Olivia Gates - One Night In…

Meghan gave a shaky laugh. ‘At times that prospect is appealing.’ She twirled her fork between her fingers. ‘I don’t know what is going to happen in the future.’ Her tone and face were bleak as she considered the prospect. The future was something she avoided thinking about. Sometimes it didn’t seem as if she had one at all. ‘I just can’t ever see myself falling in love again. If that means being alone, then I guess I’ll just have to get used to that.’

‘It’s not easy, being alone,’ Alessandro said after a moment.

Meghan glanced at him, surprised by the guarded note in his voice, the vulnerability in his eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s safer.’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Safety is important to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘This man you were with—you loved him? And he made you feel unsafe?’

‘Of course he did,’ Meghan replied shortly. ‘Stephen was married. I didn’t know it—’

‘Stephen?’ Alessandro’s eyes darkened. He reached across the table to pluck the fork from her hand. He took her fingers in his, stroking her wrist with soft, tender movements. ‘This Stephen— he was an ass. Even I can see that. But you can’t let one man— one experience—spoil the rest of us for ever.’

‘I’m sure,’ Meghan said with a little smile, struggling to hold onto her composure as the fluttery little movements on her wrist went straight to her heart, ‘you’d like to be the man to break the pattern.’

‘One man, one relationship, is not a pattern.’

‘Well, no.’ Meghan glanced down, her eyes suddenly blurred with tears as memories rushed to the surface—memories she had firmly stamped down when she’d fled Stephen’s apartment, fled the memories and the tears and kept running.

She still hadn’t stopped.

‘Meghan? Gattina?’ Alessandro lifted her chin with his fingertips. ‘What is wrong? What did I say?’

‘Nothing.’ Meghan blinked back the tears and smiled. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I am sorry. We’ve wasted enough time indoors. We can walk through the town, up to the old fortress. There is a beautiful view from its walls.’

And as easily as that, he dispelled the tension, the sorrow. Meghan let herself be led, her hand in his, out into the Umbrian sunshine.

The last thing she wanted to think about was Stephen, or the night she’d finally had the courage to walk away.

That was a memory she had locked deep into her soul. Something she never, never wanted to talk about. Certainly not to Alessandro. Not to anyone. Ever.

The fortress was built into the hill, overlooking the tumbled buildings of the town, and Meghan could imagine how it had once been formidable, impenetrable.

Now its walls were crumbling, mellow in the sunshine, and children played in the street below. Meghan let Alessandro lead her up the steps onto the top of the crenellated wall, the Umbrian countryside spread out before them in a peaceful patchwork of earthen colours.

A teasing wind blew her hair around her face and she breathed in the clean, pine-scented air, as pure and satisfying as a drink of water.

Alessandro and Meghan silently surveyed the panorama of tumbled hills and olives groves, taking in the majesty of an unchanged landscape.

‘Did you grow up here?’ Meghan asked after a long moment.

‘Yes and no. As I told you, I went to school in England. My parents’ main house of residence is in Milan. And yet …’ He smiled with wry honesty. ‘This was home.’

‘Your brother’s villa?’

‘Yes. It was my father’s before that.’

But not yours, Meghan realised silently, wondering what lay behind his careful choice of words.

‘Well, it’s beautiful,’ she said with a smile. ‘I happened on Spoleto by chance, but I’m glad I came.’

‘So am I,’ Alessandro murmured, and sudden expectant tension thrummed between them, heavy with meaning, with possibility.

Meghan stared out at the countryside, blind now to its charms.

‘I should take you back to Spoleto tonight,’ Alessandro said suddenly. His face looked hard.

Meghan’s stomach plunged icily. She realised she was disappointed. She had expected to stay. She’d expected Alessandro to want her to stay.

‘If that’s what you want,’ she said, only just managing to keep her voice steady.

Alessandro raked a hand through his hair. ‘You know it is not!’ He dropped his hand, tracing her cheek with his fingers. ‘But you are haunted, Meghan, by the past. This man—he is like a shadow. I can almost see him at your shoulder.’

Meghan touched his fingers briefly with her own, her fingers winding around his, clinging. Pleading. ‘I don’t want him there.’

Alessandro smiled sadly. ‘Neither do I.’

He cupped her cheek and she closed her eyes, revelling in the touch, the tenderness. She couldn’t go yet. She couldn’t leave this man—this hold he had on her senses, her soul. Perhaps even her heart. It wasn’t love. She knew that. It was desire; it was need.

‘Don’t take me back yet,’ she whispered.

His hand stilled. ‘Are you sure?’

Meghan opened her eyes, swallowed audibly. Panic was fast setting in. ‘I don’t mean … I’m not …’

Alessandro smiled. His thumb caressed her lips. ‘I know.’

He drew her naturally to him, in an embrace that was gentle rather than passionate. ‘Stay,’ he murmured against her hair. ‘God knows, I don’t want you to go.’

Meghan knew their time had been extended by only a day, perhaps two. Soon she would have to move on, and so would Alessandro. Their lives had never been meant to intertwine.

This was going to end. It was just a matter of when … and what happened beforehand.

The drive back to Tre Querce was quiet, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Meghan gazed out of the window at the fallow fields and bare vineyards, the sky above streaking lavender and gold.

She’d never reacted to any man the way she reacted to Alessandro—even Stephen hadn’t affected her so profoundly, so deeply … as if he were stroking not just her hand or her body, but her soul.

Her whole body—her whole self—yearned towards his touch, his understanding. The two, she realised, were intimately connected.

He didn’t love her.

He made no promises.

And yet … she wanted him.

She wanted him.

More than she’d ever wanted anything in her whole life.

More than your self-respect?

Meghan closed her eyes against the setting sun now blazing over the hills and fields.

I don’t know.

As Alessandro turned the car up the twisting drive, Meghan wondered what the night would hold. She turned to look at him, and he sensed her gaze and smiled, reaching over to twine her fingers with his.

‘Don’t be afraid, Meghan. There don’t have to be any shadows.’

Shadows. Meghan thought of Stephen. She could still see his face, hear his words.

I thought this was what you wanted.

How could he have thought that? How could he have twisted everything so horribly, so shamefully?

Alessandro was nothing like him, Meghan told herself. She knew that. He’d proved it to her again and again over this day. No matter how they’d started—what she’d thought—what he’d thought—it was different now.

Everything was different.

Could be different … if she let it.

If she let the shadows fade away.

Alessandro’s hand tightened briefly on her own. ‘Ana has the night off.’

So they would be alone. Meghan swallowed. ‘Alessandro, I want—’

Meghan broke off, her heart still hammering, as Alessandro braked sharply in front of Tre Querce and cursed in Italian under his breath.

There was another car parked in front of the villa, a racy red convertible, and the man leaning against its hood was one Meghan recognised.