tried not to read the emotion in her dark eyes, tried not to let them pull him in. Always, from the moment he’d seen her, he’d been fascinated. A young girl with flowers tangled in her dark hair, running around the garden of her father’s home, a smile on her lips. He could remember her dancing in the grass in her bare feet, while her siblings played around her.
And he had been transfixed. Amazed by this girl who, from all he had been told, should have been visibly evil in some way. But she was a light. She held a brightness and joy like he had never seen. Watching it, being close enough to touch it, helped him pretend it was something he could feel, too.
She made him not so afraid of feeling.
She’d had a hold on him from day one. She was a sorceress. There was no other explanation. Her grip on him defied logic, defied every defense he’d built inside of himself.
And no matter how hard he tried, he could read her. Easily. She was hurt. He had hurt her.
“What is it?” he asked.
She looked away. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you hurt?”
“You’ve just told me how unlucky we both are that I’m pregnant—was I supposed to look happy?”
“Don’t tell me you’re pleased about this. Unless it was your plan.”
“How could I have … planned this? That doesn’t make any sense.”
He pushed his fingers through his hair and turned away from her. “I know. Che cavolo, Alessia, I know that.” He turned back to her.
“I just wanted to tell you about the baby.”
He felt like he was drowning, like every breath was suffocating him. A baby. She was having his baby. And he was just about the last man on earth who should ever be a father. He should walk away. But he couldn’t.
“And this was the only way?”
Her eyes glittered with rage. “You know damn well it was!”
He did. He’d avoided her every attempt at contacting him. Had let his anger fuel the need for distance between them. Had let the very existence of the emotion serve as a reminder. And he had come back frozen again. So he’d thought. Because now Alessia was here again, pushing against that control.
“Why didn’t you meet me at the airport?” she asked, her words a whisper.
“Why didn’t I meet you?” he asked, his teeth gritted. “You expected me to chase after you like a dog? If you think you can bring me to heel that easily, Alessia, you are a fool.”
“And if you think I’m trying to you’re an idiot, Matteo Corretti. I don’t want you on a leash.”
“Well, you damn well have me on one!” he said, shouting for the first time, his tenuous grip on his control slipping. “What am I to do after your public display? Deny my child? Send you off to raise it on your own? Highly unlikely.”
“How can we marry each other? We don’t love each other. We barely like each other right now!”
“Is that so bad? You were prepared to marry Alessandro, after all. Better the devil you know. And we both know you know me much better than you knew him.”
“Stop it,” she said, the catch in her voice sending a hot slash of guilt through his chest. Why he was compelled to lash out at her, he wasn’t sure.
Except that nothing with Alessia was ever simple. Nothing was ever straightforward. Nothing was ever neat or controlled.
It has to be.
“It’s true, though, isn’t it, Alessia?” he asked, his entire body tense now. He knew for a fact he was the first man to be with her, and something in him burned to know that he had been the only man. That Alessandro had never touched her as he had. “You were never with him. Not like you were with me.”
The idea of his cousin’s hands on her … A wave of red hazed his vision, the need for violence gripping his throat, shaking him.
He swallowed hard, battled back the rage, fought against images that were always so close to the surface when Alessia was around. A memory he had to hold on to, no matter how much he might wish for it to disappear.
Blood. Streaked up to his elbows, the skin on his knuckles broken. A beast inside of him unleashed. And Alessia’s attackers on the ground, unmoving.
He blinked and banished the memory. It shouldn’t linger as it did. It was but one moment of violence in a lifetime of it. And yet, it had been different. It had been an act born of passion, outside of his control, outside of rational thought.
“Tell me,” he ground out.
“Do you honestly think I would sleep with Alessandro after what happened?”
“You were going to. You were prepared to marry him. To share his bed.”
She nodded wordlessly. “Yes. I was.”
“And then you found out about the baby.”
“No,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“What, then?”
“Then I saw you.”
“Guilt?”
“We were in a church.”
“Understandable.”
“Why didn’t you meet me?” she asked again, her words holding a wealth of pain.
“Because,” he said, visions of blood washing through his brain again, a reminder of what happened when he let his passions have control, “I got everything I wanted from you that night. Sex. That was all I ever wanted from you, darling.”
She drew back as though he’d struck her. “Is that why you’ve always watched me?”
“I’ll admit, I had a bit of an obsession with your body, but you know you had one with mine.”
“I liked you,” she said, her words hard, shaky. “But you never came near me after—”
“There is no need to dredge up the past,” he said, not wanting to hear her speak of that day. He didn’t want to hear her side of it. How horrifying it must have been for a fourteen-year-old girl to see such violence. To see what he was capable of.
Yet, she had never looked at him with the shock, the horror, he’d deserved. There was a way she looked at him, as though she saw something in him no one else did. Something good. And he craved that feeling. It was one reason he’d taken her up on her invitation that night at the hotel bar.
Too late, he realized that he was not in control of their encounter that time, either. No, Alessia stole the control. Always.
No more, he told himself again.
Alessia swallowed back tears. This wasn’t going how she’d thought it would. Now she wasn’t sure what she thought. No, she knew. Part of her, this stupid, girlish, optimistic part of her, had imagined Matteo’s eyes would soften, that he would smile. Touch her stomach. Take joy in the fact that they had created a life together.
And then they would live happily ever after.
She was such a fool. But Matteo had long been the knight in shining armor of her fantasies. And so in her mind he could do no wrong.
She’d always felt like she’d known him. Like she’d understood the serious, dark-eyed young man she’d caught watching her when she was in Palermo. Who had crept up to the wall around her house when he was visiting his grandmother and stood there while she’d played in the garden. Always looking like he wanted to join in, like he wanted to play, but wouldn’t allow himself to.
And then … and then when she’d needed him most, he’d been there. Saved her from … she hardly even knew what horror he’d saved her from.