different.
She undid his buckle, slid his trousers down his legs, dropping down to her knees in front of him. He groaned softly, his hands fisted in her hair, pulling her to him.
She kissed him there softly, reverently, and with a shuddering gasp he pulled her up into his arms, burying his head in her hair, breathing in the scent of her as if it were air, as if it would save him.
‘Why don’t you stop?’ he groaned against her hair, her eyes, her mouth. ‘Why don’t you stop?’
‘Stop?’ she repeated uncertainly, accepting his kisses, his regrets.
‘Stop loving me.’
Everything inside her stilled, became suspended and motionless. She touched his face with her hands, looked into his eyes, saw the anguish. ‘You know?.’ She was shaken by his admission, by hers. By the truth they both knew.
‘Don’t, Meghan. Don’t do it. Stop yourself. For your own sake, for mine, stop.’ He was still kissing her, each touch a plea. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
But I will. The words hovered in the air, unspoken. Not needing to be said.
‘I can’t stop,’ Meghan whispered. ‘I don’t want to.’
He shook his head in denial even as he laid her gently on the bed. ‘No. No. You don’t know …’
‘Tell me.’ She arched up, gasping as he touched her, his fingers slipping inside, so knowing, so tender, drawing her fevered response.
‘No … Meghan.’ His voice was ragged as he entered her warmth, filled her once again. Meghan moved beneath him, accepting his weight, the solid strength of him above and inside her.
He buried his face in her shoulder, his lips on her neck, gasping as they both moved, rocking, wanting, finding … and then shattering into pleasure. ‘Meghan … I need you too much.’
Meghan clung to him, stroked his face, his hair. His words echoed in her mind with a flicker of hope.
He needed her. It wasn’t love, but it was something.
It was all she had, and she clung to it fiercely.
Two days later Alessandro came home with two envelopes and a secretive smile.
Meghan was in the lounge, curled up with a book. Since that night of both pain and pleasure they had not talked of love—her love—again. Meghan had not wanted to mention it. She couldn’t face the certain rebuff.
Alessandro had reverted—as he always did—into the charming, urbane man she’d once thought was his real self and now knew was not.
Even though she still wanted to find the truth she’d been grateful for the reprieve, a respite from the intensity. They talked, they ate, they made love. Life, on the surface, was simple. It wasn’t real. It was a half-life, a life of pleasant pretence.
Meghan wondered how long it would last.
How long they could both keep it up. One of them was certain to break.
Shatter.
Now she took in his teasing, expectant smile with a little fizz of anticipation.
‘What is it? What do you have?’
He handed her the first envelope. ‘See for yourself.’
Meghan opened it, scanned the embossed paper. It was a letter from one of the American schools in Milan, offering her an interview.
‘Alessandro!’ she exclaimed. ‘How did you arranges…?’
‘I had your CV from Stanton Springs faxed to them. It was a matter of minutes.’
‘And some ingenuity.’
He shrugged, the movement one of instinctive inherited male arrogance. ‘That I have.’
‘The interview is next week!’ Meghan marvelled. ‘I can’t believe it!’ She glanced at him over the letter, sincerity shining in her eyes. ‘Thank you.’
Her gratitude bothered him; she saw it in his dismissive shrug, heard it in his brusque tone. ‘It was easy. Open the other one.’
She opened the second envelope. A postcard fell out.
It was a vista of an aquamarine sea, a stunning white sand beach. Meghan read the place name on the back of the card. ‘Amorphos?’
‘A Greek island, very small, very secluded. We leave tomorrow morning.’
Her eyes flew to his. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘I’ve arranged with my mother to buy the necessary things for you that you don’t have already. Your bags are packed. There is nothing keeping us here.’
‘Our honeymoon,’ Meghan said in dawning delight, and he pulled her into an embrace, gave her a brief, hard kiss. ‘Yes … where no one can find us.’
Meghan smiled, but she couldn’t keep from thinking, We can’t run for ever.
They took Alessandro’s private jet to Amorphos, so there was just the two of them in the sumptuous interior, feasting on strawberries and chilled champagne.
Meghan glanced out at the Mediterranean below them, a blue blanket stretching to the horizon.
‘I can’t believe this is real,’ she murmured, and Alessandro smiled.
‘It’s as real as we want it to be.’
She tensed slightly, aware that his remark was cryptic. Nothing so far had been very real.
This trip, just like their life in Milan, was a fantasy as manufactured as the Marmore Falls—a torrent one moment, a trickle the next.
It wouldn’t be real until Alessandro confessed, shared the secrets that drove him to despair, that turned him into a desperate stranger. Until he trusted her … loved her.
When would that happen? How could she make it happen? Don’t think you can save me.
The warning rang in Meghan’s mind, echoed through her soul.
But you’re worth saving.
She took a sip of champagne, determined to shrug such fears away, for now at least. The bubbles fizzed pleasantly through her. ‘So, Di Agnio Enterprises can spare you for a few days?’
‘They have to.’ Alessandro stretched out in the seat opposite her. ‘I am the CEO, after all. I make the rules.’
Meghan twirled her champagne flute in her fingers. ‘Stefano mentioned that the company was on the brink of ruin. You saved it.’
Alessandro stilled. ‘He exaggerates.’
Meghan felt her heart skip and then beat double-time at Alessandro’s cold look, but she pressed on anyway.
‘Does he? He seemed quite certain about his facts.’
‘He was gossipping like a laundry woman, then,’ Alessandro replied shortly. ‘It’s hardly like him.’
Meghan leaned forward. ‘Don’t blame him. He was trying to help me.’
‘Help you?’ Contemptuous disbelief delicately laced his words.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact,’ she replied with some spirit. ‘Help me understand you, Alessandro, because you’re hell to understand!’
He stared at her, eyes dark and cold as a lake in winter. Meghan held her breath, wondering if she’d pushed him too far. She hadn’t meant to start this conversation, hadn’t wanted to ask for answers. She just couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know so much.
She wanted to understand.
‘Maybe I am.’ He smiled at her, coldly, and Meghan made herself press on.
‘Stefano—he