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‘Then why don’t you enlighten me?’ A click of his lean fingers brought a waiter with a fresh glass of Buck’s Fizz to the table. Diego watched the look of surprise and pleasure cross her lovely face and waited until she’d taken the first appreciative sip before pressing softly, ‘I like to know what I’m talking about. It gives me more—’ he paused a moment before adding with self-mocking solemnity ‘—more gravitas.’
Her brilliant eyes swept up to lock with his and she giggled softly, just as he’d intended. Diego felt a pang of self-dislike as he remembered that she’d eaten nothing for breakfast, merely mangling the peach she’d taken. Then brushed it aside. He wasn’t aiming to get her drunk, just relaxed enough to rid her of that slightly edgy indifference.
‘Well—’ Her slim shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. She took one more sip then decided to leave the rest. She was beginning to feel light-headed and that wasn’t a good idea around Diego Raffacani. She needed all her wits about her.
Pulling in a tight breath, she told him, ‘My father showed little interest in me while my mother was alive and even less after her death. When I was home from boarding school I was farmed out on to his partner’s family—that’s why I’m so close to Sophie and Ben.’
Lisa sucked her lower lip between her teeth, her eyes clouding with regret. Had been close, she mentally amended. Not any more.
Seeing her sudden distress, Diego frowned. His instinct was to take the small slender hands that were lying on the top of the table and enfold them with his. He denied it with difficulty.
‘Maybe he was grief-stricken after your mother’s tragically early death, but wanted you to be able to move on,’ he suggested even-handedly, trying to understand why a man with a needy, fragile girl-child could farm her out to someone else. Where he came from people looked after their own. Family was of the first importance.
Lisa pulled a derisory face. ‘You obviously don’t know my father!’
Fishing for sympathy, the stock-in-trade of a spoiled brat?
Diego stated softly, ‘Maybe not. But I do know he gave you expensive gifts and eventually, probably because he could think of nothing else to do with you, put you in a responsible position on Lifestyle. Did you get your degree, by the way?’
The illusory mists of his seemingly gentle interest cleared from Lisa’s eyes. If that wasn’t scorn in his deep voice then she was a monkey’s uncle!
‘The only thing he ever gave me was a book token each Christmas—and a watch for my eighteenth, and he didn’t even choose it himself; Honor Clayton let slip that he’d asked her to pick something out. And, as for getting my degree—I didn’t get the chance, did I?’ she shot back at him. ‘As soon as I got back from Spain he told me the publishing empire had shrunk to the size of a small island—Lifestyle! He asked me—more or less commanded, now I come to think of it—to give up my university place and join the staff, dogsbodying, trying to learn the ropes. All hands on deck and everyone pulling together is the phrase I remember.’
‘And you were happy with that sacrifice?’ Diego wanted to know, a slight frown pulling his slanting ebony brows together.
Her mouth set stubbornly. ‘No. Just flattered that for once he was noticing me, wanting something. Of course I agreed. I wanted to please him, didn’t I? I wanted him to value me.’
Diego felt his breath lock in his lungs. Her lovely eyes had flooded with moisture. His own eyes narrowed as he watched her blink furiously, drag in a breath and essay a tight smile as if to signify she’d said too much, revealed too much.
‘Shall we go?’ As she began to get to her feet, Diego captured both of her hands and held her.
‘In a moment.’
Her hands felt so small within his. The delicacy of her bone structure had aroused all his protective instincts five years ago, left him in awe of her fragile beauty. As his eyes narrowed on the exquisitely modelled features, the soft mouth that trembled slightly, he could feel it happening all over again. The need to cherish and adore.
If she was telling the truth about her
relationship with her father, and he was pretty sure she was, then he had misjudged her, he acknowledged heavily.
Had he misjudged her in other ways? Should he listen to what she had to say about that dreadful night without cynically presuming that whatever she said would be a tissue of lies?
If he confessed what his conscience was belatedly telling him—that he’d been wrong to give her no option but to break her engagement, come to Spain with him—then maybe, just maybe, they could start all over again. The spark was still there; it had been playing havoc with him since meeting up with her again. And they were both older and wiser.
Then the small, passive hands came to life, the slender fingers curving around his, and the effect was electrifying.
He said thickly, ‘And did he? Value you?’
Lisa couldn’t answer. Simply stared into his lean, dark, shatteringly gorgeous face. Holding Diego’s strong warm hands knocked all the breath from her body, made her quiver with a thousand memories of how it had been for them in those far off days when she’d truly believed he’d loved her as passionately as she’d loved him. She wanted to be back in that beautiful magical time with a fierce longing that pushed everything else right out of her head.
She gently withdrew her hands from his and felt the loss of physical contact like a pain. She tried to concentrate on what he’d been asking her.
‘He gave no sign of it,’ she said at last, sadness darkening her eyes.
Diego leaned over the table, the dark glitter of his eyes pinning her to the spot. ‘What kind of man is he?’ he asked rawly.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ she answered truthfully. ‘He never let me close enough to find out.’
‘Yet you agreed to my demands, broke your engagement and, presumably, hurt the man you were supposed to be in love with, just to save the business and future financial security of a man who, from your account, showed very little parental interest in you.’
