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the best,’ she reminded herself. After all, she was having dinner with Stefano in her professional capacity, not personal. Nothing personal. Nothing ever personal.
The intercom for the front door sounded, and Allegra hurried to buzz him through.
The walls were so thin, she could hear the creak of the stairs and his tread down the hall and her heart started to hammer.
She grabbed her coat and handbag and met him in the hallway.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m ready.’
Stefano raised an eyebrow. He looked devastating in a charcoal-coloured suit, a crisp white shirt and mulberry-coloured silk tie. ‘We could have a drink first.’
‘Let’s go out,’ Allegra suggested. ‘My flat’s tiny.’ She realized with a little pang of shame that she didn’t want him to see her poky flat with its second-hand furnishings. Art therapists, even ones who’d had significant successes, didn’t make much money.
She was proud of her flat, but she knew it would seem pathetic to him—the little life she’d built for herself—compared with what he had. What he’d been prepared to offer her.
Stefano made no comment, merely shrugged one shoulder before gesturing for her to lead the way down the cramped hallway.
Out in the street, traffic blared along with the stereo systems propped in windows, and there was an overwhelming smell of greasy kebab on the air.
Allegra smiled brightly. ‘Where to? We could walk …’
Stupid, she told herself. Stefano would have made reservations at a place far from here.
‘I have a car.’ He gestured to a black luxury car idling at the kerb. A few passers-by were giving it curious—and envious—looks as the driver hopped out and opened the back door for them.
‘I hope you don’t mind …?’ Stefano asked politely. ‘If you wanted to eat more locally—’
‘No,’ Allegra hastened to assure him, ‘this is fine.’
It was more than fine. It was amazing. She’d spent the last seven years in severely squeezed circumstances and she’d forgotten that this was the kind of life she’d once been accustomed to. The kind of life Stefano had always known.
‘Thank you for giving me a lift,’ she said stiffly as the car pulled away from the kerb. ‘I could have taken a cab, met you at the restaurant.’
‘Yes,’ Stefano agreed, his voice pleasant and mild, ‘you could have.’
Allegra was conscious of the enclosed space, the forced intimacy of their shared seat, thighs and shoulders brushing, touching. She sneaked a glance at Stefano, saw the clean, strong lines of his cheek, his jaw, and curled her fingers into a fist in her lap.
‘So why don’t you tell me about the child in need of therapy?’ she said after a moment when the only sounds had been the muted traffic from outside and their own breathing.
‘Let’s wait until we get to the restaurant,’ Stefano replied. ‘Then we won’t be interrupted.’
Allegra nodded. It made sense, but the silence that stretched between them was unnerving, and she didn’t even know why.
This wasn’t personal, she reminded herself. It was professional. Stefano was nothing more than another parent in desperate need of help for his child. As long as she remembered that …
‘Allegra,’ Stefano said softly. He smiled as he put one large hand on her leg. Her thigh. Allegra stared down at his fingers, tense, transfixed. ‘Relax.’
She realized how tense she was, coiled tightly, ready to strike or to flee. She smiled, tried to laugh, tried to relax, and failed at both. ‘I’m sorry, Stefano. This is just a bit strange for me.’
He smiled, his gaze flickering over her features. ‘Me too.’
‘Is it?’ she asked frankly, and his smile deepened.
‘Of course. But what’s important now, what has to be important, is Lucio.’
‘Lucio,’ Allegra repeated. His son. ‘Tell me about him.’
‘I will, soon.’ He gazed down at his own hand, her leg, as if suddenly aware of what he had done. How he’d touched her.
He didn’t move his hand, and the confines of the car suddenly seemed airless, tiny. Allegra couldn’t remember how to breathe. He has a son, she told herself, which means he has a wife.
Finally, with a little smile, he removed his hand and Allegra drew in a lungful of air. Had he always affected her that way, she wondered hazily, or was it new?
Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t.
They rode in silence for a quarter of an hour before the car pulled up to a luxury hotel on Piccadilly.
Stefano ushered her up the steps and through the doors and then, surprisingly, to a lift. They rode up in silence and when the lift doors opened Allegra gave a little gasp of pleasure, for they were at the top of the hotel and beyond the elegantly set tables and tall glass vases of creamy lilies, the whole of London’s skyline stretched enticingly to the dark horizon, spangled with lights, glittering with promise.
A waiter ushered them to the most private table, tucked in an alcove with long windows on either side of them. Allegra sat down, felt the weight of the heavy linen napkin as the waiter placed it in her lap.
‘Is this all right?’ Stefano asked and she smiled mischievously.
‘I suppose it will have to do.’
Stefano smiled back, his eyes glinting in the dim light, and for a moment they seemed complicit in their own little joke, their own world. It caused Allegra’s heart to skip two beats and a bubble of laughter to well up in her throat.
She felt the cares and worries that had been tightening like an iron band around her heart ease. They very nearly slipped away altogether and she let them go, even gave them a little push.
This could work, she told herself. It was working. They were interacting in a professional way, friendly and relaxed. Just as it should be.
Allegra took a sip of water. ‘Tell me, do you come to London often?’
‘Occasionally on business,’ Stefano replied, ‘although mainly I’ve been doing business in Belgium.’
‘Belgium? What’s there?’
He gave a little shrug. ‘That industrial machinery I told you about. Mining industry.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Very boring.’
‘Not to you, I suppose.’
‘No,’ he agreed, his expression darkening as if a shadow had passed briefly over him, ‘not to me.’
‘I don’t even know what made you interested in that,’ Allegra acknowledged ruefully. ‘I feel like I actually know very little about you.’ When they’d met all those years ago, he’d asked her questions about herself. She’d been happy to chatter on about all of her silly, girlish interests. He’d been happy to listen. She winced now at the memory.
And what had she known of him? He was from Rome; he owned his own company; he was rich and handsome and he had wanted her.
Or so she’d thought … until she’d realized that all he’d wanted was her social status, her family’s standing.
Not her, never her.
‘I suppose I thought you knew what was important,’ Stefano replied.
‘Like what?’
‘That I’d protect and provide for you,’ Stefano replied. He spoke calmly, easily even, and yet Allegra felt chilled.
He was the same, she realized with a sickening stab of disappointed longing.