she was clever. In another place and another time, she knew that she would have been one of those girls who would have been said to ‘have it all’: brains and looks. But then, life had a way of counter-balancing things. At any rate, she had relied far more on her brains than she ever had on her looks. She had worked like a demon to get her A-levels, fought against all odds to get to a top university, and once there had doggedly spared no effort in getting a degree that would set her up for life. And all that against a backdrop that she had trained herself never to think about.
‘Thank you.’ She chose to misinterpret the tone of his voice. ‘So, I got a good job, did my training, changed companies...and here I am now.’
‘Fitzsimmons. Classy firm.’
‘Yes, it is.’ She could feel fine prickles of nervousness beading her forehead.
‘And yet, no designer suit? Don’t they pay you enough?’
Chase cringed with embarrassment. He had never made any secret about the fact that he came from money. Was that how he could spot the fact that her clothes were off the peg and ready to wear from a chain store? ‘They pay me more than enough,’ she said coolly. ‘But I prefer to save my money instead of throwing it away to a high-end retailer.’
‘How noble. Not a trait I would tend to associate with you.’
‘Can’t you at least try and be civil towards me?’ Chase asked thinly. ‘At any rate, most of my work is pro bono. It’s sensible not to show up in designer suits that cost thousands.’ It was what she had laughingly told someone at the firm ages ago and her boss had applauded her good sense.
They were now in front of an old-fashioned pub nestled in one of the quieter back alleys. There were gems like this all over London. When they entered, it was dark, cool and quiet. He offered her a drink and shrugged when she told him that she would stick to fruit juice.
‘So...’ Alessandro sat down, hand curved round his pint, and looked at her. He honestly didn’t know what he hoped to gain from this forced meeting but seeing her again had reawakened the nasty questions she had left unanswered. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. Or maybe we should pick it up at the end—at the point when you told me that you were married. Yes, maybe that’s the place we should start. After we’d been meeting for four months... Four months of flirting and you gazing at me all convincingly doe-eyed and breathless, then informing me that you had a husband waiting in the wings.’
Chase nursed her fruit juice. She licked her lips nervously. Her green eyes tangled and clashed with cold eyes the colour of jet. ‘I don’t see what the point of this is, Alessandro.’
‘You know what the point of it is—you’re going to satisfy my curiosity in return for the full agreed price for your shelter. It’s a fair exchange. Tell me what happened to the husband.’
‘Shaun...was killed shortly after I got my first job. He...he was on his motorbike at the time. He was speeding, lost control, crashed into the central reservation on the motorway...’
‘So you didn’t ditch him in the impersonal confines of a divorce court.’ Nor would she have. Alessandro downed a mouthful of beer and watched her over the rim of the glass. Not, as she had told him on that last day in exhaustive detail, when he’d been her childhood sweetheart and the love of her life. ‘And I take it you never remarried.’
‘Nor will I ever.’ She could detect the bitterness that had crept into her voice, but when she looked at him his expression was still as cool and unrelenting as it had been.
‘Is that because there’s no room for a man in the life of an ambitious, high-flying lawyer? Or because you’re still wrapped up with the man who was...let me try and remember... Oh, yes, I’ve got it: the only guy you would ever contemplate sleeping with. Sorry if you got the wrong idea, Alessandro. A few cappuccinos does not a relationship make, but it’s been a laugh...’
‘We should never have seen each other. It was a terrible idea. I never meant to get involved with anyone.’
‘But you didn’t get involved with me, did you?’ Alessandro angled his beautiful head to one side as he picked up an unspoken message he wasn’t quite getting.
What was there to get or not get? he thought impatiently. The woman had strung him along, led him up the garden path and then had casually disappeared without a backward glance. Hell, she had made him feel things... No, he wasn’t going to go there.
‘No! No, I didn’t. I meant...’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘You don’t understand. I shouldn’t even have even to you. I was married.’
‘So why did you? Were you riding high on the knowledge that you’d managed to net the rich guy all the groupie students were after?’
‘That’s a very conceited thing to say.’
‘I value honesty. I lost track of the number of notes I got from girls asking for some “extra tuition”.’
If there hadn’t been notes, she thought, then he surely would have clocked the stares he’d garnered everywhere he went. The man was an alpha male with enough sex appeal to sink a ship. Throw in his wealth, and it was little wonder that girls were queuing up to see if they could attract his attention. She’d never, ever been at the university longer than was strictly necessary but, if she had been, she knew that she would have become a source of envy, curiosity and dislike.
‘So was that why you decided to keep your marital status under wraps? To take the wedding ring off? To string me along with the promise of sex?’
‘I never said we would end up in bed.’
‘Do me a favour!’ He slammed his empty glass on the table and Chase jumped. ‘You knew exactly what you were getting into!’
‘And I didn’t think... I never thought...’
‘So you lied about the fact that you weren’t single or available for a relationship.’
‘If I remember correctly, you once told me that you weren’t interested in commitment, that you liked your relationships fast and furious and temporary!’
Alessandro flushed darkly. ‘Weak reasoning,’ he gritted cuttingly. ‘Did you lie because you thought that you might try me out for size? See whether I wasn’t a better bet than the stay-at-home husband? Is that why you strung me along for four months? Were you hedging your bets?’ He shook his head, furious with himself for losing control of the conversation, for actually caring one way or another what had or hadn’t been done eight years previously.
‘No, of course not! And Shaun was never a stay-at-home husband.’ Again, that bitterness had crept into her voice.
‘No? So what was he, then?’ Alessandro leaned forward, the simple shift of body weight implying threat. ‘Banker? Entrepreneur? If I recall, you were a little light on detail. In fact, if my memory serves me right, you couldn’t wait to get out of my company fast enough the very last time we met.’
Alessandro was surprised to find that he could remember exactly what she had been wearing the very last time he’d laid eyes on her: a pair of faded skinny jeans tucked into some cheap imitation-suede boots and a jumper which now, thinking about it, had probably belonged to the
