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‘More to drink?’ she suggested, offering him a frosted can.
He shook his head as he quashed his desire to pull her into his arms, because he always found public declarations of affection faintly distasteful. ‘No, thanks.’
She glanced across at him. ‘I don’t suppose you do this kind of thing very often.’
‘Have my offer of a dinner date trashed, you mean?’
A shadow crossed over her face. ‘You’re not enjoying it?’
Alessio let out a low sigh of frustration. Why were her teeth digging into the soft cushion of her bottom lip like that? He didn’t want her to go all uncertain andcuteon him. He wanted the old Nicola back. The composed, self-possessed woman who kept him a reassuring arm’s length away. ‘It’s different,’ he conceded drily. ‘I don’t think I can ever remember a spontaneous picnic being so heavily dive-bombed by wasps. But thanks for buying me dinner, Nicola. That certainly hasn’t happened in a long time.’
She sat back on her heels and plucked a blade of grass from the dusty ground and he got the strangest feeling she was trying not to meet his eyes.
‘It must be weird,’ she said slowly. ‘Being so rich that everyone always expects you to pick up the bill. I suppose you just grow up getting used to it.’
‘Or not,’ he corrected flatly.
She blinked. ‘I don’t understand.’
His laugh was tinged with bitterness. ‘You think I was born rich?’
‘It’s a reasonable assumption to make. You’re a billionaire.’ She ran the blade of grass between two unvarnished fingernails. ‘Your family own a vast estate in Tuscany. Your stepfather’s an aristocrat. Somehow, I can’t imagine you ever having been on the breadline.’
‘Well, you’re wrong.’
Her lashes shuttered her eyes. ‘Am I?’
‘Completely.’
She nodded but said nothing more and inexplicably Alessio found himself wanting to talk about it, despite his inbuilt aversion to personal disclosure. Was it his recent brush with the past which had seared it onto the forefront of his mind, along with the knowledge that his mother was refusing to extricate herself from her dysfunctional relationship? Or just that Nicola had fixed her incredible gaze on him, and he wanted to lose himself in the cool, grey depths of those eyes? ‘I wasn’t born rich,’ he said slowly. ‘My mother had nothing when I was born. No man and certainly no wedding ring.’
‘Your half-sister told me you were illegitimate,’ she ventured.
His eyes narrowed. ‘But you didn’t think to tell me that?’
‘Why should I?’ She shrugged. ‘It was just before dinner and in view of what came next, it sort of slipped my mind. Also, it’s none of my business.’
‘True. I never even met my father. He was a sailor, according to my mother. She didn’t even know his surname.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Nobody could ever accuse them of being star-crossed lovers.’
But if he had intended to shock her or goad her into passing judgement, she didn’t take the bait. In fact, she showed no reaction at all and something about her serenity made him continue.
‘We lived hand to mouth.’ He closed his eyes and as the evening sun warmed the lids, he took himself back to a very different life—a place he rarely permitted himself to visit. Had he thought that time would lessen its impact? Maybe. But to his surprise, the memory was still sharp. Still vivid. Painfully so. ‘We lived with my grandmother in Southern Italy, in a tiny apartment in the mountains. And though we had very little, it was a good life.’
Or so he had thought.
Not so his mother. His beautiful, restless mother. Bitterly resenting the restrictions brought about by childcare, she had left most of the responsibility to his belovednonna. He remembered her endless complaints that her youth was draining away as she regarded their remote, hilltop village with an aggrieved eye. ‘I will never find myself a man,’ she had moaned, glaring pointedly at her son. ‘Not with all this baggage in tow.’
Harsh words for a little boy to hear, but Alessio had been willing to forgive the woman who had given birth to him. At least, in the beginning. Later, it became much harder to forgive.
‘My mother felt trapped by her circumstances.’ His lashes flickered open and he could see a crowd of tourists outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, their phones held high in the air. ‘So she found herself a job as chambermaid in a fancy hotel in Lecce and an escape route, courtesy of a much older man who was staying there. She met an English aristocrat and quickly became pregnant by him.’
‘Lord Bonner?’ she guessed, and he nodded.
‘Edward Bonner,’ he agreed. ‘It was a huge gamble, because she was running the risk of having two illegitimate children under four. But this time she wasn’t deserted, because Edward badly needed an heir. He offered to marry her and take her to England to live in his stately home and begin a new life as Lady Bonner.’ He paused. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how delighted she was to be able to escape her life of poverty to become a bona fide member of the aristocracy.’
‘But at least she took you with her,’ she offered slowly. ‘I suppose she could have left you behind.’
‘Yes, she took me with her, although that had nothing to do with maternal devotion. I overheard her telling a friend that her refusal to be parted from her son would make her appear more caring to her new husband. At least I was never under any illusions about just how ruthless women could be,’ he added harshly.
