Chapter Seven #2
‘That’s a shame. Does she get to see your mother often? My parents can’t wait to be grandparents. If my mum could knit, she would have already started. She’s shameless.’
‘I don’t…no… I don’t see my mother as much as I’d like.
She lives in Italy now. First thing I did after I made my first million was to set her up close to family there.
I try and get her across at least twice a year but it’s always a matter of fitting it in.
Time has a habit of taking over and suddenly you find you’re in deficit. ’
‘I’m not making you uncomfortable, am I?’ she queried innocently. ‘With all my personal questions?’
‘I’m a big boy. I can take it in my stride. You’re a big girl. You can take it in your stride when I ask you a few of my own. Can’t you? You don’t feel uncomfortable, do you?’ His lips twitched with sudden amusement.
Georgie ignored that. ‘If you really want to do something, you make the time. It’s easy to just put stuff off and then say, afterwards, that you were too busy. That’s just lame.’
For a second, Alessandro felt his hackles rise and then wryly realised that he had become so accustomed to other people never disagreeing with him that he wasn’t exactly sure how to react to her honesty.
The taboo thrill of the unknown was nudging something in him he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Ever since his hungry days, when life had still held risk and adventure and the possibility of failure.
‘Lame? Tell me you’re not calling me lame…
’ But his eyes roved over her face, lowered to gauge the small, delicate bump of her breasts, and he wondered what they would feel like in the palm of his hands, wondered what her nipples would taste like and how she’d respond.
‘Let’s retreat to the sofa, Georgie. I’m finished with this food. Are you?’
‘Such a shame that there’s food going to waste but I’m stuffed. Alessandro… I should really be hitting the sack now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’
‘Not enjoying our conversation?’ The murmured question hung in the air between them and he could see, in that fraction of a hesitating second, that, like him, she was conscious of that sizzle of something electrifying and inexplicable that neither of them could put a finger on.
‘Have a coffee with me,’ he urged, standing up and moving towards the sofa. ‘Make a feeble, lame old man happy.’
Was he flirting with her?
Georgie’s pulses began to race. He couldn’t be. Could he?
He shot her a look over his shoulder and half smiled and her mouth went dry.
‘I suppose…there’s no harm…’
‘But only if you promise not to play the agony aunt.’
‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be retiring to bed, Alessandro?’
‘I feel passable now that the tablets have kicked in. Once they start wearing off, I’ll be a good patient and tuck myself under the covers and try and get some sleep.’
‘Okay…’ She hovered. This was certainly not like being one of the lads. But then what was it? He wasn’t interested in her as a woman. He’d made a point of telling her that she shouldn’t start thinking that what they had was real, because it wasn’t.
So, what was he doing?
Was she imagining something exciting and sexual and unspoken going on between them? Maybe her lack of experience with the opposite sex had made her gullible when it came to reading signals that weren’t there.
She remembered the thought that had occurred to her earlier.
Sexy guy…nothing to do…bored and not averse to a little fun…and here she was, the perfect na?ve target, nothing like those experienced glamour pusses he dated who would have known just how to handle the situation.
‘I take my coffee black.’ He jolted her out of her frantic reverie and she blinked and focused. ‘No sugar.’
‘Okay.’
‘And then you can do the talking.’ He patted the space next to him on the sofa. ‘I have a sore throat.’
‘You should really see a doctor, Alessandro.’
‘My masculine pride couldn’t handle it.’
But he was smiling with his eyes half closed, sprawled on the sofa, his long legs extended and lightly crossed at the ankles, his fingers linked loosely together on his stomach.
A big, powerful predator temporarily at rest was what she was thinking as she made them both a cup of coffee and then, as an afterthought and because she hated waste, a plate with some cheese and biscuits on it.
He smiled when he saw that.
‘I can’t bear to think of these lovely home-made biscuits being chucked out.’ She flushed and sat where he had patted, except not quite as close as he’d indicated. She stuck the plate with the cheese and biscuits between them like a physical barrier.
‘You’re so different, Georgie. Tell me why you are the way you are.’
‘Again, you’re talking in riddles.’
‘You don’t seem to have a lot of guile. I know that you’re still young but you seem so innocent. I like that.’
‘You like it because it’s different,’ Georgie pointed out with prosaic honesty. ‘If you were surrounded with lots of women like me, you’d soon be bored and desperate to meet someone like your…er…’
‘Like my ex-wife?’
‘I don’t know what she’s like so I can’t say anything about her and, anyway, I’m not interested.’
‘Not curious at all?’
‘No.’ She gulped a mouthful of hot coffee and swallowed it down.
‘I don’t believe you, because I’m curious about you.’
‘And because you’re curious about me, you think that it’s inevitable that I’m likewise curious about you?’
‘You’re good at getting to the heart of the matter.’
‘Well, that’s very egotistical. Besides… I thought…that wasn’t allowed,’ Georgie said breathlessly. ‘Curiosity…’
‘I know. It wasn’t but I didn’t expect to find myself bedridden on day one.’
‘I don’t know what that has to do with anything.’
‘I’m usually always in control, but this time I don’t have control over whatever germs are having fun inside me so maybe I’m not thinking as logically as I normally would be.
Hence, I’m curious and you’re curious too.
Tell me why you were never tempted to follow the sister who went into medicine.
Isn’t that along the same lines as teaching?
Both in the caring profession but with one being a little more up close and personal with the human body? ’
Georgie blushed.
Dyslexia was the thing she rarely discussed even though, logically, she knew that that was silly because it was so widely recognised as a diagnosed disability.
If she had to declare it, as had been the case during her work career, then she did, but it was mostly something she kept to herself.
Was it because, for those years before she was diagnosed, she had become accustomed to feeling a little second best?
Had a certain amount of insecurity around it become ingrained in her psyche? Making her think that to admit to it would be opening herself up to pity?
If that was the case, then it defied logic because no one in her family had ever made her feel inferior in any way, but then emotions sometimes bypassed logic.
‘I’ve always been more of an outdoorsy type,’ she said vaguely. ‘As a kid I couldn’t sit still long enough to do well enough to get all the exam results that would have qualified me to do something serious with my life. I found my level. It may not be as important as what my sisters do but—’
‘Don’t say that,’ Alessandro interrupted sharply.
‘What? Don’t say what?’
‘What you do is incredibly important and incredibly serious. I’ve never seen Flora so engaged as when she got back here with you, so what you do? Incredibly important.’
‘Oh. Okay. Well. Thanks.’ She went bright red.
‘And…you shouldn’t put yourself down.’
‘I didn’t think that was what I was doing. Anyway, it’s okay for you to preach about that. I bet you were born knowing you could conquer the world. I bet your first words were “I’m going to be a billionaire”.’
Alessandro looked at her in silence for a few seconds. She was tentatively sipping her coffee and looking at him over the rim of her cup, her huge brown eyes mildly inquisitive, mildly teasing.
It felt good being here, having this conversation. He realised just how little he confided in anyone. His mother, perhaps, was the only person in whom he trusted that whatever he said would remain private.
Climbing ladders and reaching the pinnacle of success brought a lot of things but it also took away a lot of things.
Trust was the first thing to go, although in fairness he’d probably dumped that when he was old enough to realise how dangerous it was.
If you couldn’t trust your own flesh and blood not to walk away from you when you were a baby, then who could you ever really trust without the promise of pain just round the corner?
Confiding in someone…also a thing of the past if it had ever been there.
He hadn’t even done that with his ex-wife.
He could buy whatever he wanted but right here, right now…this moment in time felt priceless.
‘Yes, you read me so well. Those were my first words.’ He grinned.
‘Seriously, though,’ he mused, ‘if you don’t have utter confidence in yourself, chances are you’ll never fulfil your potential and believe me when I tell you, I was always going to make sure that I fulfilled mine.
Settling for mediocrity was never on the cards. ’
‘Very driven.’
‘A lot of women find that sexy…’
He shot her a slow smile and kept his eyes fixed on her reddening face.
‘Not me,’ Georgie said unsteadily.
Alessandro lowered his eyes. He didn’t understand where that provocative remark had come from but there had been something in the atmosphere, something in their loose, semi-intimate conversation that had stirred his libido, had made him think of sex.
And not for the first time…definitely not because he was bored because he had felt it, an odd pull of attraction, the minute he’d set eyes on her.
So perplexing when she was nothing like the women he dated, when she was so careless with his boundaries, so comfortable telling him exactly what she thought, whether he wanted to hear it or not.
And her quick denial?