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‘Hmmm...’ Daisy sighed absently, wondering if he remembered the time she had tried to take his jeans off with her teeth...seriously hoping that he didn’t.
‘I think that you owe both Tara and me the chance to make something out of this mess.’
Daisy nodded and wished she had sat beside him instead of opposite.
‘I also want to give Tara what she wants, and I would have to be extraordinarily stupid not to know what she wants after yesterday.’
With enormous effort, Daisy fought to reinstate rational concentration and lifted exasperated eyes to his. ‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You let Tara tie you up in knots, didn’t you?’
Disorientatingly, Alessio’s gleaming dark gaze flared with spontaneous amusement. ‘Not at all. When she asked me very loudly in the middle of a crowded restaurant whether I thought I could still fancy her mum, I took it beautifully.’
The challenging slant of Daisy’s chin wavered as she slowly turned a beetroot shade, horror striking into her bones.
‘It was only half past twelve but I was already waiting for the question,’ Alessio confessed lazily. ‘Tara has no subtlety. She can’t wait for anything either. She just jumps right in and splashes everyone around her. Thirty-two years’ experience of Bianca stood me in good stead.’
Daisy was mortified. ‘So you guessed what she was trying to do.’
‘She was like a suicide bomber forcing herself out on a diplomatic mission. She told me how she had always thought that you and I had a lot in common with Romeo and Juliet.’
Daisy went from mortification to sheer agony. “Oh, no—’
‘How divorce destroys children’s lives: that was phase two. She backed that up with several hair-raising horror stories about schoolfriends. I lunched to the accompaniment of tales about spiteful stepmothers and abusive stepfathers. By the time the dessert cart came my appetite was flagging but Tara was putting away enough fuel to stoke a steam engine,’ Alessio recalled wryly. ‘I was allowed a break until mid-afternoon before she embarked on the problems suffered by children from broken homes.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Daisy said feelingly.
‘She took me step by painful step through subjects such as low self-esteem and abysmal academic achievement—’
‘She’s top of her class!’ Daisy gasped.
‘I suspected that. Nobody that determined to make me feel guilty could possibly be lacking in intelligence. And by the end of my indoctrination session the picture was crystal-clear. Tara worships the ground you walk on. You have also attained martyr status while still alive,’ Alessio murmured with sardonic eyes. ‘The divorce was fifty per cent my fault and fifty per cent the fault of the in-laws from hell. My evil, scheming parents, who sounded remarkably like a twentieth-century resurrection of the Borgias, may not have succeeded in driving you to suicide but then that is only a tribute to the strength of your character.’
Daisy gulped. ‘Teenagers can be very melodramatic.’
‘There were moments yesterday when I could have shaken you until your teeth rattled in your head,’ Alessio confided. ‘But the bottom line is that Tara is consumed by a desire to see us reconciled.’
‘It’s an understandable dream for her to have,’ Daisy conceded grudgingly.
‘But I want to give my daughter that dream,’ Alessio returned with dangerous softness. The limousine had stopped and the chauffeur walked round the car to open Daisy’s door for her. Tight-mouthed, Daisy slid out. ‘Where on earth are we going?’
‘My apartment.’
Inside the lift, she breathed in deep. ‘Alessio... I love Tara very much and I understand that, the way you’re feeling right now, you’d try to give her the moon if she asked for it, but I don’t want—’
‘What you want doesn’t come into this.’
Daisy’s generous mouth fell wide open.
‘Haven’t you had everything your way for long enough?’
Daisy froze in shock.
‘When the going go too rough, you walked out on our marriage without hesitation,’ Alessio delivered with aggressive bite. ‘I got no choice then and I got even less choice when it came to my rights as a parent. You didn’t compromise your wants and wishes until Tara gave you a guilty conscience. If she had had no interest in her absent father, I would probably never have learnt that I had a daughter. Dio...I feel I’ve earned the right to make some demands of my own!’
