Free Sicilian Nights Omnibus by Penny Jordan Page B

a large, soft and squishy ‘daytime’ bag, that worked with both the trousers and the jeans.
    After instructing one of the girls to unzip the cocktail dress for Leonora, Christina had left her alone in the fitting room. Leonora couldn’t help delaying the moment when she removed the dress, as she stood in front of the mirror and marvelled again at the transformation it had effected. For the first time she saw an image of what she could be—all that she had secretly longed to be since she had left her university years behind. Now she saw in the mirror a woman who was hardly daring to hope, as yet not entirely comfortable with her new image, looking back at her. The beginning of the woman that she could become—a woman at ease with herself, confident about her ability and her right to be both vulnerable and strong, to be both feminine and capable of holding down a demanding job in what was still in many ways a man’s world without having to compromise herself.
    It was one of the pretty black-suited young salesgirls who told Alessandro where he could find Leonora. Having assumed that he and Leonora were lovers, she omitted to mention that Leonora was alone in the private changing suite, so that when he walked in, his arrival masked by the thickness of the dove-grey pile carpet, Leonora was oblivious to his presence.
    Alessandro, because of the angle of a long pier glass mirror in the lounge area off the changing room, and because Cristina had fastened back the curtain, was perfectly able to see and study her. Anyone witnessing his reaction could have been forgiven for thinking that he was not pleased with what he saw, since he had started to frown.
    The reflection in the mirror showed him a stunningly beautiful young woman, wearing an elegant dress that suited her to perfection. But it was the look in Leonora’s unexpectedly violet-tinged eyes that was responsible for his frown, not her appearance. Alone, and unaware that she was being watched, she wore an expression so open and revealing that it was an intimacy he didn’t want to have—one that rolled his heart over inside his chest, seizing it in a tight fist of compassion streaked with an angry awareness of the knowledge of what he could see so plainly in her face. She looked like a little girl, scarcely able to believe in her own luck, delighted and yet at the same time struggling to balance between something she desperately wanted and some long-held inability to believe she was worthy of such joy.
    Leonora could feel her eyes burning with very private tears. She tried to blink them away, and then felt laughter bubbling in her throat as she realised she couldn’t wipe them away without ruining her new make-up or risking getting it on her beautiful dress, since she didn’t have a tissue to hand... Holding the dress to her, she turned round, remembering that there was a box of tissues on the coffee table in the lounge area—and then froze as she saw Alessandro.
    Even if he hadn’t already been able to see that her emotions had nothing whatsoever to do with the acquisition of an expensive gown and everything to do with something very private within herself, Alessandro suspected that the intensity of her shocked reaction to his presence would have convinced him on that point.
    How long had he been there? He couldn’t have—must not have seen her looking at herself in the way that she had. She could not have borne for anyone to see that, but most of all not him. Her face began to burn, her old tomboy-style defences springing into action.
    Not a man who was used to putting the emotional needs of others first, Alessandro surprised himself when he heard himself saying calmly, as he backed out of the room, ‘Sorry—I didn’t realise that you weren’t ready.’
    Leonora’s relief was so intense that it dizzied her. He had not seen her. If he had he would not have been able to resist saying something. She knew that from what she had experienced at his hands—and, of