“And?” Damn it. The question emerged breathy, far weaker than she’d have liked.
“Do you think I would ever avoid my responsibilities like you are suggesting?”
Her heart thumped. “You don’t bear any responsibility here. I can afford to care for our child, and I’m very happy to do this solo.” As she spoke the words, she acknowledged that they weren’t quite accurate. She’d do it on her own because she couldn’t see an alternative, but the woman who’d been a part of the perfect family until her mother’s sudden death had wrenched that away from her, she knew she would have wanted, more than anything, to give that same perfect family to her own child. A mother and father so desperately in love, so happy, that it wasn’t possible for the child to feel anything but surrounded in adoration.
“I know what family means to you,” he said, pressing against one of her deepest vulnerabilities. “You may like to pretend we are strangers but that’s not the case. In the year we were married, I learned a lot about you.”
Alessia’s mouth dropped open to reveal a perfect ‘O’. “To my recollection, you spent the year we were married doing your level best to ignore me.”
His smile was ruthless, his eyes glittering with coldness. “Easier said than done.” His jaw tightened. “But I did not need to spend hours talking to you to understand you, cara. I watched you grow up, remember? I saw the effect Imogen’s death had on you,” he said, referring to the loss of her mother. “I saw the way you bent over backwards to please your father, always trying to bring a smile to his face, a smile he never seemed to have after she died.” He lifted a hand, curving it over her stomach. “I saw your happiness at the prospect of marrying me – a man much older than you – and knew that it was because you thought it would please your father. How do you think he will feel if he knows I have proposed now and you have refused?”
Her rapidly firing pulse was making her dizzy. She forced herself to concentrate. “You haven’t proposed to me.”
“I am proposing now.”
“As in…marriage?”
“No, a trip to the circus,” he said with a mocking twist of his lips. “Of course marriage.”
Lightning bolts flashed inside of her. There was no way she’d let history repeat itself. Not when the first time had been so disastrous for her. “Nuh uh. No way. I’d rather walk a mile bare foot on hot coals than ever become your wife again.” And as she threw the words at him, she was glad they sounded so firm – as though she really did mean them.
Chapter Four
“YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY to give your father not just a grandchild but also news of our reunion, our marriage – something he’s always wished for.”
Alessia’s eyes glittered like diamonds in her face. “Being your ‘wife’ taught me many things too, including the stupidity of using marriage to boost my father’s happiness. I was little more than a child then; that stupidity was understandable. Forgivable, almost. But I’m not that young woman anymore. I know more, I am more. In some ways, you did that to me.” She drew herself up to her full height, fixing him with a determined stare. “I know I can raise our daughter on my own. I know I’ll be a great mother to her. I don’t need you.”
“But what about her?” He pushed, moving a little closer, so her veins began to spin with the torrent of her blood.
Something like doubt was there too, nudging at her sides. “What about her?”
“What does our daughter need? What does she deserve?”
Alessia swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “Don’t use her to manipulate me.” The words were laced with steel, despite her racing heart and pounding blood. “I’m done being pushed and pulled in whatever direction you or my father see fit.”
Something flecked in the depths of his eyes. Surprise? Respect? Uncertainty? When they were married, he’d held the whip hand. He’d been older and despite her girlish crush – one she’d cherished for a long time – she was intimidated by him, completely over-awed by his strength and dynamism. But that was a long time ago. She’d changed, just like she’d told him.
When he’d proposed to her, all those years ago, she’d been so ridiculously overjoyed and excited, exhilarated to realise that the object of her long-held affections returned her feelings. But he hadn’t. Worse than that was the realisation that he’d never even really pretended to. When she replayed his proposal after the fact – when they were married and the die well and truly cast – she’d realised that his words had been carefully chosen. Our marriage will make your father so happy, cara. This wedding makes a lot of sense. We can make a good life together. All promises that hinged on sense and rationale, and had very little to do with the capturing of one’s heart.
Perhaps Alessia had loved him so hard and fiercely that it was all she could hear? She’d certainly never noticed that he spoke of their marriage in pragmatic terms. Mortification still had the power to curl her toes, especially when she remembered the number of times she’d begged him to make love to her.
She spun away from Max now, looking towards the window, out over the ancient city. Usually the sight of its beauty called to her, filling her with pleasure, but not today. A frown tugged at her lips and her heart remained heavy.
“Our marriage was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.” His voice was little more than a growl, the words spoken softly, but they cut through her, making her flinch.
“Then why repeat it?” She hissed, squeezing her eyes shut against a wave of fresh pain.
“It was a mistake because I lied to you. Not intentionally, but the damage was just the same. I thought you understood the purpose of our union. It was only afterwards that I realised you wanted so much more from me than I had any intention of giving.” A muscle jerked low in his jaw and sadness welled within Alessia at his correct summation of the situation. “You were collateral in a deal between your father and me.”
She winced, pulling away from him and spinning angrily. “What a perfectly succinct way to put it.” She stormed towards the windows, her breasts moving quickly with the rise and fall of each tortured breath. “Collateral.” She shook her head firmly, repeating the word that was so apt.
“Yes, collateral.” He was right behind her. She straightened her spine, her eyes tormented. “Your father needed my help and our marriage was the only way he’d take it. I couldn’t see him go bankrupt and so I agreed.”
“And did you think of me, Max?” She spun around, sadness hovering in the tight lines of her features. “Did you think how our marriage might affect me?”
His lips were a grim line on his handsome face. “No.” He groaned softly. “I had known you a long time, but you were still in many ways just a child to me. The deal I struck was between myself and your father. I was arrogant and wrong, but I honestly didn’t think of you as a woman with your own needs until our wedding night, and by then it was too late.”
His honesty and sincerity should have done something to soothe her frazzled nerves but it didn’t. Instead, everything felt worse, the world too bright and too hot.
“I hated that I was hurting you,” his words pulled at her insides, bit by bit. “And I hated how miserable you were.”
“I was miserable, si,” she agreed, grabbing hold of that reminder like a lifeline. “So why in the hell do you think I’d torture myself by marrying you again?”
He lifted a hand to her stomach, curving it around the bump there, his palm flat against her clothing. “Marry me because our daughter deserves for us to try.” His eyes locked to hers and wouldn’t let go, so her heart slammed into her ribs.
“She deserves to know she’s loved and to be raised in a way that makes her happy. Do you honestly think us repeating the disaster that was our marriage will make her life any better?”
“Yes.”
His certainty did something strange to her belly, filling her with a swarming sense of doubt at her own wants and needs. But their marriage had almost destroyed her, and their divorce had been even worse. She shook her head,
resolution coming back at last. “No,” she contradicted fiercely. “You want to talk about collateral? Imagine what it would be like going through what we did – having a child bear witness to the breakdown of our marriage.”
“This marriage will not break down. This time will be different.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because there will be honesty and transparency now – each of us listing what we want from this. You thought we were in love,” he shook his head with frustration, “and while I suspected you had a crush on me, I didn’t realise the extent of it until we were already married. If I had known how genuine your feelings were, I would have done everything so differently.”
Embarrassment ran through her. “It wasn’t love,” she promised him, wondering at why the words didn’t feel quite genuine. “I was stupid and young and got carried away by the idea of…” family. Of belonging. She bit down on her lip, holding the word back. “I didn’t love you.” It felt so important to assert that now, and when his eyes flashed with an emotion she couldn’t comprehend, it nonetheless filled her with pleasure. As though she’d hurt him in some way!
“Fine,” he dipped his head in silent acceptance of that. “Even better – we shouldn’t let love cloud the reasons for our second marriage either.”
Indignation burst through her. “There is no reason to marry except for love.”
“A child is a reason.”
“Are you some kind of cave man, Massimo? Women have been doing a damned fine job of raising kids on their own for decades now.”
“But children deserve to know –,” he shook his head, the strength of his emotions silencing him.
“What?” She demanded.
“Children deserve to know both parents want them.”
Her heart rocked. She closed her eyes for a moment, the reality of his upbringing impossible to ignore in all of this. Parents who’d all but abandoned him so they could continue their hard-partying ways, leaving him to be raised by doting yet strict grandparents.
“Then be a part of her life,” she said gently, surprising them both by lifting a hand to his arm, curling it around his strong bicep. “Love our daughter, see her often, leave her in no doubt as to what she means to you.”
“That’s not enough.” He moved closer so the words breathed against her temple. “I want her to be a part of a family, and I think you want that too.”
Her heart trembled.
“We’re not a family just because we get married – just like we weren’t really married before simply because we had a wedding.”
“I made a mistake back then,” he said urgently. “I freely admit that. I should have negotiated our marriage with you directly, to be sure you understood what I wanted. I treated you like a child, but this time you will know exactly what you’re getting into, what I’m offering.”
Her throat felt thick. She went to move away but his hand clamped around her back, holding her right where she was, pressed to him, the roundness of her stomach between them.
“I want to raise our child with you. In the midst of all this, it feels like the right thing for us to do.”
“How can you say that?”
“How can you not?” He prompted. “Think of what this would mean to our daughter – and our families – particularly your father.”
“I told you, I’m done doing things for other people.” She tilted her chin defiantly so he had an overwhelming urge to kiss those full, pink lips into submission, to drive anything from her mind but the spark of desire that was always humming just beneath the surface. Getting her to agree to this took on a new imperative.
“Marry me and I will make you ten times happier than you were sad during our first marriage.”
Pain lanced her. “How will you do that?”
“By being a real husband to you.” The answer was swift and simple, and fraught with complications.
“Meaning what, Max? That we’ll have sex?” She spat the words to cover the temptation of their pull.
“Yes,” he agreed, his hand stroking her spine. “We will have sex and we will have meals together and we will share our lives, but we will both understand the limitations of our marriage, so that there can be no emotional fall out this time. Our arrangement will be perfect and simple – leaving no room for hurt feelings.” He paused, his eyes scanning hers in an attempt perhaps to read her deepest thoughts. “I don’t want to see you as you were at the end.” He dropped his head to hers, and now his lips did brush hers so she startled and then groaned, a soft sound of acquiescence.
“What limitations?” She tried to grip hold of sanity.
“Neither of us will be deluded into thinking this is about love.” Before she could remind him that love was the only reason worth marrying someone, he answered that objection. “Our marriage will be stronger because it will be based on friendship and respect and the best interests of our daughter, and any children who might follow.”
Her eyes swept shut, pain filling her. It all sounded so sensible and neat, so easy, but as a twenty year old, she’d believed herself madly in love with her husband. What if even now she wasn’t immune to that risk?
“I won’t hurt you again, Alessia. In fact, I swear I will do everything in my power to look after you, for the rest of my life.”
“I don’t need looking after,” she disputed, even as his words warmed her right through.
“I will do it anyway,” he promised. “Marry me but not as you did then. Marry me as my equal, understanding the kind of man I am and what I can give you – marry me knowing that your happiness and that of our daughter is what I will fight for every day for the rest of my life. Bene?”
“No, it’s not ‘bene’,” she said quietly, even as his words were pulling through her, lighting her up with threads of silver and gold. “You’re not the only one who lived to regret our wedding. For a year of my life I tried to make our marriage work and time and time again you rejected me, Max.” The words hurt to say but that pain was nothing to the memories that burned her. “You treated me like an afterthought. How can I believe you’d ever value my happiness now?”
“You understand why I married you then?”
“Because dad was on the verge of bankruptcy, yes. That information would have been helpful to have at the time, believe me.”
“I know,” he agreed, his expression taut. “If I had the opportunity again, I would explain that to you right from the beginning.”
“And I would have refused to marry you for such mercenary reasons,” she swore.
“Perhaps I understood that,” he muttered. “You are stubborn like your mother.”
Her chest squeezed. Their families were so intertwined, his knowledge of her mother was something that occasionally filled her with envy – when her mother had died, Alessia had been twelve. She remembered a lot but never enough. Max had been twenty-three; he had clearer recollections.
“I have a sense of morality that makes marrying for money absolutely distasteful.”
“And marrying to save Carlo from destitution? Would that have been distasteful?”
“I would have spoken to him, convinced him to let you help him without the charade of our wedding. What were you thinking to believe making me your wife had any kind of merit?”
“You were at university, busy with your studies. I thought your life would continue more or less as it had before, except instead of living at your father’s house, you’d live at mine.”
Something inside of her snapped. She pushed at his chest, putting some distance between them, her breasts moving sharply. “Damn you, Max, how dare you? You treated me like an object with no living will of my own. How dare you?”
“I admit I was wrong,” he growled. “Do you wish for me to perform some kind of ritual self-flagellation? If I could, I would change what I did then, but desperation to save your father had me acting swiftly and without the proper thought. I regret that you were caught up in that.”
“’Caught up in that�
�?” she repeated with incredulity. “You were my husband. I was twenty years old and had lived a ridiculously sheltered life. I had barely any experience with boys, none with men, and there you were, this Greek Adonis I’d spent my teenage years fantasising about, and you practically shuddered whenever I touched you.” Her face drained of colour, her mortification so intense she barely noticed that his own features grew similarly pale as she spoke. “Our marriage didn’t just make me miserable. It destroyed my soul and shattered my confidence. You wonder why I was a virgin until that night in London? I dared not even hope another man might want to touch me. I thought myself to be somehow disgusting.”
He flinched, his expression showing a strength of emotion that surprised her. “But that man in the bar –,”
“Yes, drunkenly I foisted myself on a man in a bar, and do you know why?”
He shook his head tersely, just once.
“Because I wanted to make you see me as a woman,” she spat. “I didn’t want you to think I’d cheated so you would end our marriage. I was hoping it would inspire you to damned well begin it.”
His eyes swept shut, dark colour sweeping the ridges of his cheekbones. “If you had any idea how hard it was for me to resist you, cara…”
“Stop saying that. Don’t lie to me,” she snapped, spinning away from him. “I’m done being lied to by you.”
“I swear to you, from this day until the day I die, I will speak only the truth. Alessia, I wanted you. God, I wanted you with a passion that almost destroyed me.” He caught her wrist, pulling at it lightly so she spun around. “You are eleven years younger than me. The first time I saw you, you were a five-year-old girl. I was sixteen. I had already been with many women.” He paused, letting that detail settle in. “I watched you grow up, comforted you when your mother died. You were twenty when we married, and while that made you an adult technically, to me you were still a child – and I felt like some disgusting creep for wanting to rip your clothes off your body and make you mine. Do you have any idea what I wanted to do to you?”
Loving the Enemy Page 4