‘I’m afraid you don’t have a choice in the matter.’
‘I do!’
‘Tell me what your choice is. I’m curious.’
Georgie looked at him with a downturned mouth. Did she have a choice? No. Not really. Of course, she could lose her job and that would be unfortunate but bearable. She could, however, lose everything here and, worse than that, he could summon in the police and rightfully accuse her of breaking and entering, key or no key.
She paled at the vision of herself malingering in a cell somewhere, with only a handful of rats for company. Hadn’t there been a film about that?
‘Good. We’re in agreement. Normally, as you might have guessed,’ he mused, ‘I would be concerned that you might be tempted to trade a juicy story for money, whatever you have to say about being as quiet as the grave, but you’re smart enough to realise that to do so would bring the full force of my displeasure down on you.’
Alessandro allowed that to sink in. Should he consider getting her to sign an NDA? It would mean involving a lawyer and he didn’t want that. Besides, gut feeling told him that any threat of getting the police involved was enough to guarantee her co-operation.
‘This evening, you can stay put.’ He frowned. ‘Have you eaten anything?’
‘I was on my way to get myself some dinner when I was hijacked.’
‘Hijacked. Provocative word. I can’t remember any woman accusing me of hijack before. In fact, I’d say that there were quite a few times when it felt enjoyably the other way around. Okay. I can bring something up for you. I’m assuming that, as you’ve set up camp here, the fridge is nicely stocked?’
Georgie was torn between thinking about him being hijacked by a woman,‘enjoyably hijacked’, whatever that meant, and the food she had bought and nonchalantly left in the fridge when she’d been busy treating the mansion like her own private playground.
‘I only planned on staying a few days, like I told you,’ she mumbled, ‘so, no, there isn’t heaps of food and there’s no need to bring me anything. I find that I’ve completely lost my appetite.’
Alessandro shrugged and stood up.
‘Suit yourself. I’m going to head downstairs now and I’ll see you later, nicely settled in my bedroom where I can keep an eye on you. And don’t worry, there won’t be any bed sharing. You can make yourself at home on the sofa in the sitting room in my suite.’
‘The sofa?’
‘That’s right. You don’t think that I’m about to give up my bed for someone who shouldn’t be in my house in the first place, do you?’ He looked at her incredulously. ‘At any rate, you will probably cross paths with Sophia tomorrow morning for five minutes and, once she’s gone, you’ll be free to return to the slopes and carry on doing whatever you’ve been doing there. I’m assuming you do do something for the remainder of the week when you’re not cleaning my house?’
‘Is this another question you’re asking even though you’re not that interested in the answer?’
‘Correct. I was ending things on a polite note.’ He glanced at his watch then stared at her for a couple of seconds. ‘I’m not sure what time I’ll be back in the room. No need to wait up.’
With that he was gone and Georgie sprang into action.
She raced upstairs and gathered the scant belongings she had brought with her, making sure to leave the bedroom as neatly tidied as if no one had stepped foot inside.
Her head was all over the place. What was going on? In a weird way, she was lucky that whatever was going on between him and his ex-wife had meant that he had had to involve her in a conspiracy. If he’d just rocked up to find her in his house, she had no idea how he would have reacted. She would probably have been promptly marched down to the nearest police station and tossed into a cell.
She thought about all the valuable artifacts dotted around the chalet and shuddered at the thought of him jumping to conclusions that she might have been after them.
As soon as she was in the master bedroom, she did a quick check on her computer and confirmed that he was, indeed, who he said he was.
Already panicked and in a rush,just in case another just-in-case moment happened and he came in just as she was reading all about him, not that anyone could blame her, Georgie merely glanced at the highlights, which seemed to be scores of pictures of him with a varying line-up of sexy women clinging to him like limpets.
Then she slammed shut her laptop and took a few moments to look around her.
The space eclipsed everything she had seen in the chalet. Same floor-to-ceiling windows but with a massive uber-modern fireplace that anchored the room. The bed was enormous, with a plush headboard and linen that was, as she swept her hand over it, soft and silky. Definitely eight-million thread count. There was a dressing room and then the bathroom, which she ignored because she wasn’t going to be using it. She’d already spotted separate facilities off the sitting area in which she would be sleeping. The sitting area itself was large enough for a huge cream sectional sofa and oversized armchairs, which framed yet another fireplace with a flat-screen TV to the side.
There was even an outside terrace with private access to a hot tub. Very swish, considering it would be used only once in a blue moon.
Georgie knew where everything was in the chalet. She fetched bed linen and made up the sectional sofa quickly and efficiently, but could she relax and actually get to sleep? No.
She wondered what he would have told his ex about her absence from the scene. In his high-octane world, women were probably there to be seen and not heard. As an ex-wife, she was probably used to that, poor woman. Maybe she had once been fiery and independent but had ended up squashed and subdued. Maybe that was why she remained so bitter and angry.
From the little she had seen, Alessandro Barbieri was forceful, arrogant and commanding. She thought that he was probably very good at making women angry.
