She ground her teeth together. “By ignoring the woman you’d married?”
“At twenty, I have to say, I didn’t consider you to yet be a woman.”
She whipped her head back, her eyes like flint. “How dare you?”
He expelled a soft sigh, his features softening. “Alessia, did you come here to discuss this?”
“It’s not like we talked about it then,” she said quietly, remembering the awful day they’d signed the divorce papers. She’d been hoping to drive Massimo to some kind of emotional response, to inspire a rage of jealousy, a fit of possessive passion, but instead he’d quietly and calmly ended their marriage, dissolving it with all the ease of a man who cared very little for his wife.
“What would you have liked to say back then? What would you have liked to hear?”
“Anything,” she said quietly.
“That I could never stay married to a woman who spent her nights in other men’s beds? That my name was dragged through the papers for months all because you couldn’t stay faithful? You tell me you were a woman and yet you acted like a spoiled child.”
She sucked in a harsh breath, taking an involuntary step backwards. “First of all, I never slept with him – or anyone –while we were married. It was a kiss. A stupid drunk kiss. And even if I had, would that have been my fault? Truly?”
His eyes held an ominous edge.
“You ignored me!” She hadn’t come here to have this out but having started, she found it felt good – cathartic – to throw the words at his feet. “You treated me like a stranger, someone who lived in your house and whom you had to tolerate, but didn’t want anything to do with. I was a flesh and blood woman and you treated me like ice! Marble! Why?”
He was silent, but as if cast from stone. A ripple of fear ran the length of her spine. Not of him but of the strength of emotions she could feel pulsating from him.
It was the response she’d wanted back then, a response he’d carefully denied her.
“Why marry me, Max? You didn’t love me. You didn’t even seem to like me. You sure as hell didn’t want me. So why the hell marry me?”
“You think I didn’t want you?” He moved quickly, closing the distance between them so they stood toe to toe. “You think the reason I ignored your unsophisticated attempts at seduction was because you didn’t interest me?”
She flinched at his unnecessary cruelty.
“I think I was foisted on you to save my father’s company,” she muttered. “I think you knew, and my father knew, that our marriage was a farce – the only way he’d let you help him with his company. I think I was the only one who believed –,”
“What did you believe?” He goaded, not stepping backwards, so she was aware of every movement of his chest as he breathed in and out.
“You know how I felt. How I thought I felt,” she corrected, shaking her head. “I was so stupid then, so desperate to feel…” she shook her head, tears stinging the back of her throat, threatening to fall.
“You were full of love and had no one to give it to besides your father.” The gentle tone of his voice was the last thing she wanted. It made her feel dangerously close to tears.
“And you pushed me away again and again.”
“And if I’d known how you were going to console yourself, I would never have restrained myself, Alessia.” He lifted a finger to her cheek, brushing it over the skin there. “To think I spent a year abstaining from the pleasures of sex, from the temptation of you, all to protect you, when you were rolling in the hay with whomever looked twice at you.”
Her fingertips itched and before she knew it she was lifting her hand towards his cheek, ready to slap him. She half-expected herself to stop – she was a doctor, for goodness sake! Her life was about healing people, not hurting them, but anger was a tide surging through her and before she even realised what she was doing a deafening crack filled the room – the sound of her palm landing hard against his cheek. He must have seen
it coming and yet he stood impassive and strong, barely reacting to her violent outburst.
She gasped and went to take a step backwards but he mirrored her movement, keeping them close together, his eyes boring down on hers.
“Why did you come here tonight?”
Her teeth were chattering. She was shocked – shocked by herself, but the strength of feelings he’d aroused in her, and so easily.
“I don’t know.”
Except Massimo, perceptive, clever Massimo, did know. “Liar,” he teased, lifting his fingers to the hem of her dress, his eyes mocking hers as he lifted it slowly up her thighs, so the air-conditioned breeze in this apartment brushed her skin, lifting it in fine goose bumps.
Her soft moan was involuntary. She tried to marshal her thoughts but found it almost impossible.