“Except you’re more like the slimy, cold-blooded frog than the prince.”
His jaw tightened and Alex knew she’d landed a solid hit.
She straightened as he came to her, his voice deceptively soft when he spoke. “You’ve just been through a terrible loss. Grief and guilt should not be the motivators to involve yourself in a child’s life. He’s not something you can return to a shop when the fancy wears off.”
The sudden change to this most serious of topics, and offering his sensible opinion stole the ground from underneath her. The complex facets to this man amazed her, and the surprises kept hitting her just when she thought she had the measure of him.
He smiled thinly. “You’re shocked that a man like me—ruthless, cold, cruel even—can think of a child’s well-being in this situation, can see beyond our petty differences, si?”
“No. Yes, I mean… I didn’t think you’d be quite so rational about it.” She shrugged. “It gives me hope that I’m not pushing Charlie from one horrible situation to another. Even if it is only temporary.”
“You have considered that I might be a different but just as horrible situation for him then?”
“Of course I have. You lied to me. You’ve lost my trust. I thought long and hard over that before I came back to you today.”
“And what did you conclude?”
“My first step is to get custody of Charlie. Once I achieve that goal, once this marriage becomes nothing but a liability to me, I’ll—”
“You’ll do away with me?” he said, a glint of wicked humor gleaming in his eyes.
Alex shrugged, a small smile playing around her own mouth. “Something like that, yes.”
His gaze turned thoughtful, as he stood there caging her with his body. She could almost hear the gears turning in that Machiavellian mind of his. “Bene, I’ll play along for the world. But I have a price for my cooperation.”
“Of course you do.” She glared at him. “It seems you’re nothing if not predictable.”
“You’re asking me to take on an important role in the life of a child—”
“I’m not asking you to be a permanent parent to him—”
“Ah…how do you see this playing out, then?” he asked, parodying the question she’d asked of him. “We pretend to be an adoring couple, you get custody of your half brother and then you run off to some quiet corner of the world with him in tow, never to be seen again and forget all about your poor husband?”
There was no place in the world she could go to where she could outrun her feelings for him. “What’s your price, V?” she demanded, facing him, refusing to back down even though everything inside her was building to an unbearably heightened sense of unwanted anticipation.
He tucked his finger under her chin and looked her straight in the eye. “The same as always, Alessandra.”
“Spell it out for me.”
“I’ve only ever wanted what was mine. No more, no less.
“I want the wife you promised me you’d be. I want the marriage that this was supposed to be. I want you to stand by my side while I achieve the goal I’ve worked toward all my life.”
“Those promises were made based on false assumptions. You’re not the man I thought you were. And nothing will make me betray Leo and Massimo.”
Impatience glittered in his eyes. “You do them a disservice, cara. Leonardo and Massimo can look after themselves. Charlie can’t. Why don’t you focus your energies on him?”
“You make it sound so simple. As if everything sits in a different compartment—”
“You don’t seem to grasp one crucial thing. Whether I had seen you in Bali or not, whether or not I had thrown all my own rules out the window and married you when I’ve never even had a girlfriend for more than two months, this was always going to be my path in life, Alessandra.
“I would still have done everything I could to ruin all that bears the name Brunetti.”
“And I’ll be damned before I let you use me against them,” she threw back at him.
Vincenzo took her in, reluctant admiration and pride building up in his chest.
From the portrait Massimo had drawn of her, from her own actions in the last nine weeks, he’d wondered at the sanity of what he’d done. If he’d been taken in by her beauty and his lust. But now, he knew he’d made the right decision.
He wanted this Alessandra that fought for the people she loved in her life so ferociously. He wanted that loyalty all for himself.
And whether cruel or not, fate had given him another chance with her. Alessandra’s resolve to do the right thing by her half brother was his chance, his opportunity to set things straight between them.
An opportunity to get her to spend time with him, to make her see his side of the story. To turn this temporary arrangement she’d suggested into the permanent marriage he still wanted.
“Fine, I’ll give you what you’re asking for. We will pretend to be a happy, blissfully in love couple for the world. I will help you win custody of Charlie. After a trial period of say three months.”
“Trial period of what exactly?”
“Of you behaving yourself.”
“Behaving myself? How dare you—”
“Hear me out, Alessandra. You say I’ve broken your trust? You have done exactly the same to me. Believe me, Princess, you’re the first person I gave that to and you threw it back in my face without a single moment’s doubt.”
* * *
The thin thread of resentment in those words killed Alex’s ready argument. Words fell away from her lips as she stared at him, a simple truth emerging from all of it.
Their marriage had meant something to him. Maybe not the same thing as it had to her. But something. And her walking out on it, on him, he saw as…what? Abandonment? A betrayal? Had this marriage, his vows, really been sacred to him?
“I won’t… I can’t let you bring a child
