The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain (18 page)

‘
Bella,
Alicia.'

She turned around then and he swept that hot black gaze up and down, taking in gold chiffon folds that fell from under her bust in layers, down to her feet.

His brow quirked. ‘Shoes?'

She stuck out a foot and showed him the funky gold wedges Signora Pasquale had found. She smiled even as her heart ached. ‘I've learnt my lesson one too many times now. Me and heels just do not go. Wedges are the way forward.'

Her hair was piled high, curly tendrils escaping. Golden hoop earrings swung against her slim neck, a single gold bangle encircled her tiny wrist.

Dante's chest felt tight. ‘Let's go.'

 

Despite the wedges, Alicia's feet were beginning to hurt. The dinner was long over but people still milled around the glittering ballroom in one of Milan's oldest buildings. Dante had given a speech, again showing her, uncomfortably, that if he had a passion for something, he was a force to be reckoned with. She took a sip of champagne, she wasn't going to wallow in
that
self-pity again.

And then he was striding towards her through the crowd. He came and took the glass from her and lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing her in full view of everyone. Something in Alicia's chest hardened—still the act, the show of public respectability. He was certainly getting his money's worth, she thought with uncharacteristic cynicism.

They started to make their way out of the room and were almost at the door when Dante stopped so rapidly that Alicia bumped into his back. She looked around to see what the hold up was and saw a woman addressing him. She looked to be a few years senior to Alicia, closer to Dante's age. And she was very beautiful. Thick black hair, dark olive skin and green almond eyes…In fact, she was exquisite. More than exquisite.

Alicia couldn't understand what they were saying but she didn't mistake Dante's tension or the way his hand had tightened almost painfully on hers. He'd even moved her so that she was a little behind him, as if to stop her witnessing this. Feeling suddenly enraged at this behaviour and even more so if this was some ex-lover of his, she pulled free and stepped around to face the woman.

Her green eyes were hard and cold and took Alicia aback. But she was determined to be the one to show good manners, even though her heart was breaking a little apart because surely this woman must have been a lover—she was too gorgeous not to have been.

She held out a hand. ‘Hello, I'm Alicia.'

The woman just cast a disdainful look at her hand and turned back to Dante, a sneer on her lovely face—which didn't actually look so lovely any more. She spoke again, rapidly.

Dante said something harsh and the woman stopped talking, her mouth mutinous, ugly.

Alicia couldn't stop herself. ‘Dante…who is this, please?'

He didn't even look at her; he kept looking at the woman, his expression so cold that it scared Alicia. ‘This,' he said and his voice matched his look, ‘is
no one.
'

And with that he grabbed her hand again and pulled her after him and out of the room.

W
HAT
shook Alicia up more than anything was the thought that perhaps some day she'd run into him again, exactly like that, and he would look at her with the same arctic coldness while clutching the hand of another woman. And she couldn't bear it. She knew the moment had come and she almost welcomed the events of the evening, what she'd witnessed. It was a sign.

Once inside the dimly lit palazzo she pulled back from him when he would have reached for her hand to lead her up to bed.

He looked back at her, the impatience on his face nearly funny, except Alicia didn't feel like laughing. She spoke and thankfully her voice was steady. ‘Dante, who was that woman?'

He frowned. ‘It doesn't matter who she is; I told you she's no one.'

Again that chilling tone. It cut through her.

‘Of course she's not no one Dante, she's a human being. An ex-lover?'

She held her breath.

‘Why do you want to know?' he hurled out, getting angry. His reaction made her even more determined.

‘I want to know, Dante, because whether you like it or not, we have a relationship and quite frankly it scared me the way you treated her.' She turned away from him, afraid he might see something in her eyes, and went into the drawing room. One lamp glowed in the corner, sending long shadows across the floor. She heard him come in behind her and turned back again, wrapping her arms around herself.

He stood in the doorway, six feet four inches of bristling, angry, taut
male.
And she had no idea why he was so angry.

‘Well? Why can't you tell me? Is it a bit inconvenient having your lovers run into each other?' She laughed harshly. ‘I'm surprised you're not used to it; after all there must be enough of us.'

He strode in and stopped just inches away; she could see that he was restraining himself from touching her. She wasn't scared; she knew he wouldn't touch her in violence. But he was livid.

‘And which rag did you read that in, Alicia?'

‘No, let's not make this about me. Your reputation is well-known, Dante; you said it yourself when you
asked
me so nicely to come to the conference in the first place.' A poisonous image inserted itself into her mind's eye, and the memory of the way he'd dismissed that other woman in his life so summarily. She couldn't stop, the words came pouring out. ‘The woman on the steps of the hotel that night in Lake Como; you'd just come from her bed, hadn't you?'

A dull flush coloured his cheekbones. That memory was utterly toxic to him now.

‘See? So please, spare me.' She folded her arms and moved back, chin tilted up with all the defiance she could muster. ‘So are you going to tell me, or just run around the city bumping into women and freezing them out…the same way you'll freeze me out some day, no doubt.'

Dante couldn't believe they were having this conversation. They should be in bed now. When he thought of that woman all he felt was disgust. And now Alicia was digging, insisting on finding out.

He felt stupid then, foolish. His first instinct when faced with Sonia had been to protect Alicia from her venomous presence; he'd even moved her behind him. And yet…the two women were peas in a pod. A hard, heavy, dense mass weighed his chest down. Talk about a sign to wake him up, having Alicia and Sonia come face to face like that.

He laughed harshly then. ‘You want to know who she is?'
Because she is you and you are she; that's why you're so interested isn't it?

He paced back and forth on the carpet like a caged panther and Alicia instinctively stepped away a little. His energy was lashing out like the end of a live wire.

‘I'll tell you exactly who she is; you'll probably admire her. Her name is Sonia Paparo.' His mouth twisted with extreme distaste. ‘And yes, we were lovers. A long time ago, when I inherited the business from Stefano. Actually, to be exact, the day after I made my first million she turned up on my doorstep. She had some lame story but I didn't care because she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.'

Alicia backed away even further, every word a dart that cut and stung. But she had asked for it and knew he wouldn't stop now.

His accent was thicker. ‘I told her all about myself because, well, when you're in love you do, don't you?' He didn't wait for an answer; his eyes were like burning coals.

‘I told her how our mother left us, how angry I was, how hurt. How Paolo had pined for her for years, that he still pined for her. Then one day she arrived and had a woman with her, an old woman who knelt down at my feet and begged forgiveness for leaving me and Paolo.'

Alicia's hand went to her chest. Hearing the words was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

‘I saw no reason not to believe Sonia's fantastic story of how she'd overheard this woman in the market talking about the two boys she'd deserted, and how much she regretted it. How she'd put two and two together. After all, why would she lie to me? She loved me. And I did look at it logically; it wasn't so unbelievably fantastical, we were still in the same area of Naples. The woman would have been around the right age, the same colouring…and she knew things about us…but it was only afterwards I realized that they were things I had told Sonia, together with a bit of intuition, supposition and women's innate deviousness thrown in for good measure.'

‘Dante—' She put out a hand but he cut her off curtly.

‘I'm not finished. So, against my best instincts, I welcomed the woman into my house. Too much had happened for me to forgive so quickly, but Paolo, being at an impressionable age, was ecstatic to have his mother back again, not that he'd even really known her in the first place. A huge part of me didn't believe…and Sonia accused me of being cynical, unbelieving. She pointed out how happy Paolo was…and I didn't want to be like that—cynical, mistrustful. I'd had a bellyful of it on the streets.'

Alicia felt a chair behind her and sat down dumbly. She watched as Dante still paced.

‘I don't think I need to explain to you the importance of the mother in Italian families.' It wasn't a question and Dante had gone inwards to another place. Alicia could only sit and watch, mute.

‘I knew Sonia expected a marriage proposal; she'd made it obvious from very early on. But I'd held back, I'd always vowed I'd never marry.' His mouth twisted in a parody of black humour. ‘But, funnily enough, by then
Mama
was firmly ensconced in her new role and encouraging me daily to make an honest woman of Sonia. One day I came home to find them cackling together in the kitchen over how much money they would stand to get when I asked Sonia to marry me, as they predicted I was about to do any day.' He laughed harshly. ‘And, more fool me, I'd even picked out a ring. Had stupidly listened to her advice.'

Alicia couldn't move.

He looked straight at her, through her, the pain in his eyes intense. ‘Mother and daughter, con artists. It was a well worn ploy and we were the perfect victims. When I wasn't quick enough to propose, Sonia got creative. Between us, we wouldn't have really remembered our mother…but Paolo…I had to tell him the truth. He couldn't have borne the thought of being abandoned again.'

Alicia stood up and came over, her eyes anguished. ‘Dante, I'm so sorry, truly…I know exactly how you must have felt—'

Her words cut into him, the wound still raw, and he couldn't believe how he'd been provoked into telling her about Sonia. He turned on her, eyebrows drawn together in fury. ‘
You?
How on earth could you ever know what it was like to be abandoned?'

He looked down his strong nose at her in disgust.

‘I know,' she said quietly, ‘because I watched my own mother walk away from me when I was four and Melanie was two and a half.'

Betrayal—
all over again. The word resounded in his head, deafening him. For a minute there was silence and then the cold fury that blasted from Dante was worse than any hot temper.

‘You…' He said something undoubtedly rude in Italian, his mouth a tight sneer. ‘I tell you this and still you think that you can worm your way in with not only a baby but now a fairy tale of abandonment. You haven't even got the intelligence to try and make up a slightly better version, an even more lurid story to really tug on the heartstrings?'

Alicia was trying to make sense of this; she knew on some banal level that obviously he didn't believe her. And on another level this pain cut so deep that she didn't think she'd even make it from the room.

Dante looked at her, incandescent with rage at her blatant greed and audacity. Her eyes had closed with his words and now she looked dead ahead, through him. Her face was pale.

How could she do this? Didn't she see? Acting to the bitter end.

Yet, even in the midst of this he was aware of her, in a visceral way that eclipsed anything he'd felt for any other woman, even Sonia…It was the worst thing of all; it even made the naked greed and avarice seem unimportant…Something dark moved through him. And what it was, was this: he knew he couldn't let this woman go; he wasn't ready for that, no matter what. He assured himself he was still in control, even though he felt anything but.

‘Nothing has changed, Alicia. We can get past this, at least we can be totally honest now.'

She lifted dead eyes to his and he took a step back. She laughed and it didn't sound like her. ‘You just can't believe that your brother could fall in love with a girl—a nice girl,
a good girl—
have a baby and want to get married, can you? Because it didn't happen for you. You got tricked in a heinous way, Dante, but she was one woman and her very twisted mother…and I'm afraid, as inconveniently coincidental as it may sound, we do share a similar history of woe.'

She sounded incredibly weary all of a sudden. ‘To be honest, I don't much care if you believe me, I should be used to it now, you haven't believed a word I've said since the moment we met and I've done nothing but tell the truth. And when I was wrong, I apologized. You can look up the records of the North London Orphanage Trust and you'll see our names there.'

‘If this is true, then why didn't you tell me the night I told you about my past?'

She looked at him with a dull light dimming her eyes. ‘Would you have listened, would you have believed me? It would have sounded just as fantastic then.'

Then she remembered something he'd said and her face paled even more with the hurt that sliced through her. ‘And if you think that I could ever
admire
someone who could do something like that, then you don't know me at all.' She emitted a harsh sound somewhere between a laugh and a moan. It was a sound of pain, if Dante could only recognize it, but Alicia knew he wouldn't.

‘Actually, do you know what, it's not even about knowing me, the truth is—you don't
want
to know me. All you want is a body in your bed.'

He took a step forward and opened his mouth to speak but just then his mobile rang shrilly in his pocket. With a grunt of irritation he plucked it out and answered it, his eyes never leaving Alicia's face.
‘Si…'

All she heard was rapid incomprehensible Italian, she turned away, wrapping her arms around herself and thinking of how she would try to get a flight tomorrow—get away. After hearing what Dante had been through, she could understand where his mistrust stemmed from. She knew now that that woman had taken his heart and crushed it to pieces before he'd had a chance to experience real love. She felt weary; she was obviously not the woman who could unlock his heart. There were too many awful similarities. It was cruel how the divine forces had brought them together.

‘Alicia.'

She turned and opened her mouth, about to ask him to just let her go to bed—
without him—
and closed it again. His face looked bleak and had a completely different expression. Immediately adrenalin flowed through her.

‘It's Melanie, isn't it? Something's wrong.'

He put out a hand to her shoulder and she flinched. He winced.

‘Tell me.'

‘She's been rushed into the clinic; they have to do an emergency Caesarean section.'

Her hand went to her chest. ‘But she's only seven and a half months pregnant.'

She swayed and Dante put his arm around her, the abject fear and worry on her face mocking him and his obstinate suspicions. In that instant many things became clear to him and yet…so much was still obscured, but it would all have to wait now.

He helped her from the room, made her put on something more practical and within the hour they were taking off for England.

 

By the time they reached the clinic the early morning rush hour was starting to clog the autumnal London streets. Alicia didn't wait for her door to be opened; she ran from the car, straight inside. When she found the room, she burst in to find Melanie and Paolo holding hands, their faces wreathed in tired smiles.