Vengeful Seduction (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern)

by Williams Cathy

  ‘Abigail?’ She faced him swiftly. ‘When were you talking to Abigail about me?’

  ‘I went out to dinner with her after one of her plays.’

  ‘She never told me. Why were you discussing me behind my back?’

  ‘We weren’t discussing you,’ he answered tightly. ‘There’s no need to feel paranoid. We were talking about the past and you cropped up in the general conversation.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Her voice was laden with scepticism. What had he been doing with Abigail? She felt a twinge of jealousy at the thought of the two of them, sitting in some cosy restaurant, smiling and exchanging confidences.

  Abigail had never mentioned having seen him. Why? Had she had a fling with him and decided that discretion was the better part of valour?

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said roughly, ‘I can see what’s going through that head of yours, Isobel, and you’re way off target.’

  ‘Stop pretending that you know me!’ she said, her voice high and sharp. ‘Stop acting as though you can read my mind!’

  ‘I’ve just told you that I had dinner with Abigail, a fact which she omitted to mention to you, and you’re putting two and two together and coming up with six.’

  ‘You can have dinner with whomever you choose,’ Isobel informed him. ‘Of course I’m surprised that she never mentioned it to me, but then she probably assumed, quite rightly, that I wouldn’t be particularly interested.’

  ‘No? Because your life here was too full?’

  ‘This is stupid.’ She turned away to find that her hands were trembling and her mind was filled with unpleasant, sour images of her best friend in bed with Lorenzo Cicolla.

  ‘Has it occurred to you that she didn’t mention anything because I happened to be with a woman when I met her for dinner?’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Maybe she felt a little awkward talking about me in connection with a woman. Maybe she felt that, as my ex-lover, you might be a little taken aback.’

  Isobel laughed shortly. ‘Why? Why would she feel that? I had my own life here.’

  ‘If you call marriage to Jeremy a life.’

  ‘You have no idea what sort of life we had together!’

  ‘I can guess.’

  ‘And of course you’d be right, wouldn’t you?’ she said acidly. ‘After four years of absence you swan back here, make your deductions, and of course the infallible Lorenzo Cicolla would be absolutely spot-on!’

  ‘You didn’t love him. It was obvious on the day you married him. Why would that change?’

  There was a tautness about his mouth when he said that.

  ‘Answer me!’ he muttered, taking a step towards her. ‘You never cared for him, did you? And neither did your parents. He was a bully as a boy and the trait never deserted him. He drank, and God only knows what else he did. Run around with other women?’

  ‘Stop it, Lorenzo!’

  ‘Why? Why should I stop it? I want you to tell me why you married him.’

  His eyes flared dangerously and she wondered, in dry-mouthed panic, how passion could turn to hatred like this.

  ‘It’s in the past,’ she muttered. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘There’s no getting through to you, is there, Isobel?’ he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders, and she felt his fingers bite into her skin. ‘You make noises about forgetting the past but, tell me, would you? If I had walked out on you then, when we were lovers, would you be prepared to smile forgivingly through it?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Isobel said, looking down miserably.

  ‘Then why,’ he asked in a cold, brutal voice, ‘do you imagine for a moment that I should?’

  ‘Because there’s no point dwelling on it, is there?’

  His mouth twisted. ‘And would you be mouthing all this now if I had returned empty-handed? No money in the coffers?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure,’ he sneered, and she flinched away from the look in his eyes. ‘After four years I’ve become eligible, haven’t I, Isobel? Why don’t you admit it? Maybe Abigail was wrong, maybe you’d like me to believe that there was some dark, ulterior motive for marrying him because the truth is just too sordid. Is that it? The truth being that you married him because you wanted to make a match with someone you considered to be of the same social standing as yourself. The fact that we had been lovers was nothing more than an inconvenience.’

  ‘Believe what you want,’ she answered stubbornly.

  It was like waving a red rag at a bull. His eyes glittered with savage fury and he shook her, really shook her, like a rag doll.

  ‘You used me, Isobel,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘What were you thinking when you touched me? What did you feel when we made love? That this was all something casual, a bit of a laugh? That I just wasn’t rich enough for you? No more than a poor Italian boy with his poor Italian parents?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Small towns breed insularity,’ he muttered, ignoring her protest, his eyes burning into hers. His fingers were still biting into her flesh. In the morning there would be bruises, she thought. ‘Small towns with small minds.’

  ‘That being the case, why are you here?’

  He looked at her and she felt unsteadied by his light, mesmeric eyes. ‘You made a big mistake thinking that you could play with me, Isobel. No one plays with me. Do you understand? I went to America and I made my fortune, and now I have returned and here I shall stay. I will have your father’s company and I will have you.’

  ‘I won’t marry you!’

  He laughed coldly and his hand moved to caress the nape of her neck, his fingers soft although there was no gentleness in the gesture.

  ‘How can you take pleasure in this?’ she asked, but he didn’t need to provide an answer to that one. ‘You’re crazy,’ she muttered, wishing that he would remove himself to another part of the kitchen so that she could, at least breathe properly. The feel of his fingers on her neck was making her hair stand on end.

  ‘Surely you have to admit that marriage would have its compensations, Isobel?’ he said in a husky voice. ‘You want me to make love to you as much as I want to.’ He ran his fingers along her spine and her body froze as his hand found her breast. ‘You see,’ he whispered, rubbing her nipple with his thumb, feeling it swell to his touch, ‘you can’t fight me. I mean to have my way.’

  ‘You would marry me simply for revenge? I’m not a possession, Lorenzo.’ His finger continued to rub the throbbing bud of her breast and she could feel her face burning. He bent to kiss her neck, pulling her head back with his free hand.

  They were both breathing heavily and when he pulled her against him, his hands moving to encircle her waist, she felt the hardness of his arousal with a shiver of longing.

  ‘Shame,’ he said coolly, smiling down at her, ‘the place isn’t quite right for making love, is it?’

  Isobel pulled away from him and fled to the corner of the kitchen, grabbing up a tray and sticking it in front of her like a shield.

  ‘Why don’t you go into the sitting-room?’ she asked on a high note.

  ‘And let you get yourself in order?’ He was still smiling. ‘You do look a little ruffled.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself,’ she said tightly. ‘And what,’ she added, on the spur of the moment, ‘would your woman friend think if she could see you now? Or was the woman Abigail failed to mention no more than a passing fancy?’

  He laughed. ‘I thought you weren’t curious about me?’

  ‘I’ve always been curious about a man who is willing to sleep with two women at the same time,’ she said, thinking on her feet.

  The tray was beginning to feel heavy, but suddenly it didn’t matter. She wanted desperately to hear about this woman. Jealousy clawed through her with sickening speed and she hated herself for it. Four years of bitter experience had not made her older and wiser, she thought, it had made her more stupid.

  ‘Jessica,’ he said, moving to relieve her of
the tray, and talking in a normal voice as though, Isobel thought, discussing his damned sex-life was on a par with discussing the weather. ‘She’s blonde, beautiful, and she’s my accountant. Satisfied?’

  He walked towards the door with Isobel trailing behind him, her arms folded across her chest.

  Beautiful and brainy. He had told her that he was not attracted to ornaments. Her imagination threw up at her images of a tall, leggy model who could converse about high finance with ease, and she felt slightly ill. And not in the least satisfied.

  ‘And is she pining for you back in America?’ she asked sweetly, addressing his back.

  He stopped abruptly and she nearly careered into him. He was smiling with satisfied amusement.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t let go of that topic so quickly.’

  ‘Oh, you knew, did you?’ She blushed and met his eyes with what she hoped was a steady stare.

  ‘Of course I did. You forget——’ he leaned slightly towards her, still smiling ‘—I know you well. You always were one to hammer away at something until you were completely satisfied. I remember a certain occasion when I arrived late to see you one evening and, despite the fact that you professed no interest whatsoever in my reasons, you gnawed away until I’d explained it all to you, right down to which side of the car the flat tyre had been on.’

  That made her redden even more. It also rendered her temporarily speechless.

  In one casual sentence he had sent her whirling back through time, to when life was full of heady optimism. It hurt all the more when she forced herself back to the present and back to the realisation that heady optimism was a lifetime away.

  ‘To answer your question,’ he continued in a casual voice, ‘I have no idea whether Jessica is pining my absence. She has an extremely full life, an extremely demanding job and she’s probably too exhausted in the evening to spend much time doing anything, including pining.’

  ‘I’m staggered that you could tear yourself away from such an invigorating woman,’ Isobel replied on a sour note. Her imagination had now elevated this other woman from merely being bright to being a positive genius, the sort who filled what little spare time she possessed pursuing some highly intellectual interest—like brain surgery.

  ‘So am I,’ he mused.

  ‘Then why do you?’ she snapped. ‘Heathrow is wellstocked with planes going to America.’

  ‘I told you,’ Lorenzo said coldly, ‘you won’t be getting rid of me. I have business here, and I shall stay here until it is completed.’

  Their eyes met in hostile understanding.

  ‘You would give up a woman you love simply to satisfy some warped desire for revenge?’ she asked on an indrawn breath.

  Lorenzo didn’t say anything for a while. When he finally spoke, his voice was a lazy drawl.

  ‘Whoever mentioned giving up anyone? You’ll meet Jessica yourself in due course. She’s going to be coming out here to work for me.’

  ‘You’re going to bring…You intend to…’

  ‘Stuck for words, Isobel?’

  ‘You disgust me.’ She half turned and he said viciously, under his breath,

  ‘I didn’t notice such scruples when you walked out on me to marry Jeremy Baker. Or don’t the rules of the game apply to yourself?’

  ‘I had my reasons,’ she muttered.

  ‘What? What were they?’ There was a savage urgency in his voice, and in the hard contours of his face.

  ‘The coffee’s getting cold,’ she mumbled, looking away, and he turned on his heel, his mouth drawn into a tight line of anger.

  Her skin felt as though it were on fire. She could see now what game he intended to play. The pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place.

  He wanted her to marry him, to have her tied to his side, the possession that was once denied him; but on the sidelines he would have his mistress, this other woman.

  He didn’t know that she still loved him. If he knew that, then where would she be? She wouldn’t let herself be hurt again. Hadn’t she suffered enough? she thought with anguish. She would never marry him. Sooner or later, he would have to give up.

  She followed him into the lounge where her mother, thank goodness, had not dropped off to sleep or anything inconvenient like that. She had refused to have sleeping tablets when her husband had died, was still sleeping badly most nights, and consequently had developed a habit of nodding off in the armchair in the sitting-room.

  ‘My, you two took a long time in the kitchen,’ she said mildly when they entered, and Isobel gave her a warning look which was blithely ignored.

  ‘Did we?’ Lorenzo deposited the tray on the coffee-table and shot Isobel a sideways look from under his lashes as Mrs Chandler leaned forward to pour the coffee.

  ‘Mmm.’ She handed Lorenzo his cup. ‘Not that I mind.’ She handed Isobel her cup. ‘I’m sure it does Isobel the world of good having an old friend to talk to.’

  Isobel stifled a laugh at that one and sipped her coffee.

  ‘Abigail,’ Mrs Chandler sighed, ‘is always on the road.’

  ‘An itinerant life,’ Lorenzo murmured obligingly, settling back into the chair as though in no hurry to see the front door.

  ‘So it’s refreshing for her to have you around, Lorenzo, I’m sure.’ She looked at her daughter. ‘Isn’t it, darling?’

  ‘Oh, extremely,’ Isobel muttered. About as refreshing as bathing in a sheep-dip.

  ‘That’s nice to hear, Isobel,’ Lorenzo said with a wicked grin.

  ‘I do hope,’ Mrs Chandler continued in the same pensive voice, ‘that working together to sort out David’s company will be possible.’

  ‘So do I,’ Lorenzo said, with rather more significance in his voice, which Isobel had no difficulty in picking up but which her mother happily missed.

  ‘It will be so very nice to have you around, Lorenzo.’ She paused and appeared to search around for the right words. ‘Especially since I’ve decided to visit an old relative in Cornwall for a few weeks.’

  ‘Old relative?’ Isobel nearly gagged on a mouthful of coffee. ‘Cornwall? What on earth are you talking about, Mother?’

  ‘Haven’t I mentioned it to you?’

  ‘You know you haven’t.’

  ‘Oh dear, I meant to, but things have been so hectic here, what with all this business over the company.’

  ‘What relative, Mother?’ Isobel persisted. ‘You can’t possibly mean Aunt Dora?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her in absolutely ages, and she’s always been so terribly keen to have us down.’

  ‘She drives you crazy. She fusses.’

  ‘She’s just recovering from an operation, you know,’ she said confidentially to Lorenzo. ‘Her hip. Poor old thing.’

  ‘She has a home help,’ Isobel pointed out.

  ‘But a relative would be so much nicer for her, don’t you think, darling?’ Mrs Chandler smiled. ‘I may not be the most speedy thing in the world with my illness, but I can make a passable cup of tea and we’re both so interested in the same things. Gardening, books.’ She sighed. ‘It will do me good, Isobel. I need to get away from here, to have a break from this house, with its memories.’

  Isobel looked at her mother helplessly.

  ‘But now?’ she asked. ‘Why now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I think it’s a splendid idea,’ Lorenzo said, and Isobel glowered at him.

  How dared he contribute to a conversation which had nothing to do with him?

  She looked at her mother, serenely sipping from her cup of coffee.

  This didn’t have anything to do with him, did it? Her mother couldn’t possibly be indulging in a spot of matchmaking, could she?

  She subsided into frowning, thoughtful silence, and only heard her mother’s question as a vague murmur to Lorenzo in the background.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘In a hotel,’ Lorenzo said, surprised by the question. ‘The Edwardian on the outskirts of the town. Time certainly hasn’t s
miled kindly there.’ He contemplated Mrs Chandler over the rim of the cup while Isobel only absentmindedly tuned in to what they were saying.

  She was managing quite nicely to persuade herself that there was nothing ulterior in her mother’s sudden decision to go and visit Dora Gately, who was a sweet old biddy and was, in truth, recuperating from an operation on her hip. They had not seen each other for quite some time and Cornwall would be relaxing for her mother.

  ‘Those poor people,’ Mrs Chandler was saying. ‘He drinks, you know, old Albert Towser. It’s no great secret but he drank away a lot of the profit the place made in the boom years, and now, when belts need to be tightened, they’re finding themselves terribly stretched. They’re thinking of selling. The business is simply no longer there. Two factories have shut down since you were here, and there is just no call for a hotel of that size. In addition to which, the place is in a terrible state from all accounts. And, of course, no money at all to do the necessary repair work.’

  Isobel had moved on from the knotty problem of wondering what her mother’s motives were and was now debating whether she couldn’t migrate to some other part of the world, if Lorenzo Cicolla proved to be as disastrously persistent as he intended to be. They said that the sun always shone in Australia. Wishful thinking, of course, since she would never dream of leaving her mother.

  ‘The food’s gone downhill as well,’ Mrs Chandler was continuing to muse. ‘Alice used to do quite a bit of the cooking, and she always supervised the kitchens, but she’s had her hands full with Albert these past few years and she’s no longer a young woman herself.’

  France, Isobel thought, was closer to England, but far from Yorkshire. Maybe her mother would consider the South of France. It was sunny there as well. No, perhaps not. What would happen to the physiotherapy course she wanted to start on later in the year? Her French left a lot to be desired.

  ‘The food is pretty poor,’ Lorenzo was agreeing conversationally. ‘Not,’ he added loyally, ‘like this little establishment here—even if the apple pie’s a day old.’ He grinned teasingly.

  Dorset. The weather would be rubbish, Isobel reflected, but there would be no Lorenzo Cicolla making her life hell and, far away from him, she could cure herself of her foolish love.