‘And you’ve moved on with yours,’ she couldn’t resist adding.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing.’ She tried to inch the door shut, but he pushed against it and stepped into the hallway. He didn’t know what it was, but this woman drove him to the brink of madness.
‘You can’t make a statement like that and then refuse to qualify it.’
‘You know what I’m talking about!’
Now that he was finally inside, Alessandro felt less like a man teetering on the edge of a precipice. At least he had her full attention. ‘I don’t.’
‘In which case you’re stupid. But we both know you’re not that!’ Megan pressed herself against the wall, her hands behind her back, her eyes blazing with defiant anger. ‘I saw all those pictures of you plastered in the newspapers.’
She knew as soon as the words were out of her mouth that he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. He had never, even at university, read the tabloids. He had only ever read the broadsheets. Nothing had changed, and she could have kicked herself for opening herself.
‘What pictures?’
Megan took a deep breath and looked at him scornfully. ‘Pictures of you having a riotous time with a bevy of beautiful women. And I don’t have any objection to that,’ she bit out, ‘because we’re no longer together. In fact, I’ve been having a riotous time of my own, as a matter of fact.’ She thought of Stuart and the riotous time she had had kissing him and trying to kid herself that it hadn’t felt like kissing a slab of wood.
Alessandro felt his spirits soar with satisfaction that she had been following his movements, had been jealous of the women with whom he had pointlessly tried to have a good time. It felt great—until he thought about the riotous time she claimed she had been having. Then he crashed back down to earth with supersonic speed.
‘You shouldn’t read those trashy newspapers,’ he gritted. ‘And you should know better than to believe that they ever report the truth.’
‘Meaning what?’ Megan flung at him.
‘Meaning that I went out, sure, but if you thought from what you saw that I was having a good time, then you were wrong.’
‘Guess what? I don’t believe you.’ But she wanted to.
‘I can’t blame you.’
Alessandro raked his fingers through his hair and looked at her with unrestrained frustration. He could manipulate any opportunity, had ruthlessly practised the art in many a boardroom, but just at the moment he felt like a man in a straitjacket, desperately struggling to find a way out so that he could swim to shore.
‘Look, can we at least go and sit down?’
He could see her struggling with the question, and for a few seconds he wondered what he would do if she refused—if this brand-new life she had apparently found had been a stepping stone for her to move out of his orbit. He cursed himself for not having been more relentless in his pursuit. As it stood, he had let her go, and in so doing had given her a window of opportunity to find herself a replacement.
‘I don’t see the point,’ Megan told him.
‘Why?’ Natural aggression flowed into Alessandro’s veins and he shoved his hands in his pockets. He could feel his resolve to take things easy disappearing fast, like smoke in a high wind.
‘Why would I sit down with you when I want you to leave?’
‘I should never have let you walk away!’
‘You didn’t let me walk away, Alessandro!’ Megan cried. ‘I walked away because I wanted to!’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘No! The truth is that I…I would have finished with Victoria even if I hadn’t found out that there was a third party involved. Or should I say a third party who was trying to get involved. I would have finished with her because you were in my head and I wanted to be with you. So you see, Megan, the fact is that my choice would have been for you, but for a mistake in timing.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Too many disappointments had taken their toll, and Megan looked at him bitterly.
‘Then what do you believe?’
She drew in one deep, unsteady breath, and her eyes didn’t waver as she looked at him, drawing deep from her reserves of courage because even now, after everything, looking at him still made her feel sick and giddy with love. He had said that he had flung himself into having fun, but that he hadn’t found the fun he’d thought he would. She believed him. He didn’t look like a man who had been out having a good time. In fact, he looked wrecked.
‘I think that you do still want me, Alessandro. But I’m not going to bother going down the road of trying to figure out whether what you want is a relationship or not. It doesn’t matter. You want me because you know that sooner or later you’ll get tired of me, and when that happens you’ll be free to move on.’