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‘Good. Good.’ Giovanni’s black eyes glittered with satisfaction. The first part of his mission was accomplished—the second would be to decide where to take her. A hotel? With the convenience of a bedroom within walking distance? Why not start as he meant to go on? Hunger curved the edges of his mouth into a hard smile. ‘I’ll pick you up here.’
‘No!’ The word flew out before she could stop it, but Alexa wanted neutral territory—a bland, safe environment. Though was anywhere really safe with Giovanni? Didn’t the power of his presence subtly dominate his surroundings, so that no matter where you were all you were aware of was him? She met his questioning stare. ‘My boss doesn’t like anyone else in the shop while I’m emptying the till,’ she babbled. ‘I have to look after the takings.’
‘I shouldn’t think there’ll be much in the way of takings, judging by the lack of customers,’ he observed sardonically, raising his eyebrows. ‘You will have to do better than that for an excuse, cara.’
It was arrogant of him to suppose that she needed an excuse not to talk to him—but then, his arrogance had never been in question. ‘I won’t be able to concentrate if you’re breathing down my neck.’
He smiled. Better. Much better. ‘No, I can see that might be a problem,’he agreed evenly. ‘So, where shall I see you?’
Alexa’s mind was racing. She would have to phone the childminder, of course, and arrange a later pick-up, but that should be okay.
She ran through all the possible venues to come up with the one where she was least likely to know anyone—but as a woman who rarely went out in the evenings she had a pretty big field to choose from. ‘Meet me in the Billowing Sail,’ she said. ‘Just after six. It’s a little pub, tucked away in the corner of the harbour.’
‘A pub?’ he echoed.
‘That’s right.’
‘But I don’t like pubs, Alexa,’ he said softly. ‘You know that.’
And she didn’t like being forced into a meeting with a man who could still turn her emotions upside down. He—like she—would just have to put up with it. ‘I’m afraid that pubs are part of English life—and none of the coffee shops will be open at six.’
‘Then let’s have dinner instead.’
‘D-dinner?’
‘The meal that people eat in the evenings,’he enlightened her sarcastically. ‘You know.’
Alexa felt her heart slam nervously against her ribcage. One thing she knew for sure—no way could she endure the forced intimacy of a restaurant, with its subdued lighting and leisurely service.
She shook her head. ‘No—not dinner.’
His black eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you don’t want dinner, you don’t eat dinner—or you’re having it with somebody else?’
For a second she was tempted to say yes—that the man of her dreams would be waiting at home for her, with a warm smile and an even warmer bed. Because most men would give up and go away if they thought she’d moved on and found herself another man. But Giovanni wasn’t most men, and his jealousy was legendary. It had helped destroy their relationship with its warped, dark poison—and Alexa didn’t think she could face seeing it activated now.
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not having dinner with someone else. But I’m tired,’ she said truthfully. ‘It’s been a long week, and I don’t imagine we’re going to have a lot to say to each other—certainly not enough to fill a whole meal-time. A quick drink should do it.’
For a minute their eyes met in a silent battle of wills, and he thought about trying to impose his on her—but wouldn’t that put her defences up? Alexa had something he wanted, and so for now he would play this her way. And besides, he would soon talk her out of her dismissive suggestion—or maybe kiss her out of it. His heart began to race in anticipation. A quick drink, indeed!
‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘I will see you in there, soon after six. Ciao, bella.’ And he turned his back on her and walked towards the door, seeming to take all the light and the colour with him as it shut behind him with a little pinging of the bell.
In a daze, Alexa watched him go, her knees feeling as if they were about to give way, scarcely able to believe that what she had most dreaded had just taken place.
Only it isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.
She turned round and reached for the box of tissues she kept beneath the counter, for customers to wipe off their lipstick before they slithered into costly items of clothing, and dabbed furiously at the tears which couldn’t seem to stop welling at the corners of her eyes. She didn’t even register that the shop door had opened again, and it wasn’t until she heard a voice behind her that she whirled round and saw her boss standing there—an elegant blonde in her fifties, a concerned look on her face.
‘Teri!’ she gasped. ‘I was miles away. I didn’t—’
‘I know you didn’t. That was your husband, wasn’t it?’ guessed Teri perceptively. ‘The Italian Stallion currently wowing the female population of Lymingham?’
Alexa nodded, trying to compose herself. ‘Ex-husband,’ she corrected, swallowing back the tears.
‘I didn’t think you were divorced?’
‘We’re not—officially—but divorce is just a piece of paper,’ said Alexa fiercely. ‘Just like marriage.’
‘You think so?’ questioned Teri wryly, and then a note of curiosity crept into her voice. ‘How come we’ve never seen him before?’
Alexa tensed. ‘Because he lives in Naples and I live here, and we don’t have a shared life together.’
‘That’s not what I mean, Lex,’ said Teri gently. ‘He’s Paolo’s father, isn’t he?’
There was a pause. It was just as Alexa had thought—the resemblance was as unmissable as a dark cloud suddenly obscuring the sun. The boy was a carbon copy of the man. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
Teri’s eyes narrowed in a slowly dawning comprehension, and she raised the tips of her fingers to her mouth. ‘And he doesn’t know, does he?’
There was a terrible silence.
‘No.’
‘Oh, Alexa.’
But Alexa shook her head, remembering Giovanni’s bitter words. The torture of living with him once he’d decided she didn’t measure up to his exacting standards of what a woman should be. The accusation he had flung at her as she had left his house and his city and his life. And she remembered his immense wealth and determination. Oh, no. She would be a fool to start having some kind of euphoric recall about the man she had married—and an even bigger one to underestimate his power.
‘He would take him away from me if he knew,’ she said flatly. ‘And that’s the truth.’
‘But how…why?’ asked Teri in confusion. ‘I mean, how on earth has all this happened?’
How, indeed? Why did some people’s dreams get smashed to pieces while others merely faded away like the end of a film?
She could tell Teri that she had travelled to Naples and fallen in love with that vibrant, chaotic city which was flanked by Mount Vesuvius, the island of Capri and the crystal-blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Just as she had fallen in love with Giovanni—or thought she had. With his dark good looks and dangerous charm and his determination to possess her—yes, possess her—who could have resisted him?
Fresh out of university, and undecided about a future which had seemed to have a gaping hole in it since her mother had remarried and emigrated, Alexa had gone to Italy to brush up on a language at which she was already passably fluent.
It hadn’t taken her long to decide that Italian men were after one thing—easy, uncomplicated sex with women who were prepared to offer it to them on a plate. And Alexa hadn’t been. Her one foray into matters sensual had been enough to make her cautious—because the man to whom she had lost her virginity had had all the sensitivity of bull. But then she’d met Giovanni, and all her best intentions had flown out of the window.
Working in the air-conditioned splendour of the city’s biggest and plushest department store, Alexa had become a bit of a novelty. A foreigner who spoke cool and fluent Italian—and there certainly weren’t many English shop assistants in Naples! Customers had been charmed by her accent, and men in particular had come to purchase soft leather gloves from the pale-skinned creature with the green eyes and red-blonde hair and the pale, poised air. Sales had increased. She’d been given a raise and moved onto handbags.
And then one morning Giovanni had walked in, and everything had changed. In an instant she had become the victim of the feeling which had swamped over her—a feeling she’d never really believed in until it happened to her. But then no one ever did.
The world had stopped spinning, became suspended and frozen—and everything in it had blurred into insignificance except for the man who had sauntered in, seemingly oblivious of all the eyes upon him as he homed in on her like a moth to the flame. And Alexa had fallen in love.
She had not known that he owned the store, and several like it throughout Italy, or that he featured on all the Best-Dressed and Most Eligible lists—usually somewhere near the top. All she’d known was that he had eyes like ebony and skin which seemed especially dark—like sleek, polished wood—and that the suit he wore did little to conceal the hard, honed perfection of his body. Her mouth had dried, but she’d hidden it behind her polite shop assistant’s smile.
‘So, you are the woman who is causing all the excitement,’ he murmured.
Alexa glanced around the shop, taking deliberate note of all the women who were watching him, and she smiled as she answered him in Italian. ‘And you are the man who seems to be doing just the same!’
He was slightly taken back—as much by her retort as by her fluency. Giovanni had been told that she spoke his language, but he had not expected it to be so…so…perfect. ‘I have been told that you are very beautiful,’ he said huskily. ‘But words do not do you justice. I have never seen a mouth so begging to be kissed.’
Alexa’s eyes became shuttered. Because these were the kind of glib phrases she knew were meaningless. In the past weeks she had become a dab hand at spurning the advances of amorous men—though it had never seemed remotely difficult before. ‘Are you interested in buying a handbag, sir?’
Giovanni thought of a hundred ways he could react to her question. He could say yes, go through a flirtatious little pantomime of asking her advice and then buying the one she liked best—probably the most expensive one—and presenting it to her with a theatrical flourish before asking her out for dinner. But some cool reserve in the pale green eyes told him that this strategy would not get him the result he wanted. She was not flirting with him, he realised with a certain astonishment. Not flirting with him!
‘No, I am not interested in handbags. I am interested in showing you Naples.’
‘I have a map.’
‘And I have a car.’
Alexa glimmered him a smile. ‘I like to walk. But thank you all the same.’
‘I am used to getting my own way,’ he purred.
‘Then I have a feeling that this time you’re going to be disappointed.’
‘I am never disappointed when I set my heart on something.’
Alexa discovered that he was rich, and that he changed his women more often than his cars. She told herself that the best thing would be to avoid him—but Giovanni da Verrazzano laid siege to her, and the more she refused his invitations, the more ardent became his pursuit.
If she’d had been older and more experienced she would have realised that her unwillingness to go out with him was only increasing his determination, and his admiration. But she wasn’t doing it to play games. She was doing it because she was frightened of being hurt.
So that by the time she could refuse him no longer, and agreed to have a chaste lunch in a tiny restaurant scented with jasmine and overlooking the city, Giovanni had placed her on a pedestal as high as Vesuvius itself.
He swept her off her feet with a masterful arrogance which left her reeling—and yet it was his surprisingly tender restraint which ensnared her and fuelled the fires of a passion she hadn’t known she possessed. The almost reverential respect he showed for her determination not to fall into his bed meant that Alexa could relax.
For the first time in his life Giovanni listened to a woman, and talked with her—and it was a novel experience. She made him laugh—while he showed her that a sexy and virile man could have the soul of a poet.
He fell in love—was blown away by it—as innocent as a child beneath the onslaught of this powerful feeling. The cynical man of the world who had seen and done everything was as susceptible as the next when it came to the age-old vulnerability of the heart.
But nobody told them about brevity of the colpo di fulmine—the thunderbolt of love—which crashed into lives for such a brief moment before crashing out again. If anyone had tried, they’d have never believed them.
‘Marry me,’ he said one day.
Alexa’s heart lurched, and threatened to deafen her with its sudden wild pounding.
‘But—’
‘Marry me, Lex,’he said again—softly, sweetly—his lips brushing over hers in way which made her want to faint with pleasure.
Maybe it was madness, but in Giovanni Alexa saw her glorious future. He wanted to take care of her. Her beautiful, strong, old-fashioned Italian seemed to be the answer to something she hadn’t even been aware she was looking for.
So they married, in a ceremony which was intended to be simple—until Giovanni’s mother arrived back from a spending spree in Monte Carlo to turn it into something of a spectacle. But nothing could destroy Alexa’s slightly disbelieving pleasure in the unexpected twist her life had taken. It felt like a dream—it was a dream, she thought happily, forgetting that dreams didn’t stand up to the cold light of day.
And hers crumbled on their wedding night itself, when Giovanni made the discovery that his bright-haired and perfect bride was no virgin. He stilled, staring down at her in disbelief, words torn from his lips moments after he entered her.
‘There has been another?’
It was a question designed to break the bubble of her passion—though for a moment Alexa wasn’t quite sure she had heard properly. But then he repeated it—or rather, he shouted it—and the lovemaking which up until the moment of penetration had been like her wildest expectations come true—suddenly mushroomed into something else entirely. Something ugly. Something shameful. Giovanni’s face closed up—closing her out—but he didn’t stop what he was doing. He carried on moving inside her, and the only chink in his armour came in that brief moment when he lost control and cried out her name.
Afterwards, she lay back against the pillows, feeling as if he had ripped something from her heart and her soul, staring up in the moon-washed silence as his terse and furious interrogation began.
And the first night of their honeymoon was only the start of it—for his discovery had awakened the dark green serpent of a jealousy which up until that moment had lain dormant. Every move she made was watched; every statement she uttered was analysed. She had slept with five men, no—ten. Or was it more than that? And how many was she sleeping with now, other than him? She must tell him, for he needed to know!
Yet he seemed determined to give her satisfaction—almost as if he was demonstrating a master-class in sex. As if he wanted to show her how good it could be. And in some ways it was. In his arms, Alexa gasped out her pleasure time and time again, but the lack of emotion and the simmering anger on Giovanni’s face made her feel empty afterwards. Like a beach, when the tide had turned and flowed away.
It was a slow kind of torture, and Alexa lasted only three months of her doomed marriage. Then she had fled vowing never to revisit that black landscape of despair ever again—but she would never forget Giovanni’s snarled and angry words ringing in her ears.
At least we must give thanks that you aren’t pregnant—for how would we ever know the identity of the father?
Yes, the facts were simple—it was what lay behind them which was complex. She had been too young to know the difference between love and lust, or between protection and possession. She should have known something about Italian men—and Southern Italian men in particular—before she committed herself to marriage.
‘Are you going to tell him?’ asked Teri now, her concerned voice bringing Alexa back to the present. ‘That he has a son?’
Alexa wiped away the last tear and shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said, swallowing defiantly. ‘I can’t afford to.’
CHAPTER TWO (#u4fd9f031-a616-5e4a-9e93-13baef32241d)
AFTER Teri had left the shop, Alexa forced herself to deal with practicalities. She phoned the childminder, who said that, yes, of course Paolo could have his tea there.
‘I’ll pick him up at about seven-thirty,’ said Alexa, in a voice which suddenly sounded shaky. ‘Will you…will you send him my love?’ She heard the emotion trembling in her voice as the childminder said she would, and that they would see her later.
Alexa put the phone down. Her proud and beautiful little son would not be happy to have his normal routine changed, but he would soon have the childminder acceding to his every wish just by looking at her from beneath the thick curtain of his dark lashes and twisting her with that heartbreaking smile.
What would Paolo say if he knew that his daddy was in town? She bit her lip with pain and guilt—but it was pointless allowing her mind to go there. Hadn’t she gone over this, over and over again, and decided this was the only way that her son could be guaranteed a life that wasn’t filled with acrimony and trauma?
But by the time Alexa finally locked the shop door at the end of the day she was a bag of nerves, and knew she had to pull herself together. It was pointless trying to predict what she would say or how she would behave until she knew the reason why Giovanni had suddenly turned up here today. And if she walked into the pub looking like a shivering wreck, then his suspicions would only be alerted.
Changing out of her working clothes, she pulled on jeans, sweater and jacket, and stared back at her image, knowing that she was dressed in a way which was practical and smart rather than feminine. But appearances mattered—particularly to a man like her husband. He would judge her by what she was wearing and she would not, not be found wanting. So she brushed her hair and added a touch of lipstick, and rubbed her finger against her cheeks in an attempt to put some colour there.
At least the crisp breeze which blew in from the sea took her breath away and made her feel properly alive—even if her heart felt dead. She walked along to the harbour, where little boats bobbed in the water with their masts chattering and where seagulls cawed in their relentless search for food.
On such a cold evening there were few people hanging around, and it seemed so desolated and so very English that for a moment Alexa could scarcely believe that her estranged husband was sitting waiting for her—here, in this little town. Her territory, she thought. Not his.
The pub sign creaked, and Alexa hugged her coat tightly to her as she dipped her head to walk into the warm, beamed interior and look around for Giovanni.
He wasn’t hard to find. The pub was fairly quiet, with just a few office workers having a quiet pint before setting off home for the familiar evening routine, and Giovanni looked overwhelmingly exotic in comparison.
On a table in front of him stood two glasses of red wine, and his long, muscular legs were stretched out in front of him—pulling the material tight over his groin and unashamedly accentuating his masculinity.
Alexa thought how deeply olive his skin looked beneath the soft lighting—yet it gave off a soft golden radiance which contrasted with his thick hair, as black as the coal which lay waiting to be thrown onto the roaring fire.
And suddenly she felt a terrible yearning—like someone standing in an icy waste who had just sighted a thick cashmere blanket. For how long was it since she had looked on a man and felt anything approaching desire?
Not since Italy.
And she had never desired anyone the way she had Giovanni—how could she? Who could possibly follow a role model like him?
