ONE
EVEN THOUGH I’M a fully qualified teacher I still hate getting called into the headmistress’s office. I get this nervous prickle in my stomach, like a bunch of ants are tiptoeing around in there on stilettos. My knees feel woolly and unstable. My heart starts to hammer.
It’s a programmed response from my childhood. I was rubbish at school. I mean really rubbish. Which is kind of ironic since I ended up a teacher at the prestigious Emily Sudgrove School for Girls in Bath, but that’s another story.
Being called in to the office nearly always means there’s a problem with one of the parents—a complaint or a criticism over how I’m handling one of their little darlings. Everyone knows helicopter parents are bad news. But, believe me, fighter pilot ones are even worse.
I stood outside the closed door and took a calming breath before I knocked on the door and entered.
‘Ah, here she is now,’ said Miss Fletcher, the headmistress, with a polished professional smile. ‘Jem, this is Dr Alessandro Lucioni—a new parent.’
The words were like a closed-fist punch to my heart. Bang. I’m sure it missed a beat. Maybe two. Possibly three. I stood there with a blank expression on my face … or at least I hoped it was blank. God forbid I should show any sign of the shock that was currently rocketing through me.
Alessandro was a parent? A father? He was married? He was in love?
The words were like a ticker tape running through my head. But then it flipped off its spool and flickered in a tangled knot inside my head. One of the stray tapes wrapped itself around my heart and squeezed until it hurt.
Alessandro gave a formal nod and held out a hand. ‘Miss Clark.’
I stared at his hand. That hand had known every inch of my body. That hand had coached me to my first orgasm. Those long, clever fingers had made me feel things I hadn’t felt before or since. The sight of that hand made memories I’d locked away twist and writhe and wriggle out of their shackles and run amok with my emotions. I could feel the spread of heat flowing through me. Furnace-hot heat. Heat that made me acutely aware of my sexuality and the needs and urges I usually staunchly, stubbornly, furiously ignored.
I brought my gaze up to his unreadable one. So he wasn’t going to let on that he knew me. Biblically or literally. Fine. I would play the same game.
‘Welcome to Emily Sudgrove,’ I said, and put my hand in his. His fingers were cool and strong, and closed around mine with just enough pressure to remind me of the sensual power he’d once had over me.
Okay. Forget about once. I admit it. He still had it over me. I felt the tingle of the contact. The nerves of my fingers and hand were lighting up like fairy lights on a tree. Sparking. Fizzing. Wanting.
‘Thank you,’ he said, with a brief flicker of his lips that passed for a smile—but I noticed it didn’t make the distance to his eyes.
Oh, dear Lordy me, his eyes! They were a dark lustrous brown. Darker than chocolate. Strong eyes. Eyes that could melt frozen butter like a blowtorch. Eyes that could be sexily hooded and smouldering when he was in the mood for sex. Eyes that could make my blood sing through my veins with just a look.
I felt his gaze move over my face in an assessing manner. I hoped he wasn’t noticing my eyebrows needed shaping. Why hadn’t I made the time for a bit of lady landscaping? Why, oh, why hadn’t I used the hair straightener that morning? My hair is my biggest bugbear. I hate my corkscrew curls. For most of my life I’ve had to endure dumb blonde jokes. At least when I tame my hair it gives me a little more credibility, or so I like to think.
Think. Now, there’s an idea. But my brain wasn’t capable of rational thought. I was in fight-or-flight mode. I wanted to get away from Alessandro—as I’d been doing for the last five years.
I’d seen glimpses of him from time to time. He’d saved the life of a London theatre actor a couple of years ago, which had made him into a celebrity doctor. He’s a heart surgeon. A pretty darn good one too—I have to give him that. He ripped my heart right out of my chest without anaesthetic. Oh, and the reason he’s called ‘Dr’, and not Mr like other surgeons, is because he’s done a PhD on top of his arduous training.
Talk about an overachiever. And people think I’m a workaholic. I reckon his business card would have to be one of those fold-out concertina ones, like those old-fashioned postcards, to accommodate all the letters after his name.
I saw him just a couple of weeks ago in Knightsbridge, when I was having lunch with my younger sister Bertie. He didn’t see me, thank God. He was with a blonde. A gorgeous supermodel type, with legs up to her armpits and perfect skin, perfectly shaped eyebrows and perfectly smooth straight hair. The type of woman he’s been seen out and about with ever since our relationship. Luckily my sister didn’t recognise him—or if she did she knew better than to say anything.
Urgh. I hate thinking about my relationship with Alessandro. I hate even using that term. It wasn’t a relationship—not for him, anyway. I was a rebound. That’s another word I loathe. I was a consolation prize. Not Miss Right, but Miss Will Do.
‘Dr Lucioni has enrolled his niece into your class, Jem,’ Miss Fletcher said into the canyon of silence.
Niece?
An inexplicable sense of relief collided with shock. He had a sister? A niece? Relatives? He’d told me he was an orphan.
I’d been amazed at how well he had done for himself when he had no one to back him. Not many people get to where he has without a leg-up somewhere along the way. But on the rare occasions when he spoke of his past he’d told me his parents died when he was a teenager and he had put himself through school and then medical school by working three jobs. There was no family money. No extended family support.
What other lies had he fed me?
I looked at him with a quizzical frown. ‘You have a sister?’
Something moved at the back of his eyes, like a stage-hand darting back into the shadows behind the curtains between acts.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’s currently unwell, and I’m taking care of Claudia until she recovers.’
His voice … Holy guacamole. His voice was like a caress to my sex-starved body. It stroked over me like a sensual hand, making the base of my spine melt like a marshmallow in front of a campfire. The deepness of it, the mellifluous tone of it, the Sicilian accent even years living outside his homeland hadn’t been able to remove.
That voice had told me things I had no business believing. I had fallen for every word. Every shallow promise I had taken to heart. I was ashamed of how stupid I’d been. Deeply and cringingly ashamed.
I’d spent years scoffing at my hippie parents for falling for the latest fad and then I’d gone and done the same. I’d latched on to Alessandro like a directionless follower does a guru. I’d worshipped him. I’d been prepared to give up all I had to be with him. I would have walked—no, crawled on my knees—over glass or razorblades or burning coals or a pit of hissing vipers to be with him.
But what I’d thought we had was a sham. It was all smoke and mirrors. He hadn’t loved me at all. I was payback to the woman who’d dumped him for
