Chapter One #3
When Leo had suggested inviting them all to the wedding she’d refused, for her mother, father and brother at least, saying they were estranged.
Her sister, who she’d admitted to him when their arrangement was settled had needed her help, remained a mystery.
Something about her health. That was all Simone would say on the subject.
His interest had been piqued because there might have been a similarity between them he’d been unaware of before.
Although for that very reason he’d let further discussion slide.
Simone was entitled to her secrets. Hell knew, he was keeping enough secrets of his own.
No one knew he was the son of Vito Silvestri. Leo would never give his father the satisfaction of acknowledging him in any way.
‘Amore mio? Isn’t that a little…unnecessary,’ Simone whispered, jolting him from his thoughts about the man who’d donated his genetic material to Leo’s life and nothing else.
Leo leaned forwards, his lips at her ear. What would the guests think? That they were having a tender moment? He hoped so.
‘Accept the endearment,’ he murmured, his cheek against hers. Simone’s breath hitched and something warm and potent slid in his belly like a shot of Grappa.
‘What should I call you, then?’
For so long she’d called him Mr Zanetti or Sir. When she finally used his first name, he’d liked the sound of it on her lips. Leonardo. Leo. The way she said it, as if she was savouring each syllable.
‘Whatever you want.’
There was a moment of hesitation, almost a misstep in their otherwise synchronous dance.
‘What about… Pumpkin?’
Dio. With that one word she could destroy his reputation overnight.
Yet the question carried a smile. He could hear it in the light, playful tone of her voice.
Leo wished he’d seen it on her face, since her smiles were rare and fragile things more often granted to others, such as juniors in the office who needed encouragement.
Most of the time she treated him with bland professionalism.
He chuckled and she pulled back from him grinning. Her eyes twinkled under the chandeliers adorning the room. Her look of mirth burst like a firework in his chest.
He leaned forwards again. His lips now barely touched her ear.
The tease of them achingly close, the desire to connect and hear her sigh in pleasure, sang through him.
This was not how things were supposed to be, his reactions unfamiliar after two years of them working together in a way that was entirely businesslike.
‘Let’s stick with Leo. Though I can teach you words of love in Italian should you so wish, cara.’
A tremor ran through her, like a fault line suddenly cracking. What was he thinking? Simone was a woman who’d been clear about what she’d wanted from him and what she didn’t. It had aligned with his views perfectly.
He’d rejected any idea of marrying, until his reported playboy past became an impediment to the Tessitore family, whose heritage textile company had been family owned for hundreds of years.
In all the wargaming over a possible buyout, it was the only sticking point he and his marketing department could see to him purchasing it.
The Tessitores’ increasingly concerned comments about his stability and Circolo’s plans for succession.
In truth, he had none. No desire for marriage or family, unlike his father whose own family seemed to be a small and perfect Italian success story.
Yet what nobody knew was that the immensely successful Silvestri company had been started on the back of his mother’s designs.
Stolen when his father had left his mother and Leo behind.
‘Leo, then,’ she whispered, the brush of her breath caressing his cheek.
‘Perfetto.’
He pulled back and looked down on her again.
She’d picked up some Italian in their time together and this was another word she clearly understood, as a whisper of pink flushed her high cheekbones.
He couldn’t explain why witnessing her awareness of him appealed, because it shouldn’t have.
Their relationship wasn’t one built on romance. Both had agreed on that.
Passion, however, was another matter entirely. Could still waters run deep?
What would it be like to dive in and find out?
‘Nothing’s ever perfect, Leo. Not even you.’
It was a salutary reminder of her opinion of him.
So many executive assistants he’d employed had been…
unsettled by him in some way. Female, male, younger, older.
It made no difference. Except her. After her three-month probation had ended with a permanent contract, she’d stalked into his office with a spoken demand.
Stop dazzling the staff, Mr Zanetti.
It was rather like being attacked by a tiny kitten.
He enjoyed her claws.
Although she never appeared dazzled or affected by him at all.
She seemed wholly unfazed. But as he’d told her, it was hard not to dazzle when you regularly hit the top ten world’s best-looking men lists.
It wasn’t that he was vain; rather, Leo was pragmatic about the realities of his situation, as he’d told her.
It comes with the territory, Ms Taylor.
After that, he’d smiled and she’d turned on her practical heels and stalked right out again.
The mood had been set between them on that day and it hadn’t changed much since.
‘You’re poor for my ego, Simone.’
Her face might have seemed impassive, but he glimpsed a silvery spark in her eyes. He didn’t know why he thought so, but he almost heard her wanting to roll them.
‘Stop. What I say has no impact on your rudely healthy ego. None. At. All.’
Funny that was exactly the same as he’d thought of her. His words were like rain from a roof, water off a duck’s back.
‘Does anything I say have an impact on yours?’
She cocked her head. ‘You think I have an ego?’
He didn’t doubt it, given how they’d become engaged.
As his executive assistant, Simone had been fully aware of his efforts to find a wife, the reasons for his sudden quest for matrimony.
She’d located a world-renowned matchmaker and worked with his lawyer to ensure his wishes were documented in an appropriate pre-nuptial agreement, in anticipation of a marriage.
Yet he’d been overcome by frustration at the process, how the women he’d been matched with never seemed quite right.
They’d been looking for love, or at least for something more.
They weren’t interested in his work, when his work was his life and what drove him.
The efforts to meet someone and engage in something with the hope of it being forever had become increasingly tedious, because his whole life so far had been about the temporary. The reset to permanence was an uncomfortable one. It didn’t feel right, like wearing a poorly-made suit.
In a frustrated moment, after a failed lunch date with yet another beautiful woman who didn’t fit, he’d returned to the office, glimpsed Simone and spat out the almost careless but perhaps his most insightful words he ever said.
Why can’t I find someone like you?
She’d cocked her head at him, just like she’d done tonight, fixed him with her assessing gaze and then given the fateful reply.
Maybe you can.
What had started out as something entirely fanciful, sparked an idea that sunk its teeth into him and wouldn’t let go. That in a world of people who wanted things he wouldn’t give, here was a woman who only sought what he could.
In the beginning his negotiations were cautious because he valued Simone more as his executive assistant than anything else.
His right hand in so many ways. Yet she’d been clear, harbouring no secret desires for love.
She wanted her job, and money she couldn’t raise even with her generous wage, to help her sister Holly.
Some tweaks to their pre-nuptial agreement and it was done. No need for any more dinners or painful ‘getting-to-know-you’ sessions, since both of them knew enough about the other to make the arrangement work.
And what they didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt them.
‘You propositioned me, so you clearly believed you were worth it.’
The corner of her lips tilted in an enigmatic, Mona Lisa smile.
Had Da Vinci ever sought to discover what was going through his subject’s mind as he immortalised one of the most famous smiles in history?
Because for Leo, what was going through his wife’s mind had begun to intrigue him in ways he hadn’t thought possible.
‘You accepted, so you clearly understood I was.’
It was an enticing exchange. Their banter, such as it was when Simone was only his assistant, had always been professional. Now, with this woman in his arms, there was a whisper of something more. Yet she still regarded him with her wintry grey eyes, impassive and confounding.
‘Once the seed was sown, Simone, I never had any doubt.’
A truth, in his carefully crafted life of lies.
The music began to slow, then stop. From the perfectly timed running sheet, Leo knew this was the end of the evening.
He let Simone go and she moved away from him, stepping to his side.
For a brief and unscripted moment he wanted to tell the band to start up again, so they could have one last dance, where he could hold her and they could continue this push and pull, and then he might find out what she truly thought of him.
However, that would ruin the theatre of the evening, so he restrained himself as his guests clapped and they moved to what should have been the perfect send off.
Except it wasn’t perfect, when all he wished for was the impossible.
To have Simone in his arms again.