Her Mediterranean Playboy Read Online Free PDF Page B

over the last few weeks.
    ‘I told you not to call me by that name,’ she said, firing another fiery glare his way. ‘And, even though it’s really none of your business, I married young and regretted it from day one. I don’t like discussing it. It distresses me to think of how impulsive I was back then.’
    His eyes centred on hers. ‘How old were you?’ he asked.
    Ally looked away. She hated lying to his face; it seemed much harder to do so with each lie she told. She felt as if she was constructing a precarious house of cards around herself; any minute a breath of truth would send them all toppling and expose her completely. ‘I was eighteen,’ she mumbled.
    ‘Did your parents approve of the marriage?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ she said, unable to stop a little sigh escaping. ‘Our…I mean my father left when I was a toddler, and my mother died when I was a few months off turning fifteen.’
    ‘Who brought you up after your mother died?’
    Ally found his questions deeply unsettling. She had spoken to so few people over the years about her and her sister’s tragic background. Their various stints in foster care soon after the suicide of their mother had triggered the first episode of psychosis in her twin. It had been devastating to watch her rapid slide into insanity that had meant change after change of foster home as each carer found Alex’s condition harder to cope with. Ally had fought hard to stay with her sister, which had made finding alternative placements all the more difficult.
    Once they had turned sixteen she had left school to look after Alex full-time, gradually getting her back on her feet. It had been a struggle to go to night school to complete her education and then go on to do a degree—something Alex had never quite managed to achieve—but Ally felt she had done what needed to be done to provide for them both. Her job as a stock analyst for a European-based company director meant she could support them both financially during the periods her sister was out of work due to a relapse of her illness.
    It had been almost three years since Ally had had to step in, which was why this episode was so upsetting as it seemed so out of the blue.
    ‘Ally?’
    She turned around to look at him, suddenly struck by the concerned way he was looking at her, as if he genuinely cared about what had happened to her in the past. ‘I’m sorry…what did you ask me?’ she said.
    ‘I asked who looked after you after your mother died,’ he said, his dark brown eyes momentarily losing their glittering hardness. ‘Fourteen or even fifteen, particularly for a girl, is very young to be without an adult in her life. I have a niece who is close to that age. She adores her father, but I cannot imagine what she would do if she lost her mother. You had neither.’
    Ally felt the burn of tears at the back of her eyes—tears she had forbidden herself from shedding for more than a decade. What was it about this man that affected her so? He was a playboy; he had admitted as much himself. He moved from one relationship to another like a child with a toy that no longer held any appeal. ‘I was fostered out,’ she said, lowering her eyes from his. ‘Thank God there are still good people out there who open their homes for children in difficulties.’
    Vittorio wondered why Rocco hadn’t told him of his lover’s tragic background, or if he had even known of it himself. It made sense that she craved security, given her young life had been disrupted so devastatingly, although a part of him wondered if it was all an act. What better way to garner sympathy than to construct a history of neglect and misery? Few people could resist a hard luck story; it drew on most people’s heartstrings to think how tough others had it in life.
    But there was something about the slim young woman before him that didn’t quite add up. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It was just a feeling he had. She was guarded around him,