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But if he’d known that she was attracted to him, would he have seen beyond her deliberate attempts to play herself down? Would he have zeroed in on what was so obvious to him now? The understated allure was so much more powerful than all the flamboyant peacock parading of the women he usually dated?
Or would he have steered clear of something that had the potential to get complicated?
Complicated women encouraged complicated situations, and Sophie was a complicated woman.
Right now, things weren’t straightforward, but what would happen if a passing attraction turned into something more now that they were involved in this charade?
That wasn’t something he had seriously considered, because as far as he was concerned they had both started from the same ground zero...
An irresistible attraction...
A craving that couldn’t be pushed away...
And an environment where one thing had inevitably led to another...
But what if she had been nurturing a secret attraction to him for weeks? Months? Years, even?
It might be flattering, but it might also be dangerous. What if she started taking this pretend situation seriously?
She made all the right noises, but Alessio was very switched on when it came to hearing women making all the right noises and then discovering that their aspirations had been at odds with those right noises all along.
Disquiet filled him as another little voice shattered his easy assumption that now a potential problem had been spotted it would be no trouble to put it right.
What if attachments began forming, ambushing his usual cool control?
He thought about her when she wasn’t around...she distracted him...he’d barely done a scrap of work since they’d gone to his villa...
When he was being logical, he knew that she was probably vulnerable. She had had a lousy life—almost as lousy as his. She been forced into taking responsibility at a time when she should have been enjoying her youth.
He had been forced into a similar situation, but he had been cushioned by money. He had had his chance to toughen up, and since then he made sure to be the one who called the shots in everything.
He’d lived life where she had retreated from it.
At least that was what he’d worked out from everything she’d told him, and from her reactions and the way she was.
She was a woman waiting for love to strike, whereas he was a guy who knew it never would.
But what if some of what she felt rubbed off on him?
Could that happen?
Alessio feared nothing except the weakness of being dependent on someone else—either financially, intellectually or emotionally.
And so he said now, more to get a grip on himself than anything else, ‘I think that’s an excellent idea.’
‘I... Yes... It’s as well we...er...think about this as early as possible...’
‘To avoid unnecessary complications? Agreed.’
‘Leonard must know that we’re two people who aren’t suited.’
‘Of course he does! But, as you well know, people will easily believe what theywantto believe.’
‘Yes. They do.’
‘He’s desperate to believe that I might finally have found a woman who is...’ he looked at her with a curling wry smile ‘...not built along the lines of my usual dates.’
‘But it won’t be long before he works out that just because I’m the opposite of those doe-eyed, adoring blondes you like to have draped over your arm it doesn’t mean I’m the real deal.’
