She let the matter drop, because she didn’t trust herself to speak without her voice trembling from emotion, and because she was worried she might do something really stupid and tell him how much she wished he was staying longer. What was the point in wishing? Or explaining how she felt? It was obvious that he was counting down the minutes until his departure. Charlotte wasn’t going to make a fool of herself by trying to get him to change his mind. Besides, her own situation precluded things from getting more serious between them.
Whatever she was feeling, it was better left unsaid.
Alessio forcedhimself to work for the rest of the morning. There was a mountain of emails, a heap of reports, and a few meetings to attend via Zoom, and he was glad for the distraction. His mother, however, had refused to allow him to cancel their breakfast and had, instead, shifted it to dinner. He’d agreed, if only because he considered this a part of honouring his promise to his father, but it was the last thing he felt like doing.
She made garlic langoustines and focaccia, served with crunchy roast potatoes and greens, and Caleb was his usual, obnoxious self, so Alessio found his eyes straying to the clock in the kitchen every few minutes, wondering what the earliest possible time was he could excuse himself.
He wanted to get back to the hotel. More accurately, he wanted to get back to Charlotte.
He thought of her, and a stitch formed in the center of his chest, as he recalled the way she’d looked that morning, when he’d snapped and reminded them both of how temporary his time in town was—and how much he couldn’t wait to leave.
It was true.
He wanted to get back to his real world, to a life away from his mother and half-brother and the promise he’d made his dying father. But in some way, he wanted to imagine Charlotte as a part of that world. He wanted to keep seeing her. He wanted to seduce her, to date her properly, as he did any woman he was sleeping with. He wanted to take her around the world in his jet, to show her his homes, to give her the world, in fact, for as long as they were seeing each other. He wanted to make her laugh and smile, to erase all the worries from her life. But it wasn’t that simple.
She wasn’t some footloose and fancy-free heiress or model he’d picked up at a bar. She was essentially a single, working mother, and he couldn’t just whisk her away whenever he had a hankering to take her to bed.
She had a life here.
A family.
He lifted a piece of seafood to his lips and chewed it without tasting the superb flavours.
He could come back to the Cotswolds to see her. Just until they got this out of their system, at least. A few nights a month. She could come to him sometimes—Dash had grandparents who could care for him. But she’d already explained why that wouldn’t work. She didn’t want the grandparents to know she was in a relationship, because it might jeopardise her right to custody, so they were hardly likely to babysit while she took an international booty call, and that was all he could offer her. All he wanted to offer anyone.
Which meant what?
He toyed with the question, barely paying any attention to his mother and Caleb’s conversation.
He could offer her a job! She and Dash could move to Italy. She’d be available to him then, whenever he wanted to see her. Hell, he could offer for her to be his live-in cook. He could pay her to come and stay with him—
He caught the direction of his thoughts and cursed inwardly. Was he so desperate for more time with Charlotte he was actually considering asking her to virtually prostitute herself to him?
He ground his teeth together, shaking his head to dispel that thought.
“I promised Charlie I’d go lock up,” Caleb was saying, standing and wiping his hands on the back of his jeans.
That caught Alessio’s attention. His eyes focussed on his brother, and for the first time, he realised he’d gelled his hair back from his face, and that he wore a little more aftershave than usual.
Winona nodded once. “Say hi from me.”
Alessio waited until they were alone. “Does he do that often?”
Winona frowned a little, standing to clear the plates. “What, darling?”
He grimaced at her casual use of a nickname. “Go and lock up the pub.”
“Only when Charlie’s working late,” Winona responded with a small, maternal smile that made Alessio’s skin crawl.
“He has a crush on her,” Alessio surmised.
“Oh, it’s more than a crush,” Winona confirmed. But hadn’t Alessio known that all along? He’d seen the photos in the bar, the way his half-brother looked at Charlotte. Heat flooded his body, and a sudden, soul-deep need to possess Charlotte immediately, to make her his completely and utterly, caused every cell in his body to reverberate.
“He’s in love with her?”
“I think so.”
“And how does she feel about him?”