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wondered why she was reluctant, why she was afraid.
They’d just shown how grown up and civil they could be. The past was truly forgotten.
She wasn’t that girl any more.
Stefano threaded her fingers with his own as he led her off the dance floor and away from the party.
This was strange, Allegra told herself as Stefano handed her her coat. Yet it was nice too, she realized as they headed out into the night, the September air cool on her flushed cheeks.
Too nice, perhaps.
‘Where to?’ Stefano stood on the kerb, an expensive woollen overcoat draped over one arm, his eyebrows raised in faint question.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know London nightspots very well.’
‘Nor do I. But I do know a quiet wine bar near here that can be quite relaxing. How does that sound?’
‘Fine. Lovely.’
She didn’t see Stefano gesture to the doorman, but he must have for a cab pulled sleekly to a halt at the kerb. Stefano brushed the doorman aside and opened the car door himself, ushering Allegra in before he joined her.
Their thighs touched as he slid next to her, and Stefano did not move away. Allegra wasn’t sure whether she liked the feel of his hard thigh pressing against hers or not, but she was certainly aware of it. Her hand curled around the door handle, nerves leaping to life.
They rode in silence, and Allegra was glad. She didn’t feel up to making conversation.
After a few minutes, the cab pulled to a halt in front of an elegantly fronted establishment in Mayfair and Stefano paid the driver before he helped Allegra out. His hand was warm and dry and Allegra forced herself to let go.
She could not let herself be attracted to Stefano now. Not when she had a life, admittedly a small, humble one compared to his wealth and status, but one that was hers and hers alone.
Not when she knew what he was like. What he believed. Tonight was about being friends. That was all.
That was all it could be.
The wine bar was panelled in dark wood, with low tables and comfortable armchairs scattered around. It was like entering someone’s study and Allegra could see immediately why Stefano liked it.
‘Shall I order a bottle of red?’ he asked, and Allegra bit her lip.
‘I think I’ve had enough wine already.’
‘What is an evening with friends without wine?’ He smiled. ‘Just drink a little if you prefer, but we must have a toast.’
‘All right.’ It did seem rather prim and stingy to sit sipping iced water.
Stefano ordered and they were soon seated in two squashy armchairs. Allegra even kicked off her heels—her feet had been killing her—and tucked her legs up under her.
‘So,’ Stefano said, ‘I want to hear more about what you’ve been up to these last seven years.’
Allegra laughed. ‘That’s a rather tall order.’
He shrugged; she’d forgotten how wide his shoulders were, how much power and grace the simplest of movements revealed. ‘You’re an art therapist, you said. How did that come about?’
‘I took classes.’
‘When you arrived in London?’
‘Soon after.’
The waiter came with the wine and they were both silent while he uncorked the bottle and poured. Stefano tasted it, smiled and indicated for the waiter to pour for Allegra.
‘Cin cin,’ he said, raising his glass in the old informal toast that reminded her of her childhood, and she smiled, raising her own.
She drank, grateful for the rich liquid that coated her throat and burned in her belly. Despite Stefano’s easy manner, Allegra realized she was still feeling unsettled.
Seeing him brought back more memories than she’d ever wanted to face. Memories and questions.
She had chosen not to face them when she’d left. She’d quite deliberately put the memories in a box and unlike Pandora, she’d had no curiosity to open it. No desire for the accompanying emotions and fears to come tumbling out.
When you didn’t face something, she knew, it became easier never to face it. It became quite wonderfully easy to simply ignore it. For ever.
Yet now that something was staring her straight in the face, smiling blandly.
Whatever Stefano had felt seven years ago, he’d clearly got over it. He’d put his ghosts, his demons to rest and had moved on.
And so had she.
Hadn’t she?
Yes, she told herself, she had. She had.
Stefano crossed one long leg over the other, smiling easily. ‘Tell me about these classes you took,’ he said.
‘What is there to tell?’ Her voice came out too high, too strained. Allegra took a breath and let it out slowly. She even managed a laugh. ‘I came to London and I lived at my uncle’s house for … a little while. Then I got my own digs, my own job, and when I’d saved enough money I started taking night classes. Eventually I realized I enjoyed art and I specialised in art therapy. I received my preliminary qualification two years ago.’
Stefano nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ he finally said. ‘It must have been very difficult, starting out on your own.’
‘No more difficult than the alternative,’ Allegra retorted, and then felt a hectic flush sweep across her face and crawl up her throat as she realized the implication of what she’d said.
‘The alternative,’ Stefano replied musingly. He smiled wryly, but Allegra saw something flicker in his eyes. She didn’t know what it was—hidden, shadowy—but it made her uneasy.
It made her wonder.
‘By the alternative,’ he continued, rotating his wineglass between lean brown fingers, ‘you mean marrying me.’
Allegra took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Stefano, marrying you would have destroyed me back then. My mother saved me that night she helped me run away.’
‘And saved herself as well.’
Allegra bit her lip. ‘Yes, I realize now she did it for her own ends, to shame my father. She used me as much as my father intended to use me.’
A month after her arrival in England, she’d heard of her mother’s flagrant affair with Alfonso, the driver who had spirited Allegra away. Allegra had lost enough of her naïveté then to realize how her mother had manipulated her daughter’s confused and frightened state for her own ends—the ultimate shaming of the man she despised, the man who had arranged Allegra’s marriage.
Her husband.
And what had it gained her?
By the time Isabel had left, Roberto Avesti was bankrupt and his business, Avesti International, ruined. Isabel hadn’t realized the depth of her husband’s disgrace, or the fact that it would mean she would be, if not broken-hearted, then at least broke.
Allegra bit her lip, her mind and heart sliding away from that line of conversation, those memories, the cost her own freedom had demanded from everyone involved.
‘Even so,’ she said firmly, ‘it’s the truth. I was nineteen, a child, I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted.’
Stefano’s face was expressionless, his eyes blank, steady on hers. ‘I could have helped you with that.’
‘No, you couldn’t. Wouldn’t.’ Allegra shook her head. ‘What you wanted in a wife wasn’t—isn’t—the