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every last ounce of control he could scrape up, cooling the anger that seemed to be on a low simmer in his blood constantly now.
    He had a feeling, though, that the shock was due only in part to his presence, with a much larger part due to the woman who was trailing behind him.
    He punched the up button for the elevator and the doors slid open. He looked at Alessia, who simply stood there, her hands clasped in front of her, dark eyes looking at everything but him.
    “After you,
cara mia
,” he said, putting his hand between the doors, keeping them from closing.
    “You don’t demand that a wife walk three paces behind you at all times?” she asked, her words soft, defiant.
    “A woman is of very little use to me when she’s behind me. Bent over in front of me is another matter, as you well know.”
    Her cheeks turned dark with color, and not all of it was from embarrassment. He’d made her angry, as he’d intended to do. He didn’t know what it was about her that pushed him so. That made him say things like that.
    That made him show anything beyond the unreadable mask he preferred to present to the world.
    She was angry, but she didn’t say another word.She simply stepped into the elevator, her eyes fixed to the digital readout on the wall. The doors slid closed behind them, and still she didn’t look at him.
    “If you brought me here to abuse me perhaps I should simply go back to my father’s house and take my chances with him.”
    “That’s what you call abuse? You didn’t seem to find it so abhorrent the night you let me do it.”
    “But you weren’t being a bastard that night. Had you approached me at the bar and used it as a pickup line I would have told you to go to hell.”
    “Would you have, Alessia?” he asked, anger, heat, firing in his blood. “Somehow I don’t think that’s true.”
    “No?”
    “No.” He turned to her, put his hand, palm flat, on the glossy marble wall behind her, drawing closer, drawing in the scent of her.
Dio
. Like lilac and sun. She was Spring standing before him, new life, new hope.
    He pushed away from her, shut down the feeling.
    “Shows what you know.”
    “I know a great deal about you.”
    “Stop with the you-know-me stuff. Just because we slept together—”
    “You have a dimple on your right cheek. It doesn’t show every time you smile, only when you’re really,really smiling. You dance by yourself in the sun, you don’t like to wear shoes. You’ve bandaged every scraped knee your brothers and sisters ever had. And whenever you see me, you can’t help yourself, you have to stare. I know you, Alessia Battaglia, don’t tell me otherwise.”
    “You knew me, Matteo. You knew a child. I’m not the same person now.”
    “Then how is it you ended up in my bed the night of your bachelorette party?”
    Her eyes met his for the first time all morning, for the first time since his private plane had touched down in Sicily. “Because I wanted to make a choice, Matteo. Every other choice was being made for me. I wanted to … I wanted to at least make the choice about who my first lover should be.”
    “Haven’t you had a lot of time to make that choice?”
    “When? With all of my free time? I’ve spent my life making sure my brothers and sisters were cared for, really cared for, not just given the bare necessities by staff. I spent my life making sure they never bore the full brunt of my father’s rage. I’ve spent my life being the perfect daughter, the hostess for his functions, standing and smiling next to him when he got reelected for a position that he abuses.”
    “Why?” he asked.
    “Because of my siblings. Because no matter that myfather is a tyrant, he is our father. We’re Battaglias. I hoped … I’ve always hoped I could make that mean something good. That I could make sure my brothers and sisters learned to do the right things, learned to want the right things. If I didn’t make sure, they would only have my father as a guiding