Had she known the true nature of the beast, perhaps she wouldn’t have made quite such an effort.
‘I loved my brother, Mr Fabbrini. And I loved Caroline as well.’ Her voice sounded unnaturally still.
Riccardo felt such rage at that admission that he had to clench his hands into tight balls to stop them doing what they wanted to do. His eyes were blazing coals, however, and Julia could feel them burning her skin, searing through her head like knives of scorching steel.
‘In which case, please accept my condolences,’ he sneered coldly.
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘No. I don’t, and I am quite sure you can understand why. You might have loved my ex-wife. You might have seen her as the paragon of beauty and gentleness that she convincingly portrayed, but she was neither so gentle nor was she so compassionate that she couldn’t conduct a rampant affair with another man behind my back!’ His voice cracked like a whip around her, causing a group of people at the nearby table to glance around in sudden interest at the explosive scenario unfolding in front of them.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Julia protested with dismay.
‘It hardly matters now, does it,’ he said in a dangerously soft voice. ‘It was five years ago and life has moved on for me. So why don’t you just get to the point of all of this and then leave? Go and find a life to live. If you imagine that you are going to find a sympathetic listener in me then you are very much mistaken, Miss Nash. Any feeling I had for my dearly departed ex-wife dried up the day she told me that she had been seeing another man and was in love with him.’
‘I haven’t come here searching for your sympathy!’ Julia retorted.
‘Then why did you come here?’
‘To tell you that…’ The sheer magnitude of what she was about to say made the words dry up in her throat. She removed her spectacles and went through the pretence of cleaning the lenses, her hands unsteady on the wire rims.
Without her glasses, she looked wide-eyed and vulnerable. But Riccardo wasn’t about to let himself feel sympathy for this girl. The mere thought that she was his replacement’s sister was enough to fill his throat with bile. He could imagine her sitting down in a cosy threesome, nodding and listening to their vilification of him, ripping him apart when he hadn’t been there to defend himself.
He finished his second drink and was contemplating a third, which might at least blunt the edge of his mood, when she replaced her spectacles and looked at him. He decided that he wasn’t going to help her. Let her stutter out the reason for this bizarre meeting.
‘Caroline and my brother had, well…had been seeing each other for the last four months of your relationship before it all came to a head.’ The wine had arrived and Julia gulped down a mouthful to give herself some much-needed Dutch courage. ‘But they hadn’t been sleeping together.’
Riccardo gave a derisive snort of laughter. ‘And you believed them, did you?’
‘Yes, I did!’ Julia’s head snapped up in angry rebuttal of his jeering disbelief.
‘Well, I may be a little more cynical than you, Miss Nash, but I could not imagine a man and a woman, both in their prime, spending four months holding hands and whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears without the whispering turning to lovemaking. My ex-wife was remarkably beautiful and highly desirable. I doubt if your brother could have kept his hands to himself even if he had wanted to!’
‘They never slept together,’ Julia repeated stubbornly. That was what Caroline had told her and Julia had believed every word. It had had nothing to do with sexual attraction and everything to do with the man studying her blackly from under his brows. Caroline had been afraid of him. She had confided that to her over and over in the beginning, and the truth of what she had confided had been plain enough to read on her beautiful, pained face.
Riccardo Fabbrini had terrified her. During their brief courtship, she had seen his dark, brooding personality as exciting, but the reality of it had only sunk home once they had married and she had become suffocated by the sheer explosive force of it. Nothing in her sweet-tempered reserves had equipped her to deal with someone so blatantly and aggressively male. The more dominant he became, the less she responded, wilting inside herself like a flower deprived of essential nutrients, and the more she wilted, the more dominant he had become, like a raging bull, she had whispered, baffled by her tongue-tied retreat.
Martin, with his conventional, unthreatening good looks and his easy smile and shy, compassionate nature, had been like balm to her wounded soul.
But they had not slept together. The thought of physical betrayal had been abhorrent to her. They had talked, communicated through those long, empty evenings when Riccardo had taken himself off to his penthouse suite in central London, nursing his frustration in ways, Caroline had once confessed, she could only shudder to imagine.
‘Perhaps not,’ he now conceded with a curl of his beautiful mouth. ‘She did have a bit of a problem when it came to passion. So is this what you came here for? To make your peace with the devil and clear your brother’s name now that he can answer only to God?’ He laughed coldly. ‘Consider it an effort well-done.’
Julia drew in her breath and shivered. ‘I came to tell you, Mr Fabbrini, that you have a child. A daughter. Her name is Nicola.’
The silence stretched between them as agonisingly taut as a piece of elastic; then he laughed. He laughed and shook his head in incredulous disbelief. He laughed with such unrestrained humour that the group of eavesdroppers decided that whatever had been brewing had obviously been nothing or else jokes wouldn’t have been cracked. Eventually his laughter died, but he continued to grin and this time there was a trace of admiration in his expression.
‘So, Miss Nash, I’m a papa. I thought you had come for money, but I confess I was having a little difficulty knowing what platform you would stand on to get it. Now I know and I take my hat off to you. It is the most ingenious platform imaginable. Except for one small detail. You obviously have not catered for my personality. You must have harboured the strange notion that I was some kind of gullible fool, that you could produce your brother’s offspring from behind your back and I would fall for it.’ He laughed again, but this time there was no humour in his laughter and his black eyes, when they raked over her, contained no admiration. Only distaste.
‘Caroline fell pregnant two weeks before you split up,’ Julia informed him in a stony voice. ‘You can choose to believe it or not, but it’s the truth, and that’s what I came here to say. I don’t want any money from you, but I felt you ought to know the existence of your daughter. It looks as though I made a mistake.’
She stood up, her head held high, and reached for her bag next to the chair.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ Having coerced him here against his will, the blasted woman was now about to sally forth with her nose in the air, leaving him sitting at a table, nursing a thousand questions which refused to surface. He did not for one minute believe that he had fathered any child, but now that the seed had been planted he intended to get to the bottom of it and force her to confess that she had made the whole thing up.
‘I should never have come here, but I felt I had to. I said what I had to say. I tried.’ She proudly made her way through the crowd and was on the verge of acknowledging that she was about to make her escape, when his voice roared through the room, stopping conversation, killing laughter and compelling every head to turn in his direction.
‘Get back here!’
Julia didn’t look back. She did begin to walk more quickly, though, breaking into a slight run as the exit came into sight, then, once outside, she was running, with the wind bitingly cold against her face and rain slashing down on her head. The pavements were slick and empty and she only slowed her pace because there was the very real possibility that she would fall ingloriously on her face in her heels. They were sensible-enough shoes but by no means the sturdy wellingtons she would have needed for the sudden torrential downpour.<
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She was concentrating so closely on her feet, her head bowed against the driving rain as she scuttled towards the underground, that she was not aware of the sound of footsteps behind her, increasing in speed until she did finally pause, only to find herself whipped around by Riccardo’s hand on her arm.
‘You walked out on me!’ he threw at her furiously.
‘I realise that!’ Julia shouted back.
‘You think you can just show up from nowhere, start talking about my ex-wife and throw some wild story in my face before walking away!’
‘I said what I had to say, now let me go! You’re hurting me!’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Some small satisfaction for me for the stunt you pulled back there.’
‘Let me go or else I shall yell my head off! You don’t want to end up in a police station for assault, do you?’
‘You are absolutely right. That is the last thing I want.’ He began pulling her behind him while she swatted her hand at his fingers gripping her trench coat.
‘Where are you dragging me? You might be able to get away with this caveman behaviour in Italy, but there are laws over here about men who manhandle women!’
‘There are also laws against women who think they can blackmail men out of money using a phoney story!’
He was still pulling her and eventually Julia gave up the unequal fight. If he thought he could spirit her away somewhere to prolong their nightmare conversation then he had another think coming. He would no doubt be heading for a cab, and the minute her feet hit the floor of the taxi she would insist on being driven to the nearest underground. She had said what she had come to say, what she had felt morally compelled to say, and if he chose to disbelieve her story then that was his prerogative.
He wasn’t pulling her so that he could hail a taxi.
He was pulling her towards his car, a sleek black Jaguar parked discreetly down a side-road.
Julia shied away but he was much bigger and stronger than her and suffused with angry determination.
There was no way that Riccardo was going to let this little madam escape until she confessed that the whole ridiculous thing had been a web of lies.
He realised that he was furiously trying to remember when he and Caroline had made love for the last time. He knew that it was certainly towards the end of their doomed marriage. He had returned home very late and a little the worse for wear with drink, but clutching a bunch of flowers, his attempt to woo the wife who had already mentally left him. The wife, he only acknowledged later, he had already also left behind.
It hadn’t worked. She had patiently allowed herself to be awakened, to be presented with the sad bunch of flowers. She had been polite enough to stick them in a vase of water, even though she would surely have been tired at nearly one in the morning. And she had been polite enough to make love, or rather to allow him to make love to her. If nothing else, he had finally realised that it was over between them. But when had it happened…?
‘You’re lying,’ he said harshly. ‘And I want you to admit it.’
‘I will not get into that car with you.’
‘You will do as I say.’
The sheer arrogance of the man left Julia speechless. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’
‘Get in the car! We haven’t finished talking!’
‘I refuse…’
‘Why?’ he mocked. ‘Do you imagine that your womanly assets aren’t safe with me? I told you, I don’t favour the sparrows.’ With which he yanked open the car door and waited for Julia to finally edge into the seat.
She hoped she left a huge, soaking, permanent stain on the cream leather.
‘Now,’ he said, turning to her once he was inside the car, ‘where do you live? I’m going to drop you back to your house and you’re going to explain yourself to me on the way. Then, and only then, do we part company, Miss Nash.’
In the ensuing silence Julia seemed to hear the flutter of her own heartbeat.
This was different from when they were in the wine bar, surrounded by people and noise. Locked in this car with him, she became frighteningly aware of his power and of something else: his potent sex appeal, something she had hidden from in the restaurant, choosing to concentrate her mind on the task at hand. The sparrow, she thought in panic, surely couldn’t be drawn to the eagle!
‘Well?’ he prompted with silky determination, and Julia stuttered out her address.
‘Not nervous, are you?’ He turned on the engine and smoothly began driving towards Hampstead. ‘I told you, your maidenly honour is safe with me. Unless…’ he appeared to give this some deep thought ‘…your fear has suddenly kick-started an attack of nerves. Is that it, Miss Nash? Are you afraid of being found out for the liar that you are?’
‘I’m not nervous, Mr Fabbrini,’ Julia lied. ‘I’m just amazed at your arrogance and your high-handedness. I’ve never encountered anyone like you in my life before!’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘Don’t be!’ she snapped back, her body pressed as far against the door as it was physically possible to be. She looked at his averted profile and shivered. Not a man to cross. Those had been Caroline’s words and Julia now had no problem in believing them.
‘So when did you decide to concoct your little scheme?’ he enquired with supreme politeness.
‘I haven’t concocted anything!’
Riccardo ignored the interruption. The girl was lying, of that he was convinced, and he would break her before the drive was over. Break her and return to his vastly energetic but essentially uncluttered life.
‘So…this so-called child of mine is…what did you say? Four? Five?’
‘Five,’ Julia said tightly, ‘and her name is Nicola.’
‘And not once did my beloved ex-wife choose to mention this little fact to me. Surprising, really, wouldn’t you say? Considering she always prided herself on her high morality?’
‘She thought it was for the best.’
Riccardo felt a pulse begin to beat steadily in his temple. Merely contemplating deception of that magnitude was enough to stir him. Just as well none of it was true. He slid a sideways glance at the slight creature sitting in the car, her body pushed against the car door in apprehension. So convincing, but so misguided. The most successful gold-diggers were the ones who hid their intent well.
The girl might not be a stunner, but she could act. She could act because she had brains, he considered. Which would make it doubly satisfying when she finally confessed all…
CHAPTER TWO
THE remainder of the drive was completed in uncomfortable silence. Rain slashed down against the window-panes, a harsh, clattering noise for which Julia was immensely grateful, because without that background din the silence between them would have been unbearable.
Towards the end she gave him terse directions to her house, which he followed without speaking.
By the time the sleek Jaguar pulled up in front of the three-storeyed red-brick Victorian house, her nerves were close to snapping. She pushed open the car door, almost before the car had drawn to a complete stop, and muttered a rapid thank-you for the lift. There was not much else she could thank him for. He had been insensitive, hostile and frankly insulting throughout those tortuous couple of hours in the wine bar. He had refused point blank to believe a word she had told him and had accused her of being a gold-digger.
Julia hurried up to her front door, the rain washing down on her as she fumbled in her bag for the wretched front-door key. She was only aware of his presence when he removed the key from her hands and shoved it into the lock smoothly.
‘I want you to tell me what you hoped to gain by spinning me that ridiculous, far-fetched story,’ he rasped, following her into the hall and slamming the door behind him.
Julia looked anxiously over her shoulder towards the staircase, which was shrouded in darkness.
And Riccardo, following her gaze, ground his teeth in intense irritation. She had clung to her fabrication like a drow
ning man clinging to a lifebelt and he was determined to hear her admit the truth. In fact, hearing her admit the truth had become a compulsion during the forty-minute drive to the house. If not, it would remain unfinished business, even if he never saw or heard from her again, and he was not a man interested in unfinished business.
‘I told you…’ Her voice was half-plea, half-resigned weariness. Both heated his simmering blood just a little bit more.
‘A lie! Caroline would never have kept such a thing from me, whatever her feelings.’
‘OK. If you want me to admit that I made up the whole thing then I admit it. All right? Happy?’
Wrong response. She could see that from the darkening of his eyes and the sudden tightening of his mouth. When she had set out on her mission to be honest she had had no idea about the man she would be meeting. She should have. She had heard enough about him over the years, and particularly in that first year, when Caroline had been pregnant and her hormones had unleashed all the pent-up emotion she had managed to keep to herself during her marriage. But time had dulled the impact of her descriptions, and certainly for the past six months Julia had begun to wonder whether her sister-in-law’s opinions might not have been exaggerated. Moreover, people changed. He would have mellowed over time.
Looking at his dark, hard face and the ruthless set of his features, she wondered whether anything or anyone was capable of mellowing Riccardo Fabbrini.
‘No. No, I am not happy, Miss Nash.’ He gripped her arm and leant down towards her so that his face was only inches away from hers. Julia felt herself swamped by him, struggling just to breathe, never mind control the situation.
But her eyes never left his. She was angry and, yes, intimidated, but he could see that inside she was as steady as a rock and he wanted to shake her until the steadiness turned to water.
No woman had ever roused him as much. This was a contest and he sensed that he was losing.
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