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‘Shaun...was killed shortly after I got my first job. He...he was on his motorbike at the time. He was speeding, lost control, crashed into the central reservation on the motorway...’
‘So you didn’t ditch him in the impersonal confines of a divorce court.’ Nor would she have. Alessandro downed a mouthful of beer and watched her over the rim of the glass. Not, as she had told him on that last day in exhaustive detail, when he’d been her childhood sweetheart and the love of her life. ‘And I take it you never remarried.’
‘Nor will I ever.’ She could detect the bitterness that had crept into her voice, but when she looked at him his expression was still as cool and unrelenting as it had been.
‘Is that because there’s no room for a man in the life of an ambitious, high-flying lawyer? Or because you’re still wrapped up with the man who was...let me try and remember... Oh, yes, I’ve got it: the only guy you would ever contemplate sleeping with. Sorry if you got the wrong idea, Alessandro. A few cappuccinos does not a relationship make, but it’s been a laugh...’
‘We should never have seen each other. It was a terrible idea. I never meant to get involved with anyone.’
‘But you didn’t get involved with me, did you?’ Alessandro angled his beautiful head to one side as he picked up an unspoken message he wasn’t quite getting.
What was there to get or not get? he thought impatiently. The woman had strung him along, led him up the garden path and then had casually disappeared without a backward glance. Hell, she had made him feel things... No, he wasn’t going to go there.
‘No! No, I didn’t. I meant...’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘You don’t understand. I shouldn’t even have even to you. I was married.’
‘So why did you? Were you riding high on the knowledge that you’d managed to net the rich guy all the groupie students were after?’
‘That’s a very conceited thing to say.’
‘I value honesty. I lost track of the number of notes I got from girls asking for some “extra tuition”.’
If there hadn’t been notes, she thought, then he surely would have clocked the stares he’d garnered everywhere he went. The man was an alpha male with enough sex appeal to sink a ship. Throw in his wealth, and it was little wonder that girls were queuing up to see if they could attract his attention. She’d never, ever been at the university longer than was strictly necessary but, if she had been, she knew that she would have become a source of envy, curiosity and dislike.
‘So was that why you decided to keep your marital status under wraps? To take the wedding ring off? To string me along with the promise of sex?’
‘I never said we would end up in bed.’
‘Do me a favour!’ He slammed his empty glass on the table and Chase jumped. ‘You knew exactly what you were getting into!’
‘And I didn’t think... I never thought...’
‘So you lied about the fact that you weren’t single or available for a relationship.’
‘If I remember correctly, you once told me that you weren’t interested in commitment, that you liked your relationships fast and furious and temporary!’
Alessandro flushed darkly. ‘Weak reasoning,’ he gritted cuttingly. ‘Did you lie because you thought that you might try me out for size? See whether I wasn’t a better bet than the stay-at-home husband? Is that why you strung me along for four months? Were you hedging your bets?’ He shook his head, furious with himself for losing control of the conversation, for actually caring one way or another what had or hadn’t been done eight years previously.
‘No, of course not! And Shaun was never a stay-at-home husband.’ Again, that bitterness had crept into her voice.
‘No? So what was he, then?’ Alessandro leaned forward, the simple shift of body weight implying threat. ‘Banker? Entrepreneur? If I recall, you were a little light on detail. In fact, if my memory serves me right, you couldn’t wait to get out of my company fast enough the very last time we met.’
Alessandro was surprised to find that he could remember exactly what she had been wearing the very last time he’d laid eyes on her: a pair of faded skinny jeans tucked into some cheap imitation-suede boots and a jumper which now, thinking about it, had probably belonged to the ‘childhood sweetheart’ husband. On that thought, his jaw clenched and his eyes darkened.
It hadn’t taken her long to spill out the truth. Having spent months of innocent conversation, tentative advances and retreats and absolutely no physical contact—which had been hell for him—she had sat down opposite him at the wine bar which had become their favourite meeting place; at a good bus ride away, it was far from all things university. With very little preamble, and keeping her eyes glued to his face while around them little clusters of strangers had drunk, laughed and chatted, all very relaxed in the run-up to Christmas, she’d informed him that she would no longer be seeing him.
