The Italian's Perfect Lover (7 page)

“Alessandro, you’ve left me vulnerable. When
I’m not at the dig, I’m alone in the villa from dawn to well after
dusk.”

“Surely it’s the treasures they’re after.
They won’t come inside. Besides, there are the guards who will also
be keeping an eye on the villa.”

“Yep.” She dropped her eyes and scooped up
her bag from where she’d dropped it on the floor. “You’re right.
Don’t know why I’m making the fuss.”

“Emily. You are not the kind of woman to make
a fuss. What is this really about?”

She bit her lip. No way in this world could
she tell him—Mr Perfect—about her problems. But there was something
about his tone; the authoritative note was gone, the voice was
lower. He sounded almost sympathetic.

“Nothing I can’t handle. Sorry to have wasted
your time.”

“Wait.” He stood up, his hand on her arm.
“Besides, Emily,
I
am there. You are not alone.”

She turned to face him. That was a joke. The
man had turned tail after kissing her—a mistake obviously. She
wasn’t in his league and she could have told him that right from
the beginning.

Except she’d hoped, that just for once, she
might be wrong.

“Alessandro. You’re never there.”

She turned and left without a backward
glance.

Emily loved this time of day.

The team had left. She enjoyed their company
but was always glad when they’d gone and she was left alone to
savor the progress of the dig, to enjoy the magic of the estate.
Except now, for the first time since she’d arrived, she felt an
underlying flutter of apprehension. What if her ex-boyfriend turned
up?

The last time she’d seen him was ten years
ago when her evidence had sealed his fate: imprisonment in a mental
health facility for ten years. But now his time was up and he was
free to do whatever he wanted.

He had always been a control freak—a very
convincing, charming, educated, control freak. He’d set her on the
academic path, given her her first break and come to control every
aspect of her life until even that hadn’t been enough. She hadn’t
seen the attack coming.

Short and violent, but with long-lasting
consequences, it had taken her years of therapy to even begin to
recover.

She was stronger now. But what if he turned
up and she crumpled once more? She couldn’t go back to those days
of darkness.

She shook her head as if to rid it of the
taunting thoughts. She was stronger than that, she told herself
sternly.

The rich colors of the short, triumphant
twilight of southern Italy fell around her as she made her way back
through the estate gardens to the villa. She stopped suddenly on
the edge of the shrubbery, listening.

The simple elegance of Bach’s cello suite
rose and fell across the sunken gardens, its poignant tones caught
on the soft evening breeze.

Someone was in the house. No-one should be
there.

She clenched her fists and unclenched them,
hesitating for one second before pressing on across the gardens to
the villa.

She could hear the blood pounding in her
ears, almost drowning out the music. The soft light of candles
flickered through the open windows and she could smell the
wonderful aroma of dinner. The dinner the staff left for her was
usually cold. She hesitated. Since when had her ex ever cooked?

She pushed open the French windows even wider
and stepped inside. Seated across the other side of the room was
Alessandro, nursing a large whisky and a frown.

Relief swamped her. Despite whatever had gone
on between them she felt an instinctive trust in this man.

“Alessandro! To what do I owe the
pleasure?”

He raised his eyebrow at her remark. “I
decided to return home early today.”

She walked to the table and lifted the silver
cloches from the serving dishes, sniffing appreciatively.

“Good of you considering you don’t seem to
like spending time here. Or perhaps it’s me you’ve been
avoiding?”

“Emily, now, why would I do that?”

“You tell me? I guess you don’t much like my
company.”

He laughed. “You don’t play around, do you
Emily?”

“Play?”

“With words. You always say what you
mean.”

“Of course. What’s the point in doing
anything else?” She sat down at the table and began serving out the
dinner. He rose and joined her, seating himself opposite.

He smiled again. “None. But that doesn’t seem
to stop the rest of your sex playing games.” He uncorked the
chilled bottle of white wine and poured two glasses.

“So, from the woman who doesn’t play games,
why are you here?”

“So, from the man who enjoys a game or two, I
am here because it is my home, I am required to be here and because
of something you said earlier.”

“Really? You mean I said something that you
actually listened to?”

He nodded. “You mustn’t put yourself down,
Emily, I’m sure you’re often listened to.”

She grimaced. “You know exactly my meaning.
It was
you
I was getting at. You live in your own world and
I didn’t think I had a hope in hell of getting through.”

“Well, you have.”

“So, what exactly were my words of
wisdom?”

“Something about treasures—guarding
treasures.”

Alessandro swilled the pale golden wine
around the glass and looked at her from underneath guarded lids as
she sighed with pleasure, savoring a mouthful of food. A vision of
his wife, Eva, sitting back smoking as she eyed the dinner table
with distaste, simply waiting for it to be over, entered his
mind.

The contrast couldn’t have been greater.

Avoiding Emily hadn’t worked. She’d not left
his mind, although he’d done his best to forget her.

But whether at work or at play he was
confronted with women like Eva—self-absorbed, brittle and
boring—and his mind turned once more to Emily.

Even when he was going out with women,
flirting until it was time to make love to them, he lost interest.
His body wanted release, but not with them. He wanted only one
woman. He’d never wanted only one woman and that was the dangerous
part; that was the painful part. He couldn’t risk it.

And he wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t turned up
at his office today, showing the one trait that twisted the knife
deeper inside him: vulnerability.

It disarmed him and suspended his
judgment.

The feelings and thoughts that he’d
suppressed during the week had surfaced and all he could think of
was that she was, indeed, a treasure—just as he’d first thought—and
that she needed guarding just as much as the archaeological
site.

He refilled his glass and relaxed back in his
seat once more. There was something joyous about watching someone
relish their food. Nothing greedy, no hurried eating, but a
savoring and a total absorption and appreciation of the culinary
arts. It was very sensual. It was very arousing.

He must have conveyed something of his
thoughts for she suddenly caught his eye and sat back, wary.

“So you’re also here to guard the
treasures.”

He nodded. “You were correct. I have guards
around the estate but no-one in the villa. It is safer to have
someone here also.”

She looked down, as if disappointed. He
wouldn’t enlighten her. He needed to be here for her, to make sure
she was safe but that was all. The rest he would have to
resist.

“It’s a big villa.”

He smiled. “You will be safe, believe me.” He
wouldn’t tell her that he’d had his things moved to the room beside
hers. She’d find out soon enough.

“Tell me, why did you tell the media about
the dig? You must have known what would happen.”

“I told you. Call it good business practice,
if you will.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Then call it what you like.”

“You could have ruined everything.”

“Nonsense. If your reputation is as secure as
you say, you will have no concerns. I have a business to run and
publicity is a part of it.”

“Business? What has the estate got to do with
business?”

“The money you’re using on the dig. The wages
you’re paying. Where do you think it comes from? Plucked out of the
rarefied air of artistic academic sensibility? No. It comes from my
businesses. Everything I own has to pay its way. Make me
money.”

“Why could publicity for the estate possibly
benefit?”

“There is no such thing as bad publicity,” he
said evasively.

“You can’t sell the antiquities you
know.”

“Thank you for enlightening me.”

“So, your current project is?”

“I have a number of them. The largest is the
redevelopment of a run-down area in Napoli that has great
potential.”

She sat back and looked at him. She’d taken
her glasses off now and her green eyes seemed to burrow
disconcertingly into him.

“You enjoy your work?”

“It’s work. It has its challenges—and
rewards.” He shrugged.

“By rewards, you mean monetary.”

“Not only money. Creating something out of
nothing is satisfying.”

“But it doesn’t excite you, does it? There’s
no spark when you talk about it.”

He narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t used to being
interrogated. “I thought you said I was the psychoanalyst.”

She laughed. “Doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to
see you live for your pleasure time, not your work.”

“Don’t presume you can read me, Emily. The
past is your area of expertise, not me.”

Undaunted, Emily continued. “Now me, I love
my work.”

“Well, cara, we are not all so lucky.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Enough, woman.”

She grinned. “So your current project.
Involves demolition first I guess?”

“We have to clear the area before we can
build. The tenements in Forcella were razed to the ground before we
could begin.”

“You’ve ‘razed it to the ground’? Now, that’s
not a phrase you often hear archaeologists say. In fact that’s
something you usually hear them use to describe the damage and
desecration of a once unique civilization.”

Her voice had become heated and Alessandro
relaxed once more. Anger and argument he could deal with,
sympathetic career advice, he couldn’t.

“You think everything is so valuable it
should be saved? The area we’re developing has been a huddle of
near derelict buildings of no use to anyone. Not everything needs
to be saved.”

“Perhaps you do though.”

Her words fell like a heavy weight between
them, redolent with meaning.

She’d gone too far. He pushed his chair back
in sharp response. What the hell was she talking about?

“Now, if you’ve quite finished your
interrogation, I’ll leave you to your dinner. I have more of my
destructive work to do. Goodnight.”

“Alessandro?” Her quiet voice stopped him at
the door. He turned around slowly. “Thank you for coming back
earlier. I appreciate it.”

He nodded and continued out the door.

She drove him mad. One minute frustrating and
angering him with her outspoken, almost naïve thoughts, and yet at
other times her soft-spoken frankness could take his breath away
with its simplicity.

But why the hell she should think he should
be saved was beyond him. He had everything he wanted. Didn’t
he?

He walked down the marble corridor to the
bedroom wing listening to the empty echo of his lonely footsteps
and feeling, once more, the sharp pain of his guilt. He wondered
why it was only when he was near Emily that his pain surfaced. He
closed his eyes briefly, willing it to disappear but his mind was
filled with the anxious face of his young son—floppy dark hair over
a pale face that was inherited from Eva. A son who was no longer
alive, thanks to him.

It was late by the time Emily climbed the
cool, sweep of stairs to the first floor rooms. The villa had a
different atmosphere tonight. Not one to be easily spooked, she’d
happily stayed here alone before Alessandro arrived. But now? She
felt a tension in the air she hadn’t noticed before.

She closed the door quietly behind her and
turned on the gas lamps. They cast an eerie blue-white light in two
pools, outside of which the darkness lay more thickly than before.
The room was large and bare. She’d brought few personal possessions
with her; she owned little, she needed even less. But tonight,
somehow, she wished she’d made more of an imprint on the otherness
of the room; she wished she could have claimed greater ownership.
Perhaps then she’d have felt less threatened.

She moved over to the dark window and
unfolded the wooden shutters. They squeaked with disuse and refused
to budge. With both hands she yanked at each of the shutters in
turn, growing more desperate to shut out the blind darkness that
lay outside.

Then she saw it.

A slight movement of something pale below her
window. Her eyes burned as she stared, unblinking, into the
darkness. But all she could see was a trail of twitching branches
through a sea of unmoving darkness. She opened her mouth to cry
out, but no sound came. She couldn’t move. She stood transfixed as
her eyes adjusted to the night, now seeing layers of darkness,
different textures, a movement of the tree tops in the light, night
breeze.

Again she saw it: a light flash of a lone
torch tracking its way through the bushes from the rear of the
house. Still she couldn’t move. Then she heard the crisp snap of a
branch directly beneath her window.

She backed away slowly as though the person
might detect her movements. Her shadow, doubled from each of the
two lights, twisted away from her, up the walls and cast its
darkness onto the ceiling.

Anyone from outside could see her now.

A beam of torchlight turned suddenly up on to
the window before dropping down.

She cried out loud, involuntarily, and lunged
at the door, twisted the handle and rushed out into the black
corridor, straight into the body of a man, naked except for a towel
around his middle.