‘No...’ Daisy finally found her voice again. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Then what’s the matter with—?’ Giles fell abruptly silent as the door behind her opened.
‘Since we’re in a hurry, Miss Thornton’s services will be adequate,’ Alessio asserted flatly.
Goose-flesh prickled along the nape of Daisy’s neck. She didn’t turn round even though she could see Giles regarding that scarcely civil oversight with a fresh look of incomprehension. Adequate? Her teeth clenched. Fierce resentment, backed by a rolling tide of humiliation she didn’t want to admit to, flared through her taut length.
Thirteen years ago she had been unceremoniously dumped and she had done nothing to deserve Alessio’s brutally dismissive reaction to her in front of her boss and his girlfriend. Was it embarrassment? Or was he, just like her, fighting off a distressing surge of adolescent memories? Don’t kid yourself, Daisy, a more cynical voice urged. Even at nineteen, Alessio Leopardi didn’t have a sensitive bone in his body...
Rigid-backed, Daisy descended the wrought-iron spiral staircase that ran down to the ground floor, and walked out through the crowded front office. Her legs felt as if they might fold beneath her at any moment. A deep trembling was beginning inside her. Shock was setting in hard. As she emerged out onto the pavement and began turning in the direction of the staff car park, Alessio drawled from behind her, ‘We’ll use the limo.’
‘Of course,’ she managed half under her breath.
‘So tell us about this house,’ Nina Franklin invited thinly as Daisy slid stiffly along the indicated seat opposite her.
Daisy’s lips parted and closed again. She knew virtually nothing about the property in Blairden Square, not even if there were any offers on it. Since Giles had never allowed her to deal with what he termed the ‘superior residences’ on the agency books, she had had no reason to take any interest in them. Starter homes and apartments were generally her field. But had she been in her right mind she would have checked out the facts before she’d left the office.
A glossy brochure landed squarely on her lap. She jumped. Startled violet eyes switched to the male she had been rigorously avoiding looking at.
‘Time to bone up,’ Alessio said very drily, his expressive mouth as hard as iron.
‘You’re not very efficient, are you?’ his companion remarked in cutting addition. ‘High-powered sales routines are painful but total ignorance is something else again!’
Daisy had coloured but she tilted her chin. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t dealt with this particular property before—’
‘It’s a Georgian terrace,’ Alessio slotted in gently. ‘But don’t worry about it. We can read too.’
Daisy bent her head, his smooth derision stinging like acid on her over-sensitive skin. Why was he treating her like this? Alessio was blunt but he had never been a boor. She didn’t understand his apparent need to humiliate her. Surely he couldn’t still be blaming her after all these years? And it was so ridiculous to be forced to pretend that they were strangers. Was that her fault...or his? He had made no attempt to acknowledge their previous relationship either. But then why should he have? Why should either of them want to? That relationship was all but lost in the mists of time, she told herself, until intelligence intervened. How could that long-ago summer ever be lost for her when she had Tara? Her stomach cramped again into even tighter knots.
The buzz of a mobile phone broke the tense silence. Daisy didn’t lift her head. But she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t even begin to study the brochure. It was as if her whole brain had gone into a state of suspended animation, as if the world had stopped dead the instant she’d glanced up and seen Alessio in Giles’s office. No longer the long, lean youth she recalled but, if anything, even more heartbreakingly handsome...
He had level dark brows, cheekbones sharp enough to cut concrete, an aristocratic blade of a nose, lustrous tawny eyes and a head of glossy black hair, now ruthlessly suppressed into a smooth cut and infinitely shorter than she recalled. His hard-boned features were intensely male, his wide, beautifully shaped mouth pure sensual threat. He could smile and steal your heart with one scorching, teasing glance...but that had been the boy, not the man, Daisy reminded herself painfully.
She flinched as Nina Franklin gave an explosive little shriek of annoyance and thrust the mobile phone back into her capacious bag.
‘I can’t stay!’ she told Alessio furiously. ‘Joss needs me now. I could scream but how can I refuse? He’s done me too many favours. You might as well let me out here. I can walk to the studio faster than you can get me there in this traffic! Look, I’ll try to make it over to the house before you leave.’
‘Relax...it’s not important,’ Alessio murmured soothingly.
‘I could strangle Joss!’ the blonde exclaimed resentfully, and then her green eyes landed on Daisy and hardened to accusing arrows of steel. ‘If you had been on time, this wouldn’t be happening!’
‘Perhaps you would prefer to cancel and make a fresh appointment?’ Daisy suggested with an eagerness she couldn’t conceal.
‘No, I’ll keep this one,’ Alessio drawled.
Stiff as a small statue, Daisy quite deliberately averted her gaze as the limousine stopped; the other woman slid out, but not without many regretful mutterings and an attempt at a lingering and physical goodbye that had car horns screeching in protest as the lights changed. Of course they were lovers. Daisy’s fine features were clenched fiercely tight. The intimacy between them was blatant.
Viewing a house together... Were they getting married? Her stomach twisted as she pondered that idea for the first time. For some reason she suddenly felt as if somebody was jumping up and down on her lungs. The door slammed again, sealing her into unwanted isolation with Alessio, and Daisy stopped breathing altogether.
‘It’s been a day for unpleasant surprises,’ Alessio commented grimly.
Daisy finally got up the courage to look at him again, her strained violet eyes unguarded. ‘Is that why you felt that you had to take it out on me?’
‘You are not one of my happier memories. What did you expect?’ Hard eyes regarded her pale face without any perceptible emotion at all.
‘I don’t know...’ Daisy whispered unevenly. ‘I just never expected to see you again.’
‘Look on this as a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence,’ Alessio urged with chilling contempt. ‘As greedy little bitches go, you’re still top of the list in my experience! I would go some distance to avoid a repeat of this encounter.’
In the pin-dropping silence which ensued, Daisy turned bone-white. Her appalled gaze clung to his set dark features and the cold hostility stamped there. He made no attempt to hide the emotion. Shock rolled over her in a revitalised wave. He despised her; he really despised her! But why? Why should he feel like that? Hadn’t she let him go free? Hadn’t she given him back what he’d wanted and needed and what she should never have taken? Hadn’t that single, unselfish action been sufficient to defuse his resentment?
‘But it is some consolation to learn that you’re now poor enough to be forced to earn a living,’ Alessio acknowledged, his cold eyes resting on her like ice-picks in search of cruelly tender flesh.
‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at... I’ve always worked for a living. And how can you call me a greedy bitch?’ Daisy suddenly lashed back at him, shock splintering to give way to angry defensiveness.
Alessio emitted a sardonic laugh, his nostrils flaring. ‘Isn’t that what you are?’
‘In what way was I greedy?’ Daisy pressed in ever growing bewilderment. ‘I took nothing from you or your family.’
‘You call half a million pounds nothing?’
A furrow formed between her delicate brows. ‘But I refused the money. Your father tried very hard to make me accept it but I refused.’
‘You’re a liar.’ Alessio’s eloquent mouth twisted with derision. ‘My father was not the leading light in that deal. You made the demand. He paid up only because he was foolishly trying to protect me.’
‘I didn’t demand anything...and I didn’t accept any money either!’ Daisy protested heatedly.
Alessio dealt her a look of complete indifference that cut like a knife. ‘I don’t even know why I mentioned it. That pay-off was the tacky but merciful end to a very sordid little affair.’
Daisy bit the soft underside of her lower lip and tasted the acrid tang of her own blood. The pain steadied her a little. Alessio’s father, Vittorio, had obviously lied. Clearly he had told his son that she had accepted the money. And why should that lie surprise her? The Leopardi clan had loathed her on sight. His parents had tried hard to hide the fact when Alessio was around, but his twin sister, Bianca, had shown her hostility openly. Daisy stared into space, her whole being engulfed by a powerful wave of remembered pain and rejection.
In the swirling oblivion of that tide of memory she relived the heady scent of lush grass bruised by their lovemaking, the kiss of the Tuscan sun on her skin and the passionate weight and urgency of Alessio’s lean body on hers. Broken dreams and lost innocence. Her eyes burned, her small frame tensing defensively. Why had nobody ever told her how much loving could hurt and destroy? By the time she had found out that reality, the damage had been done and her reward had been guilt and despair. A ‘sordid little affair’? No, for her it had been so much more, and it was in the divergence of outlook that the seeds of disaster had been sown...