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‘Roughly six months’

Roughly six months! Less time than he’d been with her It hurt to think that he ement in such a brief period of time

‘Not long A ind ro on the cake, Alessandro I’m very happy for you’

Alessandro hadn’t thought about it as a ind ro with her firm of lawyers on one of his deals He’d liked her, adence, and appreciated her ability to respect his ferocious working agenda Was that roh for him to take the next step forward, but he had to admit that it was at least partly fuelled by the fact that he wasn’t getting any younger

Unlike a lot of his city colleagues— the ladder to success—Alessandro had no intention of re the field Nor was he going to hang around until he was too old to enjoy playing with his kids Sure, he had had woe had always held him back from commitment

Victoria, he recognised, was undeh-powered job, and therefore did not look to hi for assurances about love or any such thing She worked for hiratifying situation

‘Icing on the cake?’ he mused ‘Yes, I suppose it is…’

CHAPTER TWO

IT HAD not been a satisfying an

Alessandro stared out of his floor-to-ceiling officeat the busy, grey London streets five storeys below Wet pavehts, and everyone seee ofon presents—at least half of which would inevitably be returned to the shops on the first working day after Christht so for Victoria—a diamond necklace which had cost the earth and which he had dispatched his personal assistant to source with the guiding words that it should be classy and very expensive His personal assistant was extremely efficient

Thinking about Christmas presents made him think about the one and only Christan A pair of tickets for a concert by a band she had been crazy about A dark, intimate venue where the noise had

The ly froht back to his unsatisfactory , but the conversation had been aard, forced, and the more aard and forced it had becoo beyond her polite responses and get the real flavour of the person sitting so stiffly opposite him

He had left the house forty-five minutes after he had arrived, with the very clear impression that he had only been invited for a cup of coffee because she had found herself between a rock and a hard place, and that, having invited hi to him Every word had been squeezed out of her, and each word had been less informative than the one before

The woman hated him and couldn’t be bothered to hide the fact

Having enemies was part and parcel of Alessandro’s life Every successful man had his fair share But his enemies would never have dared show their faces—and he had never known any woan had good reason Just as he knew that breaking up with her at the tiood, whether she accepted that fact or not There had been an innocence about her approach to life that would have been da in his wake He had made an attempt to tell her that, but she had listened to him politely, head cocked to one side, and then had said in a cool little voice, ‘Whatever’

Nor had he been able to get her to talk about her private life Was she seeing so-haul transfer, leaving behind her family, unless a enuine interest—all he had got was the same polite smile and, ‘That’s really none of your business, is it, Alessandro?’

Victoria’s call interrupted his frowning conte him that she and Dominic were in Reception

Fa nu in question was to the proame, which Dominic had followed up on with unexpected tenacity for a six-year-old kid Football gaenda His father lived in New York and only assuht when he came to London And Alessandro certainly couldn’t see Victoria slashing her work commitments to take hi football lessons for hi him up from them