One Night with Morelli(4)

                ‘It’s not really a threat as such, is it?’ Edward Weston came across as pompous but he wasn’t a total idiot and anyone who threatened Draco would have to be; the wealthy London-based Italian entrepreneur was famous for many things but turning the other cheek was not one of them! Frazer counted himself lucky to call Draco friend—you tended to bond pretty quickly with someone you got buried in an avalanche with—but if he hadn’t been, Draco’s reputation alone would have made him someone Frazer would have avoided.

                The comment earned him a flash from Draco’s dark eyes.

                ‘Do you want to hear what I think or what you want to hear?’ Frazer’s shaggy brows twitched into a straight line as he noticed for the first time what his friend was wearing: full morning suit. ‘Your wedding?’ he asked cautiously.

                ‘Marriage!’ The single word made the speaker’s opinion of that institution quite clear, it dripped with such acid scorn.

                ‘Shame—if you were married it would be a perfect solution to the problem. There would be no question of your daughter not having…’ he paused to consult the letter and read out loud ‘…“a stable female influence in her life”.’ Frazer smiled at his own joke while Draco, his dark eyes glinting not with laughter but with cynicism, lowered his long, lean frame into a chair on the opposite side of the desk.

                ‘I’d sooner move my mother in.’ The other man laughed; he had met Veronica Morelli. ‘You make a mistake,’ Draco continued, ‘and you don’t repeat it, unless of course you’re a total fool.’

                Frazer, who was blissfully happy in his second marriage, did not take offence. ‘Do you think it’s safe to come to a fool for expensive legal advice?’

                Draco gave a tight grin that deepened the lines radiating from his deep-set eyes and briefly lent warmth and humour to the dark depths. ‘There are exceptions to every rule,’ he conceded. ‘And I’m coming to you as a trusted friend—I couldn’t afford what you charge.’

                The older man snorted. Draco Morelli had been born to wealth and privilege, he could have sat back and enjoyed what he had inherited, but he was a natural entrepreneur and to his Italian family’s occasional bemusement over the last ten years he had made a series of financial investments that had made his name a byword for success in financial circles.

                Under his smile was iron resolve. Draco’s short-lived marriage had been by anyone’s standards a total disaster but it had given him the daughter he adored so he could never regret it—but to deliberately take that route again…?

                It was not going to happen.

                He had affairs, just not love affairs. He did not dress things up and recognised that for him sex was simply a basic need; he had proved over and over again that the emotional element was not necessary. It required no effort on his part to maintain an emotional buffer—there were even occasions when he did not much like the women who shared his bed. What did require some effort on his part was keeping his daughter, now a scarily mature and impressively grounded thirteen, as ignorant as possible of his affairs.

                ‘She’s talking custody rights or at least Edward is.’ His ex’s latest was a very unlikely choice for a woman who normally went for men considerably her junior. It was hard to think of a more unlikely couple and Draco doubted it would last despite the ostentatious rock on Clare’s finger, but if he was wrong—well, good luck to them.

                But he wasn’t going to allow his daughter to have her life thrown into turmoil because Clare had discovered her inner earth mother—not on his watch!