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She sighed and picked at her food, her hair falling forward to hide her face ‘About a week ago my mother came to me and asked me for…for a favour, I suppose We hadn’t seen much of each other in recent years, or really at all She’d been dating Rico Bavasso and she said he wanted to meet me’

‘What I saw last night was hardly your hter to her boyfriend’ Cristiano couldn’t keep the scepticism from his voice He didn’t even want to

‘I know She said he was feeling his age and it would do hier wo naïve’ Laurel gulped ‘I can’t believe my mother would…’

‘Set you up?’

‘She wanted him for herself’ Laurel shook her head ‘When I talked to her tonight, she was annoyed that Bavasso had been interested in me at all’

‘Char’

Laurel sighed ‘That’s just how she is I’ve accepted it’ She glanced up at hi ‘You don’t know anything about e’

‘It’s hard not to judge from what I saw and continue to see,’ Cristiano returned coolly ‘What I don’t understand is why you agreed to come at all, if there has been no love lost between the two of you’

‘Because I suppose I’ it will be better between us this time’ Laurel hesitated, and Cristiano waited for the other shoe to drop, because surely it would? ‘And,’ Laurel ad I wanted very much’

There it was, just as Cristiano had known His instincts hadn’t been wrong ‘And what did you want so much?’ he asked

‘A house My house’ Cristiano stared at her, nonplussed, and Laurel continued, ‘I spent a lot of hts It’s a s special, but I love it It’s the only place besides… Well, the only place I think of as home’

‘Besides?’ Cristiano honed on that revealing word ‘Besides what?’

Laurel shrugged, her gaze sliding away ‘Besides the villa in Milan e lived with your father That felt like home, for a little while’