‘Frank and Anne?’ Alessandro made a point of avoiding the scathing criticism in Chase’s eyes. He had absolutely nothing to feel bad about. He knew for a fact that there were vultures hovering over the place, waiting to pick it to pieces, and those vultures would not have parted with nearly as much cash as he was prepared to.
‘My dear friends. They help me here. As for me, perhaps a retirement place by the coast... So, I expect you would like to see the land, Mr Moretti? There’s a lot of it. My parents were both keen gardeners. Sadly, I haven’t had the money to look after it the way it deserves, but if the place is to be redeveloped then I’m sure you won’t find that a problem. Chase tells me you have grand plans for it to be an upmarket mall.’
Alessandro marvelled that ‘an upmarket mall’ could be made to sound like ‘the tower of Babel’, although when he looked at the older woman there was no bitterness on her face.
‘It will bring a great deal of useful traffic to the community.’
So he made money. It was what he did. It was what he had always done. And he was still doing it. He frowned as he remembered Chase’s barbed comment about his lifestyle.
He had enough money to retire for the rest of his life and still be able to afford what most people could only ever dream of. So was he trying to make up for his parents’ excesses? He was angry and frustrated that he should even be thinking along these lines. His parents were long gone and he had barely known them. How could he have, when, from a toddler, he had been in the care of a succession of nannies who had all fallen by the wayside in favour of boarding school abroad?
His parents had both been products of ridiculously wealthy backgrounds and their marriage had provided them with a joint income that they had both happily and irresponsibly squandered. Untethered by any sense of duty, and riding high on the hippie mentality that had been sweeping through Italy at the time, they had zoned out on recreational drugs, held lavish parties, travelled to festivals all over the world and bought houses which they had optimistically called ‘communes’ where people could ‘get in touch with themselves’. And then, to top it all off, they had seen fit to throw away yet more of their inheritance on a series of ill-advised schemes involving organic farming and the import of ethnic products, all of which had crashed and burned.
Alessandro, barely through with university, had had to grasp what remained of the various companies and haul them back into profit when his parents had died in a boating accident in the Caribbean. Which he had done—in record time and with astounding success.
So what if he had learnt from his parents that financial security was the most important thing in life? So what if nothing and no one had ever been allowed to interrupt that one, single, driving ambition?
A woman in whom he had once rashly confided things that should have been kept to himself was certainly not going to make him start questioning his ethos.
Beth was now chatting amicably about the wonderful advantages of the place being developed, which would bring much-needed jobs to the community. To Alessandro’s finely tuned ears, it sounded like forced enthusiasm. It was clear that she hated the thought of leaving the house, and he couldn’t help wondering what someone who had always been active in community life in London would do in the stultifying boredom of the seaside.
It was after midday by the time they were standing outside the house saying their goodbyes. His chauffeur had returned for them but Chase pointedly made no move in the direction of the car.
‘I’ll make my own way back,’ she said politely.
‘Get in.’ Alessandro stood to one side and then sighed with exasperation as she continued to look at him in stubborn silence. ‘It’s baking hot out here,’ he said, purposefully invading her space by standing too close to her. ‘And that outfit isn’t designed for warm weather.’
‘I’ll take my chances on avoiding sunstroke.’
‘Which is something I would rather not have on my conscience.’
‘You don’t have a conscience!’
‘And you do?’
Chase looked at him with simmering resentment. He didn’t look all hot and bothered. He looked as fabulous, cool and composed as he always did. Plus, he had charmed his way into Beth’s affections. She could tell. He hadn’t come on too strong, he had pointed out all the benefits of selling the place but in a perfectly reasonable way that no one would have been able to dispute. He was just so...damned persuasive! She hated it. And she hated the way she had found herself staring at him surreptitiously, hated the way her imagination had started playing tricks on her, hated the way she had had to fight against being seduced by the dark, deep, velvety tones of his voice.