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Nudging the back of his mind was the uncomfortable truth that he was not a vengeful man by nature, that this sort of revenge was born from emotions which he had handed over to her eight years ago only to find them thrown back in his face. She had shown him his vulnerability and the force of his reactions now lay in that one, unmentioned reality. It was something he could hardly stand to admit even to himself and it lay there, buried like a pernicious weed, even when he had told himself over the years that he had had a narrow escape; that getting involved with a woman such as she had turned out to be would have been an unmitigated disaster.
‘You think you know me,’ Chase muttered bitterly, and Alessandro narrowed his eyes to look at her.
‘By which you mean... Tell me.’
‘Nothing,’ she said in a harried undertone. ‘This is an impossible situation.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s the sound of the wheel turning full circle.’
‘You don’t like me, you don’t respect me, so why on earth would you want to sleep with me? You must be able to snap your fingers and have a thousand women standing to attention and saluting. Why bother with the one who doesn’t want to fall in line?’
Chase projected into the future. So she turned him down and the shelter became a shopping mall with her friend retreating to the seaside, where she would live out the rest of her days, bored, grumbling and dissatisfied. Furthermore, what would happen to their friendship? Alessandro had put her in an invidious position, for would her friend ever forgive her for being the one who failed to ‘iron out the crease’ that would have enabled her to hang on to what she loved?
She would never be able to tell Beth what that particular crease was and eventually the wonderful friendship they had would wither and die under the weight of Beth’s misunderstanding and simmering resentment. How could it not?
‘I’ve always considered myself a man to rise to the challenge,’ Alessandro said coolly.
‘And I’m your challenge.’ There was no point moaning about the unfairness of fate. He had seriously upped the ante by involving Beth and now she had to step up to the plate one way or another. He might well consider himself a guy who couldn’t resist a challenge, but when had she ever been the sort of woman to back down? Her days of doing that had been put behind her.
And he talked about unfinished business... Wasn’t it the same for her? Over the years, through everything that had happened, hadn’t he been the burr under her skin? Hadn’t she had broken nights dreaming of him? Hadn’t she replayed scenarios in her head during which what they had had came to fruition?
More to the point, hadn’t all those scenarios sprung back into instant life the second she had laid eyes on him again? Common sense had wrestled with what she considered her stupid weakness, because he was as out of bounds now as he had ever been, despite the fact that Shaun was no longer on the scene. But common sense was failing to win the battle. She knew she looked at him, wondered...
‘Are you going to tell me that I’m not yours?’ Alessandro asked softly. Two adults, he thought, who wanted each other and this time no hidden obstacle lurking in the way. On top of that, so much for her to get out of it. So where was the problem? He had never had the slightest curiosity to plumb the hidden depths of any woman, yet now he had a sudden, urgent desire to reach into her head and discover what was going on behind that beautiful, enigmatic facade. The thrill of the unexplored was heady and erotic and it took a surprising amount of will power to remain where he was, holding on to silence as a weapon of persuasion.
‘It feels...odd. Just not right.’
‘But you can’t deny that what I’m saying makes sense. If we cut through all the redundant emotion, if we leave bitterness and the past aside, don’t we still fancy the hell out of one another?’
Chase thought of his hands on her body, touching her. She had stayed far away from the opposite sex over the past eight years. Offers had been plentiful, some of them horribly insistent, but there was no way she was going to get involved with any man ever again.
So here she was, nearing thirty, unattached, with barely any social life to speak of. Wasn’t it time for her to re-join the human race? And wouldn’t she be able to do that once, as he had put it, business between them was finally finished? If she were brutally honest with herself, hadn’t Alessandro been as much a reason for where she was now with her life, as Shaun had been? He had had such a dramatic hold on her all those years ago and the way things had ended between them had scarred her to the extent that she had just simply withdrawn.
