‘I didn’t think that was what I was doing. Anyway, it’s okay for you to preach about that. I bet you were born knowing you could conquer the world. I bet your first words were “I’m going to be a billionaire”.’
Alessandro looked at her in silence for a few seconds. She was tentatively sipping her coffee and looking at him over the rim of her cup, her huge brown eyes mildly inquisitive, mildly teasing.
It felt good being here, having this conversation. He realised just how little he confided in anyone. His mother, perhaps, was the only person in whom he trusted that whatever he said would remain private.
Climbing ladders and reaching the pinnacle of success brought a lot of things but it also took away a lot of things.
Trust was the first thing to go, although in fairness he’d probably dumped that when he was old enough to realise how dangerous it was.
If you couldn’t trust your own flesh and blood not to walk away from you when you were a baby, then who could you ever really trust without the promise of pain just round the corner?
Confiding in someone…also a thing of the past if it had ever been there.
He hadn’t even done that with his ex-wife.
He could buy whatever he wanted but right here, right now…thismoment in timefelt priceless.
‘Yes, you read me so well. Those were my first words.’ He grinned. ‘Seriously, though,’ he mused, ‘if you don’t have utter confidence in yourself, chances are you’ll never fulfil your potential and believe me when I tell you, I was always going to make sure that I fulfilled mine. Settling for mediocrity was never on the cards.’
‘Very driven.’
‘A lot of women find that sexy…’
He shot her a slow smile and kept his eyes fixed on her reddening face.
‘Not me,’ Georgie said unsteadily.
Alessandro lowered his eyes. He didn’t understand where that provocative remark had come from but there had been something in the atmosphere, something in their loose, semi-intimate conversation that had stirred his libido, had made him think of sex.And not for the first time…definitely not because he was bored because he had felt it, an odd pull of attraction, the minute he’d set eyes on her. So perplexing when she was nothing like the women he dated, when she was so careless with his boundaries, so comfortable telling him exactly what she thought, whether he wanted to hear it or not.
And her quick denial?
Very telling because he hadn’t believed a word of it.
He wasn’t interested in making a complicated situation even more complicated. He would follow her lead and relegate that brief, disturbing frisson between them to the bin.
Made sense.
He gritted his teeth as he battled with his suddenly lively libido and took a few deep breaths.
She wasn’t even his type! He’d never gone for slender girls who asked too many questions and ignored hiskeep outsigns.
Weird how sexy Georgie was…no make-up…hair everywhere…boyish figure when he usually went for the voluptuous ones…
She beamed at him and Alessandro instantly had to steady himself because it lit up all of her face and knocked him for six.
‘I… I should get to bed now, Alessandro.’ Georgie stood up and, as she did so, he reached out to circle her slim wrist with his hand.
‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate you being here,’ he said with rough sincerity. ‘I do.’
Georgie stared at him, mouth parted. She registered his eyes as they dropped to her mouth and lingered there for a few heart-stopping seconds.
The atmosphere thickened and she drew in a sharp breath as he rose to his feet to tower over her.
‘Well, thank you very much.’ She half laughed but her skin was burning where his fingers touched it. ‘A prison sentence is a surefire way of getting a girl to do what you want…’
‘You were never facing a prison sentence.’
This was a dangerous place.The ground was giving way under her feet and the curiosity she had backed away from had morphed into something darker and more powerful, a mad, incomprehensible hunger to touch that wasn’t like anything she’d ever felt before.
