Free Her Mediterranean Playboy by Melanie Milburne

She looked away from his piercing gaze. ‘I’m a completely different person now. What I wanted back then is not what I want now.’
    ‘Another thing I have observed about you that runs against what Rocco told me is that you do not really enjoy being the centre of attention,’ he said. ‘I sometimes feel as if he completely misread you. He described you as an out-and-out extrovert, flirtatious and vivacious, the life of the party. But that is not the real you, is it? You hate crowds. I saw the way you reacted just then. I could feel the tension in your body. You could not wait to get away. How could Rocco have got it so wrong about you?’
    She lifted her eyes to his, wondering if there was more behindhis comment than he was letting on. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you Rocco is not the sort of person to be interested in getting to know someone deeply. To put it crudely, he was only interested in getting himself laid.’
    ‘Which you agreed to within hours of meeting him—or so he told me.’
    ‘And do you believe everything your brother-in-law tells you?’ she asked with a pointed look.
    ‘I am not unaware of Rocco’s limitations,’ he said, releasing a small sigh as he replaced his glass on the table. ‘While I admire him in a professional capacity, he is not the person I would have chosen to marry my younger sister. I tried to warn her about him, but you know what young girls are like. They do not like being told what to do. Of course it did not help that she had had a crush on him for years. Chiara has been emotionally vulnerable since our parents died in a road accident when she was a teenager. I blame myself for not being there for her. I was studying abroad at the time, at Cambridge in England, and our older sister Justina was married and living in Athens. Chiara was all alone. I will never forget that phone call…’
    He paused for a moment and picked up his glass, studying the contents before adding, as his eyes met hers, ‘I am probably boring you with all this. I do not normally share such intimate information with just anyone. You are a good listener, Ally. That is something else Rocco neglected to tell me about you.’
    Ally was so close to telling him the truth she had to bite her tongue. He seemed so genuine, so sincere, but how could she be sure?
    ‘I told you what happened between your brother-in-law and I was a mistake,’ she said, lowering her eyes once more. ‘If I could have avoided all of this I would have, but Rocco lied to me. If he had told me he was married I would have never dreamt of getting involved with him.’
    ‘When exactly did he tell you he was married?’
    She tried to recall what her twin had said. ‘Um…I think it was on our last date.’
    ‘Where was that?’
    She felt her heart flap in her chest like a stranded fish. ‘In London…’
    ‘Whereabouts in London?’ he asked.
    She frowned in frustration. ‘What does it matter where it was? A lie is a lie, no matter where it is delivered.’
    ‘That is true,’ he agreed. ‘But it is important for me to know what happened between you and when. I thought it might be beneficial to get your angle and weigh things up in my mind.’
    ‘So you can decide who is more credible?’ she asked, with a cynical twist to her mouth.
    He looked at her steadily for a lengthy pause, the dark intensity of his gaze unravelling her more than he could have imagined as she sat rigidly before him, every muscle in her face twitching under the tight control she was trying to maintain on her features. Her pulse was racing, her skin breaking out in a fine sweat, and her stomach was feeling as if a giant hole had been carved into it with a sharp implement.
    ‘As I said before, the picture he painted of you does not quite fit the frame I see before me now,’ he said, raising his glass to his lips again. ‘I wonder why that is?’
    Ally swallowed against the restriction in her throat. ‘Your brother-in-law is hardly someone I’d be