Daisy paled and chewed her lower lip. ‘Thirteen years ago, Bianca told me that Sophia had been your girlfriend and that you were seeing her again—’
‘Madre di Dio...no longer do I need to wonder why you agreed to the divorce!’ Alessio bit out rawly.
‘At the time it seemed to make sense,’ Daisy muttered ruefully.
‘Porca miseria...the damage Bianca has caused! I never dreamt that she could be such a bitch!’
‘But then she doesn’t behave like that with you,’ Daisy sighed.
‘She made that call to Barry Stevens...’ A bitter tension had hardened Alessio’s strong features and roughened his deep voice. ‘I’m sorry that you have had to endure her malicious attacks, even sorrier that I refused to listen when you tried to tell me what was happening!’
He was still appalled and mortified by his sister’s behaviour. Daisy was struggling to overcome a powerfully embarrassing urge to wrap consoling arms around him. Any move to offer comfort would be uniquely revealing to a male as shrewd as Alessio. And Daisy was not prepared to tell him that in spite of everything she loved him even more than she had loved him as a teenager. Only this time she wouldn’t run away—she would stay and fight, if need be, to give their marriage a future.
‘I’m not blaming you for what Bianca did. It’s over and done with. Forget about it,’ she urged in a rush.
‘That’s very forgiving of you,’ Alessio murmured tautly.
A thunderous silence stretched.
Alessio strode restively over to the window. Then he swung fluidly back to face her, expelling his breath in a hiss. ‘I’ve been acting like an insanely jealous and irrational teenager ever since I saw those photo albums of yours,’ he admitted in a driven undertone. ‘When I found out today that ... well, that there had never been anyone else I was really ashamed of my behaviour. I had no right whatsoever to question your past.’
Daisy rubbed abstractedly at the deep-pile carpet with a set of bare pink toes. ‘I’ve always been pretty possessive about you too,’ she muttered.
Alessio threw back his darkly handsome head, his brilliant eyes bleak. ‘I wouldn’t have acted like that if I hadn’t been so afraid of losing you again,’ he gritted.
‘I thought it was Tara you were afraid of losing,’ Daisy whispered slowly.
‘Much as I love our daughter, piccola mia, I have to confess that I used her as an excuse to make you marry me again. I was a man with a mission last week,’ Alessio grated unevenly. ‘And my mission was to win, by any means within my power, a second chance with the girl I loved and lost as a teenager. If I had only wanted Tara I would never have forced you into marriage.’
Daisy’s violet eyes were wide. With immense difficulty she relocated her voice. ‘But you kept on telling me that it was all for Tara’s sake!’
‘That was pride talking. Madre di Dio...’ Alessio groaned. ‘You fell apart in horror when I first mentioned marriage! So I cornered you and blackmailed you into it—’
‘You bought the agency because you wanted me back,’ Daisy mumbled dizzily, struggling to conceal her delight.
‘I thought if I pushed hard enough I could somehow make you feel what I was feeling,’ Alessio confessed roughly. ‘That first day I saw you again, it was like coming alive for the first time in thirteen years! Dio...I had your phone number within an hour of you leaving me again!’ Crossing the room with a look of fierce decisiveness stamped on his taut features, he reached for her with determined hands. Dark golden eyes blazed down at her. ‘This marriage can work. I love you enough for both of us!’
Daisy braced shaking hands on his broad shoulders, her throat closing over. ‘Alessio,’ she said thickly, ‘I love you too.’
He stared down at her fixedly.
Daisy swallowed convulsively. ‘I never stopped loving you but I thoughts you only wanted Tara and I was so scared of getting hurt again.’
With a stifled groan, Alessio crushed her to him, snatching her up off her feet to plunder her readily parted lips with an aching, desperate hunger every bit as strong as her own as he brought her down to the bed. Intense happiness and excitement swept Daisy to a breathless height of emotion that drove every other thought from her mind.