Olivia Gates - One Night In…

It was too much—too close to the truth, and yet so horribly far from it. ‘I didn’t know!'Meghan shouted. Tears spurted from her eyes and her voice choked. ‘I didn’t know, it wasn’t that small a town. He told me he was single! Damn you—damn you to hell, Alessandro di Agnio! I don’t care what you say—what he said— I didn’t know!’

He stilled, tensed. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said I should have known … that no one would believe I didn’t know,’ she choked out. The words, the confessions, tumbled from her lips. They’d been stamped down for so long, and now they couldn’t come fast enough. ‘He said everyone would assume I’d known—he was a model citizen, so was his wife. How could I not have known?’

‘Indeed,’ Alessandro said in a soft voice.

‘But I didn’t.’ She was begging now, pleading for him to understand, to believe—as foolish a gesture as she knew that had to be. Who begged their accuser to understand? ‘I didn’t. I realise now how naïve I was. He was so charming, so … taken with me. I never stopped to question, to wonder why we always met in hotel rooms, seedy restaurants. I assumed he just wanted to keep a low profile because of his job. I thought it all so thrilling, but it’s obvious now. Back then … then I was so starstruck, thinking myself so lucky, so in love, that I had no idea … no idea …’ Her voice trailed off brokenly.

‘No idea?’ Alessandro prompted coolly.

‘No idea of what I was getting into,’ Meghan finished in a whisper. ‘No idea what would happen. No idea that someone could think …’

‘Think what?’

This was dangerous. Memories were dangerous. Her vision blurred and she clutched blindly at the chair. ‘He thought I was nothing more than a whore,’ she said, her voice so low that Alessandro leaned forward to hear. ‘A whore,’ she repeated disbelievingly. ‘If you wonder why I thought that was what you meant by services, if you can’t understand why it hurts so much that you thought that of me—even for a moment—then now you know.’

Alessandro regarded her quietly for a moment. ‘Why would he think that?’ he asked. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

‘He just did.’ Meghan cut off a half-sob, took a shuddering breath. Her nerves were shattered, her emotions splintered. She felt as if Alessandro could sweep the broken pieces of her into his hand and blow them away. ‘He just did, anyway.’ Her voice came out dull, flat. She pressed her fist to her mouth, bit down on her knuckles. Hard. She couldn’t say more. She couldn’t tell him any more.

‘And you started to believe it?’ he surmised thoughtfully.

Meghan swung round to face him, horrified. ‘No, of course I didn’t! I would never—!’

‘Yes, you did,’ Alessandro countered softly. ‘You’ve believed it all this time, haven’t you? You think it was your fault. And you’ve never forgiven yourself.’

‘What?’ She jerked back as if she’d been slapped. ‘Forgive myself? You think I need that?’ She shook her head so hard her hair tangled against her face, and she brushed it away in one angry, impatient gesture. ‘I forgave myself a long time ago—if there was anything to forgive. Which there wasn’t.’ Her breathing hitched and she forced herself to sound calm.

There was no truth in what Alessandro was saying. There was no sense. Could he actually think she was to blame for what had happened? For what she hadn’t known? For what had happened next…?

‘Perhaps there wasn’t anything to forgive,’ Alessandro agreed evenly. ‘But you blamed yourself all the same, didn’t you? You tell me now you didn’t know. But maybe there was a little whisper in your heart. Deep down you thought, you must have known. You must have at least suspected.’

Meghan stared at him transfixed. Horrified. She felt stripped bare … again. This time more vulnerable than ever before, and it hurt. It hurt so much. More than physical blows. Still, she could not look away from Alessandro’s gaze, his eyes blazing with knowledge. Knowledge of her heart, her mind.

‘Maybe I did,’ she whispered, the words torn from her.

‘That’s why you thought I was propositioning you outside the restaurant.’

‘You were—’

‘No. I told you. Richard Harrison—the man here earlier— wanted to proposition you.’ Alessandro’s lips curled in distaste. ‘I wanted no part in that plan.’

‘You still thought—’

‘Yes.’ He held up a hand, cutting her off. ‘Until you told me I was talking to the wrong kind of woman.’ He smiled sadly, spreading his hands wide. ‘It stunned me at first. But what kind of woman assumes she’s being propositioned that way? Not a true whore—because that kind of woman would take it in her stride, sidle up to me and make an offer. Another woman—most women—would ask me what I meant, perhaps, or assume that since I’d called you out of the restaurant I naturally wanted your services as a waitress. But you didn’t. And it made me wonder.’

Meghan swallowed. Her throat was dry, as if it were coated in sandpaper. ‘What did it make you wonder?’ she whispered huskily.

‘It made me wonder why you thought you were a whore when you so obviously weren’t. That’s why you flirted that way, isn’t it? Why you stayed at that hostel—why you never reported Paulo. Why you keep thinking I’m treating you like one, thinking of you as one. Because you think you deserve it.’

Meghan shook her head. ‘I don’t deserve it.’ Her voice broke, and she couldn’t keep the tears from clogging her throat, her eyes. She blinked them back; they fell anyway, tracing silver tracks down her face. ‘I don’t.’

Wordlessly Alessandro put his arms around her, drawing her to him. Meghan let herself be pulled against him, let him tuck her chin against his chest.

He couldn’t see her face, yet his thumb still traced her cheek, wiping away the tear that slipped softly, silently down—as if he’d followed its track with his heart. He was holding her as close as a lover, as gently as a child.

‘Mia gattina, of course you don’t. Of course. I know that. Perhaps you know it in your mind, but not in your heart. Where it matters.’

She closed her eyes. For a long moment there was nothing but the sound of their own ragged breathing. Alessandro stroked her hair softly.

‘What … what happens now?’ Meghan asked in little more than a whisper.

Alessandro tensed, then sighed, a shuddering breath that made Meghan realise he was not as much in control as she’d thought. She’d been laid bare, but somehow, in some way, so had he.

He understood.

Why? How?

‘What happens now?’ Alessandro repeated almost musingly. She felt rather than saw his smile. ‘Now you marry me.’

The silence in the room was deafening, a roaring in her ears. Meghan froze, then forced herself to move away. She stared at him, looking for humour, for mockery. For something to tell her he was not, could not possibly be, serious. There was nothing in his face to indicate he was joking. He looked bland, impassive, yet Meghan suspected that blank look was his brand of armour. What did that mask hide? What emotions? What hopes?

Marriage?

Meghan shook her head.

‘You’re joking.’

‘Do you really think I would joke about marriage?’

She shook her head slowly, hating the sudden flare of hope and need that he had ignited within her. ‘Why would you want to marry me?’

‘Just because you think so little of yourself doesn’t mean I do.’

‘You just acted like you thought very little of me indeed,’ Meghan said through stiff, numb lips. ‘You called me a child, you blamed me for what happened—’