A Pawn In The Playboy's Game

‘Cosy.’

‘I expect you must find it all very boring, but not everyone is consumed with wanting to live in a city and make pots of money.’

‘I can’t recall saying anything about finding what you do boring, although I question how much personal satisfaction you must get in a place as small as this, especially after living in London.’

‘I got sick of the rat race,’ she told him shortly, and his eyebrows shot up.

‘Bit young to be jaded about that, wouldn’t you say? Normally that’s something that tends to afflict the over-forties. What about all the excitement?’

‘I’d had it with excitement.’

‘Ah,’ Alessandro murmured, and she shot him a sharp, narrowed look, which he returned with bland innocence.

‘Is that all? Have you finished questioning me? Maybe you could point me in the direction of your father, if, of course, I’ve passed the test.’

‘He’s in his greenhouse.’ Alessandro jerked his head in the general direction of the back gardens but his eyes remained pinned to her face.

So she’d returned to her grandmother to lick her wounds. Maybe her grandmother really had had some kind of turn but he was sharp enough to get the lie of the land...she’d had some sort of unpleasant experience in London involving a guy, probably someone she worked with, judging from the shifty way she had talked about her place of work. She might wax lyrical about the peace and tranquillity and lakes and rivers, but the truth was that she’d had her heart broken and had returned to her comfort zone to patch herself up.

He found himself wondering what sort of guy she had got involved with and promptly nipped his curiosity in the bud because after this weekend he doubted he would ever lay eyes on the woman again.

Which was something of a shame. In fact, something of a shame he hadn’t laid eyes on her before, on one of his rare forays into the Scottish wilds. She would certainly have made his duty visits a lot more alluring. Biting winds, depressingly bleak and empty countryside and his father’s challenged conversational skills would definitely have been easier to endure...

‘Right.’ Laura stood up and thought that she should be feeling more relieved to be out of the presence of this odious man than she actually was.

‘I wouldn’t bother having the food conversation, though.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You mentioned that you had cycled over to do your Good Samaritan duty...an offer to go food shopping for him, as if my father doesn’t have the wherewithal to pay someone to do that on his behalf. Actually—and I’m sure you know this—he could pay a chef to buy the food and cook it if he wanted. It would certainly spare him the stuff Freya churns out...’

Laura did her best not to agree with him. She had a good enough relationship with Freya, who occasionally cracked a half-smile in her presence, but no one could say that the woman produced haute cuisine.

‘Your father likes plain, simple food.’

‘Just as well. With sour-faced Freya at the helm, it’s all he’s ever likely to get.’

‘Why shouldn’t I ask him if he needs anything?’

‘Because there’s no point filling the cupboards only to empty them again in the space of a few days. Waste of time.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’ Laura stared at that drop-dead-gorgeous, arrogant face and subsided back into her chair like a puppet whose strings had suddenly been cut.

‘There’s a reason I’ve come up here,’ Alessandro explained calmly. ‘I’ve spoken to my father about this on a number of occasions, and I’ve emailed him...’ He sighed heavily and flung his head back, half closing his eyes as he thought about the frustration of dealing with someone who didn’t want to face the inevitable. It shouldn’t be like this. He knew that. Of course, history couldn’t be altered any more than the present could be changed...but it shouldn’t be like this, a constant uphill struggle.

‘I’m confused,’ Laura said urgently. ‘Spoken to him about what? Emailed him about what?’

Alessandro opened his eyes and looked at her in silence for a few seconds. ‘He hasn’t confided in you, then. Odd, considering you’re supposed to be best buddies.’

‘Please stop being sarcastic and tell me what’s going on.’

‘I’ve come up here to take my father back down to London with me.’

‘Take him?’ Laura looked at him in complete bewilderment. ‘Take him down for a few days?’

‘Not quite,’ he said gently. ‘Brace yourself. Roberto’s stint here in Scotland is at an end. I’m taking him down to London with me and he won’t be returning. The house will be packed up, necessities shipped down to London, the rest removed for auction. I’ve bought him an apartment in Chelsea. It’s the right size and if he’s in London I can keep an eye on him.’

Laura was finding it hard to keep track of what he was saying because none of it made any sense.

‘You’re kidding. Aren’t you?’

‘I never kid about things like that. Hasn’t he mentioned any of this to you? On any of your Little Red Riding Hood visits?’

For a second, Laura wanted to throw something at him. How could he just sit here, discussing the future of an old man, talking about it in a voice that was dry and cool and caustic?

‘You,’ she hissed in a driven undertone, ‘are the most...the most...’

‘Spit it out. I assure you I won’t take it personally.’

‘The most obnoxious person I have ever met in my entire life! It’s no wonder that...’

‘That what?’

They stared at each other in silence. Laura could hear the pounding of her heart, could feel the blood rushing hotly through her veins. ‘That nothing...’ she muttered, casting her eyes downwards. She had raced towards a cliff and almost flung herself over the side. What did she know of the relationship between father and son? She surmised. Roberto had never come out and said anything derogatory about Alessandro, but the cold distance between them was as obvious as a neon sign in a dark street.

The truth was that it was not really her business. And because the man sitting opposite her rattled her, it did not give her the excuse to say things that shouldn’t be said or to voice thoughts that should remain in her head.

Alessandro chose to let that go.

Did he really want to find out what might have been said about him behind his back? No! This was how it was between his father and himself but he wasn’t going to put himself through unnecessary irritation by having an outside party share their opinion on the situation. No way.

He looked at her coldly, noting her discomfort and choosing not to relieve her of it.

‘He hasn’t breathed a word of this to me or to... Well, I’m shocked. Beyond shocked. I can’t believe you’re going to try to wrench poor Roberto away from everything he...he holds dear and fling him into the mad chaos of London life. You can’t. You just can’t!’

‘No need to panic,’ Alessandro murmured in a soft voice that sent chills racing through her. ‘It’s a spacious three-bedroom apartment. All mod cons, including en suite bathrooms. I’m sure he’ll keep a bedroom free for his special friends.’ He was repulsed by the thought of her having anything to do with his father beyond the purely platonic. Yes, she had denied that connection, but if that were the case, why the horror and dismay?

Why the extreme reaction? She looked as distraught as Chicken Little when the sky was falling down.

His lips thinned and she knew exactly what he was getting at. Where was a heavy object when you needed one? she fumed.

‘And if he hasn’t mentioned anything to you,’ Alessandro inserted smoothly, ‘I put that down to denial. Because I’ve been having this conversation with my father for the past six months.’

Laura looked at him in stunned silence.

‘He’s old...’

‘My point exactly! The stroke...the fractured pelvis... He can’t deal with this bloody great big mansion. He needs somewhere more compact. He needs to be able to make it to his bedroom from the kitchen in under three hours.’

‘Please don’t exaggerate. Like you said, Roberto could afford as much help as he wants to. At the moment he just has Freya and Fergus, but I’m sure he would employ someone else to help him if he thought he needed it.’

‘This isn’t a subject that’s open to debate. I’m not thrusting him into a rabbit hutch in the centre of the city. He’ll adjust. London is full of exciting things.’

‘Old people don’t want excitement,’ Laura said flatly. ‘They want routine. They want stability. They want to be surrounded by the people and faces they’re familiar with.’

Alessandro stared at her with incredulity. Were they talking about the same man?

‘And how often are you going to visit him?’ she pursued, ignoring his closed expression. ‘Are you going to make sure he settles in? Will you be taking him under your wing? Or will you be visiting him four times a year but happily with a much shorter journey?’

Alessandro scowled. ‘Your concern is touching but I assure you...he’ll be just fine. And, incidentally, who are these familiar faces he needs to surround himself with?’

‘He has lots of friends in the village.’

‘Aside from you?’

‘Yes, aside from me! What do you think he does during the days? I mean, I know his health hasn’t been great recently, but before that? And now that he’s on the mend?’

Alessandro looked at her blankly.

‘You don’t know, do you? You haven’t got a clue. You want to drag him away from his home and you can’t even be bothered to find out what he’ll be missing! What his life here is all about!’

‘You’re shouting.’

‘I never shout!’ Her voice reverberated in the silence and she glared at him. ‘I usually never shout,’ she amended, ‘but I’m just so...angry. And stop staring at me. I suppose you’ve never been shouted at by anyone in your life before?’

‘Correct.’

Drawn out of her state of shock, Laura peered suspiciously at him. ‘No one ever gets mad at you?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Ever?’

‘You’re looking at me as though you find that hard to believe,’ Alessandro returned coolly. Taking away the physical side of things, on every level this woman offended him on all fronts. He had no thoughts one way or another on other people and the choices they made in terms of relationships. As far as he was concerned, the rest of humanity could hurl themselves into pointless marriages like lemmings jumping off a cliff, only to find themselves picking up the pieces and counting the pennies when those marriages crashed and burned. Which most of them did.

As for himself, he had no intention, and never had, of getting wrapped up with any woman. He had led a life that was ruled by his head and he liked that. Maybe the cold withdrawal of his only parent had pointed him down that path. It wasn’t something he had wasted his time analysing. He just knew that, for him, women were there to be savoured and enjoyed until the time came for him to push on. They were his stress-free zone, a welcome break from the enjoyable frenzy of being at the top of the game in the world of business.

A woman who shouted did not constitute a stress-free zone.

‘I do,’ Laura said truthfully.

‘Women, especially, fall into that category.’

‘I find that even harder to believe.’

‘I don’t encourage temper tantrums,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s something about a screaming woman I don’t find a turn-on.’

Just as well my aim isn’t to turn you on, Laura thought. The pulse in her throat kicked up a steady beat. She took in his lazy sprawl, the brooding night-dark gaze of his eyes, the harsh, perfect contours of his face, and something inside her flared into unwelcome, unexpected life.

Suddenly confused, she banked it down.

‘I just think that before you start trying to pull the rug from underneath someone’s feet, you should make an effort to understand where they’re coming from and what they would lose. Doesn’t your father have any say in this? Or are you going to stampede through his objections and do what you think is best?’

‘This conversation is going round in circles.’ Alessandro raked his fingers impatiently through his hair, spared her a searing glance and then stood up to help himself to a bottle of water from the fridge, which he drank in one long swallow. Then he leaned against the kitchen counter and looked at her. ‘I’ll do what I consider best for my father and you can pull all the hysterical, emotive language out of the bag, but nothing is going to change that. Like I told you, I’ve talked to my father about this. If he chose not to keep you in the loop, then what can I say?’ He shrugged and stared at her flushed face.

‘There’s something you should know,’ Laura said grudgingly, and Alessandro stilled.

‘I’m all ears.’

‘It’s not just that your father has a social life in the village, and if...’ she looked at him with a flare of uncharacteristic rebellion in her wide, green eyes ‘...he chose to keep you out of the loop, then what can I say? He’s also...well...you probably have cut-and-dried opinions on love, but he’s involved with someone locally...’

For a few seconds, and for maybe the first time in his life, Alessandro was rendered speechless. Her words filtered into his consciousness, tried to take shape but then dissolved before they could link up and make any sense.

‘Did you just hear what I said?’

‘I heard you. I’m just not following... You’re telling me that my father has a girlfriend?’

‘My gran.’

Perplexed, Alessandro shook his head in an attempt to get the connections in his brain to start working.

Laura saw his bewilderment and suddenly, out of nowhere, she felt a sharp pang of sympathy and compassion for him. Didn’t this say everything there was to say about the kind of relationship he had with Roberto? One in which nothing personal was ever discussed? In which no emotion was ever allowed to surface? How on earth had that happened?

‘My father is going out with your...your grandmother? How does that even make sense?’

‘It’s easy,’ Laura said drily. ‘They met ages ago and have been friends for a long time, but in the past few months, a bit longer, actually, they’ve begun seeing one another. Going on dates, that kind of thing...’

‘My father goes on dates?’

‘It happens. Two people have a solid friendship...one thing leads to another... He’s still an attractive guy. I’d bet there are a few ladies in the gardening club who have had their eye on him.’

Alessandro walked back to the table, sat down, stared off for a few frowning moments into space, then focused on the woman looking at him, head inclined, her soft lips parted.

‘Details.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘How long exactly has this dating game been going on? And your grandmother...where does she live? Widowed? Divorced? How old is she?’

Laura tensed, predicting the direction of his assumptions. ‘You’ve accused me of being a gold-digger,’ she said coldly. ‘You couldn’t have been further from the truth. And don’t you even dare think of implying that my grandmother is after your dad’s money, either! They’re just two people who get along and enjoy one another’s company. If you want the bare details, here they are.

‘My grandmother lives in a little house on the outskirts of the village about twenty minutes away. She’s lived here all her life and, yes, she’s widowed. My grandfather passed on more years ago than I care to think. She never really thought about ever finding anyone else, least of all someone she’s known since for ever, but, then, it’s really only in the past ten years or so that your father has really begun integrating himself into the community. He was quite reclusive before that. I guess work kept him away a lot...and of course my gran would have been busy working in the neighbouring town. She ran the garden centre there. Only gave up five years ago because the travel was getting a bit of a nuisance, especially in the winter. ’Course, she drove there, but you have no idea how freez—’

‘I’m getting the picture. Age?’

‘Huh? Oh. Right. Seventy-six. So that’s just one of the reasons why it would be heartbreaking for you to charge up here and try to force him to leave.’

‘Charge? Force? Heartbreaking?’

But this put a new spin on things. Maybe he should personally check out the situation. His father was dating someone whose granddaughter was his best buddy. Cynicism was ingrained in Alessandro, as much a vital part of him as drawing breath. Could this pair be working in tandem? It was far-fetched but sometimes far-fetched turned out to be reality and it always paid to be on the safe side, especially when tens of millions of pounds were at stake.

‘You’re right.’

‘I am?’ Laura looked at him warily, trying to see behind that thoughtful, speculative expression.

‘If my father is to leave this place, then it’s not up to me to be heavy-handed. I need to persuade him that there’s life beyond the Scottish boundaries...’

‘He won’t be persuaded, I’m sure of that.’

Alessandro dealt her a slashing smile. So this weekend might not happen, but that was fine. He was the kind of guy who could think outside the box when it came to dealing with unexpected situations. Like this. And, being perfectly honest, the lush appeal of the woman currently looking at him as though she expected him to produce a bomb from up his sleeve would certainly introduce a bit of entertainment to the menu.

‘But worth a try, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, you’ve spent the past hour wringing your hands and wailing that I’m being unfair. So I’m sure you’d have no objections to...showing me first-hand this fuzzy, warm social life my father would be so loath to leave behind...’

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