Chapter 31


    CHAPTER SEVEN


    ‘HAVE YOU EVER tried to find your father?’ Alessandra asked a short whileter, her eyes filled with


    curiosity.


    ‘What for?’ he dismissed. ‘Why would I want to involve myself with a man who abandoned his wife and


    child?’


    ‘I get that,’ she said, pulling a face.


    He closed his eyes. ‘Your father is an alcoholic and a gambler. He was incapable of looking after you.


    He didn’t abandon you. He’s always been a fixture in your life. There’s a difference.’


    Sheughed contemptuously. ‘I thought you knew my background. My father dumped me on his father


    before I was a year old. Ro took care of me from the moment I left hospital. My father wanted


    nothing to do with me—he still doesn’t. He’s never been there, not for any of the significant events in


    my life. My first Holy Communion    , my Confirmation, the time I represented Mn in the under tens’


    gymnastics,’ she said, ticking the events off on her fingers. ‘He wasn’t at any of them. The few times


    he’s bothered to join us as a family, he won’t speak to me. He’s never looked at me. I was there, I was


    present and still he didn’t want me. So don’t try and make out I can’t understand what it was like for


    you, growing up without a father, because my father abandoned me too, and, worst of all, he


    abandoned Ro.’


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    He and Alessandra were like two peas but from pods grown in very different gardens, Christian


    realised. They’d both been abandoned by the people who should have been there for them. For good


    or ill, it had shaped them both. The distrust and avoidance of love and rtionships.


    They were more alike than he’d ever suspected.


    Colour had heightened across Alessandra’s high cheekbones, her eyes aze with furious passion,


    the honey-brown a darkened swirl. He’d seen that swirl before, when she’d been pressed against the


    wall of her apartment.


    Theos, she had felt unbelievably good in his arms, as if her contours had been shaped especially for


    him.


    He regarded her carefully, pushing away thoughts of her naked: the way she had wrapped those lithe


    legs around him and clung to him, as if trying to burrow under his skin. Those same legs were pressed


    against his at that very moment...


    The V of her dress had dipped, exposing the top of her golden cleavage, below whichy breasts that


    had be plumper since their time together.


    What did they look like now? Did they still taste so sweet...?


    This had to stop. Right now. Imagining them in bed together was what had got him into all this trouble


    in the first ce, sitting in that Mnese restaurant, fascinated by her plump lips, imagining them over


    his...


    He would not touch her again until they were legally man and wife. He’d given her his word. He might


    have screwed things up but he was determined to do the right thing from here on in. On paper, his track


    record with women was less thanplimentary. Given that and her own history, he could understand


    why Alessandra would be untrusting. It was down to him to prove himself to her.


    Theoretically, it should be easy. Christian loved sex—what red-blooded man didn’t?—but he’d never


    allowed his libido to run his life. With Alessandra... The longer she kept those gorgeous doe eyes fixed


    on him, the more his blood swirled with the need to consume her again. Everything about her spelled


    temptation, from the glossy chestnut hair that begged to have his fingers run through it to the toned


    golden arms his hands itched to trace. Every time she opened her mouth to speak, drink or eat, he


    would watch those beautiful lips and ache to press his own to them, to feel the heat of her breath


    merge with his.


    Soon. Soon she would be his again.


    ‘At least you had Ro,’ he said softly, thinking he would have given anything for a sibling when he’d


    been a child. It hadn’t been until he’d met his fellow Columbia Four that he’d realised what had been


    missing in his life: true friendship.


    ‘Emotionally, I had Ro,’ she conceded. ‘But he’s seven years older than me. By the time I was


    eleven he was at university, thousands of miles away. My grandfather loved me but he had no


    experience of raising girls and preferred to leave me in the hands of the household staff.’