The Uncompromising Italian

‘And your secretary deals with all of that?’

‘She does. It’s usually called pressing the delete button on the computer. Some get through to me but, in general, we have established charities to which we give healthy sums of money, and all requests for business investment are automatically referred to my corporate finance division.’

‘But this slipped through the net because it came to your personal address. Any idea how he or she could have accessed that information?’ She was beginning to think that this sounded a little out of her area of expertise. Hackers usually went for information or, in some cases tried to attack the accounts, but this was clearly...personal. ‘And don’t you think that this might be better referred to the police?’ she inserted, before he could answer.

Alessio laughed drily. He took a long mouthful of his drink and looked at her over the rim of the glass as he drank.

‘If you read the papers,’ he drawled, ‘you might discover that the police have been having a few off-months when it comes to safeguarding the privacy of the rich and famous. I’m a very private man. The less of my life is splashed across the news, the better.’

‘So my job is to find out who is behind these emails.’

‘Correct.’

‘At which point you’ll...?’

‘Deal with the matter myself.’

He was still smiling, with that suggestion of amusement on his lips, but she could see the steel behind the lazy, watchful dark eyes. ‘I should tell you from the offset that I cannot accept this commission if there’s any suggestion that you might turn...err...violent when it comes to sorting out whoever is behind this.’

Alessio laughed and relaxed back in his chair, stretching out his long legs to cross them at the ankle and loosely linking his fingers on his stomach. ‘You have my word that I won’t turn, as you say, violent.’

‘I hope you’re not making fun of me, Mr Baldini,’ Lesley said stiffly. ‘I’m being perfectly serious.’

‘Alessio. The name’s Alessio. And you aren’t still under the impression that I’m a member of the Mafia, are you? With a stash of guns under the bed and henchmen to do my bidding?’

Lesley flushed. Where had her easy, sassy manner gone? She was seldom lost for words but she was now, especially when those dark, dark eyes were lingering on her flushed cheeks, making her feel even more uncomfortable than she already felt. A burst of shameful heat exploded somewhere deep inside her, her body’s acknowledgment of his sexual magnetism, chemistry that was wrapping itself around her like a web, confusing her thoughts and making her pulses race.

‘Do I strike you as a violent man, Lesley?’

‘I never said that. I’m just being...cautious.’

‘Have you had awkward situations before?’ The soft pink of her cheeks when she blushed was curiously appealing, maybe because she was at such pains to project herself as a tough woman with no time for frivolity.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You intimated that you checked me out to make sure that I wasn’t dodgy...and I think I’m quoting you here. So are you cautious in situations like these... when the computer doesn’t go to you but you’re forced to go to the computer...because of bad experiences?’

‘I’m a careful person.’ Why did that make her sound like such a bore, when she wasn’t? Once again weirdly conscious of the image she must present to a guy like him, Lesley inhaled deeply and ploughed on. ‘And yes,’ she asserted matter-of-factly, ‘I have had a number of poor experiences in the past. A few months ago, I was asked to do a favour for a friend’s friend only to find that what he wanted was for me to hack into his ex-wife’s bank account and see where her money was being spent. When I refused, he turned ugly.’

‘Turned ugly?’

‘He’d had a bit too much to drink. He thought that if he pushed me around a bit I’d do what he wanted.’ And just in case her awkward responses had been letting her down, maybe giving him the mistaken impression that she was anything but one hundred per cent professional, she concluded crisply, ‘Of course, it’s annoying, but nothing I can’t handle.’

‘You can handle men who turn ugly.’ Fascinating. He was in the company of someone from another planet. She might have the creamiest complexion he had ever seen, and a heart-shaped face that insisted on looking ridiculously feminine despite the aggressive get-up, but she was certainly nothing like any woman he had ever met. ‘Tell me how you do that,’ he said with genuine curiosity.

Absently, he noticed that she had depleted the plate of pastries by half its contents. A hearty appetite; his eyes flicked to her body which, despite being well hidden beneath her anti-fashion-statement clothing, was long and slender.

On some subliminal level, Lesley was aware of the shift in his attention, away from her face and onto her body. Her instinct was to squirm. Instead, she clasped her hands tightly together on her lap and tried to force her uncooperative body into a position of relaxed ease.

‘I have a black belt in karate.’

Alessio was stunned into silence. ‘You do?’

‘I do.’ She shrugged and held his confounded gaze. ‘And it’s not that shocking,’ she continued into the lengthening silence. ‘There were loads of girls in my class when I did it. ’Course, a few of them fell by the wayside when we began moving up the levels.’

‘And you did these classes...when, exactly?’

In passing, Lesley wondered what this had to do with her qualifications for doing the job she had come to do. On the other hand, it never hurt to let someone know that you weren’t the sort of woman to be messed with.

‘I started when I was ten and the classes continued into my teens with a couple of breaks in between.’

‘So, when other girls were experimenting with make-up, you were learning the valuable art of self-defence.’

Lesley felt the sharp jab of discomfort as he yet again unwittingly hit the soft spot inside her, the place where her insecurities lay, neatly parcelled up but always ready to be unwrapped at a moment’s notice.

‘I think every woman should know how to physically defend herself.’

‘That’s an extremely laudable ambition,’ Alessio murmured. He noticed that his long, cold drink was finished. ‘Let’s go inside. I’ll show you to my office and we can continue our conversation there. It’s getting a little oppressive out here.’ He stood up, squinted towards his gardens and half-smiled when he saw her automatically reach for the plate of pastries and whatever else she could manage to take in with her.

‘No need.’ He briefly rested one finger on her outstretched hand and Lesley shot back as though she had been scalded. ‘Violet will tidy all this away.’

Lesley bit back an automatic retort that it was illuminating to see how the other half lived. She was no inverted snob, even though she might have no time for outward trappings and the importance other people sometimes placed on them, but he made her feel defensive. Worse, he made her feel gauche and awkward, sixteen all over again, cringing at the prospect of having to wear a frock to go to the school leaving dance, knowing that she just couldn’t pull it off.

‘I’m thinking that your mother must be a strong woman to instil such priorities in her daughter,’ he said neutrally.

‘My mother died when I was three—a hit-and-run accident when she was cycling back from doing the shopping.’

Alessio stopped in his tracks and stared down at her until she was forced uncomfortably to return his stare.

‘Please don’t say something trite like I’m sorry to hear that.’ She tilted her chin and looked at him unblinkingly. ‘It happened a long time ago.’

‘No. I wasn’t going to say that,’ Alessio said in a low, musing voice that made her skin tingle.

‘My father was the strong influence in my life,’ she pressed on in a high voice. ‘My father and my five brothers. They all gave me the confidence to know that I could do whatever I chose to do, that my gender did not have to stand in the way of my ambition. I got my degree in maths—the world was my oyster.’

Heart beating as fast as if she had run a marathon, she stared up at him, their eyes tangling until her defensiveness subsided and gave way to something else, something she could barely comprehend, something that made her say quickly, with a tight smile, ‘But I don’t see how any of this is relevant. If you lead the way to your computer, it shouldn’t take long for me to figure out who your problem pest is.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE OFFICE TO WHICH she was led allowed her a good opportunity to really take in the splendour of her surroundings.

Really big country estates devoured money and consequently were rarely in the finest of conditions. Imposing exteriors were often let down by run-down, sad interiors in want of attention.

This house was as magnificent inside as it was out. The pristine gardens, the splendid ivy-clad walls, were replicated inside by a glorious attention to detail. From the cool elegance of the hall, she bypassed a series of rooms, each magnificently decorated. Of course, she could only peek through slightly open doors, because she had to half-run to keep up with him, but she saw enough to convince her that serious money had been thrown at the place—which was incredible, considering it was not used on a regular basis.

Eventually they ended up in an office with book-lined walls and a massive antique desk housing a computer, a lap-top and a small stack of legal tomes. She looked around at the rich burgundy drapes pooling to the ground, the pin-striped sober wallpaper, the deep sofa and chairs.

It was a decor she would not have associated with him and, as though reading her mind, he said wryly, ‘It makes a change from what I’m used to in London. I’m more of a modern man myself but I find there’s something soothing about working in a turn-of-the-century gentleman’s den.’ He moved smoothly round to the chair at the desk and powered up his computer. ‘When I bought this house several years ago, it was practically derelict. I paid over the odds for it because of its history and because I wanted to make sure the owner and her daughter could be rehoused in the manner to which they had clearly once been accustomed. Before, that is, the money ran out. They were immensely grateful and only suggested one thing—that I try and keep a couple of the rooms as close as possible to the original format. This was one.’

‘It’s beautiful.’ Lesley hovered by the door and looked around her. Through the French doors, the lawns outside stretched away to an impossibly distant horizon. The sun turned everything into dazzling technicolour. The greens of the grass and the trees seemed greener than possible and the sky was blindingly turquoise. Inside the office, though, the dark colours threw everything into muted relief. He was right; the space was soothing.

She looked at him frowning in front of the computer, sitting forward slightly, his long, powerful body still managing to emanate force even though he wasn’t moving.

‘There’s no need to remain by the door,’ he said without looking at her. ‘You’ll actually need to venture into the room and sit next to me if you’re to work on this problem. Ah. Right. Here we go.’ He stood up, vacating the chair for her.

The leather was warm from where he had been sitting, and the heat seemed to infiltrate her entire body as she took his place in front of the computer screen. When he leaned over to tap on the keyboard, she felt her breathing become rapid and shallow and she had to stop herself from gasping out loud.

His forearm was inches away from her breasts and never had the proximity of one person’s body proved so rattling. She willed herself to focus on what he was calling up on the screen in front of her and to remember that she was here in a professional capacity.

Why was he getting to her? Perhaps she had been too long without a guy in her life. Friends and family were all very good, but maybe her life of pleasant celibacy had made her unexpectedly vulnerable to a spot of swarthy good looks and a wicked smile.

‘So...’

Lesley blinked herself back into the present to find herself staring directly into dark, dark eyes that were far too close to her for comfort.

‘So?’

‘Email one—a little too familiar, a little too chatty, but nothing that couldn’t be easily ignored.’

Lesley looked thoughtfully at the computer screen and read through the email. Her surroundings faded away as she began studying the series of emails posted to him, looking for clues, asking him questions, her fingers moving swiftly and confidently across the key board.

She could understand why he had decided to farm out this little problem to an outside source.

If he valued his privacy, then he would not want his IT division to have access to what appeared to be vaguely menacing threats, suggestions of something that could harm his business or ruin his reputation. It would be fodder for any over-imaginative employee, of which there were always a few in any office environment.

Alessio pushed himself away from the desk and strolled towards one of the comfortable, deep chairs facing her.

She was utterly absorbed in what she was doing. He took time out to study her and he was amused and a little surprised to discover that he enjoyed the view.

It wasn’t simply the arrangement of her features that he found curiously captivating.

There was a lively intelligence to her that made a refreshing change from the beautiful but intellectually challenged women he dated. He looked at the way her short chocolate-brown hair spiked up, as though too feisty and too wilful to be controlled. Her eyelashes were long and thick; her mouth, as he now saw, was full and, yes, sexy.

A sexy mouth, especially just at this very moment, when her lips were slightly parted.

She frowned and ran her tongue thoughtfully along her upper lip and, on cue, Alessio’s body jerked into startling life. His libido, which had been unusually quiet since he’d ended his relationship with a blonde with a penchant for diamonds two months ago, fired up.

It was so unexpected a reaction that he nearly groaned in shock.

Instead, he shifted on the chair and smiled politely as her eyes briefly skittered across to him before resuming their intent concentration on the computer screen.

‘Whoever’s sent this knows what they’re doing.’

‘Come again?’ Alessio crossed his legs, trying to maintain the illusion that he was in complete control of himself.

‘They’ve been careful to make themselves as untraceable as possible.’ Lesley stretched, then slumped back into the chair and swivelled it round so that she was facing him.

She stuck out her legs and gazed at her espadrilles. ‘That first email may have been chatty and friendly but he or she knew that they didn’t want to be traced. Why didn’t you delete them, at least the earlier ones?’

‘I had an instinct that they might be worth hanging onto.’ He stood up and strolled towards the French doors. He had intended this meeting to be brief and functional, a blip that needed sorting out in his hectic life. Now, he found that his mind was stubbornly refusing to return to the matter in hand. Instead, it was relentlessly pulled back to the image he had of her sitting in front of his computer concentrating ferociously. He wondered what she would look like out of the unappealing ensemble. He wondered whether she would be any different from all the other naked women who had lain across his bed in readiness for him.

He knew she would—instinct again. Somehow he couldn’t envisage her lying provocatively for him to take her, passive and willing to please.

No. That wasn’t what girls with black belts in karate and a sideline in computer hacking did.

He played with the suddenly tempting notion of prolonging her task. Who knew what might happen between them if she were to be around longer than originally envisaged?

‘What would you suggest my next step should be? Because I’m taking from the expression on your face that it’s not going to be as straightforward as you first thought.’

‘Usually it’s pretty easy to sort something like this out,’ Lesley confessed, linking her hands on her stomach and staring off at nothing in particular. The weird, edgy tension she had felt earlier on had dissipated. Work had that effect on her. It occupied her whole mind and left no room for anything else. ‘People are predictable when it comes to leaving tracks behind them, but obviously whoever is behind this hasn’t used his own computer. He’s gone to an Internet café. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes to a variety of Internet cafés, because we certainly would be able to trace the café he uses if he sticks there. And it wouldn’t be too much of a headache finding out which terminal is his and then it would be a short step to identifying the person... I keep saying he but it might very well be a she.’

‘How so? No, we’ll get to that over something to drink—and I insist you forfeit the tea in favour of something a little more exciting. My housekeeper makes a very good Pimm’s.’

‘I couldn’t,’ Lesley said awkwardly. ‘I’m not much of a drinker and I’m...err...driving anyway.’

‘Fresh lemonade, in that case.’ Alessio strolled towards her and held out his hand to tug her up from the chair to which she seemed to be glued.

For a few seconds, Lesley froze. When she grasped his hand—because frankly she couldn’t think of what else to do without appearing ridiculous and childish—she felt a spurt of red-hot electricity zap through her body until every inch of her was galvanised into shrieking, heightened awareness of the dangerously sexy man standing in front of her.

‘That would be nice,’ she said a little breathlessly. As soon as she could she retrieved her scorching hand and resisted the urge to rub it against her trousers.

Alessio didn’t miss a thing. She was a different person when she was concentrating on a computer. Looking at a screen, analysing what was in front of her, working out how to solve the problem he had presented, she oozed self-confidence. He idly wondered what her websites looked like.

But without a computer to absorb her attention she was prickly and defensive, a weird, intriguing mix of independent and vulnerable.

He smiled, turning her insides to liquid, and stood aside to allow her to pass by him out of the office.

‘So we have a he or a she who goes to a certain Internet café, or more likely a variety of Internet cafés, for the sole reason of emailing me to, well, purpose as yet slightly unclear, but if I’m any reader of human motivation I’m smelling a lead-up to asking for money for information he or she may or may not know. There seem to be a lot of imponderables in this case.’

They had arrived at the kitchen without her being aware of having padded through the house at all, and she found a glass of fresh lemonade in her hands while he helped himself to a bottle of mineral water.

He motioned to the kitchen table and they sat facing one another on opposite sides.

‘Generally,’ Lesley said, sipping the lemonade, ‘This should be a straightforward case of sourcing the computer in question, paying a visit to the Internet café—and usually these places have CCTV cameras. You would be able to find the culprit without too much bother.’

‘But if he’s clever enough to hop from café to café...’

‘Then it’ll take a bit longer but I’ll get there. Of course, if you have no skeletons in the cupboard, Mr Baldini, then you could just walk away from this situation.’

‘Is there such a thing as an adult without one or two skeletons in the cupboard?’

‘Well, then.’

‘Although,’ Alessio continued thoughtfully, ‘Skeletons imply something...wrong, in need of concealment. I can’t think of any dark secrets I have under lock or key but there are certain things I would rather not have revealed.’

‘Do you honestly care what the public thinks of you? Or maybe it’s to do with your company? Sorry, but I don’t really know how the big, bad world of business operates, but I’m just assuming that if something gets out that could affect your share prices then you mightn’t be too happy.’

‘I have a daughter.’

‘You have a daughter?’

‘Surely you got that from your search of me on the Internet?’ Alessio said drily.

‘I told you, I just skimmed through the stuff. There’s an awful lot written up about you and I honestly just wanted to cut to the chase—any articles that could have suggested that I needed to be careful about getting involved. Like I said, I’ve fine-tuned my search engine when it comes to picking out relevant stuff or else I’d be swamped underneath useless speculation.’ A daughter?

‘Yes. I forgot—the “bodies under the motorway” scenario.’ He raised his eyebrows and once again Lesley felt herself in danger of losing touch with common sense.

‘I never imagined anything so dramatic, at least not really,’ she returned truthfully, which had the effect of making that sexy smile on his face even broader. Flustered, she continued, ‘But you were telling me that you have a daughter.’

‘You still can’t erase the incredulity from your voice,’ he remarked, amused. ‘Surely you’ve bumped into people who have had kids?’

‘Yes! Of course! But...’

‘But?’

Lesley stared at him. ‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re making fun of me?’ she asked, ruffled and red-faced.

‘My apologies.’ But there was the echo of a smile still lingering in his voice, even though his expression was serious and contrite. ‘But you blush so prettily.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life!’ And it was. Ridiculous. ‘Pretty’ was something she most definitely was not. Nor was she going to let this guy, this sex God of a man—who could have any woman he wanted, if you happened to like that kind of thing—get under her skin.

‘Why is it ridiculous?’ Alessio allowed himself to be temporarily side-tracked.

‘I know you’re probably one of these guys who slips into flattery mode with any woman you happen to find yourself confined with, but I’m afraid that I don’t go into meltdown at empty compliments.’ What on earth was she going on about? Why was she jumping into heated self-defence over nonsense like this?

When it came to business, Alessio rarely lost sight of the goal. Right now, not only had he lost sight of it, but he didn’t mind. ‘Do you go into meltdown at compliments you think are genuine?’

‘I...I...’

‘You’re stammering,’ he needlessly pointed out. ‘I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’

‘I don’t...err...feel uncomfortable.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

Lesley stared helplessly at him. He wasn’t just sinfully sexy. The man was beautiful. He hadn’t looked beautiful in those pictures, but then she had barely taken them in—a couple of grainy black-and-white shots of a load of businessmen had barely registered on her consciousness. Now, she wished she had paid attention so that she at least could have been prepared for the sort of effect he might have had on her.

Except, she admitted truthfully to herself, she would still have considered herself above and beyond being affected by any man, however good-looking he might happen to be. When it came to matters of the heart, she had always prided herself on her practicality. She knew her limitations and had accepted them. When and if the time came that she wanted a relationship, then she had always known that the man for her would not be the sort who was into looks but the sort who enjoyed intelligence, personality—a meeting of minds as much as anything else.

‘You were telling me about your daughter...’

‘My daughter.’ Alessio sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his dark hair.

It was a gesture of hesitancy that seemed so at odds with his forceful personality that Lesley sat up and stared at him with narrowed eyes.

‘Where is she?’ Lesley looked past him, as though half-expecting this unexpected addition to his life suddenly to materialise out of nowhere. ‘I thought you mentioned that you had no family. Where is your wife?’