‘Well...?’ Chase cleared her throat and valiantly met his eyes.
‘No explanations, no excuses, not even of the make-believe variety... Sorry, not good enough.’ He signalled to the waitress for the bill. ‘And consider this conversation over.’ Hell, the woman could act. She was as white as a sheet and her hands were shaking—remarkable performance. He felt something painful twist inside him, an iron fist clenching on his intestines, and staunched it down.
‘I think we can say that our unfinished business has been concluded. If you ever get it into your head to descend on me, either at my offices or at my house, I assure you I will have you forcibly removed either by the police or by my security personnel. Do you read me?’
Chase nodded. Had she expected him to part with cash just because she’d asked? Because she’d offered to pay him back? Was there some part of her that had hoped he might know her well enough by now to give her the benefit of the doubt? She couldn’t tell him the truth. How could she? She was boxed in with no room to manoeuvre.
‘I understand,’ she said quietly.
‘Question.’ Alessandro was furious with himself for not walking away without a backward glance. He was even more furious with himself for the unwilling tug of compassion he was feeling for a woman who was nothing more or less than a gold-digger with great acting ability. And, underneath that maelstrom of emotion, he recognised the angry pain of disillusionment. ‘If you’re so desperate for money, why jack the job in?’
‘I can’t discuss that either.’
Alessandro stood up abruptly. ‘Good luck finding your money,’ he told her coldly. ‘If anything needs to be discussed about the shelter, you might want another lawyer to handle it.’
‘I’ve already begun tidying up all my ongoing case files. Someone else will be handling all the details with the shelter. I...I’ve been given permission to leave at the end of the week. I should be working out a month’s notice but my boss—’
‘Not really interested.’
Chase remained standing, watching his departing back. She told herself, bracingly, that it was always going to end—yet the hollowness filling her felt as destructive as a tsunami. If she wasn’t a homeowner, if she had been one of the millions renting, she knew that she would have upped sticks and disappeared. No job, no Alessandro and a threat waiting for her when she returned: it took all her courage to gather herself and head back outside down to the underground.
Brian would be there. He had told her in a chummy voice laced with menace that he would be waiting when she returned, that he didn’t mind just hanging out there, although if she wanted to hand her key over to him...
Chase shuddered.
* * *
Heading in the opposite direction back to his office, Alessandro angrily realised that the very last thing he was in the mood to do was work. He still had a conference call lined up for later that evening. He got on his mobile, spoke to his secretary and cancelled it.
Hell, could he have been that stupid that he had fallen for the walk up the garden path yet again? With tremendous effort, he side-lined the fury raging through him and tried to recall the details of their brief conversation in the brasserie.
She hadn’t given him an answer when he had asked her why she had handed in her notice if she needed money. That, for one thing, made no sense. Whatever debts she had managed to incur, she wasn’t so stupid that she could imagine settling them without a regular salary coming in. So had she been sacked? Had they discovered something? Had she been embezzling? It seemed a ludicrous idea, but hell, how was he to know when she had offered no explanation for her behaviour?
No, this was not going to happen again. He was emphatically not going to be left stranded with a bucket load of unanswered questions, as had happened last time round. Whether he ever laid eyes on her again or not was immaterial. He would pay her a little visit and would stay put until she answered all his questions to his satisfaction. Then, and only then, would he leave.
He called his driver to collect him. Rush-hour traffic meant that it took a ridiculously long time before his driver made it to the building, even though his car, parked outside his house, was only a matter of a couple miles away as the crow flew. It took even longer to navigate the stand-still traffic in central London.
His mobile buzzed continuously and he eventually switched it off. He was fully given over to trying to disentangle the conversation he had had with Chase. He felt like a man in possession of just sufficient pieces of a complex puzzle to rouse curiosity and yet lacking the essential ones that would solve the conundrum.
This, he told himself, was why he was sitting in the back of his car, drumming his fingers restlessly on the leather seat and frowning out of the back window. He had been presented with a complex puzzle and it was only human nature to try and figure it out, whatever the cost. Frankly, he would drag answers out of her if he had to.