‘Because I needed a few days somewhere till the worst was over with Alison’s chickenpox. I mean, this place is empty most of the time and I honestly had no idea you would be returning because the agency always gives advance notice as to when it’s going to be occupied. I didn’t think that you were going to show up out of the blue or else I would never have come here.’ Georgie hesitated, then looked at him from under her lashes. ‘I don’t get what’s going on. Why were you pretending that you knew me?’
Alessandro paused.
He hadn’t banked on any of this but now that the situation had presented itself, he recognised that he was in a bind.
The slip of a thing perched with barely concealed defiance opposite him was sharp, despite the tangle of long blonde hair and the big brown eyes and the heart-shaped face that emanated an air of sexy, foxy innocence.
Much as he was loath to admit it, he found himself, for the first time, on the back foot.
Unwittingly, she had become a participant in a charade and now what was he going to do about that?
How much was he willing to tell her? He was a billionaire. One phone call would confirm whether the woman genuinely cleaned for him, but, presuming that she did, then how fast was she going to recognise the weakness of his position and demand money in exchange for her complicity?
It was an unforeseen messy situation but, for the life of him, he could think of no way round it with Sophia there, ready to do her worst.
Of course, he could go downstairs and launch into the perfectly truthful explanation of why the woman was where she was, but he knew his ex-wife and knew that there was not a single thing she would believe about the story and, even if she believed all of it, there was no way she wouldn’t wilfully misinterpret the situation to her advantage.
There was nothing worse than a woman scorned and he’d been paying for that ever since their divorce.
‘I ask the questions here.’ He paused. ‘Your unauthorised presence here has complicated things.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘I involved you in a situation on the spur of the moment and believe me when I tell you that I am not a man who does anything on the spur of the moment.’
‘What’s the situation? The one that you involved me in? I mean, why didn’t you just say that you had no idea who I was?’
‘Like I said, it’s complicated and any information I choose to tell you will be strictly on a need-to-know basis. Right now, you have no need to know.’
‘You can’t involve me in whatever you have going on with your ex-wife and expect me to go along with it without question.’
‘You’re a trespasser on private property. Right now, your right to ask questions is limited.’
‘Technically I’m nota trespasser.’
‘Technically, if you want to push that point, we can leave it up to a judge to decide. If I were you, I wouldn’t start putting bets on you winning the case.’
He was staring at her with a thoughtful frown, leaving Georgie ample time to consider her lack of options.
‘Okay,’ he eventually said with unconcealed reluctance. ‘I suppose you might deserve some sort of explanation, which isn’t an invitation to ask questions. My ex-wife is a suspicious woman and it would have… complicated my life had she thought that you were…’ He shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair.
‘Some floozy you happened to have staying in your chalet?’
‘That’s a crude way of putting it, but yes.’
‘Why would she care, if you’re divorced? Unless she wants to get back together with you?’
‘That question comes under the category of ones there’s no point asking because you won’t be getting an answer. First things first though—however foolhardy it may have been on my part to drag you into a temporary charade, I want to make it perfectly clear that this does not give you…’
He allowed the silence to thicken between them and, in that silence, Georgie could read the direction of his thoughts as clearly as if they had been written on his forehead in neon lettering.
He was rich, he was powerful and he was, at this precise moment, vulnerable because he had been forced into putting on a show in front of his ex-wife for reasons she couldn’t fathom and knew didn’t concern her.
He was a man who never acted on impulse but he had been forced into doing so. Did he think that she would now somehow use the situation to blackmail him? All the cards were in his favour because if he decided to launch some sort of lawsuit against her, then he’d win, hands down. It wouldn’t just be a case of her getting the sack and losing her cleaning job.
Her lips thinned as she fought to contain her temper.
‘Give me what? The right to try and get money out of you? Even though you already made sure to tell me that I’d be in trouble if I didn’t go along with your make-believe scenario that we knew one another? That you would be willing to involve the authorities? Honestly? I don’t think trying to get money out of you would be worth a stint in prison.’
