One Night In…
And she didn’t know what to do.
She hadn’t expected this utter rejection—the man she loved turned into a stranger she couldn’t even understand.
She should have spoken sooner—done something, thought something, acted. Shown him … But what? She’d still been reeling with shock, with disappointment, with sorrow.
And now it was too late.
It’s never too late, her heart cried out, and Meghan forced herself to listen. Alessandro was her second chance at life, at love; she was his. She wouldn’t let go of it lightly.
She couldn’t let him leave.
Not like this. Never like this.
On weak, wobbling legs she walked up the stairs, her mind buzzing but blank. She wished she knew what to say, what to think. She only knew she had to act.
She turned the corner, came to the bedroom door. And saw him.
Alessandro sat on the bed, his head bowed, his hands fisted in his hair. Meghan’s heart contracted, ached with a desperate longing that nearly made her stagger.
She recognised that stance, the bleak despair in every agonised line of his body. She’d felt it herself.
It was the look of a person who believed his own soul was damned because everyone had told him it was, even when his heart had cried out for belief, for love.
For salvation.
She’d felt it when one man had condemned her; Alessandro had suffered the judgement of an entire country.
This is the man I love.
This was the man. No matter what he’d thought, what he’d felt, what he’d done.
She loved Alessandro.
And she knew, had to believe, that he was the man she thought he was, knew he was.
The man he meant to be.
She must have made some sound, for he looked up, his face hardening into a mask once more.
‘I’ll be out of here in a few minutes,’ he said coldly. ‘Can’t you wait?’
‘No, I can’t,’ Meghan said. Her voice was a scratchy breath of sound but she forced it to come out stronger. ‘And you won’t.’
‘I won’t?’ he repeated in a mocking tone. ‘You should know by now there’s little I won’t do, gattina.’ He stood up, grabbed the half-filled bag at his feet and slung it over one shoulder.
Meghan stood in the doorway, her arms flung out, blocking him. Alessandro walked towards her, one eyebrow raised in incredulous disdain.
‘Get out of my way, Meghan.’ He spoke softly, quietly, yet she still knew it was a threat.
‘No.’
He paused, his eyes sweeping, assessing her, burning her, just as they had when he’d looked at her that first time in the restaurant.
Even then her body, her heart, had known this was the man— the man she needed.
And she wasn’t going to let him walk away now.
‘Haven’t you had enough, Meghan? Or did you lose all of your self-respect when that man abused you?’ He shook his head. ‘Save us the shame of such a scene and let me walk out of here with head held high.’
‘I don’t think anyone’s head is high right now,’ Meghan replied in a low voice. ‘Yours wasn’t a moment ago, and mine isn’t now. I’m ashamed—’ her breath hitched ‘—that I didn’t answer you downstairs. That I didn’t tell you I believed.’
‘But you did believe. You believed the truth. Now, enough of this!'His hand slashed through the air. ‘Leave me alone. Let me go.’
Meghan’s throat ached with unshed tears. She held them back, forced herself to be strong, if only for a moment. Trembling, she put one hand flat on Alessandro’s chest, felt his sucked-in breath at the contact. The caress. ‘But I can’t let you go, Alessandro. I love you.’
He shrugged, determinedly unmoved. ‘You love the man I pretended to be to make you marry me.’
‘Why would you do that? You didn’t have to marry me. I told you that myself. It could have been an affair.’
‘You hold yourself rather cheaply,’ he said coldly, his mouth twisting.
Meghan’s eyes blazed for a second. She might be dying inside—her dreams, her hopes, her heart, all on their last breath, their last chance—but she was still going to fight. Fight for her own shattered hopes, for Alessandro’s.
‘You hold yourself cheaply, it seems,’ she responded levelly. ‘I don’t know your secrets, Alessandro. I don’t know all the things you did. I don’t want to. But I know—I know—that you’ve been trying to overcome your past. To not be the man the tabloids painted you—the man you and everyone else believed you to be. I’ve seen you struggle with it. I’ve seen you lose, and I’ve seen you win. It’s not an act.’ Her voice broke into fragments of pain and sorrow, of hope too painful to bear, too precious to lose. ‘I believe in you. I love you.’
Alessandro was silent, still. She could feel the energy thrumming through him, a raw, angry pulse.
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not real.’
‘It is real,’ Meghan flashed. ‘You can’t keep denying what I know! I don’t care what you do, how many times you try to push me away. I know who you are and I love you!’
‘No, you don’t!’ His voice came out in a savage roar, ripped from his body, his lungs, and Meghan jerked back, startled. His face twisted into a grimacing sneer as he dropped his bag on the floor, grabbed her arms. ‘What do you want from me? What do I have to do to show you I’m not the man you think I am?’ His fingers dug into her arms and Meghan forced herself to submit, to stare into his face, a beautiful face no longer blank, but tormented by pain and misery.
He felt. The mask had dropped, and she was glad.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ she said quietly. Her voice shook only a little. ‘You’ve already shown me, Alessandro. You’ve shown me with compassion, love and tenderness what kind of man you are. The man I love.’
He let out a low, rasping sound; Meghan thought it was a laugh. Then he pulled her to him, her breasts flattening against his chest, and kissed her with a hard desperation that felt like a bruise.
Meghan’s hands crept up his chest, wound around his neck. She pulled him closer and gentled the kiss, turning it into something loving and warm.
He refused, breaking it off, coming up for air with a choked laugh of disbelief. ‘Have you no self-respect?’ he demanded, and though pain was slicing cleanly through her, Meghan answered steadily.
‘I didn’t. But you gave it back to me. You can’t take it away again.’
‘Can’t I?’ he jeered, and, pulling on her wrists, led her to the bed, tossing her carelessly down on it. Meghan lay there, her heart pounding so loudly it seemed to fill the room with its desperate beat. She was on her back, splayed, helpless.
She thought of the first time he’d touched her, what he’d said. I’m not going to touch you. I’m not that kind of man.
No, he wasn’t. She still believed. Even now, when he was determined to show her differently, to prove her love was worthless.
Especially now.
The final test.
He looked down at her, his hands on his hips, his expression coldly mocking. ‘Scared, Meghan?’
‘No.’ Her voice wavered, but she kept looking at him. Forced herself to meet the icy steel of his eyes.
‘You should be.’
‘What are you going to do, Alessandro? Try to make me stop loving you? Is that what this is about?’
‘What this is about?’ he mused, his smile a taunt. He dropped his hand down to her ankle, ran it slowly, temptingly up her bare leg—a deliberate, calculated caress. Meghan didn’t move even when his hand travelled further upwards, under her skirt, teased her at the joining of her thighs, his eyes still on hers, still cold.
Even now she felt the flickerings of desire, unbearably sweet, piercing the anger.
‘Do you want me,’ he said in disbelief, ‘even now?’
Unashamed, Meghan raised her head, looked at him. Offered herself to him. ‘Yes. I love you.’
He jerked back his hand, scalded by her honesty. ‘This isn’t about love!’
‘Yes, it is. I love you. And you love me.’ She met his gaze, let her eyes blaze into his.
He shook his head, hunched his shoulders. After a moment of tense silence, he said, ‘Meghan, I’ve never wanted to hurt you.’
‘Then don’t.’
‘ You don’t know me!’ He bit the words out, raking a frustrated hand through his hair.
‘I don’t know who you were,’ Meghan corrected. ‘But I know you now.’
He shook his head, his eyes blanking again. The mask was slipping down once more, and Meghan knew she couldn’t let it return.
‘Alessandro, don’t.’ She struggled up from the bed, pulled her skirt back down. ‘Don’t shut me out.’ She stood before him, begging. ‘What will it take to prove to you that you can’t turn me away? That I won’t desert you?’
‘You’ve proved that to me, Meghan,’ he snapped savagely. ‘You’re like a little beaten dog, accepting every careless kick. I can’t get you to leave!’
Meghan blinked. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to be able to do this. She just didn’t know if she had the strength.
‘I was honest with you,’ she said, after a long, taut moment, her voice barely audible. ‘I told you my secrets. My shadows. I took the risk.’
‘What risk?’
‘The risk of having you not believe me. Of having you disgusted by me, by my past. Believing of me what Stephen did. It was a big risk.’
He was silent, arrested, his eyes narrowed. Meghan dragged a breath into her lungs, willed herself to continue.
‘You told me you liked taking risks. I was a risk, you said. Well, sorry, Alessandro, but I don’t see that from here. All I see is a man haunted by his past. A man afraid to tell the truth. A coward.’
‘I am not a coward!’ His eyes flashed flint and his hands balled into fists. Meghan lifted her chin.
‘No? Then tell me the truth.’
‘I told you the truth.’
‘You told me the tabloid truth. I want to know what really happened the night of the car accident.’
‘That has nothing—’
‘Yes, it does,’ she cut him off. She pressed her hands flat against his chest. He shrugged away, but she kept on holding him. Touching him. ‘I think I’m smart enough to realise that even being the world’s biggest playboy wouldn’t drive you like this. Torture you like this. It has to be something else. So what else is there? It must be the car accident. Something happened that night—something that is consuming you with guilt. I know what guilt feels like, Alessandro. I know what it tastes like. It tastes like cold metal. It rides you, wakes you up in the night, drenched in sweat, in icy terror. I know. You said I had shadows, but you have them too, and I don’t want them here any more.’
He looked down at her, curled his fingers around her hands as if to remove them, then stopped. His eyes weren’t blank; they were shadowed with pain, darkened with sorrow.
‘It’s not that simple.’
Meghan felt the first tremulous thrill of victory. She leaned in, kissed the rapid pulse of his throat. ‘It is.’
Alessandro shook his head, the barest of movements, his eyes closed, his face working into hard lines, harsh angles.
‘What happened that night?’ Meghan asked softly. ‘You argued—you said something to Roberto and he didn’t like it. He was shaken, frightened. What did you tell him?’
Alessandro was silent for a long moment. Meghan could hear the ragged rasp of their breathing; the pounding of their hearts. Outside a child laughed, a muted sound of joy from another world.
‘I told him the truth.’ Alessandro spoke through stiff lips, his eyes focused on a distant place, a remembered time. His voice was little more than a whisper.
‘What was the truth?’
His hands curled tightly around hers; he was holding onto her now, Meghan realised. He didn’t want her to let go.
She wouldn’t. She never would.
‘He’d made a mistake.’ Alessandro stopped, and Meghan held her breath. She knew it would take time, and it would take pain, to bring the truth from him. She could wait. ‘He had no head for business, Roberto,’ he continued after a moment, his voice turning toneless. Meghan understood the need to distance himself from the telling. ‘He was an artist, burdened by my parents’ expectations. He never should have …’ He let out a low breath, shook his head, then continued. ‘After my father died, the company was Roberto’s alone. He made all the decisions, and he couldn’t handle the responsibility. He never should have been given it.’
It should have been you, Meghan thought. Alessandro was the one with the head for business; he’d designed the most stunning piece of jewellery she’d ever seen. Yet he’d been passed over since he was a child—perhaps a bit too high-spirited, his mischievous pranks turning wilder as he was continually overlooked. It was so easy to imagine. To understand.
‘He made some bad business deals,’ Alessandro finally said. ‘Ran into debt, terrible debt, and he couldn’t get out. He became desperate, but he was also stupid. He wanted to pay back the loan sharks without anyone noticing, so he started embezzling from the company. Our company.’
He looked down at her, regret etched on every line of his face. ‘I found out. I wish I hadn’t. Roberto would be alive today …’
Meghan doubted that, but she held her tongue. Alessandro’s honesty—his confession—was too precious.
‘I used to check the company’s finances,’ he explained, expressionless once more. ‘I … I always had an interest. When I realised what was going on I was angry.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I was very angry—unreasonably so, perhaps—and I went to find him immediately. He was at a party—Paula, his wife, was there. Everyone was there. I spoke to him—I tried to keep it private …’ Now his voice turned urgent, almost pleading. ‘But Roberto decided to brazen it out. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about, asked why I was checking up on him, so I stated figures. Facts. Then the life drained out of him. I saw him then, defeated, hopeless, and I was glad.’ He looked at her, his face twisted with torment. ‘What sort of man does that make me, to feel that way towards my own brother? My own brother, who never did me a moment’s harm?’
Meghan shrugged. She felt eerily calm. In control. At last. ‘A natural one, to have such a reaction in the heat of the moment.’
‘He left the party; I followed him.’ He was determined to finish it now, to have the reckoning. ‘We got in the car. Once we were alone Roberto became furious. I’d never seen him so angry, so … hateful. I knew he was afraid, but I didn’t let him off. I didn’t give him any mercy.’
‘Did he ask for it?’ Meghan asked.
‘He told me that I should turn a blind eye to his doings, that he’d always turned a blind eye to mine. I said … I said …’ Alessandro dragged in a shuddering breath. ‘I said I’d see him rot in hell first.’
Meghan’s fingers ached from where he was clenching them, clinging to her as his last hope for redemption. She held on.
‘And then?’
‘And then …’ He drew in another breath. ‘And then he said that’s just what I’d do.’
Alessandro was silent, his lips pressed tightly together, unable to say any more. To finish the story.
Realisation dawned slowly, achingly. ‘He was driving the car, wasn’t he?’ Meghan said softly. ‘He tried to kill you both.’
Alessandro didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Tenderly Meghan reached up and stroked his face, let her fingers trail along his cheek.
‘You took the blame,’ she surmised. It all made sense now. It was all so horrifyingly clear. ‘You didn’t want to sully his perfect reputation, did you? His wife … Your mother …’
‘He tried—’
‘What did you do? Trade places in the car? Emilia said you walked away without a scratch, but you must have had some injuries.’
‘A concussion,’ Alessandro said tonelessly. ‘I dragged him across to the passenger seat, managed to get myself behind the wheel before I blacked out. It was the only way,’ he told her, urgency roughening his tone into a demand. ‘Roberto was the kindest, gentlest person … He had a moment of terrible weakness, but one that would be remembered for ever. I knew they’d believe I was driving the car—maybe they’d even think I meant to do it. They’d believe anything of me. It hardly mattered. But Roberto never hurt anyone.’
Except you, she thought. He hurt you.
Meghan shook her head slowly; love swelled within her, hurting her with its beauty and joy. This was the man she loved. ‘And for this you feel guilt? Shame?’
‘I killed him,’ Alessandro whispered. ‘If I hadn’t confronted him … if I hadn’t said that …’ His voice turned angry, savage in its recrimination. ‘I knew he was weak. That he didn’t have a head for business. I’d always known it. It didn’t help matters that I was partying every night, acting the playboy to thumb my nose at my parents and the world. I was stupid and reckless, and no more so than the night I got into that car. If only I’d taken the keys …’
‘He would have done it another day,’ Meghan said calmly. ‘Another way. He was desperate, Alessandro, forced into a corner. It’s not your fault.’
‘It is.’ He spoke with such certainty that her heart plummeted; then she felt angry.
‘You can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions! Didn’t you show me that when I told you what happened to me? Was I responsible for Stephen’s actions? For what he did to me?’
His face twisted in horror. ‘Meghan, don’t.’
‘No—you don’t,’ Meghan snapped back. He looked startled, and she almost smiled. ‘I see who you really are. The world even sees it—sees what you’ve done with Di Agnio Enterprises. Alessandro, you must forgive yourself. If not for your own sake, then for mine.’ She paused, her voice turning into an ache as she repeated the words he’d once said to her, the words with which he’d healed her. ‘I know, and I accept you. I believe you.’ She paused, tears filling her eyes as her fingers skimmed his cheek. ‘I love you.’
Alessandro was silent; his eyes were closed. Meghan’s heart beat a steady, desperate staccato as she wondered what was going on in his tormented mind, what would happen now.
Then a single tear slipped down his cheek; it dampened her fingers. Alessandro’s grief for his brother. Meghan’s breath caught in her chest; her heart expanded and she could breathe again. She could believe again.
Alessandro opened his eyes. ‘I love you.’
Meghan felt weak with relief, giddy with joy.
He shook his head, took her tear-dampened fingers and lifted them to his lips. ‘I don’t know why I have been so blessed to have a woman who believes in me enough to see me through this. To make me go through this.’ He smiled, the sorrow sifting from his eyes, revealing a flicker of hope. ‘You saved me, Meghan. You saved me.’
‘And you saved me.’
‘I need to ask you to forgive me,’ he continued in a low voice, ‘for hurting you so very much. I did it to drive you away. I thought it would be easier for both of us. Or at least for me. I couldn’t bear seeing you walk away from me, gattina. Seeing you disgusted by who I was, by who I am.’
‘No,’ Meghan whispered, ‘never that. I know who you are, Alessandro, and you are the man I love.’
He nodded in acceptance, in wonder. ‘You knew even before I did. How can you know me so well when I was blind to myself?’
‘We were both blind,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘And we needed each other to be healed. Forgiven.’ Loved.
He pulled her towards him, kissed her with a gentle passion that had her swaying into him completely, surrendering everything. Her heart, her soul, her mind, her body. His. All his.
‘I am a blessed, blessed man,’ he said, and there was a ragged edge of incredulous gratitude in his voice.
‘No more blessed than I am.’
He nodded, kissing her again, and as sunlight slanted through the windows, sifting patterns on the floor, Meghan realised the shadows were gone. All of them.
All that was left was her and Alessandro, and joy. Only joy.
About the Author
A self-confessed romance junkie, INDIA GREY was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon Writers’ Guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school-day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept these guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she also gained a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University and, in a stroke of genius on the part of the Gods of Romance, met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity, and heaps of pink washing generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!
To John.
Thank you for the Happy Ever After.
PROLOGUE
THE dress was ivory satin, heavy and smooth. Once a nineteen-fifties cocktail dress belonging to Grandmère, Anna’s mother had taken it in to fit Anna’s skinny ten-year-old frame and added a narrow grosgrain ribbon around the waist, just above where the skirt flared out with wonderful fullness. An old piece of net curtain trimmed with tiny crystal beads and fixed down with a pleasingly authentic-looking plastic tiara completed the picture.
‘It’s beautiful.’ Anna looked at herself in the mirror, her dark eyes shining with joy. ‘Just like what a real bride would wear. It’s the best birthday present ever. Thank you, Mama.’
Lisette smiled. ‘Happy Birthday, chérie. You’re beautiful. You look like a fairy princess.’
Anna frowned. She knew it wasn’t true. Fairy princesses would be soft and blonde and blue-eyed like her mother, not olive-skinned and dark like she was. But she loved the dress all the same.
She was lucky that her birthday always fell in the summer holidays, when she and her mother were staying with Grandmère at Château Belle-Eden, and that summer she did nothing but play weddings. Gathering armfuls of flowers from the château’s garden, she entwined garlands of jasmine and ivy around the banisters and tied heavy old-fashioned roses into spiky bouquets. In the hot, still afternoons the hallway was cool and the dim light filtering through the magnificent stained-glass dome above cast shimmering patterns on to the pale stone floor. While her mother played the piano in the salon Anna would drift down the stairs, shedding petals from her wilting rose bouquet, towards her imaginary waiting groom.
She pictured him standing at the bottom of the sweeping staircase, looking exactly like the prince in her book of fairy tales. Tall, blond, impossibly elegant in his morning coat, she imagined over and over again the moment when he would turn and look up at her.
The love that blazed in his blue eyes took her breath away every time.
CHAPTER ONE
‘C’EST tout, mademoiselle?’
Anna cast a last look at her childhood, jumbled into the back of the auctioneer’s van, and swallowed hard.
‘Yes. That’s all.’
The man slid up the tailgate and dusted off his big hands. ‘Bien, mademoiselle. There are just a few boxes left in the attic now; nothing that can go in a Paris saleroom, I’m afraid. Perhaps a local firm, a brocante?
Anna nodded, absent-mindedly scuffing the dusty gravel with the toe of her little green ballet pump, then stopping abruptly. She’d spent too long in tatty espadrilles hanging around with the GreenPlanet gang—she’d almost forgotten how to behave in proper clothes.