One Night In Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘You’ve proved that to me, Meghan,’ he snapped savagely. ‘You’re like a little beaten dog, accepting every careless kick. I can’t get you to leave!’

  Meghan blinked. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to be able to do this. She just didn’t know if she had the strength.

  ‘I was honest with you,’ she said, after a long, taut moment, her voice barely audible. ‘I told you my secrets. My shadows. I took the risk.’

  ‘What risk?’

  ‘The risk of having you not believe me. Of having you disgusted by me, by my past. Believing of me what Stephen did. It was a big risk.’

  He was silent, arrested, his eyes narrowed. Meghan dragged a breath into her lungs, willed herself to continue.

  ‘You told me you liked taking risks. I was a risk, you said. Well, sorry, Alessandro, but I don’t see that from here. All I see is a man haunted by his past. A man afraid to tell the truth. A coward.’

  ‘I am not a coward!’ His eyes flashed flint and his hands balled into fists. Meghan lifted her chin.

  ‘No? Then tell me the truth.’

  ‘I told you the truth.’

  ‘You told me the tabloid truth. I want to know what really happened the night of the car accident.’

  ‘That has nothing—’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ she cut him off. She pressed her hands flat against his chest. He shrugged away, but she kept on holding him. Touching him. ‘I think I’m smart enough to realise that even being the world’s biggest playboy wouldn’t drive you like this. Torture you like this. It has to be something else. So what else is there? It must be the car accident. Something happened that night—something that is consuming you with guilt. I know what guilt feels like, Alessandro. I know what it tastes like. It tastes like cold metal. It rides you, wakes you up in the night, drenched in sweat, in icy terror. I know. You said I had shadows, but you have them too, and I don’t want them here any more.’

  He looked down at her, curled his fingers around her hands as if to remove them, then stopped. His eyes weren’t blank; they were shadowed with pain, darkened with sorrow.

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  Meghan felt the first tremulous thrill of victory. She leaned in, kissed the rapid pulse of his throat. ‘It is.’

  Alessandro shook his head, the barest of movements, his eyes closed, his face working into hard lines, harsh angles.

  ‘What happened that night?’ Meghan asked softly. ‘You argued—you said something to Roberto and he didn’t like it. He was shaken, frightened. What did you tell him?’

  Alessandro was silent for a long moment. Meghan could hear the ragged rasp of their breathing; the pounding of their hearts. Outside a child laughed, a muted sound of joy from another world.

  ‘I told him the truth.’ Alessandro spoke through stiff lips, his eyes focused on a distant place, a remembered time. His voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘What was the truth?’

  His hands curled tightly around hers; he was holding onto her now, Meghan realised. He didn’t want her to let go.

  She wouldn’t. She never would.

  ‘He’d made a mistake.’ Alessandro stopped, and Meghan held her breath. She knew it would take time, and it would take pain, to bring the truth from him. She could wait. ‘He had no head for business, Roberto,’ he continued after a moment, his voice turning toneless. Meghan understood the need to distance himself from the telling. ‘He was an artist, burdened by my parents’ expectations. He never should have …’ He let out a low breath, shook his head, then continued. ‘After my father died, the company was Roberto’s alone. He made all the decisions, and he couldn’t handle the responsibility. He never should have been given it.’

  It should have been you, Meghan thought. Alessandro was the one with the head for business; he’d designed the most stunning piece of jewellery she’d ever seen. Yet he’d been passed over since he was a child—perhaps a bit too high-spirited, his mischievous pranks turning wilder as he was continually overlooked. It was so easy to imagine. To understand.

  ‘He made some bad business deals,’ Alessandro finally said. ‘Ran into debt, terrible debt, and he couldn’t get out. He became desperate, but he was also stupid. He wanted to pay back the loan sharks without anyone noticing, so he started embezzling from the company. Our company.’

  He looked down at her, regret etched on every line of his face. ‘I found out. I wish I hadn’t. Roberto would be alive today …’

  Meghan doubted that, but she held her tongue. Alessandro’s honesty—his confession—was too precious.

  ‘I used to check the company’s finances,’ he explained, expressionless once more. ‘I … I always had an interest. When I realised what was going on I was angry.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I was very angry—unreasonably so, perhaps—and I went to find him immediately. He was at a party—Paula, his wife, was there. Everyone was there. I spoke to him—I tried to keep it private …’ Now his voice turned urgent, almost pleading. ‘But Roberto decided to brazen it out. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about, asked why I was checking up on him, so I stated figures. Facts. Then the life drained out of him. I saw him then, defeated, hopeless, and I was glad.’ He looked at her, his face twisted with torment. ‘What sort of man does that make me, to feel that way towards my own brother? My own brother, who never did me a moment’s harm?’

  Meghan shrugged. She felt eerily calm. In control. At last. ‘A natural one, to have such a reaction in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘He left the party; I followed him.’ He was determined to finish it now, to have the reckoning. ‘We got in the car. Once we were alone Roberto became furious. I’d never seen him so angry, so … hateful. I knew he was afraid, but I didn’t let him off. I didn’t give him any mercy.’

  ‘Did he ask for it?’ Meghan asked.

  ‘He told me that I should turn a blind eye to his doings, that he’d always turned a blind eye to mine. I said … I said …’ Alessandro dragged in a shuddering breath. ‘I said I’d see him rot in hell first.’

  Meghan’s fingers ached from where he was clenching them, clinging to her as his last hope for redemption. She held on.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then …’ He drew in another breath. ‘And then he said that’s just what I’d do.’

  Alessandro was silent, his lips pressed tightly together, unable to say any more. To finish the story.

  Realisation dawned slowly, achingly. ‘He was driving the car, wasn’t he?’ Meghan said softly. ‘He tried to kill you both.’

  Alessandro didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Tenderly Meghan reached up and stroked his face, let her fingers trail along his cheek.

  ‘You took the blame,’ she surmised. It all made sense now. It was all so horrifyingly clear. ‘You didn’t want to sully his perfect reputation, did you? His wife … Your mother …’

  ‘He tried—’

  ‘What did you do? Trade places in the car? Emilia said you walked away without a scratch, but you must have had some injuries.’

  ‘A concussion,’ Alessandro said tonelessly. ‘I dragged him across to the passenger seat, managed to get myself behind the wheel before I blacked out. It was the only way,’ he told her, urgency roughening his tone into a demand. ‘Roberto was the kindest, gentlest person … He had a moment of terrible weakness, but one that would be remembered for ever. I knew they’d believe I was driving the car—maybe they’d even think I meant to do it. They’d believe anything of me. It hardly mattered. But Roberto never hurt anyone.’

  Except you, she thought. He hurt you.

  Meghan shook her head slowly; love swelled within her, hurting her with its beauty and joy. This was the man she loved. ‘And for this you feel guilt? Shame?’

  ‘I killed him,’ Alessandro whispered. ‘If I hadn’t confronted him … if I hadn’t said that …’ His voice turned angry, savage in its recrimination. ‘I knew he was weak. That he didn’t have a head for business. I’d always known it. It d
idn’t help matters that I was partying every night, acting the playboy to thumb my nose at my parents and the world. I was stupid and reckless, and no more so than the night I got into that car. If only I’d taken the keys …’

  ‘He would have done it another day,’ Meghan said calmly. ‘Another way. He was desperate, Alessandro, forced into a corner. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘It is.’ He spoke with such certainty that her heart plummeted; then she felt angry.

  ‘You can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions! Didn’t you show me that when I told you what happened to me? Was I responsible for Stephen’s actions? For what he did to me?’

  His face twisted in horror. ‘Meghan, don’t.’

  ‘No—you don’t,’ Meghan snapped back. He looked startled, and she almost smiled. ‘I see who you really are. The world even sees it—sees what you’ve done with Di Agnio Enterprises. Alessandro, you must forgive yourself. If not for your own sake, then for mine.’ She paused, her voice turning into an ache as she repeated the words he’d once said to her, the words with which he’d healed her. ‘I know, and I accept you. I believe you.’ She paused, tears filling her eyes as her fingers skimmed his cheek. ‘I love you.’

  Alessandro was silent; his eyes were closed. Meghan’s heart beat a steady, desperate staccato as she wondered what was going on in his tormented mind, what would happen now.

  Then a single tear slipped down his cheek; it dampened her fingers. Alessandro’s grief for his brother. Meghan’s breath caught in her chest; her heart expanded and she could breathe again. She could believe again.

  Alessandro opened his eyes. ‘I love you.’

  Meghan felt weak with relief, giddy with joy.

  He shook his head, took her tear-dampened fingers and lifted them to his lips. ‘I don’t know why I have been so blessed to have a woman who believes in me enough to see me through this. To make me go through this.’ He smiled, the sorrow sifting from his eyes, revealing a flicker of hope. ‘You saved me, Meghan. You saved me.’

  ‘And you saved me.’

  ‘I need to ask you to forgive me,’ he continued in a low voice, ‘for hurting you so very much. I did it to drive you away. I thought it would be easier for both of us. Or at least for me. I couldn’t bear seeing you walk away from me, gattina. Seeing you disgusted by who I was, by who I am.’

  ‘No,’ Meghan whispered, ‘never that. I know who you are, Alessandro, and you are the man I love.’

  He nodded in acceptance, in wonder. ‘You knew even before I did. How can you know me so well when I was blind to myself?’

  ‘We were both blind,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘And we needed each other to be healed. Forgiven.’ Loved.

  He pulled her towards him, kissed her with a gentle passion that had her swaying into him completely, surrendering everything. Her heart, her soul, her mind, her body. His. All his.

  ‘I am a blessed, blessed man,’ he said, and there was a ragged edge of incredulous gratitude in his voice.

  ‘No more blessed than I am.’

  He nodded, kissing her again, and as sunlight slanted through the windows, sifting patterns on the floor, Meghan realised the shadows were gone. All of them.

  All that was left was her and Alessandro, and joy. Only joy.

  The Italian’s Captive Virgin

  INDIA GREY

  About the Author

  A self-confessed romance junkie, INDIA GREY was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon Writers’ Guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school-day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept these guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she also gained a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University and, in a stroke of genius on the part of the Gods of Romance, met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity, and heaps of pink washing generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!

  To John.

  Thank you for the Happy Ever After.

  PROLOGUE

  THE dress was ivory satin, heavy and smooth. Once a nineteen-fifties cocktail dress belonging to Grandmère, Anna’s mother had taken it in to fit Anna’s skinny ten-year-old frame and added a narrow grosgrain ribbon around the waist, just above where the skirt flared out with wonderful fullness. An old piece of net curtain trimmed with tiny crystal beads and fixed down with a pleasingly authentic-looking plastic tiara completed the picture.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Anna looked at herself in the mirror, her dark eyes shining with joy. ‘Just like what a real bride would wear. It’s the best birthday present ever. Thank you, Mama.’

  Lisette smiled. ‘Happy Birthday, chérie. You’re beautiful. You look like a fairy princess.’

  Anna frowned. She knew it wasn’t true. Fairy princesses would be soft and blonde and blue-eyed like her mother, not olive-skinned and dark like she was. But she loved the dress all the same.

  She was lucky that her birthday always fell in the summer holidays, when she and her mother were staying with Grandmère at Château Belle-Eden, and that summer she did nothing but play weddings. Gathering armfuls of flowers from the château’s garden, she entwined garlands of jasmine and ivy around the banisters and tied heavy old-fashioned roses into spiky bouquets. In the hot, still afternoons the hallway was cool and the dim light filtering through the magnificent stained-glass dome above cast shimmering patterns on to the pale stone floor. While her mother played the piano in the salon Anna would drift down the stairs, shedding petals from her wilting rose bouquet, towards her imaginary waiting groom.

  She pictured him standing at the bottom of the sweeping staircase, looking exactly like the prince in her book of fairy tales. Tall, blond, impossibly elegant in his morning coat, she imagined over and over again the moment when he would turn and look up at her.

  The love that blazed in his blue eyes took her breath away every time.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘C’EST tout, mademoiselle?’

  Anna cast a last look at her childhood, jumbled into the back of the auctioneer’s van, and swallowed hard.

  ‘Yes. That’s all.’

  The man slid up the tailgate and dusted off his big hands. ‘Bien, mademoiselle. There are just a few boxes left in the attic now; nothing that can go in a Paris saleroom, I’m afraid. Perhaps a local firm, a brocante?

  Anna nodded, absent-mindedly scuffing the dusty gravel with the toe of her little green ballet pump, then stopping abruptly. She’d spent too long in tatty espadrilles hanging around with the GreenPlanet gang—she’d almost forgotten how to behave in proper clothes.

  She straightened up and smiled apologetically at the removal man. His face softened. He’d worked for Paris’s top auction house for a good many years now, so by rights nothing should surprise him any more. Aristocrats were an eccentric lot, and English aristocrats were the oddest of all, but Lady Roseanna Delafield was like no one he had ever come across before. With her silky black hair shot through with pink streaks and her quick, graceful ballerina’s movements, she was like a pedigree kitten who had got lost and gone feral. Today her hair was caught back in a discreet knot at the nape of her neck, she was wearing a little black linen shift dress that made her skin glow like sun-kissed apricots and she looked for all the world like any other smart young lady of breeding, but nothing could quite disguise the vulnerability in those big dark eyes.

  ‘Bon chance, ma petite,’ he said kindly, climbing into the driver’s seat of his lorry. ‘Is sad to say goodbye to somewhere where we ‘ave be
en ‘appy, no?’

  Anna shrugged sadly. ‘Yes. But maybe it’s not goodbye just yet. You never know …’

  Leaning out of the window the man laughed. ‘Miracles do ‘appen, chérie. I ‘ope you find one.’ He started the engine and winked at her. ‘You deserve it. Au revoir.’

  Anna watched the van disappear round the bend in the drive, through the pine trees, then she turned and walked slowly back into the château. Inside the hot, late summer air was heavy with the smell of decay and her eyes travelled desolately around the once-splendid entrance hall. The duck-egg-blue silk that lined the walls was rotting and torn; pale squares were left where the men had taken down the paintings and darker patches showed the ravages of damp.

  Her little low-heeled shoes echoed on the leaf-strewn floor as she walked slowly up the stairs. Above her, miraculously the stained glass dome was still intact and at that moment a shaft of afternoon sunlight sent shimmering pools of light on to the stairs. She smiled, remembering how she used to love trying to catch those rippling rainbows as a child, and how they used to fall in vivid splashes on the white bride’s dress she’d got for her birthday that summer when she’d played the wedding game.

  That last summer before her mother had died.

  She jumped as her mobile phone rang, and slid it out of her bag.

  ‘Fliss, I’m on my way. The auctioneer people just left, so I’m just going to lock up and leave.’

  ‘OK, honey, I’ll order you a very strong Martini.’ Fliss’s voice was warm with compassion and understanding. ‘Are you getting the bus?’

  ‘No. One of the guys in the GreenPlanet camp has a bike I can borrow. It’s only a few miles.’

  From the other end of the phone Fliss gave a snort of laughter. ‘You’re joking, right? Anna, no one has ever arrived at the Hotel Paradis by bike. Are you going to get it valet parked?’

  Stamping up a narrower flight of stairs to the attic, Anna scowled. ‘Don’t be silly. I don’t see why I should pump carbon monoxide into the atmosphere just to keep the parking valets at the Paradis in tips.’