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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.

Stefano shrugged in dismissal. ‘But you have not been home.’

‘And where’s home, exactly?’ Allegra asked. ‘My family’s villa was auctioned off when my father declared bankruptcy. My mother lives mostly in Milan. I don’t have a home, Stefano.’ Her voice rang out clear and sharp, and she looked down, wanting to recover her composure, wishing it hadn’t been lost.

She didn’t want to talk about her family, her home, all the things she’d lost in that desperate flight. She didn’t want to remember.

‘Is London your home?’ Stefano asked curiously, when the tense silence between them had gone on too long. Too long for Allegra’s comfort, at any rate.

She shrugged. ‘It’s a place, as good as any, and I enjoy my job.’

‘This art therapy.’

‘Yes.’

‘And what of friends?’ He paused, his fingers tightening imperceptibly on his wineglass. ‘Lovers?’

Allegra felt a frisson of pure feeling shiver up her spine. ‘That’s not your business,’ she said stiffly and he smiled.

‘I only meant to ask, do you have a social life?’

She thought of her handful of work acquaintances and shrugged again. ‘Enough.’ Then, since she wasn’t enjoying this endless scrutiny, she asked, ‘And what of you?’

Stefano raised his eyebrows. ‘What of me?’

Suddenly she wished she hadn’t asked. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. ‘Friends?’ she forced out. ‘Lovers?’

‘Enough,’ Stefano replied, a faint feral smile stealing over his features. ‘Although no lovers.’

This admission both startled and pleased her. Stefano was so virile, so potent, so utterly and unalterably male that she would have assumed he had lovers. Loads.

Probably he only meant he had no lovers currently, Allegra thought cynically. No arm candy for the moment, none for this evening.

Except her.

He was with her tonight.

‘Does that please you?’ Stefano asked, breaking into her thoughts and making her gaze jerk upwards in surprise.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she countered swiftly.

‘No, of course not, and why should it?’ Stefano’s smile turned twisted, cynical. ‘Just as it doesn’t matter to me.’

Allegra nodded, uncertain. Of course, the words were right, yet the tone wasn’t. The feeling wasn’t.

She saw something spark in Stefano’s eyes, something alive and angry, and she set her wineglass on the table. ‘Perhaps this was a bad idea. I was hoping we could be friends, even if just for an evening, but maybe, even after all this time, we can’t. I know memories can hurt. And hurts run deep.’

Stefano leaned forward, his fingers curling around her wrist, staying her.

‘I’m not hurt,’ he said, his voice quiet and firm, and Allegra met his eyes.

‘No,’ she said, suddenly, strangely stung, ‘you wouldn’t be, would you? The only thing that was hurt that day was your pride.’

His eyes glinted gold, burned into hers. ‘What are you saying?’

‘That you never loved me.’ She took a breath and forced herself to continue. ‘You just bought me.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘So you claimed in that letter of yours, I remember.’

Allegra thought of that letter, with its girlish looping handwriting and splotchy tear-stains and felt the sting of humiliation.

He wasn’t even denying it, but it hardly mattered now.

‘I think I should go,’ she said in a low voice and Stefano released her, leaning back in his chair. ‘I never meant to bring all this up, talk about it again.’ She tried to smile, even to laugh, and wasn’t quite able to. ‘Perhaps it would have been better if I’d left before you came into the party. If we hadn’t seen each other at all. We almost missed each other, as it was.’

Stefano watched her, smiled faintly. ‘That,’ he said, ‘wasn’t going to happen.’

Allegra felt a lurch of trepidation, as if everything had shifted subtly, suddenly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We weren’t going to miss each other this evening, Allegra,’ Stefano said with cool, calm certainty. ‘I came to the party—to London—to see you.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘ME?’

Stefano watched the emotions chase across Allegra’s features: shock, fear, pleasure. He smiled. Even now, she wanted his attention. His touch.

And he couldn’t stop touching her, whether it was her back as he’d steered her through a crowded ballroom, or her thigh in the darkened confines of a city cab. He was drawn to her, despite both his desire and intent to the contrary. He wanted to touch and to know the woman he’d once believed he could love.

Love. You never loved me. How many times had she told him now, he wondered cynically. How many times had she thrown it in his face? No, he hadn’t loved her, not the way she’d wanted. Not like Galahad, Rhett Butler, or whatever ridiculous caricature of a man she’d imprinted in her childish mind.

It hardly mattered now anyway. Love was not the issue; Lucio was.

He smiled, broke the silence. ‘Yes, you,’ he said.

Allegra blinked. Stared. She heard a buzzing in her ears. Felt it in her soul. ‘What do you mean?’ she finally said, though she’d heard what he’d said. She just couldn’t believe it.

‘I knew you would be at this wedding, and I wangled an invitation from your uncle. It wasn’t difficult. He was thrilled to be getting such a notable guest.’ His lips curved in a mocking smile that had Allegra gritting her teeth at his unshakeable arrogance.

‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why did you want to see me, Stefano?’

Stefano cradled his wineglass between his hands, staring into its ruby contents before he raised his head. His expression was stony, bleak. ‘Because I’ve been told you’re the best art therapist for children in this country.’

Allegra jerked back, startled. She hadn’t expected that. What, a mocking little voice asked, did you expect? For him to declare that he’d missed you? Loved you?

‘I think that’s overstating the case rather a lot,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’ve only been qualified for two years.’

‘The doctor I spoke to in Milan recommended you unreservedly.’

‘Renaldo Speri,’ Allegra guessed. ‘We corresponded regarding a case I had, a boy who had been misdiagnosed with autism.’

‘And he wasn’t autistic?’

‘No, he was severely traumatised from witnessing his mother’s suicide.’ She grimaced in memory. ‘It was a remarkable breakthrough, but I can’t really take the credit for it. Anyone could have—’

‘Speri thinks highly of you,’ Stefano said with a shrug. ‘He seems to think you’re the best. And I want the best.’

Allegra watched him for a moment. The best. So she was a commodity, a possession. Just as she’d been all those years before. Would Stefano ever think of her otherwise? Did he even know how?

At least the difference now, she thought cynically, was that the arrangement was mutual.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this when we first met, Stefano? Why come to the reception at all?’ Why ask her to dance, take her for a drink, talk about lovers?

She shook her head, felt a tide of humiliation wash over her at the realization of how Stefano had been manipulating her … as he had before. Softening her up for the request. The kill.

She felt another wave of humiliation crash over her as she remembered her own thoughts, the pleasure she’d felt at believing Stefano wanted to be with her. Treacherous, half-acknowledged desires that Stefano had undoubtedly surmised. She closed her eyes briefly, sickened by his deception, and by herself for falling for it … again.

She opened her eyes and met Stefano’s blank gaze with a stern one of her own. ‘If you were interested in me professionally, you should have come to my office, made an appointment—’

Stefano shrugged, unrepentant. His face was expressionless, yet his eyes blazed into hers. ‘You know it’s not as simple as that, Allegra. The past still lies between us. I needed to see how things would be between us. If we would be able to work together.’

‘And can we?’ she asked, eyebrows raised, her voice sharpened with both sarcasm and curiosity.

‘Yes.’ He spoke flatly, with cold certainty. ‘We can.’ He leaned forward, his eyes intent on hers, trapping her with his unrelenting gaze. ‘The past is forgotten, Allegra.’

Yet it hadn’t felt forgotten a moment ago, Allegra thought, suppressing a shiver of unease. That flash of something dark and primal in Stefano’s eyes had made her feel as if it wasn’t forgotten at all.

‘And for this you needed to ask me to dance? Invite me out for a drink?’ She shook her head. ‘If you want me to help you, Stefano, help whatever child you are thinking of, then you need to be honest with me. From the beginning. I won’t abide liars.’

Stefano’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am not a liar,’ he said coldly. ‘How was I not honest, Allegra? We had a past. I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t interfere with what I am proposing before I set it before you. That’s all.’

She pressed her lips together against a useless retort … a revealing retort. There was nothing Stefano had done, she acknowledged silently, that she could point her finger at. Accuse him of. Yet she was still cross, still hurt, and she still felt uneasy, uncertain. Uncomfortable.

‘All right, fine,’ she said at last. ‘Why don’t you tell me what exactly you’re proposing?’

Stefano paused. ‘The hour’s late,’ he said. ‘And it’s been a long evening. Why don’t we talk about it another time? Tomorrow, perhaps? Over dinner?’

Allegra frowned. ‘Why not Monday, in my office?’ she countered.

‘Because I’ll be back in Rome on Monday,’ Stefano replied with firm finality. ‘Allegra, I am interested in you only as a professional—’

‘I know that!’ she said, a flush rising to her cheeks.

‘Then why not converse over dinner? We’ve just shown how we can be reasonable this evening. We can even, perhaps, be friends.’ He smiled, his amber eyes glinting with a promise Allegra remembered all too well. A promise of tenderness and compassion, of understanding and caring. Of love.

False. All false.

Allegra took a breath. Stefano was right; she was letting the past cloud the present issue, which was presumably a hurting child.

She had to forget it, had to move on as she knew she’d done all those years ago. Yet seeing Stefano had brought it rushing back.

She lifted her chin. ‘All right. Tomorrow.’

‘Tell me your address and I’ll fetch you.’

‘There’s no need—’

‘I’ll fetch you,’ Stefano repeated. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t need to. He simply smiled. Smiled and waited.

Allegra chose to capitulate gracefully. Some battles, she knew, were not worth fighting. Not yet.

She gave it to him, then rose from her chair. He stood also. ‘Goodnight, Stefano,’ she said, and she held out her hand.

He glanced down at it, smiling wryly, before he took it in his. Her hand felt so small in his, small and fragile.

‘Good night, Allegra,’ Stefano said, his voice a husky murmur. ‘Until tomorrow.’

All the next day Allegra’s mind hurtled from alarm to anticipation, marking quite a few assumptions along that perilous mental route.

Stefano wanted to contract her services as an art therapist for a child. A child.

His child?

His wife?

She probed these possibilities with careful, clinical precision. Did it hurt? How much pain?

She wasn’t jealous, she knew that. She wasn’t even that surprised. So what did she feel?

She didn’t know. Couldn’t answer. More thoughts, more emotions to tuck away in that box.

As day darkened into twilight, Allegra surveyed the slim pickings of her wardrobe.

She’d splurged on the dress for Daphne’s party, and there was nothing else remotely as sophisticated or expensive in her wardrobe. Her work clothes were generally plain and comfortable, and the few dresses she had were stodgy and serviceable.

Allegra sighed. Why hadn’t she considered this before? She’d have had the time, if not the money, to buy something at the shops.

Why, that objectionable little voice whispered inside her, do you care? Are you trying to impress him? Attract him?

‘No,’ Allegra said aloud but, even alone in her bedroom, her voice sounded flat and false.

With a growl of impatience, she turned to the rack of clothes and picked a dress out at random. It was an olive green coat dress that she’d bought on sale for an interview, and while it presented a reliable if rather depressing image for work, it was hardly something one wore to dinner … especially if that dinner was at one of London’s classiest restaurants, which Allegra had no doubt it would be, knowing Stefano.

Knowing Stefano … Did she really know him?

Seven years was a long time for both of them. She’d never have expected him to act as he had last night, putting the past behind them. Wanting to be her friend. Caring about what she thought.

And the only reason he’d done those things, she reminded herself, was because he wanted something from her.