Chapter Nine #3
‘But when will I see you again?’ Flora had asked, staring up at her with an anxious frown.
‘Soon!’ Georgie had said with forced cheer. ‘As soon as I get to grips with some work issues!’ She’d stooped to Flora’s level, smoothed her velvety purple jumper with its bright pink embroidered Disney character and kissed her on the forehead.
But she’d felt terrible.
Now, after a week, she was back into her routine and plastering a smile on her face while she fudged questions about where she’d been.
‘Getting away from your horrible germs.’ She’d swiped Alison with a tea towel, laughing as they’d cooked dinner together the evening before.
‘I know you had a family thing, Georgie, and you don’t want to talk about it but, seriously…no hot guys in Florida?’
Georgie had quickly changed the subject because immersing herself in a couple of necessary white lies was one thing, expanding on them was another.
She hadn’t heard a word from Alessandro. She was due to clean his house on the Sunday and it was going to take lots of deep breathing, willpower and maybe even smelling salts not to wallow in nostalgia. Did she have it in her? She would find out soon enough.
Right now, though…
It was a little after seven in the evening. She was on her own in the house. Alison and Claire were both out and wouldn’t be back for ages.
As it stood, though, she was in good company. She had her tabloid newspapers and a selection of gossip mags. Maybe they would take her mind off her messy, painful, tortured thoughts.
Curled up on the sofa with a plate of doughnuts she’d bought earlier, a cup of coffee and with the telly playing in the background, it took her minutes to flick past the obligatory everything-that-was-wrong-in-the-world front pages to the gossip selection in the middle of the paper.
Mere minutes before she saw the full-blown image dominating the double spread and, with a sickening lurch in her gut, registered the dramatic headline above it.
Alessandro stared down at the photo of himself in the trashy tabloid his PA had kindly put on his desk the evening before with an apologetic note that he might want to have a look.
He got why.
Being snapped occasionally with a woman on his arm came with the territory. He was a billionaire, he was eligible and, without a trace of vanity, he knew that he was good-looking.
And he went to places a lot of people could only dream of going to. Premieres, exclusive fundraisers, boxes at sporting events where it wasn’t unusual to spot members of the royal family. Paparazzi were drawn to those venues like bees to honey.
But this…was in a league of its own.
He snatched up the paper, stared at the picture of him and his ex-wife for a few grim seconds and then, yet again, scowled at the glaring headlines announcing with salacious glee that a reunion looked as though it was on the cards.
The picture bolstered the headline.
Sophia was clutching his arm and looking up at him with an adoring smile on her face. He, in turn, was staring down at her, half shielding his eyes from the glare of the still cold winter sun in Manhattan.
They were the perfect loved-up couple. Of course, the truth couldn’t have been further from that but…
He walked over to the window of his office, which sat on the top four floors of an iconic skyscraper.
From here, you couldn’t even see people down below on the crowded lunchtime streets. All you could see was what was directly outside the panes of glass and that was the blue of a winter sky and the scudding of white clouds.
Would Georgie have seen that picture? Read the article, which was rife with ridiculous speculation? And if she had…
Alessandro groaned and raked his fingers through his hair.
He’d planned on seeing her. He knew that she would be cleaning his house on the following day, the Sunday, or, as she had laughingly put it, wafting a feather duster over a bunch of surfaces you could see your reflection in.
He’d resigned himself to a conversation that would very likely not go his way, but what happened now?
He grabbed his coat and exited his office at speed. There was no one around because it was nine-thirty on a Saturday evening and anyone with any kind of life to speak of wasn’t in an office building.
He would take his private jet to Vancouver and drive to his house. He wouldn’t wait for her in the house because he didn’t want to startle her. He would wait until she was there and he would ring the doorbell of his own house and wait for her to answer it.
Like someone paying a visit. Crazy, but desperation, he realised, made a person do crazy things.
Desperation and love.
Love. It still left him shaken when he thought about how deeply he had fallen into an emotion he’d thought he could never, would never, feel.
Years of building his defences, sealing himself away from anything that could promise hurt and yet… Georgie had walked away from him and he had felt tears in his eyes and a hollowness in his heart that made him want to sit on the pavement and bury his head in his hands.
He’d done nothing. He’d been paralysed by panic and terror at a place he’d never thought he’d be in. It had been as though the familiar contours of the world had shifted so while everything looked the same, nothing felt the same.
He would think things through. He would let the dust settle. He would come to terms with…the wild, uncontrolled feeling of being vulnerable.
And then he would see her because he had to. But now…with that article out there in the public domain…
It was going to be a very different visit from the one he had originally planned, before Sophia had pulled her last stunt at his expense.
Georgie was wafting the feather duster. Every time she went into a different room in Alessandro’s house, she was assaulted by vivid memories of meeting him for the first time, drowning in those dark eyes.
She remembered the first feel of his hand on her and that feathery non-kiss that had made her shiver all over.
Then she thought about that headline, thought about him and Sophia getting back together, rebuilding their little family unit, and she wanted to dump the feather duster, grab the rolling pin from the kitchen drawer and run through the house breaking everything that could be broken, screaming out her agony and heartache.
She’d known what the deal was when she’d got involved with him.
She’d known that he was off-limits. She’d stupidly, nonchalantly, mistakenly assumed that past hurt would protect her from making another mistake, especially when he’d made it clear that she wasn’t to start thinking that what they had was real.
Yet she’d fallen in love with him and now, not only was she dealing with her shattered heart, but she was also having to deal with the cold fact that somehow their brief liaison had propelled him into a change of heart with his ex-wife.
Was it because, for the first time, he had spent undiluted time with his daughter in the company of someone who joined in?
Had her presence there, the way she’d bonded with Flora, led him to the belief that he might have ditched his marriage prematurely?
That there remained things there that could be salvaged?
That he and Sophia could find a way to being the family they should have been when Flora had been born?
Maybe he’d finally realised that he’d made his fortune and he could slow down and, in slowing down, could devote the time and energy needed to be a parent and a husband.
She wanted to take something positive from the experience, wanted to be the bigger person and feel happy that she had been instrumental in him finding the right path and, in so doing, opening up his relationship with Flora so that he could become the best dad she knew he had the potential to be.
Unfortunately, it was a work in progress. At the moment she was going down rabbit holes thinking about him.
She wondered whether she’d done the right thing walking away and then immediately told herself that she had, only to quickly start imagining what life would look like right now if she’d taken him up on his offer.
Rabbit hole.
She swept the feather duster round the sitting room with a flourishing touch by the door and stood back to look at her handiwork, not that much work had been involved.
Between their leaving the house and returning to it, the agency had obviously been told to send someone in to do an interim job, and so Georgie had had very little to do on her first day back.
She was heading to the kitchen where she would finish things up when she heard the doorbell and it was such a shock that, for a few seconds, she froze.
She’d never been interrupted doing her cleaning duties before. Ever. Except that one time. But, of course, it couldn’t be Alessandro because he wouldn’t be ringing his own doorbell.
Which could only mean that it was someone from the agency who’d come to give her her walking papers.
Why not?
Alessandro was on a different path now and the milk of human kindness had probably had time to curdle.
Just thinking about her cleaning his house would be a sorry reminder of a past he wanted to make sure he never bumped into again.
She steeled herself before opening the front door. She pulled it open, braced for bad news and there he was…
Shock tightened every muscle in her body. Her mouth fell open and she stared at him until she could feel the searing heat inside her pour into her cheeks.
She would have slammed the door.
She very nearly did until she remembered that this was actually his house.
And then it hit her. He was a decent guy. Wasn’t that part of the reason she’d fallen in love with him? Because beneath the arrogance and the polished exterior and the cool self-assurance, he was a really good guy?
He’d come to personally break the news to her because they’d slept together and he’d think that she deserved an explanation.
Oh God. It was going to be a pity fest from him and she couldn’t bear the thought of it.
‘Georgie.’
‘Hi, Alessandro.’ Georgie cleared her throat. ‘I was just on my way out, actually. I just have the kitchen to get through. Why are you here? I mean, why did you ring the doorbell? Have you forgotten your key?’
‘Can I enter my own house?’
Georgie stepped aside but as soon as he was inside, she swung round to look at him and pressed herself against the closed door.
God, he looked stupendous.
Charcoal-grey cashmere coat…black jeans…black jumper…
‘I know why you’ve come,’ she said in a burst of might-as-well-get-it-out-of-the-way opener.
‘Let’s sit down.’
His eyes met hers, dark and steady and destabilising.
‘Georgie, I came here to talk to you and it’s a conversation that can’t be had by the front door.’
He reached out his hand and she looked at it incredulously. Did she look so feeble that he thought he needed to give her a hand in case she couldn’t unglue herself from the front door?
She drew in a deep breath and handed him the feather duster, which she was still holding.
‘Congratulations,’ she said coolly. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I saw the article in the papers.’
‘I thought you might have.’
‘We don’t have to sit down for a heart-to-heart about your reconciliation with your ex-wife, Alessandro. Like we both know, what we had was a passing fling. You don’t owe me any explanations.’
‘Come on.’
He strode off, looked back over his shoulder and Georgie reluctantly followed him towards the kitchen. He pulled a chair out for her and then sat right next to the chair he’d pulled out.
‘Why did you ring the doorbell?’
‘Because I didn’t want to wait in the house for you to show up.’
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘Sit, Georgie. Please. Would you? I checked with the agency.’ He looked at her resentful, distrustful face and had to steel himself against the uphill task staring him in the face.
‘I planned on…coming here…seeing you, talking to you before that article came out. I know what you’re thinking. I can read it on your face but let me explain.’
God, he’d missed her.
Missed her ready laugh, missed the way she teased him, missed the way her small body curved against his.
She’d left and he’d known. Known that he’d fallen in love with her, that all the wisdom he’d shored up from his disadvantaged childhood and disillusioning marriage had not been enough to stop her from getting to him.
She hadn’t even had to try.
‘I told you, no explanations needed. I’ve moved on.’
‘Don’t say that. Please.’
‘Not that there was anything to move on from. A bit of fun. That’s all there was to it. I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some? And then I’ll finish cleaning here and make a move because I have things to do.’
She stood up abruptly, lowering her eyes and shielding her expression.
He watched her turned back, longed for her…wanted her to turn around, to meet his eyes, and yet was grateful for the reprieve because it gave him a chance to work out what he was going to say.