Chapter Four
TWO DAYS LATER, Georgie was at Vancouver airport where she was due to meet Alessandro before they both flew to Orlando.
Everything had gone like clockwork from the second she’d agreed to go with him.
Money had been deposited into her bank account, more than she’d expected, with an accompanying text saying that she was to buy herself suitable casual wear, and she had been informed that a driver would collect her from his house in Whistler and deliver her to Vancouver airport.
Just as she was leaving the house her phone had pinged with another message from him.
Meet me in the first-class lounge. I will be there with my daughter. You’re a big girl. You don’t need me next to you to check in.
How rude, she’d absently thought when she’d read his message.
She had done her fair share of Internet sleuthing, not that it could be called sleuthing because you didn’t have to be a PI to find out about him.
The man was everywhere on the World Wide Web.
He was the real deal in the world of business.
Mostly she’d devoured the spread of images of him with various women in tow.
Most of them had been gazing at him with proprietorial adoration.
He came with bags of money, killer looks and obviously oodles of charm, but none of that charm had been wasted on her in the very brief messages he had sent her.
As a byline, she had skimmed over his meteoric rise to success with a lot of attention paid to his seemingly other-worldly talent at spotting trends in developing technology and his ability to make sharp decisions about dubious companies that always ended up turning to gold at his touch.
He’d told her, in passing, that he hadn’t been born rich, that he’d had to fight to get where he had, but there was very little about his background at all. Only mention of his scholarship to Yale and his sporting prowess, which was as impressive as his intellect.
No wonder he thought he could rule the world, she’d concluded. From rags to riches would do that to a person.
The driver had instructions to deliver her to the check-in desk but as he swung towards the airport, Georgie told him very firmly that he could do away with that task. Maybe Alessandro thought that she needed delivery to door in case she got cold feet at the last minute.
She was braced for what lay ahead. No cold feet and complete discretion.
Alessandro was trusting her on that front and it was very easy to remember that lazy suggestion of power he emanated, the sort of power that could grant wishes just as fast as it could punish in equal measure.
The truth was, though, that Georgie knew that discretion was something she could handle. She was talented when it came to keeping things to herself.
Underneath the perky, cheerful facade, she’d learnt to hide the hurt she’d felt, growing up, as she’d watched her older sisters and her friends get the Valentine’s Day cards and the eager phone calls from boys while she got the invites to play tag rugby with them on a Sunday morning.
She’d joined in with her friends in the jumbled years of adolescence but could never get serious enough about make-up and flirting and so had awkwardly hovered in the background in her jeans and sweatshirts, content to hear their tales of boyfriends and broken hearts, having her crushes and quietly putting them away every time they came to nothing.
How she’d hidden her unhappiness when boys had confided in her, never really seeing her as a blossoming woman. If she’d been starring in a movie, she would have been the bridesmaid but never the bride.
Then that miserable Hans episode. Putting it in perspective, she knew it hadn’t really been true love and her broken heart might mostly have been wounded pride, but it had still hurt and she had continued to put a smile on her face and carry on regardless.
So keeping stuff to herself? Definitely within her remit.
Events might have hurtled towards her with the suddenness of a sinkhole but there was a spring in her step as she made her way to the first-class check-in.
She checked in at the speed of light.
It was only when she was heading to the first-class lounge that she felt the first twinge of nerves.
Her phone pinged. Alessandro.
‘Checked in yet?’
The deep timbre of his voice made her heart skip a beat and she pulled over to the side and leaned against the wall by one of the coffee shops.
‘I’m just making my way to the first-class lounge.’
‘Good. Flora and I are here but before you meet my daughter there are a couple of things I need to discuss with you first. If you go past the reception area you’ll see a bank of sofas to the right. I’ll be waiting there.’
‘With Flora?’
‘I can leave her to amuse herself for fifteen minutes. I’ll make sure I can see her from where we’re sitting. She’s good at occupying herself.’
‘What else do we need to talk about? I haven’t breathed a word of anything to anyone, if that’s what you want to quiz me about.’
‘It’s not. I trust you not to have said anything to anyone. I’ll see you in twenty minutes. That should be plenty of time to wend your way there. Coffee, how do you take it? Or would you rather something else?’
‘Er…’
‘The flight leaves in an hour and a half so let’s move along, Georgie.’
‘Coffee. White. One sugar. Thank you.’ She could picture him impatiently looking at his watch.
‘No dawdling, please. I’ll see you in fifteen.’
Before she could launch into something sarcastic about dawdling being the furthest thing from her mind, he’d hung up and she sprinted with her pull-along, following signs to the lounge and getting there with barely any time to spare.
She spotted him as soon as she had managed to get past the three women guarding the lounge like gatekeepers on a mission to make sure no riff-raff managed to con their way into the sanctuary where only the wealthy were allowed.
Incipient nerves had disappeared in her haste to get to the meeting point but now they returned with a vengeance.
She felt instantly out of place.
She’d dressed for comfort and the cold, even though they would be heading to warmer temperatures because Florida would be basking in the twenties.
Her trousers were black, loose and fleece-lined and she had layered up so that she could strip off as necessary.
Vest, tee shirt, long-sleeved tee shirt and a cosy waterproof jacket because she would be returning to deep winter and would need it when she got back.
She doubted she would have the luxury of a chauffeur-driven car once her role was over.
When she looked at the tribe of smartly dressed, self-assured men and women in the lounge with their shiny patina of people living jet-setting, busy, expensive lives, she couldn’t help feeling just a tiny bit like a bag lady.
Alessandro was where he’d said he would be.
He had his computer in front of him and was frowning as he scrolled on it.
It gave her a couple of seconds to take him in and to realise that his masculine beauty hadn’t conveniently dimmed since she had last seen him.
He was dressed casually in dark grey trousers and a white shirt cuffed to the elbows and even among the wealthy, glamorous people around him, he managed to stand out.
It wasn’t just his beauty, although he truly was spectacular with his dark hair, his rich, burnished skin and the autocratic set of his features.
Something about him was compelling, which was why she was still staring like a star-struck teenager when he suddenly looked up and their eyes collided.
She reddened and walked quickly over to where he was sitting.
With every step she felt more like a fish out of water.
‘You made it,’ was the first thing he said when she was standing in front of him.
He closed his computer, glanced past her and then returned his dark eyes to her face.
She certainly hadn’t dressed to impress, he thought, taking in every inch of what she was wearing without seeming to notice at all.
He’d transferred her a generous amount of cash so that she could invest in the usual designer gear but if she had, then she had forgone that option for travelling.
Well, that was a first.
He was so accustomed to women dressing to impress that he almost did a double take now.
‘I know what you’re going to say.’
‘Why don’t you sit? I’ve ordered coffee.’ He signalled to someone behind her.
‘You’re going to tell me that I haven’t dressed appropriately.’
‘Was I? Thank you for reading my mind.’
‘Where is Flora?’
She twisted this way and that, gripped with curiosity, and then sat back as a pot of coffee and china cups were placed on the table in front of them, along with a little plate of interesting-looking savouries.
‘You’ll meet her soon enough but, as I said to you, there are a couple of things I feel we ought to get clear from the start.’
He poured her coffee, added milk and pushed it over to her.
‘Firstly, I touched on the fact that the less close you get to my daughter, the better.’
‘Yes, although I’m going to have to talk to her now and again or else she’s going to start getting suspicious if we don’t seem to know one another. People who are supposed to be going out usually spend a tiny amount of time in each other’s company.’
‘She’s six.’
‘I teach kids. You’d be surprised how quick they are at catching on at what’s happening around them.’
‘Naturally, yes, we’ll do one or two things together, but I’ve always made a point of not allowing any of the women I date to have any participation in that side of my life.
Unfortunately, I’m stuck with this situation but my ground rules remain roughly the same.
I will not allow my daughter to get close to anyone who will be vanishing from the scene.
In your case, vanishing from the scene in a matter of ten days. ’
He suddenly coughed, apologised and scowled.
‘Message received loud and clear.’
‘Next on the agenda, I want to remind you that this situation isn’t real.’