Kate Watson—Ms Kate Watson—was everything he avoided when it came to women. She was cold, distant, intense, unsmiling and prickly. She never let him forget that she was there to do a damn good job and nothing else.
But that single sentence...That’s not the sort of person I am...had made him wonder.
What sort of person was she?
‘You were asking me about my out-of-hours suggestion...’ Alessandro moved the topic swiftly along, at the same time relegating her stray remark to a box from which it would be removed at a later date.
He had nothing to do on a Friday night. A rare situation for him. He dragged the single spare chair in the room across to her desk and sat down, angling it so that he could extend his long legs to the side, crossing them at the ankles.
Kate watched with something approaching horror. ‘I was about to leave... Perhaps we could continue this conversation on Monday morning? I’m usually in first thing. By seven-thirty most days.’
‘Laudable. It’s heart-warming to know that there’s at least one person in my finance department who doesn’t clock-watch.’
‘I’m sure you must have plans for the evening, sir...Alessandro. If I take the paperwork home I can have a look at it over the weekend and get back to you with my findings on Monday morning. How does that sound?’
‘The reason I suggested that we discuss this situation out of hours is because I would rather not have it turned into a matter for speculation. Naturally you would be paid generously for your overtime.’
‘It’s not about being paid for overtime,’ Kate said stiffly. She kept her eyes firmly pinned to his face, but she was all too aware of the lazy length of his body, the flex of muscles under the white shirt, the tanned column of his throat and the strength of his forearms where he had shoved the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows.
He had always made her jumpy, in a way other men never had. There was a raw, primal, barely contained aggression about him that threatened her composure, and it had done so from the very first time she had set eyes on him as a new recruit to the company.
It was dangerous. It was the sort of dangerous she could do without. She didn’t like the way her body seemed to respond to him of its own accord. It frightened her.
Her upbringing had taught her many things, and the biggest thing it had taught her was the need for control. Control over her emotions, control over her finances, control over the destination of her life. She had grown up with a role model of a mother who had lacked all control.
Shirley Watson had adopted the frivolous name Lilac at the age of eighteen, and had spent her life living up to it—moving from pole dancer to cocktail-bar waitress to barmaid back to cocktail-bar waitress, flirting with men’s magazine pin-ups along the way.
A stunningly beautiful, pocket-sized blonde, she had only ever learned how to exploit the natural assets with which she had been born. Kate only knew sketchy details of her mother’s past, but she did know that Lilac had grown up as a foster-home kid. She had never known stability, and instead of trying to create some of her own had relied on being a dumb blonde, always believing that love lay just round the corner, that the men who slept with her really loved her.
Kate’s father had vanished from the scene shortly after she was born, leaving Lilac heartbroken at the age of just twenty-one. From him, she had moved on to a string of men—two of whom she had married and subsequently divorced in record time. In between the marriages she had devoted her life to pointlessly trying to attract men, always confusing their enthusiasm for her body for love, always distraught when they tired of her and pushed on.
She was a smart woman, but she had learned to conceal her brains because a brainy woman, she had once confided in her daughter, never got the guy.
Kate loved her mother, but she had always been painfully aware of her shortcomings and had determined from an early age that she would not live a life blighted by the same mistakes her mother had made.
It helped that she was dark-haired. And tall. She lacked her mother’s obvious sex appeal and for that she was thankful. Her assets she kept firmly under wraps, and when it came to men...well...
Any man who liked her for her body was off the cards. No way was she ever going to fall into the same helpless trap her mother had. She relied on her brains, and goodness knew it had been tough going, ploughing through her school years, moving from place to place, never quite knowing what would confront her on her return home from school.
Her mother, by a stroke of good fortune, had been given sufficient money by her second husband in their subsequent divorce to enable her to buy somewhere small in Cornwall. She—Kate—would not be relying on any such stroke of fortune. She would provide for herself by hook or by crook and be independent.
And when and if she ever fell in love it would be with a guy who appreciated her intelligence, who was not the kind of man with commitment issues, who didn’t abandon women after he had had his fill of them, who didn’t go out with women because of the way they looked.
So far this paragon of virtue hadn’t appeared on the scene, but that didn’t mean that she would ever be distracted in the meantime by the sort of guy she privately despised.
So why, she wondered, did her stupid body begin a slow burn whenever Alessandro Preda was within her radius?
And now here he was, making noises about them working alongside one another outside normal working hours.
‘Then what is it about?’ Alessandro demanded, bringing her back to the reality of him sitting across from her with a bump. ‘Hectic social life? Can’t spare a week to sort this matter out?’ He glanced around him before settling his dark eyes on her cool, pale face. ‘Despite the extremely pleasant office you have here at the tender age of what...? Twenty-something...?’
‘I’ve been promoted on merit.’
‘And part of that promotion involves going beyond the call of duty now and again. Consider this one of those instances.’
Kate lowered her eyes, keeping her cool.
‘You said you were heading off now...?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case...’ Alessandro stood up and sauntered towards the door, where he proceeded to lean against it, staring at her ‘...I’ll walk you down. In fact, I’ll go one better. I’ll give you a lift to your house. Where do you live?’
Kate licked her lips nervously and ventured a polite smile as she stood up as well, and began tidying a desk that wasn’t in need of tidying.
‘How long have you been here?’
His voice had her head snapping up and she looked at him in bewilderment.
‘How long have I been where? In your company? Working in London?’
‘Let’s start with in this office.’
Kate looked around her at her neat space, in which she felt so safely cocooned. These four walls were tangible proof of how far she’d come and how quickly—tangible proof of the solid income that marked her steps along that road called financial security.
Her mother had asked if she could visit her place of work when next she was in London but Kate had tactfully, and a little shamefully, killed the suggestion before it could take shape.
Lilac Watson, not yet fifty, and these days thankfully a little less obvious in displaying what she had to offer physically, would still never have blended into these muted, expensive surroundings.
This was Kate’s life, built with her own blood, sweat and tears, and her mother had her own life. In Cornwall. Far away. Separate.
‘What about it?’ She shoved her work laptop