Olivia Gates - One Night In…

She could finally have power, and it would not be abused.

She shook her head. It was crazy, but it was tempting.

‘And what do you get out of this bargain?’ she asked after a moment, uneasy suspicion rippling through her.

‘I get a wife who won’t expect me to love her. A wife I desire. Most women want to marry for love. I’m not interested in deceiving or disappointing them. The women who don’t want to marry for love are usually after money. Mine. I’m not interested in them either.’

It sounded chilling, as soulless as a business transaction at a bank. ‘If you’re so against love,’ Meghan asked quietly, ‘why marry at all?’

He hunched one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘I told you before. It’s not easy being alone.’

‘Get a dog,’ she snapped, and he smiled faintly.

‘I don’t want a dog.’

‘What do you want, Alessandro?’ Meghan asked, and she held her breath for the answer.

His expression stilled, blanked. Although his face was a mask, she sensed the urgency underneath. ‘I want you.’

Meghan’s heart lurched. Yearned. This was what she wanted to hear. Yet she was still afraid. She couldn’t trust it. Not this time. Not again. ‘Why me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, with an honesty that stung just a little. ‘But I want you, Meghan. I want a life … a life that’s different. A life together.’

‘But without love?’ Meghan clarified, after her heart had stopped stumbling. ‘It sounds kind of cold.’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’

‘Tell me how.’

‘Companionship, desire, affection.’ He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Don’t those mean something to you?’

All too much. ‘What’s the difference?’ Meghan challenged. ‘Wouldn’t you call those things love?’

He levelled her with one knowing look. ‘Would you?’

No. Love was needing someone like air or water. Needing despite the desire or affection. Needing even though it hurt, even though pain sliced through you, even though it killed you.

She glanced away. ‘What about children?’ There was an ache of longing like a physical pain, deep in her belly.

‘Do I want them? Yes. I need an heir. Someone to run Di Agnio Enterprises when I am gone. Someone to pass it on to.’

‘And would you love your children?’ Meghan asked, her throat raw and aching.

Alessandro paused. ‘I would certainly give them every affection, every opportunity.’

Meghan shook her head. Was it possible to have affection and desire—to enjoy them—without love? She didn’t know. Didn’t know if she could take the risk to find out.

His hand circled her wrist and he pulled her towards him, caressing her with his words. ‘You can stop running, Meghan. You can stop hiding who you are, what happened to you. I already know, and I accept you. I believe you. Does it really matter if I don’t love you?’

She was so near she could feel his breath feathering her face. She lifted her head, saw the truth, the heat blazing in his eyes.

She was tired of running. Of being alone, afraid, ashamed.

‘I wasn’t looking to be rescued,’ she said in a low voice.

He smiled, skimming his fingers along her cheek. ‘We never are.’

‘And you? Will I be enough for you?’ Meghan asked, a thread of uncertainty, of fear, in her voice. ‘What if you get tired of being married? Being married to me? What then?’

Alessandro looked down at her, blinked slowly as he took in her words. When he spoke his voice was quiet, yet as strong and taut as a wire. ‘I honour my promises,’ he said. ‘I honour my word. No matter what you … or anyone … thinks. That is the man I am. The man I mean to be.’ He spoke with a fierce determination that roughened his tone and burned in his eyes.

She wanted to believe. She wanted to so much.

‘It can happen,’ he promised softly. ‘It can happen for both of us. We can forget the past, what people thought, what they believed. We can be something new—something wonderful and true—to each other.’

It sounded wonderful. But was it real? And could it happen without love? And what was he running from?

‘I … I need to think about it,’ she said, her voice a raw whisper. ‘It’s too big a decision to make so quickly.’

‘I can give you tonight,’ Alessandro said. ‘Tomorrow I have to return to Milan, to deal with business. Insulting Richard Harrison—as satisfying as it was—is sure to have repercussions.’

‘And if I say no in the morning?’ Meghan asked, transfixed by the unreality of the situation.

‘I’ll take you to the station in Spoleto. Or the airport— wherever you’d like to go.’

A ticket to her next destination. The thought had no appeal. Her travelling, once exciting and vibrant, was now just another excuse to run away.

Yet the realisation that he would dismiss her so easily—so coldly—chilled her to the marrow.

‘And if I say yes?’ she whispered.

‘You come with me to Milan, meet my family, and we get married.’

Alessandro spread his hands, smiling, although there was a coolness, a remoteness in his eyes that stung Meghan’s soul. Who was this man? Would she ever understand him?

‘As soon as possible.’

‘That easy?’ she asked, in both disbelief and hope.

‘That easy.’

The sky was inky black, studded with stars, as Alessandro prowled along the terrace outside. He’d already knocked back a glass of whisky, the fiery liquid burning all the way to his gut, and it hadn’t helped.

What had he done?

He’d asked Meghan Selby—a virtual stranger—to marry him. A pretty young woman he’d mistaken for a whore—who’d mistaken herself for a whore.

He laughed aloud—a rasping sound that echoed in the still night and held no humour.

He didn’t think Meghan was a whore. She was, he thought with something close to regret, far too innocent. Too naïve … about him.

He recalled the aching vulnerability in her eyes, the shadows of both remembered and anticipated pain, and cursed himself— not for a fool, but for a madman.

A devil.

What kind of a man but a devil offered marriage to a woman who had been so badly hurt—who surely deserved only love and tenderness when he could offer her neither?

He could pretend to be tender. He could say the right words, do the right things. Because he knew what the response would be, the response he wanted.

He knew how to play her.

He was good at that. He’d always been good at that.

Alessandro raked a hand through his hair and cursed softly. He’d finished with hurting people, with acting selfishly and leaving ruin and grief in his wake.

That was his old life. He’d put it aside two years ago, along with the memory of a smoking ruin and the still, lifeless form of his older brother.

And yet now he was risking not only his own soul—which he’d long since condemned—but someone else’s.

Meghan’s.

A woman who deserved so, so much more than he could give.

A woman who deserved so much more than him.

He stared out at the midnight sky, at the sliver of moon, pale and luminous, suspended above a still world, silent save for the rustling of leaves in the olive trees.

Eyes like sunlight on an olive grove.

Why had he asked her to marry him?

She would have agreed to an affair. He could have worked her out of his system, left her at the train station with a diamond bracelet and no backward glances.

He’d done it before. Many times.

So why marriage? Why now? Why her?

Because I’m not that man any more. I don’t want to be that man any more.

His lips twisted into a smile—a smile of self-loathing and also of self-acknowledgement.