Vicenzo looked remotely austere and every inch the successful businessman in a pristine shirt and tie, dark trousers. ‘I was just about to come and find you…we need to talk.’
Foreboding slid down Cara’s spine as she preceded him into the study.
He looked so serious that it scared her.
He gestured for her to sit down in the chair opposite his big mahogany desk and took a seat himself. Cara felt absurdly as if she was coming for an interview. She looked around and saw that all of the papers were gone.
‘What have you done with the papers? I would have tidied them away.’
‘They’re shredded.’
Cara gasped. ‘But I hadn’t given you the report yet.’
‘I know what Cormac did, Cara, and as he’s no longer a threat, I didn’t see the harm in shredding the evidence now.’
‘But…’ Cara frowned. ‘You could have done that weeks ago.’ A dart of something struck her, and she saw Vicenzo wince slightly.
‘Yes. But while you were here, and while I still saw you as a threat, I had to make sure I knew what he’d done.’
Something contrary made Cara say, ‘And how do you know I’m not still a threat?’
Vicenzo froze, his face darkening before he finally said, ‘You are still a threat, Cara. That’s the problem.’
Cara felt hurt and anger start to burn down low, but before she could say anything Vicenzo held up a hand.
‘I don’t mean that sort of threat, Cara. The threat I’m talking about is entirely different.’ He looked at her steadily, making her heart flutter.
Then he got up and went to stand at the window with his back to her.
After a long moment he turned around. ‘You call me Enzo when we make love.’
Cara flushed hotly, immediately forgetting whatever threat he was talking about. The need to protect herself was huge as she blustered, ‘I’m sorry—
it doesn’t mean—’
He shook his head and smiled ruefully for a moment. ‘No, don’t apologize. I like it. I haven’t been called Enzo for a long time.’
Cara frowned. ‘But in London that night…’
The smile disappeared and something flashed across his face. ‘I introduced myself as Enzo, yes. Because when I met you, Cara, I had no intention of taking you to bed. My sole desire that evening was to seek you out and make you acknowledge what I thought you’d done.’
He was grim. ‘I jumped to the first, easiest conclusion, based on purely circumstantial evidence, and I damned you along with your brother to a place I had no wish to investigate. In my guilt at not being able to protect Allegra, I lashed out. I’d over-protected her for a long time.’ His mouth was a thin line. ‘We had a fight just a few weeks before she died. She told me to back off, leave her alone…’
‘It’s not your fault she met Cormac,’ Cara said quietly.
Vicenzo raked a hand through his hair. ‘I know…but still… When I went into that club and you were sitting there in that dress, you turned and looked up at me… I’ve been lost since that moment, Cara, and all because of what you did to me when you just looked at me. Before I met you I would have felt sick at the thought of being attracted to Cormac Brosnan’s sister. But then, as we both know, as soon as we met the reality was the exact opposite. I found myself acting on pure instinct, telling you that I was Enzo… It was as if I had to become someone else to justify the attraction I felt. Somewhere in my mind, which had been melted in a haze of lust, I told myself that I was concealing my identity to see how mercenary and manipulative you really were.’
Self-derision marked his features, shocking Cara.
‘And when I asked you to come to my hotel you said no… By then all I could think of was how angry I felt to be rejected by you, how much I wanted you and my injured pride.’ He laughed harshly. ‘I was about to let you walk away without even confronting you. I was in serious danger of forgetting why I’d sought you out in the first place.’
‘But then I went back…’ Cara said faintly, struggling to take all this in, wondering where he was going with this.
He came closer and looked down at her. ‘But then you came back.’
Cara winced as she saw how her innocent actions would have played straight into his misconception of her character.
Taking her by surprise, he came down on one knee in front of her. Her heart tripped at the look in his eyes. ‘Why did you come back, Cara? It couldn’t have been easy if you hadn’t done it before.’
His nearness and his questions made Cara want to curl into herself. She couldn’t reveal how the depth of her emotions had moved her that night.
She couldn’t reveal how badly he’d hurt her.
She shrugged with a lightness she certainly didn’t feel. ‘It was the same for me too…’ She hurried to qualify. ‘The attraction. I’d never met anyone who made me feel like that before…and that week…it had been such an awful week. You came along out of nowhere, and suddenly it was as if nothing else existed in the world except you. I just…I wanted to lose myself in that. To get away from the pain…the grief.’
A spasm of something flashed across Vicenzo’s face, but he stood and went to face the window again, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.
He finally turned around again, his face once more a mask of bland neutrality.
‘I owe you an apology, Cara. More than an apology. For everything and especially for that night—the following morning. I was angry with myself for losing control and I took it out on you. When you appeared in Dublin to tell me of your pregnancy I added insult to injury, assuming that you were like every other woman I’ve ever known.’
‘Your father told me about your mother,’ Cara said quietly.
His body tensed, and he said eventually, with a tight smile, ‘Yes. My mother certainly did a number on all of us. She left us a broken family.
My father never really recovered…and he and I went out of our way to cosset Allegra. We both overprotected her—as if that could make up for her mother’s abandonment.’
Cara’s voice was low, her eyes steady on his. ‘Was that why you believed I’d walk away from my baby if you paid me enough money?’
He winced and nodded slowly. Cara ached inside that he would believe that. Her spine straightened and she willed him to believe her now, when she said, ‘I would never have done that Vicenzo. Nothing on this earth would ever have persuaded me to walk away from my baby, my child.
Nothing. I would have stayed. That’s why it was easy to sign the prenuptial agreement. I don’t care about the money. I would have stayed to be with my child.’ And you, she had to admit to herself. Even then a part of her had been aware of her weakness.
As Cara’s eyes blazed into his, willing him to trust what she was saying, she saw something move in his expression, something in his eyes, and it made her heart beat fast.
‘I know,’ he said gruffly. ‘I do believe you. And you can’t know how hard it’s been for me to come to terms with that. To trust again. My mother broke all our hearts, and since the day she left I’ve denied my own instinctive need to create a family, fall in love.’
‘But why did you insist on marrying me if you’d come from that experience?’ Cara held her breath.
‘I told myself that it was because you were carrying my heir. I told myself it was to stop any potential scandal or a slanging match in the tabloids. I told myself it was so that I could control you and punish you by showing you that even by marrying a billionaire you’d effectively get nothing… But in reality my reasons for marrying you were much more ambiguous than that.’
He took an audible breath. ‘They were ambiguous because from the moment we met I started to change. You’ve changed me.’
Cara didn’t register his words for a minute. His eyes were burning into hers. Something in his stance made her want to stand and run, but she stayed sitting and watched as he pulled a chair up and sat down opposite her. He took her hands, and she could feel his shaking.
Vicenzo looked down for a second before bringing his head back up, his eyes intense. ‘Yesterday, when I got home and you were gone…and when I found out where you were…that you’d driven. When I saw you at the side of the road I think I aged a few decades in the space of half an hour. All I could imagine was you lying somewhere at the bottom of a ravine.’ He’d gone pale again.
‘But I’m fine,’ Cara pointed out.
‘I know. But the truth is it made me finally face up to something. From the start I put you in a place where I thought I had you all figured out as someone evil and manipulative. A gold-digger. But it was ridiculous. You had no idea who I was that night in London, and yet I told myself you’d gone to bed with me because I was obviously rich…’
He shook his head. ‘All the concepts I had about you slowly but surely started to crumble. And far earlier than I was prepared to admit. It was the way you signed the prenuptial agreement without turning a hair.’ He smiled faintly. ‘The way you bonded with my father; your determination to wear black. And the night of your birthday, which was a total disaster.’