‘I have to admit—’ she lowered her voice from low to practically inaudible and shot a few glances around her ‘—I’ve never travelled like this in my life before.’
‘AndIhave to admit—’ he lowered his voice with similar drama ‘—that I never had myself until I did.’
‘It must have been incredible…you…er…okay, I think I might be about to overstep the brief.’
‘Really? Then take a step back.’
‘I read up on you. I just think it must have been incredible as you climbed the ladder until you got to a place where you could afford private jets and houses here, there and everywhere.’
Alessandro knew what he should say at this point.
He should add a third clause to the two he had already detailed. Clause one—don’t start building bonds with his daughter.
Clause two—don’t start getting ideas that he might be up for grabs, because he wasn’t.
And now clause three—don’t even begin to think about looking for a backstory and plumbing any depths.
Her brown eyes were calm and interested.
‘How old are you?’ he asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘Mid-twenties?’
‘I’m twenty-six. Why do you ask?’
‘You look younger or maybe…’ he thought back to that jaded feeling he’d had ‘…maybe you just make me feel a hell of a lot older.’
‘Older than what?’
‘Thirty-two. I feel a hell of a lot older because I’ve probably been through a hell of a lot more than you have. What’s it like where you grew up?’
‘Where I grew up…nice. Lots of countryside. I say nice…when you get to a certain age, it can be downright boring. But yes, growing up there was a lot of space. Cows and trees and stuff like that.’
‘Cows and trees and stuff like that.’
‘No cows or trees where you grew up?’
‘Alcohol, drugs and making sure to look over your shoulder when you walked the streets after dark. Not a cow in sight and trees were few and far between. Course, it’s a lot more gentrified now but, yes, that was where I grew up so I suppose it was incredible climbing the ladder and making it to the top.’
Alessandro felt the throb in his temples, the steady progress of a headache he hadn’t had when he’d headed to the airport earlier on.
He felt exhausted.
Exhausted and a little spaced out. Overtired? He’d been up until one in the morning working on emails.
He heard himself say, in a low, pensive voice, ‘Although it has to be said that the higher up the ladder you climb, the more you forget how strong the desire was to have all those incredible things within reach. The houses and yachts and jets lose their allure.’
‘I imagine so,’ Georgie murmured.
‘Right.’ He belatedly remembered the number three clause, which he had temporarily and inexplicably put to the back of his mind. ‘That’s our flight.’ He tapped Flora on her shoulder. ‘Time to board, my little flower.’
The six-year-old looked up at him and beamed at the endearment.
I will not get involved with this family, was what Georgie was thinking as they began bustling to go.I will not stick my oar into things so that I can be rebuffed yet again. I will definitely not speculate about father and daughter and those spaces between them, or anything else for that matter. Not my business.
Even though, she admitted to herself, she’d already started speculating, and those things he had said…
