‘So, if you didn’t go to college how did you get a degree?’
The innocuous question threw her. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Absently she pushed some hair behind her ear, her belly tightening when she saw his eyes follow the movement.
‘I did it through the Open University… Cormac didn’t approve of my going to college.’
‘And you always did what your brother told you?’ he asked mockingly.
‘Somehow I can’t quite believe that—although I can see the logic. No doubt you were of much more use to him without a college schedule messing up your hectic social lives.’
Cara’s hands clenched into fists by her sides. She’d done what her brother had told her because she’d had no choice—unless she’d have preferred being homeless on the streets of London from the age of sixteen. The fact that she’d pathetically hoped that some day Cormac would change and become the loving and protective big brother she’d always yearned for was a mocking embarrassment now.
‘I’ve already told you before that my life with my brother was not what you think.’
‘And how was it, then, Cara? How many poor deluded heiresses did you and your brother seduce into thinking that he loved them just so you could clean them out?’
Cara felt winded with hurt. How could she have forgotten for a second that once she was strong enough again Vicenzo would come after her.
She whirled around to leave.
‘I don’t have to listen to this—’
But he moved fast and caught her arm, making her gasp—not in pain, but in the contact of flesh to flesh. He whirled her back round and Cara saw his raised hand. She reacted completely reflexively, flinching violently in his hold, ducking her head. Then she froze. An awful stillness descended around them and Cara’s breathing sounded unbearably loud.
‘You think I would hit you?’ His voice was horrified.
Cara trembled from reaction and looked up, seeing Vicenzo’s eyes narrowed and how his mouth had tightened. She knew that of all things she feared about this man violence was not one of them.
She shook her head faintly. She realised now that his hand had merely been coming out to steady her. ‘No,’ she said shakily. ‘I don’t know what—’
Vicenzo was grim. ‘Someone hit you. Was it Mortimer?’
Cara couldn’t understand the feral glitter of his eyes. She shook her head again, mesmerized.
His hand gripped her even harder. He wasn’t going to let this go.
‘Who hit you, Cara?’
‘Why? Why do you even care?’ she asked desperately, wanting to find any way to avoid him seeing the inner, secretly vulnerable part of her. No one knew about this. Not even Rob or Barney. She was ashamed of it, of her weakness.
‘Tell me, Cara.’
And then he did something she couldn’t counter-attack. He gentled his hold on her and his hand became caressing, smoothing the skin it had held so tightly. Cara trembled and looked up at him, unaware of the mute plea in her eyes. But he would not budge.
She dropped her head and said, so quietly that he had to strain to hear,
‘Cormac. Sometimes when he was drunk he’d lash out… Most of the time I avoided it…him…but sometimes…’
Vicenzo swore under his breath and let her go. Immediately Cara put space between them and rubbed her arm distractedly. She felt something move within her. ‘Like I said, not everything was as it seemed.’
‘So you keep saying’ was all Vicenzo said enigmatically as he looked at her from under hooded lids.
A long tense moment stretched between them as Cara looked at Vicenzo and willed him to believe her. And then a knock came on the door, making Cara jump minutely, her heart beating unsteadily.
Lucia appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Signore Valentini is waiting outside on the terrace for Cara…’
‘Chess…’ She looked at Vicenzo, but he still had that unreadable expression on his face. She shouldn’t have said anything. A sense of futility stole over her, zapping her energy. ‘I promised your father a game of chess this morning.’ She glanced down at the papers on the floor, the evidence of her own brother’s handiwork making her feel sick. ‘But I can stay here—’
‘No.’ Vicenzo sounded harsh. ‘Go to my father. I can clear this up.’
Vicenzo watched Cara leave the room with a straight back. The dark colors of the clothes she wore mocked him now. He raked a hand through his hair as he saw again the abject terror on her face when she’d thought he was going to hit her. That any woman should think that was absolute anathema to him. She was throwing up so many contradictions, and it made him feel strangely vulnerable. And that was not an emotion he cared to admit to. That feeling had almost devastated him once, and he would not allow it back in now.
That evening, after dinner, Vicenzo called Cara back when she would have made her escape after Silvio had retired. She turned reluctantly at the door, still smarting from their encounter earlier. Vicenzo stood and came around the table, the hands in his pockets stretching the material over his groin. Cara’s cheeks flared as she felt her body respond. The last few weeks of no contact made her skin prickle.
‘Yes?’
He looked at her steadily from under hooded lids. ‘It’s your birthday tomorrow.’
Cara blanched. It had been so long since anyone had remembered her birthday—not since her parents had died… Cormac certainly never had.
She was turning twenty-three the next day.
‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly, not sure where he was going with this.
‘I have a villa on the Emerald Coast, in Porto Cervo. I’ll take you there tomorrow evening and we can go out for dinner…’
Cara gripped the door, her knuckles showing white. Suddenly the thought of leaving this villa was frightening in the extreme. ‘But why would you want to do that?’
He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Call it a truce… I think we could do with a truce, don’t you?’
Cara shrugged as well, too bemused and confused to do anything else.
‘Good, we’ll leave about four p.m. Pack something for going out.’
Vicenzo watched Cara leave the room and questioned his sanity. What was he doing? And why did he feel compelled to do something, anything, for her birthday? And why, when he’d noticed the date on her passport, had he felt such a tug of something? He comforted himself. This would be the ultimate test. He would be taking her to a place where her true colors would undoubtedly shine—and that, surely, would help to quiet these growing voices of doubt in his head…
The next day Cara waited patiently in the hall at four, with a small bag.
Vicenzo strode out of his office and looked from her to the bag. ‘That’s it?’ Incredulity laced his voice.
Cara nodded. He shrugged and hustled her out to the Jeep. After a ten-minute drive from the villa they pulled into a field, where Cara saw a helicopter waiting. Within minutes they were airborne and flying north-east over mountainous terrain. Cara looked down, captivated.
Exhilaration coursed through her at being in a helicopter for the first time.
Vicenzo pointed things out to her along the way, and she tried to ignore how aware she was of his big body beside hers in the small space.
When they landed, and he helped her out, her legs nearly buckled because they were so wobbly. To her mortification he lifted her up. When she started to protest he kissed her for a long moment. He pulled back and Cara looked up, bewildered, her whole body alive with desire.
And then he said, ‘We’re a newly married couple, remember? Smile for the cameras.’
Cara looked around and was nearly blinded by the flashing of cameras from just beyond a chain fence a few feet away. The real world was back.
Vicenzo bundled her into a Jeep with darkened widows and they took off.
She crossed her arms and faced him, feeling ridiculous disappointment rushing through her. ‘If this is some exercise in bolstering your image as a newly converted family man, then—’
His mouth was grim. ‘It’s not. Believe me. I’d forgotten that the paparazzi always lie in wait there.’ And that caught him up short. He’d arrived with countless other women at this small airfield, used mainly by VIPs, and he’d never once before been caught out.
Something about Cara’s sheer joy in the helicopter and the way she’d been so endearingly shaky afterwards had distracted him. He fought down the doubts that mocked his justification for bringing her here. This was her territory. No doubt she would love this. Once she saw the villa…the club.
The villa Vicenzo took Cara to was about as different as it was possible to get from his family villa. This was an architect’s dream: all sharp abstract angles and corners, glass everywhere, and entirely white inside. There was an infinity pool that had a view looking right out over the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was perfectly nice, thought Cara, but…cold. Unlived-in. A place for mistresses.
That thought caught her up short. Was this where he brought his lovers?
He must have seen something cross her face, because he said, ‘This is where I do most of my entertaining—where I host business or social events…’