It was agony, knowing he was just a short walk away down the corridor, yet out of her reach. She supposed she could hardly mosey along and interrupt the interviews going on in there for the new MD’s position. Not to mention that Donatuila was forever present, guarding him like a mastiff.

She drummed her fingers on the pages spread before her on the desk. Soon he would be leaving.

Panic seized her. Her time was running out. Once he got on that plane it would be the end of everything. Her absolute joy. The excitement of not knowing what he would do next, the sheer thrill of being with him, the passion. He’d fly out of their lives and she’d be back to her nun-like existence.

Anguish speared through her at the thought of losing him again. How would she ever bear it?

She turned a page and puzzled over a strange sentence for a while, then gave up and aimed it for the bin. Another slam dunk. Why couldn’t people learn to punctuate?

She was reaching for the next one on the pile just as the phone rang on her desk. She started, and her heart jumped into a nervy racketing.

‘Lara?’ It was Alessandro’s deep voice. ‘Can I see you for a few minutes?’

‘Certainly,’ she said. Calmly, she hoped.

She didn’t feel calm. She replaced the phone with shaking hands, realising this was it. The verdict. After a few seconds, avoiding Josh’s interested glance, she stood up, straightened her blouse and soft blue jacket, and brushed down her pencil skirt.

Alessandro was waiting for her at the door of his office. She tried to read his expression, but he looked controlled and inscrutable. He closed the door behind her when she walked in, then bent to brush her cheek with lips that were cool.

‘Good morning, Lara.’

Lara. Not Larissa, or carissima, or tesoro. After being lovers last night, they were back to being formal.

Some expensive, tangy aftershave lingered on his lean, smooth-shaven jaw. He looked so tall, dark and delicious in his charcoal suit and crisp blue shirt, on another, less nerve-racking occasion, she might have kissed his beautiful, stern mouth. It was easy to believe he was the Marquis of the Venetian Isles, though impossible to credit that such a gorgeous, sophisticated example of masculinity had ever desired her.

Maybe she’d dreamed last night and those things he’d said. Maybe, when he’d left her afterwards with that remote, closed expression, it was because at heart he was repelled by the modest domesticity of her and her child.

She managed to stay upright on her legs, but her entire being was a vessel of nervous flutterings.

‘So?’ she queried in a low voice, her heart on a cliff’s edge, last night’s scene with Vivi vivid in her mind. ‘What-what is it?’

His brilliant gaze scoured her face in careful assessment, then he lowered his lashes. Choosing his words, she realised, her heart plunging in fear.

‘I have been thinking. I want to meet Vivi.’

‘Oh.’ The shock roiled through her. She felt her heart rev into a painful pounding rhythm. The moisture dried from her throat. ‘Oh, good, good,’ she somehow said, knowing she had to behave like an adult, her dry voice as husky as a crow’s. ‘But…are you sure? Where are you going with this, Sandro? Are you aware…? I-I mean, have you considered this will be deeply-emotional and significant to her?’

Her voice cracked on ‘emotional’, and there was no concealing her feelings.

‘I am doing what I must do, carissa.’ He frowned. ‘Why are you so afraid? Last night was deeply emotional and significant to me. All of it.’

‘Oh.’ Her eyes filled with tears, and she dashed them away with the backs of her hands. ‘All right, then,’ she said, when she could. She moistened her lips. ‘So what happens after you meet her? You fly off to the other side of the globe and we never see you again?’

‘That’s not how it will be.’

‘How will it be, then?’ Her hands twisted in tune with her churning heart. ‘Can you see this-that if you meet her, then leave her and never come back, she will be more destroyed by it than if you never meet her?’

Shock flickered in his dark eyes, and he grabbed her shoulders. ‘Why do you have such a poor opinion of me, Lara? Why would I do that? Do you think I would just forget her?’

‘I don’t know. You forgot me.’

His eyes widened. ‘Cosa?’

There was a knock. Alessandro released her just as the door opened and Donatuila swished in.

‘Your next guy is here, boss.’ She came to a surprised halt, her pencilled brows flying up. ‘Oh, hey. Sorry. Am I interrupting?’

‘Oh, no, no,’ Lara said, whipping blindly around and managing to make the door without knocking her sideways. ‘I’m just leaving.’

She walked briskly to the ladies’ room, grateful not to meet any other curious eyes along the way, and sat in a cubicle until the tears had properly dried up and she’d stopped the shaking.

How ironic, to have been interrupted in the middle of what might have been the most important conversation of her life.

After a while, she got up and checked her mascara, though there wasn’t much she could do without make-up. She’d just have to wait for her eyes to return to normal. Why was it that some tears did more damage than others?

Back at her desk, she reached for the next manuscript on the pile and kept her eyes lowered to it. There may have been a charged silence in the room, but if any of her friends noticed anything, they didn’t say a word.

It was nearly lunch time when an eruption in the depths of her bag summoned her to her mobile. Her mother, she assumed. Something to do with picking Vivi up from school.

Her heart jolted when she saw that the message was from Alessandro.

Meet me in the lobby.

Fine, she thought, straightening her spine. Round two. She was calmer now. She’d had coffee, she wasn’t blotchy any more, and she’d had time to think a little. If he wanted to see Vivi, that could only be good, couldn’t it? Wasn’t it what she wanted?

She dropped by the Ladies first to make sure she looked smooth and pale, the most she could hope for on this stressful day.

Alessandro was in the lobby ahead of her. She saw him as soon as the lift doors opened on the ground floor. He was standing by the entrance, chatting to some guy from Sales.

He turned his dark intelligent gaze to her as she approached, and she saw his lean face tauten, then smooth to become controlled.

Anxious not to cause any more interest than she was sure had been already aroused, she walked straight past them, through the glass doors and out into the street.

After a few minutes, she heard a firm, energetic tread behind her and Alessandro caught up.

‘Are you all right?’ He looked searchingly down at her, and she met his gaze coolly enough.

‘Fine. I think.’

‘I’m sorry about before, tesoro. I have been trying all day, but the office is not a good place for conversation. Let’s see if we can do better.’ He glanced around for a suitable location. At a nearby corner he spotted a leafy little precinct of shops and cafés. Taking her elbow, he hustled her to it, steering her under an awning shared by a café and a florist shop, halting her next to a giant tub of fragrant stocks. Deceived into believing it was spring, masses of freesias, daffodils and jonquils perfumed the heady air.

Alessandro glanced at his watch, his brows edging together. In contrast with the flowers, he smelled fresh and crisp and masculine. ‘I’ve managed to get some tickets for tonight’s opera. I thought perhaps you might come with me, enjoy the music, and afterwards we can have a little supper while we make our arrangements?’

‘Arrangements?’ She glanced warily at him.

His eyes were cool, steady and determined. ‘For me to meet with Vivi. I know you must prepare her, but we also need to consider how and where it should happen. Don’t we, carissa? We want it to be-good.’

Her pulse quickened, but she had more control this time. ‘That’s a lovely invitation, Alessandro, but I’m afraid I can’t accept. I-I can’t go out another night and leave Vivi with Mum.’ His brows lifted, and she said hurriedly, ‘Mum doesn’t mind, but it would be the third night in a row I’ve asked her to babysit. She has to work, and it’s very tiring for her. Last night I barely made it home in time for her.’ Conscious of the glint in his eyes piercing her right through her cerebral cortex, she added, ‘There’d hardly be time for us to talk, anyway. I’d have to come home straight after the opera, and-’ She shrugged and lowered her gaze, mumbling, ‘And anyway, Vivi needs me to be with her.’

His face became smooth and expressionless, and he nodded his head. ‘I see. So many reasons. Well, well, of course she does need you…It’s a pity. It does make it quite difficult for me. I don’t have very much time before I go to my next appointment in Bangkok.’

He glanced at his watch again, his jaw set grimly, and started to move away, negative vibrations whirling. Then all at once he turned back and gripped her arm, sending a bolt of pleasurable electricity searing through her flesh. ‘Is this reluctance because you’re angry about my marriage to Giulia? Is that why you accused me of forgetting you?’

Perhaps because she’d been so stirred up earlier, her emotions all sprang to the fore, ready for another workout.

She drew herself up to her full five seven. ‘What? I’m not reluctant. That’s a ridiculous thing to say. Look, what you don’t seem to realise is that when you’re a parent you can’t just drop everything at a whim. I do want you to know Vivi. I do. But I can’t help your time frame. If you just appear every six years, hang around for a few days then disappear again-that’s not my fault, is it?’

His mouth and jaw tightened. ‘That is the work I do. That is how my life is.’