by Lynne Graham
Something forbidden, something dangerous, something out of control. Once she had prided herself on her self-discipline. There had been no place for a man in her battle-plan. Men took, men demanded, men expected, men complicated things. Maybe when she was at least thirty, she had thought with the naive certainty of youth, maybe when she was comfortably established in her career, she would let a man into one compartment of her busy, fulfilling existence. 'He' would be enthusiastically supportive of her ambition, content to accept that only that one tiny little compartment was his…
Fate had had the last laugh on her. Fate had thrown up Vito, a male as diametrically opposed to her ideal as he could possibly be. Once Vito had believed that he had her where he wanted her, so besotted she couldn't think straight, he had tried to change her into a totally different person. Piece by piece he had eroded her confidence, criticising this, censuring that. Thank God she had woken up.
One day she might have looked in the mirror and seen her mother staring back at her. An unhappy woman, hooked on a man who was poison for her but too drained of strength and self-worth to take the antidote. It would be news to her sister, but in Ashley's opinion there could have been no worse fate than to end up respectably married to Vito di Cavalieri…
'There is no point in waiting any longer.' The receptionist flashed an irritated look. The phase of meaninglessly polite smiles was long past. 'I did warn you that Mr di Cavalieri wouldn't be available. When he's in London, he's exceptionally busy. His appointment book is filled weeks in advance.'
He wasn't available on the phone and he was no more available in the flesh. He had to see her. He simply had to. He knew why she was here and he had to understand. There was nobody more family-orientated than Vito. She had called in sick at the day nursery where she worked as an assistant. On the dot of opening time, she had entered the Cavalieri Bank. Two hours on, she was still on the ground floor of a twenty-storey building. Perhaps it was naive of her, but she was appalled by the growing suspicion that Vito wouldn't even give her five minutes of his time.
Her surroundings reeked of expense and elegance. Cross a brain like a steel trap with the family bank vaults and you got success, the sort of success that even the receptionist wore like a mantle of superiority. Ashley reddened, painfully conscious that four years ago she would have strolled into this impressive building in jeans and a T-shirt and an unconcerned smile. Then, it wouldn't have bothered her that she looked shabby and out of place. In those days she had been secure in herself. But she wasn't now. As the axe of retribution had fallen on every hope, dream and attachment she had ever cherished, her self-confidence had dive-bombed accordingly.
Vito wasn't going to see her. She tasted the concept, retreated from it fearfully. All right, so they hadn't parted friends. In fact, they had parted on the most violent terms of mutual hatred, but somehow she had assumed that Vito would opt for the civilised response.
'Miss Forrester?' It was the receptionist again. 'If you're prepared to wait for another hour, Mr di Cavalieri may be able to see you. It's not definite now,' she warned. 'His senior secretary is trying to squeeze you in before lunch.'
Ironically, that condescension sent fury hurtling through Ashley. 'How very kind of her,' she said sharply. 'You can wait on the top floor,' she was told frigidly. The top floor was sumptuous. Involuntarily she was impressed, and that annoyed her again. The svelte brunette on the desk looked her over covertly. The loose khaki jacket and cotton trousers she wore were the closest thing she had to a suit. Her hair was doing its usual stint of falling down, dropping untidy tendrils round a face that already felt horribly hot. In all, she felt a mess.
By the end of another hour, she was a limp rag. All her carefully thought out opening speeches and follow-ups had deserted her. Vito, she was convinced, was deliberately keeping her waiting. Vito had the art of subtle, mind-bending cruelty at his polished fingertips.
'Mr di Cavalieri will see you now.'
Gulping, she scrambled upright, hating him for having reduced her to a bag of nerves, harassed by unwelcome memories. A middle-aged woman greeted her at the foot of the corridor. 'I'm afraid Mr di Cavalieri can only give you ten minutes.'
Ten minutes to plead Tim's case to a male who not only loathed her but also equated dropping a sweetie paper on the pavement with crime? She hung on to a hysterical howl of laughter. Ten minutes was better than nothing and, knowing Vito's capacity for holding on to a grudge, nothing was what she had almost received.
Double doors spread wide into an enormous office. An acre of plush carpet stretched before her. She could see a desk with a computer bank and several phones. Psychologically, it was a most intimidating backdrop, reminding her quite unnecessarily that she was entirely on Vito's ground with nothing between her and desperation but the flimsy hope that he did not recall their last meeting quite as accurately as she did…
Her skin dampened. Vito was in view now. Taller than she remembered, darker than she remembered, about a hundred times more staggeringly attractive than she had ever allowed herself to remember. All the sophisticated trappings were there; the superbly elegant suit, the absolutely unshakeable good manners that were prompting that coldly polite smile. But they were only a facade on a fiercely elemental nature and an immense and arrogant ego, a galaxy away from her New-Age-man ideal.
'Thanks for seeing me.' It wasn't the opening she had planned. Indeed, it sounded demandingly humble to her own ears.
CHAPTER TWO
'I'M SURE you'll understand that I'm not being rude when I ask you to be brief.' Vito indicated the chair placed in readiness about six feet from the desk. If his secretary had stepped forward with a blindfold, Ashley wouldn't have been surprised. 'I'll be as brief as possible.'
A satiric black brow elevated. 'Bearing in mind that I have no desire to hear a plea for clemency on your brother's behalf.'
Crushed before she could even warm up, Ashley was relieved when a phone buzzed and he stretched out an impatient hand. As his attention switched from her, she breathed again. The temptation to study him was overpowering. He was incredibly attractive. Hard cheekbones slashed his strong, dark features, highlighting the proud temperamental flare of his nose and a mouth that was a wide, blatantly sensual arc. But, if you were a woman, it was the eyes you noticed first and remembered longest. Vito had stunningly beautiful eyes, golden as the purest precious metal in sunlight or dark as darkest ebony.
In defiance of her every wish to the contrary, Vito still radiated a dark, savage sexuality boldly at variance with a three-piece suit and a silk tie. Every woman between fifteen and fifty raised her chin and sucked in her stomach when Vito passed. And she was not, she learnt, dragging her disobedient eyes from him, the exception that broke the rule. As she lowered her lashes, her skin heated. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was racing. She was badly shaken by her adolescent response to all that raw, blatant masculinity. Anger followed predictably in the wake of that lowering awareness. He replaced the phone, uttering a bland apology for the interruption.
'You want me to get down on my knees and beg, don't you?' As the hot, thoughtless words burst from her, shrill with resentment, she could have bitten her tongue out for that loss of control.
Vito lounged back in his swivel chair, insultingly unsurprised by the verbal assault. Far too perceptive eyes of gold ran over her flushed face. 'Exactly why are you here?' he asked, politely ignoring her outburst.
'To talk about Tim and why he did it. You're probably not aware of it, but your nephew-'
Vito dealt her a narrowed glance. 'Insulted you to your brother?' he interposed. 'It was a regrettable incident.'
Ashley stiffened. 'Regrettable?'
'Pietro lost two of his front teeth,' Vito returned drily. 'The question of family loyalties was settled with their fists. Pietro came off worst and he has been honest with me. I see no connection between that episode and your brother's inexcusable invasion of my home.'
'So you had chapter and verse on Act One. What
about Act Two?' Ashley pressed with spirit. 'Tim was cornered outside school and beaten up by four boys, one of whom was your nephew.'
'When did this take place?'
Ashley had to think for a second or two before slinging the date at him with relish.
'On that day, Pietro was attending his cousin's wedding in Rome,' Vito responded even more drily. 'He could not possibly have been present.'
Her chin came up. 'If he wasn't there, he organised it. '
Vito set the gold pen in his hand very decisively down on the glass desktop. 'You are now entering the realms of fantasy. Pietro would not have involved himself in so cowardly an act. Unless you have evidence on which to base these allegations, I would advise you to drop this line of argument.' Ice cool dark eyes rested on her. 'Pursue it and you will find it a most unproductive course.'
She was furious that she did not possess the exact details of that incident. Four youths had attacked Tim. That was the sum total of her knowledge. She ground her teeth together on an explosive retort. The atmosphere had all the encouraging warmth of a polar freeze. Biting her lower lip, she murmured, 'I understand that the enmity between your nephew and my brother originally related to some rivalry over a girl-'
His sculpted bone-structure set. 'And what possible relevance does that information have to the current situation?'
Ashley stiffened. 'The connection is pretty obvious from where I'm sitting!'
'Then we would appear to be seated in very different positions,' Vito drawled with biting sarcasm. 'I fail to see the smallest connection.'
'You're not prepared to allow me anything, are you?' she snapped back at him, her temper simmering.
A chilling smile formed on his lips. 'But then, in your place, I would have come through that door and endeavoured to make what apology I could for such conduct. Your sole reason for being here appears to be a blind determination to foist some measure of blame upon Pietro or, indeed, upon some unknown girl,' he delineated with sardonic emphasis. 'If that were not so contemptible, I would be entertained by your efforts to excuse the inexcusable.'
A red-hot flush climbed with painful slowness beneath her translucent skin. Her approach had been all wrong. She didn't need him to tell her that. Vito, hatefully polished veteran of many a brilliant diplomatic manoeuvre. Just entering this office had taken every shred of courage in her armoury. Under threat, Ashley went on the offensive. If Vito had been decent enough to see her earlier, she could have controlled that flaw in her own make-up. But Vito had made her suffer through an agonising morning of uncertainty, adding to her stress and strain. Vito had successfully smashed her composure before she even walked into this room.
'I was… I am very upset,' Ashley reasoned tautly. 'Tim's been under considerable pressure recently with his exams so close. I simply wanted you to have a clearer picture of his state of mind.'
'But I have not the remotest interest in his state of mind,' Vito said without a flicker of emotion. 'He is neither a child nor a mental incompetent. He is responsible for his own actions.'
She focused on a point safely to the left of him. This was it. This was her cue to explain why Tim had reacted so violently to Pietro's taunts. This was her cue to tell Vito that their relationship had, in the messy aftermath of their break-up, extracted a heavy toll from her future. But how could she possibly manage to tell Vito about her pregnancy? Vito, of all people? How on earth could she discuss something that was so deeply personal a grief that she had never yet managed to discuss it with anyone?
In a weak moment she had allowed Susan to know that she was carrying Vito's child. She had trusted Susan to be careful with that information. She should have known better. Her father had overheard Susan and Arnold talking about her pregnancy and the secret had been out with a vengeance!
Hunt Forrester had always been the first to sneer when other people's children got into trouble. He would boast of the rigid discipline within his own home censuring other more liberal parents and smirking over the unlikelihood of any of his children making the same mistakes.
The discovery that she was pregnant had outraged her father. The fear of his own loss of face in the local business community, should her condition become known, had been enough to make him disown her. The further news that the father of her child was already married to someone else had been the last straw.
She had been four months pregnant when she'd miscarried, although most of her family had assumed that the loss of her baby was not a natural event. She had been hoist with her own petard. In her teens she had been very outspoken about her determination never to marry or have children. Everyone knew that abortions were relatively easily available and everyone had assumed that she had finally chosen that option. No, she could not tell Vito… Vito, who was so exceptionally fond of children, Vito, with whom she had once enjoyed several heated debates on the subject of a woman's right to choose. Vito would not believe her either and, if he thought for one moment that she had chosen that option, he would despise her even more than he did now.
'Tim is only eighteen,' she started afresh, ramming back the bitter pain of her memories. 'And some of this is my fault. I never discussed… I mean, he knows nothing about what happened between us. He made certain incorrect assumptions but I had no idea how he felt until this happened.'
The silence dragged on. Vito could use silence like a weapon. She had never been able to understand how he achieved that effect but he did. He sat there, supremely at ease, cool, calm and immensely self-assured. He intimidated her. Her slender hands clenched even more tightly round the bag on her lap. 'Look, I'm not trying to excuse him-'
'But that is precisely what you are guilty of,' he countered.
The word 'guilt' sent spectral fingers of alarm wandering down her rigid spinal cord. 'If Tim receives a prison sentence, his whole life will be destroyed. He lost his head, Vito. He's very sorry for what he's done.'
His gaze was unwaveringly direct. 'Then where is he?'
'He doesn't know that I'm here.' She floundered wildly for a second. 'And I don't know why you're even asking me that. It's unfair. You've stirred up the police so much, he'd probably be arrested if he came anywhere near this building!'
'Agile,' Vito murmured softly, appreciatively. 'I had forgotten how agile you could be. But tell me, if either I or any member of my family had been in the path of that car, do you think your charming brother would have stepped on the brakes?'
Bone-white, she flinched. 'Why do you want to make what he did even worse than it already is? He ran amok with your car. He didn't try to kill somebody! It was done on impulse while he was under the influence of alcohol. He didn't know what he was doing until it was too late!'
Vito made a flexible bridge of long brown fingers. 'Is that alarming assurance intended to soften my heart? Those who break the law should be punished. Cushioning your brother from the consequences of his own behaviour would not be in his best interests.'
'It was only your blasted car, Vito!' she slashed back at him furiously. 'He didn't plan to crash it. There's punishment and punishment. Sending a teenager to prison for smashing up a car and a stupid fountain is what I call over-reaction. It will destroy Tim!'
'It's most unlikely that he'll go to prison for a first offence.'
'But it's not his first-' In horror, she caught back what remained of that killing sentence.
Black lashes dropped reflectively low on brilliant dark eyes. 'My conscience may then rest in peace. Quite deliberately you have sought to mislead me by contending that his behaviour was quite out of character. But if he has broken the law before, he most definitely deserves what he has coming to him. Clearly the first warning was insufficient to curb his violent tendencies.'
A steel band of tension was now throbbing across her brow. She had come here to help Tim. So far, all she had done was fuel the flames of Vito's outrage. 'Have you ever met Tim?'
'Very briefly,' Vito conceded. 'I recognised him at my nephew's party and had a short conversation with
him. He bears a marked resemblance to you in both colouring and temperament.'
'Do you think I have violent tendencies as well?' she demanded bitterly as she realised that Vito, probably quite unwittingly, had been responsible for connecting her brother with her for the benefit of the rest of his family. He ignored the gibe. 'He has your eyes,' he said very quietly, his sensual mouth hardening. 'You both possess considerable physical appeal but in his case, as in yours, it is distinctly superficial on closer acquaintance.'
Temper stormed through her and she lifted her head high. 'You do have to concede one mitigating factor, however…’
He sighed, glancing fleetingly at his watch, boredom somehow screaming from the tiny gesture, making her even more determined to explode him out of his offensive detachment. 'And what is that?'
Ashley fixed huge emerald-green eyes accusingly on him. 'Each and every one of us has the capacity to go off the rails if the provocation is great enough. You once did so yourself, but I gather that I'm not supposed to remember that occasion.'
His golden features shuttered, his jaw line clenching hard. 'The reminder is both unnecessary and irrelevant. I don't suffer from blackouts.'
In that split-second she came dangerously close to losing control. It had cost her dear to remind him of that last meeting. Rape? No, not rape. In bitter anger it had begun, and in savage passion it had ended. Not an act of love or even of desire. A final, humiliating expression of all-male contempt which had destroyed her pride for many, many months afterwards. Mastering her fury now was the hardest thing she had ever done and she only managed the feat by concentrating on her brother.
'I'd plead with you if I thought it would make "any difference,' she admitted starkly.