is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Second-Time Bride

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

TARA stood in the doorway, a daunting five feet nine inches of teenage truculence. ‘Why do I have to go to Aunt Janet’s?’

‘Because that’s what you do on Saturdays if I have to work.’ Daisy shimmied her slender hips into a burgundy skirt while frantically trying to do up her blouse with her other hand, one anxious eye on her daughter, the other on the clock by the bedside. ‘And if you’re at Janet’s I don’t have to worry about you.’

‘Yeah, so, like, it’s not for my benefit, it’s for yours.’ Dark brown eyes rested accusingly on her much smaller parent.

‘Look, can we have this out tonight?’ Daisy begged, feverishly digging through the foot of her wardrobe for two matching shoes.

‘I’m thirteen and I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t drink or do drugs—’

‘I should hope not,’ Daisy muttered with a compulsive shudder.

‘And I’m not like you were. I’m really sensible and mature for my age—’

‘Why do I sometimes get the impression that I’m no giant in your opinion?’

‘Mum, you’re bound to be a worrier! You got taken in and rolled out by a major creep at seventeen and you’ve been paying for it ever since because you got stuck with me,’ Tara reminded her ruefully. ‘But I am not going to make the same mistake. Unless Mr Impossibly-Rich-and-Handsome comes knocking on the door while you’re out, you’re safe! I just want to go down to the market with Susie and buy a new top. All the best things will be gone if I have to wait until this afternoon—’

‘I have never felt stuck with you!’ Daisy protested.

‘Mum...we haven’t got time to get into that sort of stuff. The market?’ Tara pleaded.

Daisy hurried through the gilded glass doors of Elite Estates exactly forty-five minutes later, breathless and feeling harassed but trying not to look it. Her boss, Giles Carter, had phoned first thing to inform her that the virus doing the rounds of the agency had knocked out the boy wonder on the sales team—Barry the Barracuda, as Daisy thought of him in private. Her presence was required to deal with Barry’s latest new client on what should have been a much cherished day off.

Daisy had worked ten years for Elite Estates and had no illusions about management chauvinism. She was the token woman on the sales staff. She had fought her way up the office ranks with the greatest difficulty, disadvantaged by her sex, her lack of height and her youthful appearance. It had taken hard sales figures to persuade Giles to take her seriously but he still ensured that she dealt only with the properties at the lowest end of the market.

‘Giles has phoned down for you twice,’ Joyce on Reception told her in a warning hiss. ‘And boy, have you got a treat in store...’

Daisy felt a cold chill down her back. Giles had never given her a treat in his life. She always got the difficult clients. ‘It’s not that old lady back again, is it? Mrs Sykes?’

Joyce laughed. ‘Didn’t you notice the limousine out front?’

Daisy had been in too much of a hurry to notice anything. Now she looked and saw the impressive long silver vehicle parked outside.

‘The most utterly dreamy-looking guy I’ve ever seen got out of it,’ Joyce sighed in a languishing undertone. ‘Sadly, an utterly dreamy-looking blonde got out with him.’

A couple... Hopefully the type who still liked each other and respected each other’s opinions. Daisy had had some nightmare experiences with twosomes who hadn’t been able to agree on anything when it had come to the home of their dreams. Last-minute pull-outs on sales had been the result.

She knocked on the door of Giles’s sumptuous office and walked straight in.

It was the woman she saw first. She was studying her watch with a little moue of annoyance, a fabulous mane of corn-gold hair partially concealing her features. A tall dark male was standing with his back turned to the door. He swung fluidly round as Daisy entered but she couldn’t see his face in the sunlight flooding through the windows.

Giles gave her an exasperated look. ‘I expected you sooner than this,’ he complained ungraciously.

‘Sorry,’ Daisy said to the room at large. ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.’

‘Miss Thornton...this is Mr Leopardi and Miss Nina Franklin.’ Giles introduced them in the oily voice he employed solely around wealthy clients.

Daisy froze. Leopardi. That name thudded into her brain like a sharp blow. Stunned, she stared at the large male presence now blocking out the sunlight. All she could focus on was a pale blue tie set against a slice of snowy white shirt bounded by the lapels of an exquisitely tailored charcoal-grey jacket. Numbly she tipped her silver-fair head back and looked up at him. Disbelief enclosed her in complete stasis. It was Alessio! The shock of recognition was so intense that she couldn’t move a muscle. She simply stood there, all colour drained from her triangular face, her polite smile sliding away into nothingness. The hand she had begun to extend dropped weakly back to her side again.

Helplessly she collided with deep-set dark eyes fixed on her with an incredulous intensity that was as great as her own. And then luxuriant black lashes swept low, swiftly screening his gaze from her. She saw the tautness of his facial muscles beneath the gold of his dark skin, grasped the fierce control he was exerting and, with a huge effort, dragged her shattered eyes from him, fighting to regain her composure.

‘Mr Leopardi...’ she muttered in a wobbly undertone, and began to raise her hand again with all the flair of a malfunctioning automaton.

Alessio ignored the gesture and spun on his heel to address Giles. ‘Is this woman the only employee you have available?’ he enquired harshly.

There was a sharp little silence.

‘Miss Thornton is one of our most experienced members of staff.’ Giles fixed an ingratiating smile to his full lips but his dismay was obvious. ‘Perhaps you think she seems a little on the young side but she’s actually a good deal older than she looks!’

Daisy flushed to the hairline. The beautiful blonde giggled. The thick silence pulsed like a wild thing in a room that now felt suffocatingly airless. She focused on Alessio’s shoes—hand-stitched Italian loafers. She remembered him barefoot and in trainers. That was the only thought in her mind but it speedily flowed on into another.

She remembered a teenage boy, not a full-grown adult male. She knew the adult only from pictures in newsprint that fractured her peace for days afterwards. But how much more disturbing it was to be faced with Alessio in the flesh...and without any warning whatsoever. Her tummy muscles were horribly cramped up. She felt sick, physically sick, and could not have opened her mouth had her life depended on it.

Giles cleared his throat uneasily. ‘I’m afraid that there isn’t anyone else available this morning. If it wasn’t for this—’ he frowned down at the clumsy plaster cast on his foot ‘—I would have been delighted to personally escort you round the Blairden property. As it is—’

‘Alessio... if we don’t get a move on, I’ll be late for my booking,’ the blonde complained petulantly, unfolding lithely from her chair to reveal a height very little short of Alessio’s six feet three.

The woman was a model—a very well-known model, Daisy recognised belatedly, her dazed eyes scanning that impossibly perfect bone structure. She had seen that same face on countless magazine covers. And what had Giles said her name was? Like a sleepwalker, she moved forward and extended her hand. ‘Miss Franklin...’

Manicured fingertips brushed hers only in passing. Bored green eyes flicked dismissively over her. The blonde slid her hand into Alessio’s in a gesture of possessive intimacy and curved right round him to whisper something in his ear, her other hand moving caressingly up over his chest to curve finally to one broad shoulder.

Daisy went rigid and stared. Then abruptly she looked away, but every nerve in her body screamed as she did so. For a split second, as her own fingers had closed tightly in on themselves, she had been tempted to thrust their bodies apart. That insane urge shook her inside out.

‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll brief Miss Thornton.’ Giles closed a taut hand round Daisy’s elbow and practically pulled her out into the corridor.

His heavy features were flushed and angry. ‘What’s the silent act in aid of? No wonder the bloke wasn’t impressed! Don’t you know who he is?’

Daisy studied the wall opposite.

‘The Leopardi Merchant Bank...that’s who he is! I mean, you just stood there gawking at him! Hell’s teeth, why does the richest client we’ve had in months have to come through the door the one and only day Barry’s away sick?’ Giles groaned in disbelief.

And it couldn’t be happening to a nicer person, Daisy found herself thinking, because it was easier to think about that than to think of what had just happened. Of all the estate agencies in the London area, why had Alessio had to choose this one? Was it because of the grovelling service Giles offered to the well-heeled? Alessio was so rich that he would get that kind of service anywhere. Her temples pounded with sick tension.

‘Hey...you’re not coming down with this blasted virus too, are you?’ Giles demanded, taking an almost comically fast step back from her.

‘No...’ Daisy finally found her voice again. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Then what’s the matter with—?’ Giles fell abruptly silent as the door behind her opened.

‘Since we’re in a hurry, Miss Thornton’s services will be adequate,’ Alessio asserted flatly.

Goose-flesh prickled along the nape of Daisy’s neck. She didn’t turn round even though she could see Giles regarding that scarcely civil oversight with a fresh look of incomprehension. Adequate? Her teeth clenched. Fierce resentment, backed by a rolling tide of humiliation she didn’t want to admit to, flared through her taut length.

Thirteen years ago she had been unceremoniously dumped and she had done nothing to deserve Alessio’s brutally dismissive reaction to her in front of her boss and his girlfriend. Was it embarrassment? Or was he, just like her, fighting off a distressing surge of adolescent memories? Don’t kid yourself, Daisy, a more cynical voice urged. Even at nineteen, Alessio Leopardi didn’t have a sensitive bone in his body...

Rigid-backed, Daisy descended the wrought-iron spiral staircase that ran down to the ground floor, and walked out through the crowded front office. Her legs felt as if they might fold beneath her at any moment. A deep trembling was beginning inside her. Shock was setting in hard. As she emerged out onto the pavement and began turning in the direction of the staff car park, Alessio drawled from behind her, ‘We’ll use the limo.’

‘Of course,’ she managed half under her breath.

‘So tell us about this house,’ Nina Franklin invited thinly as Daisy slid stiffly along the indicated seat opposite her.

Daisy’s lips parted and closed again. She knew virtually nothing about the property in Blairden Square, not even if there were any offers on it. Since Giles had never allowed her to deal with what he termed the ‘superior residences’ on the agency books, she had had no reason to take any interest in them. Starter homes and apartments were generally her field. But had she been in her right mind she would have checked out the facts before she’d left the office.

A glossy brochure landed squarely on her lap. She jumped. Startled violet eyes switched to the male she had been rigorously avoiding looking at.

‘Time to bone up,’ Alessio said very drily, his expressive mouth as hard as iron.

‘You’re not very efficient, are you?’ his companion remarked in cutting addition. ‘High-powered sales routines are painful but total ignorance is something else again!’

Daisy had coloured but she tilted her chin. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t dealt with this particular property before—’

‘It’s a Georgian terrace,’ Alessio slotted in gently. ‘But don’t worry about it. We can read too.’

Daisy bent her head, his smooth derision stinging like acid on her over-sensitive skin. Why was he treating her like this? Alessio was blunt but he had never been a boor. She didn’t understand his apparent need to humiliate her. Surely he couldn’t still be blaming her after all these years? And it was so ridiculous to be forced to pretend that they were strangers. Was that her fault...or his? He had made no attempt to acknowledge their previous relationship either. But then why should he have? Why should either of them want to? That relationship was all but lost in the mists of time, she told herself, until intelligence intervened. How could that long-ago summer ever be lost for her when she had Tara? Her stomach cramped again into even tighter knots.

The buzz of a mobile phone broke the tense silence. Daisy didn’t lift her head. But she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t even begin to study the brochure. It was as if her whole brain had gone into a state of suspended animation, as if the world had stopped dead the instant she’d glanced up and seen Alessio in Giles’s office. No longer the long, lean youth she recalled but, if anything, even more heartbreakingly handsome...

He had level dark brows, cheekbones sharp enough to cut concrete, an aristocratic blade of a nose, lustrous tawny eyes and a head of glossy black hair, now ruthlessly suppressed into a smooth cut and infinitely shorter than she recalled. His hard-boned features were intensely male, his wide, beautifully shaped mouth pure sensual threat. He could smile and steal your heart with one scorching, teasing glance...but that had been the boy, not the man, Daisy reminded herself painfully.

She flinched as Nina Franklin gave an explosive little shriek of annoyance and thrust the mobile phone back into her capacious bag.

‘I can’t stay!’ she told Alessio furiously. ‘Joss needs me now. I could scream but how can I refuse? He’s done me too many favours. You might as well let me out here. I can walk to the studio faster than you can get me there in this traffic! Look, I’ll try to make it over to the house before you leave.’

‘Relax...it’s not important,’ Alessio murmured soothingly.

‘I could strangle Joss!’ the blonde exclaimed resentfully, and then her green eyes landed on Daisy and hardened to accusing arrows of steel. ‘If you had been on time, this wouldn’t be happening!’

‘Perhaps you would prefer to cancel and make a fresh appointment?’ Daisy suggested with an eagerness she couldn’t conceal.

‘No, I’ll keep this one,’ Alessio drawled.

Stiff as a small statue, Daisy quite deliberately averted her gaze as the limousine stopped; the other woman slid out, but not without many regretful mutterings and an attempt at a lingering and physical goodbye that had car horns screeching in protest as the lights changed. Of course they were lovers. Daisy’s fine features were clenched fiercely tight. The intimacy between them was blatant.

Viewing a house together... Were they getting married? Her stomach twisted as she pondered that idea for the first time. For some reason she suddenly felt as if somebody was jumping up and down on her lungs. The door slammed again, sealing her into unwanted isolation with Alessio, and Daisy stopped breathing altogether.

‘It’s been a day for unpleasant surprises,’ Alessio commented grimly.

Daisy finally got up the courage to look at him again, her strained violet eyes unguarded. ‘Is that why you felt that you had to take it out on me?’

‘You are not one of my happier memories. What did you expect?’ Hard eyes regarded her pale face without any perceptible emotion at all.

‘I don’t know...’ Daisy whispered unevenly. ‘I just never expected to see you again.’

‘Look on this as a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence,’ Alessio urged with chilling contempt. ‘As greedy little bitches go, you’re still top of the list in my experience! I would go some distance to avoid a repeat of this encounter.’

In the pin-dropping silence which ensued, Daisy turned bone-white. Her appalled gaze clung to his set dark features and the cold hostility stamped there. He made no attempt to hide the emotion. Shock rolled over her in a revitalised wave. He despised her; he really despised her! But why? Why should he feel like that? Hadn’t she let him go free? Hadn’t she given him back what he’d wanted and needed and what she should never have taken? Hadn’t that single, unselfish action been sufficient to defuse his resentment?

‘But it is some consolation to learn that you’re now poor enough to be forced to earn a living,’ Alessio acknowledged, his cold eyes resting on her like ice-picks in search of cruelly tender flesh.

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at... I’ve always worked for a living. And how can you call me a greedy bitch?’ Daisy suddenly lashed back at him, shock splintering to give way to angry defensiveness.

Alessio emitted a sardonic laugh, his nostrils flaring. ‘Isn’t that what you are?’

‘In what way was I greedy?’ Daisy pressed in ever growing bewilderment. ‘I took nothing from you or your family.’

‘You call half a million pounds nothing?’

A furrow formed between her delicate brows. ‘But I refused the money. Your father tried very hard to make me accept it but I refused.’

‘You’re a liar.’ Alessio’s eloquent mouth twisted with derision. ‘My father was not the leading light in that deal. You made the demand. He paid up only because he was foolishly trying to protect me.’

‘I didn’t demand anything...and I didn’t accept any money either!’ Daisy protested heatedly.

Alessio dealt her a look of complete indifference that cut like a knife. ‘I don’t even know why I mentioned it. That pay-off was the tacky but merciful end to a very sordid little affair.’

Daisy bit the soft underside of her lower lip and tasted the acrid tang of her own blood. The pain steadied her a little. Alessio’s father, Vittorio, had obviously lied. Clearly he had told his son that she had accepted the money. And why should that lie surprise her? The Leopardi clan had loathed her on sight. His parents had tried hard to hide the fact when Alessio was around, but his twin sister, Bianca, had shown her hostility openly. Daisy stared into space, her whole being engulfed by a powerful wave of remembered pain and rejection.

In the swirling oblivion of that tide of memory she relived the heady scent of lush grass bruised by their lovemaking, the kiss of the Tuscan sun on her skin and the passionate weight and urgency of Alessio’s lean body on hers. Broken dreams and lost innocence. Her eyes burned, her small frame tensing defensively. Why had nobody ever told her how much loving could hurt and destroy? By the time she had found out that reality, the damage had been done and her reward had been guilt and despair. A ‘sordid little affair’? No, for her it had been so much more, and it was in the divergence of outlook that the seeds of disaster had been sown...

The clink of glass dredged her back from her dangerous passage into the past. Her lashes fluttered in confusion as Alessio leant lithely forward and slotted a brandy goblet between her nerveless fingers. ‘You look like you are about to pass out.’

Faint colour feathered then into Daisy’s drawn cheeks. She watched him help himself to a drink from the cabinet, every movement calm and precise. He did not look as though he was about to pass out. Although if he ever found out about Tara he might well make good the oversight. Hurriedly, she crushed that disturbing, foolish thought. Alessio had never wanted their baby.

At nineteen, Alessio had been able to think of an awful lot of things he wanted but they had not included a baby. So, knowing that, why on earth had she let him marry her? And yet the answer to that was so simple. She had honestly believed that he loved her... deep down inside...even though he hadn’t been showing it any more. It was amazing what a besotted teenage girl could persuade herself to believe, she conceded painfully.

‘And you are wearing odd shoes,’ Alessio remarked in a curiously flat tone.

A feeling of unreality was starting to enclose Daisy but she also sensed that Alessio was not as in control as he wanted to appear. She surveyed her feet, saw one black court shoe, one navy. It didn’t bother her. In the midst of a nightmare encounter, unmatched shoes were a triviality. She drained the brandy in one gulp. It sent fire chasing into the chilled pit of her stomach. She swallowed convulsively. ‘I wasn’t supposed to be working today. I came out in a hurry.’

‘You’ve cut your hair.’

Daisy lifted an uncertain hand halfway to her shoulderlength bob of shining silver-blonde hair, connected with brilliant eyes and wondered why time seemed to be slowing up, why they were now having this curiously stilted conversation when barely a minute ago they had been arguing. ‘Yes. It’s easier to manage.’

Alessio was running that narrowed, gleaming gaze over her slight figure in a manner which made her feel incredibly hot and uncomfortable. A wolfish smile gradually curved his hard mouth as he lounged back with innate grace in the seat opposite. ‘You don’t seem to have much to say to me...’

She wasn’t about to tell him that he was still gorgeous. Even as a teenager he had known that and had shamelessly utilised that spectacular combination of smouldering dark good looks and animal sex appeal to his own advantage. He had used it on Daisy—dug his own grave, really, when she thought about it. She had been agonisingly naive and had fallen like a ton of bricks for him, defenceless against that polished seduction routine of his.

‘You’re still full of yourself,’ Daisy told him helplessly.

A faint darkening of colour accentuated the slant of his chiselled cheekbones, his tawny eyes flaring with momentary disconcertion.

She loosed a sudden laugh, sharp in its lack of humour. ‘But then why shouldn’t you be?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I think it means that you should get me out of this car before I say something we both regret,’ Daisy admitted tightly, feeling all the volatile emotions she had buried so long ago rising up inside her without warning.

Alessio slung her a knowing look redolent of a male who knew women and prided himself on the fact. ‘You never forget your first love.’

‘Or what a bastard he was...’ The assurance was out before Daisy could stop it.

Alessio’s long, lithe frame tensed—a reaction which gave her a quite extraordinary surge of satisfaction. Shimmering eyes lanced into her with stark incredulity. ‘How can you say that to me?’

‘Because being married to you was the worst experience of my life,’ Daisy informed him, throwing her head high.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘And, believe me, I didn’t require a financial bribe to persuade me into a quick exit! You were domineering, selfish and completely insensitive to what I was going through,’ Daisy condemned in a shaking voice that steadily crept up in volume in spite of her attempt to control it. ‘You left me at the mercy of your totally monstrous family and allowed them to treat me like dirt! You stopped talking to me but that did not stop you using my body whenever you felt like it!’

Alessio was transfixed. There was no other word for his reaction. The Daisy he had married would never have criticised him. In those days, Daisy had crept around being quiet and apologetic while silently, miserably adoring him, no matter what treatment he handed out. Alessio had accepted the adoration as his right. She hadn’t had the guts to stand up to him then, not when she had mistakenly blamed herself for the fact that he had had to marry her.

‘In fact you went into a three-month-long sulk the same day that you married me! And the minute your obnoxious family saw how you were behaving they all jumped on the same bandwagon. I didn’t just have one person making my life a living hell, I had a whole crowd!’ she spelt out fiercely. ‘And I don’t care how any of you felt; I was only seventeen and I was pregnant and I did not deserve that kind of punishment!’

Daisy fell silent then. She was shattered, genuinely shattered by the bitterness that had surged up in her and overflowed. Until now she had not appreciated how deep her bitterness ran. But then she had not had an opportunity to vent those feelings before. Within forty-eight hours of her miscarriage, Vittorio Leopardi had presented her with divorce papers. And, sick to the heart from all that she had already undergone and Alessio’s cruel indifference, she had signed without a word of argument.

‘So, when you took the money and ran, you thought it was your due,’ Alessio opined grittily.

She stole a dazed glance at him from beneath her feathery lashes. His darkly handsome features were fiercely taut. ‘I ran but I didn’t take any money,’ she muttered wearily, and then wondered why she was still bothering to defend herself. When it came to a choice between her word and his father’s, she had no doubt about whose Alessio would believe. And it wouldn’t be hers.

‘I despised you for what you did,’ Alessio admitted with driven emphasis. ‘And to listen now to you abusing my family makes me very angry.’

‘I doubt if I’ll lose any sleep over that.’ Yet Daisy’s heartbeat suffered a lurch when she met that anger brightening his hard gaze. Her chin came up, defying the sudden chill of her flesh. She had said her piece. She had waited thirteen years to say it and there wasn’t a single word of it which she could honestly have taken back. How could he still behave as if he had been the only one wronged?

When she had discovered that her miscarriage had not been quite what it had appeared, she hadn’t dreamt of bothering Alessio or his family with what would have been very bad news in their opinion. Indeed, still loving Alessio as she had, she had felt positively heroic protecting him from such an unwelcome announcement. He had wanted neither her nor their child, so she had taken care of the problem. She had kept her mouth shut, let the divorce proceed without interruption and brought her baby into the world alone. Alessio owed her! He had been able to get on with his life again, unhampered by all the many adult responsibilities that had become hers at far too young an age.

The limousine had stopped. She hadn’t noticed. She gazed out at the elegant Georgian square and simply knew that she could not bear another single minute in Alessio’s company. There was too much pain and confusion biting at her.

‘I’m going to catch a cab back to the office and say you cancelled,’ Daisy told him abruptly. ‘Then you can come back on Monday if you like and see the house with someone else.’

‘I don’t think your boss would swallow that story.’ Alessio’s shrewd gaze lingered on her and his expressive mouth took on a curious quirk.

‘I don’t care!’ Daisy stared back at him defiantly.

‘So you still make stupid decisions on the spur of the moment.’

Colour ran up in a hot, betraying flush beneath her fine skin. She knew exactly what he was getting at. ‘Shut up!’ she hissed back.

‘And you still blush like a furnace around me...in spite of your advanced years,’ Alessio chided with lazy enjoyment at her embarrassment. ‘And, in spite of my advanced years, you still turn me on hard and fast. Now isn’t that fascinating?’

Daisy couldn’t believe he had said that. The tip of her tongue stole out in a swift flick to moisten her lower lip. Involuntarily she connected with eyes that now blazed passionate gold, his ebony lashes low on his lingering scrutiny. The heavy silence stretched like a rubber band pulled too taut for safety.

‘If this is your idea of a joke...’ she began unevenly.

Alessio surveyed her with slumbrous intensity and a slow, devastating smile curved his mouth. ‘Don’t be pious. You’re feeling the same thing I’m feeling right now.’

Her breath was trapped in her throat. Daisy could not tear her bemused eyes from the potent lure of his. And it was not an unfamiliar sensation that was creeping over her, she registered in dizzy disbelief; it was an old but never forgotten sensation of quite incredible excitement. The whole atmosphere had a wild, electric charge. Her heartbeat was thundering in her eardrums, her whole body stretched and tight with every nerve-ending ready to leap.

‘Curiosity and excitement,’ Alessio enumerated with purring softness.

It was fatal to be so easily read but Daisy couldn’t help herself. Slowly but surely she was sinking back to the level of maturity she had reached at the time of the party at which they had first met, and she remembered the sheer, terrifying whoosh of emotion and response which Alessio had evoked in her even at a distance of twenty feet. One look and she had been trembling, pitched on such a high of breathless, desperate yearning that she had felt slaughtered when he’d looked away again. ‘Stop it...’ she muttered shakily.

‘I can’t. I like to live dangerously now and again,’ Alessio revealed huskily.

‘I don’t...’ But her wretched body was not so scrupulous. She was devastated to feel her breasts, now full and heavy, surge against the lace barrier of her bra, the swollen nipples tightening into shameless, aching peaks.

‘How would you feel about an afternoon of immoral, erotic rediscovery?’ Alessio murmured thickly, his scorching golden eyes, as hot as flames, dancing over her heated skin. ‘I’ll take you to a hotel. For a few stolen hours, we leave the anger and the bitterness behind and relive the passion...’

Daisy was stunned, and on another level she was recalling the end of that long-ago party when Alessio had finally deigned to speak to her and make the smoothest pass she had ever encountered. She had been stunned then too by his sheer nerve. His brazen disregard of what she had naively seen as normal courting rituals had shocked her rigid. He had planted a drink in her hand and asked her to go to bed with him that night. She had slapped his face.

He had grinned. ‘Tomorrow night?’ he had asked with unconcealed amusement in his beautiful eyes, and she should have known then that it would take more than one slap to dent that ego.

‘Daisy...’ Alessio breathed.

This time she came back to the present with a sense of intense pain. Her violent eyes were starkly vulnerable; she veiled them. All of a sudden she felt horribly cold and lost. ‘I don’t want to relive the passion,’ she told him tightly. ‘Yes, you were quite incredible in bed but I wouldn’t let you use me like that again. Once was enough. You’re trying to put me down this time too. That’s one advantage of being a grown-up: I can see the writing on the wall.’

The endless silence pulsed with fierce undertones.

‘I cannot believe I am even having this conversation with you!’ Alessio gritted with ferocious abruptness.

‘I suppose it’s comforting to know that you haven’t changed. You’re still a two-timing, oversexed, immoral rat,’ Daisy muttered in a choky little voice, valiantly fighting off the threat of the tears damming up behind her burning eyes, ready to spill over.

‘I am none of those things!’ Alessio blistered back at her.

‘Creep,’ Daisy spat, making a dive to get out of the car. ‘You really are one lousy creep to do this to me! Do you think I’m a whore or something? Do you think I don’t know you’re trying to humiliate me?’

A strong hand suddenly whipped out to capture one of hers, holding her back. ‘It was an unfortunate impulse. I don’t know what came over me. Call it temporary insanity if you like,’ he growled savagely. ‘I’m sorry!’

‘Let go of me!’

He did, and Daisy wrenched open the door and almost fell out onto the pavement, sucking in a great gulp of fresh air as she did so. She was shaking like a leaf. She took a tottering step away from the limousine, her gait that of someone who had escaped a traumatic brush with death.

‘And it’s really pathetic to still be shooting the same lines at your age!’ she slung back at him for good measure.

‘Dio...will you keep your voice down?’ Alessio roared at her, causing an elderly lady walking an apricot poodle to step off the pavement with a frown of well-bred disapproval and give the two of them a very wide berth.

Daisy stole a glance at Alessio, took in the shaken look of uncertainty currently clouding his normally sharp-as-paint gaze and grew in stature with the knowledge that he was handling their unexpected encounter no better than she was. Memories from their volatile teenage years and the effects of shock were driving a horse and cart through any effort they made to behave like civilised, intelligent adults.

‘Look, do you want to see this house or don’t you?’ she asked stiffly.

‘If you will control your tongue and stop hurling insults, I see no reason why we should not deal with this on a normal business footing,’ Alessio drawled with icy control.

CHAPTER TWO

AN HOUR and a half later, Daisy surveyed the elegant hall of the Georgian house for the hundredth time and wondered how much more time the owners would spend entertaining Alessio. Her presence had not been required to give the grand tour, oh, dear, no!

The Raschids had stayed in specially when they had leamt that Alessio Leopardi was coming to view their beautiful home. Mr Raschid was a diplomat and apparently had met Alessio at an embassy dinner last year. Eager to renew that acquaintance, the couple had lost no time in telling Daisy to wait in the hall, while assuring Alessio that they would give him a far more interesting tour than she could. Well, she would have been rather out of her depth in a three-way conversation taking place in Arabic.

Alessio hadn’t looked at her again. Suddenly she had acquired all the invisibility of a lowly maid. And that was how it should be. Like the Raschids, he was a client, just another client, and clients, particularly very wealthy ones, frequently treated the agency staff as something slightly less than human. When she thought about it, their romance thirteen years ago had broken all the class and status rules—Alessio the adored only son of the Leopardi banking dynasty and Daisy the au pair working down the road from his family’s palatial summer villa.

They had not one single thing in common. Alessio had grown up as part of a close-knit, supportive family circle but Daisy had lost both her parents by the time she was six. Her elderly grandparents had brought her up. Her entire childhood had been filled with loss and death and sudden change. She had never had security. Illness and old age had taken everyone she cared about until her mother’s sister had taken her turn of guardianship when Daisy was sixteen. A career teacher in her late thirties, Janet had encouraged her niece to be more independent than her own parents had allowed. But she had been dubious when Daisy had initially suggested spending the summer before her final year at school working as an au pair.

‘I bet you land a ghastly family who treat you like a skivvy and expect you to slave for them day and night,’ Janet had forecast worriedly.

In fact, Daisy had been very lucky. The agency had matched her up with a friendly, easygoing couple who owned a small villa in Tuscany and went there every summer with their children. The Morgans had given her plenty of time off and Liz Morgan had gone out of her way to see that Daisy met other young people. The very first week, Daisy had been invited to the party where she’d met Alessio.

He had roared up on a monster motorbike, sheathed in black jeans with a hole in one knee and a white T-shirt. Tousled, curly ebony hair had been blown back from his lean, vibrantly handsome features and an entire room of adolescent girls had gone weak at the knees with a collective gasp. What was more, his own sex had clustered round him with equal enthusiasm. Alessio had been hugely popular, the indisputable leader of the pack.

Even then he’d had an undeniable golden aura. One had had the feeling that even on a rainy day the sun would still shine exclusively around Alessio. He’d had the immense and boundless self-assurance of a being who had always led a charmed life. The angels had not been having forty winks when Alessio was born. Alessio had been young, beautiful, academically brilliant and rich. And Daisy’s greatest attraction could only have been that she was different from the girls he was used to dating. The new face, the foreigner, who had to work to get a taste of the sun, had stood out from the familiar crowd.

But she hadn’t known who he was then. His name had meant nothing to her. And even after being slapped Alessio had still trailed her all the way back to the Morgan villa on his motorbike when she had walked out on the party. Since losing face in public was every teenager’s worst nightmare, she had been upset. The more she had told him to grow up and get lost, the more he had laughed. She had been convinced that he was sending her up for her shocked response to that proposition of his, embarrassingly aware that she had overreacted and that a smart verbal rejoinder would have been infinitely more adult.

‘Anyone will give me a reference. I’m a really wonderful guy when you get to know me,’ he told her, with a shimmering, teasing smile that made her vulnerable heart sing. ‘And I’m delighted you’re not the sort of girl who gives her all on a first date. Not that I would have said no, you understand...but the occasional negative response is probably better for my character.’

‘You really like yourself, don’t you?’ she snapped.

‘At least I don’t lurk behind the furniture, scared to speak to people, and react like a startled rabbit when they speak to me,’ he retorted, quick as a flash.

And she fled indoors, slunk up to her bedroom and cried herself to sleep. But Alessio showed up again early the next morning. Liz brought him into the kitchen where Daisy was clearing up the breakfast dishes. The whole time Alessio was with her the older woman hovered, staring at Alessio as if she couldn’t quite believe he was real.

‘I’ll pick you up at seven...OK?’ he said levelly, quite unconcerned by his audience. ‘We’ll go for a meal somewhere.’

‘OK...’

‘Smile,’ he said, cheerfully ruffling the hair of the two-year-old girl clinging to his leg. ‘She can smile at me...why can’t you?’

‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

His mouth quirked. ‘You’re not supposed to admit things like that.’

Liz cornered her the instant he departed. ‘Daisy, if I acted a little weird, put it down to me being shocked at the sight of a Leopardi entering my humble home.’

‘Why?’ Daisy frowned.

‘We’ve been coming here every summer for ten years and I still can’t get as much as nod of acknowledgement from the Leopardis! His parents are mega-rich—as well as their villa here they’ve got a huge mansion in Rome, where they live most of the time—and they are very exclusive in their friendships,’ she explained uncomfortably. ‘And Alessio has a reputation with girls that would turn any mother’s hair white overnight. But he usually sticks with his own set. Please don’t take this the wrong way, Daisy...but do you really think you can handle a young man like that? He’s seen a lot more of life than you have.’

But Daisy didn’t listen. Alessio did not seem remotely snobbish. And Alessio’s unknown parents interested her not at all.

He rolled up in a low-slung scarlet sports car to take her out that evening. Daisy was impressed to death but Liz grabbed her husband in horror as she peered out from behind the curtains. ‘I don’t believe it! They’ve bought a teenager a Ferrari! Are the Leopardis out of their minds?’

All the trappings of fantasy were there—the gorgeous guy who had miraculously picked her out of a wealth of beautiful, far more sophisticated girls, the fabulous car. That night they dined in a ritzy restaurant in Florence. Daisy was overpowered by her surroundings until Alessio reached across the table and twined her tense fingers soothingly in his, and then she quite happily surrendered to being overpowered by him instead.

On the drive back, he stopped the car, drew her confidently into his arms and kissed her. About ten seconds into that wildly exciting experience, he started teaching her how to kiss, laughing when she got embarrassed, laughing even harder when she tried to excuse her inexpert technique by pleading cultural differences. But surprisingly he didn’t attempt to do anything more than kiss her. He was so different away from his friends. Romantic, tender, unexpectedly serious.

‘Do you know I still haven’t asked you what you’re studying at college?’ Alessio remarked carelessly at one point.

‘History and English. I want to be an infant teacher,’ she said shyly, and if he hadn’t kissed her again she might have told him that she was already worrying that in a year’s time she mightn’t get good enough grades to make it onto the particular teacher-training course which her aunt had advised her to set her sights on.

‘You wouldn’t believe how relieved I am to hear that you’re studying for your degree,’ Alessio confided lazily. ‘I was afraid you might still be at school.’

And she realised then that there had been a misunderstanding. She attended a sixth-form college for sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds, not a college of further education which would equip her with a degree. ‘Would it have made a difference... if I had been?’ she prompted uneasily.

‘Of course it would have made a difference.’ Alessio frowned down at her in surprise. ‘I don’t date schoolgirls. It may be only a matter of a couple of years but there’s a huge gap in experience and maturity. You can’t have an equal relationship on those terms. It would make me feel as if I had too much of an advantage and I wouldn’t feel comfortable with that.’

And Daisy felt even less comfortable listening to him. She realised that Alessio would never have asked her out had he known what age she was. And that if she told him he had been given the wrong information he wouldn’t want to see her again. So how could she admit to being only seventeen?

Choosing not to tell him the truth didn’t feel like lying that night. It felt like a harmless pretence. She had not thought through what she was doing in allowing Alessio to believe that she was older than she was. It did not once cross her dizzy brain that there would come a time of reckoning and exposure... and that Alessio would be understandably outraged by her deception. By the end of that evening, she was walking on air and fathoms deep in love...

Daisy emerged from that unsettling recollection to find herself still taking up space in the Raschids’ spacious hall. The sound of voices alerted her to the fact that she was about to have company again. She stood up just as the Raschids and Alessio appeared at the head of the staircase. Her uneasy eyes slid over him and lowered, but not before she’d seen his frown of surprise.

‘I assumed you would have returned to the agency,’ he admitted on the pavement outside.

‘My boss definitely wouldn’t have liked that. Have you any queries?’ Daisy prompted stiffly, ignoring the chauffeur, who had the door of the limousine open in readiness.

‘Yes...were you sitting in that hall the entire time I was looking round the house?’

‘No, I was swinging off the chandelier for light amusement! What do you think I was doing?’

‘If I had known you were waiting, I wouldn’t have spent so much time with the Raschids. Did you even get a cup of coffee?’

Daisy’s head was pounding. She was at the end of her rope. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you care?’ she derided. ‘One minute you’re calling me a—Alessio!’ she gasped incredulously as he dropped two determined hands to her tiny waist, swept her very efficiently off her feet and deposited her at supersonic speed in the limousine. ‘Why the heck did you do that?’ she demanded breathlessly as he swung in beside her.

‘If we’re about to have another argument, I prefer to stage it in privacy,’ Alessio imparted drily. In the time he had been away from her, he had reinstated the kind of steely control that mocked her own turbulent confusion.

‘Look, I don’t want another argument. I only want to go home.’

‘I’ll take you there.’

Daisy froze. ‘No, thanks.’

‘Then I’ll drop you back at the agency. It’s on my route.’

‘You’re being all polite now,’ she muttered, and it infuriated her that she sounded childish.

‘We both overreacted earlier.’ Shrewd, dauntingly dispassionate eyes rested on her hot cheeks. ‘I’m prepared to admit that I threw the first stone. Calling you a greedy bitch for accepting a settlement on our divorce was inexcusable. You were entitled to that settlement. Unfortunately, after a very few minutes in your company, I regressed to being nineteen again. But I can’t see why it has to continue like that. Thirteen years is a very long time.’

So why all of a sudden did it feel like the fast blink of an eyelid to her? Yet she had only to look at Alessio to know how much time had passed. He no longer smouldered like a volatile volcano. Alessio now had the ability to turn freezingly cool and civil. She moistened her dry lips. ‘If you’re interested in the house, you won’t have to deal with me again. I was standing in for someone else today.’

‘And you’re not a great saleswoman around me.’

‘I don’t even know what kind of property you’re looking for.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘Not much point in asking now.’ Daisy sat on the edge of the seat in the corner furthest away from him.

An uncomfortable silence followed.

‘I wasn’t lying when I said that I still find you attractive,’ Alessio breathed grimly.

Daisy tensed, her head high, her neck aching with the stress of the position.

‘Nor was I trying to put you down,’ Alessio drawled with an audible edge of distaste. ‘But some lustful urges are better suppressed.’

A lustful urge? In her mind’s eye, she pictured a sleek wolf circling a dumb sheep. And with shrinking reluctance she recalled her own response to Alessio’s sexual taunting in the car earlier. Thinking about that response devastated her. For a few terrifying seconds Alessio had somehow made her want him again. And, worst of all, Alessio knew what he had achieved. He had resurrected an intense sexual awareness that was stronger than anything she had ever expected to feel again and she hated him for doing that—hated him for forcing her to accept that he could still have that power over her.

But then mightn’t her own wanton excitement have been an echo from the past? she reasoned frantically with herself. But yes, Alessio was right on one count—you never forgot your first love, most especially not when the relationship had ended in raw pain and disillusionment.

‘I think it’s wise that we don’t see each other again,’ Alessio said quietly. ‘I have to admit that I was curious but my curiosity is now satisfied.’

A painful tide of heat climbed slowly up Daisy’s slender throat. Dear heaven, he was actually warning her off! Concerned lest that confession of animal lust should have roused fresh expectations in her greedy, gold-digging little heart, he was smoothly striving to kill off any ambitious ideas she might be developing. So cold, so controlled, so unapologetically superior... Her teeth gritted. How could Alessio talk to her like this? Did he think he was irresistible? Did he fondly imagine that she was likely to chase after him and make a nuisance of herself?

‘I wasn’t even curious to begin with,’ she lied.

‘Naturally I was curious. The last time I saw you before today you were five months pregnant and still my wife.’

Her facial muscles locked hard. ‘You didn’t want a wife.’

‘No, I have to confess that I didn’t. I doubt if you will find many teenage boys who do want to get married,’ Alessio responded grimly. ‘I was no more prepared for that commitment than you were...but I did attempt to deal with the situation—’

‘Yes, you were a real hero, weren’t you?’ Daisy broke in with a curling lip. ‘You did the honourable thing. You married me! Your mamma wept and your papà over-flowed with sympathy. Naturally no decent Italian girl would ever have got herself in such a condition!’

‘They were upset!’ Alessio growled.

‘Do you think I wasn’t upset? What do you think it was like for me, being treated like some brassy little slut who had set out to trap you?’ Daisy condemned painfully. ‘I wasn’t allowed out the door in case someone saw me! I used to have nightmares about giving birth and then being buried alive in the garden!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Alessio gritted fiercely.

‘You mean your mother didn’t share that little fantasy with you? She was hoping like hell that I would have the baby and then magically disappear, leaving the baby behind! She was always telling me that I was too young to cope with a child and how much she loved children...’ Daisy shuddered. ‘Talk about feeling threatened! Life with the Leopardis...it was like a Hammer horror movie!’

Scorching eyes landed on her in near-physical assault. ‘You are making me very angry.’

Daisy shrugged and compressed her generous mouth. ‘That’s how I remember you—angry. No such thing as forgiveness from a Leopardi.’

‘In the circumstances, I think I behaved reasonably well.’

Daisy treated him to a glance of naked contempt. ‘By making the immense sacrifice of marrying me? Don’t kid yourself, Alessio. You’d have done me a bigger favour had you dumped me and run the minute I told you I might be pregnant!’

‘What the hell do you have to be so bitter about?’ Alessio ground out, raking her with fiercely intent eyes. You walked out on me! And anyone listening to you would think it only happened last week!’

Daisy tried and failed to swallow. For an instant her confusion and dismay were openly etched on her fragile features and then she turned her head away and saw the familiar frontage of the estate agency with a sense of incredible relief. ‘Being civilised isn’t easy, is it?’ she conceded tightly.

‘I did love you,’ Alessio murmured, his intonation harsh.

As the passenger door beside her swung open, Daisy spun back to him, violet eyes bright with incredulous scorn. ‘Do you think I either want or need your lies now?’

‘Don’t let me keep you,’ Alessio drawled with heavy irony, shooting her a chilling look of antipathy.

The agency was closed. Of course it was. It was after one. Daisy kept on walking, tight and sick inside. This was the very worst day of her life, absolutely the very worst...seeing Alessio again, all those tearing, miserable memories fighting their way up to the surface of her mind and driving her crazy. Mere minutes away from him, she found that she couldn’t believe some of the things she had said to him. No wonder he had asked her why she was so hostile! Thirteen years on and still ranting as if the divorce had only become final yesterday!

Not that Alessio had reacted much better at first. But Alessio had got a grip on himself fast. Alessio had stayed in control. Scarcely a surprise, she allowed grudgingly. Alessio had prided himself on never losing control of his temper. For the entire three and a half months of their marriage he had therefore smouldered in a silence that was infinitely more accusing and threatening and debilitating than any mere loss of temper. He had held in all his emotions with rigid, terrifying discipline at a time when Daisy had been desperate for any shred of comfort, any hint of understanding, any crumb of forgiveness. And maybe that was why in the end she had grown to hate her memory of him...

He had reduced her to the level of a tearful, pathetic supplicant, utterly destroying her pride and self-esteem. She had never had a great deal of confidence, but by the time Alessio had finished with her she had had none at all. And yet before their marriage, before everything had gone wrong, Alessio had done wonders for her confidence. He had built her up, told her off for undervaluing herself, frowned every time she cracked a joke at her own expense. He had kept on telling her how beautiful she was, how special, how happy she made him feel. Was it surprising that she had fallen so deeply in love with him? Or that when cruel reality had come in the door and plunged them into a shotgun marriage their whole relationship had fallen apart?

A fantastic boyfriend, a lousy husband. He had married her purely for the sake of the baby she’d been carrying. But the minute the wedding had taken place the baby had become a taboo subject. He had never mentioned her condition if he could avoid it. It had been as if he was trying to pretend she wasn’t pregnant. And then one night, when the curve of her stomach had become too pronounced for him to ignore, he had abruptly turned away from her, and for those final, wretched weeks he had moved into another bedroom. The ultimate rejection...he had severed even the tenuous bond of sex.

Within days, Bianca, his twin, had been smirking at her like the wicked witch. ‘Fat is a total turn-off for Alessio. Only four months along and already you look like a dumpy little barrel on short legs. He wouldn’t be seen dead with you in public. Now he doesn’t want to sleep with you either. Can you blame him?’

No blow had been too low for Bianca. Daisy shivered in remembrance. That spiteful tongue had been a constant thorn in her flesh. Brother and sister had been very close. She had often pictured Alessio confiding in Bianca and had cringed at the suspicion that nothing that happened in their marriage was private. She had imagined Alessio describing her as a dumpy little barrel and had wept anguished tears in her lonely bed. Strange that it had occurred to none of them that the sudden increase in her girth was not solely the result of comfort eating but a sign that she was carrying two babies and not one...

Janet’s house was only round the corner from her flat. Daisy headed for her aunt like a homing pigeon, praying that Tara was still at her friend’s house, wondering if some sixth sense this morning had prompted her to give in to her daughter’s pleas for a little more freedom.

Janet was on the phone when she came through the back door. ‘Put on the kettle,’ she mouthed, and went back to her call.

Daisy took off her suit jacket, caught a glimpse of herself in the little mirror on the kitchen wall and stared in horror. She rubbed at her cheeks, bit at her lips for colour but could still only focus on the stricken look in her eyes. She hoped she hadn’t looked stricken to Alessio and then questioned why it should matter to her. Pride, she supposed. Why hadn’t she managed to be cool and distant? Why had she had to rave at him the way she had?

‘You’re quiet. Tough morning?’ Janet was drawing mugs out of a cupboard.

‘I bumped into Alessio today—’

A mug hit the tiled floor and smashed into about twenty pieces.

‘It affected me like that too,’ Daisy confided unsteadily.

‘Let’s go into the lounge,’ her aunt suggested tautly. ‘We’ll be more comfortable in there.’

Daisy couldn’t stay still in any case. Her nerves seemed to be leaping up and down with jumping-bean energy. She folded her arms, paced the small room and briefly outlined the bare bones of that meeting. ‘And just wait until you hear this bit... His lousy father told him I took the money he offered me!’

Her aunt’s angular face was unusually tense. ‘Alessio mentioned the money?’

‘He wouldn’t believe me when I said that I’d refused it!’

Janet’s bright blue eyes were troubled, her sallow cheeks flushed. ‘Because I accepted it on your behalf.’

Daisy stopped dead in her tracks. ‘You did...what?’

Her aunt walked over to her desk and withdrew a slim file from a drawer. She handed it to Daisy. ‘Try to understand. You weren’t thinking about the future. I was worried sick about how you would manage with a baby if anything happened to me.’

Daisy studied the older woman in a complete daze.

‘It’s all in the file. A financial consultant helped me to set it up. Not a penny of that money has ever been brought into this country or touched. It’s in a Swiss bank account,’ Janet explained. ‘But it’s there for you and Tara should you ever need it.’

‘Alessio was telling the truth?’ Daisy mumbled thickly.

Her aunt sighed. ‘His father came to see me while you were in hospital. He practically begged me to accept the money. He felt terrible about the way things had turned out—’

‘Like heck he did!’

Janet’s face set in stern lines. ‘Vittorio was sincere, Daisy. He said that you were miserable and Alessio was equally miserable and that he had felt forced to interfere—’

‘He couldn’t wait to interfere!’

‘I found it very hard not to tell him that he still had a grandchild on the way,’ the older woman confessed wryly. ‘But, just as his loyalties ultimately lay with his son, mine lay with you. I respected your wishes.’

‘But to take the money...’ Daisy was shattered by that revelation.

‘I still believe I made the most sensible decision. You were very young at the time. You needed financial security—’

‘I’ve managed fine all these years without Leopardi conscience money!’

‘But you mightn’t have done. A lot of things could have gone wrong,’ Janet pointed out. ‘And what about Tara? Don’t you think that she is entitled to have something from her father’s family?’

‘I’ll give it back!’ Daisy swore, too upset to listen.

‘Wait and ask your daughter how she feels about that when she’s eighteen. I doubt very much that Tara will feel as you feel now. She does, after all, have Leopardi blood in her veins—’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Daisy asked defensively. ‘Tara knows exactly who she is—’

‘No, she knows who you want her to be. She’s insatiably curious about her father.’

Daisy was finding herself under a surprise attack from a woman she both respected and loved and it was a deeply disturbing experience. ‘Since when?’

‘The older she gets, the more often she mentions him. She talks about him to me. She won’t ask you about him because she doesn’t want to upset you.’

‘I have never ducked any of her questions. I’ve been totally honest with her.’

Janet grimaced. ‘It’s going to be very difficult for you but I think it’s time for you to tell Alessio that he has a daughter—’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Daisy gasped, thunderstruck.

‘Some day Tara is likely to march into his office in the City and announce herself...and for her sake Alessio ought to be forewarned.’

‘I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.’

‘Do you intend to tell Tara that you met Alessio today?’

There was a sharp little sound from behind them. Both women jerked round. Tara was standing in the hall, wideeyed and apparently frozen to the spot by what she had overheard. Then she surged forward, her pretty face suddenly full of wild excitement. ‘You met my father... Mum, you were speaking to him? Really...genuinely...speaking to him? Did you tell him about me?’ she demanded, as if that revelation might have just popped out in casual conversation.

Daisy was stunned by Tara’s naked excitement, by the crucifying look of hope and expectation glowing in her eyes. She was being faced with a disorientatingly different side of the daughter she had believed she knew inside out. And, shorn of the world-weary teenage front, the innocence of the child had never shone through more clearly. Icy fingers clutched at Daisy’s heart. Janet had been right. Tara was desperate to be acknowledged by Alessio but she had carefully hidden that uncomfortable truth from her mother. Only this morning she had carelessly referred to her father as a ‘major creep’.

‘No... I’m afraid I didn’t,’ Daisy said woodenly, traumatised by what she had seen in her daughter’s face.

‘Your mother didn’t get the opportunity,’ Janet chipped in heavily.

Tara’s face shuttered as if she realised how much she had betrayed and then raw resentment flared in her painfilled eyes. ‘Just because he didn’t want you doesn’t mean he mightn’t want to know me!’ she condemned with a choked sob.

Daisy went white. Her daughter stared at her in appalled silence and then took off. The kitchen door slammed on her hurtling exit.

‘Lord, all I’ve ever done,’ Daisy whispered wretchedly, ‘is try to protect her from being hurt.’

‘As you were?’ Janet squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. ‘Doesn’t it ever occur to you that Alessio could ave changed as much as you have? That the teenager who couldn’t cope with the prospect of fatherhood is now an adult male of thirty-two? Are you telling me that he couldn’t scrape through a single meeting with Tara? That could well be enough to satisfy her and if he won’t even agree to that...well, Tara will have to accept it. You can’t protect her by avoiding the issue.’

‘I guess not...’ Daisy’s shaken voice trailed away altogether.

Two sleepless nights had done nothing to,improve Daisy’s outlook on life. All she could think about as she walked into the Leopardi Merchant Bank was that in the space of one morning Alessio had brought her whole world down round her ears. And the pieces were still falling. Tara was still very upset about what she had flung at her mother in her distress. Quick-tempered and passionate, Tara was also fiercely loyal and protective. Nothing Daisy had so far said had eased her daughter’s regret at having hurled those angry, hurtful words.

So why were you hurt? Daisy was still asking herself. There had to be something wrong with her that she could still flinch from the reminder of Alessio’s rejection this long after the event. And how could she have been so blind to her daughter’s very real need to know that her father had at least been made aware of her existence? Had Tara even thought of what might come next? Had she some naive fantasy of Alessio welcoming her with open arms and delight?

Or was that her own prejudice and pessimism talking again? But Daisy could only remember Alessio’s distaste when she’d been pregnant, his indifference to her need for him when she had miscarried. That had been the final bitter blow that had driven Daisy away.

Was there the remotest possibility that a male that selfish could respond in an appropriate manner to a painfully vulnerable teenage daughter whom he had never wanted in the first place? Daisy acknowledged that she had known what she was doing when she’d kept quiet about Tara’s existence. The risk of exposing her child to the same rejection that she herself had experienced had been too great.

Daisy got out of the lift on the top floor. If she had thought Giles’s office was the last word in luxury, she was now learning her mistake. The sleek smoked-glass edifice which housed the Leopardi Merchant Bank was stunningly elegant in its contemporary decor. There were two women in the reception area. The older one moved forward. ‘Miss Thornton? I’m Mr Leopardi’s secretary. Could you come this way, please...?’

Daisy reddened. Alessio’s secretary wore a marked look of strain—possibly the result of Daisy’s steadfast determination not to be refused an appointment. Alessio was undoubtedly furious. After all, he had made it very clear that he did not wish to see her again. However, she didn’t know where he lived so she had had no choice but to approach him at the bank.

Her heart pounding at the foot of her throat and reverberating in her eardrums, she walked dizzily into Alessio’s office, a great big room with a great big glass desk and...Alessio standing there, suppressed dark fury and rigid restraint emanating from every lean, poised line of his tall, muscular body.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded with icy precision.

Her head swam, her knees wobbled. She opened her mouth and closed it again. A quite sickening wave of dizziness overwhelmed her and the next thing she knew the blackness was folding in and her legs were crumpling beneath her.

CHAPTER THREE

DAISY surfaced from her faint very slowly. She focused on Alessio’s dark features as he swam gradually into focus, and a dazed smile curved her soft mouth. He was cradling her in his arms, her slight body still limp, her head resting back against his forearm. It felt wonderful. Her violet eyes dreamy, she looked up at him...and melted, a honeyed languor stealing through her as she shifted and curled her toes in wanton anticipation.

‘You have the most gorgeous eyes,’ Alessio breathed in an abstracted undertone, drawing ever closer.

They were lost in his. Pools of passionate gold set between luxuriant black lashes even longer than her own. Daisy expelled a tiny sigh, the raw heat of his lean, hard body curling sensuously into her relaxed limbs. She curved instinctively closer and he lifted a hand almost jerkily and let long brown fingers thread into the fall of her hair, his thumb rubbing caressingly against her earlobe. Her heartbeat went crazy in the thrumming silence.

‘Alessio...’ she mumbled.

‘Piccola mia...’ The familiar endearment left him in an aching sigh.

Warm fingers cupped her cheekbone as he bent his dark head. He captured her moist lips in a devouring kiss and plundered them apart. From that first instant of contact, Daisy was electrified. The erotic flick of his tongue exploring the tender interior of her mouth made her jerk in shock and gasp. lightning heat sizzled through her. Her hands came up to clutch at his thick hair, his broad shoulders, his powerful arms and clung. Every clamouring sense roared off in glorious rediscovery. He crushed her to him and she surrendered with enthusiasm. As she strained up to him in a fever of desire, excitement clawed at her throbbing body in a voracious surge.

With a driven groan, Alessio dragged his mouth from hers and stared down at her with stunned intensity. He snatched in a ragged breath and abruptly stood up, carrying her slim body with him. His strong face set like cement as he gazed into her passion-glazed eyes. Swinging lithely round, he simply opened his arms and let her drop from a height back down onto the sofa he had just vacated.

‘Give me the bad news first!’ Alessio raked down at her.

Daisy had landed in a mess of wildly tangled hair and inelegantly splayed limbs on the mercifully well-sprung sofa. She didn’t know what had hit her. For an instant she didn’t even know where she was but she knew that Alessio was there all right, standing over her like a hanging judge as she attempted to halt a seemingly unstoppable roll in the direction of his plush office carpet. A pair of strong hands caught her and impatiently flipped her back upright into the corner of the seat.

‘“The bad news...”?’ Daisy echoed. Momentarily, utter cowardice had her in its hold. She didn’t want to be forced to think. Not about how time had cruelly slid back to entrap and humiliate her. Not about how excruciatingly pleasurable it had felt to be in Alessio’s arms. Not about how dreadful it felt to be separated from him again. No, she definitely didn’t want to think.

‘You only faint when you’re terrified! Do you think I don’t remember that?’ Alessio launched at her grimly. ‘You drop in a pathetic little heap, then you open those big blue eyes and fix them on me and I have an uncontrollable urge to give way to my baser instincts. That’s how you broke the news of your pregnancy!’

‘My pregnancy?’ Daisy questioned helplessly. ‘I didn’t get that way on my own!’

‘There was nothing accidental about it,’ Alessio condemned harshly.

Daisy froze, shattered by that particular accusation. Even thirteen years ago, it had not occurred to her that Alessio might believe that her pregnancy was anything other than an accident. That his family suspected her of such manipulative behaviour had been no surprise to her, but she had innocently assumed that at least Alessio did not share their suspicions. ‘Are you really trying to accuse me of having deliberately set out to...?’

Alessio spread two brown hands in a frustrated movement of dismissal. ‘We are not going to talk about this.’

‘Now just you wait a minute,’ Daisy objected, springing upright. ‘You can’t throw an accusation like that and then back off from it again!’

‘Did you hear me? Leave yesterday’s bad news where it belongs,’ Alessio spelt out. ‘We are not about to get into that again. We are not going to fight about ancient history like a couple of stupid kids!’

‘Ancient history...yesterday’s bad news...’ How would Alessio react when she informed him that ‘yesterday’s bad news’ was infinitely more current than he had had any cause to suspect? The fight went out of Daisy. She sank heavily back down on the sofa again. ‘You want to know why I told your secretary I had to see you to discuss an urgent, confidential matter—’

‘I think I’m ahead of you there.’ Alessio surveyed her with innate cynicism, his lip curling. ‘You’re broke, aren’t you? You’re in debt.’

‘I don’t know where you get that idea.’ But Daisy turned a guilty pink, unable to avoid thinking about that Swiss bank account filled with Leopardi money. Not just filled but positively bursting at the seams with Leopardi money, the original investment having grown greatly in the intervening years, according to Janet.

Alessio settled down on the matching leather sofa opposite. He looked incredibly formidable to her evasive eyes. He was wearing a superbly tailored navy pinstriped suit and a red silk tie. The expensive fabric skimmed wide shoulders and delineated long, powerful thighs. Hurriedly she tore her gaze from him but he stayed there in her mind’s eye. So achingly handsome, from the top of his smooth, darkly beautiful head to the soles of his equally beautiful shoes. Her throat closed over. Her mind was a complete blank. Why couldn’t he have started losing some of his hair or developed a bit of a businessman’s paunch?

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