CHAPTER THREE

      FOR THE PAST few years Kate had seen her place of work as a refuge. There, she had felt in charge of her life, had worked hard at putting together all the building blocks that gave it definition and purpose.

      Now she felt jumpy. On tenterhooks. Always on the lookout for Alessandro who, for the past couple of days, had often appeared to talk to her. About a client with a thorny tax problem, two overseas companies whose vast returns had generated questions about splitting them into smaller fragments, an acquisition that would mark a significant branching out from electronics, shipping and the leisure industry into publications...

      ‘Cape would normally handle this, but seeing that he’s on an extended holiday abroad, and seeing that that extended holiday is likely to become permanent, you’d better start getting acquainted with some of his responsibilities...’

      This at five-thirty earlier today, when most of her colleagues had mentally switched off in preparation for leaving and had been all agog at the appearance of the big man.

      She had kept as cool and collected as she could but her nerves had been all over the place. Surely the head of finance should be handling this situation? she had ventured, watching askance as he had perched on the side of her desk and then dragging her eyes away from his muscular thighs and the way the fine fabric of his trousers was stretched taut over them. But, no. Watson Russell was swamped by several huge ongoing deals—and besides, these matters would qualify as fairly small peanuts for him.

      Afterwards, some of the girls had hovered, waiting for her to emerge from her office, and had proceeded to ply her with questions. None of the questions had had anything to do with work. They had wanted her opinion of him. As a hunk. Kate had made it a point never to engage in conversations like that, but she had been pinned to the wall and had found herself admitting that he was all right but not her type.

       So how come he’s been around so much...is something going on...?

      Argh! She had become just the sort of giggly, girly type she had never been, and it had left her all hot and bothered.

      And he still hadn’t committed to a meeting so that he could look through what she had found out—which, as it turned out, was not very much at all. George had been dipping his hands in the till, but it hadn’t been going on for very long and the amounts, in the big scheme of things, weren’t that significant.

      She would talk to Alessandro about that—try and find some compassion in him for the older man—but she didn’t hold out much hope.

      Now, at home far earlier than she normally would have been, on yet another hot summer evening, Kate looked at her work computer with jaundiced eyes.

      It wasn’t yet six and she couldn’t face sitting in front of her computer and picking up where she had left off during the day.

      Wandering through her very nice little ground-floor flat, she had plenty of time to think about the social life she lacked.

      The back door was flung open and she could smell the neighbours barbecuing. Aside from the pleasant couple with two kids living next to her, she had no idea who her neighbours were.

      At work, having almost given up on asking her, two of her colleagues had invited her to go to the pub with them and she had felt a little surge of panic because...

      Because her whole life was devoted to work.

      How had that happened? Okay, she knew how, and she knew why, she just didn’t understand how it had all run away with her so that she had lost all her perspective.

      Not only was her social life practically non-existent, but where was the guy she should be dating? Where was the exciting sex life she should be having?

      She had had one boyfriend, three years previously, and he had fallen off the face of the earth because he had wanted more attention than she had been prepared to give. He hadn’t understood that she had been taking professional exams and had had to study when she wasn’t holding down the demanding job at the accountancy firm she had left as soon as she had qualified.

      At the time she had been miffed—because how hard would it have been for him to just give her some breathing space? Surely it had been enough that they’d had fun on the weekends? But he had wanted more than just fun on the weekends.

      So now here she was—alone. She wouldn’t have wanted to be with Sam still. No, in retrospect, he hadn’t been the man for her, even though he had ticked a lot of the right boxes. But shouldn’t she have moved on? Be having a good time finding his replacement? Somewhere?

      She lived in London, for heaven’s sake!

      Frustrated with the direction of her thoughts, she slammed shut the French doors at the back so that she couldn’t be reminded of what she was missing by the smell of barbecue wafting into her house.

      Then she had a shower.

      Then, in a pair of tiny shorts and a cropped top, she prepared to wait out the annoying train of thoughts that were suddenly bothering her.

      For which she blamed her wretched boss, who had somehow managed to get under her skin, to make her feel somehow inadequate...

      And as soon as she started thinking about Alessandro she found that she couldn’t stop.

      He was just so alive and vital and brimming over with restless energy. Next to him, she felt like a pale, listless shadow, going through the motions of having a fulfilling life when she wasn’t.

      Absorbed in pointless speculation, she was only aware of the doorbell when it was depressed with such insistency that she was forced to dash and pull open the door or else risk her neighbours complaining about noise pollution.

      Alessandro Preda was the last person she’d expected to see standing on her doorstep. In fact she blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision and turn him into someone else. But, no, he was still there. Tall, dynamic, broad-shouldered, and way too exotically good-looking for London suburbia.

      He didn’t say a word. Just looked at her. He had obviously come straight from work because he was still in his work trousers—charcoal grey, super conventional, and yet on him somehow not quite. But there was no jacket, and he had shoved the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, revealing muscled forearms liberally sprinkled with dark hair.

      She seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

      ‘Are you going to ask me in?’

      Alessandro eventually broke the silence. It took some effort. He had wanted to catch her by surprise, had been driven by sheer curiosity to see her somewhere—anywhere—that wasn’t to do with the office.

      But he hadn’t expected this.

      This wasn’t the starchy woman who occupied her own office three floors down in his building. Removed from the files, the computers, the telephones and the uninspiring range of suits in various shades of grey, this was a different