I’m aware of that.’
Cara sat up straight, horror filling her that Silvio felt compelled to act as some kind of confidante. ‘Silvio, please—you don’t have to—’
He held up a hand, effectively shushing her and she closed her mouth. He glanced at her briefly before looking back to the board. ‘You know Vicenzo and Allegra’s mother left when he was twelve and she was four years old?’
Cara shook her head. She knew not to protest against his speaking again, and in all honesty she couldn’t help her interest being piqued about what had happened to their mother. Was this where Vicenzo’s cynical mistrust stemmed from?
Silvio sighed heavily before moving a pawn, expertly capturing one of hers. ‘My wife and I had been unhappy for some time. The truth was that ours was an arranged marriage. She had lost her heart long before me, to her childhood sweetheart. I was aware of the fact, but after we got married, had children, I thought she’d forgotten about him.’
Cara sat still and silent, watching as a bleak expression took hold of Silvio’s features, making him look drawn and older, more frail.
‘She started acting strangely…going out at odd times, becoming distant, elusive, secretive. I suspected she was seeing someone and confronted her. She admitted that she had been seeing her old love. His own wife had died and left him with a small child. Emilia told me that he’d asked her to go back to him, help him raise his child.’
Cara gasped softly, unable to stop herself, but Silvio didn’t seem to hear her.
‘I pleaded with her, begged. To no avail. His pull was too strong. I don’t know what the children knew, but somehow they knew. The day she chose to leave they were lined up in the hall. They’d refused to go to school that morning.’ Silvio cast out a hand and shrugged. ‘Who knows?
Perhaps they overheard us arguing… They just stood there, saying nothing. Allegra was holding onto Vicenzo’s hand so tightly. When Emilia walked down the drive with her suitcase Allegra broke away and ran after her, screaming and crying, begging her to stop, clinging onto her clothes. Emilia had to push her away—and that’s when Vicenzo ran out.
He followed her all the way to the gate and kept demanding why, why, why, over and over again, just that one word. Emilia was about to get into the car, her lover had the engine running and his own child in the back.
Vicenzo held the car door open, wouldn’t let her shut it. Finally, Emilia got out of the car and slapped him across the face. So hard that I heard it here in the house. It was only then that Vicenzo stopped asking why.’
Cara had gone cold inside. This was why Vicenzo had believed she would be cruel enough to walk away from her own baby.
She looked at Silvio, hoping the horror she felt wasn’t mirrored on her face. ‘I had no idea.’
‘And why would you? I know Vicenzo has never spoken of what happened. And I knew better than to ask of him that he get married and have children.’ Silvio looked at her. ‘But now…since Allegra…obviously everything is different. But Cara, please know that I’m very glad you are here.’
Before Cara could articulate any kind of response, he said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, my dear, I think it’s past my bedtime.’
Cara got up jerkily and helped him from the room in his wheelchair. The night nurse came and took over, taking Silvio into his room.
Cara went back to sit on the terrace and looked out into the darkness for a long time. She could only imagine the kind of bond that must have been forged between Vicenzo and Allegra that day. Her mind was a tumult of dark thoughts and a wrenching sadness for what they had gone through.
Yet even with this knowledge Cara knew she’d be a fool to think that it gave her any deeper understanding into Vicenzo and his psyche. All she did know now for sure was that he was about as likely to marry for love as she was ever to be free of Cormac and his debts.
No wonder it had been so easy for him to marry her. It meant absolutely nothing to him. It would only be a matter of time before he sought to get the marriage dissolved, and then Cara could get on with working and paying the debt off. Hopefully never to see Vicenzo again. At the thought of that her heart immediately constricted.
And then, as if to mock her, all she could see was Vicenzo’s dark, stern face, his powerful body. And when she tried to call up hatred, or even the wish for vengeance for his turning her life upside down, she couldn’t. All she could call up was a deep desire for him to take her…but he couldn’t have made it more obvious the previous night in that impersonal bright white space, that she didn’t hold any more appeal for him.
It was that stark disappointment that finally had her fleeing to her bed, where she tossed and turned all night, her dreams full of a mocking smile.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
VICENZO stood watching Cara. She sat on the ledge by the pool at the back of the villa, with its sweeping view over the Mediterranean. His heart jolted with the realization that he’d missed her. And also with the sinking confirmation that she wasn’t behaving in the manner he would have expected of the women he knew: a spoilt oiled body worshipping the sun… magazines lying around…Lucia running back and forth, bringing drinks.
He finally had to concede that she was completely different from any woman he’d ever known. And what he’d learned in Rome over the past few days sat heavily within him. His original rock-solid opinion of her was being washed away with all the remorselessness of a tidal wave approaching the land, threatening everything in its path.
Her slim legs were drawn up and her chin rested on her knees. His eyes roved hungrily over her bare skin, where her waist dipped in and out in a gentle curve. Her perfectly modest black bikini fired his blood and libido more than the skimpiest scraps of material he’d seen on countless women over the years. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and it made her look young. His belly clenched when he thought of her birthday. She was young. Too young in many ways for what she’d been through.
Doppo was stretched out near her, and Vicenzo marveled again at how she and the dog had taken to each other with an almost fierce devotion.
He’d just been up to visit Allegra’s grave, which was on a hill behind the villa and had discovered fresh flowers. He ruled out his father, due to his lack of mobility. It could have been Tommaso or Lucia, but…
Cara sensed him even before Doppo jumped up and started wagging his tail energetically. A fine-tuned awareness ran across her skin, raising it into goosebumps as she turned her head to find Vicenzo leaning against a tree nearby, watching her. Her breath caught in her throat. He was so gorgeous, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, hair damp as if he’d just showered. He must have arrived home some time ago. She felt self-conscious in the bikini and stood up, reaching for the sarong she’d been sitting on, tying it just over her breasts.
He strolled towards her, not a hint of anything on his face, and stopped a few feet away. Cara was breathing fast, every cell in her body jumping with wild excitement at seeing him again. She tried desperately to clamp down on the reaction, knowing that he wouldn’t thank her for it.
‘You’ve caught the sun.’
Cara grimaced. The curse of the Celtic skin she’d inherited. ‘I know.
It’s—’
‘It suits you.’ Vicenzo’s eyes swept down, taking in the way Cara’s skin had started to go even more golden, an explosion of freckles marking every exposed surface.
He held something up then—a card. Cara recognized it. It was the sympathy card she’d sent to the Valentini offices in London all those weeks ago. It felt as if a lifetime had passed since then.
‘I only received this when I went back to Rome. Any personal post gets couriered over once or twice a week, depending on how urgent it looks. It was with a batch of other sympathy notes and cards, so I didn’t see it till just a couple of days ago.’
Cara swallowed. ‘I sent it that week…after the crash. I didn’t know what to do—how to get in contact with you. I asked at the hospital, but they wouldn’t give out any details…’
Vicenzo remembered that week, hearing his assistant on the phone to someone at the hospital, telling them that under no circumstances were they to give out any personal family information. He could see from the postmark that Cara had sent the card to his office before he’d met her that night. Its simple message of condolence had reached down deep within him and clenched tight.
The revelations he’d faced in the last twenty-four hours rushed up and made him want to push her away. To somewhere he didn’t have to deal with her simple and yet explosively alluring sexuality, and all her contradictions as she stood before him now.
‘Why did you send the card, Cara? What were you hoping to achieve if I got it?’
Cara couldn’t keep the bitter edge out of her voice. For a moment there, when she’d seen him watching her, she’d fancied that something had changed. But of course it hadn’t. ‘Nothing. I sent it because I wanted to extend my condolences…I didn’t know what else to do.’ She turned her head to look away, scared he might see the emotion she was trying to keep down. The awful paltriness of her sympathy card mocked her.