Second-Time Bride

‘You were worth waiting for,’ Daisy whispered tightly, painfully.

Alessio lifted his dark, tousled head. With a slightly unsteady hand he smoothed her silky hair from her brow, long, caressing fingers cradling her cheekbone in a gesture of almost awkward tenderness. Only then, disturbingly, his beautiful dark eyes slewed away from the anxious intensity of hers, his lush lashes screening his gaze, but not before she’d seen the daunting bleakness etched there.

‘I feel bloody guilty,’ he confessed, and immediately released her from his weight.

Daisy didn’t know what she had expected from him but it hadn’t been that admission.

‘Why no one else in all this time?’ Alessio prompted tautly.

Now, that question was predictable but not one which Daisy was prepared to answer honestly. Defensively she turned her head away, aching with love for him and suppressing a dangerous urge to close the physical gap he had opened up between them. ‘When you have to look at a man and think, How would I feel if I got pregnant by him? it kind of chills your bones.’

Instead of laughing as she had hoped, Alessio sat up in a sudden movement and swore long and low in Italian. ‘Porca miseria,’ he finally groaned. ‘I didn’t use anything!’

Daisy lay with all the life of a block of wood. His horror at that realisation had the same effect on her as several blows with a hatchet.

‘Don’t you understand?’ Alessio gritted, as if he was expecting more of a reaction from her. ‘I didn’t take any precautions!’

‘Relax,’ Daisy urged in a choky little voice. ‘I doubt if I’m as fertile as I was at seventeen.’

‘Dio...what have I done?’ he bit out, only half under his breath.

Daisy hunched herself under the cover of the sheet. Witnessing Alessio’s appalled response to the risk that he might have fathered a child with her a second time was, she was convinced, the most humiliating and painful dose of hard reality that she had ever experienced. Hurt and bitter tears boiled up behind her lowered eyelids.

‘I feel incredibly guilty,’ Alessio said again.

‘Go away,’ Daisy mumbled thickly, not even caring what he might have to feel guilty about any more.

A surprisingly hesitant hand came down on her rigid shoulder. She shook it off and scooted over to the far side of the bed. ‘Leave me alone!’

His weight left the bed. But ironically she didn’t want what she had said she wanted and immediately started feeling bereft and deserted and resentful.

‘Get some sleep,’ Alessio urged heavily. ‘I have to go out for a while.’

‘Don’t come back,’ Daisy spat, and burst into floods of tears the minute the door closed. She crammed her fist against her mouth but she still sobbed herself hoarse.

Obviously Alessio had no feelings for her other than lust. And now he clearly wished he hadn’t bothered with that either. So why had he dragged her off to bed?

No doubt it had been part and parcel of his desire to put on a show of marital harmony for Tara’s homecoming. Their daughter would undoubtedly not be impressed by the fact that the parents she wanted to regard as reunited lovers were sleeping in separate bedrooms.

CHAPTER TEN

DAISY was still in bed when the phone rang. At first she ignored it but the persistence of the caller finally triumphed and she reached for the receiver in a sudden spasm of irritation, no longer able to bear that intrusive shrill.

The feminine burst of imperious Italian reproof that greeted her was instantly recognisable. ‘Bianca?’ Daisy flatly broke into the flood of complaint. ‘This is Daisy, not one of the staff. Alessio’s out. Shall I ask him to call you?’

‘Actually it was you I wanted to speak to,’ Bianca informed her, her annoyance suddenly replaced by saccharine sweetness. ‘I’m well aware that Alessio isn’t at home. Shall I tell you how I know? He’s with Nina...’

Daisy tensed and then slowly expelled her pent-up breath in a hiss. ‘Don’t you ever give up, Bianca? Thirteen years on, you’re still playing the same old silly tune!’

‘Check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me! Nina is staying in a holiday complex only a few minutes’ drive from the villa.’ Bianca reeled off the address with audible satisfaction. ‘Alessio’s Ferrari is parked at the door—’