Second-Time Bride

by Lynne Graham

  ‘You are scaring me,’ Daisy muttered in a surge of involuntary candour.

  ‘Maybe you scare me when you haul out a suitcase barely twenty-four hours after you say “I do” for the second time!’ Alessio was very pale beneath his golden skin but fierce determination harshly delineated his sculpted bone structure. ‘Now, I don’t expect you to become bosom pals with my sister but I do expect a mature acceptance that my family are also Tara’s family and that when she arrives here at the end of the week she does not need to be dragged into the midst of some continuing, petty war that started before she was even born!’

  ‘I did not restart the war.’

  Alessio spread his lean, strong hands in a bold arc of impatience with a subject he clearly considered beneath his notice. ‘I will not allow Tara to come home to us for the first time and find a hostile atmosphere—’

  ‘And what are you intending to do to improve that atmosphere?’ A laugh that was no laugh at all escaped Daisy as she recalled the humiliation of his earlier rejection. Fighting blindly to conserve her pride, torn with savage pain and confusion, she thrust up her chin in defiance. ‘I hate you, Alessio. I really hate you for what you’ve done to me today!’

  ‘Or maybe you hate me for what I didn’t do!’ Throwing her off balance, Alessio cast an explicit and suggestive glance back towards the disordered bed. Bold eyes flaming over her, he murmured thickly, ‘I can hardly believe now that I walked away from temptation.’

  Affected more than she could bear by that mercurial change of mood and direction, her breasts rising and falling with the accelerated pace of her breathing, Daisy said with hoarse emphasis, ‘You’ll get your face slapped if you try to walk back again!’

  ‘When did that prospect ever inhibit me?’ Alessio flashed her a look of sudden vibrant amusement. ‘You ought to know by now that I relish a challenge.’

  Without the smallest warning, Daisy’s heart turned a somersault and her mouth went dry.

  A wolfish smile curved Alessio’s mobile mouth. ‘But you can relax. You’re safe for the moment. The staff are waiting to serve lunch.’

  ‘Lunch?’ Daisy echoed foolishly.

  With difficulty, she tore her gaze from the intense lure of those entrapping golden eyes. All over again she was devastated by her inability to control or suppress her powerful sexual response to him.

  ‘Our unwelcome guests will be busy in the grounds. We’ll be alone,’ Alessio pointed out soothingly.

  ‘Unwelcome?’ Daisy queried tautly, uncertainly.

  ‘Dio…surely you don’t imagine that I wanted this three-act circus descending on us?’ Alessio’s mouth twisted with expressive incredulity. ‘But they’ll be gone soon enough.’

  ‘Why did Bianca need your permission to use the grounds?’ Daisy prompted on the way downstairs, her outrage at the situation ebbing a little as she appreciated that Alessio was no more pleased by the invasion than she was.

  ‘I own the villa now. When Vittorio decided to sell, I bought.’

  ‘So what has your sister got to do with a fashion shoot?’

  ‘Three months ago she became the owner of a photographic studio. She’s trying very hard to make a mark on the fashion world. Nina’s a top model,’ Alessio explained. ‘Bianca needs her star quality to sell this layout and as Nina is a friend of the family she agreed to help.’

  Daisy reconsidered the view she had had of Nina and Alessio together, belatedly conceding that she had seen nothing that might not be described as an affectionate greeting. ‘Nina…is a family friend?’

  ‘Our parents move in the same social circles.’

  ‘I saw you with her,’ Daisy heard herself admit with shocking abruptness. ‘She was all over you like chickenpox!’

  Alessio shifted a broad shoulder beneath Daisy’s piercing sideways scrutiny. ‘Nina is very demonstrative. Showbiz-type personalities usually are. And, to be frank, cara, she’s behaving generously. I was seeing her up until very recently.’ He delivered the reminder with a hint of reproof.

  Horrified to be riven with a white-hot streak of jealousy, Daisy found herself surveying her meal with little appetite. Just knowing that the beautiful, generous Nina was around made her feel deeply insecure. Only this morning she had been telling herself that she could handle a marriage of convenience, but already she was drowning in an emotional morass of pain and confusion. Why was it that no other man had ever had the power to tear at her heart with one teasing smile and stop it beating altogether by the simple act of donning a pair of jeans?

  Having dismissed the staff, Alessio replenished her wine with his own hand. Daisy watched those long, lean, denim-clad legs advancing and momentarily shut her eyes in despair, because every treacherous pulse in her body was pounding insanely fast.

  ‘You’re not eating,’ Alessio commented tautly.

  ‘Maybe what I want isn’t on the plate,’ Daisy said wildly, loathing herself for her own bodily weakness. She was turning into a sex-starved animal but she would leave him, stark naked if necessary, before she allowed him to find that out!

  ‘Just tell me what you want and I’ll order it for you.’

  Daisy gave an agonised little quiver, her imagination leaving her suspended between heaven and hell. ‘I’m not hungry—’

  ‘You haven’t eaten since last night!’ Alessio grated. ‘Do you have a problem with food?’

  ‘What is this thing you have about my eating habits?’

  Alessio shot her a look of exasperation ‘I knew a girl with anorexia nervosa at university. Sophia… Sophia Corsini, now, she—’

  That particular name did grab Daisy’s full attention. ‘Your girlfriend was anorexic?’ she cut in sharply.

  ‘Sophia was in most of my classes but I never dated her,’ Alessio countered with a faint frown of distaste and surprise at the suggestion. ‘She was one very mixedup kid. She dropped out in the middle of our second year.’

  Her eyes lowering from his, Daisy mulled over that calm explanation. She believed him. Colour rose slowly in her cheeks. Bianca had made up a story and Daisy had foolishly swallowed it without demanding evidence or confronting Alessio. Clearly, there had been no other girl involved in the breakup of their first marriage. And yet hadn’t she been ready to give credence to Bianca’s spiteful allegations a second time? Should she tell Alessio what had really happened with his sister? Would he believe her? she wondered ruefully. Bianca was a very overprotective and possessive twin, but clever enough to hide it. Daisy was almost certain that she had been treated to a side of Bianca that Alessio had yet to experience.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Alessio probed, taking in her evasive gaze and guilty flush.

  ‘You actually thought I might be anorexic too?’ Lifting up her head, eager to move the subject in a safer direction, Daisy studied him, and an undeniable lurch of tenderness warmed her. He had been worried about her, concerned about her health. She picked up her knife and fork. ‘Tense situations kill my appetite,’ she told him. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘But that wasn’t what you were thinking about,’ Alessio said perceptively, after watching her clear her plate in careful silence.

  ‘Maybe I was thinking about just how well I know you … in fact, how well I ever knew you,’ Daisy said unsteadily.

  ‘I’m a very average guy,’ Alessio asserted lazily, his lush black lashes partially screening eyes of vibrant gold which interfered with her ability to breathe.

  ‘You think so?’ Daisy responded a little unevenly, struggling to close out the flash-fire effect of those gorgeous eyes. ‘You know … I need fresh air more than I need caffeine. It’s very airless in here.’

  But Alessio sprang up and caught her as she left the table, tugging her up against him with hard, insistent hands, every muscle in his big, powerful body tense as he stared down at her with unhidden frustration. ‘We’re married now. Don’t shut me out… and don’t run away from me.’

  The hard masculine thrust of his virility against her taut stomach ma
de her slender length hum and throb like a race car revving up. A bitter-sweet ache made her thighs clench, leaving her dizzy and disorientated. But even as her hips began to rise in a tiny, inviting circular motion as old as time, and the kind of fierce, unquenchable longing that burned engulfed her, Daisy fought her own frailty with frantic determination.

  ‘We’re making a home for Tara. That’s all we’re doing,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘Now…please let go of me!’

  His smouldering gaze told her that he wasn’t about to listen and then a door slammed, voices intruding from the hall, and Alessio released her with a raw expletive. On legs that felt as reliable as cotton-wool sticks, Daisy fled through the French windows. But she felt as though she had left half of herself behind in the broken circle of his arms. A stifled sob tore at her throat, her eyes smarting with stinging tears as she breathed in the hot, still air and saw right to the very heart of her turmoil.

  Only loving had ever hurt this much. Alessio influenced her every emotion and response. And that was so achingly, terrifyingly familiar to Daisy. She could have coped so much better with being a sex-starved animal. The idea that she might still love Alessio petrified her. Loving him meant that the very last thing she could live with was a humiliating marriage of convenience cobbled together solely for their daughter’s sake.

  Indeed, much as she loved Tara, if Alessio told her once more that they were only married again for her benefit she would scream and push him out of a window, because every time he stressed the all-encompassing importance of Tara’s needs it made Daisy feel as if she herself was of no account. And why was she so pathetically envious of his affection for her daughter? Because she wanted more for herself. In short, she was still hopelessly in love with the same male who had stolen her heart at seventeen. Why had it taken her this long to work that out?

  In a daze of conflicting emotions, Daisy watched Alessio stride down the steps at the front of the villa, a devastatingly handsome male whose every lithe, graceful movement made her shockingly aware not only of him but also of her own extreme vulnerability. Hurriedly, she looked away again, only then giving some attention to the scene before her. Nina was posing in a gorgeous shoulderless sugar-pink evening dress against the dark yew topiary. Tara had once had a Barbie doll that looked remarkably similar. Impossibly perfect, dressed like a fairy-tale princess, complete with a cloud of golden hair.

  Bianca drifted over. ‘Stunning, isn’t she?’

  Daisy was watching Nina blowing a flirtatious kiss at Alessio between takes. ‘I don’t believe in the coincidence of you and Nina arriving today—’

  ‘But Alessio does. Obviously I knew you were staying here,’ Bianca confirmed drily.

  Irritably brushing off the attentions of the fluttering make-up girl, Nina approached Alessio with the efficiency of a heat-seeking missile closing in on a target.

  ‘You’re a week too late,’ Daisy told Bianca firmly. ‘You should have tried this charade before the wedding!’

  ‘I’m merely bringing a continuing relationship to your attention,’ Bianca responded sweetly. ‘Does Nina strike you as a woman who has recently lost her lover to a wife? She knows why Alessio married you and she knows it won’t last long. She can afford to be understanding.’

  Nina had engaged Alessio in animated conversation. Daisy tilted her chin and walked over. Nina ignored her. Alessio settled a casual, long-fingered hand on the base of her spine. Daisy leant against him in a sudden tiny but aggressive movement and dug her fingers into the back pocket of his jeans, her seemingly idle fingernails scoring the flexing muscles of his lean hip. The scent and the heat of him engulfed her. An infinitesimal quiver ran through her. A seductress well on the way to becoming a hopeless victim of her own ploy, Daisy sucked in oxygen in a despairing rush, feeling Alessio tense and shift, while she dazedly questioned the inconsistency of her provocative behaviour.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Alessio breathed with telling abruptness.

  Nina opened her green eyes wide. ‘But I can’t. I have to get into my next outfit in five minutes.’ She frowned down at Daisy, too self-centred even to realise that the invitation had not been directed at her. ‘Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Barry gave me a message for you.’

  ‘Barry?’ Daisy frowned, momentarily thrown by the reference.

  ‘I went to view that house with him,’ Nina said carelessly. ‘I felt really sorry for him too. He’s terribly broken up about losing you.’

  Before Daisy could part her lips to challenge that astonishing assurance, Alessio intervened curtly, ‘And the message?’

  Nina looked coy. ‘He said to remind Daisy of the proposition he made the night before your wedding.

  ‘Barry wants you to give him the chance to manage the agency,’ Daisy proffered beneath Alessio’s chillingly unimpressed gaze while Nina walked back to the cameras wearing a feline smile of satisfaction. ‘He’s very ambitious. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  Alessio shook free of her.

  Daisy’s lashes fluttered and she groaned, ‘Oh, no, you’re still a jealous toad!’

  His eyes blazed with derision, his mouth twisting. ‘You have to be out of your mind to think that,’ he drawled with icy precision.

  Yes, possibly she was … for wasn’t she attributing emotions to him that he did not possess? There had to be some degree of caring for jealousy to exist. And Alessio did not care. Alessio’s sole concern was Tara. Flushing a hot, mortified pink, Daisy spun away and headed off for the cover of the trees, feeling that she’d made an outsize ass of herself. Let Bianca and Nina play out their stupid farce, she decided ruefully. They would be gone soon enough.

  How could she have hidden from what was in her own heart when she’d married Alessio again? Her emotions had threatened to tear her in two with their contrary promptings. Yet still she had refused to see them for what they were. She still loved Alessio. What price their marriage of convenience now? And in forcing her into that agreement hadn’t Alessio really been giving her what she secretly wanted? She burned with shame at that acknowledgement.

  Curled up in the shade of the giant oaks on the edge of the estate, she found herself inexorably reliving powerful and disturbing memories of the teenagers they had once been, so intensely and exclusively involved in each other that they had always wanted to be alone. Could she possibly settle for less now? Could she live with a man who only needed her to keep his daughter happy? In such an empty relationship, it would kill her by degrees to be a real wife to Alessio, she conceded painfully.

  ‘Do you realise what time it is?’

  Daisy paused halfway up the stairs and studiously consulted her watch. ‘Half past nine.’

  His lean features a set mask of self-restraint, Alessio nonetheless prowled like a sleek, dark, hungry predator across the hall and spread his hands expressively. ‘Where the hell have you been until this hour?’ he gritted from between clenched teeth.

  ‘I went for a walk. I thought I’d give our visitors a chance to get on their bikes,’ Daisy said tightly. ‘Sorry I missed out on dinner but I made myself a sandwich in the kitchen. Now I’m off to bed. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight?’ Alessio raked, the mask slipping slightly to allow her a view of the angry exasperation he was struggling to control.

  Daisy hurried into the dressing room off their bedroom. Frustratingly, her case had been unpacked while she had been out. After locating a nightdress, Daisy removed herself again at speed and selected a small bedroom on the second floor. Only when she had got into bed and doused the light did she begin to relax a little. Alessio would get the message eventually. They could be…well, parenting partners. Anything more intimate was out of the question and as long as she kept her feelings to herself, as long as he had no suspicion of his power over her he couldn’t hurt her again, could he?

  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 real
ised 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.