‘No,’ she said, staring down at the table. ‘I—I don’t want that.’
‘Then play your part, and stop behaving as if I were a leper,’ he told her. ‘Because it bores me.’ He paused. ‘It also makes me wonder,’ he added softly, ‘what you would do if, some night, I—tested your resolve. Capisce?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was a thread.
‘Bene.’ He gave her a swift, hard smile. ‘Now let us go, happily united, into lunch.’
SHE walked into the restaurant beside him, moving like an automaton. His hand was under her arm as if she was in custody, as they followed the head waiter to yet another corner table.
‘They have a new chef here,’ Sandro told her as he took his place beside her. His sleeve, she realised, was only a few inches from her bare arm. Altogether too close for comfort. ‘And the food is said to be very good,’ he added.
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ she said. ‘Is this hotel part of the Comadora chain, by any chance?’
‘We acquired it six months ago.’
‘I see.’ She played nervously with the cutlery. ‘Will—will you tell me something?’
His gaze sharpened. ‘If I can,’ he said, after a pause.
‘When we first met—why didn’t you tell me who you really were? Why did you let me think you were simply a minor hotel employee?’
‘Because that is exactly what I was,’ he said. ‘I had been travelling round all the hotels in the group to learn the trade, working in every department, so I could see what shape they were in.
‘Traditionally my family has always been involved in agriculture and banking. The hotels were acquired in the nineteenth century by one of my ancestors who is said to have won them in a poker game.
‘When my father inherited them, he wanted to get rid of them. He had no interest in tourism. But I felt differently. I thought managing the chain—updating and improving it—would be more interesting than citrus fruit and olive oil, or sitting in some air-conditioned office in Rome.
‘So I was working incognito, and compiling a report that I hoped would convince my father to keep the hotels and invest in them.’
‘But I wasn’t involved with any hotels,’ Polly protested. ‘I worked for an independent tour company. You could have told me the truth.’
He said quietly, ‘Paola, as the Valessi heir, I brought a lot of baggage with me. We are a wealthy family, and there had been women in my life whose sole priority was my money. I had become—wary.’
He spread his hands. ‘You had no idea who I was, and yet you wanted me—for myself. For Sandro Domenico. I found that—irresistible. Can you understand that?’
‘I understand.’ There was a constriction in her throat. ‘But your money must have been useful when you needed to be rid of—someone.’
His mouth hardened. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In the end, it usually came down to—money.’ He paused. ‘Is that all you want to ask?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I have a hundred questions. But I’m not sure you’d be prepared to answer them all.’
‘No?’ He sent her a meditative look. ‘Try me.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Well—the scar on your cheek. I was wondering how that happened.’
‘I was in an accident,’ he said expressionlessly. ‘In the hills above Comadora. My car left the road on a bend and plunged into a ravine. I was thrown clear, but badly injured. My life was saved by a local man who found me, and administered some rough first aid before the ambulance got to me.’
It was a bald recital of the facts—something he’d clearly done many times before. He spoke as if it no longer had the power to affect him, but Polly could sense the tension in him.
She stared down at the immaculate white tablecloth. She said quietly, ‘You were—lucky.’
You could have died, she thought, the breath catching in her throat. You could have been killed so easily. And I—I might never have known just how much I had to mourn.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Fortunate, indeed.’ His eyes were hooded as he looked at her. ‘Do you require further details?’
Oh, God, Polly thought. I know what I have to ask—but I don’t want to hear the answer.
She took a deep breath. She said, ‘When did it happen? Was anyone else involved—in the crash?’
‘Three years ago. I had a passenger,’ he said levelly. ‘A girl called Bianca DiMario. She—did not get clear.’
Polly stared at him, aware of the sudden chill spreading through her veins. She said hoarsely, ‘That’s—terrible.’
She wanted to stop there—to ask nothing more. But that was impossible, of course.
I have to go on, she thought, steeling herself. I—I have to know.
‘You—you were close? You knew her well?’ She was a casual acquaintance? You were just giving her a lift? Please say that’s all it was—please …
‘I had known her for most of my life,’ he said quietly. ‘She came to live at the palazzo with her aunt, the contessa, at my father’s invitation. Bianca’s parents were both dead, and the contessa was a widow who had been left with little money.
‘My father had a strong sense of family, and he considered it a duty and an honour to care for them both.’ He paused. ‘Bianca was also intended to be the next Marchesa Valessi,’ he added, evenly. ‘The announcement of our engagement had been planned for the week after the accident.’
Polly was reduced to stricken silence as the pain returned, twisting inside her. She could see so clearly now why he’d had to get rid of her with such indecent haste—and offered such a high price to achieve that.
She’d become an embarrassment, she thought. Their affair an insult to his future wife.
She bent her head. ‘I—I’m sorry,’ she said huskily. ‘It must have been utterly ghastly—to lose the girl you were going to marry in such a way.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was the worst time of my life. Something I cannot let myself forget.’ His faint smile was grim. ‘So I keep the scar to remind me how I was robbed forever of my chance of happiness.’
How can I listen to this? she asked herself imploringly. How can I let him hurt me all over again? She wanted to throw herself at him, hitting him with her fists, and screaming that she mattered too.
She wanted to weep until she had no tears left.
With a supreme effort, she mastered herself.
‘The accident,’ she said. ‘Does anyone know what caused it?’ How could she speak normally—discuss this terrible thing when she was falling apart inside? When she had to face all over again that everything he’d ever said to her—promised her—had been a lie?
Sandro shrugged. ‘The inquiry found a burst tyre on my car, so I was—exonerated. But I still have to live with the memory.’
And I, Polly thought, shall have to live with your betrayal of me—and I don’t know if I can do that. I think you may be asking the impossible.
She met his gaze. ‘Bigamy,’ she said clearly. ‘Is that another Valessi