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      ‘I’m not hurt,’ he said, his voice quiet and firm, and Allegra met his eyes.

      ‘No,’ she said, suddenly, strangely stung, ‘you wouldn’t be, would you? The only thing that was hurt that day was your pride.’

      His eyes glinted gold, burned into hers. ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘That you never loved me.’ She took a breath and forced herself to continue. ‘You just bought me.’

      He shook his head slowly. ‘So you claimed in that letter of yours, I remember.’

      Allegra thought of that letter, with its girlish looping handwriting and splotchy tear-stains and felt the sting of humiliation.

      He wasn’t even denying it, but it hardly mattered now.

      ‘I think I should go,’ she said in a low voice and Stefano released her, leaning back in his chair. ‘I never meant to bring all this up, talk about it again.’ She tried to smile, even to laugh, and wasn’t quite able to. ‘Perhaps it would have been better if I’d left before you came into the party. If we hadn’t seen each other at all. We almost missed each other, as it was.’

      Stefano watched her, smiled faintly. ‘That,’ he said, ‘wasn’t going to happen.’

      Allegra felt a lurch of trepidation, as if everything had shifted subtly, suddenly. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘We weren’t going to miss each other this evening, Allegra,’ Stefano said with cool, calm certainty. ‘I came to the party—to London—to see you.’

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘ME?’

      Stefano watched the emotions chase across Allegra’s features: shock, fear, pleasure. He smiled. Even now, she wanted his attention. His touch.

      And he couldn’t stop touching her, whether it was her back as he’d steered her through a crowded ballroom, or her thigh in the darkened confines of a city cab. He was drawn to her, despite both his desire and intent to the contrary. He wanted to touch and to know the woman he’d once believed he could love.

      Love. You never loved me. How many times had she told him now, he wondered cynically. How many times had she thrown it in his face? No, he hadn’t loved her, not the way she’d wanted. Not like Galahad, Rhett Butler, or whatever ridiculous caricature of a man she’d imprinted in her childish mind.

      It hardly mattered now anyway. Love was not the issue; Lucio was.

      He smiled, broke the silence. ‘Yes, you,’ he said.

      Allegra blinked. Stared. She heard a buzzing in her ears. Felt it in her soul. ‘What do you mean?’ she finally said, though she’d heard what he’d said. She just couldn’t believe it.

      ‘I knew you would be at this wedding, and I wangled an invitation from your uncle. It wasn’t difficult. He was thrilled to be getting such a notable guest.’ His lips curved in a mocking smile that had Allegra gritting her teeth at his unshakeable arrogance.

      ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why did you want to see me, Stefano?’

      Stefano cradled his wineglass between his hands, staring into its ruby contents before he raised his head. His expression was stony, bleak. ‘Because I’ve been told you’re the best art therapist for children in this country.’

      Allegra jerked back, startled. She hadn’t expected that. What, a mocking little voice asked, did you expect? For him to declare that he’d missed you? Loved you?

      ‘I think that’s overstating the case rather a lot,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’ve only been qualified for two years.’

      ‘The doctor I spoke to in Milan recommended you unreservedly.’

      ‘Renaldo Speri,’ Allegra guessed. ‘We corresponded regarding a case I had, a boy who had been misdiagnosed with autism.’

      ‘And he wasn’t autistic?’

      ‘No, he was severely traumatised from witnessing his mother’s suicide.’ She grimaced in memory. ‘It was a remarkable breakthrough, but I can’t really take the credit for it. Anyone could have—’

      ‘Speri thinks highly of you,’ Stefano said with a shrug. ‘He seems to think you’re the best. And I want the best.’

      Allegra watched him for a moment. The best. So she was a commodity, a possession. Just as she’d been all those years before. Would Stefano ever think of her otherwise? Did he even know how?

      At least the difference now, she thought cynically, was that the arrangement was mutual.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me this when we first met, Stefano? Why come to the reception at all?’ Why ask her to dance, take her for a drink, talk about lovers?

      She shook her head, felt a tide of humiliation wash over her at the realization of how Stefano had been manipulating her … as he had before. Softening her up for the request. The kill.

      She felt another wave of humiliation crash over her as she remembered her own thoughts, the pleasure she’d felt at believing Stefano wanted to be with her. Treacherous, half-acknowledged desires that Stefano had undoubtedly surmised. She closed her eyes briefly, sickened by his deception, and by herself for falling for it … again.

      She opened her eyes and met Stefano’s blank gaze with a stern one of her own. ‘If you were interested in me professionally, you should have come to my office, made an appointment—’

      Stefano shrugged, unrepentant. His face was expressionless, yet his eyes blazed into hers. ‘You know it’s not as simple as that, Allegra. The past still lies between us. I needed to see how things would be between us. If we would be able to work together.’

      ‘And can we?’ she asked, eyebrows raised, her voice sharpened with both sarcasm and curiosity.

      ‘Yes.’ He spoke flatly, with cold certainty. ‘We can.’ He leaned forward, his eyes intent on hers, trapping her with his unrelenting gaze. ‘The past is forgotten, Allegra.’

      Yet it hadn’t felt forgotten a moment ago, Allegra thought, suppressing a shiver of unease. That flash of something dark and primal in Stefano’s eyes had made her feel as if it wasn’t forgotten at all.

      ‘And for this you needed to ask me to dance? Invite me out for a drink?’ She shook her head. ‘If you want me to help you, Stefano, help whatever child you are thinking of, then you need to be honest with me. From the beginning. I won’t abide liars.’

      Stefano’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am not a liar,’ he said coldly. ‘How was I not honest, Allegra? We had a past. I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t interfere with what I am proposing before I set it before you. That’s all.’

      She pressed her lips together against a useless retort … a revealing retort. There was nothing Stefano had done, she acknowledged silently, that she could point her finger at. Accuse him of. Yet she was still cross, still hurt, and she still СКАЧАТЬ