A Pawn in the Playboy's Game

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...’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_30cb2aa1-3b1c-537b-a0b7-dea85971c622)

‘BOY’S LATE. PROBABLY changed his mind. Probably decided that it’d be better to airlift me out of my own damned house than go through this charade of pretending he’s interested in anything I do!’

Laura looked at Roberto anxiously. Alessandro was half an hour late and who better than she to know the vagaries of transport? Trains that laughed in the face of timetables. Cabs that got stuck in traffic and crawled along as though they were submerged in treacle. Planes that hovered and circled and hovered and circled because they were at the back of a queue.

‘He said he’d come,’ she told him firmly while sneaking a glance at her watch. It was nearly six and the two of them were hovering like maiden aunts waiting for their wayward charge to return home.

It was ridiculous.

‘My son has his own damned personal schedule! Lives for his work!’ He repositioned his tie and banged his walking stick on the wooden floor. ‘Probably got a call and, of course, any call would take precedence over coming to Scotland! Never could stand the place! Always preferred that namby-pamby London life!’ He threw her a sly look. ‘’Course, something else could have held him up!’

‘Yes?’ She looked at Roberto affectionately. He still belonged to an era when ties were de rigueur, whatever the occasion, and trousers were always belted firmly at the waist. He was dressed in a jumper with the crisp white shirt underneath neatly buttoned to the neck, the knot of his dark, striped tie crisply in place and a pair of his most casual slacks, which were still pressed into submission with no-nonsense creases down the middle of the legs. His shoes gleamed. He looked such a vision that she had taken a picture of him on her phone so that she could send it to her grandmother. He had, naturally, grumbled, although she’d noticed that he had surreptitiously neatened his thick silver hair with his hand before the shot.

‘Floozy.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Floozy. Has enough of them chasing behind him! Met one or two myself. Silly little airheads but sometimes even the smartest of men can’t resist a—’

‘I get the picture, Roberto!’ She led him away from that subject back to plants and gardens and the cookery club her grandmother wanted him to join.

The last thing she needed was to hear about Alessandro and his so-called floozies.

In fact, the last thing she wanted was to be here, on a Friday evening, wearing a long-sleeved, knee-length dress and boots and waiting for a guy who had managed to get under her skin in a very, very irritating way. She had spent the past week thinking about him, hadn’t been able to shake him out of her head, and having to face him again was not what she wanted.

But here she was because Roberto had told her that the three of them would be going out.

‘Got it into his head that the old man’s life’s suddenly interesting!’ Roberto had announced. ‘Told him it was a damned sight more interesting than one that was just work, work, work and some floozies in between!’ After that he had sat her down and explained the whole business of the move he didn’t want and wasn’t going to be forced into. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to discuss it with her grandmother and she wasn’t to say a word. He would talk to Edith himself when she returned, not, he insisted, that he was going anywhere.

‘But if the boy wants to try to move me, then he can try all he wants! He’ll soon find out that this old bugger won’t be going anywhere!’

Laura had picked up the thread of trepidation running through his bravado and had instantly agreed to be by his side when Alessandro arrived. She would not, emphatically would not, be sticking around for the entire weekend but, yes, she would accompany them to dinner at the newly opened fish restaurant in the neighbouring town.

Now Roberto was fretting but before she could start soothing him all over again they heard an overhead roar and they both hurried over to the big bay window, peered out and registered the presence of a helicopter, which was circling, finding the right spot in the immense garden outside, before landing. The blindingly bright beam cutting through the darkness was an impressive sight. Laura would put money on every single person in the town craning their necks out of their windows and wondering what the heck was going on.

‘Might have guessed he wouldn’t have come like any other person!’ He was already hobbling out of the sitting room, where they had been chatting in front of a pot of tea, and Laura sprinted after him, reaching the front door just as it was opened and there he was, as tall, as sinfully good-looking, as aristocratically arrogant as she remembered.

‘Hope you haven’t set that thing down on any of my plants!’ Roberto bellowed as the rotors wound down to a noisy din.

Alessandro glanced wryly past him to catch Laura’s eye and her skin was suddenly on fire.

‘And thank you for that warm welcome.’ Alessandro turned back to signal something to his pilot, then stepped into the hall, shutting the door behind him. His sharp eyes didn’t miss a thing. His father still had the same mutinous expression on his face as he had had the weekend before, when Alessandro had tried to get him to talk about moving, and Laura...

She’d been on his mind. He hadn’t been able to work that one out. Was it because, in a sea of predictable women, she had been the only one to have ever contradicted him? Had the novelty of being criticised got under his skin and provoked a reaction? Like nettle rash? Something annoying you couldn’t ignore? Or had the lack of a female presence in his life had something to do with it? It had been a couple of months since he had seen off his last girlfriend.

He didn’t analyse the reaction. He just knew that the weekend planned had lain in front of him, glittering like a gem on the horizon. And that, in itself, was spectacular, considering how reluctant his visits had been in the past, obligatory visits to be endured before returning to the sanity of city life.

‘You’re late. Was about to head to the kitchen and take something out of the fridge!’

He glanced at Laura to see whether she, like him, was irritated with his father’s impatience, but when he looked at her it was to see that she was smiling indulgently at Roberto, her hand resting lightly on his forearm, a gesture of affection that his father appeared to take for granted.

‘If Freya stocks the fridge,’ Alessandro said evenly, ‘then I wouldn’t count on the contents to be inspiring. I’ll be ten minutes at the most. I need to send a quick email.’

Laura frowned. She knew that Roberto had been dressed and waiting for the past hour and a half. She’d helped him with his tie and she’d seen, from the other three ties draped over the back of the chair, that he’d had a task choosing the one he wanted to wear.

‘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.