at him. For a few seconds, she honestly believed that she had misheard what he had said. Then she thoughtfully closed her knife and fork, wiped her mouth with her linen serviette and searched his face to see whether this was some way of making a fool of her.

‘So Beth…’ she said slowly, giving him ample time to cut her short and rubbish what she thought he had said, ‘gets to keep the house, plus you pay off her debts, plus you put money into renovating and updating the place…am I getting it right?’

‘That would be about the size of it.’

‘And you would do this because…?’ Brow furrowed, she suddenly smiled at him with genuine delight. ‘I know why. You were impressed with what you found at the shelter, weren’t you? I don’t suppose you were expecting it to be as well run as it was. Beth spares no effort when it comes to doing good for those girls. It’s hard to go there and not be moved by what you find. I’m so pleased, Alessandro.’ She reached out impulsively and covered his hand with hers.

Alessandro looked at the shining glow on her face and was extremely pleased with himself for being the one to put it there.

‘Can I call and tell her?’ Chase asked excitedly. ‘No, perhaps I’d better not do that.’ She flashed him an apologetic smile. ‘You’ll have to forgive the lawyer in me, but we’ll have to get this all signed on the dotted line. But, once she knows, she’ll be over the moon. Between you and me, I don’t honestly think she was looking forward to a quiet retirement by the seaside.’

‘So you agree with me that this is a good idea?’

‘Of course I do! I’d be a fool not to.’ Even with her defences up, knowing how he felt about her after what she had done to him, she knew that there was a blazingly good streak in him. Those lectures he had given had been given for free, and he had taken considerable time out to individually help some of the students, had actually offered internships to a couple of them. He hadn’t just been as sexy as hell, he had shown her a glimpse of humanity that she had never seen before and that, amongst other things, had roped her in and kept her tethered in a place she had known was desperately dangerous.

‘Naturally, there’s no such thing as a free lunch in life.’ Alessandro shook his head ruefully, the very picture of a man who regrets that there wasn’t. ‘I wish I could say that I was the perfect philanthropist, but you have to understand that all this will cost me a small fortune.’

The smile died on her face. The bill was brought to them and she automatically reached for her bag but it had been settled before she could rummage out her wallet and pay her fair share. ‘Of course it will,’ she agreed coolly. ‘And you’ll want to be repaid for your largesse. Will your rates be competitive?’

‘Shall we go?’

Chase could feel disappointment rising inside her as he waited for her to gather her things, standing aside so that she could precede him out of the restaurant. Once outside, she didn’t bother with her stupid jacket. He had been right when he had remarked that it was impractical for the weather.

What had he been playing at? Stringing her along with all manner of empty promises only to yank them all back at the last minute? Didn’t he realise that, if Beth had wanted to borrow money so that she could clear her debts and get the shelter really going, she would have gone to the bank? Of course, Chase thought uncomfortably, she had tried that some time ago but to no avail. She simply hadn’t had the collateral to get a loan of the size she required, even though the bank manager had known her parents. Money was just not being lent, not to ventures that had nothing to gain. Had Alessandro checked that out himself and come to the conclusion that he could provide her with the money but jack up the interest rates?

‘I really believed you for a minute,’ she simmered, barely noticing that she was being ushered into the back seat of his car. ‘I really thought that you had been so impressed by what you saw that you decided to do the right thing. I really thought that there was a part of you that was the same guy who gave internships to those girls years ago, and the same guy who put in extra time helping that little group of Asian students through their language barriers with some of their papers.’

‘You remember. Those girls have been promoted several times. One left a year ago to have a baby and returned a few months ago to resume work. Two of the Chinese students work in my Hong Kong offices.’

‘You kept in touch with them.’ She fought against the pull of a connection that threatened her valued self-control. She severed the incipient connection. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To discuss my proposal further. Out of public earshot.’

‘Beth can’t afford to pay you back for a loan.’ Back to business, but her mind was still straying dangerously close to memories of the man she had once been so irresistibly drawn to—the man she knew still existed even if those complex sides, revealed all those years ago, would never again get an airing in her presence.

‘Whoever mentioned loans?’

‘You’re confusing me, Alessandro.’

‘Ditto,’ he murmured under his breath. He looked at her in silence, his searing attraction laced with a poignant familiarity that wasn’t doing his libido any favours, until she shifted uncomfortably and took notice of her surroundings. They were away from the hustle and bustle.

‘And you haven’t said where we’re going. This isn’t the way back to my house.’

‘Well spotted. It’s the way to mine.’

‘What?’ Chase immediately felt her pulses begin to race. She didn’t want to be here, in this car! Far less heading to his place, wherever that was! He had just pulled a cheap trick, whatever he had said about his offer not being a loan. He had really shown his true colours, aside from which she knew that she should steer clear of him. But the memory of how much she had craved to see where he lived eight years ago slammed into her with the force of a freight train. ‘Let me out of this car immediately.’

‘Calm down.’

‘I’m perfectly calm.’

‘You’re as perfectly calm as a volcano on the point of eruption. Relax. We’ll be there in ten minutes.’

Chase felt ill at the thought of stepping foot into his private space. She had never thought that she would see him again and, now that she had, she should be laying down clear boundaries. Instead, the lines were blurring. He had come to her house, seen the way she lived, formed his opinions. Now she was going to his.

She watched with growing panic as the sleek, black car manoeuvred through quiet streets, finally turning into an avenue through imposing black wrought-iron gates. The houses here were beyond spectacular. No superlative could do justice to the pristine white-and-cream facades, the ornate foliage, the lush greenery, the air of indecently wealthy seclusion. The cars were all top of the range, high end.

So this was where he lived. Never in her wildest, twenty-year-old’s dreams could she have come up with this.

‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ she said automatically as his driver opened the passenger door for her.

‘I wasn’t comfortable conducting a private conversation in a public place.’

‘There was nothing private about our conversation. It was a business deal.’ But she couldn’t help staring at the enormous house in front of her, the perfectly shaped shrubs on either side of the black door, the highly polished brass of the knocker. Nor could she help feeling, in some deep, dark part of her, that their conversation had been threaded with undercurrents that were anything but businesslike.

‘I love the way you constantly argue with me,’ Alessandro remarked drily as he opened the front door and stood aside so that she brushed past him. ‘It’s refreshing. You did that eight years ago as well. And it was refreshing then.’

There had been times, countless times, when he had just wanted to scoop her to him and silence those feisty arguments with his mouth…just kiss them away. But he had been prepared to bide his time. He had been prepared to do way too much to attain the eventual goal of just having her. She had taught him the art of patience, damn fool that he had been.

Chase didn’t say anything. She was too busy being impressed. It wasn’t just the size but the pristine perfection: marble flooring, the colour of pale honey, was broken by silky rugs. The paintings on the walls varied in size but were recognisable—who on earth had paintings on their walls that were recognisable? The impressive staircase leading up gave onto a landing which was dominated by a massive stained-glass window that did magical things to the sunlight filtering through it.

She came back to planet Earth to find that Alessandro was watching her, hands in his pockets.

‘You have a beautiful place,’ she said politely.

Alessandro dutifully looked around him, as though taking stock of where he lived for the first time, then he shrugged. ‘It works for me. Come through.’

‘I honestly don’t see why you couldn’t have laid out your terms and conditions for this so-called “not a loan” at the restaurant.’ But she followed as he led the way towards a kitchen that looked as though it had never been used. He didn’t do cooking; she remembered him telling her that way back when.

‘Have you ever used this kitchen?’ she asked, perching on one of the top-of-the-range chrome and leather bar stools by the counter and watching as he attempted to make sense of the complicated coffee machine.

‘You don’t want coffee, do you?’ he eventually asked, turning to glance at her over his shoulder.

‘If I did, would you be able to figure out how that thing works?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Tea would be nice.’ She hadn’t appreciated just how rich he was. These were the surroundings of a man to whom money was literally no object. She bristled when she thought of him holding her to ransom by reducing his offer for the shelter just because he could.

‘I’m very good with a kettle and some tea bags.’ He hunted them down, opening and closing cupboards. ‘I come in here very rarely,’ he offered by way of explanation. ‘I have a housekeeper who makes sure it’s stocked and a chef who does all my cooking on the occasions when I happen to be in.’

‘Lucky you.’

There wasn’t a single woman on the planet, Alessandro thought, who would have offered that sarcastic response when confronted with the reality of his wealth. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘You’re right. I don’t.’ She took the cup of tea from him. The cup was fine-bone china, weirdly shaped, with an art deco design running down one side. When she thought of him trying and failing to work out how his high-tech appliances worked, she could feel a smile tugging the corners of her mouth, but there was no way that she would be seduced by any windows of vulnerability in him.

‘Why do you have all these gadgets in here if you don’t cook and barely use the kitchen?’

‘I remain eternally optimistic.’

Chase wished he wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t undermine her defences with his sense of humour. She didn’t want to remember how he had always been able to make her laugh. She didn’t want him to make her laugh now.

‘Well, now we’re here, maybe you could explain this business with the shelter?’

Alessandro looked at her. He wondered what it was about her that just seemed to capture his imagination and hold it to ransom.

‘You have no idea what goes through me when I think of what you did eight years ago,’ he murmured.

‘You brought me here so that you could talk about that?’ Chase fidgeted uncomfortably. She wanted to drag her disobedient eyes away from him but somehow she couldn’t.

‘But the past belongs in the past. What’s the good dredging it up every two seconds? The best thing I could do right now is send you on your not-so-merry way, out of my life once and for all. Unfortunately, I find that there’s something holding me back.’

‘What?’ It was a barely whispered response. She cleared her throat and did her utmost to remember that this was just an opponent whom she happened to have known a long time ago. It didn’t work. She still found herself hanging onto his every word with shamefully bated breath, watching him watching her, and letting those deep, dark looks penetrate every fibre of her being. Dampness pooled shamefully between her legs, physical proof of something she was loath to admit, and her nipples tingled, sensitive and taut against her lacy bra. ‘What’s holding you back?’ She shifted, felt her slippery wetness making her panties uncomfortable.

‘You.’ Alessandro allowed that one word to ferment in the lengthening silence between them until it was bursting with significance.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Of course you do,’ he drawled smoothly. ‘We can both waste a little time while I indulge your desire to feign ignorance but what would be the point? We’ll end up getting to the same place eventually. Despite what happened between us, despite the fact that my levels of respect for you are lamentably non-existent, I find that I’m still sexually attracted to you. And I wouldn’t be telling you this now if I didn’t know that it was a two-way street.

‘And don’t bother trying to deny it. I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think my attention is somewhere else and I’ve seen the way you respond whenever I get within a two-foot radius of you. We had it once and we have it again. It’s a shame but…’ He shrugged with graceful elegance.

‘You’re…you’re mad…’ Her words said one thing; her treacherous body however, was, singing a different refrain.

‘Am I? I don’t think so.’

Chase watched, mesmerised, as he slowly stood up and breached the short distance separating them to plant his hands on either side of her chair, locking her into place so that she could only raise her eyes upwards to stare at him. She could feel the pulse in her neck beating wildly, a physical giveaway that every word he was saying struck home.

‘I’m the lawyer working for Beth; sure, we know each other…’ The word faltered and died in her throat as he cupped her cheek with his hand and stroked it with his thumb.

Years ago, their chaste relationship had pulsated with unexplored passion and unspoken, untested lust. Now, as his hand remained on her cheek, she shuddered and resisted the urge to sink into the caress.

‘Please, Alessandro, don’t.’

‘Your body is telling me something different.’

‘I don’t want to start any kind of relationship with you.’

‘Relationship?’ Alessandro queried huskily. ‘Who’s talking about a relationship? I could no more have a relationship with you than I could with a deadly snake. No, I’m not interested in a relationship. I’m interested in having sex with you, plain and simple. Just like you’re interested in having sex with me. Don’t you want to touch what you spent months staring at eight years ago? Don’t you want to finish what you started? I do. A lot.’

Chase opened her mouth to tell him to get lost but nothing emerged. His cool, brilliant dark eyes held her in a trance even though she knew that every word that left that perfect mouth was offensive and insulting.

And yet…her imagination was going crazy. The fantasies she had had of him touching her all those years ago sprang from the box into which they had been firmly locked and attacked her on all fronts. She weakened at the thought of his fingers stroking the wetness between her legs, his mouth kissing the twin peaks of her breasts, nipping the tight buds of her nipples, suckling on them while he continued to stroke her dampness…

‘So here’s the deal.’ Alessandro was finding it hard to contain his excitement at the prospect of netting the prey that had once escaped him and putting to bed, once and for all, feelings that had no place in his life. Her skin was like satin beneath his fingertips. ‘You sleep with me for as long as I want you to and the shelter stays. Renovated, updated and modernised. Your friend’s debts will be cleared.’

‘You want to pay me for services rendered?’

‘I want to take what you want to give. In return, you get the shelter. And please don’t try and tell me that you don’t want to touch me. You do.’ His mouth met hers and Chase braced her hands on his shoulders, determined to push him away. But instead she was horrified to find that she was caressing him; that her mouth was returning his kiss with equal urgency; that she was sinking into him like a person starved of nourishment; that she was whimpering, little mewling sounds that shocked and excited her in equal measure and, worse, when he finally pulled back that the sudden space between them felt cold and unwelcome.

‘I think I’ve proved my point.’ There was a betraying unsteadiness in his voice. He might not like her or respect her but, God, did he want her. More than anything or anyone. ‘Let’s finish this business. A couple of weeks, tops, and you can disappear back to whatever life you have, having made your friend a very happy bunny.’

Chase had withdrawn and was rising to her feet, arms tight around her body.

‘I’ll never do that, Alessandro!’

Alessandro shrugged and tried to wrestle back his self-control, even though just watching her was affecting him in ways he could barely quantify. ‘You have forty-eight hours to give me your answer then the deal is off the table.’

‘I’ve already given you my answer!’

‘Forty-eight hours…’ he repeated, his eyes roving over her flushed face and her defiant yet tellingly shaken expression. ‘And let’s just wait and see if your answer remains the same after you’ve…thought things through.’

CHAPTER FIVE

BETH TELEPHONED THAT evening. She could barely contain her excitement. She might be able to hang on to the shelter!

‘What do you mean?’ Chase asked tentatively. She had spent the past few hours unable to get down to work. Alessandro’s offer kept playing in her head over and over again, like a tape recording on a loop. She had stalked out of his house, her head held high, and he had made no attempt to stop her. She thought that that, in itself, displayed a level of arrogance that should really have had her turning her back on him for ever. She loathed arrogance.

Unfortunately, along with her determination not to be browbeaten into making a pact with the devil, there lurked the uncomfortable awareness that, devil or not, he roused something in her she didn’t want but couldn’t resist. He had kissed her and her whole world had felt as though it had been tilted on its side. It was the same something that had been there eight years ago; the same something that had made her behave in a way she had known she shouldn’t. Sexual attraction: he had put his finger on it. Sexual attraction and more…

‘I had a call from Mr Moretti.’

‘Ah…’ She drifted over to the sofa and sat down.

‘He’s a lot more compassionate than I originally gave him credit for. You know, when this whole business started, well, I just thought of him as a human bulldozer, not caring what or who got in his way.’

Chase smirked. ‘What did he say?’

‘That he’s spoken to you and you’ve both come up with a plan to secure the future of the shelter; you’re both trying to iron out the creases. Chase, my dear, I can’t tell you how overjoyed I would be if this worked out. I’ve been dreading telling the girls that they’ll have to go, plus the waiting list is so long of people who need us. Not to mention the seaside idea. Never could quite see myself retiring by the coast and having coffee mornings with all the other retirees.’

‘I’m sure there’s more to life by the coast than coffee mornings.’ Her mind was in a whirl. She was also incensed. So much for the forty-eight hours after which her decision would be final! How could she have been foolish enough to believe that Alessandro wouldn’t exert influence over a decision he wanted? ‘Lots of people go down there to…er…sail…’ she said vaguely.

‘Can’t think of anything worse. Drive me mad!’

‘Did he mention what this idea of…ours happens to be?’ Chase prodded gently.

‘Not a word!’ Beth hooted. ‘Said it was something he wanted kept up his sleeve. Probably to do with tax!’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, don’t these awfully rich people enjoy tax breaks by giving money to charity? We are a registered charity…’

Chase sighed and decided to lay off the details of any such scheme. Despite a sharp brain and her degree in engineering, Beth’s interest in all things financial was sketchy at best.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, noncommittal.

‘At any rate, it all sounds very promising. I know what you’re going to say, my dear! Don’t count your chickens… But I get a good feeling from that young man. Did the minute I met him. Showed a real interest in everything we do here at the shelter.’

Alternatively, Chase thought, the man was a skilled actor with a golden tongue. Take your pick.

She spent another twenty minutes on the line as Beth waxed lyrical about Alessandro, and as soon as her friend was off the phone she hunted down the business card he had given her and telephoned him on his mobile.

‘Well, that was a low trick!’ was the first thing she said the minute she heard his voice on the other end.

At a little after nine, Alessandro had just finished wrapping up a two-hour conference call and was about to leave the office, which was deserted aside from him. In the act of reaching for his jacket, he flung it down on the leather sofa instead and relaxed to take her call. ‘So Beth called you,’ he drawled without an ounce of shame. ‘I thought she might. She certainly was over the moon when I spoke to her. Charming woman.’

‘You’re a low-down, sneaky rat!’

Alessandro grinned. Whatever Chase’s downsides, she was by far and away the most outspoken, feisty woman he had ever met in his entire life. It would probably be a tiresome trait in the long run, but just for the moment it was certainly invigorating.

‘Now, now, now…is that any way to speak to your friend’s knight in shining armour?’

Chase detected the wicked grin in his voice and gritted her teeth in frustration. ‘What did you tell her?’

‘Long conversation. I’ll fill you in when we next meet.’

‘How could you?’

‘How could I what? Make that delightful woman one very happy lady?’

‘Try and twist my arm into accepting your…your… No, I take that back; I understand perfectly how you did that!’

‘It’s comforting to know that you can read me like a book. That way, there will be no mixed messages between us. Now, why don’t you carry on working and I’ll call you in the morning?’

‘I haven’t been able to do a scrap of work today!’

‘Too busy thinking about me?’

Chase made an inarticulate sound of pure frustration and racked her brains for a clever riposte.

‘Well, why don’t you get some well-deserved beauty sleep and we’ll talk in the morning…or later, if you’d like. After all, your forty-eight hour deadline won’t yet be up. Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch.’

She was left clutching the phone which had gone dead because he had hung up on her. He’d barely heard her out! She felt that there was a lot more anger to be expressed. Unfortunately, without an adversary at which to direct her attack, she was left simmering and fuming on her own as she flounced down in front of the television, having abandoned all attempts at reviewing her caseload.

She was barely aware of what she was watching. It appeared to be a crime drama with an awful lot of victims and an extremely elusive murderer. She had fully zoned out of the story line when, at a little after ten, she heard the insistent buzz of the doorbell and was jerked into instant red alert.

Alessandro.

Surely he wouldn’t have the cheek to show up at this hour at her house?

Of course he wouldn’t. Why would a shark bother to stalk a minnow when it knew full well that the minnow would swim into its gaping jaw of its own free will?

Much more likely that it was Beth; as she slipped on her bedroom slippers and padded out to the front door, she was already trying to work out what she might say to begin killing her friend’s already full-blown optimism.

She pulled open the door to Alessandro and her mouth fell open in surprise.

‘Rule one,’ he said, strolling past her to take up residence in the sitting room before she had had a chance to marshal her thoughts into order. ‘When living in London, never open the door unless you know who’s going to be standing on your doorstep.’ He turned towards her, which instantly made her feel like a guest in her own home. ‘I could have been anyone.’

‘And, unfortunately for me, you’re not!’ She folded her arms and looked at him with gimlet-eyed stoniness. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You said that you were finding it impossible to get down to work because you were thinking of me, so I thought I’d drop by.’

‘I never said any such thing!’ He was not in work clothes but in a pair of black jeans and a grey polo-necked shirt. He looked drop-dead gorgeous, which did nothing for her composure, because she felt far from drop-dead anything in her tatty old jogging bottoms and a tee-shirt that had lost its shape in the wash years ago. She also wasn’t wearing a bra and she was conscious of her nipples poking against the cotton of the tee-shirt.

‘I must have misunderstood. My apologies. But I’m here now, so maybe you could offer me a cup of coffee? Nothing stronger. I’m driving.’

‘I wasn’t about to offer you anything!’

‘Don’t you want to let off steam? You were breathing brimstone and fire down the line less than an hour ago.’

‘Because you went behind my back and led Beth to believe that you were going to save her shelter—worse, led her to believe that the decision lies with me!’

‘Oh, but it does, doesn’t it?’ He stared at her with a mixture of cool certainty and mild surprise that she should question the obvious.

‘What on earth did you tell her?’

‘That you and I were working on a plan to see whether the place could be saved and money invested.’

‘Because you’re such a good guy, right?’

‘Let’s not go down the tortuous route of moral ethics, Chase. However non-existent you think mine are, you’re not exactly in a position to point fingers.’

Chase chewed her lip and glared impotently at him. ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’ She shrugged and turned away. He was here now, in her house, smug and self-satisfied at the awkward position into which he had shoved her; sooner or later they would have to talk, so why not make it sooner? She couldn’t see herself getting to sleep in a hurry.

She returned with two mugs of coffee to find him ensconced in one of the deep chairs, the very picture of a man totally relaxed in his surroundings.

‘You gave me your word that I would have forty-eight hours.’

‘And nothing’s changed on that front,’ Alessandro said smoothly. ‘You still do. I’ve just thrown an extra something into the mix.’

‘And that wasn’t fair.’

‘Between us, the gloves are off. You’re as scheming as I am, so don’t even bother to try and play the wounded party with me.’ He had not been able to get her out of his head and, the more he thought about her, the more urgent his need to have her became. The sooner he had her, sated this voracious lust, the faster he would be rid of her. He couldn’t wait.

Nudging the back of his mind was the uncomfortable truth that he was not a vengeful man by nature, that this sort of revenge was born from emotions which he had handed over to her eight years ago only to find them thrown back in his face. She had shown him his vulnerability and the force of his reactions now lay in that one, unmentioned reality. It was something he could hardly stand to admit even to himself and it lay there, buried like a pernicious weed, even when he had told himself over the years that he had had a narrow escape; that getting involved with a woman such as she had turned out to be would have been an unmitigated disaster.

‘You think you know me,’ Chase muttered bitterly, and Alessandro narrowed his eyes to look at her.

‘By which you mean… Tell me.’

‘Nothing,’ she said in a harried undertone. ‘This is an impossible situation.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s the sound of the wheel turning full circle.’

‘You don’t like me, you don’t respect me, so why on earth would you want to sleep with me? You must be able to snap your fingers and have a thousand women standing to attention and saluting. Why bother with the one who doesn’t want to fall in line?’

Chase projected into the future. So she turned him down and the shelter became a shopping mall with her friend retreating to the seaside, where she would live out the rest of her days, bored, grumbling and dissatisfied. Furthermore, what would happen to their friendship? Alessandro had put her in an invidious position, for would her friend ever forgive her for being the one who failed to ‘iron out the crease’ that would have enabled her to hang on to what she loved?

She would never be able to tell Beth what that particular crease was and eventually the wonderful friendship they had would wither and die under the weight of Beth’s misunderstanding and simmering resentment. How could it not?

‘I’ve always considered myself a man to rise to the challenge,’ Alessandro said coolly.

‘And I’m your challenge.’ There was no point moaning about the unfairness of fate. He had seriously upped the ante by involving Beth and now she had to step up to the plate one way or another. He might well consider himself a guy who couldn’t resist a challenge, but when had she ever been the sort of woman to back down? Her days of doing that had been put behind her.

And he talked about unfinished business… Wasn’t it the same for her? Over the years, through everything that had happened, hadn’t he been the burr under her skin? Hadn’t she had broken nights dreaming of him? Hadn’t she replayed scenarios in her head during which what they had had came to fruition?

More to the point, hadn’t all those scenarios sprung back into instant life the second she had laid eyes on him again? Common sense had wrestled with what she considered her stupid weakness, because he was as out of bounds now as he had ever been, despite the fact that Shaun was no longer on the scene. But common sense was failing to win the battle. She knew she looked at him, wondered…

‘Are you going to tell me that I’m not yours?’ Alessandro asked softly. Two adults, he thought, who wanted each other and this time no hidden obstacle lurking in the way. On top of that, so much for her to get out of it. So where was the problem? He had never had the slightest curiosity to plumb the hidden depths of any woman, yet now he had a sudden, urgent desire to reach into her head and discover what was going on behind that beautiful, enigmatic facade. The thrill of the unexplored was heady and erotic and it took a surprising amount of will power to remain where he was, holding on to silence as a weapon of persuasion.

‘It feels…odd. Just not right.’

‘But you can’t deny that what I’m saying makes sense. If we cut through all the redundant emotion, if we leave bitterness and the past aside, don’t we still fancy the hell out of one another?’

Chase thought of his hands on her body, touching her. She had stayed far away from the opposite sex over the past eight years. Offers had been plentiful, some of them horribly insistent, but there was no way she was going to get involved with any man ever again.

So here she was, nearing thirty, unattached, with barely any social life to speak of. Wasn’t it time for her to re-join the human race? And wouldn’t she be able to do that once, as he had put it, business between them was finally finished? If she were brutally honest with herself, hadn’t Alessandro been as much a reason for where she was now with her life, as Shaun had been? He had had such a dramatic hold on her all those years ago and the way things had ended between them had scarred her to the extent that she had just simply withdrawn.

‘It just feels so…cold and detached. So businesslike.’ She rubbed her lightly perspiring hands along the soft cotton of her jogging pants.

‘You’re looking for flowers and chocolates and courtship?’ His mouth curled into a cynical smile. ‘I believe I fell into that trap once before. I don’t repeat my mistakes twice.’

Chase thought she could detect the rapid beating of her heart as he stared at her broodingly. She felt as though she had one foot raised over the edge of a precipice as she made her mind up as to whether to jump or not. Yet, she knew that that was a fallacy. She was older, wiser and tougher and, if this felt like a business arrangement, then it had to be said that business arrangements came with definite upsides. For starters, she would know all the parameters. She would not be hurt. She would be taking from him just as he would be taking from her and, when they walked away from each other, she would be freed from the strange half-emptiness of regret that had been her companion for the past eight years.

It was a tantalising thought.

As though she had opened a door to a gremlin, she was suddenly released from the constraints of having to fight the attraction that had been gnawing away at her. She imagined…and the images were so vivid that she felt faint.

‘I can’t think of anything I would want less than a courtship,’ she informed him with as much cool detachment as she could muster. Certainly not flowers or chocolate. He had given her those once before. He must have realised, in the aftermath of her dumping him, that those tokens had hit the bin before she had had time to make it back to her flat. Thank goodness she had bluntly refused to accept anything else. At least he would never be able to add ‘gold-digger’ to all the other bitter insults he had heaped on her.

Watching her closely, Alessandro knew that he had won. She was going to be his. And yet, instead of the satisfaction of accomplishment, he was irked by the notion that she didn’t want a courtship because she had already had a courtship from the one guy who had really counted in her life.

Who gave a damn about the ex-husband? The bald fact was that the man was no longer around and the one woman who had eluded him was going to be his. He was not now, and never would be, in competition with a ghost. When he was through with her, he would discard her and she could return to the photo albums she had stashed in a drawer somewhere. He didn’t care. He would have got the one and only thing he wanted from her and for which, essentially, he was prepared to pay a high price, bearing in mind all the money that would need pumping into that shelter if it was to achieve habitable status.

‘Is that because you’ve decided to limit yourself to one and that role was filled by your dearest, departed ex—or because you’ve had so many in the intervening years that you’re sick of them?’

‘I’ve been so busy in the past few years that I haven’t had time for…for any kind of relationship.’ How strange it felt to be sharing this kind of confidential information! Over time, she had become defined by her need for privacy. She knew that most of her colleagues her age thought she was weird. She knew they thought that, with her looks, she should be putting herself out there instead of working all the hours God made before scuttling off to a house to which none of them had ever been invited. She didn’t care, and she had become so accustomed to self-containment that she now looked at Alessandro, wide-eyed, startled by her outburst.

‘You mean…?’ Curiosity kicked in with cursed force.

‘There’s actually nothing out of the ordinary about that. Relationships require time and I haven’t had a lot of that while I’ve been trying to climb up the career ladder.’ Chase knew how she sounded: tough, hard, cold. This wasn’t the person she had ever set out to be but she wasn’t going to apologise for the fact that her life hadn’t been a round of parties, late nights and sex with random men.

‘So ever since your husband died…?’ he encouraged.

Chase tilted her chin defensively. ‘I know how it must sound to someone like you.’

‘Someone like me?’

‘I expect you have an active sexual life. Lots of women. You’re rich, you’re good-looking, you’re self-assured. You wouldn’t have a clue how I could…hold off on relationships for quite a long time.’

‘I managed it eight years ago. With you.’ He shook his head, impatient with himself. And he did, actually, understand. Grief and mourning could do all sorts of things and have all manner of consequences. That said…

‘It’s not healthy,’ he said brusquely.

Chase reddened. ‘I haven’t asked for your opinion,’ she said defensively. ‘And the only reason I’m telling you this is because you might want to have a rethink.’

‘Not following you.’

‘I’m a little rusty in that particular area.’ She gave a brittle, nonchalant laugh, but inwardly every part of her felt exposed, vulnerable and uncertain. What on earth was she doing? She wasn’t like the women she imagined him being drawn to; she lacked the finesse and the experience. Did she want to risk the humiliation of having him look at her with amusement and disappointment just because she needed to know what she had missed all those years ago? Because, sure, the shelter would be a happy bonus, but she was already yielding for reasons that were far more complex than the desire to save her friend’s shelter. Shelter or no shelter, she would never have allowed herself to be manipulated into doing something she didn’t want to do.

Alessandro frowned. He had been quick to assert that his proposal was a non-negotiable arrangement designed to assuage the inconvenient need he had to sleep with her and thereby get her out of his system. He had been even quicker to inform her that he would not be investing it with any bells and whistles. It would be sex, no more or less. Yet, he found that he didn’t care for the cool approach she was taking. Hell, she was still sitting a million miles away from him!

‘I’ll cope. Does that mean that you’ve made your mind up?’

‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’ve been curious. Maybe we do need to…eh…take what we have a step further.’ Her heart was beating like a drum. ‘But if I accept,’ she continued firmly, because it was important for him to know that she wasn’t making a decision based on blackmail or unfair persuasion, ‘it’s not to do with the shelter. Much as I love Beth, I would never do something I didn’t want to because of her.’

‘Right now, the only thing that matters is that we’re going to be lovers.’ He gave her a slashing, sexy smile and patted the space next to him on the sofa. ‘So why don’t you come and sit next to me and we can continue bonding with a little less physical distance between us?’

Chase thought she could actually hear her own painful breathing. Fear and apprehension at touching him, being close to him, warred with unbridled excitement. She had stepped off the side of the precipice and she had no idea what she had let herself in for but it was an adventure she needed to have. It was a situation over which she could only hope to exercise control and, for someone who had constructed walls of control all around her, it was a daunting prospect. But she had done daunting before. Many, many times. She could handle daunting.

‘How long do you think this will take?’

‘Come again?’ Alessandro had never had to fight this hard for anyone. Sexual attraction had proved stronger than his very justifiable bitterness and dislike. He had had to swallow a lot and yet, having done that, having got her to the place he wanted, surely the going should get less tough?

‘How long do you think it will take before we get past this…thing? A night? A couple of days?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Alessandro raked his fingers through his hair and frowned at her. ‘And why are we talking about timelines, anyway? All I want to do right now is touch you, so why don’t we dispense with the conversation and get down to business?’ He sprawled back, arms extended on the back of the sofa, legs loose and open.

He was the very essence of man at his most physical, Chase thought with a shiver, utterly and beautifully masculine; she licked her lips cautiously. She wanted this so badly. It felt as though it was something she had never stopped wanting. She tentatively closed the distance between them to sit like a wooden doll next to him.

‘I feel I should tell you,’ she whispered as Alessandro lazily removed one arm from the back of the sofa to trail it along her neck.

‘You talk a lot,’ he growled and then, almost from nowhere, plucked from thin air, ‘You always did. As though you had too many words inside you that needed to get out.’ He laughed softly, caught unaware by the memory. ‘Do you remember the way you would mention a case file and then force me to have an opinion so that you could practise shooting it down in flames?’

Hell, what was he going on about? He angled his body round and pulled her towards him and it was like the promise of heaven. The undiluted thrill of having her in his arms was incomparable and he urgently sought her mouth, plundering it while his hands moved down to circle her waist. His erection was steel-hard and painful. More than anything else, he wanted to rip down those unattractive jogging bottoms, pull aside her panties and then just thrust into her, hard and fast, until he got explosive relief. There would be time enough to do the whole gentle foreplay stuff later.

Chase could feel the raw energy emanating from him in waves but that soft laugh, that nostalgic memory he had laid out bare for her without really thinking, was strangely seductive, strangely relaxing. Fingers that had been curled into his polo shirt suddenly splayed against his chest and she struggled back from him.

‘Wait…’

‘I’m not sure I can.’ But he reluctantly drew back, his breathing ragged and uneven. She was stripped of her tough, outer shell, the consummate lawyer and assertive career woman. He glimpsed a uniquely feminine vulnerability that startled him, because she was the last woman on the planet he would ever have labelled ‘vulnerable’. Once upon a time, sure, but then once upon a time he’d been an idiot.

‘I’m not into playing games,’ he drawled just in case she got it into her head that she could string him along for a second time. ‘And, just in case you think that you might be able to pull off any “one step forward, two steps back” tactic, then forget it. This time round, you’re dealing with a different person, Chase. My levels of tolerance when it comes to you are non-existent.’

‘I know they are!’ Whatever the backdrop to what they had had eight years ago, it all seemed so innocent now in retrospect. ‘It’s just…’

‘Just what, Chase?’

‘Never mind.’ She wasn’t looking for sweet nothings whispered in her ear nor was she looking for any shows of affection. She told herself that she was perfectly comfortable with an ‘arrangement’, yet as she reached to hook her fingers under the tee-shirt to pull it over her head, she knew that she was breathing too quickly, close to freezing up.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ Alessandro groaned and caught her hands in his. ‘Why tell me that this is what you want if you have to squeeze your eyes tightly shut and give every impression of a woman who has to grin and bear it?’

‘I do want it,’ Chase insisted but she could hear the giveaway wavering in her voice and she hated it.

‘Then what’s the problem?’ He took in the hectic flush in her cheeks. What was going on here? Shouldn’t this be straightforward—two consenting adults getting something out of their system? ‘Tell me.’

‘You’re not really interested.’

‘Let me be the one who decides that.’ He nuzzled her ear and smiled as she quivered, because it tickled.

‘I’m… I’ve…’ She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I’ve never really been into sex,’ she said in a rush. ‘I know you can’t bear me, and your tolerance levels are low, but I can’t just fall on this sofa with you and have wild sex.’

‘Never really been into sex?’ Alessandro’s voice held accusatory disbelief. ‘You were a married woman,’ he pointed out with ruthless directness. ‘Married at what age—eighteen? Younger? Are you telling me that you were a gymslip wife who didn’t enjoy sleeping with her husband?’

‘I don’t want to talk about Shaun,’ Chase said quickly. Or, she mentally tacked on, anything to do with my past, the past you think you know but don’t.

Alessandro looked at her in silence for a long time. She was flustered as hell but trying hard to put on a show of strength and assertiveness. Did he need all of this? It was just sex and, yet again, that surge of curiosity that was more insistent than the cold logic he wanted to impose. ‘Why don’t you want to talk about him?’

‘Because…there’s no point. I’ll just say that things are never what you think they are.’ Too much information. ‘But it’s been a long time for me…’ she concluded hurriedly.

‘You just want me to take it slowly, do you?’

Chase nodded.

‘In that case, what about a show of good faith?’ He shot her a slow smile. ‘Taking it slow is one thing,’ he murmured, playing with a strand of her hair whilst he tried to halt his runaway mind, which wanted to ask her what she had meant by her enigmatic remark about things never being what you thought they were. ‘A standstill pace, on the other hand, just won’t do. So why don’t we both get naked and see what happens next?’ He watched her carefully, wanting her more than anything, prepared to do the complex if that was what it took. ‘If you’re not comfortable down here, then you could always give me a tour of upstairs and we can end up in your bedroom. How does that sound?’

Chase nodded. ‘You might be disappointed at what you see.’ She tried to make her voice as normal as possible but her pulse was racing as they quietly padded upstairs. ‘The whole of my upstairs could probably fit into your downstairs cloakroom.’

He wanted a show of good faith and she couldn’t blame him. She pushed open the doors to the small spare room, with its single futon, the desk at which she was accustomed to working until late into the night and the bathroom which was large and airy given the size of the house. They ended up in her bedroom.

Alessandro stood in the doorway and looked. The walls were a subdued cream but the four-poster bed was dressed and all romance. The prints on the walls were landscapes of deserted beaches. The dressing table, like the wardrobe, was old, doubtless bought at auction. He thought that he might be the first guy to step foot in this room and it gave him an unbelievable kick. Every single woman he had ever known had been keen to show him their bedrooms and the beds which promised inventive entertainment for as long as he wanted. Mood lighting had usually been a dominant theme. When he took in Chase’s wary expression, he could see ambivalence there.

‘Your sanctuary.’

‘Not any longer. You’re in it.’

‘By invitation.’ His hand reached to the button on his trousers, but first he removed the shirt in one easy movement.

Chase practically fainted. He was the stuff daydreams were made of and she had had enough of those over the years. His body was burnished gold and honed to perfection. When he moved, she could detect the ripple of muscle under skin. Her breathing picked up pace and her mouth went dry. Under her top, her bare breasts tingled, and she had the heady feeling that she wanted them touched, that she wanted her nipples played with.

‘Your turn…’ He liked the way her eyes skittered across his body as if helplessly drawn to stare at him. He remembered the way that used to do crazy things to him once and was uneasily aware that that should have changed—so why hadn’t it? He found that he was holding his breath as her tee-shirt slowly rode up her belly, exposing her pale skin a slither at a time. She wasn’t doing this because of undue pressure, yet there was an erotic hesitancy about her movements. The wealth of all her complexities crashed over him like a wave from which he had to fight to surface, to bring himself back in the moment.

He was a randy teenager all over again as he looked at her breasts, heavy and sexy and everything he had imagined. More. Her breasts were bigger than he had thought, tipped with perfect rosy-pink discs. She possessed a body that should never be constrained by a starchy lawyer’s outfit. Her proportions were all feminine curves: bountiful breasts, a narrow waist and proper hips that swelled tantalisingly under the dreary track pants. He wanted nothing more than to stride over to her and feel her nakedness pressed against him.

With some sixth sense, though, he was aware of her skittishness. He didn’t get it, but he could feel it. Any sudden moves and he got the feeling that she would take flight, even though she obviously wasn’t embarrassed about her body, wasn’t trying to be coy and hide her breasts behind her hands. He kept his eyes on her face as he removed his trousers and flung them to one side, still looking at her.

Chase felt her skin tighten at the glaring evidence of his arousal. His dark boxers could hardly contain it. She shakily reached to the elasticised waist of her joggers and stilled as he moved towards her.

‘You look as though you want to run away,’ he murmured. He swallowed hard because the tips of her breasts were almost brushing his chest and his hands itched to feel the weight of them. ‘Believe it or not, this is taking it slow by my standards.’

‘I believe you,’ Chase said huskily. She touched his chest with one finger and felt his soft moan.

‘Come to bed.’ He stepped away from her. ‘I’m not sure how long the slow plan can carry on for.’

When he turned his back to her, Chase knew that he was trying to hold himself back. She felt giddy with power. It was a wonderfully novel sensation and it afforded her a layer of strength she hadn’t known she possessed. With Shaun, it had never been like this, never, not even in the very beginning. But she didn’t want to think about her ex-husband. That was one very fast and very sure route to instant depression.

She slipped out of the jogging bottoms; his back was still turned when she crept into bed and under the covers.

‘Now…’ He wasn’t used to taking sex slowly. He had never had to pace himself. He failed to consider that pacing himself with a woman for whom he harboured nothing more than a desire to even the score made no sense. ‘Tell me…’ he flipped onto his side so that they were lying under the covers, front to front, their bodies not touching but both of them vitally aware of their nudity under the duvet ‘…about the prints on your walls. And the four-poster bed…’

CHAPTER SIX

IF THERE WERE prizes for holding a man’s interest, then Alessandro thought that Chase would be in line for all of them. He had planned on a straightforward conquest, aided and abetted by the trump card of saving the shelter. He would take her and, by taking her, he would rid himself of the allure of the inaccessible—which was the position to which she seemed to have been elevated over the years, apparently without him even having noticed. For him, the accessible had always had a short-lived appeal, especially when the quarry in question came with a truckload of dubious cargo.

And she had played him at his own game, had not been browbeaten but had laid her cards on the table. But then that hesitancy, that tentative admission that sex wasn’t her thing… She had lain in his arms but he could feel her tension and he had backed off, even though his body had been on fire for her.

The rapacious, lying, deceitful, manipulative woman had shown a shrinking violet side to her that had got under his skin. Since when had he become the sort of man who was content to hold off, especially in a situation like this, with a woman scarcely worth his time and attention? He had held off with her once and look at where that had got him! But had he done what he should have done? Had he sneered at her attempts to play the shy maiden and ploughed forward? Hell, no! He had lain with her in his arms like the virgin she most certainly was not, had talked, and then he had left to return to his apartment and a freezing-cold shower.

Then he had gone abroad for two days, giving himself time to figure out why he was behaving so out of character and giving her time to wise up to the fact that what they had was a deal—and one he intended to cash, because her time limit for playing shy had been used up. He had returned late last night with two flights to Italy booked and the decidedly uncomfortable realisation that there might just be a need to shift gears slightly—to woo her, despite everything he had said about what they had not being a courtship. Somewhere along the line the whole ‘time limit’ speech had been shelved.

He just knew that when she came to him she would come of her own volition. She would jettison whatever the hell it was that was holding her back. In the space of a heartbeat, it had become a matter of pride—actually in the space of time it had taken for the notion of a break in Italy to take root, which had been fairly instantaneous.

If she was holding back because she hadn’t managed to put the premature death of her husband behind her, then she needed to move on from that place and come to him willingly. There was no way he was going to sleep with any woman unless her thoughts were focused one hundred per cent on him and, if it took some seduction to get her to that place, then he would play along with it. The end result would be the same, wouldn’t it? And he was an ‘end result’ kind of guy.

He had phoned her from abroad and announced the whole Italy idea with far more conviction than he had been feeling at the time, but she had taken little persuading as it turned out in the end. She was due some time off and she would take it. A little more enthusiasm would have been appreciated but he had met his match in her. She hadn’t pandered to him eight years ago and she wasn’t going to pander to him now, even though she knew him for the billionaire that he was.

Now, standing in front of the check-in desk at Heathrow surrounded by crowds, he scowled as he felt himself inevitably harden at the tantalising prospect of having her; of touching that flawless body; of sinking against those breasts, feeling them against his chest, against the palms of his big hands, pushing into his mouth. He had once lost his head over a mirage and now he would take what he felt was his due, take the promised fruit and kill the bitterness inside him that made such an unwelcome companion.

Through the crowds he spotted her weaving and looking around for him and he gave her a brief wave.

‘You’re ten minutes late. You should have let my driver collect you instead of coming by public transport.’

Chase looked up at his frowning face and was tempted to snap because, however much she wore her hard-won independence like a badge of honour, he obviously had a Neanderthal approach to women in general. But she bit back the retort because she could remember the way he had always taken command when she had known him: paying for whatever they had before she could offer to go halves; impatient with second-rate service; intolerant of anyone in his lectures who’d failed to try.

‘I told you. I had some work to finish before I left.’ Left for a week in the sun. She had no idea where that idea of Alessandro’s had sprung from. She had fought against going, because she was all too aware that their relationship was destined to crash and burn, and the last thing she needed was a plethora of memories she would later have to work out of her system, but he had been insistent. Maybe being out of the country would infuse this weird closure of theirs with an unreality that would be easy to box away.

Italy, he had told her, was his home and, hell, why not. It was a nice time of year over there and he had just closed a massive deal. She could see his house. His casual tone of voice down the end of the line had told her that it wasn’t a big deal. He would be going over there himself, she figured, with her or without her, but he would take her along because, as far as he was concerned, she had yet to fulfil her side of the bargain. Lying naked in his arms, tense as a plank of wood, didn’t count.

Had they had sex, she was sure that he would not have suggested the Italy trip. Revenge lay behind his motivation and revenge was an emotion that could be sated very quickly. Certainly, a week of her would be enough. Did she deserve that? Maybe she did, in his eyes, and she would never disabuse him of the complicated story behind her lies because that would open up a whole new can of worms far worse than the one she was dealing with.

‘Isn’t that the old hoary line used by men?’ Alessandro queried, moving towards the check-in girl at the first class desk. It occurred to him that he would have quite enjoyed having her at his beck and call and put that down to a caveman instinct he’d never known he possessed. Or maybe he only possessed it when the chase was still on, and only with her because she hadn’t followed the pattern of the women he slept with.

‘You’re very chauvinistic, Alessandro. Women who have careers can’t just jettison them the second something better comes along. As it is, I’ll have a mountain of work to get down to when I get back. I shouldn’t really be here at all, even if I am due time off.’

‘Are you telling me that being with me is more compelling than your career?’

‘I’m not saying anything of the sort!’

‘You work too hard.’

‘How else am I expected to get on?’

‘What are you expecting to get on to?’ They had checked in and were now heading through Passport Control, towards the first class lounge. Years ago he had considered the possibility of a private jet, if only to cut down on the inconvenience of a bustling airport, but had ditched the idea, because who needed to be responsible for such a vast personal carbon footprint when it could be avoided? Shame, though, because, had he had one, he could have introduced her to some creative ways of passing time twenty thousand miles up without an audience of prying eyes.

‘I’d like to head up my own pro bono department. Maybe even branch out on my own and concentrate on that area. Bring in a few other employees…who knows?’

‘And what about another prance up the aisle? Is that up there on the agenda? Surely your parents would want to hear the patter of little feet when you visit them in Australia? Or do visits to Australia get in the way of your career?’

Chase temporarily froze. The passing lie was not one on which she wanted to dwell. She wanted no reminders of her non-existent family. She knew that the last thing he would want to discuss would be her ex or her past treachery. His only goal was to get her into bed; her only goal was to put this murky, tangled, haunting past to rest. He was motivated by revenge, she by a need for closure. It was a straightforward situation. She needed no reminders of white lies that had been told and could not now be un-told.

How would he react were he to know that, not only had she once lied to him about her marital status, not only had she dumped him in a way that now made her cringe with guilt and shame even though she knew that it just couldn’t have been helped at the time, but that her entire past was as substantial as gossamer?

‘Australia is a long way away…’ she muttered vaguely.

‘Yes. I know. I’ve been there. You’ve never told me which part of Australia they live in. It’s a big place.’

‘You wouldn’t have heard of it.’ She could feel beads of perspiration break out all over her body. ‘It’s just a small town on the outskirts of…um…Melbourne. Look, I really don’t want to talk about this. Discussing personal issues isn’t what we’re about, is it?’ Never had she realised how being trapped in a lie could prove as painful as walking on a bed of burning coals.

‘No,’ Alessandro said shortly. ‘It’s not.’ He looked at her blank eyes and tight smile and felt a surge of rage that the thing most women gave naturally to him—the desperate openness which they always seemed to hope could suck him into something permanent and committal—was the one thing Chase steadfastly refused to give. It angered him that he was even going down the road of quizzing her because it reflected a series of inner challenges that he knew were inappropriate. The challenge to get her into bed so that he could assuage the treachery he felt had been done to him had been replaced by the challenge to get her into bed willingly and hot for him; the challenge to wipe her ex out of her head when they finally had sex, the challenge to get into her head, to know what made her tick.

Where the hell did it end? Did he need her to remind him that the rules of the game precluded certain things?

‘Call it making polite conversation,’ he offered with cool politeness.

‘I overreacted. It’s just that…’

‘No need to explain yourself. I’m basically not interested in your past. Like I said, small talk…’

Chase was silenced. Of course he was basically not interested in her past. He was basically not interested in her. He was utterly focused on one thing and one thing only. She nodded, nonchalantly indicating that she understood, that she shared the same sentiment.

When he began telling her about some of the complex legalities of the deal he had just pulled off, she let herself slide smoothly into career-woman mode, and then the conversation flowed faultlessly onto the subject of Beth and the shelter. It was a happy story and Chase felt herself once again relax. This was an odd situation but she could handle it, just as long as she didn’t start feeling angst over stuff, just as long as she maintained the composed exterior that was so much part and parcel of her personality. She couldn’t let herself forget that she wanted this as much as he did. They both had their demons to put to rest.

They landed at Cristoforo Colombo Airport at Genova Sestri to a brilliant day. The wall-to-wall blue skies, which had no longer been in evidence in London after their brief appearance, were here in full force. As soon as they stepped into the waiting limo, she could feel a heady holiday spirit fill her.

‘It’s been ages since I’ve been away,’ she confided as she settled back to watch the stunning scenery gallop past from the back of the car. ‘In fact…’ she turned to him ‘…my only trip abroad in the past few years has been a snatched week at a spa resort in Greece.’

‘In that case, I shall make it my mission to see that you enjoy every second of my country…when and if we have the time; bed can be remarkably compulsive with the right companion in it.’ His dark eyes roved over her face, encompassing her luscious body, enjoying the delicate bloom of colour that tinged her cheeks.

This holiday would put an end to the game playing which he had sworn he wouldn’t tolerate, yet had ended up indulging that one night which should have seen this uncontrollable passion slayed. As she had pointed out in a timely reminder, this wasn’t about getting to know one another, this was about sex. Getting to know one another had been a pointless game which he had mistakenly played a long time ago, little knowing that he had been the only participant.

This time round, there’d be no more messing around and taking things at a snail’s pace. He would move only as slowly as he felt necessary to get her where he wanted her—which was out of his system so that he could return to normality.

Vaguely annoyed at the contrary drift of his thoughts, he was aware of telling her about the Italian Riviera, on autopilot, pointing out the grandeur of the mountainous landscape in such close and unusual proximity to the sea, giving her a little bit of history about the place. His voice warmed as he described the vast olive grove plantations stretching across the hills, vast tracts of which had once been owned by his ancestors, only to disappear over the years, mismanaged and sold off in bits and pieces—the last by his parents, who had needed the money in their quest for eternal fun.

‘You could always come back here…buy more olive groves. It’s so beautiful; I can’t see why you would want to live in London.’ Not even in her wildest, escapist fantasies could she ever have dreamt up somewhere as beautiful as this. The landscape was bold and dramatic, the colours bright and vibrant. Everywhere was bursting with incredible, Technicolor beauty. Alessandro might have had irresponsible parents but it had to be said that, whatever he had gone through, he had gone through it in some style.

‘I have a house here. It’s where we’re going.’

‘But how often do you visit it?’

‘As you’ll be the first to agree, taking time out gets in the way of a career.’

Chase bristled at the implicit criticism in his remark. It reminded her that what they shared was simply a truce but, behind that truce, there was a lot he just didn’t like about her. ‘My career is important to me.’

‘I’ve gathered.’

‘You say that as though you disapprove of women who work.’

‘On the contrary. Some of the highest positions in my company are occupied by women.’

‘But you would never actually go out with a woman who had a career…’

Alessandro shot her a sidelong glance. The car was air-conditioned but he had chosen to have the windows opened and the breeze blew through her hair, tossing it across her face in unruly strands. She was no longer the high-powered lawyer with the pristine appearance. She was the girl he had once known and he railed against the pull of memories. ‘There’s little I find attractive about a woman who puts her career first.’

Chase rolled her eyes and sighed, because the breeze was too balmy and the scenery too exotic for arguing. ‘That is because you’re a dinosaur.’ He had old-fashioned ideas. Years ago she had teased him that that was a backlash from his parents’ excesses but she had liked those old-fashioned ideas, never having come across them before.

‘And I take it that under normal circumstances you wouldn’t choose to go out with a dinosaur? Tell me about your husband.’

‘I no longer have a husband,’ Chase said shortly, rousing herself from bittersweet memories of their brief, shared dalliance.

‘I realise that. What was he like?’ He was curious. He found that he wanted to know. This wasn’t polite conversation, although the casual tone of his voice gave nothing away.

The last thing Chase wanted to do was to talk about Shaun but she had a sneaking suspicion that, if she backed away from the subject, it would arouse his interest even further. ‘We met when we were young. I was only fifteen. Just. We met at the local disco.’

‘Cosy. And was it love at first sight?’

‘We found that we had a lot in common.’

‘Always a good start to a healthy relationship. Even at the ripe old age of fifteen. Just.’ He found that he didn’t care for the idea of them having a lot in common at whatever the hell age they had happened to meet. Nor had he intended to get wrapped up in pointless conversations about the thug who had been lurking behind the scenes when she had taken him for a ride and played him for a fool.

‘So they say,’ Chase murmured tonelessly.

‘I take it he wasn’t sharp enough to make it to university?’

‘Shaun was plenty sharp.’ She couldn’t help the bitterness that had crept into her voice but she kept it at bay. Talking about Shaun would inevitably lead to all sorts of questions about the sort of world she had really come from. Chase found that she had moved on from the fear of him discovering the truth about her and eking out some kind of belated revenge by spilling the beans to her work colleagues. She honestly couldn’t see him doing that.

No, what she feared—and she hated herself for this—was to have him walk away in disgust at the lies she had told, at the person she really was and the life she had really led. His pedigree was impeccable and although she knew that they would be the archetypal doomed lovers—in it for the wrong reasons but driven to fulfil their destiny—she still found that she wanted him to believe her to be the sassy, smart lawyer with the perfectly ordinary background when they parted company.

Wasn’t that to be expected? What if she bumped into him at a later date? What if he met some of the partners in her law firm and started talking about her? If he knew the truth about her, then wasn’t it likely that it would slip out in conversation? And, even if nothing did slip out, surely he would never be able to disguise the contempt in his voice at the mention of her name?

‘Sharp as in…?’

She snapped out of her daydreaming to find his eyes narrowed on her. ‘Streetwise; sharp as in streetwise.’

‘And did your streetwise late husband have a job?’ He thought back to the picture she had shown him all those years ago.

‘He…worked in transport but he…he lost his job shortly before the accident. I’d bought him that motorbike. I’d been putting aside some money and I wanted to celebrate getting my first promotion…’

‘So you celebrated by buying him a motorbike. Shouldn’t he have been the one doing the buying to congratulate you? Or am I just thinking like a dinosaur again?’

‘Alessandro, please, let’s move on from this. I honestly don’t want to talk about Shaun. Tell me more about here. It’s amazing to think that there can be snow on mountaintops that are just a short distance from the Med…’

Alessandro heard the soft plea in her voice. ‘Why did you give me a second look if you were so clearly head over heels in love with your husband?’

‘I…I’m sorry. I made a mistake.’

‘Which doesn’t answer my question.’ He raked his hand impatiently though his hair and sat back with his eyes closed for a few seconds. ‘Scrap that. Not sure I could stomach whatever fairy stories you decide to come out with.’

‘Alessandro…’

He inclined his head towards her and linked his fingers loosely in his lap. She had the face of an angel, the body of a siren and he was furious with himself for wanting to probe deeper. He pointed to a spot behind her as the car turned left. ‘My house.’

Chase turned just in time to glimpse a sand-coloured mansion rising up from the cliffs, overlooking the placid turquoise sea with a backdrop of woods of chestnut trees. She forgot everything and her mouth dropped open.

‘I have two housekeepers who live in, make sure everything is ticking over. Occasionally, it’s used by some of my employees, a little bonus if they do well. The promise of an all-expenses-paid long weekend here generates a lot of healthy competition, and it does no harm for the place to get an airing now and again.’

‘It’s huge. What about family members?’

‘Oh, completely off-limits to them. My parents ensured their place in the pecking order as the black sheep of the family and I’ve inherited their generous legacy. I have little contact with my extended family.

‘My parents were both only children, so there are strangely few people who bear a belated grudge towards me. I see a couple of slightly less distant relatives now and again when I’m in Milan; a few more work in some of my associated companies, my way of making amends for my parents’ appallingly hedonistic behaviour which was, if all accounts are to be believed, ruinous to both family names.’

He edged towards her and pointed. ‘You can’t see it, but there’s a winding path that leads down to a private cove at the bottom of the cliff face. Excellent bathing. Once upon a time, fishing used to be big here. Not so much any more. Tourism pays better, it would seem. The wealthy find the sight of yachts far more uplifting than the reality of fishing boats.’

‘What a shame you don’t get here often,’ Chase said. When he was like this—charming, informative, his voice as deep and as dark as the most pure, rich, velvety chocolate—she could forget everything. She could lapse back to the past where dangerous, taboo emotions still held a certain innocence, a time when he didn’t hate her. ‘Don’t you sometimes long to have someone to share this with?’

‘Oh, but isn’t that what I’m doing now?’ Alessandro drawled. ‘Admittedly, only for a few days, and with a woman who is destined never to return, but it’ll do for the moment.’

He reached across, pulling her towards him. ‘I’ve given my loyal housekeepers time off,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘It’s hot here. I thought it might be nice for us to live as naturists for a few days. Why bother with clothes? I want to be able to touch you anywhere…at any time… And you’ll discover that my house is perfect for ensuring one hundred per cent privacy. I’ll make you thaw, my sweet; on that count, you can trust me…’

Chase was still smarting from the insistent stab of hurt his words had generated. Destined never to return.

They approached the sprawling villa through wrought-iron gates which had been flung open, revealing perfectly groomed lawns stretching out on either side of the gravel drive.

‘How many people does it take to look after these gardens?’ She shouldn’t have been, but she was still shocked by the splendour.

‘A small army,’ Alessandro admitted drily. ‘I’m single-handedly trying to do my bit to keep the economy going. There’s a very private pool to the side of the house. I have vague memories of my parents throwing some extremely wild parties there.’

‘I had no idea the house belonged to them.’ Chase turned to look at him and their eyes tangled. Instantly, she could feel her breasts begin to ache in expectation of his caresses. With Shaun, she had become conditioned to viewing sex as something that had to be done. But when she had lain next to Alessandro her body had been fired up in a way that was new and, whilst they hadn’t made love, it now thrummed at the prospect of being touched by him. It was a heady, exciting feeling and she was sure that it was all wrapped up in the culmination of what had begun all that time ago, what had never come to fruition.

‘It was their pride and joy. The one thing they both hung on to.’

‘And you kept it for sentimental reasons?’

‘I never do anything for sentimental reasons. It’s a good, appreciating asset.’

It was dreamy. If she had been able to conceive of a place like this, she might have been more elaborate in her teenage fantasies about perfect lifestyles instead of just settling for average. Then she decided that it was just as well, because how much more awkward would life have been now had her naïve, happily married parents in their two-up two-down been turned into minor landed gentry living in a small castle?

They were greeted by an elderly housekeeper and her husband who had stayed on to welcome Alessandro, tugging him into the kitchen so that they could show him the freezer full of food that had been prepared and the well-stocked larder. He managed to shoo them away after an hour and they departed wreathed in smiles.

‘They’ve been with me for longer than I care to think. As you know, my parents were firm believers in handing over care of their offspring to hired help,’ he told her as he played tour guide, taking her from room to room. He absently thought how many of those little details of his past she had been privy to, courtesy of that small window in his life during which his self-control had gone on holiday.

‘I’m treating them to a well-deserved rest in a destination of their choosing, which as it turns out happens to be France, where their eldest is a dentist. I tried to persuade them into somewhere a little further afield but they weren’t having it. Mauritius, apparently, is no competition for two hyper grandchildren.’

Chase’s heart fluttered. This was how he had managed to get under her skin. This was why she never wanted to have him learn the truth about her. This was why the thought of what he could do to balance the scales of justice should he want to avenge past wrongs was no longer the only consideration. Underneath his ruthlessly cold exterior were these flashes of genuine thoughtfulness that kept reminding her of why she had risked so much just talking to him eight years ago; that ambushed all her good intentions to keep her distance. Whenever he made her laugh, her defences slipped just a little bit more.

This was a dangerous game because she would end up being hurt. She would end up losing her hard-won self-control. She would end up with someone else having power over her, someone who didn’t care about her, who wanted her for all the wrong reasons. Maybe she had already ended up there.

She had walked into this with her eyes wide open but now she felt as though she had walked straight into a trap, having stupidly failed to take account of its power for destruction.

The whole sex thing… Yes, she had wanted it, had craved it, but she had been scared because of past experience and he had respected her when she had turned into a block of ice in his arms. That consideration he had shown her, as it turned out, was just something else that had nibbled away at the edges of her defences so that what had once been a fortress, protecting her from the slings and arrows of emotional involvement with the human race, was beginning to resemble a broken down old castle open to all the elements.

She felt exposed in a way she never had in her life before. She felt as she had eight years ago: like a woman falling in love.

‘You’ve stopped using rapturous superlatives to describe my house.’

Chase blinked and realised that he was several metres ahead of her because she had stopped dead in her tracks. Her brain had been so wrapped up contemplating the horror of falling for this guy again that it hadn’t had any room left to give messages to her legs to keep moving.

‘I think I may have run out of them.’ She blinked and took in the raw sexuality of the man lounging in front of her with that killer half-smile on his lips.

‘Where is this famous pool you’ve been bragging about?’ Her voice was normal but her brain was malfunctioning.

‘I never brag.’ Again that smile that hurled her back in time. He took her hand to lead her through the house, out to the kitchen and towards the sea-facing side of the house, which took her breath away. ‘Except in this one instance.’

He gestured to the open view as though he owned it and then relaxed back to look at her response. He had never given a damn what women thought of his opulent lifestyle and was indifferent to their gasps of awe whenever they stepped foot into his house in London. Yet he rather enjoyed the way her mouth fell open as she stepped out to stand next to him.

The house looked down to the sea that was turquoise and as still as a lake. The garden on this side was just a strip of green, broken by distinctive Italian palm trees and bordered by thick shrubbery. To one side a gate announced the winding stone steps, which Chase imagined led to the cove he had told her about.

This was her dream come true. She had somehow been catapulted into the prints she had hung on her walls. The romance which had not been part of the plan clung to her in a miasma, giving her all sorts of stupid illusions that somehow what they had might be the beginning of something real. It was time to start unravelling that piece of fiction.

‘Are you sure it’s completely deserted here?’ She squinted against the sun to look up at him, shielding her eyes with one hand.

Alessandro looked down at her. She was in a flimsy sleeveless dress which was far too baggy for his liking but which, on the upside, provided terrific fodder for his imagination. ‘As a ghost town. Why?’

‘Because I think we should explore that pool area you were bragging to me about… Oh yes, I forgot: you never brag…’ Her hand fluttered provocatively to the small top button of the dress. ‘It’s so warm. I think I might need to strip off, have a dip in that pool of yours, the one—’

‘I keep bragging to you about even though I never brag?’ He laughed under his breath and felt the bulge in his pants as that part of his body which had been in charge of his brain ever since she had reappeared to smash into his ordered existence rose to immediate attention.

He linked his fingers through hers and began leading her across the lawn, swerving to the side of the house where exuberant flora, lemon trees, shrubs sprouting with brightly coloured flowers and hydrangea enclosed an exquisite infinity pool. The air was aromatic.

‘I feel as though I’ve stepped into a travel brochure.’

Alessandro frowned. A nagging thought occurred to him. Had he seen those prints on the walls and brought her here so that he could deliver her those dreams of sun, sea and sand that had clearly never been realised? Had that been some weird, unconscious motivation behind his invitation to bring her to his house? He irritably swept aside a suspicion with which he was not comfortable.

‘You said you were hot…?’

‘So I did.’ She would have liked to enjoy the scenery a bit more. Well, a lot more. But business was business, wasn’t it? The longer this game between them carried on, the deeper her scars would be when they parted company, when he had got what he wanted. She undid the small buttons of the dress and it fell to the ground, pooling at her feet.

Alessandro remained where he was, looking at her with lazy, predatory satisfaction. ‘Will this be a full striptease?’

‘I want you, Alessandro…’ And I love you. I loved you once and I think it would be very easy to love you again. She schooled her features to conceal the chaos of her thoughts. ‘And I think we’ve both waited long enough…’ She walked towards him, reaching behind her as she did so to unhook her bra, which she tossed onto one of the low, wooden sun loungers, never taking her eyes off his face.

Alessandro found that he could barely control his breathing. The moment was electric. His jaw clenched when she was finally standing in front of him and he had to steel himself against an unruly, premature overreaction as she slipped out of her panties so that she was now completely naked.

‘The sun’s pretty fierce…’ He curved his hand around her waist, idly caressing it and pulling her against him at the same time. ‘And you’re fair. Any doctor would tell you that you need to lather yourself in sunblock…’ He kissed her slowly, tugging her bottom lip with his teeth, gently tasting her mouth, taking his time as their tongues melded, even though it was agony trying to keep his libido in check.

‘So what do you want to do about it?’ She wrapped her arms around his neck and flung her head back with a sigh as his lips traced a path along the slender column of her neck. She was wet and ready for him. She reached to fumble with the button of his trousers and he stayed her hand.

‘One good striptease deserves another,’ he murmured in a sexy, shaky undertone that sent her blood pressure skyrocketing. ‘But first…’

He sauntered towards what she now saw was a vine-covered pool house and emerged a couple of minutes later with towels and various creams. He dumped them on one of the vacant loungers and she watched, heart beating wildly, as he did what she had done only moments before.

His shirt was tossed to join hers and he kept his eyes on her as he walked slowly towards her. Every inch that brought him closer did crazier things to her nervous system. Her breath caught in her throat as he removed his trousers, then, when she felt that swooning was a real possibility, the final item of clothing joined the rest and he was as naked as she was, his proud, impressive erection proclaiming that he was as turned on as her.

When he was inches away from her, she reached down and firmly circled it with her hand.

‘Three days ago you were as tense as a violin string…’ He led her towards one of the loungers which was shaded by an overhanging tree and he neatly spread one of the towels on it.

Three days ago, she thought, I had no idea that my body could feel like this; three days ago it started to come alive. I may have been apprehensive then at what I was feeling but I’m not apprehensive now…

‘I’m not now,’ she said huskily.

‘Then lie down. I’m going to put sun cream on you and it’ll be the best foreplay you’ve ever experienced…’

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