day. That night, on our way back to the castle, the accident happened.’
He dragged in air, as if struggling with the memories. ‘Someone there overheard us talking and reported it to the police, and so when they came to the hospital, while I was barely recovering from injuries so horrific they expected me to die, it was to inform me that I was the suspect in a mass murder case.’
Ice-cold water sluiced through her veins. She took a step closer. His pain was so clear on his face she could read his story there, etched in his scars. That anyone had suffered so much pain, that he had suffered so much, destroyed her. His pain became hers, and she wanted to do anything she could to make things right. Knowing she never could, no matter what she felt for him, knowing now she’d had a right to be scared of staying.
‘Alessandro …’
‘Can you blame me for burying myself here and hiding away from the media’s macabre pursuit, Dr Hunter? Can you begin to understand?’
‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ she offered softly, but knew it could indeed be like that. ‘It never has to be like that again.’
‘No. Not if I stay here.’
And she knew she had to play her final card—the final truth she had taken this long to admit. ‘And if I told you that I loved you?’
He looked at her then, savagery mixed with tragedy. ‘Then I would say you are the most cursed of all.’
CHAPTER TEN
THE applause rang out loud and long in the Washington auditorium, and Dr Grace Hunter smiled in her sensible suit and bowed one final time to the audience, finally able to withdraw to the quiet of the room generously labelled her dressing room—little more than a closet to store her things, really, but at least it provided her with a bolthole.
The lecture in London three months ago had been such a resounding success that she’d been booked almost solid ever since. City after city wanted to hear the story of the lost pages, wanted to see her presentation and hear the lost messages from the fabled book of healing.
She felt a fraud every time—tonight more than ever. How could it be a book of healing, she wondered, when she felt so heartsick every minute of every day? And yet she had the fame she had sought. She had the respect of her peers and her colleagues. She had a book deal and offers of chairs at universities all around the world. Even, in her latest coup, a last-minute slot on a prime time chat show.
How was it possible, with all that success, to feel so wretched?
Or had Alessandro been right? Was she the most cursed of all, loving a man who could not return her love?
She peeled the jacket from her shoulders and pulled the court shoes from her feet, remembering another outfit—a waterfall of silk atop silver sandals that shimmered with every step. His fiancée’s dress. Had he realised how much he’d hurt her when she’d heard that? Or hadn’t he cared because in his mind she’d already ceased being his fiancée before she had died? Whatever, she supposed she should be thankful that at least he’d taken the trouble to find her something that had never been worn. And it had been a beautiful dress.
She sighed, picking up her programme folder to remind herself of where she would be next. There was no point focusing on the past. She must look to the future. She had career decisions to make and continents to decide between.
There was a knock on the door and she pushed herself from her chair reluctantly, remembering the drinks organised for after her presentation. No doubt a reminder call. She was probably already late.
She pulled open the door, ready to make her excuses, but the words dried up in her throat, incinerated by the lightning bolt that coursed through her. She blinked up at him, her eyes moving past his beauty and his horror to drink in the man himself.
‘I heard your lecture,’ he told her, when he clearly realised she was incapable of speech. ‘You were amazing.’
She swallowed. ‘You heard it?’
‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’ And then, perhaps because he sensed she was incapable of rational thought, ‘Perhaps you might invite me in?’
And she shook her head to scatter her woolly thoughts and remembered her manners. ‘Please, Count Volta.’
‘Alessandro,’ he corrected, and her stunned heart—not yet ready to hope—warmed just a