SOMEBODY LIKE YOU

          She slowly exhaled. Hailee couldn’t care less if she was alone with Alessandro in the same room or not. She wasn’t afraid of him. Never was… He might be able to make other people tremble in their shoes. He might be able to request blind obedience from anyone who came within his despotic reach.          But not her. Never her! And she found it amazing if not pathetic that one man could walk into a room and command that kind of sheep-like obedience without even having to give his name.          Then again, this one man wasn’t just any man. This was a man who had such power that he could walk into any room, anywhere in the world, and demand immediate attention.          The same man who had had this house and its beautiful grounds locked up like a for

          A big man in a grey suit and a tough-looking face stood guard just outside the door. A stranger to keeping her away… But away from what? From finding the truth? From finding out that the man that took her little girl away from her was Alessandro’s father? “I want to see Alessandro. Where is he?” Hailee asked shakily. “Where…Uh… Where is my… husband?”           His gaze drifted towards the closed study door. “Signor Baroni wished not to be disturbed.”           The man’s accent disturbed her profoundly. She had heard it so many times… It was Sicilian as the voice that had spoken to her on the phone. Hailee shuddered and stepped past him, ignoring the obvious hint in his reply. She hurried across the hallway and pushed open the study door.           Alessandr

          The door flew open. As Alessandro came back into the room, Hailee leaped to her feet, forgetting all about Giovanni Masini. Alessandro gave both of them a sharp glance. The air had to be thick with tension after their discussion. And, even if it wasn’t, the way Giovanni was standing aside, very stiff and with an offended expression, was giving everything away.“Well?” Hailee asked anxiously. “Have they...?”          Her words faded away… Seeing his expression it was enough to wipe what bit of life her heated discussion with Giovanni had put into her face right away again.“Be calm, Hailee,” Alessandro soothed as her arms whipped around her body and she began to shiver. “They are still negotiating. Try to keep in mind that they want what I have the power to give them more than they want to keep your child.”     

         Alessandro was tall and she wasn't, the top of her head barely reaching his chin, so she had to tilt her head to look into his face. The rain had caught him too, but only briefly, so the drops sat on the expensive silk of his jacket in small crystal drops that could easily be brushed away.          His hair was so black that it reminded her of midnight, gleaming damply but not dripping wet like hers. She didn't know then that the great Alessandro Baroni stood there like that, in silence, because he was completely and utterly love-struck.          He admitted that to her later, weeks later when his single-minded campaign to break through her shy reserve was successful, on a night when she was lying in his arms on a bed of fine linen, their bodies damp, limbs tangled, his hand gently caressing her long hair across the pillow.  &n

          It has been a long, exhausting, unnatural night. Hailee dozed on and off and came down to breakfast the next morning hollow-eyed and wan-faced, to find Alessandro sitting alone at the breakfast table, swiping through his phone.          The moment he saw her, Alessandro put the phone away, making a narrow-eyed study of the obvious evidence of strain in her face. Hailee gave an inward grimace, entirely aware of exactly how terrible she looked. She was wearing no make-up, and the peaches cream bloom that her skin usually wore was missing.          She had brushed her hair, but only so she could tie it at the back to keep the long, heavy mass out of the way. And she was wearing a simple, blue skirt teamed with a long, loose silk knit jumper in a delicate shade of cream.          Under normal cir