He was as cold as ice. Utterly unmoved. ‘It may have been deemed a tragic accident, thanks to the weather, but I’ve no doubt that if you both hadn’t seen fit to use my sister so heinously then she would still be alive today.’
Cara clutched at her chest, her pain indescribable—because his raw words hit home with the precision of an arrow. His grief was tangible.
‘Please—you don’t understand. I played no part in my brother’s life.’
Except as his unpaid slave.
Vicenzo laughed out loud and stepped back. The sound jarred. ‘Oh, really? From the age of sixteen you’ve lived with him in that luxurious penthouse apartment. There’s no record of you attending school or for that matter college in the UK—despite your claim to have obtained a degree. From the age of seventeen you became a regular at his favorite club, and from what I saw last night you learnt how to seduce and beguile at an early age. I have photos of you falling out of that club at four a.m.
under the arm of various Z-list celebrities.’
Cara remembered seeing that actress in the queue last night and felt bile rise. ‘Stop it. That’s not how it was.’
But he didn’t stop. He paced, making her feel dizzy. ‘You and your brother were thick as thieves, Miss Brosnan. You hostessed his parties for him—no doubt entertaining his friends along the way.’
The minute he said that the horrible memory of the other night came back to her—what Cormac’s friend had expected of her in repayment of a debt she’d not even known about.
‘Please. Stop,’ she begged weakly. Cara knew she was retreating somewhere inside herself, unable to believe how twisted Vicenzo believed everything to be. How horribly wrong he was.
He finally stopped, and looked at her with an expression so dispassionate it was almost worse than all the words and revelations.
‘The account in your name, which was regularly topped up to the tune of almost a million, damns you the most. Your brother was bankrolling you for being his accomplice. It’s just a pity all that money wasn’t his.’
Cara looked up bleakly, not even surprised that he knew about the account, or the fact that Cormac had been rogue trading, getting further and further into debt. Nothing would surprise her any more. She hadn’t even known about the account until she’d found a bank statement in her name on her brother’s desk in the apartment just weeks ago. She’d naively assumed the money was his earnings. To say she’d been shocked would be an understatement.
Cormac had set it up in her name as her legal guardian, before she’d come of age, he had been using her name to protect himself. It still made her sick to think of how he’d implicated her in such a way. The existence of an account like that in her name had the potential to ruin any chance for a professional future in business, and now Vicenzo Valentini knew about it too. Cara felt as if she were suffocating.
‘I had no access to that account.’ She knew he wouldn’t believe her.
‘Tell me another story. This is so entertaining.’
She was right. She closed her eyes for a long second, wishing futilely that when she opened them again he would be gone, she would be alone. But when she did he was still there. The dark avenging angel. Pain started to solidify in her chest.
‘Why did you sleep with me?’ she said quietly, not looking in his eyes but somewhere down by his feet.
He shocked her by coming close, to rest a hand on the bed, bending down. A hand took her chin and forced her gaze to meet his. She sucked in a breath, his scent washing over her, making her nerves jangle painfully.
Vicenzo steeled his body not to respond, hating the fact that through all this Oscar-winning act of injured innocence he still wanted her. He gave thanks now for the will-power he’d exerted last night not to kiss her properly. It had taken all his strength not to plunder those soft pink lips, but at the last moment something had stopped him. It was the fact that he’d wanted to kiss her with a hunger that went beyond anything he’d ever felt with another woman. He couldn’t think about why for the first time in his life he’d realised how intimate it was to kiss a woman on the mouth.
‘I slept with you, dear Cara, because after meeting you—’ his eyes flicked over her ‘—after seeing you in the flesh, I decided that this would be a far more satisfactory way to confront you with the truth. The morning after you believed you’d seduced another millionaire into taking care of you.’
Numbness spread through her, taking the pain to another place.
‘I’m not so stupid as to believe for a second that you won’t pick yourself right up from where we’ve left off and find another sucker—after all, you didn’t waste any time clearing Cormac’s debts, did you? I know all about the little visit you were paid by the Honorable Sebastian Mortimer the night before last, the morning after which your brother’s debts were mysteriously settled.’ His mouth thinned. Self-derision smacked him.
He’d been as much in thrall to this woman as the other man, ‘You’re expensive.’
Nausea at his interpretation of something that might have been rape rose, making a cold sweat break out on her brow. Cara’s voice was shaky as she tried to ignore his touch. ‘I didn’t sleep with him, and if you’d bothered to check properly you’d have seen that the debts were paid off before he came to see me.’ She winced inwardly as soon as she said this, knowing how he’d twist it. And he did.
Vicenzo quirked a cynical brow. ‘Well, he was obviously aware of your charms and paid you in advance.’
That was it. Cara ripped his hand down and scrambled back, her limbs not working properly. The burning heat of hatred was starting to spread through her at his monumental scorn. At how he’d so awfully misconstrued the reality of her life with her brother. She felt so raw and flayed and exposed she couldn’t begin to tell him how it had really been.
She could only protect herself now with whatever she could.
She backed away from the bed clutching the sheet. It lay between them with its tousled sheets, the smell of their sex an all too mocking reminder of a seduction and consummation that had been two different things for two very different people. The fact that he obviously hadn’t even realised that she’d been a virgin was something Cara gave silent thanks for now.
To be vulnerable in front of this man was to invite personal annihilation.
Her legs were like jelly. ‘You have it all figured out so perfectly, Mr.
Valentini. Perhaps if you’ve finished your crude version of this kangaroo court you’d be so kind as to let me get dressed? Then I can take myself out of your sight.’
Vicenzo’s eyes flashed, and he stood there for a long moment regarding her. Cara bit her lip, tensed her jaw—anything to stop the awful burning emotion from erupting from her chest. The backs of her eyes stung hotly, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before she collapsed. It was all too much to take in.
‘Don’t worry, Miss Brosnan, I wouldn’t come within three feet of touching you again. My only regret is that, unlike my sister, you had no innocence to give away. I’m doing to you exactly what your brother planned on doing to her. It pains me that you won’t feel an ounce of the devastation that she would have felt. Perhaps it’s a blessing that she never got to that point?’
He walked to the door then, and Cara fought not to sag just yet. He turned back one last time, and with a look that seared her all the way through right to her heart, leaving her in no doubt as to his utter disgust of her, he left. Cara heard the outer door open and close.
For a long time she just stood there, numb, staring into the space he’d occupied. And then, as if she’d been lacking oxygen, she sucked in a huge, choking, gasping breath. And with it came a surge of nausea. She made it to the bathroom just in time and retched pathetically into the bowl until there was nothing left but bile. Weak and shaking, she slumped by the toilet, unaware of the tears running down her cheeks.
And then she thought of something. He’d never kissed her. Not on the mouth. Not after that first glancing, fleeting kiss that had made her yearn for more. And he’d avoided her pathetic attempts to kiss him. Cara saw it so clearly now. That obvious bid to avoid what many considered to be an even more intimate act than the ultimate penetration. All that tenderness of feeling had been a mere illusion, her own flight of romantic fancy projected onto the situation. He had taken her with cruel ruthlessness to teach her a lesson. They hadn’t made love, they’d had sex. He’d wanted her to feel like a cheap whore, and she did.
That was what finally got through to her. She hunched over pitifully, unable to keep the awful sobbing back. Somehow realizing that was the hardest thing to bear of all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two months later, Dublin
CARA tried to keep the expression of naked pleading off her face. But she was desperate. The middle-aged man across the desk from her took off his spectacles.
‘I’m afraid that you simply don’t have the hands on experience I’m looking for. I think you’ll find that many firms will feel the same.’