The Italian's Secretary Bride (11 page)

Hell, it had to be frustrated lust that was making him see Alice jumping into bed with every man she spoke to…and now he was jealous of some dead guy! His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists as his guts churned with self-contempt.

‘He was dead within forty-eight hours.' She connected with his eyes and registered the flash of shock and warmth of sympathy in the startling depths. ‘I know, I didn't think that young, fit people died of pneumonia either, not with modern drugs. Well, that's what I thought…' she admitted huskily.

Luca watched her slender shoulders lift; the pragmatic gesture hid a world of hurt. He could only imagine what it must have felt like. The surge of fierce protectiveness that surfaced from somewhere deep inside him froze Luca to the spot; it was one of the strongest, most primal responses he had ever experienced.

‘But apparently they do.' For a long time she had been bitter and angry but this had lessened over the years.

‘Three months isn't long to get to know your husband.'

‘Mark wasn't a complicated person.' Unlike you, she thought. Her husband had been caring and mild-mannered; it was actually hard to think of a man more different from the complex, difficult one who stood beside her. Mark had been a gentle man and theirs had been a gentle love, not a wild, breathless passion, and she had liked it that way. The thought had a defensive quality that made her brow pucker.

‘Anyhow,' she added, ‘how long does it take to fall in love?' And when did it happen to me?

She was so white he thought for a split second she was going to pass out, then suddenly as she exhaled shakily her cheeks filled with colour.

‘You're asking the wrong man.'

‘Haven't you ever…?' She bit off her impetuous question and, blushing deeply, she shook her head. ‘It's none of my…'

One dark brow slanted sardonically. ‘Have I ever been in love? That sort of depends on how you define love, doesn't it?'

‘Oh, God, you're not going to give me a body count, are you?'

He saw her grimace of distaste and his eyes darkened with anger. ‘Oh, I stopped counting years ago.'

His satiric drawl made her shift uncomfortably but she added defiantly, ‘No little black book?'

‘In these days of computers? Haven't you heard print is dead?' he asked her ironically. ‘Just what the hell have I done to make you think I'm some emotionally shallow bastard?' Before Alice could think about responding to this bitter demand he added abruptly, ‘How long did it take for you to fall in love, Alice?'

‘Me?' Flustered, she pressed a hand to the base of her throat. She tried to look away but those curiously intense eyes had her held tight. She couldn't even blink. ‘I, well…'

‘Was it love at first sight?'

‘I'd known Mark all my life. He was the boy next door, literally. Well, the farm next door, to be precise.'

‘You married your childhood sweetheart?'

To Alice's sensitive ears he sounded disapproving. ‘I suppose I did.'

Luca watched through heavy-lidded eyes as she went over to a drawer and opened it. Carefully she slid the framed photo between the layers of clothes inside.

‘Do people know you were married?'

Alice repressed the urge to go back and open the drawer. It was stupid to feel disloyal for closing a drawer. To see anything symbolic in the gesture, she told herself, was just plain crazy. Mark was still part of her life; he always would be. This was Luca's fault. If it weren't for him she wouldn't be feeling this way.

When she swung back to face Luca her expression was borderline belligerent. ‘It's hardly a secret.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘Well, we never exactly reached the cosy-chat stage, did we?' Even
thinking
cosy in the same breath as Luca seemed wildly inappropriate.

‘No, we just got straight down to ripping off each other's clothes.'

Alice gasped, her eyes filling with hot tears of humiliation. ‘I'm trying to forget.'

Breathing hard, Luca placed his hand palm-flat against the wall and spread his fingers until the sinews stood out in his hand. ‘Having any luck?' he asked throatily after an interval of several long, laboured breaths.

‘No!' she wailed miserably.

Luca straightened up and, hands linked behind his head, dragged his fingers down his neck, where he began to massage the tight tortured knots of muscles. ‘Six years is a long time to be celibate.'

‘I'm sure it is to someone who can't go for six minutes without sex!' she flared.

‘So you've had lovers?'

‘You're unbelievable!' she gasped, staring up at him incredulously. ‘Just what makes you think you've got any right to ask me something like that?'

His eyes narrowed on her angry face. ‘So you have.'

‘Even if I'd had as many lovers as you have, it wouldn't make any difference to what I shared with Mark. Sex is just sex; the love we shared was something else entirely. Mark will always be part of my life.' Her voice thickened. ‘And I'll never be alone.' Her eyes flashed as she lifted her chin.

The silence that filled the room after her impassioned declaration seethed with loud emotions.

If Alice hadn't been busy feeling disgusted with herself for using her relationship with Mark like some sort of shield to disguise what she was feeling for Luca, she might have noticed the beads of sweat across his brow and the unhealthy grey tinge to his olive skin.

‘That will make your bed crowded for any man who wants to be part of your life now.'

‘That's a totally
horrible
thing to say!'

‘Sometimes totally horrible things need saying,' he retorted coldly. ‘It's very easy to idealise someone when they're dead, especially when you conveniently filter out all the things that irritated you about that person.'

‘Well, with you that wouldn't leave much else, would it? Beside a massive ego.' He inclined his dark head sarcastically as though acknowledging a compliment and her lips tightened. ‘Mark didn't
irritate
me; he was kind and funny. We didn't fight.'

A nerve beside his wide mobile mouth spasmed. ‘Always gave in to you, did he?'

Alice, her hands clenched tightly at her sides, glared at him with loathing. ‘You'd like to spoil my memories, wouldn't you?' she accused wildly. ‘But you can't. We had a happy marriage, we thought alike, we agreed on almost everything.'

‘And that is your formula for a happy marriage?' he questioned incredulously.

‘It worked for us.'

His expression was shuttered as his brilliant eyes swept her flushed, impassioned face. ‘So you had something you don't expect to recapture and in the meantime you make do with casual lovers.' Ironically, a day earlier that would have made her his ideal woman. At what point tonight had he realised he wanted more from Alice…much more?

‘And why
shouldn't
I have lovers?' Alice demanded truculently. ‘Not everyone finds me as repellent as you do!'

‘Repellent?'

‘I'm so glad you find this funny,' she told him witheringly. Actually, as much as she tried not to notice, it was impossible not to recognise he had a quite amazingly attractive laugh even when it was bitter.

‘You have no idea, do you?' he said.

Alice flicked a nervous hand through her hair, drawing the end of one curl absently into her mouth. ‘No idea about what?' she queried suspiciously.

‘No idea that everything you do is…' he raised his expressive hand and prescribed an undulating curve in the air ‘…
seductive
,' he rasped huskily. ‘You have more sex appeal in your little finger, than any woman that ever drew breath,' he announced with the embattled air of a man who had been pushed too far. ‘Look, I can't do this now. We'll talk about this.' He shook his head. ‘But not now.'

‘I don't want to talk. I want to go to bed with you.'

‘Per amor di Dio!'
he groaned, grabbing his thick dark hair in agitated handfuls. ‘You are…killing me!'

‘That's not what I want to do to you.' She kept changing from hating him, to wanting him!

Luca never knew where he got the strength to get out of that door, but from somewhere he discovered hidden reserves.

 

Sitting in the cab, because frankly he didn't trust himself behind the wheel of his car, Luca basked in the saintly glow of knowing he'd done the right thing for…Actually, he didn't bask at all! He doubted he had ever felt this lousy in his entire life.

Halfway home he decided that he had proved his point. Alice could be in no doubt now that he had principles. There was no need to push it. If she wanted a casual lover he would be that casual lover. Why not? It was a pride thing, nothing else. His middle name was casual, so why change now? And, he thought, his eyes narrowing grimly, he would make her forget every other lover she had ever had!

‘Mate,' he called out to the driver. ‘Change of plan—take me back to the hotel.'

The driver was sympathetic. ‘Left something behind?'

‘Yes, something pretty important.'

The black coffee he had ordered at the desk reached the room just before he did. Luca watched as the young man knocked politely at Alice's door. The door swung inwards and he called tentatively through the gap.

Luca stepped forward. ‘I must have left it open. Thanks, I'll take it from here,' he said, pressing a note into the boy's hand.

‘Thank you, sir…' His eyes widened as he saw the colour of the note. ‘Thank you
very much
. Anything else you want, just call.'

‘I think I can manage from here,' Luca returned.

He felt nervous…
This wasn't just any woman; this was Alice.
Alice who from day one had got under his skin like no other woman born.

His footsteps silent on the deep pile of the carpet underfoot, he walked into the room. He could hear the soft sound of weeping before he actually saw the figure hunched in an attitude of abject misery. Alice, her knees drawn up to her chest, was sitting on the bed rocking gently to and fro. Her glorious hair fell in silvery bangs hiding her face from his view, but her distress was obvious.

Automatically Luca took a step towards her. It was then that he saw what was clutched in her hands: the photo of her husband.

He turned and walked away, quietly closing the door behind him. The people he met as he walked through the hotel gave the tall, grim-faced figure a wide berth. Luca was oblivious to the wary looks. It shook him to realise that for a minute there he'd been willing to go to Alice, take her in his arms, make love to her, even though he knew that he would be a substitute. She would close her eyes and think of her husband.

Were fools born or made? It was an interesting question.

What had she said? Sex is just sex. All his adult life that had been true for Luca, but this time sex was not going to assuage the ache in his loins. He wanted Alice to love him…he loved Alice. If he was going to show Alice that it was possible to find true love more than once, he was going to have to stifle his natural inclinations and take things slowly. It might kill him, but he was going to be patient.

 

After Luca had left her, Alice wept long and hard. Then after the tears stopped she lay on the bed and, shading her puffy eyes against the electric light overhead, did some good, hard, and, it had to be admitted, overdue, heart-searching.

What had Mum said…life had to go on? Something along those lines. Ironic, really—she'd been avoiding living hers all this time because she had never wanted to feel the sort of pain she had experienced when she had lost Mark, and now she had fallen for a man who aroused feelings far stronger than she had thought she was capable of.

When she thought how much Luca could hurt her if she let him it terrified her, but when she thought about never knowing what it felt like to be loved by him it terrified her even more.

She didn't delude herself, she knew a man like Luca would only be interested in a casual relationship. An expression of determination spread across her face. Well, if casual was what he wanted she would show him just how casual she could be, she decided, levering herself into a sitting position.

She looked at the photo in her hand and kissed the smiling image. She accepted that it was illogical to feel she was being disloyal to Mark for falling in love with another man. She would always love Mark, but he was the past and she had to look to the future. Mark had loved life and her and he would be angry if he thought she was using his memory as an excuse not to live life to the full.

With an expression of sad resolve she took the ring on the gold chain and placed it with the photo.

‘Time to move on, sweetheart,' she whispered.