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‘What are you thinking?’ Stefano murmured, and Allegra gazed at him through half-closed lids, soothed by the music and wine.
‘How odd this is,’ she admitted in a husky murmur. ‘To be dancing with you … again.’
‘It is odd,’ Stefano agreed, his voice pitched low to match hers. ‘But not unpleasant, surely.’
‘I expected you to hate me.’ Her eyes opened, widened. Waited.
He shrugged. ‘Why should I, Allegra? It was a long time ago. You were young, afraid. You had your reasons. And, in the end, we didn’t know each other very well, did we? A handful of dinners, a few kisses. That was all.’
Allegra nodded, accepting, though her throat was tight. He’d distilled their relationship down to its rather shallow essence, and yet it had been the most profound experience of her life.
‘Do you hate me?’ Stefano asked with surprising, easy candour. Allegra looked up, startled, and saw a shadow flicker through his eyes.
‘No,’ she said, and meant it. ‘No. I’ve moved past it, Stefano.’ She smiled, tried to keep her voice light. Breezy. ‘It was a long time ago, as we’ve both agreed, and I’ve realized that you never lied to me. I just believed what I did because I wanted to.’
‘And what did you believe?’ Stefano asked softly. Allegra forced herself to meet his gaze directly.
‘That you loved me … as much as I loved you.’
The words seemed to reverberate between them and for a strange second Allegra felt like the girl she’d been seven years ago, standing before Stefano and asking, Do you love me?
He’d never answered then, and he didn’t now.
Allegra let out a breath. What had she expected? That he’d tell her he had loved her, that it had all been a mistake, a misunderstanding?
No, of course not. It hadn’t been a mistake. It had been the right thing to do. For both of them.
Stefano hadn’t loved her, hadn’t even considered loving her, and she would have been miserable as his wife. She’d never regret her choice, never even look back. Not once. Not ever.
That you loved me … as much as I loved you. The words played a remorseless echo in Stefano’s brain, even as he continued to dance, continued to feel Allegra’s soft contours so tantalizingly close to him. He fought the urge to pull her closer, and closer still, and make her remember how they could have been all those years ago, if they’d been given the chance.
If she’d given him a chance.
But she hadn’t, she’d made her decision that night, and he’d accepted it.
Hell, he’d made peace with it. Or at least he would now, for Lucio’s sake.
Lucio … He forced his mind as well as other parts of his body away from Allegra’s tempting softness and thought of his housekeeper’s son, the grandson of the man who’d given him everything—shelter, food, opportunity—even at his own expense.
He wouldn’t repay Matteo by neglecting his duty to his grandson. He wouldn’t let Allegra distract him in his purpose … or, if it came to it, have him distract her.
His lips curved as he considered how many ways in which he could distract her …
No. No, the past was over. Finished.
Forgotten.
It had to be.
The music ended and they swayed to a stop before Stefano quite deliberately stepped away. It was time to tell Allegra the real reason why he was here … why he was dancing with her, or talking to her at all.
Allegra felt Stefano’s arms fall away and resisted the urge to shiver. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her uncle glowering and she looked away.
Stefano glanced around at the crowd of striving socialites and smiled. ‘This crowd isn’t really to my taste. What would you think about getting a drink some place more congenial?’
Allegra felt a leap of both anticipation and alarm in her chest. ‘I don’t …’
Stefano raised an eyebrow. ‘Care to finish that sentence?’ he asked dryly and Allegra realized she’d trailed off without knowing what to say. What to think.
What to feel.
‘It’s late,’ she murmured, and wondered what she wanted Stefano to do. Take her reluctance as refusal or refuse to take no for an answer?
It galled her that she didn’t know what she wanted him to do; she just wanted him to choose.
‘It’s not even ten o’clock yet,’ Stefano said. There was a lazy lilt to his voice that made Allegra feel as if a purring cat had just leapt on to her lap. She wanted to stroke it, test its softness. ‘One drink, Allegra. Then I’ll let you go.’
‘All right,’ she said, her voice cautious, yet with not nearly as much reluctance as she knew she should have.
She wondered why she was reluctant, why she was afraid.
They’d just shown how grown up and civil they could be. The past was truly forgotten.
She wasn’t that girl any more.
Stefano threaded her fingers with his own as he led her off the dance floor and away from the party.
This was strange, Allegra told herself as Stefano handed her her coat. Yet it was nice too, she realized as they headed out into the night, the September air cool on her flushed cheeks.
Too nice, perhaps.
‘Where to?’ Stefano stood on the kerb, an expensive woollen overcoat draped over one arm, his eyebrows raised in faint question.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know London nightspots very well.’
‘Nor do I. But I do know a quiet wine bar near here that can be quite relaxing. How does that sound?’
‘Fine. Lovely.’
She didn’t see Stefano gesture to the doorman, but he must have for a cab pulled sleekly to a halt at the kerb. Stefano brushed the doorman aside and opened the car door himself, ushering Allegra in before he joined her.
Their thighs touched as he slid next to her, and Stefano did not move away. Allegra wasn’t sure whether she liked the feel of his hard thigh pressing against hers or not, but she was certainly aware of it. Her hand curled around the door handle, nerves leaping to life.
They rode in silence, and Allegra was glad. She didn’t feel up to making conversation.
After a few minutes, the cab pulled to a halt in front of an elegantly fronted establishment in Mayfair and Stefano paid the driver before he helped Allegra out. His hand was warm and dry and Allegra forced herself to let go.
She could not let herself be attracted to Stefano now. Not when she had a life, admittedly a small, humble one compared to his wealth and status, but one that was hers and hers alone.
Not when she knew what he was like. What he believed. Tonight was about being friends. That was all.
That was all it could be.
The wine bar was panelled in dark wood, with low tables and comfortable armchairs scattered around. It was like entering someone’s study and Allegra could see immediately why Stefano liked it.
‘Shall I order a bottle of red?’ he asked, and Allegra bit her lip.
‘I think I’ve had enough wine already.’
‘What is an evening with friends without wine?’ He smiled. ‘Just drink a little if you prefer, but we must have a toast.’
‘All right.’ It did seem rather prim and stingy to sit sipping iced water.
Stefano ordered and they were soon seated in two squashy armchairs. Allegra even kicked off her heels—her feet had been killing her—and tucked her legs up under her.
‘So,’ Stefano said, ‘I want to hear more about what you’ve been up to these last seven years.’
Allegra laughed. ‘That’s a rather tall order.’
He shrugged; she’d forgotten how wide his shoulders were, how much power and grace the simplest of movements revealed. ‘You’re an art therapist, you said. How did that come about?’
‘I took classes.’
‘When you arrived in London?’
‘Soon after.’
The waiter came with the wine and they were both silent while he uncorked the bottle and poured. Stefano tasted it, smiled and indicated for the waiter to pour for Allegra.
‘Cin cin,’ he said, raising his glass in the old informal toast that reminded her of her childhood, and she smiled, raising her own.
She drank, grateful for the rich liquid that coated her throat and burned in her belly. Despite Stefano’s easy manner, Allegra realized she was still feeling unsettled.
Seeing him brought back more memories than she’d ever wanted to face. Memories and questions.
She had chosen not to face them when she’d left. She’d quite deliberately put the memories in a box and unlike Pandora, she’d had no curiosity to open it. No desire for the accompanying emotions and fears to come tumbling out.
When you didn’t face something, she knew, it became easier never to face it. It became quite wonderfully easy to simply ignore it. For ever.
Yet now that something was staring her straight in the face, smiling blandly.
Whatever Stefano had felt seven years ago, he’d clearly got over it. He’d put his ghosts, his demons to rest and had moved on.
And so had she.
Hadn’t she?
Yes, she told herself, she had. She had.
Stefano crossed one long leg over the other, smiling easily. ‘Tell me about these classes you took,’ he said.
‘What is there to tell?’ Her voice came out too high, too strained. Allegra took a breath and let it out slowly. She even managed a laugh. ‘I came to London and I lived at my uncle’s house for … a little while. Then I got my own digs, my own job, and when I’d saved enough money I started taking night classes. Eventually I realized I enjoyed art and I specialised in art therapy. I received my preliminary qualification two years ago.’
Stefano nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ he finally said. ‘It must have been very difficult, starting out on your own.’
‘No more difficult than the alternative,’ Allegra retorted, and then felt a hectic flush sweep across her face and crawl up her throat as she realized the implication of what she’d said.
‘The alternative,’ Stefano replied musingly. He smiled wryly, but Allegra saw something flicker in his eyes. She didn’t know what it was—hidden, shadowy—but it made her uneasy.
It made her wonder.
‘By the alternative,’ he continued, rotating his wineglass between lean brown fingers, ‘you mean marrying me.’
Allegra took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Stefano, marrying you would have destroyed me back then. My mother saved me that night she helped me run away.’
‘And saved herself as well.’
Allegra bit her lip. ‘Yes, I realize now she did it for her own ends, to shame my father. She used me as much as my father intended to use me.’
A month after her arrival in England, she’d heard of her mother’s flagrant affair with Alfonso, the driver who had spirited Allegra away. Allegra had lost enough of her naïveté then to realize how her mother had manipulated her daughter’s confused and frightened state for her own ends—the ultimate shaming of the man she despised, the man who had arranged Allegra’s marriage.
Her husband.
And what had it gained her?
By the time Isabel had left, Roberto Avesti was bankrupt and his business, Avesti International, ruined. Isabel hadn’t realized the depth of her husband’s disgrace, or the fact that it would mean she would be, if not broken-hearted, then at least broke.
Allegra bit her lip, her mind and heart sliding away from that line of conversation, those memories, the cost her own freedom had demanded from everyone involved.
‘Even so,’ she said firmly, ‘it’s the truth. I was nineteen, a child, I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted.’
Stefano’s face was expressionless, his eyes blank, steady on hers. ‘I could have helped you with that.’
‘No, you couldn’t. Wouldn’t.’ Allegra shook her head. ‘What you wanted in a wife wasn’t—isn’t—the person I was meant to become. I had to discover that for myself. Back then I didn’t even know I was missing anything. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.’ Her voice rang out bitterly.
‘And something made you realize you weren’t,’ Stefano finished lightly. ‘I know it shocked you to realize our marriage was arranged, Allegra, as a matter of business between your father and me.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘it did. But it wasn’t just that, you know.’
Stefano cocked his head, his eyes alert. ‘No? What was it, then?’ His voice was bland and mildly curious yet Allegra still felt a strange frisson of fear. Unease.
Suspicion.
‘You didn’t love me,’ Allegra said, striving to keep her voice steady. ‘Not the way I wanted to be loved, anyway.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ she said, trying to keep her voice light. ‘It’s all past, as you said.’
‘Indeed.’ Stefano’s voice was chilly, the expression in his eyes remote at best. ‘Still,’ he continued, his voice thawing, turning mild, ‘it must have been difficult for you to set up a new life here, leave your family, your home.’ He paused. ‘You’ve never been back really, have you?’
‘I’ve been to Milan, for professional reasons,’ Allegra replied, hearing the defensive edge to her voice.
