Kate Hewitt by The Italian's Bought Bride

Author:The Italian's Bought Bride
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-04-28T12:14:35+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE NEXT MORNINGthe town house was silent as Allegra made her way downstairs, but after a few seconds she heard the quiet clink of china from the dining room and saw Stefano in the mahogany-panelled room, drinking a cappuccino, his head bent over the newspaper.

She watched him silently for a moment, the hard plane of his cheek and jaw, the soft sweep of his hair, the way he absently ran his long-fingered hand through it before turning a page.

Looking longer she saw lines of strain on either side of his mouth, shadows of fatigue under his eyes.

What had kept him up last night? she wondered. His own behaviour, or hers? The past or the future?

It was wrong of me.

She’d heard him through her door, as she huddled on her bed. She’d heard the regret in his voice, but it barely made a dent in her hardened heart.

He’d treated her like an object. A possession. He’d revealed himself in that one cold, calculated caress—what he thought of her, what he couldn’t forget.

And even though the light touch of his fingers had made her tremble, had made her want, she wouldn’t let it weaken her will.

She was not Stefano’s possession. She would not let him treat her as one.Ever.

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And, Allegra resolved as she stood in the doorway of the dining room, she would tell Stefano so. Now, not with whispered words of regret through a closed door, but face to face, eye to eye.

‘Stefano.’

His head jerked up, his eyes wary, hooded before he smiled. ‘Buon giorno.’

‘Buon giorno.’She sat at the table and picked up acornetti, taking a knife and buttering it with fingers that only trembled a tiny bit. ‘We need to talk.’

He folded his paper and placed it on the table, a look of polite expectancy on his face. ‘Of course. What is it?’

She shook her head slowly. Was he going to pretend that last night hadn’t happened? That the truth, painful and broken as it was, hadn’t been revealed?

‘When we both agreed to this business arrangement,’ she began, keeping her voice firm and purposeful,

‘you told me that we were different people. That the past didn’t matter.’

‘Yes,’ Stefano confirmed, a touch of coolness in his voice. He took a sip of his coffee and Anna bustled in from the kitchen with a cappuccino for Allegra.

‘Grazie,’she murmured, her gaze still fastened on Stefano’s. ‘But that wasn’t true, was it, Stefano?’ she asked softly when Anna had left. ‘The past does matter, and perhaps we haven’t changed as much as we think we have. As much as we want to have changed. And I won’t allow the past to affect the present or the future. Not my future, not yours, and certainly not Lucio’s.’

‘I wouldn’t expect it to,’ Stefano drawled. He sounded bored.

‘You may have hired me,’ Allegra continued, her voice still thankfully firm, ‘but I’m not your possession.

I won’t be treated like one—’

‘Allegra, I apologised for my behaviour last night,’ Stefano cut her off coldly. ‘I was angry with what had happened, not seven years before, but a few hours ago.

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