‘I’ll pick you up at seven...OK?’ he said levelly, quite unconcerned by his audience. ‘We’ll go for a meal somewhere.’
‘OK...’
‘Smile,’ he said, cheerfully ruffling the hair of the two-year-old girl clinging to his leg. ‘She can smile at me...why can’t you?’
‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
His mouth quirked. ‘You’re not supposed to admit things like that.’
Liz cornered her the instant he departed. ‘Daisy, if I acted a little weird, put it down to me being shocked at the sight of a Leopardi entering my humble home.’
‘Why?’ Daisy frowned.
‘We’ve been coming here every summer for ten years and I still can’t get as much as nod of acknowledgement from the Leopardis! His parents are mega-rich—as well as their villa here they’ve got a huge mansion in Rome, where they live most of the time—and they are very exclusive in their friendships,’ she explained uncomfortably. ‘And Alessio has a reputation with girls that would turn any mother’s hair white overnight. But he usually sticks with his own set. Please don’t take this the wrong way, Daisy...but do you really think you can handle a young man like that? He’s seen a lot more of life than you have.’
But Daisy didn’t listen. Alessio did not seem remotely snobbish. And Alessio’s unknown parents interested her not at all.
He rolled up in a low-slung scarlet sports car to take her out that evening. Daisy was impressed to death but Liz grabbed her husband in horror as she peered out from behind the curtains. ‘I don’t believe it! They’ve bought a teenager a Ferrari! Are the Leopardis out of their minds?’
All the trappings of fantasy were there—the gorgeous guy who had miraculously picked her out of a wealth of beautiful, far more sophisticated girls, the fabulous car. That night they dined in a ritzy restaurant in Florence. Daisy was overpowered by her surroundings until Alessio reached across the table and twined her tense fingers soothingly in his, and then she quite happily surrendered to being overpowered by him instead.
On the drive back, he stopped the car, drew her confidently into his arms and kissed her. About ten seconds into that wildly exciting experience, he started teaching her how to kiss, laughing when she got embarrassed, laughing even harder when she tried to excuse her inexpert technique by pleading cultural differences. But surprisingly he didn’t attempt to do anything more than kiss her. He was so different away from his friends. Romantic, tender, unexpectedly serious.
‘Do you know I still haven’t asked you what you’re studying at college?’ Alessio remarked carelessly at one point.
‘History and English. I want to be an infant teacher,’ she said shyly, and if he hadn’t kissed her again she might have told him that she was already worrying that in a year’s time she mightn’t get good enough grades to make it onto the particular teacher-training course which her aunt had advised her to set her sights on.
‘You wouldn’t believe how relieved I am to hear that you’re studying for your degree,’ Alessio confided lazily. ‘I was afraid you might still be at school.’
And she realised then that there had been a misunderstanding. She attended a sixth-form college for sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds, not a college of further education which would equip her with a degree. ‘Would it have made a difference... if I had been?’ she prompted uneasily.
‘Of course it would have made a difference.’ Alessio frowned down at her in surprise. ‘I don’t date schoolgirls. It may be only a matter of a couple of years but there’s a huge gap in experience and maturity. You can’t have an equal relationship on those terms. It would make me feel as if I had too much of an advantage and I wouldn’t feel comfortable with that.’
And Daisy felt even less comfortable listening to him. She realised that Alessio would never have asked her out had he known what age she was. And that if she told him he had been given the wrong information he wouldn’t want to see her again. So how could she admit to being only seventeen?
Choosing not to tell him the truth didn’t feel like lying that night. It felt like a harmless pretence. She had not thought through what she was doing in allowing Alessio to believe that she was older than she was. It did not once cross her dizzy brain that there would come a time of reckoning and exposure... and that Alessio would be understandably outraged by her deception. By the end of that evening, she was walking on air and fathoms deep in love...
Daisy emerged from that unsettling recollection to find herself still taking up space in the Raschids’ spacious hall. The sound of voices alerted her to the fact that she was about to have company again. She stood up just as the Raschids and Alessio appeared at the head of the staircase. Her uneasy eyes slid over him and lowered, but not before she’d seen his frown of surprise.
‘I assumed you would have returned to the agency,’ he admitted on the pavement outside.
‘My boss definitely wouldn’t have liked that. Have you any queries?’ Daisy prompted stiffly, ignoring the chauffeur, who had the door of the limousine open in readiness.
‘Yes...were you sitting in that hall the entire time I was looking round the house?’
‘No, I was swinging off the chandelier for light amusement! What do you think I was doing?’
‘If I had known you were waiting, I wouldn’t have spent so much time with the Raschids. Did you even get a cup of coffee?’
Daisy’s head was pounding. She was at the end of her rope. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you care?’ she derided. ‘One minute you’re calling me a—Alessio!’ she gasped incredulously as he dropped two determined hands to her tiny waist, swept her very efficiently off her feet and deposited her at supersonic speed in the limousine. ‘Why the heck did you do that?’ she demanded breathlessly as he swung in beside her.
‘If we’re about to have another argument, I prefer to stage it in privacy,’ Alessio imparted drily. In the time he had been away from her, he had reinstated the kind of steely control that mocked her own turbulent confusion.
‘Look, I don’t want another argument. I only want to go home.’
‘I’ll take you there.’
Daisy froze. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Then I’ll drop you back at the agency. It’s on my route.’
‘You’re being all polite now,’ she muttered, and it infuriated her that she sounded childish.
‘We both overreacted earlier.’ Shrewd, dauntingly dispassionate eyes rested on her hot cheeks. ‘I’m prepared to admit that I threw the first stone. Calling you a greedy bitch for accepting a settlement on our divorce was inexcusable. You were entitled to that settlement. Unfortunately, after a very few minutes in your company, I regressed to being nineteen again. But I can’t see why it has to continue like that. Thirteen years is a very long time.’
So why all of a sudden did it feel like the fast blink of an eyelid to her? Yet she had only to look at Alessio to know how much time had passed. He no longer smouldered like a volatile volcano. Alessio now had the ability to turn freezingly cool and civil. She moistened her dry lips. ‘If you’re interested in the house, you won’t have to deal with me again. I was standing in for someone else today.’
‘And you’re not a great saleswoman around me.’
‘I don’t even know what kind of property you’re looking for.’
‘You didn’t ask.’
‘Not much point in asking now.’ Daisy sat on the edge of the seat in the corner furthest away from him.
An uncomfortable silence followed.
‘I wasn’t lying when I said that I still find you attractive,’ Alessio breathed grimly.
Daisy tensed, her head high, her neck aching with the stress of the position.
‘Nor was I trying to put you down,’ Alessio drawled with an audible edge of distaste. ‘But some lustful urges are better suppressed.’
A lustful urge? In her mind’s eye, she pictured a sleek wolf circling a dumb sheep. And with shrinking reluctance she recalled her own response to Alessio’s sexual taunting in the car earlier. Thinking about that response devastated her. For a few terrifying seconds Alessio had somehow made her want him again. And, worst of all, Alessio knew what he had achieved. He had resurrected an intense sexual awareness that was stronger than anything she had ever expected to feel again and she hated him for doing that—hated him for forcing her to accept that he could still have that power over her.
But then mightn’t her own wanton excitement have been an echo from the past? she reasoned frantically with herself. But yes, Alessio was right on one count—you never forgot your first love, most especially not when the relationship had ended in raw pain and disillusionment.
‘I think it’s wise that we don’t see each other again,’ Alessio said quietly. ‘I have to admit that I was curious but my curiosity is now satisfied.’
A painful tide of heat climbed slowly up Daisy’s slender throat. Dear heaven, he was actually warning her off! Concerned lest that confession of animal lust should have roused fresh expectations in her greedy, gold-digging little heart, he was smoothly striving to kill off any ambitious ideas she might be developing. So cold, so controlled, so unapologetically superior... Her teeth gritted. How could Alessio talk to her like this? Did he think he was irresistible? Did he fondly imagine that she was likely to chase after him and make a nuisance of herself?