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Her pulse quickened. Had she loved Sam? No. Not at all. She’d been very fond of him and she’d loved the stability he’d appeared to offer, and deep down, she’d loved that he seemed to worship and adore her, because that had felt safe and reassuring. Her ego had loved that. None of those responses did her any justice.
“Where did you go?” He prompted, reaching out and running his hand over her thigh, so she shivered – but not a shiver of anything other than warmth and need. It flooded her whole body, making her a little woozy as she stood.
“Brazil.”
“Why?”
“I have a friend who lives there. She asked me. I went.” It sounded simple, and it had been. Mia had understood that Alessia’s heart was breaking, that Alessia herself was on the brink of breaking, and she’d given Alessia space to fall apart and a shoulder to cry on when the time was right. The sun, sand, food had helped her find her feet and accept that she was no longer Mrs Massimo Montebello.
The memories were too strong being back here, married to Max once more, only months away from welcoming their baby into the world. She needed to blot them out – for though they were years old, the pain felt fresh.
“I don’t think walking down memory lane serves either of us,” she said, frankly, moving out of his reach, towards the wardrobe on autopilot. At that point in time, it felt almost like a little sanctuary she could duck into and escape his penetrating gaze. “The past is over. Dealt with. How I felt, what I did, none of that matters anymore. This marriage is completely different.”
“But we’re the same people,” he pointed out with logic.
“No, Max. We’re really not.” She needed to make this clear to him, so that he understood what she was saying. “I will never be that girl again. I will never believe in love and happily ever after and knights in shining armour and all of the silly girly fantasies I consoled myself with night after night. I’m not here because I want to ‘heal’ those hurts – there is no healing those wounds now. They’re old and knotty, scar tissue of my soul. Let’s just concentrate on the future and the marriage we have now. And that marriage is better served by maintaining a polite distance between us.”
His eyes were mocking and dangerous in a way that speared pleasure through her. She ignored that involuntary response. She didn’t want it.
“You think that’s possible?”
“I think it’s necessary.” She sighed. “And if you truly feel any kind of protective instinct for me then you’ll respect what I’m saying. I don’t think you have the power to hurt me again. I would hope I’ve learned my lesson. But I’d really rather not risk finding out for sure. Don’t call me ‘cara’, don’t look at me as though you care about me. Just…treat me like you did before. I’m used to that.”
Chapter Seven
THERE WERE ANY NUMBER of things he could have said in response, but the look in her eyes had warned him not to. She had been putting him on notice, her nerves at breaking point no matter how she liked to say she didn’t feel anything for him anymore.
If they weren’t, he might have told her that this marriage was – obviously – different. This was for life – their child made that essential. But even that brought with it problems, because Alessia had undoubtedly married him the first time believing their marriage would last a lifetime.
As had he.
He hadn’t expected to be divorced in a year. So what had he thought? That she could grow up a little more, and eventually, when he didn’t feel like such a lecherous creep, their relationship would progress? As though he could flick a switch and transform what they were into something completely different? Or had he expected it to grow out of their marriage? If so, why hadn’t he made more effort? Because she was right – he’d treated her like a polite stranger in their first marriage, barely acknowledging her presence unless necessary and certainly not acknowledging her femininity.
He closed his eyes with a burst of self-directed pain, remembering the ways she’d tried to break down those barriers – climbing into his bed, joining him in the shower, and he’d always resisted her, politely but insistently defusing the situation to reinforce the existing parameters of their relationship.
He’d wanted to protect her, to treat her almost like a little sister, but instead he’d basically told her she was some kind of sexual repellent. That hadn’t been his intention. He’d presumed his own responses were so obvious, that even as he pushed her away she must have been able to tell how badly he wanted to give into their mutual desire. He had always believed she’d understood that he was treating her with respect – and honouring her innocence, given her connection to his family.
But if she hadn’t – and Alessia had made it abundantly clear that had never entered her mind – then their marriage had been a long year of rejection. Cold and consistent. And still she’d tried to break through, to forge a true intimacy with him.
Nothing made any sense. Least of all his feeling of passionate possession when he’d learned firstly of her affair – an affair that had never, as it turned out, happened – and then her would-be marriage to the free-loader Sam. Given they’d never been remotely physically intimate, why had the idea that she’d cheated on him torn through Max with such ferocity? The photographs had been like acid against his eyeballs. His brothers’ and cousins’ concern the final nail in the coffin. His pride had been hurt, yes, but it was so much more complicated than that.
Sam was easier to explain – just as he’d claimed to Alessia, he felt an imperative to care for her. Carlo would expect nothing less, and as for Massimo, he didn’t consider his duties there had ever been absolved. If Sam had been violently in love with Alessia? If he’d convinced Massimo that he would love and cherish Alessia for the rest of her life, would Max have stepped back to the sidelines and wished them well?
/> It disturbed him that he couldn’t answer that with any clarity, but he was glad it was simply a hypothetical. Sam had shown his true colours. Massimo had ended their engagement with one conversation and the cutting of a large cheque.
He’d told her he’d be honest with her from now on, but he wasn’t being, was he?
Not about Sam.
Would she want to know the truth? Or would it make her feel worse, as though the other man had seen her only as a means of accessing her father’s bank balance? She already held a delusional idea that she was not desirable; wouldn’t Sam’s true motives exacerbate that? Indecision fired inside of him.
At the time, he’d had no issues with his behaviour but now, he felt a sharp stab of regret at having taken over her life. It had been arrogant, yes, but Massimo had always been a man who took charge. He’d acted on instincts and it was only now that he was beginning to question every single instinct he possessed.
London had been the cherry on top – he’d thought she would be sexually experienced and that coming together would simply be a single night of passion – a night he’d denied himself and fantasised about for years. But Christo, her innocence, her insistence that she hadn’t cheated on him and his disbelief in that, it all swirled through him like streams of acid.
He ground his teeth together now, staring out at Rome, the view so familiar he barely saw it. He was done for the day, the brief he needed to familiarise himself with before the following morning committed to his memory, and yet still he sat there, staring out at Rome, his body still, his mind over-active, tormented by the past. Regardless of what she’d said that morning, he knew it wasn’t an easy thing to separate what they’d been then from what they were now. A real future together would mean fixing the base of their relationship – and that meant redressing the past, piece by piece.
“Alessia?” She stiffened her spine, squaring her shoulders, fully aware Max might argue with her choice and telling herself she didn’t care.
