The Italian's Unexpected Baby. Kate Hewitt

burrowing into his skin. ‘Oh?’

      ‘The media said you came from a poor background…the slums of Naples.’ He angled his head away from her, not trusting the expression on his face. ‘Is that true?’

      ‘Slums is such a pejorative word, but I suppose, in essence, yes.’ He did his best to sound bored. He was bored.

      The last thing he wanted to talk about was his pathetic past…the endless chaos of moving from grotty flat to grotty flat, the stints in foster care when his mother had lost custody of him, the endless jobs she’d taken cleaning office buildings, the countless boyfriends she’d had in a desperate bid to assuage the despairing sadness of her life. A childhood he’d done his best always to remember, to remind him of how he would be different, even as he pretended to forget.

      ‘Then if you know what it’s like to be poor, to live from pay check to pay check, how can you fire people like that?’

      ‘Because I know what it’s like to work hard,’ he said in a steely voice, ‘and to earn what I have. And anyone who does those things will have a position with Costa International, that much I guarantee.’

      Her eyes widened. ‘They will?’

      She sounded so hopeful it made him cringe. ‘Dillard Investments was dying on the vine. I just plucked it before it fell, withered, to the ground. If anything, I’ve saved people’s jobs in the long run.’

      ‘Do you really mean that?’

      Impatient now, he shrugged. ‘Henry Dillard was charming, I’ll grant you that, but he was a terrible businessman. I did his employees a favour.’ Why had he stooped to justifying himself? ‘I’m not the monster you seem to think I am,’ he finished levelly. ‘Regardless of what you read online.’

      She stared at him for a moment, and he felt as if she were seeing right inside him, that blue, blue gaze burrowing deep down inside his soul, reaching places he’d closed off for good. He looked away, shrugging as he took a sip of champagne, struggling to master his wayward emotions.

      ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t think you are.’

      ‘You’ve changed your mind?’ He’d meant to sound offhand and failed.

      ‘I think you like to present yourself as someone hardened and ruthless,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s the right image for someone who specialises in corporate takeovers, isn’t it?’

      ‘I suppose.’ What else could he say? She saw too much already.

      ‘I wonder who you really are,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder what you’re hiding.’ Alessandro stared at her, unable to look away. He felt a tug low in his belly, pulling him towards her. She wanted to know him. It was beguiling, alarming. Nobody knew him, not like that.

      ‘Let’s dance,’ he said, his voice roughened with emotion. When they danced, they wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t say things or see inside him. He would make sure of it.

      Wordlessly Mia nodded, and after depositing their empty champagne flutes on a nearby table, Alessandro took her by the hand and led her to the ballroom’s parquet dance floor. The music was a slow, sensuous piece, the sonorous wail of a saxophone wrapping its lonely notes around them as Alessandro took her into his arms.

      Her hips bumped his gently and heat flared white-hot, making his hands tense on hers before he deliberately relaxed his grip and began to move her around the floor.

      She was elegant in his arms, matching the rhythm of his movements, her hips swaying, her body lithe. Lithe and eager. He felt her tremble and knew, like him, she felt this most inconvenient and heady desire, growing stronger with every second they swayed together. The realisation only stoked his own.