CHAPTER THREE
FOR THE FIRST time in years Chase felt helpless. Three days ago she had walked into the imposing glass building that housed AM Holdings with a simple mission: save the shelter. She had been in control—the career woman, successful in what she did, in command of the situation. She had hoped for a favourable outcome but, had there not been one, she would have left with a clear conscience—she would have done her best.
And now here she was, hanging around by the window in her house, peering out at regular intervals for Alessandro, who had made good on his request to be shown the shelter.
‘What for?’ she had demanded at the time. ‘I don’t see the point. You’re just going to demolish it anyway so that you can put up a mall catering for rich people.’
‘Be warned,’ he had said, eyebrows raised, those midnight eyes boring straight through her, making her feel as though her whole body had been plugged into a socket. ‘Do-gooders and preachers have a monotonous tendency to become self-righteous bores. Naturally, I have details of the land somewhere but I want to see for myself what the layout is. Since you’re the one handling the deal, I can’t imagine that would be a problem. Or is it? Does our past history make it a problem for you?’
Yes. Yes, it does, she had thought with rising desperation. ‘No. Of course not. Why should it?’ she had answered with an indifferent shrug.
So here she was now and she felt as though control was slipping out of her grasp. She knew that under normal circumstances a lapse in her self-control would be easily dealt with but with Alessandro...
Her frustration and anger was underlined by a darker, more insidious emotion, a swirl of excitement that scared her. It felt like a slumbering monster slowly reawakening. Even though she had taken care to dress as neutrally as possible, in a navy-blue suit that was the epitome of sexlessness—and an impractical colour, given the wall-to-wall blue summer skies and hot sunshine—she still felt horribly vulnerable as she hovered in the sitting room waiting for him to show up.
She had informed him that she would meet him at the premises, but he had insisted on collecting her.
‘You can fill me in on the history of the place on the way,’ he had said smoothly. ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’
She had bitten her tongue and refrained from telling him that there was no point being forearmed when the net result would be a demolition derby. He was the guy with the purse strings and she had already seen first-hand how he could use that position to his own advantage. She had no desire to revive the ticking clock.
A long, sleek, black Jaguar pulled up outside the house just as she was about to turn away from the window and her attention was riveted at the sight of him emerging from the back seat, as incongruous in this neighbourhood as his car was.
He was dressed in pale-grey pinstriped trousers, which even from a distance screamed quality, and a white shirt, the sleeves of which he had rolled to the elbow.
For a few heart-stopping seconds, Chase found that she literally couldn’t breathe, that she was holding her breath. The mere sight of him was a full-on assault on all her senses. She watched as he looked around him, taking in his surroundings. She felt sure that this was the sort of neighbourhood he would be accustomed to telling his chauffeur to drive straight through and to make sure the car doors were locked. By no means was it in a dangerous part of London but neither was it upmarket. Well paid though she was, she wasn’t so well paid that she could afford to buy a house in one of the trendier areas and, unlike many of her associates, she didn’t have parents who could stick their hands in their pockets and treat her to one.
She dodged out of sight just as he turned to face the house and, when the doorbell rang, she took her time getting to it. Her heart was beating like a sledgehammer as she pulled open the door to find him lounging against the doorframe.
‘Right. Shall we go?’ she asked as her eyes slid away from his sinfully handsome face, returned to take a peek and slid away again. She gathered her handbag from where she had hung it on the banister and bent to retrieve her briefcase from the ground.
‘In due course.’ Alessandro stepped into the hallway and shut the front door behind him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m coming in for a cup of coffee.’
‘We haven’t got time for that, Alessandro. The appointment has been made for ten-fifteen. With rush-hour traffic, heaven only knows how long it will take for us to get there.’
‘Relax. I got my secretary to put back the visit by an hour.’