She inhaled slowly, and then turned to Sam. “Excuse me,” she said quietly. “I’m going to freshen up. And then do you mind if we go, Max? I’m tired.”
“Of course not,” his eyes remained on Sam’s face a moment before flicking to hers. “I’ll meet you at the door in a few moments.”
Alessia pushed away from them, stepping back into the ballroom before remembering she was still wearing Sam’s jacket. She shrugged out of it, marvelling at the obvious quality – Sam had hated expensive fashion but this was undeniably couture – and moved back towards the door. It was still ajar. She pressed a hand to it.
“I told you not to speak to her ever again.”
Alessia froze, the words making no sense. They were issued in Max’s voice, but why would Max be saying that? And to Sam? Tension underscored his statement; she felt it reverberating towards her.
“I had no idea she’d be here,” Sam responded. “I simply agreed to attend with my cousin.”
“And you just had to follow her out here?”
“What? Are you afraid I’ll break the confidentiality agreement you made me sign? Afraid I’ll tell her what a manipulative son of a bitch her husband is?”
Silence. Deafening, thunderous silence. None of it made sense. A confidentiality agreement? What the hell was Sam talking about? When had he and Max met? And why would Max get him to sign any damned thing? She felt hot and cold all over, and her heart was slamming into her ribs in a way that made her want to press a hand between her breasts and forcibly calm it.
“You know the penalty if you do.”
Chapter Thirteen
A FRISSON OF SOMETHING like fear ran down Alessia’s spine. She took a step backwards, into the madness of the ball, and spun away. She knew Renato. She’d met him a handful of times, and he just happened to be walking within twenty metres of Alessia. She made a beeline for him, stopping him mid-step.
“Signora,” his smile showed he remembered meeting her, the deference in the dip of his head showed he knew who her husband was.
She ignored that. If he wanted to ingratiate himself with the Montebellos he’d chosen a lousy receptacle for that. “Would you mind giving this to Sam?” She held the jacket out.
“Certo. Can I get you a drink? Something to eat?”
“I’m just leaving,” she apologised. “Thank you.” She walked to the door, her shoulders squared, unconscious of the way peoples’ eyes seemed to follow her steps.
At the door, she turned for a moment, just as Massimo entered the ballroom. She had a few moments to watch him unobserved. Her stomach rolled, doubts spun through her, but oh, her heart. Her stupid, disloyal heart. Even as the conversation she’d overheard made it impossible not to understand that there were things afoot of which she had no knowledge, her heart was telling her not to jump to conclusions. To have faith. This was Max. The man who knew her better than anyone else on earth, the man she knew inside and out. But her pulse was frantic because that wasn’t necessarily true, was it?
She wanted to believe in him, she wanted to trust him, but the past was right there, enormous and looming, reminding her of their first marriage and the disaster it had been. Reminding her that only hurt had come from trusting him. He’d lied to her then, he’d preyed on her innocence, naivety and obvious love for him.
And now?
But why would he lie?
The baby. He wanted this baby, more than anything. If she hadn’t fallen pregnant, he wouldn’t have contacted her.
“Oh, God.” She turned away, gulping in air, putting a hand out to support herself on the doorjamb. She felt weak and so angry with herself.
“Signora? Va bene?”
She blinked at the kindly stranger and nodded; tried to smile. “Grazie.”
Massimo’s hand was around her back a moment later, pulling her towards him, his eyes showing worry. Worry about her? Or at whatever Sam knew that he could tell Alessia?
“I’m fine.” The words emerged snappier than she’d intended. “Let’s go…back.” She couldn’t say ‘home’. Within moments the word had lost its place in her heart.
“Si.”
The dress felt like a chain, the necklace a padlock. She could hardly breathe. She sat beside him in the limousine without touching, without looking, without acknowledging.
“Alessia,” his voice was just a murmur, begging her to look at him, drawing her attention. She swallowed, hating that her head swivelled towards him without her consent.
“I’m sorry he was there.”
She was silent. His eyes roamed her face. She couldn’t read his expression, she knew only that he was trying to piece things together himself.
“You were hurt.”
“No.” Denying that was easy. She reached between them for the leather armrest. She knew there was a concealed panel beneath it. She flipped it open and pressed a smooth black button. A dark grey screen lifted between the driver’s section of the limousine and their own.
A muscle jerked in Max’s jaw; his eyes didn’t leave her face.
“You loved him and he broke your heart. You weren’t prepared to see him tonight. It’s normal that you’d feel…”
“I didn’t love him.” The words felt good to say. She had wondered about that a little, but she knew now that what she’d felt for Sam hadn’t been love. It was comfort and reliability. Relief. Seeing him tonight had awoken nothing within her heart, no familiar sense of need, no aching regret. Just mild interest.
Max shook his head. “You do not need to lie to me.”
Her lips parted of their own volition. “Isn’t that a little rich?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”
“No, of course you don’t.” She ran her finger over the armrest, wondering if she should wait, sleep on what she’d heard, think about this from all angles. But Alessia was driven by emotions, and her emotions demanded an explanation.
“I was wearing his jacket,” she said quietly. Max’s eyes swept to her bare shoulders, waiting.
“I realised when I left you both. I came back, to return it.” She pinned him with all the hurt and confusion that was chewing through her. “I overheard you.”
Her words hit him. She saw it in every line of his face, though he stayed still, close to her – too close – making breathing difficult.
“What did you hear?”
It was the wrong thing to say. The cautious question showed how dishonest he’d been – and how dishonest he intended to continue being.
“For God’s sake, Max. What did you do?”
His expression remained guarded, defensive.
“I mean it, what did you do to Sam? What consequence was he referring to? What is he not allowed to tell me?”
Max settled back in his seat, quiet and thoughtful for a moment. When he spoke, there was restraint in his voice, each word carefully chosen, weighted in his mouth before being expelled. “I’m sorry you found out like this.”
She braced, saying nothing, breath clamped in her throat.
“When I heard you were getting married, I was…concerned.”
A brow shot up. “Why?”
His eyes were mocking – but of her, or himself? “You know that I never considered my duty towards you to be at an end?”
“Duty?” She spat the word with derision, shaking her head. Then, “Go on.” The encouragement was terse, clearly showing what an effort it was costing her to have this conversation with the appearance of anything like calm. Rome sped past them – mountainside scenery giving way to more built up villages, the city twinkling in the distance.
He didn’t speak. She turned back to face him, her eyes laced with anger. “The truth. Now.”
His head shifted in the smallest of nods and his mouth was a grim line in his face.
“You were my wife. Even after we divorced, I knew I had a responsibility to you.”
She waited, with effort, digging her nails into her palms to stop her from rejecting his statement.
She ground her teeth together, her hackles rising unbearably. “Because you promised my father?” She demanded, hating that, hating everyone in that moment.
“Yes.” He shook his head with visible frustration. “And no. Because I promised you, and myself, that I would. You were no longer my wife, legally, but that did nothing to alter the commitment I’d made to you.”
She bit back her first retort – to fire something angry at him and let this escalate into an all-out war. That might feel satisfying in the short term but it wouldn’t get her the answers she craved.
“And so you heard I was going to marry Sam,” she prompted, her voice carefully muted of any feeling, regardless of how they were rampaging through her body.
He dipped his head silently.
“And?” She prompted.
“And I decided I should meet him.” He echoed her calm delivery. Anyone observing them from the outside might have concluded that they were discussing nothing more incendiary than the route to take back to his place.
“So you did.”
“Si.”
“Why aren’t you telling me everything?” She murmured, then sucked in an uneven breath. “You met him and?”
“I didn’t like him. I didn’t trust him.”
“You had no right,” she said darkly, as the car pulled up at traffic lights. Traffic beeped and zipped past them. She barely noticed.
“I had every right,” he retorted emphatically. “Our marriage gave me that right.”
She made a snorting sound. “I really wish you’d stop talking like that. ‘Our’ marriage was a sham. A ruse, designed to placate a stubborn old man you wanted to help. It had nothing to do with me, nothing to do with any duty you claim to have felt for me.”
“Not at first,” he agreed, then shook his head. “Or maybe it did. I don’t know. I can’t say. At some point, it became that. The idea of you being hurt, ever, was and always will be anathema to me.”
She ground her teeth together. Didn’t he realise that the biggest hurt in her life had been because of him? “Our divorce came through five years ago. We barely spoke or saw each other between times.”
“But you saw my family,” he spat with more contempt than was wise to show her. Her brows shot towards her hairline.
“I didn’t seek them out!”
“I know that.” The words growled from his chest. “But you saw them, and they saw me, and they told me about you.”
“So you kept tabs on me,” she swallowed, looking away from him, focussing her gaze on the city beyond. It was becoming more familiar. They were nearing his prestigious neighbourhood.
“I liked to know that you were okay. If I had met Sam and found him to be of decent character, I would have stayed away.”
Her heart stammered hard against the wall of her ribs. She felt as though danger were everywhere, flames threatening to burst her into pieces.
“He is a decent guy,” she said quietly.
He didn’t speak at first but the silence was thick with his disagreement.
“I offered him money to leave you.”
Her mouth dropped. She jerked her eyes back to his, and then she was shaking her head, her whole body quivering in shock. “You did what?”
“I offered him money.” And now Max shrugged as though it were no big deal after all, as though Alessia should surely see that. “He could have refused it. I was hoping he would,” he told her darkly.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered. “Sam has always known what my financial situation is. It’s not as though I’m not wealthy in my own right.”
“But it is your money.”
“We were getting married. What’s mine would have become his.”
“And I made sure he knew you would have an ironclad prenuptial agreement in place,” Max inserted smoothly.
Alessia’s harsh intake of breath cut through the car. “I didn’t arrange a prenup.”
“No. But your father would have insisted on it.”
“Once you’d told him to?”
Once again, he shifted his head a little. “If you cannot take measures to protect yourself then –,”
“I don’t need protecting from Sam,” she roared, putting a hand over her stomach instinctively, as though blocking their child’s ears.
“He didn’t hesitate before taking payment to walk away from you.”
Her ears felt as though they were steaming! “Because you made it impossible for him to say no.”
He swore softly under his breath. “Is that the action of a man in love?”
“I didn’t care if he loved me or not,” she said with a shake of her head. “I liked him and he liked me –,”
“So be friends with him. Don’t marry him.”
The car slowed to a stop and she had only a second to compose her features before the driver opened her door. Max moved quickly, exiting his side of the vehicle and stalking to hers before she could shuffle to the door. He held a hand out to help her – a hand she could have used given her size and state of shock. She ignored it, pushing to standing somewhat inelegantly and trying to catch her breath.
She fired him a look of pure outrage then moved towards the front door of the house. He swiped a key and the door popped open.
“Don’t you dare,” she whirled around to face him as soon as they were inside, alone in the corridor. “Talk to me about the kind of man I should marry.” She saw him standing there and felt only a kick of grief – he was just as he’d been earlier that same night, when they were on their way to the event. Only then she’d looked at him with flutterings of hope and love – yes, love – because she’d started to believe that their marriage was becoming real.
She made a strangling noise and walked quickly to the stairs, moving up them angrily – but it was an anger that burned bright and hot. She knew it would extinguish soon, all the heat burned through the wick until only embers remained, and then she’d be filled with sadness and shock.
She had to use her anger while she had it. She burst into her room and grabbed a handful of clothes, not stopping to think, not stopping to breathe. She stuffed them into one of the expensive heavy paper shopping bags the clothes had arrived in. It was a tangle of dresses, skirts, shirts – she didn’t care. Somewhere within the bag there’d be enough to get her through the next day. She could regroup and work out what she wanted to do next.
“What are you doing?” He demanded, standing in the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What does it look like?”
He didn’t move, but his expression softened, his eyes almost breaking down her barriers.
“I told myself that if I saw him and he spoke of you as you deserved then I would leave things alone. He didn’t. From the first I could see how mercenary and self-interested he was.”
She felt like she was about to pass out. She pressed a hand to the wall, steadying herself, conscious of the way Max responded immediately, moving deeper into her room, his hands moving to steady her. She shook her head ferociously. “No. I’m fine.” She lowered her voice, swallowing. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t fine.
“So you offered him money. How much?”
Max had the good grace to look ashamed.
“How much did it take to make him walk away?”
“Does it matter?”
“I think I have a right to know my commercial value, sure.”
No reply.
“Tell me what my ex-husband paid my fiancé to get out of my life?”
“I am not your ex-husband,” he said quietly.
She glared at him. “How much?”
He expelled a sigh. “Enough. Enough that he decided to cut his losses – that it was more economically viable for him to take the money and leave you than it was to marry you and wonder if he’d ever have any money of his own.”
“How.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “M
uch?”
He compressed his lips, his eyes locked to hers, as though they were in a silent, unspoken battle of determination.
Finally, he looked away. “A million American dollars.”
Alessia stumbled backwards a little, reaching for the support behind her. “A million dollars?” She shook her head in disbelief. “You honestly gave the man I was meant to marry a million dollars to see if he would leave me?”
“And he did,” Max said simply. “He could have told me to get stuffed – what I would have expected from a man who loved his fiancé. He didn’t deserve you.”
Alessia lifted her eyes to him and felt an all-consuming sense of grief. It was drowning her, absorbing her from every side. “No,” she agreed on a whisper. “Probably not.”
Max was quiet. Watchful. Waiting.
She made a groaning noise. “You’re still lying to me. At every opportunity you have lied and obfuscated, doing whatever you could to keep me from seeing things clearly. You told me this marriage would be different. You told me I could trust you – and God help me, I did – but look at what you’ve done! Look at how you’ve lied!”
He didn’t deny it and she was glad for that.
“How much of this is just ego, Max? You liked how much I adored you in our first marriage. When you thought I’d cheated, your ego was hurt. But I was still single, still just your ex-wife. Until I got engaged and then I was no longer yours – until you made sure I was all over again. Even this marriage, which I thought I was coming into with eyes wide open, is the most ridiculous farce.”
“Why? Why is it?”
“You need to ask that? You’ve been lying to me! Every damned day that you haven’t told me about Sam and what you did you’ve been lying to me! You told me I could trust you and I’ve been working on that but all the while you must have been laughing at me and my naïve stupidity. I’m five years older than I was then but apparently I’m just as gullible.”
“Not gullible,” he denied fiercely. “Beautifully kind-hearted. You hold people to your own standards so never see them as they really are. Of course you didn’t recognise that Sam was using you – you would never do such a thing so why should you suspect him of that?”
Loving the Enemy Page 14