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‘Why?’ Daisy frowned.
‘We’ve been coming here every summer for ten years and I still can’t get as much as nod of acknowledgement from the Leopardis! His parents are mega-rich—as well as their villa here they’ve got a huge mansion in Rome, where they live most of the time—and they are very exclusive in their friendships,’ she explained uncomfortably. ‘And Alessio has a reputation with girls that would turn any mother’s hair white overnight. But he usually sticks with his own set. Please don’t take this the wrong way, Daisy...but do you really think you can handle a young man like that? He’s seen a lot more of life than you have.’
But Daisy didn’t listen. Alessio did not seem remotely snobbish. And Alessio’s unknown parents interested her not at all.
He rolled up in a low-slung scarlet sports car to take her out that evening. Daisy was impressed to death but Liz grabbed her husband in horror as she peered out from behind the curtains. ‘I don’t believe it! They’ve bought a teenager a Ferrari! Are the Leopardis out of their minds?’
All the trappings of fantasy were there—the gorgeous guy who had miraculously picked her out of a wealth of beautiful, far more sophisticated girls, the fabulous car. That night they dined in a ritzy restaurant in Florence. Daisy was overpowered by her surroundings until Alessio reached across the table and twined her tense fingers soothingly in his, and then she quite happily surrendered to being overpowered by him instead.
On the drive back, he stopped the car, drew her confidently into his arms and kissed her. About ten seconds into that wildly exciting experience, he started teaching her how to kiss, laughing when she got embarrassed, laughing even harder when she tried to excuse her inexpert technique by pleading cultural differences. But surprisingly he didn’t attempt to do anything more than kiss her. He was so different away from his friends. Romantic, tender, unexpectedly serious.
‘Do you know I still haven’t asked you what you’re studying at college?’ Alessio remarked carelessly at one point.
‘History and English. I want to be an infant teacher,’ she said shyly, and if he hadn’t kissed her again she might have told him that she was already worrying that in a year’s time she mightn’t get good enough grades to make it onto the particular teacher-training course which her aunt had advised her to set her sights on.
‘You wouldn’t believe how relieved I am to hear that you’re studying for your degree,’ Alessio confided lazily. ‘I was afraid you might still be at school.’
And she realised then that there had been a misunderstanding. She attended a sixth-form college for sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds, not a college of further education which would equip her with a degree. ‘Would it have made a difference... if I had been?’ she prompted uneasily.
‘Of course it would have made a difference.’ Alessio frowned down at her in surprise. ‘I don’t date schoolgirls. It may be only a matter of a couple of years but there’s a huge gap in experience and maturity. You can’t have an equal relationship on those terms. It would make me feel as if I had too much of an advantage and I wouldn’t feel comfortable with that.’
And Daisy felt even less comfortable listening to him. She realised that Alessio would never have asked her out had he known what age she was. And that if she told him he had been given the wrong information he wouldn’t want to see her again. So how could she admit to being only seventeen?
Choosing not to tell him the truth didn’t feel like lying that night. It felt like a harmless pretence. She had not thought through what she was doing in allowing Alessio to believe that she was older than she was. It did not once cross her dizzy brain that there would come a time of reckoning and exposure... and that Alessio would be understandably outraged by her deception. By the end of that evening, she was walking on air and fathoms deep in love...
Daisy emerged from that unsettling recollection to find herself still taking up space in the Raschids’ spacious hall. The sound of voices alerted her to the fact that she was about to have company again. She stood up just as the Raschids and Alessio appeared at the head of the staircase. Her uneasy eyes slid over him and lowered, but not before she’d seen his frown of surprise.
