Chapter Five #2
She sipped her wine and stared at the ground, but she could feel his dark eyes on her as he strolled to sit on the very same sofa next to her.
‘What am I forgetting and is it because what? Georgie, I apologise if I was a little short. The truth is I’m exhausted.’
Georgie slanted a glance across to him. He was rubbing his eyes then he sat back on the sofa and briefly closed them.
He looked beyond exhausted.
She was staring at him when he opened his eyes and looked at her and, for a few seconds, the atmosphere was very still as the silence continued for a fraction longer than it should have.
Her heart began to thud.
Sexual awareness zipped through her. She wasn’t just admiring a good-looking guy. This wasn’t a detached appreciation of someone who stood out from the crowd and this didn’t feel at all like the harmless crushes she had had on guys in the past.
What she felt now was potent and overwhelming, an electric awareness of him that made her dampen and made her nipples tingle at the thought of being touched.
By him. By those long brown fingers at which she now seemed to be staring.
Her mouth went dry and she fought to try and get her scattered thoughts in order.
‘Well?’ he prompted.
‘I thought that perhaps you were embarrassed by me,’ she said in a rush, and just as quickly she finished the rest of her wine and covered the empty glass with her hand because no way was she going to have any more.
‘Embarrassed? Why would I be embarrassed by you?’
Georgie shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. What are the plans for tomorrow? Like I said, I know you sent me that email but I wasn’t sure whether we would be sticking to it rigidly. Is there anything you want me to book? I could do that.’
‘You don’t have to book anything. You’re not here in the capacity of my secretary. Why would I be embarrassed by you? And, yes, it matters. We’re going to be here for ten days. It matters if you’ve somehow got it into your head that…that what? Exactly?’
Georgie took a deep breath.
‘I’m quite a down-to-earth person,’ she said. ‘I don’t do designer clothes. I work with kids and when I’m not teaching them how to ski, I’m teaching them how to play sports. My entire wardrobe is comprised of comfy clothes.’
‘I’m not following you.’
‘I thought you’d woken up to the fact that your companion isn’t going to be decked out in expensive casual wear, with diamonds on my fingers and Gucci loafers on my feet. I’ve seen the crowd here. The clothes some of them are wearing could kit out the matchbox in London I haven’t even bought yet.’
‘Why are you so insecure? Trust me, nothing could have been further from my mind.’ He smiled and yawned.
‘Okay.’
‘I can tell you’re going to get along with Flora and, whatever I’ve said about not getting close to her, it’s a relief that there won’t be any tension between you.’
‘She’s a great kid.’
‘Back to what you said, though. Tell me where that came from.’
‘What?’
‘The fact that you felt insecure about not being decked out in the usual expensive nonsense that most women feel the need to wear.’
‘Remember I’ve seen all those pictures of you online. The women you go out with don’t seem to hang around in jeans and old tee shirts.’
‘We’re not going out, though. You’re not one of my women.
You can wear what you want to wear, but I thought that you might like to treat yourself to all the things you might not usually buy for yourself.
And you’re right, of course. The crowd here are the usual moneyed lot.
If you feel more comfortable blending in, then that’s fine.
If not, wear what you want, like I said.
The thick clothes you travelled in might be a little inappropriate, though.
At least, if you want to avoid heatstroke.
There’s no need for you to feel insecure about your looks. ’
Georgie reddened but his smile was warmly genuine and he looked as though he was enjoying the conversation, enjoying being in her company.
She felt a swoop of pleasure.
‘I guess I grew up comparing myself to my sisters. We’re only separated by a few years and they’re both older than me and more successful than me. Well, I say successful, they’ve become professionals. Katherine’s a lawyer and Emily’s a doctor.’
‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘They were bright and popular with boys and I suppose that as I was the youngest and maybe because I wasn’t as academic as they were I veered off in the opposite direction.
I decided I’d be the one who didn’t do girly and then I found my passion, teaching kids, and there was no need to ever do girly.
So coming here…’ she rolled her eyes and smiled, relaxed in a way that was surprising, given her reaction to him ‘…I feel out of my depth.’
‘You’re insecure.’
‘No, of course I’m not!’ But then she thought of Hans and the pain of feeling like an idiot when she’d caught him kissing that girl and then winking at her, pulling her into a conspiracy of agreeing with him that what they’d had had meant nothing, had all been a bit of a laugh.
She thought of the countless times she had laughed with the lads, played football with them, listened to their tales of woe with girlfriends and felt small inside because she would have so wanted to join in with the cool gang of girls with their flirty smiles and giggling gossip but had just not known how.
She’d boxed herself in, had been the tomboy in the family and after a while she hadn’t known how to unbox herself.
‘I’m boring you.’
‘I agree you don’t give off the impression of being insecure,’ he mused thoughtfully, ignoring her interruption.
‘Because I know how to dig my heels in and stick up for myself.’
‘Don’t knock it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a refreshing change from a lot of the women I’ve known in the past who make it their mission to never stick up for themselves just in case it offends me.’
Alessandro frowned because he had no idea how the conversation between them had meandered into the place it was now. There was work to do. He had a ton of emails to get through and various reports to look at.
He opened his mouth to rein it in but then looked at her and shifted.
She’d tugged her long plait over her shoulder and was idly playing with the end of it, twirling it between her fingers with a small frown on her face, as though her thoughts were a million miles away.
It was easy to feel insecure if you compared yourself to other people.
He had never suffered from that problem, even though he had grown up in lack.
From the minute he could understand the world around him, he’d set his eyes on the prize and gone for it with the energy of someone who fully believed in himself.
The goal at the end would be freedom, because that was the one and only thing money really bought.
Freedom from having anyone call the shots.
Everything else had been blocked out until Flora had come on the scene. Before her arrival, he had had no faith in relationships. Why would he? He had been abandoned by his father and had grown up in a world where things around him were transitory.
People came and went. In the case of his adolescent contemporaries, many in the direction of a jail.
His mother had been a constant, but he’d known from an early age that his father’s abandonment of them had broken her somewhere deep inside.
She, too, had learnt the pain of loving and having that love rejected.
With him, the pain of the child not comprehending the callousness of the parent and with his mother…
the pain of the wife whose love had nowhere to go, abandoned by the man she’d set her heart on with a child by her side to take care of.
The one constant?
The acquisition of power and wealth that would protect him from the frailty of human nature all around him. Love was loss and loss was pain. His daughter was the only one who held the key to his heart.
Unaccustomed to introspection, Alessandro dragged his eyes away from Georgie even though some wilful part of him wanted to remain with the conversation for a bit longer.
‘Moving on,’ he said, and she blinked and focused on him.
He looked at her with lowered eyes. She really was very pretty in an ultra-feminine way. Big brown eyes…that unruly tumble of hair…her slightly parted lips as though always on the verge of saying something. Her dewy-eyed innocence was captivating.
Finding himself staring, he frowned and cleared his throat.
The headache was back and worse.
‘Flora will probably be up early so maybe we should aim to start the day by eight-thirty. Breakfast downstairs. I’ll get someone at Reception to improve on the schedule I emailed you and we follow it.’
‘I’m not sure six-year-old kids adhere to that kind of military approach when it comes to having fun.’
‘No option. I don’t want to spend my time wandering around aimlessly because I want to be back at the hotel by one so that I can catch up on work.’
‘Okay.’
‘You can do whatever you want between one and six.’
‘Sure.’
‘Flora will be happy to watch television and, at four, I’ll do something with her, let her lead the way.’
‘She’ll love that,’ Georgie said warmly.
‘At six, we can go to the restaurant and she can have her dinner. Once she’s asleep, you can do as you wish because I’ll grab something and catch up on work.’
‘Do you ever stop working?’
‘Here. I’ll barely be working while I’m here.’
‘But what about all that catching up on stuff?’
‘My normal day stretches to a great deal more than catching up on stuff,’ he said wryly. ‘Do you have any questions about the timetable?’
‘Er…’
‘You have the email I sent you?’
‘Of course.’
‘You can look at it for guidance. It details all the suitable rides and my PA has helpfully calculated timings getting between them, allowing for occasional pit stops.’
‘That’s very efficient. Wow.’
‘Now, your clothes.’
‘Yes? My clothes?’