Kate Hewitt - Latin Lovers - Italian Husbands

Relief poured through her for a strange, split second; she couldn’t get out. She couldn’t go .

So she would go quietly back to bed and forget she’d ever had this mad, mad plan. She’d half-turned back when the door was unlocked from the outside. Alfonso, her mother’s driver, stood there, tall, dark, and expressionless.

‘This way, signorina,’ he whispered.

Allegra glanced back longingly at her home, her life. She didn’t want to leave it, yet she would have been leaving it all tomorrow anyway, and for a fate surely worse than this.

At least now she was in charge of her own destiny.

‘Signorina?’

Allegra nodded, turning back from the warm light of her home. She followed Alfonso into the velvety darkness, her trainers crunching on the gravel drive.

Wordlessly, Alfonso opened the back door and Allegra slipped inside.

As the car pulled away, she gazed at her home one last time, cloaked in darkness. Her eyes roved over the climbing bougainvillea, the painted shutters, everything so wonderfully dear. In the upstairs window Isabel stood, her pale face visible between the gauzy curtains, and Allegra watched as her mother’s mouth curved into a cold, cruel smile of triumph that made her own breath catch in her chest in frightened surprise.

Tears stinging her eyes, her heart bumping against her chest in fear, Allegra pressed back against the seat as the car moved slowly down the drive, away from the only home she’d ever known.

STEFANO WATCHED ALLEGRA stiffen, her fingers stilling on the buttons of her cheap coat. Her head was bent, her face in profile so he could see the smooth, perfect line of her cheek and jaw, a loose tendril of hair curling on to the vulnerable curve where her neck met her shoulder.

When he’d come here tonight—finagled an invitation all too easily from the ever striving Mason—he’d intended to speak to Allegra about business only. All he cared about was obtaining the best care for Lucio.

He didn’t—wouldn’t—care about the past, wouldn’t care about Allegra. She was simply a means to an end.

Yet now he realized their history could not be so smoothly swept away. The past had to be dealt with … and quickly. Easily. Or at least appear as if it was.

He moved forward so his breath stirred that stray tendril of hair—as darkly golden as he remembered—and said, ‘You’re not leaving so early, are you?’

Slowly, carefully, she turned around. He saw her eyes widen, her pupils flare in shock as if, even now, after he’d spoken, she was surprised—afraid?—to see him there.

Stefano smiled and slipped the coat from her shoulders. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said. The memories, which pulsed between them with a thousand unnamed emotions, he firmly pushed to one side.

He saw Allegra gaze up at him, her eyes wide and luminous, reminding him so forcefully of the girl he’d known too many years ago. He felt a lightning streak of pain—or was it anger?—flash through him at that memory and he forced himself to smile.

All he could think about, care about, was Lucio. Not Allegra. Never Allegra. He let his smile linger as he asked, ‘Won’t you come into the party with me?’

It was bound to be a shock. Allegra knew that. Yet she still hadn’t expected to be so affected, so aware. Of him.

Even now, she found herself taking in his appearance, her eyes roving almost hungrily over his form, the excellently cut Italian suit in navy silk, the lithe, lean strength of him, the utter ease and arrogance with which he stood, holding her coat between two fingers.

‘Stefano,’ she finally said, drawing herself up, bringing her scattered senses back into a coherent whole. ‘Yes, it has been a long time. But I was actually just leaving.’

She’d envisiaged a scenario such as this many times—how could she not? Yet in each one she’d imagined Stefano furious, indifferent, or perhaps simply unrepentant. She’d never, in all of her imaginings, seen him smiling, looking like an old acquaintance who wanted nothing more than for them to catch up on each other’s lives.

Yet perhaps that was precisely what they were. Seven years was a long time. Who knew how either of them had grown, changed? And Stefano had never really loved her in the first place; his heart hadn’t been broken.

Not like hers had.

He hadn’t given her her coat, she realized. He hadn’t said a word, just smiled faintly in that aggravatingly arrogant way.

‘My coat, please,’ she said, trying not to sound annoyed, even though she was.

‘Why are you leaving the party so early?’ he asked. ‘I’ve just arrived.’

‘That may be, but I’m going,’ she said firmly. She couldn’t help but add, as curiosity compelled her, ‘I didn’t realize you knew my uncle’s family that well.’

‘Your uncle and I do business together.’ His smile, still faint, now deepened. ‘Did you not realize I’d been invited?’

‘No,’ she said shortly.

‘From what I’ve gathered, your uncle and you are not on favourable terms.’

Allegra’s gaze jerked up to his; he was staring at her with a quiet understanding that quite unnerved her.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I hear things. So do you, I imagine.’

‘Not about you.’

‘Then let me take this opportunity to fill you in,’ he said, smiling easily. Too easily. Allegra shook her head in instinctive, mute denial.

She wasn’t prepared for this. She’d expected to encounter hostility, hatred, or perhaps at worst—or at best—indifference.

Yet here he was, smiling, relaxed, acting like her friend.

And she didn’t want to be his friend. She didn’t want to be anything to him.

Why? Was she still angry? Did she still hate him? Had she ever hated him? The questions streaked through Allegra’s mind like shooting stars and fell without answers.

‘I don’t think we really have anything to say to each other, Stefano,’ Allegra said when she realized the silence had gone on too long, had become pregnant with meaning.

Stefano raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t we?’

‘I know a lot has passed between us,’ Allegra said firmly, ‘but it’s all in the past now and I—’

‘If it’s in the past,’ Stefano interjected smoothly, ‘then it doesn’t matter, surely? Can’t we share an evening’s conversation as friends, Allegra? I’d like to talk to you.’

She hesitated. Part of her howled inside that no, they couldn’t, but a greater part realized that treating Stefano as a friend, an acquaintance, was the best way to prove to him, and to herself, that that was really all he was.

‘It’s been a long time,’ he continued quietly. ‘I don’t know anyone here but George Mason, and I’d rather have more congenial company. Won’t you talk with me for a while?’ His smile twisted and the glint in his eyes was both knowing and sorrowful. ‘Please?’

Again Allegra hesitated. All those years ago she’d left Stefano, left her entire life, because he’d broken her heart.

Yet now was her chance to show him, herself, the world, that he hadn’t. Or, even if he had, she’d come out of the experience wiser, stronger, happier.

‘All right,’ she whispered. She cleared her throat and her voice came out stronger. ‘All right, for a few minutes.’

His hand rested on the small of her back as he guided her back into the Orchid Room. Even though he was barely touching her, she burned from the mere knowledge of those fingers skimming the silk of her dress.

His touch. She’d once craved it, although in all of their engagement he’d never given her more than the barest brush of a brotherly kiss.

And now her body, treacherous as it was, still reacted to him, her senses screaming awake from the mere brush of his fingers.