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“I liked to know that you were okay. If I had met Sam and found him to be of decent character, I would have stayed away.”
Her heart stammered hard against the wall of her ribs. She felt as though danger were everywhere, flames threatening to burst her into pieces.
“He is a decent guy,” she said quietly.
He didn’t speak at first but the silence was thick with his disagreement.
“I offered him money to leave you.”
Her mouth dropped. She jerked her eyes back to his, and then she was shaking her head, her whole body quivering in shock. “You did what?”
“I offered him money.” And now Max shrugged as though it were no big deal after all, as though Alessia should surely see that. “He could have refused it. I was hoping he would,” he told her darkly.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered. “Sam has always known what my financial situation is. It’s not as though I’m not wealthy in my own right.”
“But it is your money.”
“We were getting married. What’s mine would have become his.”
“And I made sure he knew you would have an ironclad prenuptial agreement in place,” Max inserted smoothly.
Alessia’s harsh intake of breath cut through the car. “I didn’t arrange a prenup.”
“No. But your father would have insisted on it.”
“Once you’d told him to?”
Once again, he shifted his head a little. “If you cannot take measures to protect yourself then –,”
“I don’t need protecting from Sam,” she roared, putting a hand over her stomach instinctively, as though blocking their child’s ears.
“He didn’t hesitate before taking payment to walk away from you.”
Her ears felt as though they were steaming! “Because you made it impossible for him to say no.”
He swore softly under his breath. “Is that the action of a man in love?”
“I didn’t care if he loved me or not,” she said with a shake of her head. “I liked him and he liked me –,”
“So be friends with him. Don’t marry him.”
The car slowed to a stop and she had only a second to compose her features before the driver opened her door. Max moved quickly, exiting his side of the vehicle and stalking to hers before she could shuffle to the door. He held a hand out to help her – a hand she could have used given her size and state of shock. She ignored it, pushing to standing somewhat inelegantly and trying to catch her breath.
She fired him a look of pure outrage then moved towards the front door of the house. He swiped a key and the door popped open.
“Don’t you dare,” she whirled around to face him as soon as they were inside, alone in the corridor. “Talk to me about the kind of man I should marry.” She saw him standing there and felt only a kick of grief – he was just as he’d been earlier that same night, when they were on their way to the event. Only then she’d looked at him with flutterings of hope and love – yes, love – because she’d started to believe that their marriage was becoming real.
She made a strangling noise and walked quickly to the stairs, moving up them angrily – but it was an anger that burned bright and hot. She knew it would extinguish soon, all the heat burned through the wick until only embers remained, and then she’d be filled with sadness and shock.
She had to use her anger while she had it. She burst into her room and grabbed a handful of clothes, not stopping to think, not stopping to breathe. She stuffed them into one of the expensive heavy paper shopping bags the clothes had arrived in. It was a tangle of dresses, skirts, shirts – she didn’t care. Somewhere within the bag there’d be enough to get her through the next day. She could regroup and work out what she wanted to do next.
“What are you doing?” He demanded, standing in the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What does it look like?”
He didn’t move, but his expression softened, his eyes almost breaking down her barriers.
“I told myself that if I saw him and he spoke of you as you deserved then I would leave things alone. He didn’t. From the first I could see how mercenary and self-interested he was.”
