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Finally he heard her half running down the stairs, and she reappeared in the doorway, once more in the clothes in which she had gone out shopping. The dress and all the other accessories had, he assumed, joined the discarded jewellery category.
‘I won’t tell you that you’ve blown this out of all proportion,’ he heard himself say, in defiance of everything his head was telling him.
‘You just did. And if that’s your opinion, then you’re welcome to voice it.’
‘I think you’re making a big mistake,’ Alessandro said stiffly. For him, this felt like a major concession.
‘Oh? And that would be…why? Exactly?’
‘What are you going to do when you walk out of this house? Do you imagine that your life is going to slot back to the place it was before we happened to meet? Before we became lovers?’
‘No. I don’t think it will for a minute, Alessandro.’
Megan looked at him evenly. She was only now really appreciating how different he was from the man she had so stupidly fallen in love with seven years ago, and with whom she was now still so stupidly in love. Alessandro made love like a dream, and could make any woman feel like the sexiest woman on earth, but he was essentially a coldly logical man. He saw only the practicalities of marriage, and didn’t shy away from an institution that would further enhance his standing. He was getting older, and how seriously could any man, however brilliant, intuitive and filthy rich, be taken by the People Who Mattered if he approached his forties still with the reputation of being a playboy? For someone whose work was his ruling passion, every scandalous inch in a gossip column would be seen as an erosion into his credibility.
Hence Victoria. She had been his perfect match, because she would never have interfered with his working life.
Realistically, Megan knew that she exercised some power over him—but only in a sexual sense. Her mistake had been to think that he would ever allow passion to rule his life. He hadn’t seen her as enhancing his life, more as invading it, and everyone knew what happened to invaders. They were eventually repelled.
It was her misfortune that his role in her life was completely different. If he had been an invading force, then she had been a joyful captive, waving the white flag before he had even had the chance to take up residence. She hadn’t so much surrendered before the first tank as begged to be taken on board.
‘You said that we needed to get each other out of our systems.’ Megan smiled sadly. ‘I think I can honestly say that I’ve done that. I’ve got the measure of you, and if my life doesn’t go back to the place it was, then I’m hoping that it moves on to an even better place.’
‘You’ve got the measure of me?’ That sounded very much like criticism to Alessandro, and he was duly outraged. In fact, for the first time in his life he was rendered totally speechless. Not only had she thrown that uncalled-for insult at him, but she was now turning away, clearly seeing no need to follow through with the remark.
‘At least,’ she said, with a wry smile and one hand on the doorknob, ‘there won’t be any awkward moments at school. We won’t bump into one another.’
For Megan, it had felt dignified to have the last word. She had also succeeded in not making a spectacle of herself. However, those two high points in the evening were lost over the next week or so, as reality set in with a vengeance.
She found it difficult to concentrate at school, and things were made worse when, only ten days after she had staged her walk-out on Alessandro, she was unhelpfully shown a centre spread in one of the tabloids by Charlotte. It featured an extremely riotous-looking Alessandro in the company of several beauties, all of whom were rich young things with family pedigrees coming out of their ears.
He might not be rushing to find another Victoria replacement, she thought bitterly, but he was certainly intent on enjoying himself on the way.
While she had been pining and rehashing their break-up in her head, to the point where she seemed to have a permanent headache, he had been out having fun. She had made her great long speech about putting him behind her and moving on to a better place, but actually all it had amounted to was blah, blah, blah.
‘Okay.’ She looked up from the newspaper to Charlotte, who had tactfully turned away and was reading instructions on the back of a packet of a microwave meal. ‘You win. I’m going to get out there and start having some fun of my own.’
Charlotte immediately lost interest in the container in her hand and spun round with a broad grin.
‘I know some clubs,’ she said, reeling in her fish before it had time to wriggle off the hook. ‘I can give you mellow and smoky—not literally, of course, with the smoking ban. Or I can give you funky, or upmarket classy…Take your pick.’
