Read Online Enthralled by Moretti by Cathy Williams - Free Book Online Page B

You’d like me to believe that you’re all bleeding heart and caring for the defenceless. Well, how would you like to prove it?’

CHAPTER FOUR
    C HASE DIDN ’ T ANSWER immediately. Alessandro slid back the partition and told the driver to deliver them to a well-known French restaurant. By the time that sank in, the car had already altered course.
    ‘What the heck do you think you’re doing?’
    ‘We’re going to discuss my proposal over food. It’s lunchtime.’
    ‘And I’ve told you that I need to get back to do some work! Besides, I can’t imagine what sort of proposal you have for me that involves you kidnapping me!’
    ‘I like your use of language. Colourful.’
    Chase was still burning from where his finger had touched her lips. Her mouth tingled.
    ‘What made your friend decide to go into the good Samaritan business?’
    Chase looked at him with unbridled suspicion. He was leaning indolently against the door and she got the feeling that it was all the better to see her. Like the big, bad wolf in the fairy story. ‘I don’t know what good it will do for you to hear Beth’s potted history.’
    ‘I’ve never known anyone who erects so many obstacles to complicate a perfectly harmless conversation.’
    ‘That’s because everyone kowtows to you, I imagine,’ Chase offered ungracefully. While he was supremely relaxed, legs slightly open, one arm along the back of the seat, the other hanging loosely over his thigh, she was as tense as a block of wood. Her legs were tightly pressed together. Her lips were tightly compressed. Her fingers were interlinked and white at the knuckles.
    ‘Rich people seem to have that effect,’ she continued, avoiding his speculative eyes. ‘I’ve seen it. They like throwing their weight around and they take it for granted that everyone is going to agree with everything they say.’
    ‘You’re getting all hot and bothered over nothing,’ Alessandro murmured with mild amusement. ‘The food at this restaurant is second to none. Have you been there? No? Then you should be looking forward to the experience. So why don’t you relax? Tell me about your friend.’
    ‘You didn’t seem that interested in her when you were downgrading the price of the place by a thousand pounds per minute.’
    ‘That was before I met her.’
    Every argument she engineered seemed to crash into a brick wall. He wasn’t interested in arguing with her. She, on the other hand, felt driven to keep arguing because something inside her was telling her that, if she didn’t, she might find herself in dangerously unchartered territory. She might start remembering how funny he could be, how thoughtful, how engaging.
    ‘She obviously comes from a fairly wealthy background,’ Alessandro murmured encouragingly. ‘And yet the road she decided to travel down wasn’t exactly the predictable one.’
    When he had first laid eyes on Chase after eight years, he had been shocked. And hard on the heels of that shock had come rage and bitterness. It seemed that he had badly underestimated the effect she had had on him. He hadn’t put her behind him after all. Had he succeeded in doing that, he would have felt nothing but indifference and contempt. So, yes, revenge had been an option but why make a third party suffer? Weren’t there other ways of handling a situation that had landed in his lap?
    Rage and bitterness were corrosive emotions and there was one very good way of permanently eliminating them. He smiled with slow, deliberate intent.
    Chase took note of that smile and wondered what the heck was going on.
    ‘She hasn’t had a...normal upbringing,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I know this because I knew her before this whole business with the shelter cropped up. Actually, she came to me when she was approached with your company’s interference because we were already friends.’
    ‘Interference? I’ll overlook your take on my generous offer to buy her out. How did you become friends? Oh no, don’t