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Not when she knew what he was like. What he believed. Tonight was about being friends. That was all.

That was all it could be.

The wine bar was panelled in dark wood, with low tables and comfortable armchairs scattered around. It was like entering someone’s study and Allegra could see immediately why Stefano liked it.

‘Shall I order a bottle of red?’ he asked, and Allegra bit her lip.

‘I think I’ve had enough wine already.’

‘What is an evening with friends without wine?’ He smiled. ‘Just drink a little if you prefer, but we must have a toast.’

‘All right.’ It did seem rather prim and stingy to sit sipping iced water.

Stefano ordered and they were soon seated in two squashy armchairs. Allegra even kicked off her heels—her feet had been killing her—and tucked her legs up under her.

‘So,’ Stefano said, ‘I want to hear more about what you’ve been up to these last seven years.’

Allegra laughed. ‘That’s a rather tall order.’

He shrugged; she’d forgotten how wide his shoulders were, how much power and grace the simplest of movements revealed. ‘You’re an art therapist, you said. How did that come about?’

‘I took classes.’

‘When you arrived in London?’

‘Soon after.’

The waiter came with the wine and they were both silent while he uncorked the bottle and poured. Stefano tasted it, smiled and indicated for the waiter to pour for Allegra.

‘Cin cin,’ he said, raising his glass in the old informal toast that reminded her of her childhood, and she smiled, raising her own.

She drank, grateful for the rich liquid that coated her throat and burned in her belly. Despite Stefano’s easy manner, Allegra realized she was still feeling unsettled.

Seeing him brought back more memories than she’d ever wanted to face. Memories and questions.

She had chosen not to face them when she’d left. She’d quite deliberately put the memories in a box and unlike Pandora, she’d had no curiosity to open it. No desire for the accompanying emotions and fears to come tumbling out.

When you didn’t face something, she knew, it became easier never to face it. It became quite wonderfully easy to simply ignore it. For ever.

Yet now that something was staring her straight in the face, smiling blandly.

Whatever Stefano had felt seven years ago, he’d clearly got over it. He’d put his ghosts, his demons to rest and had moved on.

And so had she.

Hadn’t she?

Yes, she told herself, she had. She had.

Stefano crossed one long leg over the other, smiling easily. ‘Tell me about these classes you took,’ he said.

‘What is there to tell?’ Her voice came out too high, too strained. Allegra took a breath and let it out slowly. She even managed a laugh. ‘I came to London and I lived at my uncle’s house for … a little while. Then I got my own digs, my own job, and when I’d saved enough money I started taking night classes. Eventually I realized I enjoyed art and I specialised in art therapy. I received my preliminary qualification two years ago.’

Stefano nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ he finally said. ‘It must have been very difficult, starting out on your own.’

‘No more difficult than the alternative,’ Allegra retorted, and then felt a hectic flush sweep across her face and crawl up her throat as she realized the implication of what she’d said.

‘The alternative,’ Stefano replied musingly. He smiled wryly, but Allegra saw something flicker in his eyes. She didn’t know what it was—hidden, shadowy—but it made her uneasy.

It made her wonder.

‘By the alternative,’ he continued, rotating his wineglass between lean brown fingers, ‘you mean marrying me.’

Allegra took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Stefano, marrying you would have destroyed me back then. My mother saved me that night she helped me run away.’

‘And saved herself as well.’

Allegra bit her lip. ‘Yes, I realize now she did it for her own ends, to shame my father. She used me as much as my father intended to use me.’

A month after her arrival in England, she’d heard of her mother’s flagrant affair with Alfonso, the driver who had spirited Allegra away. Allegra had lost enough of her naïveté then to realize how her mother had manipulated her daughter’s confused and frightened state for her own ends—the ultimate shaming of the man she despised, the man who had arranged Allegra’s marriage.

Her husband.

And what had it gained her?

By the time Isabel had left, Roberto Avesti was bankrupt and his business, Avesti International, ruined. Isabel hadn’t realized the depth of her husband’s disgrace, or the fact that it would mean she would be, if not broken-hearted, then at least broke.

Allegra bit her lip, her mind and heart sliding away from that line of conversation, those memories, the cost her own freedom had demanded from everyone involved.

‘Even so,’ she said firmly, ‘it’s the truth. I was nineteen, a child, I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted.’

Stefano’s face was expressionless, his eyes blank, steady on hers. ‘I could have helped you with that.’

‘No, you couldn’t. Wouldn’t.’ Allegra shook her head. ‘What you wanted in a wife wasn’t—isn’t—the person I was meant to become. I had to discover that for myself. Back then I didn’t even know I was missing anything. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.’ Her voice rang out bitterly.

‘And something made you realize you weren’t,’ Stefano finished lightly. ‘I know it shocked you to realize our marriage was arranged, Allegra, as a matter of business between your father and me.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘it did. But it wasn’t just that, you know.’

Stefano cocked his head, his eyes alert. ‘No? What was it, then?’ His voice was bland and mildly curious yet Allegra still felt a strange frisson of fear. Unease.

Suspicion.

‘You didn’t love me,’ Allegra said, striving to keep her voice steady. ‘Not the way I wanted to be loved, anyway.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ she said, trying to keep her voice light. ‘It’s all past, as you said.’

‘Indeed.’ Stefano’s voice was chilly, the expression in his eyes remote at best. ‘Still,’ he continued, his voice thawing, turning mild, ‘it must have been difficult for you to set up a new life here, leave your family, your home.’ He paused. ‘You’ve never been back really, have you?’

‘I’ve been to Milan, for professional reasons,’ Allegra replied, hearing the defensive edge to her voice.