by Lynne Graham
'I won't have her upset,' Vito said softly.
Ashley swallowed hard and smoothed the silk of her band-painted evening gown. She was unable to avoid the flashing brilliance of the diamond ring lodged like a manacle on her wedding finger. Vito had passed it across the table over dinner last night. No frills there, she conceded, and dimly wondered what had happened to the romantic male who had once regularly presented her with flowers and little gifts with all the charm of a very Italian lover. And she hadn't wanted them, although she had struggled to appreciate the sentiment behind his need to continually give her things. She had hated the flowers. When her father had been particularly nasty to her mother, he would always bring flowers home the next day. And her silly mother would go into ecstasies, as if some extraordinary effort had been involved in their purchase. For the very first time it occurred to her that her whole relationship with Vito four years ago had been dominated by her inner terror of somehow ending up like her mother. A tiny frown pleated her fine brows. She had never seen that before and yet it was so obvious. Her unhappy childhood had soared like a huge wall between them.
'It's not too late to invite your family to the wedding.' Ashley shuddered. 'No, thanks.' 'Surely your sister-?'
'We're not close.'
'Have you ever let anyone close?' Vito asked with dark emphasis.
He had come closer than anyone, but he hadn't been satisfied with what she was prepared to give. It was all or nothing with Vito. If you didn't surrender everything, he thought he was being short-changed. Once a banker, always a banker. He had wanted all the accounts out on the table, all balanced and shipshape. He had not listened to the truths he desired to hear. He had simply demanded that she mould herself into the woman he wanted. He had ignored her needs. The idea of her wanting any form of independence had been an insult to his masculinity. She had been a free spirit for the first time in her life and he had tried to cage her. And even if she had felt differently, she had been far too young for marriage and children and all the many responsibilities that both would have demanded of her. Yet Vito had thought he was offering her paradise on a plate. At least this time he knew the score, she reflected tautly.
The past week had been a period of agonising tension. Vito had taken her out three times to dinner and once to a nightclub where he didn't even ask her to dance. He had withdrawn behind a cold front as menacing as a polar freeze. Every night he had dropped her back to the apartment and left her there in solitary confinement. He hadn't laid a finger on her, and she couldn't decide whether that was supposed to be her punishment or his own. Was it any comfort to know that he had clearly found that episode of abandoned sex as devastating as she had? Did what she made him feel threaten him? It was an interesting thought.
Every light in the huge house seemed to be shining with blinding brilliance. This would be her home when they were in London, but not for very long, she told herself. She gave their marriage a year at most. When she proved to be unrewardingly infertile, by virtue of the contraception she was secretly taking, Vito would have no reason to continue the farce. And by then surely, he would have had an overdose of revenge?
A tiny figure clad in something floaty and silvery swam up to them. Ashley's nerveless hands were instantly gripped in an evident rush of warm and welcoming affection. 'I can't tell you how much I've been dying to meet you.' Elena di Cavalieri's use of English had been honed to perfection by years at an English boarding-school. Linking a deft arm in hers, Ashley found herself carried off. Startled, she glanced back at Vito. He smiled, possibly the most genuine smile he had given her in the last fortnight, and her mouth ran dry at the sheer magnetism of that smile until she reminded herself that it was for his mother, who was clearly far too clever to show her real feelings in a no-win situation.
'I think we need to talk.' Elena pressed open a door almost furtively and all but dragged her in. Freed, Ashley hovered in what was a most handsome library. Her future mother-in-law offered her a glass of champagne from a silver tray. The ambush had been pre-planned and there was something just a tinge desperate in Elena's very bright smile. 'Won't you sit down?'
Ashley sank down stiff-backed on an armchair, her defensive antennae prickling with wariness. 'We're getting married the day after tomorrow.' The announcement, ludicrously unnecessary in the circumstances, just flew off her unguarded tongue. She reddened fiercely, abstractedly aware that she had sounded like a woman ready to fight off all threats to the contrary.
'And nothing could make me happier,' Elena assured her levelly.
Ashley stared at her in bewilderment.
Elena sighed. 'I do mean that sincerely. I'm so desperately sorry that I interfered in what was none of my business four years ago. I made a dreadful error of judgement for all the wrong reasons and if I hadn't been so stubborn I would have told him what I had done the minute he came back from London. He was so shattered when you turned him down. I'd never seen him like that before but I told myself he'd get over it.'
'He did, but you don't need to feel responsible. I…I had other reasons for not marrying him,' Ashley responded uncertainly.
'Why haven't you told him about my visit?'
'There was no reason to tell him. That's in the past,' Ashley said, wanting to show that she could be equally generous.
'I really do want you to be happy with my son. I just wish that I could turn the clock back for both of you.' Elena looked a little tearful. 'And some day I hope we can become friends.' Her sincerity was unquestionable. Elena clearly believed that she was the woman Vito loved. Ashley had been softened by her honesty and her careful avoidance of any mention of Carina but she was in no position to respond in kind. How would Elena feel when this marriage also came to an unhappy end? Ashley found herself hoping Vito's mother wouldn't start thinking that her past interference had had any bearing on that development.
Vito was standing across the hall in a clump of other men. As she approached, he immediately excused himself. Interpreting her greater relaxation, he murmured, 'I could have told you there was nothing to worry about. My mother's a very gentle woman.'
Men were so stupid sometimes, Ashley thought irritably. Elena was an unashamedly emotional woman and a ruthlessly protective mother, far less fragile than appearances might suggest. Momentarily she surprised herself with the awareness that she would rather have welcomed Elena as a friend. As it was, she wouldn't be around long enough to scratch the surface even as a daughter-in-law.
The next hour· was a blur of names and faces. Vito infuriated her. The reserve she had endured all week was blatantly cast aside. He was showing her off like a trophy. Mine, that firm hand on her shoulder said. Look but don't touch, said his eyes. Self-satisfaction emanated from him in waves. Only one of his three sisters was present. Giulia, proudly pregnant in a beautiful designer gown, greeted her like an old friend.
'I'm so happy for you and Vito,' she said warmly. 'I insisted on being here tonight. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.'
'When did you get married?' Ashley enquired. 'Almost three years ago.' Giulia patted her stomach complacently. 'And this will be our third child.'
'Your third?' Ashley was quite stunned by the announcement.
Giulia laughed. 'I had twins the first time. You have a lot of catching up to do.'
Ashley managed a very forced smile, thinking how easy it was for some women to reproduce and how horrendously difficult for others. Bursting with health and vitality, Giulia actually made the process look simple, she thought painfully.
'Giulia's crazy about kids,' Vito delivered with a grim look, a betraying tautness etching his hard bone structure.
Something snapped inside Ashley. 'Oh, shut up and go to hell!' she flared in a ferocious hiss, and walked off, fiercely keeping her anguish to herself. She was damned if she would ever tell him again. He deserved to be left in ignorance but she did not deserve the snide remarks.
'Ashley!' A man she was brushing past closed a hand over her arm and looked at her with surp
rise and pleasure. 'What on earth are you doing here?'
She blinked bemusedly as she recognised Josh's familiar, friendly face, and suddenly grinned. 'I could ask you the same question.'
'Oh, I've been on the guest list ever since I delivered Giulia's twins.' His bright blue eyes twinkled. 'She came over to London on a shopping trip and went into labour in Harrods, of all places. Instead of giving birth in the very exclusive clinic in Rome which she had selected, she ended up in a National Health hospital. So what's your excuse? Care to share it while we dance?'
She allowed Josh to fold her into his arms. Vito was so tall that she could see him across the crush. Even at a distance she could feel the dark force of his appraisal. Dear heaven, here she was actually fraternising at close quarters with a member of the forbidden species… a man! She wondered whether she would be shot at dawn and whether she would be allowed a last request.
'I was a late arrival. Have you seen her yet?' 'Seen who?' she asked.
'Vito di Cavalieri's wife-to-be.' 'You're dancing with her,' she sighed.
'You're kidding me!' Josh held her back from him.
Slowly he shook his head and his mobile mouth compressed. 'You're not kidding. How the blazes did you meet him?'
'A long time ago.' She saw his pain and impulsively leant up and pressed a kiss to the corner of his tight mouth. 'I'm sorry it wasn't you, but he's like a migraine that won't go away,' she whispered, belatedly realising that she had drunk just a little too much champagne since her arrival. 'Why can we never love the people we want to love, Josh? Why do we always have to love the wrong ones?'
'Nature made it that way to keep us all on our toes.' Josh skimmed a wayward strand of Titian hair from one perfect cheekbone and withdrew his hand not quite steadily. 'You're so beautiful, I can't think straight around you-'
'Then permit me to do your thinking for you, Mr Hennessy'.' At the sound of Vito's smooth dark drawl, Ashley's head whipped round so sharply that it hurt. 'Put your hands on her just one more time and I'll break every bone in your body!'
As she spun, Vito clamped a hand that bruised round her forearm, his darkly handsome features a mask of rigidly constrained anger. She clashed with glittering golden eyes and paled.
CHAPTER SIX
'How could you do that to me?' Ashley gasped. 'How could you embarrass Josh like that?' Wrathfully unrepentant, Vito poured himself a whisky from the decanter on the library table. 'I warned you. If I hadn't felt sorry for the poor bastard, I'd have hit him! Dio, what sort of a woman are you?'
'What's a kiss on the cheek?' she demanded. 'Josh is an old friend.'
'And presumably the bed sheets have yet to cool,' Vito breathed with stinging derision.
'I won't even dignify that with an answer.'
His sensual mouth was set in a cold line of austerity. 'He's in love with you. As a former victim, I'm an expert on the symptoms. Did you give him the same run-around that you gave me? Was he weak enough to beg? He's a fool. If anyone begs in our relationship, it will be you.'
She shivered, the bite of that menacing assurance making her skin prickle with fear. 'You'd have to kill me first.'
'No, cara,' Vito contradicted silkily. 'All I have to do is take you to bed. Something I plan to do over and over again in the very near future. It would seem it was a mistake to neglect you all week.'
'I-I don't know what you're talking about,' she muttered tightly.
'You looked across at me and then you were all over Hennessy like a second skin.' A heady flush washed her complexion. Yes, she had known he was watching her, indeed had been aware with every fibre of her being. She was too honest with herself to deny the fact. He had hurt her and she had reacted as impulsively as she usually did. She was suddenly ashamed of encouraging Josh to put himself in such an awkward position.
'So why did you do it?' Vito drawled.
Whipped on the raw once too often, she flung back her glorious head of hair and lifted her chin. 'Go to hell,' she said fierily.
'If I go to hell, I take you with me.' His strong, dark features taut with anger, he reached for her. 'I want to know why you found that cheap little exhibition necessary.'
A powerful hand was welded to her narrow shoulder, denying her the retreat she had been about to make. Involuntarily she collided with narrow dark eyes fringed by dense black lashes and the effect was paralysing. Her breath tripped in her throat. 'We should get back to the party.' Vito ran a blunt brown forefinger up the extended line of her throat and she swallowed jerkily. The atmosphere was heavy, intense. Her mouth ran dry, her soft lips parting as she snatched in air. Heat was beginning to surge up inside her. Long fingers glanced caressingly along her jawbone and she had to fight the temptation to turn her cheek into his palm like a sensuous cat begging to be stroked. The hand on her shoulder slid down her rigid spinal cord, tracking her raw tension and then sinking into the narrow indentation just below her waist to ease her closer still.
'The party,' she repeated shakily, struggling to hold on to thoughts already blurred round the edges. His brilliant gaze glittered over her wide eyes and tremulous mouth as his fingers spread over the curve of her hip and pressed her into the hard cradle of his lean thighs. Excitement, wild and inescapable, shock-waved through her. The bold thrust of his erection against her stomach electrified her. She quivered in response and shut her eyes tightly in soundless despair, wanting to feel revulsion, wanting to feel anything but this insane compulsion to uncurl her taut fingers and force him even closer.
'Why?' he persisted.
'Why what?' she mumbled, despising herself. 'Hennessy?'
'Giulia… you hurt me.' The words came in an unsteady rush.
His hands dropped from her and he stepped back, relocating his glass. He left her marooned in the centre of the carpet. Dazedly, she looked at him, the shock of separation shrilling through her nerve-endings with a butcher's efficiency. In the soft pool of the lamplight, he had the beauty of a dark angel but the hard, ruthless angles and sleek lines of a predatory animal. Neither, she registered dully, could have been more coldly merciless in administering punishment. And she was painfully reminded of how easily he had walked away from her once before.
Her legs were wobbling. Her stomach felt seasick but worst of all was that clawing hunger of arousal still clamouring for assuagement. She sank down on to a sofa, pale and drained and deeply ashamed that he could exercise such effortless power over her.
'You really do hate me, don't you?' The question that sought no answer simply slid from her tongue. 'And you blame me for everything that happened four years ago. You don't want to accept that the view is very different from my side of the fence.'
'Is it?' There was no emotion whatsoever in the flat response.
'You walked out, not me,' she condemned in an undertone. 'I needed to find somewhere else to live and I was broke-'
'The rent on that apartment was paid up until the end of the year,' Vito incised drily. 'There was no need for you to move out. I also opened an account for you so that you would not be short of money.'
'Yes…' A choky little laugh escaped her. 'I'll never forget that most sentimental of final farewells. A cheque-book delivered by special messenger. Just what every woman wants as a last touching memory of your undying devotion. What did you think I was? Some little bimbo you had to payoff?'
An almost imperceptible flush demarcated his high cheekbones. 'I was responsible for you. I discharged that responsibility in the only way open to me at that time.'
'I didn't take your money when I lived with you. Why would I take it when you were gone?' she whispered hoarsely. 'I couldn't go back to the flat I'd shared because I sublet it two weeks before you left. That's why I ended up on Steve's couch.'
'The baby… was it mine?' He shot the question at her without warning. He was out of context but she could see by his stillness, his cold concentration that it was really the only topic he was ready to focus on. 'The subject is closed', he had said a week ago, but even Vito was
human.
The raw cruelty of that question pierced her like a knife. And the strength of her own pain surprised her or she had believed that she was prepared for that suspicion. 'How can you ask me that?' she gasped.
In the smouldering pulse of the silence, Vito elevated a satiric ebony brow. Ashley bowed her head, quivering with a hatred that was but a thin patina over a painful surge of confused emotions. Where was her anger? She wanted her anger, she needed that anger. But instead she was suffering a desperate sense of loss and futility. Why did it hurt so much to hate him? Why did she feel so terrifyingly vulnerable? Why all of a sudden did it matter so much that he believed her?
'It was yours.' She surrendered, despising herself for the weakness. 'And-'
'That's all I want to know,' Vito interrupted fiercely. 'But how did you know?' she demanded finally.
'I put a private investigator on you. I was curious.' Vito cast her a freezingly shuttered glance but one brown hand clenched into a fist in betrayal as he spoke. 'I believed that there was another man involved. In the end that angle was immaterial. Purely by accident, I discovered that you had a far more powerful reason for wanting me out of your life.’
Ashley flinched. He thought that she would have gone to any lengths to ensure that she had the freedom to dispose of their unborn child. It was a sordid picture and one she did not have the means to dispel. In her absence she had been convicted and sentenced four years ago and he was allowing her no right of appeal.
'You won't listen to me,' she pointed out strickenly. 'But I didn't have the abortion. I changed my mind. I had a miscarriage a couple of months later.'
'We should return to the party.'
'Vito, you can't do this to me!' she cried.