Sticking his hands in his jeans, he turned and leaned on the wall beside her door. He’d wait. For as long as it took. His fingers fiddled with the coins and car keys in his pockets. Eventually, she’d have to open this damn door and stick her pointy little nose out to see who lurked outside.
Her ex-fiancé was already married. To another woman.
The information had rocked him. Still rocked him.
Vico stared at the precisely clipped hedge lining the side of her house. Not a single leaf or branch dared to challenge the rigid uniformity of the hedge. She probably demanded some gardener come here every day to ensure complete compliance from her shrubs.
His security team had been even more thorough. The additional information that the man was also a cheat had been a revelation. The man had been seen with the other woman long before the engagement with Lise Helton had ended.
Had she known?
Not likely. She didn’t strike him as a woman who’d put up with a mistress on the side. She had too much pride for that. So she hadn’t known and something else had broken the engagement.
Something like having sex with another man.
Had the ex found out and cut it off?
Not likely again. They hadn’t been seen by anyone they knew for the short time they’d been at the bar and she wasn’t the type to talk about her personal life. There’d been no gossip running around the office he could detect. And he was pretty good at detecting.
So, the only possible explanation was the one he’d grasped at the very beginning. She’d cheated, confessed and paid the price, and Vico Mattare had screwed up someone else’s life once more. The fact that she’d been saved from a marriage to another cheat didn’t lessen the guilt roiling inside him. The only redeeming element from all this conjecture was at least he knew she’d wanted him. Badly. Badly enough to risk screwing up her life. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to soothe his pride a bit. Yet it did nothing to dispel the guilt.
Another thought buzzed into his mind.
Lise Helton was a cheat, but at least she’d been honest with her ex. A lot more honest than she’d ever been with Vico Mattare. Telling him she had the flu. Telling him there wasn’t anything else going on with her body.
An irritated growl came from his throat at his scattered thoughts.
No more. No more guilt or frustration or anger. All of the emotions had to be washed away and in their place some good hard, cold logic had to land.
The ex-fiancé wasn’t a part of the picture.
The picture that had a baby in it.
He’d instructed his security to dig deeper, find the weapon he had to have to make her submit to his will. What mattered, he thought with grim determination, was he’d finally found her Achilles’ heel. The information that would…bring her to heel.
Her family home.
Taverwood Grange.
The photos and research his security team had sent had given him more than mere ammunition against her. The information had given him a clear understanding of the differences lying between them. The mansion, for surely there was no other way to describe it, stood on a knoll, looking grandly over the rolling hills and dales of a vast parkland. The Kent property had been in her family for hundreds of years. A priceless treasure house of art and antiques.
The place she’d been raised in.
The Princesse indeed.
The comparison to the two-bedroom flat above his uncle’s shop in downtown Naples, where he’d been raised, could not have been starker. The two bedrooms which housed his two brothers, his three sisters, his mother, and himself. Had there ever been a time when he had not yearned for privacy? For a place he could call his own? Had there ever been a day when he hadn’t dreamed of roaming free?
Not in the dirty streets of the ghetto where his family was forced to live. No, his childhood dream had been of green grass and streams and trees to climb.
Lise Helton’s childhood must have been a fantasy come to life.
Those memories must be very dear to her. Which played right into his hands. For he was now the proud owner of that magnificent property’s mortgage.
Si. She would do what he wanted her to do.
Vico glanced back at the door. Pushed the doorbell hard. Listened as the chimes echoed dimly from behind the entrance.
He’d wait. But not as a supplicant. As a dictator.
A sound from behind the door made him straighten.
The doorknob turned. The door opened.
Her face was creased from sleep and her eyes were blurry. She wore a rumpled flannel nightgown that would have easily fit two of her in its folds. Blonde hair, tangling and tumbling, caught the early morning sunlight.
The ever-present lust roared through his veins, despite the fact that the Princesse currently resembled a bag lady.