A strong hand suddenly whipped out to capture one of hers, holding her back. ‘It was an unfortunate impulse. I don’t know what came over me. Call it temporary insanity if you like,’ he growled savagely. ‘I’m sorry!’
‘Let go of me!’
He did, and Daisy wrenched open the door and almost fell out onto the pavement, sucking in a great gulp of fresh air as she did so. She was shaking like a leaf. She took a tottering step away from the limousine, her gait that of someone who had escaped a traumatic brush with death.
‘And it’s really pathetic to still be shooting the same lines at your age!’ she slung back at him for good measure.
‘Dio...will you keep your voice down?’ Alessio roared at her, causing an elderly lady walking an apricot poodle to step off the pavement with a frown of well-bred disapproval and give the two of them a very wide berth.
Daisy stole a glance at Alessio, took in the shaken look of uncertainty currently clouding his normally sharp-as-paint gaze and grew in stature with the knowledge that he was handling their unexpected encounter no better than she was. Memories from their volatile teenage years and the effects of shock were driving a horse and cart through any effort they made to behave like civilised, intelligent adults.
‘Look, do you want to see this house or don’t you?’ she asked stiffly.
‘If you will control your tongue and stop hurling insults, I see no reason why we should not deal with this on a normal business footing,’ Alessio drawled with icy control.
CHAPTER TWO
AN HOUR and a half later, Daisy surveyed the elegant hall of the Georgian house for the hundredth time and wondered how much more time the owners would spend entertaining Alessio. Her presence had not been required to give the grand tour, oh, dear, no!
The Raschids had stayed in specially when they had leamt that Alessio Leopardi was coming to view their beautiful home. Mr Raschid was a diplomat and apparently had met Alessio at an embassy dinner last year. Eager to renew that acquaintance, the couple had lost no time in telling Daisy to wait in the hall, while assuring Alessio that they would give him a far more interesting tour than she could. Well, she would have been rather out of her depth in a three-way conversation taking place in Arabic.
Alessio hadn’t looked at her again. Suddenly she had acquired all the invisibility of a lowly maid. And that was how it should be. Like the Raschids, he was a client, just another client, and clients, particularly very wealthy ones, frequently treated the agency staff as something slightly less than human. When she thought about it, their romance thirteen years ago had broken all the class and status rules—Alessio the adored only son of the Leopardi banking dynasty and Daisy the au pair working down the road from his family’s palatial summer villa.
They had not one single thing in common. Alessio had grown up as part of a close-knit, supportive family circle but Daisy had lost both her parents by the time she was six. Her elderly grandparents had brought her up. Her entire childhood had been filled with loss and death and sudden change. She had never had security. Illness and old age had taken everyone she cared about until her mother’s sister had taken her turn of guardianship when Daisy was sixteen. A career teacher in her late thirties, Janet had encouraged her niece to be more independent than her own parents had allowed. But she had been dubious when Daisy had initially suggested spending the summer before her final year at school working as an au pair.
‘I bet you land a ghastly family who treat you like a skivvy and expect you to slave for them day and night,’ Janet had forecast worriedly.
In fact, Daisy had been very lucky. The agency had matched her up with a friendly, easygoing couple who owned a small villa in Tuscany and went there every summer with their children. The Morgans had given her plenty of time off and Liz Morgan had gone out of her way to see that Daisy met other young people. The very first week, Daisy had been invited to the party where she’d met Alessio.
He had roared up on a monster motorbike, sheathed in black jeans with a hole in one knee and a white T-shirt. Tousled, curly ebony hair had been blown back from his lean, vibrantly handsome features and an entire room of adolescent girls had gone weak at the knees with a collective gasp. What was more, his own sex had clustered round him with equal enthusiasm. Alessio had been hugely popular, the indisputable leader of the pack.
Even then he’d had an undeniable golden aura. One had had the feeling that even on a rainy day the sun would still shine exclusively around Alessio. He’d had the immense and boundless self-assurance of a being who had always led a charmed life. The angels had not been having forty winks when Alessio was born. Alessio had been young, beautiful, academically brilliant and rich. And Daisy’s greatest attraction could only have been that she was different from the girls he was used to dating. The new face, the foreigner, who had to work to get a taste of the sun, had stood out from the familiar crowd.
But she hadn’t known who he was then. His name had meant nothing to her. And even after being slapped Alessio had still trailed her all the way back to the Morgan villa on his motorbike when she had walked out on the party. Since losing face in public was every teenager’s worst nightmare, she had been upset. The more she had told him to grow up and get lost, the more he had laughed. She had been convinced that he was sending her up for her shocked response to that proposition of his, embarrassingly aware that she had overreacted and that a smart verbal rejoinder would have been infinitely more adult.
‘Anyone will give me a reference. I’m a really wonderful guy when you get to know me,’ he told her, with a shimmering, teasing smile that made her vulnerable heart sing. ‘And I’m delighted you’re not the sort of girl who gives her all on a first date. Not that I would have said no, you understand...but the occasional negative response is probably better for my character.’
‘You really like yourself, don’t you?’ she snapped.
‘At least I don’t lurk behind the furniture, scared to speak to people, and react like a startled rabbit when they speak to me,’ he retorted, quick as a flash.
And she fled indoors, slunk up to her bedroom and cried herself to sleep. But Alessio showed up again early the next morning. Liz brought him into the kitchen where Daisy was clearing up the breakfast dishes. The whole time Alessio was with her the older woman hovered, staring at Alessio as if she couldn’t quite believe he was real.
‘I’ll pick you up at seven...OK?’ he said levelly, quite unconcerned by his audience. ‘We’ll go for a meal somewhere.’
‘OK...’
‘Smile,’ he said, cheerfully ruffling the hair of the two-year-old girl clinging to his leg. ‘She can smile at me...why can’t you?’
‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
His mouth quirked. ‘You’re not supposed to admit things like that.’
Liz cornered her the instant he departed. ‘Daisy, if I acted a little weird, put it down to me being shocked at the sight of a Leopardi entering my humble home.’
‘Why?’ Daisy frowned.
‘We’ve been coming here every summer for ten years and I still can’t get as much as nod of acknowledgement from the Leopardis! His parents are mega-rich—as well as their villa here they’ve got a huge mansion in Rome, where they live most of the time—and they are very exclusive in their friendships,’ she explained uncomfortably. ‘And Alessio has a reputation with girls that would turn any mother’s hair white overnight. But he usually sticks with his own set. Please don’t take this the wrong way, Daisy...but do you really think you can handle a young man like that? He’s seen a lot more of life than you have.’
But Daisy didn’t listen. Alessio did not seem remotely snobbish. And Alessio’s unknown parents interested her not at all.
He rolled up in