A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

‘I think we should head off sooner rather than later,’ she murmured, catching Alessandro’s eye and holding it. ‘Roberto always has an early night.’

‘Roberto can go to bed whenever he damned well wants to!’ Roberto announced, but she felt him relax a little when Alessandro immediately nodded and dumped his case on the floor.

‘I’m having a car delivered to me in the morning.’ Alessandro fished his mobile out of his pocket. ‘What’s the number for the local taxi company?’

‘No need,’ Laura said briskly. She hooked her arm through Roberto’s and then turned to him and tucked his scarf neatly into his overcoat.

‘You’re always faffing and fussing, girl!’

But again Alessandro was made aware of a relationship he had never even known existed, a relationship from which he was made to feel like an outsider. His father, grumbling and chiding, was clearly pleased to have her fuss over him.

‘Someone has to when my grandmother isn’t around,’ she murmured, and Roberto shot his son a sidelong look before shooing her away. ‘There’s no need to call a taxi.’ She stood back, head cocked, making sure everything was up to her inspection with Roberto’s outfit. ‘I’ve brought my car.’

‘You’re going to drive us?’ Alessandro let them pass and slammed the door behind them.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t feel comfortable with a woman behind the wheel,’ she said with saccharine sweetness. ‘Because if that’s the case, then you’re a dinosaur.’

‘Girl speaks her mind!’ Roberto chortled smugly. ‘Something you’ll have to get used to, my boy!’ He absently patted her hand as they trundled towards the side of the house.

‘You intend to take us out in that?’ Squatting directly under one of the security lights that surrounded the house was an ageing Morris Minor. ‘I thought those cars were extinct,’ he murmured. ‘Along with the dinosaurs you mentioned.’

‘It’s very reliable,’ Laura told him tartly.

‘Except for last winter,’ Roberto pointed out, and for the duration of the drive they launched into an extended anecdote about the unpredictability of her car, which, Alessandro assumed, he was supposed to find uproariously hilarious. He wondered why his father didn’t just buy her something more reliable and then grimaced because had he done that, Alessandro knew that he would have been the first to point out that his father was being ripped off.

He had intended to bring up the matter of the move but, over a surprisingly good meal, he found every effort thwarted.

They had in-jokes. They talked about people in the village. They spent way too long discussing some orchids someone or other had done something or other with, only desisting when Alessandro was forced to butt in and shut down that particular topic or risk falling asleep. He heard his father laugh. Twice. The sound was so unusual that he wondered whether his ears had been playing up but, no, at the end of an hour and a half he could see for himself that the life he had envisioned his father having might have been slightly off target.

And he had known nothing about it.

‘So how long will you be staying?’ Laura asked politely, when, engine still running, they were back at the manor house.

‘This has been the most uncomfortable journey of my life,’ Alessandro informed her as he levered his big body out of the back seat. ‘Why is your engine still running? I take it you’re coming in.’

‘I hadn’t intended to.’

‘Girl’s got to be on her way!’ Roberto announced.

‘In that case,’ Alessandro countered, ‘we can have some time to discuss your move.’

‘Not tonight, my boy. This old man needs his beauty sleep!’

‘I’ll come in for a couple of minutes.’

Roberto, on his way to the front door, paused to look at the two of them, eyes narrowed. ‘Can’t think Edith will want you gallivanting all over the country at this time of the night!’

Laura laughed as she joined them to walk to the front door. Roberto’s bushy brows were drawn together in a frown. ‘Hardly gallivanting all over the country,’ she soothed. ‘My grandmother worries too much.’

‘With good cause,’ Roberto muttered, rapping his walking stick on the front door impatiently as Alessandro jangled a bunch of keys, hunting out the right one. ‘After all those shenanigans in London!’

‘Here we go!’ Laura trilled, hoping to drown out that utterly, utterly inappropriate remark and mentally vowing to warn her grandmother about any more confidences while Alessandro was on the scene, earwigging. ‘Back home and I must say the meal was delicious!’

Much as she didn’t want to spend time in Alessandro’s company, she knew that she would have to, at least for half an hour or so. First, she wanted to find out how long he intended staying in Scotland, because having a car delivered was not a good sign. Second, she was desperate to know whether he was rethinking his silly decision to try to browbeat Roberto into moving down to London.

She had seen the way Roberto had deflected all attempts to manoeuvre the conversation to the move and she knew that whatever relationship the two had, it would crash and burn completely if Alessandro kept hammering away at his father, trying to force a move that wasn’t wanted.

Couldn’t he see that?

Did he care?

And how on earth had these two ended up at such loggerheads...?

She was curious. She shouldn’t be but she was. She was waved aside when she offered to walk Roberto up the stairs and it was only when he had disappeared from sight that she felt the power of Alessandro’s presence wrap around her like a stranglehold.

In the busyness of leaving the house and driving to the restaurant and then doing her utmost to carry the conversation to any topic that would demonstrate Roberto’s ties to the community, she had forgotten how uncomfortable she felt in the dress.

Now, as those dark eyes settled on her, she had to stop herself from tugging it down.

‘Drink?’ He looked at her for a few seconds. She was wearing a dress that was never going to win prizes at a fashion show. It was an awkward length and, twinned with serviceable boots, gave the impression of someone who wasn’t into clothes. His was a rich diet of catwalk models but he had still found his eyes straying time and time again over dinner to the way the fabric stretched over her full breasts, the way the neckline offered just a glimpse of cleavage, enough for his imagination to take flight. ‘Because I’m guessing that the only reason you volunteered to come in was because there’s something you want to say to me. A stiff gin and tonic might move things along.’

Laura scowled. With no Roberto around, he was back to being the arrogant, obnoxious guy who thought it was amusing to needle her. She could also tell from the way his eyes had skimmed over her that he found her get-up funny—the dress, which hadn’t seen the light of day since London, and even then had only been worn once, the boots, which were sturdy, useful and most of all warm, but hardly the height of fashion.

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