Harlequin Presents February 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2: Dealing Her Final CardUncovering the Silveri SecretBartering Her InnocenceLiving the Charade

by Jennie Lucas

  Maybe it was his fault for taking too much time off lately to spend with Valentina and trusting his staff to do the jobs they should, and that thought didn’t make him any happier.

  He needed that signature.

  Carmela let him into the apartment and showed him to the salone, where he paced its length while he waited. He glanced at the caller ID when his cellphone rang and pressed the receive button. ‘Matteo. Sì!’

  He grunted when Matteo complimented him on the photograph of him and Valentina at the opera in the online papers this morning. He didn’t want to be reminded of Valentina, even if his plan to have their romance followed by the papers and have them openly speculating about the possibilities of a new Barbarigo bride had worked supremely well. ‘But that’s not why I’m calling,’ Matteo continued. ‘I was wondering if you and Valentina would come to dinner on Friday evening.’

  ‘Sì. I can make it, but Valentina will be gone by then.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘A shame. So when is she coming back?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Why? I like her, very much. It’s time you settled down, Luca. She seems perfect for you.’

  Luca laughed. ‘Forget it, Matteo, I’m not looking for a wife. Least of all someone like Valentina.’ He tried to remember why. Tried to dredge up all the reasons why it had once seemed so true. Tried to bundle them all up into some kind of argument that might convince his cousin. Failed, and changed tack. ‘This is sport, nothing more. Rest assured, she won’t be in Venice come Friday. I’m making sure of it.’

  He heard a polite cough behind him and turned. ‘You wanted to see me?’ Lily offered, one eyebrow arched, her fingers laced elegantly together in front of her.

  He cut the call and slipped his phone into his pocket and pulled out an envelope from another. ‘I have some paperwork for you to sign,’ he said, wondering how much she’d heard. ‘It seems you missed a signature before.’

  ‘I spoke to Valentina yesterday,’ she said, ignoring him as he placed the paper down on a nearby desk and held out a pen for her. ‘Her flight is on Monday. What exactly is this “sport” you are planning?’

  ‘Who says I was talking about Valentina? Now, if you would just sign here...’

  ‘I heard what you said. What game are you playing, Luca?’

  ‘Just sign the form, Lily.’

  ‘Tell me. Because if you are planning on hurting my daughter...’

  ‘You expect me to believe you, of all people, care? You, who shipped her out here to bail you out of the mess you’d made of your own life? You, who would sell your daughter to the devil if it profited you?’

  ‘Guilty,’ she said, ‘on all charges,’ surprising him with her easy admission. ‘But these last few weeks I’ve got to know my daughter properly, and I like her. I like her a lot, so much so that I will miss her terribly when she’s gone. And I know I have no right to even ask, but I so wish she did not have to go.’

  The world had gone mad! Nothing was as he had thought it would be. Nothing was how it should be. Valentina was going. He should feel happy. He would be happy. Just as soon as this black cloud lifted from his shoulders.

  But Lily, he’d expected to be happy too—a new house, money, a new man—the Lily he knew should not need her daughter’s presence a moment longer. And yet here she was practically despairing that she was leaving.

  What the hell was happening?

  ‘Promise me you won’t hurt her, Luca,’ Lily inserted into the weighted silence. ‘Please promise me that.’

  And the frustrations of the last twenty-four hours—the news that Valentina was leaving—a night at the opera with a woman who looked like a goddess followed by a night of exquisite love-making—the missed signature—all coalesced to form one molten rage. ‘I’m not promising anything!’

  ‘But she doesn’t deserve to be hurt. She’s done nothing—’

  ‘You’ve got no idea what she did! This is no more than she deserves!’

  And her mother grew claws before his eyes. ‘Oh, I’d say it’s clearly much less than she deserves, after the misery you put her through.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I gave her the best night of her life!’

  ‘You clearly gave her one hell of a lot more than that!’

  The thump in his temples thundered out a warning that pieced together in ugly sequence in his brain. ‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’

  She shook her head, hand over her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. If you don’t know, then maybe there’s a reason for that.’

  A reason for not knowing?

  Not knowing what?

  What the hell had he given her?

  Why wouldn’t he be told?

  Unless...

  And as his blood surged loud in his ears, a drum call to war, a drum call to action, the thumping beat of his heart pounded out the only possible answer and he felt sick to his very core.

  ‘Are you saying Valentina was pregnant—pregnant with my child?’

  Lily stiffened where she stood, but her eyes were wide and fearful, the fingers of one hand clutching at her throat. ‘I didn’t tell you that.’

  He turned, already on his way out. Already with one mission in mind.

  ‘Luca—wait! Listen to me!’

  But there was no waiting. No listening. Because for three weeks he had harboured this woman in his house, treated her like a princess, made love to her like she actually meant something, and all the time she had been harbouring the ugliest of secrets.

  Had she been laughing all this time? At him not knowing? At him, thinking he had the upper hand when all the while she’d already exacted her revenge in the worst possible way?

  Now it was time to find out the truth.

  The truth about what she had done to his child!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HE FOUND her curled into a window seat tapping away on the laptop, her hair hanging loose, the ends flicking free around her face, and wearing gelato-coloured clothes, looking like innocence personified.

  Innocence?

  Oh no.

  He felt like growling.

  Once he might have been taken in. But not now.

  Because now he knew better.

  She looked up as he approached and an electric smile like he hadn’t seen before lit up her face for just a moment, until she blinked and the smile turned to a frown. The laptop got forgotten on a cushion beside her as she sat up. ‘What’s wrong, Luca? Why are you home so early?’

  ‘All this time...’ He dragged in air, needing the time and the space to get the words out in the order he wanted when so many were queued up ready and willing to be fired off. ‘All this time, I never imagined you were capable of such a thing.’ He shook his head from side to side as he looked at her, seeing a new Valentina where once he had seen a goddess, seeing finally the spiteful, vengeful bitch that she really was. ‘When were you planning on telling me? Or was it your dirty little secret?’

  The blood drained from her face, guilt leaching her face. ‘Luca?’ And from where he was standing the pathetic whimper of his name on her lips sounded like a confession.

  He shook his head, blood pounding in his temples, pounding out a call to war, the sound stealing the volume from his voice until his words came out rasping against the air. ‘You don’t even try to deny it!’

  Her hand plastered over her mouth. More denial. More proof.

  ‘Luca,’ she implored from behind her hand as the tears started to fall. He was unmoved. Of course there would be tears. He’d expected them. Because she had been found out for what she really was.

  ‘How long,’ he demanded, ‘were you going to keep it a secret?’

  ‘Who told you?’ sh
e asked. ‘Was it Lily?’

  And her words damned her to a hell worse than anything he could devise. He felt sickened by her confession. Sickened that the denial he hadn’t realised he’d been secretly hoping for did not materialise.

  Sickened that she could have done such a thing.

  ‘Does it matter?’ He strode away, unable to look at her for a moment longer, clawing fingers through his hair until his scalp burned with the pain. And still it wasn’t enough. Then he spun back. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She looked as if she’d lost her place in the world.

  She looked as if she was wondering what had gone wrong.

  She looked as guilty as hell.

  ‘I was going to!’

  ‘Like hell!’

  ‘I was!’ And then she was up from the couch, clutching at his arm. ‘Luca, you have to believe me, I was going to tell you. I know I hadn’t before, but I decided this morning that you should know.’

  ‘This morning! How convenient! What a shame someone else got there first.’ He brushed her hand away. ‘I don’t want anyone like you touching me. Not after what you’ve done.’

  She blinked up at him, all big golden fake eyes. ‘But you wouldn’t have wanted to know, surely? You wouldn’t have wanted to know I was pregnant, not after the way we’d parted.’

  He looked down at her with all the hate in the world on his face. ‘I might at least have wanted a say in how our baby met its end. Don’t you think I was entitled to at least that much?’

  Tina stopped and stared, sideswiped by the ugliness of his words. She’d been defending one charge—that she had never told him about their child, a charge she’d known would be difficult enough. But suddenly the argument, like the ground beneath her, had shifted again and Luca was accusing her of...what?

  ‘What are you saying? What exactly are you accusing me of?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know! Because you know what you did. You murdered my child!’

  The clocks stopped, while the magnitude—the sheer injustice—of his allegation rolled over her like waves upon a beach, dumping her head first into the sand, only to come up barely alive, barely breathing.

  ‘No,’ she muttered, from that vague, shell-shocked place she was. ‘No, that’s not how it was.’

  ‘You as much as admitted it!’

  ‘No! Our baby died.’

  ‘Because you made it happen!’

  ‘No! I did nothing! I know I didn’t tell you about our baby, but I did nothing—’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Valentina. I wish I did, but you damned yourself when you pretended you were going to tell me today. You never made any effort to tell me. You were never going to tell me.’

  ‘Luca, listen to me, you’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘Have I? I curse myself for taking a woman like you back into my bed, knowing now what you did that first time. Knowing what you might be capable of again.’

  ‘I had a miscarriage! Our baby died and it was nothing to do with me. Why won’t you listen to me?’

  ‘A miscarriage? Is that what they call it where you come from?’

  ‘Luca, don’t be like this. Please don’t be like this. I could never do such a thing!’

  But dark eyes bore coldly down upon her, judge, jury and executioner in two deep fathomless holes. ‘Then why did you?’

  And she knew there was only one card left to play.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, hoping to reach some part of him, hoping to appeal to whatever scrap of his heart might hear her pleas. Might believe her.

  She didn’t know how he would respond. Disbelief. Horror. Indifference. She braced herself for the worst.

  But the worst was nothing she could have imagined. He laughed. He threw back his head and laughed, and the sound rang out through the palazzo, filling the high-ceilinged room, reverberating off the walls. A mad sound. A sound that scared her.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said, when the fit had passed. ‘That’s just perfect.’

  ‘Luca? I don’t understand. Why is that so funny?’

  ‘Because you were supposed to fall in love with me. Don’t you see? That was all part of the plan.’

  Ice ran down her spine, turning her rigid. ‘Plan? What plan?’

  ‘You still can’t work it out? Why do you think I asked you here?’

  ‘To pay off my mother’s debt. On my back. In your bed.’ The words came out all twisted and tight, but that was how she felt, like a mop squeezed and wrung out and left out to dry in a twisted, tangled mess.

  ‘But it wasn’t only her debt,’ he said in a half snarl. ‘It was your debt too. Because nobody walks out on me. Not the way you did. Not ever.’

  ‘All of this because I slapped you and walked out?’ She was incredulous. ‘You went to all this trouble to settle the score?’

  ‘Believe me, it was no trouble given Lily’s predilection for spending.’

  ‘So why,’ she asked, her hands fisting, her throat thick, but damn him to hell and back, she refused to give in to the urge to cry, not before she knew all of the awful truth, ‘why did you want me to fall in love with you? Why was that part of your so-called plan?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s the best bit. ‘Because once you fell in love with me, it would make dumping you so much more satisfying.’

  ‘But why, when I was leaving anyway?’

  ‘Do you think I was planning to wait until your flight to cut you loose? Not a chance. And now, after finding out the kind of person you really are, I’m glad to see the back of you.’ He dragged in air. ‘What a fool I was. To think I let you back into my life after what you’d done. What were you hoping this time? To do it all again? To go home with another child in your belly—another child on whom you could exact your own ugly revenge?’

  She blinked against the wall of hatred directed her way, as his words flayed her like no whip ever could. They scored her and stung her and ripped at her psyche.

  And there was nothing she could say or do, nothing but feel the weight of her futile love for this man sucking her down into the depths of one of Venice’s canals. Knowing there would be no rescue.

  ‘I’ll go, Luca. You clearly want me gone and I don’t want to stay so I’ll pack up and leave now and consider myself duly dumped.’

  She walked to the door, holding her head, if not her heart, high. And then she turned. ‘There’s one more thing I should have told you about our baby. Add it to my list of crimes if you must, I don’t care. I named him Leo.’

  * * *

  He wandered the palazzo like a caged lion. He felt like a caged lion. He wandered through his bedroom, he wandered past the windows where they’d made love, he wandered out of his home and out through the calles of Venice, past the scaffolding around Eduardo’s old palazzo, where the engineers and builders were already hard at work shoring up the foundations, and back again and still he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  Still she was gone.

  But he’d got what he wanted, hadn’t he? He still wanted her gone, given what she had done.

  He’d got what he had wanted all along. He’d got rid of her. He’d got even.

  So why the hell wasn’t he happy now she was gone?

  Why was he so miserable now she was gone?

  Damn the woman! He’d almost wanted her to stay. He’d almost figured she’d meant something to him before her betrayal. He’d almost factored in a measure of longevity before he’d learned the truth about what she really was. He didn’t want to think about the kind of person she really was.

  He got back to his study and looked at the file someone had placed on his desk while he’d been away. A file he’d asked for. A file that bore a name tag he wasn’t sure he entirely recognised.

  Leo Henderson Barbarigo.

&n
bsp; Why did that name send shivers down his spine? And then he opened the file and read and realised why he’d felt so sick all this time.

  Because it was true that mad in that night of love-making that he and Valentina had conceived a child.

  A son.

  Because it was true that the child had been lost.

  Their son.

  But not because Valentina had brought an end to that pregnancy, as he’d so wrongly accused her of.

  Valentina had been speaking the truth.

  Oh God, what had he done?

  Suddenly all the injustice in the world swirled and spun like threads and blame and hope all intermingled and tangled.

  And he hoped to God it was not too late to do something to make up for it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LUCA had figured a chartered jet should give him a fighting chance of catching her given a commercial flight’s connections along the route. A chartered jet, a fast car and a GPS set for somewhere called Junee, New South Wales—with any luck he’d be right behind her.

  So when he arrived at the gate marked ‘Magpie Springs’ and rattled the car across the cattle grid, he thought he’d done it, that soon he would see her. That soon he would have a chance to make up for it all.

  He followed the bumpy dirt track, sheep scattering in his path and increasingly wondering where the hell any house might be and if he’d taken a wrong turn, when he rounded a bend and there was the house, nestled under a stand of old shade trees.

  He pulled the BMW to a stop, sending up a cloud of dust that floated on the air. He climbed from the car, never more acutely aware of the expanse of blue sky than at this far-flung end of the world, and an October that felt more like April to him, with its promise of coming heat rather than a final farewell in the sun’s rays.

  A screen door opened and a man emerged, letting the door slam shut behind him. Tall, rangy and sun-drenched, he stopped to assess the new arrival, his eyes missing nothing. Her father, he guessed, and felt himself stand taller under his scrutiny.

  ‘Signore—Mr Henderson?’