by Anne Mather
'You can't stay here!'
Ben's denial was instinctive, born as much of a need to protect himself as any altruistic desire to repair her marriage. But she couldn't stay at the apartment. There simply wasn't room.
'I knew you'd say that.' Cass raised her glass to her lips and drained it once again. 'As you've always refused to let me stay here, I doubted any circumstances—no matter how desperate—would persuade you to change your mind,' she finished bitterly.
'Cass—'
'Anyway, it doesn't matter,' she continued, taking the brandy bottle from him and pouring herself another. 'I didn't expect you to say I could stay here. No,' she paused, slanting a considering grey gaze up at him, 'I want you to ask your mother if I can stay at the villa for the summer.'
Ben blinked. 'Are you serious?' He shook his head. He could imagine his mother's reaction to that suggestion.
'Why not?' Cass regarded him defensively. 'I have stayed at the villa before. Lots of times, you know that. We used to stay there together before—'
'Things are different now,' Ben interrupted her harshly, swallowing the dregs of his own brandy without enjoyment, and Cass sniffed.
'I know that, too. I know Sophia blamed me for what happened, and she was probably right. But that was years ago now. I'm not the same person, and I don't suppose she is. Won't you at least ask her? If you won't, I don't know what I'll do.'
This last was said with a real note of desperation in her voice, and Ben's nerves clenched. 'What is that supposed to mean?' he demanded, grasping her arm and swinging her round to face him, and then wished he hadn't when the haunting appeal of her expression tore into his gut.
'What do you think it means?' she retorted after a moment, pulling her arm out of his grasp and pressing it protectively against her side. 'Oh, don't worry, I'm not threatening to kill myself or anything melodramatic like that. You won't have my death on your conscience, if that's what you're afraid of. I—I just thought you might help me, that's all. You—you are my brother, aren't you? You used to say you cared what happened to me.'
'I do care,' grated Ben through his teeth, and then, taking a hoarse breath, he turned away. 'All right, all right, I'll speak to her,' he conceded. 'But I can't promise anything. You have to understand that.'
'Oh, I do. I do!' The relief in Cass's voice was almost palpable, and the little laugh she gave was triumphant. 'Oh, Ben,' she cried, 'I knew I could depend on you. You won't let me down.'
Ben wished he could feel as confident. In the twenty or so minutes since he had let her into the apartment, Cass had systematically destroyed the whole fabric of a life it had taken him years to construct. He had thought he was secure; inviolate; no longer vulnerable to the demands of the secular world. Safe within the walls of his academic fortress, he had foolishly imagined that nothing could penetrate its protected façade, but he had been wrong. And now he had to live with that knowledge as well as everything else.
'Have you eaten?' Cass asked suddenly, and he forced his mind into less traumatic channels.
'Eaten?'
'Well, you have just got back, haven't you? Isn't that what you said?' Cass was shedding her jacket as she spoke, revealing the narrow bones of her shoulders exposed by the tan silk vest she was wearing underneath. She wasn't wearing a bra, and he averted his eyes from the small breasts pressing pointedly against the thin material. She was so thin, he thought again, reluctantly anguished by the admission. Dear heaven, what had been happening to her? Whatever it was, he couldn't let it go on.
Now he brushed back his hair with a weary hand and glanced down at his bathrobe. 'Well,' he said, striving for normality, 'I was going to take a shower. Mrs C. didn't expect me back today, and as she hasn't stocked the fridge, I was going to go out for something to eat.' That wasn't actually true. He had decided to go straight to bed, but he couldn't tell her that.
Cass lifted her shoulders. 'Go out?' she repeated, without much enthusiasm. Then, 'Is that little shop still open? You know—the one just off the piazza?'
Ben frowned. 'How do you know about that?'
Cass grimaced. 'Well—as a matter of fact, I went in there yesterday afternoon. I thought—oh, I just thought they might know where you were.'
Ben's mouth turned down. 'And?'
Cass made a defensive gesture. 'They didn't.' She met his dark gaze defiantly. 'Don't look like that. I was desperate. I've told you.' She paused. 'Well? Are they still open?'
Ben hesitated. 'They might be.'
'Good. Then I'll go and buy us some food. I can prepare it while you're having your shower, hmm?'
Ben was torn two ways. On the one hand was the fairly urgent desire to get her out of his apartment forthwith, and on the other a reluctant understanding of her reasons for wanting to eat here. After all, it was summer in Italy; the height of the tourist season. Anyone could see Cass and report her whereabouts to either their father or Roger. And while that might, conceivably, be the safest solution, it was not one Ben could live with. Not tonight, anyway.
But thinking of Guido Scorcese reminded him of something else, something he had forgotten until now. 'Why did you say you had to get away before Father found out about Roger?' he asked abruptly. 'What does he have to do with it?'
'Oh…' Cass shifted a little uncomfortably now. 'You know.'
'No, I don't.'
'You must.' Cass spread her arms. 'Daddy must have told you.'
'Told me what?' There was an edge to Ben's voice now. 'I should remind you, our father is not prone to confide in me.'
'No, but—oh!' Cass sighed, and then, apparently deciding he was serious, she said, 'Daddy would expect me to confide in him. As—as I did before.'
'Before?' Ben gazed at her disbelievingly. 'This has happened before?'
Cass swallowed. 'Just once,' she admitted unhappily, and he swore colourfully in his own language. 'I think it was the same woman, actually.'
'The bastard!' he muttered, reverting back to English. 'And what happened then?'
Cass lifted her slim shoulders. 'Daddy—talked to him.'
'Threatened him, you mean.'
'Something like that.' Cass bent her head. 'Anyway, he—Daddy, that is—persuaded Roger to stay. But I don't want that!' she burst out tremulously. 'I don't want Roger to try and make our marriage work just because he's afraid Daddy's going to cut him out of the company. You don't know how that makes me feel.'
'I can guess,' said Ben quietly, and, compelled by a force stronger than himself, he reached out and took her quivering shoulders between his hands, pulling her convulsively towards him.
She came into his arms willingly, her slim body feeling almost fragile against the solidity of his. Her arms slid round his waist, and she pressed her face against his chest, and presently a warm wetness penetrated the parted lapels of his robe, revealing she was in tears.
'Hey!' he exclaimed, his own voice suspiciously thick as he found her chin with one hand and tilted her face up to his. 'Don't cry. No one's going to force you to go back to him. Not as long as I'm here.'
'Oh, Ben!' Her voice quivered. 'What would I do without you?'
Ben steeled himself against the impulse to lick the salty pearls of her tears from her cheeks, and gently but firmly put her away from him. 'Well, that's not a question you're going to have to answer,' he replied, speaking with determined brightness. 'And to answer your earlier question: yes, the shop you mentioned will still be open. Will you make the meal, or shall I?'
'I will,' she answered at once, smudging away her tears with a slightly unsteady finger. 'We'll have meat and fettuccine and some of that lovely mozzarella cheese, hmm?'
'All right.' Ben nodded. 'Do you need any money?'
Cass pulled a face. 'It's my treat.' She paused, and then offered awkwardly, 'About tonight. You're not going to send me back to the Regina, are you?'
Ben succeeded in concealing his real reactions to that. 'No,' he told her evenly. 'No, of course not. You can sta
y here. But I'd advise you not to tell my mother. She might not understand.'
CHAPTER TWO
CASS shifted restlessly beneath the light quilt, wondering if Ben was having as much of a problem in sleeping as she was. Probably, she decided, remembering the narrowness of the spare bed, and her own guilt when he'd insisted she use his room. Although, as he had just returned from Australia and New Zealand, he was probably tired enough to sleep on a clothes-line.
She, on the other hand, had had little enough to do during the last few days but hide out in her hotel room, waiting anxiously to see if Ben returned to his apartment. She had thought of going to the university, but the idea of her own personal problems becoming the subject of speculation among the other members of the teaching fraternity had persuaded her against it. And for the same reason she had avoided approaching Mrs Cipriani. The little Italian woman was a very likeable character, but she was inclined to gossip. And until Ben came back, Cass had not wanted any spy of Roger's, or her father's, discovering her whereabouts from her.
The decision to come to the apartment one last time on her way to the airport had been an inspiration, as it happened. When she had seen the lights burning in the apartment her heart had almost stopped beating, and, trusting that it was too late for Mrs Cipriani to be working, she had dismissed her cab and entered the building.
She sighed. It had been so good to see Ben again. She had missed him so much since her marriage to Roger, particularly as Ben never visited London these days. Indeed, he seemed to have lost all interest in her, she reflected disconsolately. Ever since that last disastrous summer at Calvado, he had avoided her like the plague.
She sighed, shifting on to her back and shading her eyes against the moonlight streaming through the slats in the blind. If only it was possible to turn back the clock, she thought unhappily. She would make sure nothing happened to spoil the relationship they had once had.
She sighed again. When she was growing up, Ben had been a regular visitor to the house in Eaton Chare. Even the feud, which had existed between Sophia and Guido ever since her father had divorced Ben's mother and married again, had not turned Ben against them. He had even gone to university in London, and Cass knew her father had expected him to make his home in England. The head office of the lucrative Scorcese shipping empire was there, and Guido had naturally assumed Ben would join the family business.
But he hadn't. Cass grimaced now, remembering the rows he and her father had had when Ben had unexpectedly decided that he wanted to teach. She had been too young to understand, of course, but she could remember being afraid even then that Ben might stay away.
But her fears had been unfounded. Ben had stayed on in England until she was twelve, taking a doctorate in medieval history. And, even when he gave in to his mother's pleas and got an appointment at the university in Florence to be nearer her, there were still the long holidays when they could see one another.
She remembered she had been fourteen the first year Ben had invited her to spend a few weeks with him and his mother in Italy. Sophia Scorcese's villa at Calvado, on the Ligurian coast just south of Genoa, was in an idyllic position, and, although Cass had never quite worked out how Ben had persuaded his mother to let her stay, she had had a marvellous time. It had been the first of several such holidays and, if her own mother had never been entirely enthusiastic about the arrangement, her father had encouraged the liaison. Perhaps he had hoped she might persuade Ben to change his mind about joining the company. Whatever the reason, she had been only too happy to go, and, determined socialite that she was, Diana Scorcese had been easily diverted from family problems. As a child, Cass had fondly imagined it had been her mother's ability to arrange parties and look beautiful that had caused her father to fall out of love with his first wife and into love with Diana. It was only as she got older she had learned that Guido's marriage to Sophia had been over long before he met Diana. The Italian woman from a small village in Tuscany, whom he had been obliged to marry because she was carrying his son, had never wanted to share the success her husband had created. Sophia was not a socialite; she had never wanted to leave Italy. And when Guido had transferred his headquarters from Genoa to London, their marriage had been virtually over.
Cass supposed she could understand Sophia's resentment at her son's friendship with the daughter of that second marriage. It must have been pretty galling for her having to accept Cass into her home, even if she had been little more than a child to begin with. After all, she was the daughter of the woman who had forced Guido to abandon his religious beliefs and divorce his first wife. Until Diana came along, their separation had not defied any of the laws of the Catholic Church, and Sophia had been reasonably content. However, Diana had wanted more than a sexual commitment, and Guido had wasted no time in acquiring his decree absolute.
Cass remembered her first weeks at Calvado had been fraught with innuendo. But it had not lasted. Once Sophia had seen how happy they were together, she had had to concede defeat, and until the summer Cass was eighteen, Sophia had borne the girl's company with a mixture of tolerance and resignation. Ben relaxed more when Cass was around, and his mother liked that. Besides, it enabled her to spend more time with him than she might otherwise have done. Sophia had known it was unlikely that Ben would have spent weeks at Calvado if Cass had not been there; and as she had always worried about his getting involved with some unsuitable female, she had acknowledged the advantages of him spending the long vacation entertaining his sister.
Until… Until that fateful summer when she came of age, thought Cass now, rolling on to her stomach and trying to find a cool spot on her pillow. How had it happened? How could she have become so involved with Ben that she had forgotten who he was? It all seemed so unbelievable seen from this distance, and yet wasn't she still turning to Ben because he was the only person in the world who really cared about her?
She buried her hot face in the pillow, trying not to think about Ben, trying to come to terms with her own problems. And the most significant of them was Roger, and what she was going to do about their marriage.
She desperately wished she had never laid eyes on Roger. And she most definitely wished she had never married him. She doubted she would have, had it not been for what had happened at Calvado, but she had rushed off to Bermuda afterwards in a state of some distraction, and he had been there, waiting for her.
Of course, her mother had wanted to know why she had chosen to join them, after all; why she had come back from Italy weeks before she had been expected; and Roger had provided a convenient excuse. She had met him several months before in London. He was one of her father's blue-eyed boys, a young man of impeccable pedigree, who had accepted her parents' invitation to the villa they owned near Hamilton because he had expected her to be there.
And he had been quite good fun to begin with. He had obviously found her incredibly attractive, which was very satisfying after what had happened, and Cass had behaved with an uncharacteristic abandon—brought on, she suspected, by a kind of defensive defiance.
However, the upshot of letting Roger make love to her one night after a particularly riotous beach party they had attended had resulted in him proposing, and she had accepted, rather foolishly as it turned out.
Of course, her father had been delighted. Denied a son willing to follow in his footsteps, he had adopted Roger as a surrogate, and for the past four years Cass had been desperately trying to make the marriage work. But the truth was, she had little or no interest in their physical relationship, and even though she would have liked to have become pregnant, if only to please her father, it simply hadn't happened. In consequence, they rowed a lot—Roger could be quite horrible when he had been drinking—and he persistently taunted her with his sexual exploits. It was not a recipe for any kind of a life, and Cass knew she had come to the end of her tether. That was why she had done the unforgivable and come to Ben. He had seemed the only person she could turn to. Her mother had always be
en too busy with her own life to pay much attention to her daughter, and her father— her father would never understand.
She thought now how fortunate she had been in finding Ben at the apartment at last. She had never dreamt he might be away on a lecture tour, or she would certainly not have hung about in Florence, waiting for him to return. Her imagination had only stretched as far as Rome or Genoa, or perhaps to the villa at Calvado. But instead he had been half a world away in the antipodes and, if she had understood his reference to Mrs Cipriani, he had arrived back sooner than he had expected. Another coincidence? she wondered restlessly. Or had she somehow communicated her need of him on a level far beyond their understanding? Whatever the answer might be, he had come back and he had promised to help her; and she ought to be satisfied with that instead of mulling over what might have been…
The smell of freshly brewed coffee awakened her the next morning. It came drifting through her door, which was standing ajar, its pungent aroma a distinct incitement to get up. Cass, who hadn't slept until the early hours, felt little reluctance about getting up. For the first time in months she was looking forward to the day ahead, and, pushing back the quilt, she swung her slender legs out of bed.
The cream satin wrap that matched the nightgown she had unpacked the night before was lying at the foot of the bed; sliding her arms into the sleeves, she got to her feet. Glancing round the bedroom as she did so, she felt a warming feeling of anticipation. Although it was at least four years since she had stayed at the apartment, it was all so wonderfully familiar. It was like coming home, she reflected ruefully, realising Ben might not appreciate her feelings. But that didn't change the way she felt, and she ran her fingers along the brass rail at the foot of the bed as she walked to the door, loving the polished smoothness of the metal beneath her hand.
As she had expected, Ben was in the kitchen, and he looked up somewhat dourly at her entrance. Like her, he was still not dressed, but she guessed from the terseness of his expression that her occupancy of his bedroom was the real reason he was still in his bathrobe.