Some time later, a distant dull thud broke the silence of the villa. Daisy frowned when within the space of a minute another thud followed...and then another. She lost count but realised in growing horror that the racket of slamming doors was getting louder and closer, not to mention more intimidating, by the second. The image of Alessio striding through the villa conducting something as uncool as a room-to-room search for his missing bride shook her rigid but Daisy stayed where she was, as stiff and tense as a sacrificial offering, until finally and with an almighty crash that matched her heartbeat the door flew wide.
‘I ought to chain you to a wall in the cellar!’ Alessio launched at her in a roar of raw derision as he strode over to the bed and stared fulminatingly down at her shrinking figure. ‘At least then I’d know where to find you! You spend half the damned day hiding in the woods and then creep up here to the attics to spend the night. What sort of a marriage do you call this?’
‘This is not a normal marriage—’
‘But it’s about to become one!’ Alessio swore with conviction as he dragged back the bedding and hauled her up into his arms before she could even draw breath to evade him.
‘Put me down!’ Daisy screeched in shock, having been prepared for argument but not physical intervention.
‘You’re supposed to be in my bedroom. That’s where you’re going. And if you don’t want to sleep in the bed with me you can sleep on the floor...but one thing I do know—you are sleeping in the same room. Why? Because you are my wife!’ Alessio spelt out with wrathful emphasis.
‘You blackmailed me into becoming your wife!’
‘Come off it,’ Alessio countered with blistering contempt, thundering down the stairs two at a time and striding along the corridor. ‘On your terms the blackmail was manna from heaven!’
‘I... beg... your... pardon?’ Daisy gasped, devastated that he should already be harbouring such a suspicion.
‘You want me every bit as much as I want you ... and only this way could you have me without admitting that fact. Manna from heaven!’ Alessio repeated with provocative bite as he dumped her down on the bed.
‘That’s an absolutely ridiculous accusation!’ Daisy struggled to sound convincingly incredulous but she had turned scarlet.
‘And since nothing will convince me that you don’t want me ... mutual lust being instantly recognisable ... I can’t understand why you’re still running in the wrong direction!’ Alessio delivered with savage candour. ‘What more do you want from me? What does it take for me to get some co-operation? Do I need to tell you that there is a string of credit cards and a monthly allowance that would keep an oil sheikh happy waiting for you?’
Daisy paled and swallowed hard at the degrading suggestion that money might make her more amenable. Suddenly, playing the role of gold-digger who had gone out with a big unfeeling bang during their first marriage no longer felt like a source of secret amusement or a clever defence mechanism. Maybe it was time she told Alessio the truth about that financial settlement. She worried at her lower lip, feeling threatened by the prospect of even telling Alessio that much. But how could it hurt? At least he wouldn’t be able to call her mercenary again!
‘And the sound of your silence will not get us anywhere fast!’ Alessio bit out.
Daisy cleared her throat awkwardly but Alessio had already vanished into the bathroom. In an abrupt movement, she yanked up two pillows and placed them carefully in a defensive line down the centre of the bed.
Alessio hit the mattress and the barrier simultaneously. He sat up again and vented an expletive in Italian. ‘Sometimes you are so bloody childish...’
‘It is not childish of me to believe that our relationship will work best if we sleep apart,’ Daisy protested shakily. ‘And, by the way, I am not greedy and grasping and I never was!’
An expectant hush fell.
‘Is that the end of this astonishing rush of confidence?’ Alessio probed drily.
Colouring with annoyance, Daisy breathed in deep and forced herself onward, telling herself that it would be very much to her advantage to embarrass him with the truth. She tilted her chin. ‘Your father persuaded Janet to accept that settlement on my behalf. She put it in a Swiss bank account and she didn’t tell me it was there until last week.’
‘Madre di Dio...’ Alessio breathed in a shaken surge of comprehension, his deep voice fracturing. A split second later he attempted to breach the pillows but Daisy was ready for that eventuality.
She rolled out of bed and took up a defensive stance. ‘So you can stop calling me greedy, and I don’t need your credit cards or your lousy allowance because that settlement would keep Tara and me in comfort for the rest of our days!’
‘You weren’t lying when you said you didn’t take a penny when you divorced me...’ Spiky black lashes swept up to reveal shrewd, questioning eyes of gold as he surveyed her with intense interest and none of the embarrassment she had expected. ‘So at what stage did you decide that you preferred me to think that you were greedy and grasping? What were you trying to cover up?’
Chagrined pink flooded Daisy’s small face. The speed with which Alessio could assimilate new information and dissect it horrified her. ‘I...I—’
‘Then you genuinely did think that you were doing me a favour by divorcing me and keeping quiet about Tara,’ Alessio reflected out loud. ‘Daisy the martyr—now that does have a far more convincing ring of reality. You let my father bully you into the divorce, didn’t you?’ He drove a not quite steady hand through his luxuriant black hair and looked heavenwards, his strong jawline set fiercely hard.
The silence grew and lingered until her tension seemed to scream beneath its weight.
‘Daisy... were you still in love with me when you divorced me?’ Alessio enquired in a tone of the utmost casualness.
The silence was like the clash of cymbals in Daisy’s ears. She was appalled. One little thing, just one little thing she had confessed, and within the space of a minute he was sprinting for the finishing line.
‘Gosh, I’m so tired,’ she mumbled round a fake yawn, desperate fingers splayed to conceal her hot, discomfited face.
‘Come back to bed,’ Alessio purred in husky invitation. ‘I’ll wake you up fast.’
Involuntarily, Daisy hovered, violet eyes wide, a vulnerable prey to the lure of him. She thought of his hands on her body and a shiver of raw excitement coursed through her. A hungry need that she could not withstand held her fast. Why not give him the chance to prove that his way could work? an insidious voice murmured in the back of her mind.
‘I won’t risk another pregnancy,’ Alessio imparted with measured emphasis. ‘Is that what is worrying you? I don’t want another child.’
And instantly that voice in Daisy’s mind was silenced. A curious pain stabbed through her in its wake. Surely more children should at least have been a possibility in the normal marriage which Alessio had said he wanted? Yet he’d cooly dismissed the idea of extending the family before it could even arise.
In an abrupt movement, her every suspicion as to his marital intentions reawakened, Daisy grabbed at the light quilt lying at the foot of the bed. Beneath Alessio’s utterly incredulous gaze, she wrapped herself within its folds and curled up in a comfortable armchair.
CHAPTER NINE
IN DAISY’S dream, the most perfect baby in the world lay before her, unclaimed. She was in the very act of eagerly reaching out to take possession when a pair of cruel, unfeeling hands got there first. ‘I said no.’ Alessio’s voice intervened in icy disapproval and the seductive vision of sweet-smelling, lovable baby vanished.
Daisy woke up with tears trapped in her throat. A maid was pulling back the curtains. She was in bed but she was alone. She had a hazy recollection of briefly, blissfully snuggling into masculine arms and of the moan of distress which had escaped her when she had been released all too quickly into the cool embrace of a sheet. Her cheeks reddened fiercely. How long would it be before Alessio appreciated that she ran in the wrong direction only because she couldn’t trust herself too close? Or did he already appreciate that?
As for that stupid dream, she thought painfully, she hadn’t realised just how much she would love another baby until Alessio had announced that there wasn’t going to be one. She had experienced a deep sense of rejection. Her distrust and insecurity had taken over again. One unpleasant fact stared her in the face. If there was any truth in the suggestion that Alessio might be looking on their marriage as only a temporary expedient, a second child would definitely be on the forbidden list.
Even so, within twenty-four hours of remarriage, Alessio had still turned her every conviction inside out. Yesterday she had hidden behind her pride but last night she had made a first nervous step towards lowering her defences when she had told him about that Swiss bank account. She had to be honest with herself at least. She loved the rat. She desperately wanted to be convinced that their marriage was real and that it did have a future.
As her steps sounded on the stairs some twenty minutes later, Alessio strolled out of the drawing room. A shaft of sunlight glittered across his luxuriant black hair; burnished his eyes and threw into prominence his hard, classic cheekbones and beautiful mouth. Intense sexual awareness literally froze Daisy in her tracks. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She could barely breathe. Her heart pounded in her eardrums, the blades of unquenched desire scissoring cruelly through her taut length, filling her with embarrassing heat as every pulse raced.