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He’d placed his briefcase on the floor at his feet and leaned down to kiss her lingeringly on the mouth. ‘Mmm,’ he’d said, lifting his head momentarily. ‘You have been eating chocolate again.’
She’d rolled her lips together and tried to smile, but her stomach had felt like it was unravelling. ‘I know you’re going to be terribly shocked,’ she’d said, capturing her lip with her teeth before adding, ‘I can’t believe it happened myself… I should have been more careful. I know it sounds stupid and naïve but I just didn’t realise how easy it was…’
He’d smiled and tipped up her chin with the pad of his fingertip. ‘Let me guess. You have run out of credit on your mobile phone, no?’
‘No, it’s not that…’ Her stomach had tilted again at his touch.
‘I told you before, cara, money is not an issue with me,’ he’d said, stroking her cheek with his thumb. ‘I was the one who encouraged you to stay on in Milan for a few extra weeks, so it is only fair that I give you an allowance to tide you over.’
‘No, I don’t want to take money from you, Alessandro,’ she’d said. ‘I won’t do it. I can get a job in a café or something if I run out.’
He frowned with disapproval. ‘No, I do not want you working in a hot, crowded café. I like coming home to you fresh and happy to see me.’
‘It’s not about money,’ she said. ‘I have some savings from home I can transfer in any case.’
His thumb stopped moving as he held her gaze. ‘You do not like the thought of being paid to be my lover?’
She frowned at him. ‘Of course I don’t like the thought of it. That’s positively archaic, Alessandro. People don’t do that, or at least not in the circles I move in.’
His expression was still unreadable as he looked into her eyes. ‘I want you to be my lover, and I do not mind paying you to stay with me.’
Scarlett felt her breath stall in her chest. ‘For…for how long?’
His thumb moved to her bottom lip and grazed it tantalisingly, his eyes holding hers like a magnet. ‘How long would you like to stay in Milan?’ he asked.
Her heart began thumping irregularly again. ‘How long do you want me to stay?’ she asked softly.
He kissed the corner of her mouth. ‘The way I feel right now, I want you to stay for a long time—a very long time.’
Scarlett let out her breath in a long stream of relief. She had longed to hear him say he loved her, but it was almost as good knowing he wanted her to stay indefinitely.
‘Alessandro…’ She stepped up on tiptoe and kissed his mouth in a series of hot, passionate little touchdowns of her lips on his. ‘I love you. I didn’t think it was possible to love someone so much and so quickly, but I do,’ she said, gazing up at him rapturously. ‘I love being with you. I love it more than anything in the world.’
He smiled again and brought her closer, his hips pressing against hers. ‘I know you do, and I enjoy being with you too. Now, tesore mio, tell me what you were so intent on telling me when I came in the door. I am all ears—is that how you say it in English, hmm?’
‘Yes…yes, it is.’ She took a little breath and announced baldly, ‘Alessandro, I’m pregnant.’
He released her so abruptly she stumbled, only just managing to right herself because there was a priceless marble statue close by. She faced him, one hand still holding the statue, her stomach feeling like it was going to drop down between her suddenly trembling legs.
His expression was thunderous with anger, his eyes like chips of murky-coloured ice as they locked on hers.
‘Vio slut ripugnante!’ His words were laced with venom. ‘Vio whore ripugnante.’
Scarlett’s eyes went wide with shock; she had been in Italy long enough to recognise a savage curse when she heard one. Although she had expected him to be surprised, and perhaps a little angry, to have him call her such horrible names was so unexpected she stood without speaking or defending herself for far too long.
‘You tried to trick me into asking you to marry me,’ he went on in the same cold, hard tone. ‘You did not just want my money in exchange for a little affair—you wanted everything, did you not?’
‘Alessandro—’ She choked on a frightened sob. ‘Why are you carrying on like this? I thought you cared for me. I—’
She flinched away as he stabbed a finger in the space between them. ‘Siete una frode affamata dei soldi deceitful,’ he snarled.
She swallowed against the burning ache in her throat. ‘I’m not sure what you’re saying. Please, can you speak in English?’
He stepped closer, one of his hands coming down on her wrist like a manacle. ‘You are a deceitful, money-hungry cheat,’ he translated viciously, his eyes flashing with sparks of brown and green. ‘You are a filthy slut, a filthy whore.’
Scarlett pulled against his iron hold. ‘Stop it, Alessandro, please, you’re hurting me.’
He flung her arm away and glared down at her. ‘You are good at this, I will admit that, Scarlett. But then you are rather accurately named, are you not? You are a scarlet woman if ever there was one.’
She stood as frozen as the statue beside her. ‘Don’t say things like that, Alessandro,’ she said, her heart squeezing in pain. ‘You know I’m not like that.’
His bark of humourless laughter had an edge of cruelty to it. ‘You opened your legs for me within three days of meeting me, but now of course I know why. You were looking for a father for your illegitimate child. You backpackers are all the same, screwing whatever comes along just for the hell of it. You got caught out and had to find a substitute father in a hurry. Who better than me, a knight dressed in Armani?’
Scarlett could scarcely believe what she was hearing. The malevolence in his tone was so foreign to her. She had never seen him lose his temper. He had never spoken to her so coarsely; she wasn’t sure how to deal with it, or indeed how to defend herself. It seemed so out of character; it terrified her that the man she had given her heart and soul to had suddenly changed into someone else entirely.
‘Get your things and get out of my house,’ he bit out. ‘I will give you ten minutes to do so.’
The hammer blows of panic inside her head made her vision start to blur. Her mouth was dry, her heart feeling as if it had been backed over by a truck. Her stomach churned with the nausea that had plagued her for days on end, but she fought against it valiantly as she tried to come to grips with what was happening.
She took a couple of deep, calming breaths. ‘You don’t mean that, Alessandro,’ she said, keeping her voice soft and low. ‘You know you don’t. Darling, what’s come over you?’
His eyes blazed as they looked down at her, his lips pulled tight by a rage so intense she instinctively moved back a step.
‘You cannot possibly be carrying my child,’ he said, with a flinty glare.
She nervously moistened her mouth. ‘But of course it’s yours, Alessandro. I’ve only been with you.’
His lips curled back in a sneer. ‘Itete trovando!’
Her chest tightened another painful notch. ‘Please speak to me in English, Alessandro. I don’t understand you.’
‘You are lying!’ He shouted the words so loudly they bounced off the walls, the echoes falling like slaps against her ears.
Scarlett was struggling not to cry. ‘I’m not lying. I’d only had one lover before you, and that had been over a year before we met. How can you possibly doubt me?’
‘You had been travelling for weeks with that Kirby man, but you tossed him aside as soon as you met me, no doubt because his wallet was running a little dry,’ he said.
‘That’s not true! I have never slept with Dylan. I told him and the others to leave without me, because I wanted to spend more time with you.’
His expression was cold with contempt. ‘That was just a very clever act to worm your way into my affections, was it not?’
Her face fell. ‘No…no. That’s not true. How can you say that?’
‘I can say it because it is true,’ he said. ‘You tried to set me up to pay for your bastard child, but there is one thing you miscalculated about me.’
She swallowed the thorny knot in her throat. ‘Alessandro, you’re not making sense. We’ve made love hundreds of times, a lot of times without protection. I went on the Pill too late. I thought it would be safe, but it obviously wasn’t.’
His sneer turned to a snarl. ‘I have heard of such ploys before. The unplanned pregnancy is a handy way of forcing a man into marriage, but these days it is all too easy to prove paternity.’
‘I’ll have a test done to prove it,’ she said with rising despair. ‘Then you’ll have to believe me.’
His eyes raked over her from head to foot. ‘I have all the proof I need. Now get out of my life.’
She looked up at him in stunned shock. ‘You surely don’t mean to throw me out on the streets at this time of night?’
His face was set in stone. ‘It is where you belong, is it not?’
Scarlett opened her mouth to protest, but he had already turned to call one of the household staff, issuing a short, sharp command to have Signorina Fitzgerald’s belongings packed immediately and brought to the front door.
Once the servant had scurried away, Alessandro turned back to Scarlett with another look of contempt. ‘I must congratulate you on your ingenuity,’ he said. ‘I have been pursued by many women, but no one has ever got close enough for me to invite them to live with me, albeit temporarily.’
A bubble of anger inside Scarlett finally found its way to the surface. ‘I was only ever a temporary diversion for you, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘You were only interested in a summer fling, and for your own convenience asked me to move in with you. You were never going to make things permanent between us.’
‘Permanency is not something I have ever or will ever aim for in my relationships,’ he said. ‘I value my freedom too much.’
‘You’re going to end up a lonely old man with no one to love you,’ she said, her heart sinking as the servant came down the huge staircase, carrying her backpack.
Alessandro gave a scornful sneer and opened the front door as wide as it would go. ‘Goodbye, Scarlett.’
She picked up her backpack where the servant had placed it and slung it awkwardly over one shoulder, her eyes now streaming with tears. ‘You’re going to regret this one day,’ she said, her voice breaking over the words. ‘I know you will. You will hate yourself for not believing me.’
‘The only thing I will regret is allowing you to fool me into thinking you were not like other social-climbing women,’ he said. ‘Now, get out before I have you thrown out.’
Scarlett stepped down the stairs with only her pride to keep her upright. She walked stiffly towards the wrought-iron gates, her heart splintering into thousands of pieces as she heard the front door of his house click shut with ominous finality behind her.
CHAPTER THREE
SCARLETT HAD to pull herself away from the past when Alessandro came back towards her with his phone clicked shut. ‘I am sorry about that,’ he said. ‘One of my projects in Positano has been giving me some trouble. Now, let me show you around so you can get a feel for the place.’
She walked with him towards the staircase, her stomach feeling as if not only butterflies but bees and wasps were all vying for a landing space inside.
‘I would like the foyer and reception area to make a statement,’ he said as they climbed the stairs. ‘Lots of marble—Italian, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Scarlett said, and tried not to react as his arm brushed against hers as she stood beside him on the first floor and looked down.
She was shocked that such a simple touch could affect her so much. She had thought she was immune to him by now, after what he had done to her. She had hated him for so long, the heat of it smouldering deep inside her, stoked every now and again by another milestone in her little son’s life that Alessandro, out of arrogance, would never see. She had wanted to contact him so many times.
She had considered pursuing him legally, by insisting on a paternity test to clear her name, but she had been frightened of the consequences. What if Alessandro turned out to be like her father, who had always made it so callously clear he had never wanted a second child? Her father’s cruel words to her during her childhood had echoed well into her adulthood. She had lived with the stigma of being unwanted all of her life. She couldn’t bear for her little son to suffer the same.
Sunlight came in from the dome above their heads and shafted down in golden rays on the floor below. Alessandro’s arm brushed against hers again as he pointed to a shadowed area to the left of the reception desk. ‘See that corner over there?’ he said.
‘Umm…yes,’ she nodded, her nostrils flaring as the subtle but tantalising tones of his aftershave wafted past her face.
‘What could you do to make that brighter and more open?’ he asked, turning to look down at her.
Scarlett felt her heart come to a shuddering halt as his eyes met hers. She swallowed against the sudden thickness in her throat, her palms moistening where they were clutching at her handbag strap like a lifeline. ‘I’d need to think about it,’ she said. ‘Lighting is one option, but there are others. For instance, if we choose a lighter colour for the marble it will throw more light everywhere, not just in that corner.’
His eyes were still locked on hers. ‘You are good at this, no?’
She ran her tongue over the arid landscape of her lips, feeling self-conscious and terribly exposed. ‘I enjoy it,’ she said. ‘I like the challenge of bringing new life to old interiors.’
He was standing so close Scarlett could hear the in-and-out of his breathing. She had only to take half a step for her body to come into contact with his, from chest to thighs. She sucked in a breath when he lifted his right hand and cupped her cheek, the touch so like a caress it made her whole body shiver in reaction.
‘Don’t,’ she said in a hoarse whisper. ‘Please…’
His thumb moved from her cheek to trace over her bottom lip, the movement slow but incredibly sensual. ‘I have been thinking about how good we were together four years ago. Do you remember?’ he asked softly.
How could she forget? Scarlett thought. Her body still rang with the echoes of the passion he had awakened. She could feel the pulse of it now as her blood charged through her veins. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘No you do not remember, or no you do not want to be reminded?’ he asked with a slanted smile.
‘I’m here to work, Alessandro,’ she said with as much assertiveness as she could muster. ‘Nothing else.’
His eyes held hers for an interminable pause, before he stepped back from her and reached for a document lying on a table nearby. ‘I trust you have had time to read through the contract I gave you?’
‘Yes.’
She drew in a breath as he opened the folder and handed it to her. ‘It is marked where you need to sign,’ he said. ‘Take your time.’
Scarlett bit down on her bottom lip as she looked through the folder page by page, her eyes skimming the words she had read, reread and agonised over for the last two days. She would be able to pay off all her debts and put enough money aside to pay for Matthew’s education up to high school. There was even enough for her to employ a part-time nanny to take the strain off him being in child care for such long hours while she worked.
‘I will give you carte blanche with the budget.’ Alessandro’s voice carved a deep hole in the silence. ‘I want the best that money can buy.’
She looked up from the document to meet his hazel gaze. ‘Why me?’ she asked. ‘Why are you choosing me for such a huge project?’
His expression gave nothing away. ‘You are reputed to be one of the best,’ he said. ‘And I am in the habit of only settling for the best.’
She screwed up her mouth at him. ‘That wasn’t what you communicated to me four years ago. Back then, I was the lowest of the low.’
He held her pointed glare for several pulsing seconds. ‘But you have since made something of yourself, have you not?’ he said. ‘No doubt I did you a favour by making you sit up and take responsibility for your actions.’
‘A favour?’ she spluttered. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me for the last four years?’
‘That is neither my fault nor indeed any of my business,’ he said, bending down to pick up the folder she had just dropped. He closed it, tucked it under his arm and met her gaze once more. ‘I am prepared to pay you well to do this work for me, but if you are having second thoughts I can just as easily use one of your competitors. I have several from which to choose.’
Scarlett’s eyes went back to the folder, her heart skipping a beat at the thought of some other design studio having the chance to work a miracle on this building. It was as Roxanne had said: a chance of a lifetime, and something they had both dreamed of since they had qualified as interior decorators.
‘Do you want the job or not?’ he asked after a lengthy moment.
She took an unsteady breath and put her hand out for the folder. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, dearly hoping she wasn’t going to regret it.
He opened the folder without taking his eyes off hers, and handed his pen to her, clicking it as he did so.
Scarlett felt the warmth of his fingers on the pen as she took it from him and, to disguise her reaction, laid the folder on the table nearby, bent her head and signed all the relevant sections.
She straightened after she had finished and handed it back to him. ‘There,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘All signed.’
‘Now all you have to do is deliver on your promise,’ he said with another one of his enigmatic smiles.
