Second-Time Bride by Lynne Graham Page A

help being relieved that it was all over—’
    â€˜ Madre di Dio ...’ Alessio breathed unsteadily, his lean hands suddenly clenching into powerful fists.
    â€˜And I don’t blame you for that...not really,’ Daisy admitted with innate honesty, her voice taut with the force of her own turbulent emotions. ‘But I had had enough and the last thing I could have faced was breaking back into all your lives when you thought you were finally free of me and saying, Guess what? I’m still pregnant! It was easier to let you go on thinking that that was over, finished and done with, the way you all wanted it to be. So I really didn’t want to have to come here this morning and spoil your day—’
    â€˜Spoil my day?’ Alessio enunciated with visible difficulty.
    Daisy stooped almost clumsily and dropped the certificate and the small photo on the low glass table between them. ‘I would never have told you if it had been left solely up to me,’ she revealed in a jerky undertone as she began backing away towards the door, her anxious violet gaze nailed to his low shimmering golden eyes. ‘I know you’re shocked and angry and undoubtedly thinking that you must have been cursed the night you first met me but please try to think of all this from Tara’s point of view. She would like to meet you. She’s not going to make a nuisance of herself or anything like that but she’s curious—’
    â€˜Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?’ In a sudden movement, Alessio sprang out of his statuelike stillness and strode after her.
    â€˜I’ve said all I’ve got to say for now!’ Daisy confessed, and speeded up in her path to the door, wrenching it open when she got there and not bothering to look over her shoulder as she walked very fast down the corridor. She hit the call button on the lift and then looked.
    â€˜ Dio! Get back here right now!’ Alessio launched at her in a rage, from a distance of twenty feet.
    Her heart leapt into her throat. She had a dazed impression of the receptionist’s stunned incredulity and then she turned and fled, heading for the stairs instead. There was no point in assisting Alessio to spring an embarrassing scene in public. Obviously he was in deep shock, otherwise he wouldn’t have shouted at her like that. He was also in a blaze of fury, and that was new—but not something Daisy planned to hang around and find out more about. She crashed through the last set of fire doors and raced down a wide set of stairs.
    â€˜I’ll drag you up again by the hair if you don’t get back here!’ Alessio roared down at her from the flight above.
    â€˜I’m running away for your benefit, not my own!’ Daisy hurled breathlessly back. ‘If I don’t, you’ll say a lot of things that you’ll be deeply ashamed of saying in a few hours’ time!’
    â€˜You bitch!’ Alessio grated as he continued his enraged pursuit.
    â€˜Don’t you dare call me that!’ Daisy paused to shout back. ‘And by the way, it was your birth control that failed and not my lack of it! The dates prove that beyond doubt!’
    Alessio spat something in Italian that sounded very aggressive. Daisy blenched. This was not a mood she knew him in—Alessio in an uncontrollable dark fury, doubtless made all the more dangerous by his lack of practice in expressing such feelings. It had not once crossed her mind that she might find herself being chased through the Leopardi Merchant Bank by a male who even at nineteen had prided himself on his self-control and superhuman cool. So he was furious—well, that was no surprise, was it? But that was no excuse to attack her!
    Tara had been conceived in August, not July, which meant that Alessio was the one responsible. Of course, he had tried to push that responsibility off onto her, citing the very first time they had made love, when a