I glowered at him. Why had I allowed myself to fall into his trap so easily? But then, I thought, what was the point in denying I’d seen him? It was making me look foolish, and the last thing I wanted was to appear foolish and gauche in front of him.
‘Yes. Who was your date?’
‘The practice manager from my consulting rooms.’
I only just managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes. I could just imagine the ‘practice’ they’d get up to.
‘I’d love to see her job description.’
His jaw tensed as if he found my comment irritating. ‘It was her birthday. Now, let’s get on with the tour, shall we?’
It annoyed me that he’d made me look petty and unprofessional. ‘This way,’ I said, and turned smartly on my heels.
But I was all too acutely aware of his tall, commanding frame following close behind.
I COULD SMELL the lemon and spice of his aftershave as I led the way to the dormitories on the second floor. It was a subtle scent, redolent of warm summer afternoons in a lemon grove. I thought of that brief time in Paris—the way we’d met by accident when I’d run into him as I was coming out of a shop late on a Saturday afternoon. He steadied me with his hands and I looked up into his face and my heart all but stopped.
I’m the last person who would ever believe in love at first sight, but something happened at that moment I still can’t explain. I felt something shift inside me as his dark brown eyes met mine. He spoke to me in fluent French, so that might have explained it. It made me fall all the faster. And then he was so gallant, bending down to help me pick up the tote bag that had slipped off my shoulder, spilling its contents all over the cobblestones.
When he handed me my wand of lip gloss our fingers touched. I felt a fizzing sensation that travelled all the way up my arm and somehow ended in a molten pool between my legs.
He led me to a quiet table in the shade of a leafy tree outside a café on the Rue de Seine and ordered sparkling mineral water for me and an espresso for himself. We talked for two hours but it felt like two minutes.
He told me how he had grown up in Sicily but had studied and trained in London, and was spending that year working at Paris’s top cardiac centre to complete his PhD before heading back to London. Most surgeons found the specialty hard enough, but he’d taken on even more study.
He fascinated me. I was spellbound by his warm, intelligent brown eyes and his long-fingered hands that had so briefly touched mine. I thought of those hands, how they performed intricate surgery and saved countless lives. I sat there aching for him to touch me again. I must have communicated it silently, for he suddenly reached across the table and took my hand in his, stroking his thumb over the back of it as his eyes meshed with mine.
He didn’t have to say a word. I could see it in his gaze. I knew it was the same in mine. There was a connection between us that transcended the primal attraction of two healthy consenting adults. I had never felt a surge of lust so overpowering, and yet I could feel something else as well, which was less easily defined.
Looking back, I suspect I recognised some quality in him that spoke to the lonely outsider in me, which I prided myself on keeping well hidden. My mother would say it was fate, or kismet, or the planets aligning or something. My father would say it had something to do with our chakras being balanced. Whatever it was, the world seemed to carry on without us as we sat there gazing into each other’s eyes.
I gave myself a mental slap and pushed open the first dormitory door. ‘We sleep the Key Stage One and Two girls two to a room to encourage close friendship,’ I said. ‘The older girls can request single rooms, but we encourage sharing to maintain a sense of family.’
Alessandro gave the dormitory a cursory look before meeting my gaze. I wondered if he could see any trace of the nostalgia that had momentarily sideswiped me. His eyes moved back and forth between each of mine as if searching for something.
‘Are you happy, ma petite?’
I felt my knees weaken at the French endearment. I covered it quickly by pasting a poised and professional look on my face. I could not allow myself to be lured back into his sensual orbit. His voice, no matter what language he spoke—French, Italian, English or a combination of all three—made a frisson of delight shimmy down my spine.
I wondered if my voice had the same effect on him. Not flipping likely. I might have smoothed over my Yorkshire vowels after years of living in London, but even so there was no way anyone would want to listen to me reading the phone directory.
‘What’s wrong with Claudia’s mother?’ I asked, to steer the conversation away from my emotional health.
An impenetrable sheen came over his eyes and he turned away to look at the dormitory, with its two neatly made beds and the waist-high bookshelf that doubled as a bedside table between. There were two teddy bears in pink and purple tutus sitting side by side on the top. It might have been any bedroom in the suburbs except for the sound of schoolchildren playing in the playground outside.
‘She’s receiving treatment for a protracted illness,’ he said after a long moment.
Something in my stomach slipped. ‘Terminal?’
‘I hope not.’
I bit my lip as I thought of six-year-old Claudia losing her mother. My mother—both my parents, actually—drove me nuts, but I couldn’t imagine not having her around any more.
What would it do to a little girl so young to have no one but her uncle to watch out for her? Who would help her with the issues of growing up? Who would tell her about the birds and the bees, not to mention the blowflies who could destroy her innocence in …? Well, I’m not going to go there. Who would she turn to when the world seemed to be against her? Or when she got her heart broken for the first time? Who would hold her and tell her they loved her more than life itself?
‘What about Claudia’s father?’ I asked.
Alessandro’s top lip developed an unmistakable curl of disdain. ‘He’s not in the picture. Never has been. Claudia has never met him.’
‘What about grandparents?’
The line of his mouth tightened until it was almost flat. ‘There are none on either side.’
None? Or none he wanted to acknowledge? I wondered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister five years ago?’ I said.
He drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. I watched as his broad shoulders went down on the long exhale and what looked like a tiny flicker of pain passed over his features.
‘We weren’t in contact at that point.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘It sounds it.’
He gave me a level look. ‘It’s important to me that Claudia settles in as quickly
