Glancing at Julian, he asked, ‘Did you like her?’
Julian shrugged. ‘She was okay.’
Hardly a glowing endorsement. ‘Have you liked any of them?’
There was no response to that one, just Julian looking at him with those big, solemn eyes. ‘Whodoyou like?’ he asked in frustration.
‘Nat,’ Julian said, and turned back to theTV.
Of course.
Nat, who couldn’t mind her own business. Nat, who spoke her mind. Nat of the lift. Nat, who he’d dreamt about every night since they’d met.
Why did it have to beher?
But… Alessandro looked down at his son and sighed. Julian wanted Nat. So, Nat it was. That he could do.
Hopefully.
5
‘That’ll be ten dollars and twenty cents, please,’ said the woman at the cash register.
Nat was fishing around her bag to grab her phone to pay for the sandwiches and drink on her tray when a very male voice from behind said, ‘Take it out of this.’
Every nerve ending in her body leaped as the authoritative tone washed over her and she glanced over her shoulder. Even not trapped in a lift with him – was that only yesterday? – his sheer masculinity had her heart doing a funny shimmy in her chest. She frowned, both at her unwanted response and his offer to buy her lunch.
‘I pay my own way,’ she said, annoyed that Alessandro was both arrogant enough to presume and able to make her body feel so alive – in the middle of the staff cafeteria – all at the same time.
The worker looked from her to him and Nat couldn’t help but notice that, when he wanted to, Alessandro Lombardi could indeed pull a hundred-watt smile. His face went from darkly handsome, deeply tortured widower to blatantly sexy, Romangod. His curved lips utterly desirable as he dazzled the poor woman at the till.
After another stifling night with only a fan that seemed to do nothing other than push the hot air around and little sleep, it was especially irksome.
Pushing his money closer, he murmured, ‘Keep the change.’
Nat rolled her eyes as the woman practically swooned and reached for his crisp orange note. Picking up her tray, she left him to it but within seconds she could sense him following.
‘Italian women may think it’s charming to be taken care of but I don’t,’ she said, steaming ahead to a table that overlooked the rose gardens for which St Auburn’s was famous. ‘So, don’t pull your macho rubbish with me.’
Last time she’d let a man pay for her, she’d been sucked into wasting five years of her life.
He pulled out her chair and Nat glared at him as she angled herself into it, which was childish but he was seriously the living end.
‘I wanted to talk to you about Julian. I thought the least I could do was buy you lunch while you listened.’
Nat eyed him across the table as she folded her arms. If anything, he looked more tired than she’d ever seen him. His hair was more tousled, like he’d been continually running his hands through it, and the furrows in his forehead were more prominent, but damn if this man didn’t already know her Achilles’ heel.
‘Is he okay?’
She’d spent the morning with Julian and he didn’t seem any different from his usual quiet self. Had something happened? What did he need to talk about?
‘Of course,’ he dismissed curtly as if irritated by her assumption that something was wrong. ‘I just wanted to… ask you something.’
Intrigued despite herself, Nat opened up her packaged egg and lettuce sandwiches and took a bite. ‘Ask away.’
‘How come you work at both the crèche and the hospital?’
Okay… not what she’d been expecting. ‘You have to ask me that after Ernie?’
