Harlequin Presents--April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Dani Collins

  He took another breath, his tone changing. ‘Jenna, understand this—ever since my divorce the tabloid press, the gossip columns, have made copy and headlines out of me. They get a helping hand—from Bianca, for one. She liked to tip them off when I was going about with her. Partly because she enjoyed being in the limelight and partly...’ his eyes hardened ‘...because she hoped it might help in her goal of becoming the next Signora Rocceforte. She never had a chance, of course, but the hacks would have loved to break such a story. So when—’

  He stopped. Then resumed resignedly. No point in starting this sorry tale only to bottle it now.

  ‘There was a story, Jenna, published in one of the tabloid rags after we arrived back here from Turin—an article I never saw coming, which outlined how very different you are from the likes of Bianca, and explained your presence in my life in a very different way. The reporter attempted to paint you into the role Bianca never could attain—said that you were to me what she never had been nor ever could be. The consequence of which was...’ he dropped the envelope on to his desk as if it were dangerous to touch ‘...this letter.’

  He stared down at it now, heaviness crushing him. Then, like a switch, he snapped his eyes back to Jenna. She was sitting so still...so very, very still.

  He made himself go on. Willing her to understand what he had done—why he had done it. Not so she would forgive him—never that—but so she would understand.

  His damaged eyes rested on her. It hurt to see her. She was so close, yet so infinitely far away.

  ‘Jenna, from the very first I knew it was...unwise...to be anything to you other than your employer and your pupil’s father. Knew it was...unwise...to want anything more. Unwise to spend time with you, talk with you, laugh with you. Unwise to want you to shed your sad cloak of invisibility. Unwise to kiss you in the moonlight—’

  His expression changed.

  ‘That’s why I put you from me—pushed you away. That’s why I brought Bianca here with all her friends, wanting to banish my desire for you by flooding myself and my home with distraction. I thought it would help me to keep away from you. To undo what I had so unwisely begun.’

  His eyes rested on her. She had not moved. Not one iota. She was as still as a statue made of living flesh.

  He forced himself on. ‘But I couldn’t banish you from my thoughts, my longings. If anything, the whole endeavour only proved to me that it was you I wanted to be with, with every fibre of my being.’

  His voice changed again. Dropped to a low intensity.

  ‘You were everything that Berenice was not. You alone—of all the world—could draw from me the poison of my nightmare marriage. Your quiet ways and your quiet voice and your quiet loveliness... Your clear spring water eyes and your sylvan grace... And above all—oh, above all, Jenna, your honesty, your truthfulness, your kindness and your compassion. You were all that I craved—all I could not do without. You were the woman I wanted—needed—to make my life whole again.’

  Into his head came the memory of standing out on the still-damp terrace after their first unforgettable night together, when he had made her his. Standing in the fresh morning sunshine after the storm that had devastated the chestnut tree, feeling the air that had been bright and clear and clean.

  ‘The world new-made,’ she had said.

  He drew a breath, deep into his smoke-ravaged lungs. ‘And so I cleared them all out—Bianca and her friends—and, heedless of the danger, came striding to claim you.’ He shut his eyes. ‘To make you mine.’

  His eyes flashed open again.

  ‘A dangerous word, Jenna...mine. And I knew the danger—God help me, I knew! Knew I should not claim you, knew I should be wise and never hold you in my arms, never kiss you, never sweep you into my bed, my life, my—’

  He broke off. He shouldn’t say any more. She had endured enough at his hands.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said instead, ‘but I ignored it. Silenced it. Told myself I would take the risk even though I knew how real that risk would be, because of how very different from Bianca you were.’

  He saw her expression change now. Saw a flickering that seemed to be a lightening and then a frown of puzzlement.

  ‘Risk?’ Her voice was strained and low. She was not understanding. ‘What risk, Evandro? How?’

  He tensed his jaw, sending pain shooting through the scars on his face. He was silent for a moment, his face grim. He did not want to tell her this—por Dio, he did not! But tell her he must.

  ‘The risk,’ he said, his voice like leaden stones, ‘that I would have to choose.’ He paused, looking at her, his eyes like weights upon her. ‘Choose between you...and Amelie.’

  * * *

  Jenna heard the words but could not believe them.

  ‘Evandro, I would never...never dream of...of—’ She broke off, dismay at what he’d said vivid in her face. ‘I would never, never make you do such a thing! How could you think it, Evandro? How could you think I would ever do anything to harm what you have with Amelie?’

  She could hear the distress in her voice, along with the agitation and protest.

  ‘How could you think, after everything I told you about how my own father chose my stepmother over me—rejecting me—that I would ever, ever want you to do that to Amelie? And why should I? Amelie is a darling! I love her as much as I love—’ She broke off again, her face working. ‘I would never make you choose.’

  He held up a hand. ‘Not you,’ he said heavily. ‘It would not be you making me choose—never you.’

  Incomprehension furrowed her brow. ‘But who?’

  ‘Berenice,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Berenice?’ Her incomprehension was total.

  He pushed away from his desk, moved to sink down into the executive chair behind it,

  ‘I have another sorry tale to tell you,’ he opened, his voice still heavy. ‘Ugly, but necessary.’

  He seemed to hesitate, as if he had no wish to say what he must. Then, his expression steeling, he spoke, his voice harsh and grating.

  ‘My father wanted to expand Rocceforte Industriale in a merger with a similar French company, Trans-Montane, which was in financial difficulties but which would have been a good match for us. Berenice had inherited a controlling interest in the company, so the obvious, easiest way for the merger to proceed was by...’ he took a slicing breath ‘...by uniting our two families. To say I was in agreement would be an understatement.’ There was scathing self-mockery in his voice now. ‘I was happy to please my father—as I told you that day we had our tea party—and glad to do good for the company that had been in our family for over a hundred years, but I didn’t marry for that reason alone.’

  He paused again, and Jenna saw something in his face that stabbed at her. Heard a hollowing in his voice when he spoke next.

  ‘I took one look at Berenice—and was lost.’

  She saw him shift restlessly in his chair, heard the tension in his voice as he went on.

  ‘I was twenty-five, full of romantic notions. My father was delighted. I would have a wife every man would envy me for, who would double our business overnight.’ His voice changed, became etched with sadness now. ‘And I would also bring him the joy of knowing that I was making a love match as wonderful as he had known—the match that had been taken from him by the death of my mother two years earlier. He wanted so much to see me happily married...to see me deeply in love—’

  He broke off. Again Jenna saw something change in his face, becoming hard, twisting his mouth.

  ‘As it happened, my wife wanted that too. She wanted me deeply in love with her. Besotted by her. She knew it would make me...malleable. Easy to manipulate. It was the same aim she had for all the hapless males she drew to her. But for me, her husband, it was even more important to keep me that love-struck, devoted fool who’d married her with stars in his eyes thinking he’d found
his dream come true—his ravishing bride. She wanted me to be her faithful adoring husband, eagerly footing the bill for her every extravagance, lavishing everything she wanted upon her, doing anything for her—anything at all. Putting up with her capriciousness and her temper, her self-obsession and her narcissism, turning a blind and ever-forgiving eye to her constant affairs, indulging her in anything and everything she craved—and thinking myself privileged to be allowed to do so.’

  His voice hardened even more.

  ‘But although I’d thought the best of her when I’d married her, I came to see the worst of her. To see through her superficial allure, to see her for what she truly was—and she could not endure it. Was enraged by it. So she turned on all her powers to charm and seduce and beguile me, to draw me back into her manipulative clutches—determined not just to entrap me in her web again but to punish me for seeking to withdraw from her. Punish me,’ he said grimly, ‘by breaking my heart.’

  He paused, his face emptying of all emotion.

  ‘She could not do it,’ he said. ‘She could not make me stay love-struck for a woman who had no love for anyone, let alone her husband. She had lost her power over me. I stuck with her—tolerated her for Amelie’s sake, even though I saw so little of her, and even for my father’s sake. But after he died I knew I could endure it no longer. And when I divorced her it was the end of her power entirely. She was defeated. I was done with her.’

  Jenna saw an expression form on his face that chilled her to the bone.

  ‘But Berenice,’ Evandro said, his words falling like stones, ‘was not done with me.’

  His eyes focused intently on hers as he went on, almost piercing her.

  ‘And when I claimed custody of Amelie she struck.’

  He looked away for a moment, as if seeing something far away that was out of reach to him. That always would be. Then his lasering gaze came back to her.

  ‘My determination to wrest Amelie from her had shown her how much she could demand of me before she conceded custody—and it gave her a new power over me. Not just to force me to pay her a fortune for Amelie—over and above what I had already paid her for her divorce settlement—but to get something that would satisfy her even more. Would satisfy her lust for revenge on me for daring to reject her, escape her, divorce her. For denying her the pleasure of breaking my heart. She might not be able to break my heart herself—but she knew she could still break it using Amelie. It was the price,’ he said, his voice empty of all emotion now, ‘of finally conceding custody to me.’

  She saw his darkened eyes flick to the letter he’d taken from the desk drawer and held up to her before discarding it on the desk’s surface. Then his eyes came back to her.

  ‘She demanded I sign a document that my lawyer was appalled by. He was horrified—and he warned me what she was intent on. “You are giving her the power to destroy your future,” he told me. But I did not care. Could not. I knew it would give me Amelie and bring to an end the delays and prevarications and endless wrangling that Berenice was using to drag out the process. Amelie would come to me permanently. The custody battle would be over. Unless—’

  Yet again, he broke off. Yet again, his gaze shifted away from her. And this time it did not come back to her as he continued to speak, as if his eyes were consciously avoiding her.

  ‘She wanted to break my heart so she found a way. By making me choose...’ and now his eyes lashed back to her ‘...choose between Amelie and any other woman who might come to mean something to me.’ His face twisted. ‘The likes of Bianca didn’t bother her. She knew they were simply women for affairs—nothing more than that. But you—you, Jenna—were different. That damnable article in that tabloid, with its prurient speculation about who you were to me, reached her, and—just as I dreaded—she struck.’

  His gaze dropped again to the letter lying on his desktop.

  ‘It’s from her lawyers,’ he said. ‘Relaunching the custody battle for Amelie—just as Berenice threatened she would. Unless—’

  That word hung in the air again.

  ‘Unless I did what I had agreed—what I’d promised in that document my lawyer was appalled by. And so I sent you packing.’ He took a deep and weary breath. ‘She forced me to choose. To choose between Amelie—and you.’

  Emotion speared in Jenna as she heard his words, propelling her into speech just as it had before. ‘That could never be a choice for you, Evandro! Never.’

  Memory assailed her—not of that dreadful last day at the palazzo, but a memory much older than that. A memory of a father for whom that had been a choice. A father who had chosen very differently. Choosing his new wife and rejecting his daughter.

  As Evandro never, never would.

  As she would never want him to.

  ‘No, it never could be.’

  The words of this man, the father who had made a different choice from her own, echoed hers.

  ‘It never could be. I could never hand Amelie back into Berenice’s malign clutches—never betray the vow I made to protect her from her toxic mother always, no matter the cost. So I did what her lawyer’s letter demanded,’ he said, his voice emptying. ‘I pushed you away. Despatched you back to England. Finished with you. End of—’

  The staccato words fell away from him.

  There was too much in Jenna’s head—far too much. Swirling like a maelstrom, her emotions were chaotic, and she felt entirely overwhelmed. But out of it all, one thing crystallised. One thing that made no sense. No sense at all after everything he’d told her. Something that furrowed her brow, made her get to her feet and go halfway towards his desk, then halt.

  Her gaze dropped momentarily to the thick white envelope on the desk in front of him, with its typed address, its French stamp, its letter inside containing its cruel demand—Berenice’s final vengeance on the man she had already wronged so much...her final threat to the child she had used as a weapon against her loving father. Then her eyes lifted to Evandro—to his ravaged face and the bleakness in his damaged eyes. She felt emotion move within her, but suppressed it. This was not the moment for it.

  She felt her frown deepen, her troubled thoughts turn questioning. She took a breath, trying to make sense of something that made no sense. No sense at all. And when she spoke, her voice was filled with incomprehension.

  ‘Everything you’ve told me about Berenice,’ she began, picking her words carefully, ‘everything Signora Farrafacci has let slip about her, everything that Amelie herself has said—and, even now, the way you described the horror of her death and how she brought it about by her irresponsible recklessness... Everything from Amelie’s chaotic, unstable life with her—so absolutely unsuitable for a child—to her using Amelie as a bargaining chip in your divorce to extract a fortune from you, to her hedonism, extravagance, narcissism, selfishness and self-regard—her perpetual infidelities and her drinking... Everything points, surely, to her having had no chance at all at reversing the custody decision. So, how...’ she took a laboured breath ‘...how could she ever have threatened you and Amelie in that way?’

  Her voice was vehement.

  ‘Evandro, what judge in the world—in any jurisdiction!—would hand Amelie back to such a mother? Would take her away from her father—’

  He cut across her. His voice stark. ‘But I’m not Amelie’s father.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JENNA STILLED, eyes fixed on Evandro.

  ‘I am not Amelie’s father,’ he said again.

  Something seemed to pass across his face, then it was gone.

  ‘Just who is will probably never be known. Not even to Berenice.’ His voice held no emotion. ‘As for DNA tests—well, the choice of candidates would be very broad. And international. Berenice had no interest in identifying him. She only threw the unedifying information my way when she saw me with the baby that up until then she had let me think was mine.’ His express
ion was as harsh as his voice. ‘The baby I’d hoped, so much, might mark a turning point for us. At that point my refusal to give up completely on the shambles of my marriage was being fed by my delusions that a child between us might salvage something decent and true. But when Berenice saw me cradling Amelie—a typical doting Italian father—it so enraged her to have me paying attention to anyone but herself that she threw at me, with sadistic mockery, the news that I was devoting myself to another man’s bastard.’

  His expression changed again.

  ‘I knew that our marriage was over then. But the real cruelty of that moment was not in what she had thrown at me, but in the fact that there was now, in that unholy, toxic mess, a child... A child innocent of all the sordid circumstances of her conception and her birth, now trapped in the poisonous web of Berenice’s jealousy, spite and self-obsession.’

  Jenna saw him take another breath, ragged and harsh.

  ‘The truth of Amelie’s parentage became her ultimate weapon against me.’

  He looked away, out over the terrace, as if he were watching Amelie playing out there, riding her pink bicycle up and down, golden hair streaming. The golden hair which she now knew came neither from Berenice nor Evandro. Jenna had finally got an answer to that question, it seemed.

  ‘It was a weapon that would win her everything she wanted—the fact that I had no legal right to a child I loved, because she was not mine. Her rage at being usurped by another female in my life, her fury that I’d dared to see her for what she was, all found a weapon in Amelie’s paternity. It was a gun perpetually pointed at me. And not just pointed at me—pointed at a victim far more vulnerable. At Amelie.’

  He paused, his voice as tight as a garrotte.

  ‘All she had to do was tell the court I was not Amelie’s father and demand a DNA test to prove it. My claim for sole custody would crumble.’ His voice tightened even more. ‘Even if a judge had ruled her an unfit mother, Amelie would have been taken into care, lost in a system that, yes, might...might...have allowed me to adopt her—eventually—but after how much wrangling? How lengthy a process? But there was no certainty of that—none. Remember, I had never had more than minimal contact with Amelie—Berenice had seen to that, keeping perpetually on the move as she dragged the child around Europe and America, preventing me from forming a relationship with her. And even with Amelie in care, Berenice might have tried to regain custody of her. As I have bitter cause to know, she could be supremely manipulative and convincing—she would have done whatever it had taken to get Amelie back for the sole purpose of tormenting me, taunting me, knowing how desperately I wanted to save Amelie from her. How desperately responsible I felt for her.’