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‘Of a sort.’
Another sigh and she nibbled her lip as she started to shake her head. He could feel her slipping away from him, like an ebbing tide. The scars had tilted the odds against him. Of course they had.
‘I just don’t think I can do this,’ she said softly, her gaze sliding away from his. Her shoulders hunched; she looked guilty. ‘I watched my mother marry for money, time and time again, and the results were disastrous...for her as well as for me and my sister. I can’t be like her in that way. I won’t let myself.’ She paused, her shoulders hunched, her gaze averted as if she couldn’t bear to look him in the face. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Really, there is no need to apologise,’ Alex returned stiffly. He wasn’t going to argue with her; he certainly wasn’t going to beg. ‘Consider the matter closed,’ he said, and then he turned and walked back inside the villa, staring blindly ahead all the while.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN MILLY AWOKE the next morning, she knew Alex had gone. It was only a little past six, lemony sunshine banishing the last of the pearly grey light of dawn, but she knew all the same. She could almost hear the echo of the whirr of the helicopter blades signifying his departure; perhaps that was what had woken her up.
Quietly she slid out of bed and went to the window, opening the shutters fully to take in the breathtaking view of sun and sand, sea and sky. The blue-green waters of the Aegean Sea shimmered under the azure perfection of another summer’s day. Inside Milly felt strangely hollow.
As soon as Alex had walked back into the villa last night, his body and gait both stiff with dignity and affront, Milly had questioned her decision—and not just because of the money. Yes, she could use the money, especially for Anna’s sake, but what if this was the only marriage proposal she ever received? More importantly, what if it was the best?
As Alex had sussed out, she was cynical and wary of such fanciful feelings as love and romance. If her parents hadn’t put her off, her dalliance with Philippe certainly had.
Even now she could remember the mocking twist of his lips as he’d gazed at her. ‘Do you honestly think I’d fall for a little mouse like you?’
No, sh
e wasn’t going to go down that route again. So why not this? She wouldn’t get duped or hurt, and she’d have financial stability, companionship of a sort, and even a child. After the financial and emotional turbulence of her entire childhood, who was she to scoff at those things?
Standing at the window, letting the sunlight stream over her, she wondered why she’d refused—even as she acknowledged why. Because her mother had married for money rather than love, and she never, ever wanted to be like her mother.
But this would be different, a little voice inside her persisted.
Would it? Another insidious voice mocked back. Would it really?
Turning away from the window, Milly went to shower and dress. She had a full day of housework ahead of her, and she needed to stop thinking for a little while. Blot out all the what-ifs and just be. Still, she wondered when Alex would return...and what it would be like when he did.
The house felt emptier than usual as she went about her work, sweeping and mopping and dusting. She put off doing the inevitable—cleaning Alex’s bedroom, stripping the bed and washing his sheets. It had felt like any other room just days before, but now it was different. Perhaps she was.
After a solitary lunch reading at the kitchen table, she decided to put it off no longer, and in truth she was curious. Upstairs, down a separate corridor that held only his master suite and two guest bedrooms, she tiptoed towards his door, holding her breath, half expecting someone to pop out, something to happen. Of course, nothing did.
Milly pushed open his bedroom door and then stepped into the sparsely furnished room—a king-sized bed on a low dais with rumpled sheets and duvet, the indentation where his head had lain still visible on his pillow. There were no ornaments or knick-knacks, no photos or mementoes. There never had been, in her six months there.
The room was luxurious and as impersonal as could be, like something found in a high-end hotel. Milly began to strip the bed, her methodical movements belying the sudden thud of her heart, her dry mouth. Why was she being affected this way?
Unthinkingly she slipped off the pillowcase he’d used and pressed it to her face, inhaling an unfamiliar musky and very male scent. She was still holding it when her mobile phone began to vibrate, and she jumped like a scalded cat, dropping the pillowcase.
Her hands near to shaking, Milly slid her phone from the pocket of her jeans and glanced down at the screen. Anna. All thoughts of pillowcases and the head that had lain on them vanished as she swiped to take the call.
‘Anna? Are you okay?’ As ever Milly couldn’t keep the anxiety from her voice as soon as she spoke with her sister. Her situation was so precarious, and she was so very young.
‘I’m fine, Milly.’ Anna’s voice was quiet, a little sad. Milly knew she hated living with her father, Milly’s stepfather—one of them, anyway—and Milly couldn’t blame her. The situation was dire, and there was nothing she’d been able to do about it. Carlos Bentano kept custody of his only child more out of a cruel whim than any love or affection on his part.
‘Good.’ Milly walked away from Alex’s bed, gazing out at the sparkling sea. ‘I was hoping you could come visit here at the end of the summer,’ she said, trying to inject a positive note into her voice, as if what she was suggesting could really happen. ‘For a few weeks at least...’
‘If he lets me,’ Anna said quietly, her voice filled with doubt, and Milly sighed. Carlos Bentano and Milly’s mother had married when she was fourteen and Anna just four. While their parents had been partying up with the last of their money, both penniless, minor aristocrats, Milly had been like a mother to Anna, only to be wrenched away from her four years later, after the inevitable and acrimonious divorce. In the intervening years, her contact with her stepsister had been all too fleeting; she’d seen her once or twice a year, if that, although not for lack of trying.
Carlos was just as likely to turn Milly away at the door of his dilapidated villa on the outskirts of Rome than let her in, and for no reason than it seemed to amuse him to be cruel. Meanwhile he hosted debauched parties, inviting all manner of dissolute reprobates into his home, and paid scant attention to his daughter by an earlier marriage—Anna’s mother had died when she was a baby—and was indifferently negligent of her education. Milly was desperate to get Anna away from him, and five million euros would certainly help...
But she’d said no. She’d turned Alex Santos down, and right now, listening to her sister’s voice wobble as she tried to be brave, Milly could not think why she had been so selfish.
‘Why wouldn’t he let you?’ Milly protested as brightly as she could. ‘It won’t affect him, and he might like having the house to himself for a change.’ But they both knew Carlos didn’t care about that. ‘How are things going, anyway?’ Milly asked. She talked to Anna nearly every day, but, despite these daily conversations and reassurances that she was well, Anna was never able to allay her anxiety, a knot of tension that had lodged itself in her stomach six years ago, when they’d been separated.
‘Okay,’ Anna said on a sigh. ‘He came back from the casino last night in a foul mood.’
