‘A concussion,’ Alessandro said tonelessly. ‘I dragged him across to the passenger seat, managed to get myself behind the wheel before I blacked out. It was the only way,’ he told her, urgency roughening his tone into a demand. ‘Roberto was the kindest, gentlest person … He had a moment of terrible weakness, but one that would be remembered for ever. I knew they’d believe I was driving the car—maybe they’d even think I meant to do it. They’d believe anything of me. It hardly mattered. But Roberto never hurt anyone.’
Except you, she thought. He hurt you.
Meghan shook her head slowly; love swelled within her, hurting her with its beauty and joy. This was the man she loved. ‘And for this you feel guilt? Shame?’
‘I killed him,’ Alessandro whispered. ‘If I hadn’t confronted him … if I hadn’t said that …’ His voice turned angry, savage in its recrimination. ‘I knew he was weak. That he didn’t have a head for business. I’d always known it. It didn’t help matters that I was partying every night, acting the playboy to thumb my nose at my parents and the world. I was stupid and reckless, and no more so than the night I got into that car. If only I’d taken the keys …’
‘He would have done it another day,’ Meghan said calmly. ‘Another way. He was desperate, Alessandro, forced into a corner. It’s not your fault.’
‘It is.’ He spoke with such certainty that her heart plummeted; then she felt angry.
‘You can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions! Didn’t you show me that when I told you what happened to me? Was I responsible for Stephen’s actions? For what he did to me?’
His face twisted in horror. ‘Meghan, don’t.’
‘No—you don’t,’ Meghan snapped back. He looked startled, and she almost smiled. ‘I see who you really are. The world even sees it—sees what you’ve done with Di Agnio Enterprises. Alessandro, you must forgive yourself. If not for your own sake, then for mine.’ She paused, her voice turning into an ache as she repeated the words he’d once said to her, the words with which he’d healed her. ‘I know, and I accept you. I believe you.’ She paused, tears filling her eyes as her fingers skimmed his cheek. ‘I love you.’
Alessandro was silent; his eyes were closed. Meghan’s heart beat a steady, desperate staccato as she wondered what was going on in his tormented mind, what would happen now.
Then a single tear slipped down his cheek; it dampened her fingers. Alessandro’s grief for his brother. Meghan’s breath caught in her chest; her heart expanded and she could breathe again. She could believe again.
Alessandro opened his eyes. ‘I love you.’
Meghan felt weak with relief, giddy with joy.
He shook his head, took her tear-dampened fingers and lifted them to his lips. ‘I don’t know why I have been so blessed to have a woman who believes in me enough to see me through this. To make me go through this.’ He smiled, the sorrow sifting from his eyes, revealing a flicker of hope. ‘You saved me, Meghan. You saved me.’
‘And you saved me.’
‘I need to ask you to forgive me,’ he continued in a low voice, ‘for hurting you so very much. I did it to drive you away. I thought it would be easier for both of us. Or at least for me. I couldn’t bear seeing you walk away from me, gattina. Seeing you disgusted by who I was, by who I am.’
‘No,’ Meghan whispered, ‘never that. I know who you are, Alessandro, and you are the man I love.’
He nodded in acceptance, in wonder. ‘You knew even before I did. How can you know me so well when I was blind to myself?’
‘We were both blind,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘And we needed each other to be healed. Forgiven.’ Loved.
He pulled her towards him, kissed her with a gentle passion that had her swaying into him completely, surrendering everything. Her heart, her soul, her mind, her body. His. All his.
‘I am a blessed, blessed man,’ he said, and there was a ragged edge of incredulous gratitude in his voice.
‘No more blessed than I am.’
He nodded, kissing her again, and as sunlight slanted through the windows, sifting patterns on the floor, Meghan realised the shadows were gone. All of them.
All that was left was her and Alessandro, and joy. Only joy.
About the Author
A self-confessed romance junkie, INDIA GREY was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon Writers’ Guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school-day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept these guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she also gained a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University and, in a stroke of genius on the part of the Gods of Romance, met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity, and heaps of pink washing generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!
To John.
Thank you for the Happy Ever After.
PROLOGUE
THE dress was ivory satin, heavy and smooth. Once a nineteen-fifties cocktail dress belonging to Grandmère, Anna’s mother had taken it in to fit Anna’s skinny ten-year-old frame and added a narrow grosgrain ribbon around the waist, just above where the skirt flared out with wonderful fullness. An old piece of net curtain trimmed with tiny crystal beads and fixed down with a pleasingly authentic-looking plastic tiara completed the picture.
‘It’s beautiful.’ Anna looked at herself in the mirror, her dark eyes shining with joy. ‘Just like what a real bride would wear. It’s the best birthday present ever. Thank you, Mama.’
Lisette smiled. ‘Happy Birthday, chérie. You’re beautiful. You look like a fairy princess.’
Anna frowned. She knew it wasn’t true. Fairy princesses would be soft and blonde and blue-eyed like her mother, not olive-skinned and dark like she was. But she loved the dress all the same.
She was lucky that her birthday always fell in the summer holidays, when she and her mother were staying with Grandmère at Château Belle-Eden, and that summer she did nothing but play weddings. Gathering armfuls of flowers from the château’s garden, she entwined garlands of jasmine and ivy around the banisters and tied heavy old-fashioned roses into spiky bouquets. In the hot, still afternoons the hallway was cool and the dim light filtering through the magnificent stained-glass dome above cast shimmering patterns on to the pale stone floor. While her mother played the piano in the salon Anna would drift down the stairs, shedding petals from her wilting rose bouquet, towards her imaginary waiting groom.
She pictured him standing at the bottom of the sweeping staircase, looking exactly like the prince in her book of fairy tales. Tall, blond, impossibly elegant in his morning coat, she imagined over and over again the moment when he would turn and look up at her.
The love that blazed in his blue eyes took her breath away every time.
CHAPTER ONE
‘C’EST tout, mademoiselle?’
Anna cast a last look at her childhood, jumbled into the back of the auctioneer’s van,