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CHAPTER SEVEN

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

‘What for?’ he dismissed ‘Why would I want to involve et that,’ she said, pulling a face

He closed his eyes ‘Your father is an alcoholic and a ga after you He didn’t abandon you He’s always been a fixture in your life There’s a difference’

She laughed conteround My father dumped me on his father before I was a year old Rocco took care ofto 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 Confiryers ‘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 andup without a father, because my father abandoned me too, and, worst of all, he abandoned Rocco’

He and Alessandra were like two peas but froardens, Christian realised They’d both been abandoned by the people who should have been there for theood or ill, it had shaped them both The distrust and avoidance of love and relationships

They were htened across Alessandra’s high cheekbones, her eyes ablaze 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 apartood in his arms, as if her contours had been shaped especially for hihts of her naked: the way she had wrapped those lithe legs around hi to burrow under his skin Those saainst his at that verythe top of her golden cleavage, belohich lay breasts that had becoether

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

This had to stop Right now Iot hi in that Milanese restaurant, fascinated by her plu theain until they were legally ht have screwed things up but he was deter from here on in On paper, his track record omen was less than complimentary 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 hiain Everything about her spelled teed 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 thee with his

Soon Soon she would be his again

‘At least you had Rocco,’ 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 Colu in his life: true friendship

‘Emotionally, I had Rocco,’ she conceded ‘But he’s seven years older than me By the time I was eleven he was at university, thousands of randfather loved irls and preferred to leave me in the hands of the household staff’