Second-Time Bride(11)

‘I was never deliberately unkind to you,’ Alessio asserted.

Daisy resisted an urge to mention his reconciliation with his former girlfriend, Sophia. Why dig up something so long buried? It would be demeaning and petty to confront him about that now. Teenage boys were not programmed for fidelity. And she didn’t even know if he had been sleeping with the other girl or merely seeking out more entertaining company. She wanted to be fair. Their marriage had been over by then anyway.

Their relationship had really died the night when Alessio had turned away from her in bed. Thinking back to that devastating rejection, Daisy relived the anguish of a very insecure teenage girl who had been prepared to settle for sex if that was all she could have from the boy she loved. When Alessio had decided he didn’t want or need the sex either, she felt utterly devalued and useless, instead of feeling relieved that so degrading a practice had ended. A couple of weeks after Alessio had moved out of their bedroom, Bianca had dropped the news about Sophia. Alessio’s sister had enjoyed telling Daisy that her brother was seeing the other girl again.

‘And, even though I then believed that you had chosen to become pregnant, I never once confronted you with that belief.’ Alessio, Daisy registered, sounded very much as though he expected a burst of applause for such saintlike restraint.

‘Why not?’ she couldn’t help asking.

‘I assumed that you had done it so that you would not have to leave me at the end of the summer.’

Daisy reddened to the roots of her hair. She did it because she loved me...she just couldn’t help herself. Trust Alessio to come up with an excuse for her that flattered him! But no wonder he had felt trapped; no wonder he had been so furiously angry with her throughout their short-lived marriage!

‘And what would have been the point? Would it have changed anything? After all, I had already screwed up both our lives with spectacular efficiency,’ Alessio derided, his wide, sensual mouth narrowing. ‘I had failed my own expectations, bitterly disappointed and distressed my parents and got a very young girl pregnant. That was quite enough to be going on with, do you not think?’

Daisy cloaked her pained gaze. His every word tore at her and increased her confusion. It seemed inconceivable to her now, but back then she had never thought in any depth about the effect of their marriage on Alessio’s relationship with his parents. Her adolescent outlook had been narrow and exclusive, centred solely on her own feelings and what was happening in their relationship. She had taken no account of all the other pressures on Alessio. Her belated acknowledgement of her own essential teenage selfishness dismayed her.

‘And now I come here to meet a daughter who is a stranger,’ Alessio breathed grimly. ‘Have you any idea how that feels? A daughter whom I would have loved and cared for and protected has been living all this time within miles of the Leopardi bank in the City...and here she is in a grubby little flat you couldn’t swing a cat in!’

Suddenly, Daisy wanted to cover her ears. ‘I didn’t think you would want her—’

‘Is that what you have told her? Have you poisoned her mind against me as well?’ Alessio dealt her a fierce look of condemnation. ‘And still you do not tell me what I did to deserve such a punishment. So I wasn’t man enough to make it to the hospital...but that was the one and only time I ever let you down!’

Daisy’s knees wouldn’t hold her up any more. She dropped down on the edge of an armchair. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled thickly.

Alessio had stridden over to the window. He swung back to study her with bleak, darkened eyes, all emotion firmly back under lock and key. ‘I can do without the tears. If my daughter sees them, no doubt I’ll get the blame for that too, and I have no desire to make a first impression as some sort of big, nasty bully who makes her mother cry!’

Daisy gulped and scrabbled hurriedly for a tissue.

‘As of now we can only look to the future and hope to do better this time around,’ Alessio completed with hard, lingering emphasis, his screened eyes, with a sudden stormy flare of glinting gold, resting on her downbent silver head. ‘Our daughter’s needs must come first. We both owe her that consideration. I hope you appreciate that fact.’

Daisy was too choked up to speak. She was thinking about the pathetic little exercise book that Tara had produced from its hiding place on the top of her wardrobe. Some pictures of Alessio, carefully cut out of newspapers, had been glued into it. In her frantic excitement last night, Tara had bared her soul, hadn’t been able to hold anything back. And Daisy had tossed and turned in her bed until dawn, coming to shamefaced terms with the fact that she had never offered her daughter a photograph of her father. Yet she had a thirteen-year-old photograph of Alessio still lurking in her own purse. For the first time, it struck her that that was just a tad peculiar and rather hard to explain rationally.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, and made a dive for the door.

When she had managed to compose herself again, she popped her head round Tara’s bedroom door. ‘Are you ready yet?’

Tara was sitting on the edge of the bed, unusually still. Glossy streamers of black hair rippled as she turned her head, her anxious eyes so painfully like her father’s that Daisy’s heart skipped a startled beat. ‘I’m terrified,’ she whispered jerkily. ‘I’ve thought about this for so long, but now it’s really happening, now he’s actually here...suppose he doesn’t like me?’

Daisy recalled Alessio’s restive, simmering tension. ‘He’s just as scared you won’t like him.’

‘Is he?’ Tara scrambled up, bolstered by the assurance. ‘Did he say so?’

‘No, but it’s written all over him,’ Daisy managed with a wobbly smile.

‘I guess this is hard for him too. Maybe he thinks I’m expecting Superdad or something.’ Tara’s eyes softened, her tender heart instantly touched. ‘I mean, he won’t know what to do or say either. I suppose it’s easier for me really... I’ve always known about him.’

‘Yes.’ Daisy watched the carpet begin to blur under her aching gaze.

‘And he must be dead keen, to arrive this early,’ Tara decided.

‘Yes—’

‘I’m being really cruel staying in here and keeping him waiting,’ Tara concluded with a sudden frown of discomfiture.

Having reached the conclusion that her father was more to be pitied than she was, Tara straightened her slim shoulders and stepped round her mother. ‘It’s OK...you don’t need to come. I think I’d prefer to see him on my own first.’

Daisy flattened herself up against the wall and wrapped her arms round herself. Alessio wouldn’t want an audience either. So why should she feel excluded? Her daughter was no longer a baby who needed her every step of the way and Tara had always had a strong streak of independence.

In the lounge they both spoke at the same time.

‘You look like my sister...’ she heard Alessio breathe raggedly.

‘Do you still have your motorbike?’ Tara asked in a rather squeaky rush.

Daisy pressed her fingers against her wobbly mouth, yanked herself off the wall which had been supporting her and fled into the kitchen. Where was all this truly slaughtering guilt coming from? she asked herself wretchedly. Did she have to accept that she’d been completely in the wrong to keep father and daughter apart?

But how easy it was for Alessio to heap all the blame on her! Thirteen years ago, he had not made a single attempt to share his real feelings with her. So, naturally, Daisy had made assumptions. His behaviour had led her to believe that she was making the right decision, but why had it not occurred to her that she might only be storing up trouble for the future? Yes, it was very easy for Alessio to condemn her now. Hindsight made everyone wise. He could say now that he would have loved and cared for his daughter, and how could she challenge him when he had never been put to the test?

And what was going to happen to her relationship with her daughter if Tara started thinking the same way? Did she deserve to be treated like some sort of unfeeling monster? But how much had she been protecting herself from further pain and humiliation when she’d chosen not to tell Alessio about Tara? Daisy dashed a hand over her streaming eyes. And what if Alessio proved to be a terrific father? Just to spite her, just to prove her wrong and himself right, Alessio would very probably break his neck to be Superdad and, the next thing she knew, Tara would bitterly resent having been denied her father all these years.

‘Mum...we’re away!’ Tara called from the hall.

Before Daisy could respond, the front door slammed. From the lounge window she watched Tara walking admiringly all the way round the gleaming black Maserati that Alessio had evidently arrived in. She was chattering and laughing non-stop. She looked as if someone had lit a torch inside her. Alessio was visibly entranced by that glowing volubility. His absorption in his excited daughter was total.

And why not? Daisy thought painfully. In looks and personality, Tara was very much a Leopardi. Strongwilled, stubborn, outspoken and passionate, she was Alessio without the ice and self-control, Bianca without the spite and spoilt-rich-girl arrogance. Daisy would have had to be blind not to recognise that. And how much easier it must be for Alessio to relate to that laughing, talkative girl who bore so little resemblance to her mother. A cold, hard knot of fear clenched in Daisy’s stomach as she gazed down at them. Breathing in deeply, she moved away from the window.