Kitabı oku: «Modern Romance September 2017 Books 5 - 8»

CHAPTER ONE

IT SEEMED AS if a funeral was just a chance for people to get drunk. Not that Allegra Wells had personal experience of such a thing. She’d stuck to sparkling water all evening and now stood on the sidelines of the opulent hotel ballroom in Rome where her father’s wake was being held and watched people booze it up. She could have felt bitter, or at least cynical, but all she could dredge up was a bone-aching, heart-deep weariness.

It shouldn’t be this way.

Fifteen years ago it wouldn’t have been.

She took a slug of water, half wishing it was alcohol that would burn its way down to her belly and make her finally feel something. Melt the ice she’d encased herself in for so long, so that numbness had become familiar, comforting. She didn’t even notice it most of the time, content with her life back in New York, small as it was. It was only now, surrounded by strangers and with her father dead, that she felt painfully conscious of her isolation in the world she’d always viewed at a safe distance. The father who had turned his back on her without a thought.

Her father’s second wife and stepdaughter Allegra knew, at least by sight. She’d never met them but she’d seen photos when, in moments of emotional weakness, she’d done an Internet search on her father. Alberto Mancini, CEO of Mancini Technologies. He was in the online tabloids often enough, because his second wife was young and socially ambitious—at least she seemed to be, from everything Allegra had seen and read online.

Her behaviour at the funeral, wearing black lace and dabbing her eyes with artful elegance, didn’t make Allegra think otherwise. She hadn’t spared Allegra so much as a glance, but then why would she? No one knew who Allegra was; she’d only known about the funeral because her father’s lawyer had contacted her.

Around her people swirled and chatted, caught up in their own intricate dance of social niceties. Allegra wondered why she stayed. What she was hoping to find here? What did she think she could gain? Her father was dead, but he’d been dead to her for fifteen years, or at least she’d been dead to him. No messages, no letters or texts or calls in all that time. Nothing, and that was what she grieved for now, not the man himself.

The father she’d lost a long time ago, whose death now made her remember and ache for all she’d missed out on over the years. Was that why she’d come? To find some sort of closure? To make sense of all the pain?

Allegra’s mother had been furious that she’d been attending, had seen it as a deep and personal betrayal. Just remembering Jennifer Wells’s icy silence made Allegra’s stomach cramp. Interactions with her mother were fraught at the best of times. Jennifer had never recovered from the way her husband had cut both her and Allegra out of his life, as neatly and completely as if he’d been wielding scissors. Although it hadn’t felt neat. It had felt bloody and agonising, thrust from a life of luxury and indulgence into one of deprivation and loneliness, trying to make sense of the sudden changes, her father’s absence, her mother’s tight-lipped explanations that had actually explained nothing.

‘Your father decided our marriage was over. There’s nothing I could do. He wants nothing to do with either of us any more. He won’t give us a penny.’

Just like that? Allegra had barely been able to believe it. Her father loved her. He swooped her up in her arms, he tickled her, called her his little flower. For years she had waited for him to call, text, write, anything. All she’d got, on and on, was silence.

And now she was here, and what was the point? Her father was gone, and no one here even knew who she was, or what she’d once been to him.

From across the room Allegra saw a flash of amber eyes, a wing of ink-black hair. A man was standing on the sidelines just as she was, on the other side of the room. Like her he was watching the crowds, and the look of contained emotion on his face echoed through Allegra, ringing a true, clear note.

She didn’t recognise him, had no idea what he’d been to her father or why he was there—yet something in him, the way he held himself apart, the guarded look in his eyes, resonated with her. Made her wonder. Of course, she wouldn’t talk to him. She’d always been shy, and her parents’ divorce had made it worse. Chatting up a stranger at the best of times verged on impossible.

Still she watched him, covertly, although she doubted he noticed her all the way across the room, a pale, drab young woman dressed in fusty black with too much curly red hair. He, she realised, was definitely noticeable, and many women in the room were, like her, shooting him covert—and covetous—looks. He was devastatingly attractive, almost inappropriately masculine, his tall, muscular form radiating energy and virility in a way that seemed wrong at a funeral, and yet was seductively compelling.

They were here to commemorate death, and he was all life, from the blaze of his tawny eyes to the restless energy she felt in his form, the loosely clenched fists, the way he shifted his weight, like a boxer readying for a fight. She was drawn not just to his beauty but to his vitality, feeling the lack of it in herself. She felt drained and empty, had for a long time, and as for him...?

Who was he? And why was he here?

Taking a deep breath, Allegra turned and headed for the bar. Maybe she would have that drink after all. And then she would go back to the pensione where she’d booked a small room, and then to the reading of her father’s will tomorrow, although she hardly thought he’d leave her anything. Then home to New York, and she’d finally put this whole sorry mess behind her. Move on in a way she only now realised she hadn’t been able to.

She ordered a glass of red wine and retreated to a private alcove off the main reception room, wanting to absent herself as much as she could without actually leaving.

She took a sip of wine, enjoying the velvety liquid and the way it slipped down her throat, coating all the jagged edges she felt inside.

‘Are you hiding?’

The voice, low, melodious, masculine, had her tensing. She flicked her gaze up from the depths of her glass and her eyes widened in shock at the sight of the man in front of her. Him.

It was as if she’d magicked him from her mind, teleported him across the room to stand here like a handsome prince from a fairy-tale, except there was something a little too wicked about the glint in his eye, something too hard about the set of his mouth, for him to be the prince of a story.

Was he the villain?

Too stunned to form a coherent response, or one of any kind, Allegra simply stared. He really was amazingly good-looking—dark hair cut slightly, rakishly long, those glinting, amber eyes, and a strong jaw with a hint of sexy stubble. He was dressed in a dark grey suit with a darker shirt and a silver-grey tie, and he looked a little bit like Allegra imagined Mephistopheles would look, all dark, barely leashed power, the energy she’d felt from across the room even more forceful now, and twice as compelling.

‘Well?’ The lilt in his voice was playful, yet with a dark undercurrent that snaked its way inside Allegra like a river of chocolate, pure sensual indulgence. ‘Are you?’

Was she what? She was gaping, that much was certain. Allegra snapped her mouth closed and forced her expression into something suitably composed. She hoped.

‘As a matter of fact, I am. Hiding, that is. I don’t know anyone here.’ She took a sip of wine, needing the fortification as well as the second’s respite.

‘Do you make a habit of crashing funerals?’ he asked lightly, and she tensed, not wanting to admit who she was...the rejected daughter, the cast-off child, coming back for scraps.

“Not unless there’s an open bar,” she joked, hefting her glass, and the man eyed her thoughtfully. Did he believe her? She couldn’t tell. ‘Did you know him?’ she asked. ‘Alberto Mancini?’ The name stuck in her throat, and she saw a flash in the stranger’s eyes, a single blaze of feeling that she couldn’t identify but which still jolted her like lightning.

‘Not directly. My father did business with him, a long time ago. I wanted to...pay my respects.’

‘I see.’ She tried to gather her scattered wits. The look of sleepy speculation in the man’s eyes made her skin prickle. His gaze was like a caress, invisible fingertips trailing on her heated skin. She’d never reacted to someone so viscerally before, so immediately. Maybe it was simply because her emotions were raw, everything too near the surface. She certainly couldn’t ever recall feeling this way before. ‘That’s very kind of you.’ He smiled and said nothing. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘I didn’t.’ His gaze swooped over her again, like a hawk looking for its prey. ‘But it’s Rafael.’

* * *

Rafael Vitali didn’t know who this beguiling woman was, but he was captivated by her cloud of Titian curls, the wide, grey eyes that were as clear as mirrors, reflecting her emotions so he could read them from across the room. Weariness. Sorrow. Grief.

Who was she? And what was her relationship to Mancini? It didn’t really matter, not now his business was done, justice finally satisfied, but he was still curious. A family friend—or something less innocuous? A lover? A mistress? She hadn’t come just for the bar, of that he was certain. So what was she hiding?

Rafael took a sip of his drink, watching the emotions play across her face like ripples in water. Confusion, hope, sadness. A lover, he decided, although she was surely young enough to be his daughter. Mancini’s wife and daughter were across the room, looking sulky and even bored. Rafael would have spared a second of sympathy for the man’s widow if he hadn’t known how she’d raced through his money. And tomorrow she would discover how little there was left...perfect justice, considering how Mancini had done the same to his mother, leaving her with nothing.