One Night with Morelli. KIM LAWRENCE

than one occasion and maybe, if the subject he had chosen to poke his nose into had been any other, he might have been laughing—but he wasn’t.

      One thing he absolutely did not joke about was his daughter’s welfare.

      Frazer, older by several years than the man who was pacing the room restless as a caged panther in the enclosed space, smoothed the paper with the flat of his hand as he laid it back on his desk—it had landed there in an angry, crumpled ball.

      ‘It’s not really a threat as such, is it?’ Edward Weston came across as pompous but he wasn’t a total idiot and anyone who threatened Draco would have to be; the wealthy London-based Italian entrepreneur was famous for many things but turning the other cheek was not one of them! Frazer counted himself lucky to call Draco friend—you tended to bond pretty quickly with someone you got buried in an avalanche with—but if he hadn’t been, Draco’s reputation alone would have made him someone Frazer would have avoided.

      The comment earned him a flash from Draco’s dark eyes.

      ‘Do you want to hear what I think or what you want to hear?’ Frazer’s shaggy brows twitched into a straight line as he noticed for the first time what his friend was wearing: full morning suit. ‘Your wedding?’ he asked cautiously.

      ‘Marriage!’ The single word made the speaker’s opinion of that institution quite clear, it dripped with such acid scorn.

      ‘Shame—if you were married it would be a perfect solution to the problem. There would be no question of your daughter not having…’ he paused to consult the letter and read out loud ‘…“a stable female influence in her life”.’ Frazer smiled at his own joke while Draco, his dark eyes glinting not with laughter but with cynicism, lowered his long, lean frame into a chair on the opposite side of the desk.

      ‘I’d sooner move my mother in.’ The other man laughed; he had met Veronica Morelli. ‘You make a mistake,’ Draco continued, ‘and you don’t repeat it, unless of course you’re a total fool.’

      Frazer, who was blissfully happy in his second marriage, did not take offence. ‘Do you think it’s safe to come to a fool for expensive legal advice?’

      Draco gave a tight grin that deepened the lines radiating from his deep-set eyes and briefly lent warmth and humour to the dark depths. ‘There are exceptions to every rule,’ he conceded. ‘And I’m coming to you as a trusted friend—I couldn’t afford what you charge.’

      The older man snorted. Draco Morelli had been born to wealth and privilege, he could have sat back and enjoyed what he had inherited, but he was a natural entrepreneur and to his Italian family’s occasional bemusement over the last ten years he had made a series of financial investments that had made his name a byword for success in financial circles.

      Under his smile was iron resolve. Draco’s short-lived marriage had been by anyone’s standards a total disaster but it had given him the daughter he adored so he could never regret it—but to deliberately take that route again…?

      It was not going to happen.

      He had affairs, just not love affairs. He did not dress things up and recognised that for him sex was simply a basic need; he had proved over and over again that the emotional element was not necessary. It required no effort on his part to maintain an emotional buffer—there were even occasions when he did not much like the women who shared his bed. What did require some effort on his part was keeping his daughter, now a scarily mature and impressively grounded thirteen, as ignorant as possible of his affairs.

      ‘She’s talking custody rights or at least Edward is.’ His ex’s latest was a very unlikely choice for a woman who normally went for men considerably her junior. It was hard to think of a more unlikely couple and Draco doubted it would last despite the ostentatious rock on Clare’s finger, but if he was wrong—well, good luck to them.

      But he wasn’t going to allow his daughter to have her life thrown into turmoil because Clare had discovered her inner earth mother—not on his watch!

      ‘I am fond of Clare—let’s face it, it’s hard not to be fond of Clare,’ her ex-husband conceded. ‘But I wouldn’t trust her to take care of a cat, let alone a teenager. Can you imagine it…?’ He shook his dark head, grimacing at the mental image.

      When they handed out the responsibility gene Clare was out of the room. Josie had been three months old when his ex had gone out for a facial and manicure and not come back. Left effectively a single parent at twenty, Draco had had to learn some new skills very quickly—he still was learning.

      Fatherhood was a constant challenge, as was resisting his mother’s interference. When he’d told the grieving widow that she needed a new challenge in her life, he certainly hadn’t intended that challenge to be him! When Veronica Morelli wasn’t turning up on his doorstep without warning with large suitcases she was trying to set him up with suitable women—the marrying kind.

      ‘She’s asking for joint custody, Draco, and she is the girl’s mother.’ Frazer held up a hand to stem the eruption his comment invited and continued calmly. ‘But, no, given the circumstances and her history I don’t think there is any prospect of any court coming down on her side, even if it got that far and she did marry Edward Weston. It’s not as if she doesn’t have access, very reasonable access, already to Josie.’

      Draco nodded. No matter what her faults were, his ex-wife was Josie’s mother and she was in her own way fond of her only child. Clare’s fondness meant months could go by and their daughter would have no contact beyond the occasional text or email from her mother, then she would appear loaded with gifts and was for a time a doting mother, until something else caught her interest.

      Draco’s objectivity when he thought of his ex-wife was still tinged with cynicism but the corrosive anger had long since gone. He was even able to recognise that it had always been aimed more at himself than Clare, and with some justification when you considered the stubborn sentimentalism masquerading as love that had made him go through with a marriage that had had impending disaster written all over it.

      ‘So you don’t think I have anything to worry about?’ he asked.

      ‘I’m a lawyer, Draco—in my world there is always something to worry about.’

      ‘Sure, I might walk under a bus.’ He glanced at his watch and got to his feet, brushing an invisible speck from the perfectly tailored pale grey jacket. Actually, he was catching a helicopter rather than a bus to the wedding of Charlie Latimer; he found weddings depressing, and boring, but Josie was very excited about dressing up and he was making an effort for her sake.

      ‘Is it true that Latimer is marrying his cook?’

      ‘I haven’t a clue.’ Draco, who had less liking for gossip than he did weddings, replied honestly while he thought of a pink tartan bra and a pair of big green eyes…

      On his way down in the elevator he thought some more about the bra’s owner, and he was so involved in the mental images that there was a twenty-second delay before he noticed that the lift door had opened.

      Focus, Draco… He did not for a second doubt his ability to do just that; it was a case of prioritising and he was good at that. It had been this ability that had got him past the first few weeks and months after Clare had walked out. He could have carried on being bitter, twisted and generally wallowing in a morass of self-pity; he could have allowed himself to be defined by that failure.

      But he hadn’t.

      After that reminder, keeping his libido on a leash was relatively simple and he told himself that Green Eyes was definitely not his type. Still, there had been something about her…

      ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

      Draco placed a steadying hand on the arm of the young woman who had not so accidentally collided with him. Blonde and stunning, she was his type.

      His smile was automatic and lacking a spontaneity that the recipient appeared not to notice. Standing on one foot,