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‘I see you’re a very healthy eater,’ he said conversationally, helping hi it back to the table, where he proceeded to pour hiiveaway of a moredecadent nature’

‘If you give e’

‘But returning to what I said’ This tihtful, serious ‘And that re like your mother I looked at so room’

‘You shouldn’t have come here and you shouldn’t have nosed around’ For a few appalling seconds, Kate felt as though her little world was in the process of being tilted on its axis ‘I should never have told you any of that stuff’

‘Why? Is there so in other people?’

‘Do you?’ She turned the question right back at hiuts to all and sundry? What about all those et deep and personal with them? Do you hold hands and sob over a bottle of hile you pour your soul out?’

This hat it felt like to lose control She had always had control, and now here she was, sitting at her own kitchen table, losing it with a guy who had the power to terminate the career she had so carefully built

And the worst of it was that she didn’t want to retract the accusation

She are of hi He swa in his clean, masculine scent When she leaned forward she could feel his personality wrap around her like tendrils of ivy

She feltalive

But not, she told herself uneasily, in a good way There was nothing about Alessandro Preda that could ood way She felt alive in a very, very annoying way

‘At least you’re not apologizing for asking that daring question,’ Alessandro drawled

So she had ditched the shorts and the cropped top, but the jeans and the baggy shirt did nothing to reduce her sex appeal Now he had seen that body shorn of its cae was i iron

‘And you’re right I don’t tend to do the personal touchy-feely business with the woin recent tiely alike But you wear your defence system on the outside You cover up from neck to ankle but there’s no need You’re not your mother You may want to make sure you don’t follow in her footsteps, but you don’t have to dress like a spinster schoolteacher to do that’

‘How dare you co the back of her throat but thankfully she was far too reticent a person to allow them access

‘I’ to analyze you,’ Alessandro told her in just the sort of gentle voice that she knewif she let it ‘Don’t you feel a little trapped by all the hoops you h?

‘I don’t feel trapped by anything This is the life I’ve chosen to lead You have no idea what it’s like to beinsecure when you’re growing up’

‘How do you know that?’ Alessandro asked softly

Her eyes widened She paused for thought How did she know that? Because of who he was? Rich Powerful Confident Arrogant Those were not the hall but exemplary Besides, he was the sole issue of the unionof tealthy families If you looked him up on the internet—which she never had—you would discover that She had overhead one of the giggly girls fro that titbit one day in the office restaurant He occupied a stratosphere that was quite unlike hers Actually, quite unlike most peoples

‘But you were right when you said that we’re here to talk about Cape’

For a minute there Alessandro had felt the pull to trade one set of confidences for another He didn’t knohere that had coive in to Probably hearing her talk about her mother had naturally led him to think about his own parents They too lived on the coast—probably not a million miles away from her mother Small world

‘Of course I’ll just go and fetch the file I’ve coht be easier for you to go through rather than follow the trail piecemeal’

‘Highly efficient, and just what I would expect of you!’