by Lynne Graham
Ava froze. ‘Been there, done that,’ she declared stiffly without looking at him as she stooped to lift up the paint tin. ‘I’m freezing … let’s get back to the car—’
‘When did you visit them?’
‘Yesterday,’ she extended reluctantly.
Vito frowned and made the connection, shrewd dark eyes bronzing with sudden intensity. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘I found out that I’m not Thomas Fitzgerald’s daughter, after all. I’m a bastard, father unknown,’ she confided doggedly between gritted teeth as she stalked ahead of him towards the car.
‘You’re … a what?’ Vito closed a strong hand round her slim shoulder to force her to turn her head to look back at him again.
Ava explained what she had learned in as few words as she could manage. ‘So, you see, you really couldn’t expect any of them to have visited me while I was in prison or to bother with me now—I’m not and never have been part of their family and they finally feel that they can be open about that.’
Appalled, Vito swore under his breath in Italian. ‘You should have been told a long time ago and never in such a cruel manner.’
‘Nobody was cruel!’ Ava interrupted in heated disagreement. ‘Thomas Fitzgerald was fed up with having to live a lie and you can’t blame him for that.’
‘I—’
Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘It’s none of your blasted business!’
Silenced by that forthright declaration, Vito drove back to the castle with a fiercely tense atmosphere between them. Ava breathed in slow and deep, fighting to control her distress. She hadn’t wanted to tell him but he had virtually forced her to speak. Now he had to be embarrassed for her but the last thing she wanted or needed was his pity. Every atom of her being reared up in a rage at that humiliating prospect.
Eleanor Dobbs was waiting for them in the big hall. The housekeeper’s expression was grave and anxiety infiltrated Ava as the older woman extended a folded newspaper to her employer.
Vito glanced at the headline, ‘Barbieri with bro’s slayer,’ and the accompanying photographs, one of Ava at the time of the accident, the other of her by his side in London the day before. His handsome mouth compressed into a tough line while Ava peered over his arm to study the same article and turned white as the snow beginning to lie on the ground outside.
CHAPTER NINE
PRESSED into the library, Ava filched the newspaper from Vito to get a proper look at the article. She spread it out on his desk and poured over it to read every word while he remained poised by the fire to defrost, his expression forbidding and stormy.
‘This is horrible,’ she muttered in disgust.
‘It is what it is,’ Vito responded stonily. ‘The truth we can’t change. I can’t sue anyone for telling the truth but I wish I’d chosen to be more discreet in your company yesterday. What I do want to know is where they got the tip-off from. I will be questioning my staff. Nobody else knew you were here.’
The truth we can’t change. That statement rang like the crack of doom in Ava’s ears and her heart sank to the soles of her feet. It was the truth, the elephant in the room whenever they were together. Serving a prison sentence hadn’t cleared her name, rehabilitated her reputation or made her one less jot guilty as charged of reckless endangerment of Olly’s life. She stilled on that thought, cold inside and outside, her skin turning clammy. Maybe this was the real punishment for what she had done, she conceded, never ever being able to forget for longer than a moment in time.
Vito strode to the door. ‘I’ll talk to the staff.’
‘Wait … at least one other person knew I was here,’ Ava volunteered abruptly. ‘I was visiting Olly’s grave and she recognised me. I thought I’d seen her before somewhere but I didn’t know her—Katrina Orpington?’
Halfway out of the door, Vito came to a sudden halt. ‘Katrina? The vicar’s stepdaughter?’
‘Is she? Blonde? Looks a bit like a model? She called me a killer, thought it was offensive that I should be in the cemetery,’ Ava advanced woodenly.
Vito’s gaze flared hot gold. ‘And you didn’t warn me? Dio mio, is there anything you’re willing to tell me?’
Her troubled eyes veiled and her soft lips firmed. ‘You don’t need to hear that kind of stuff.’
‘I don’t need to be shielded from it either!’ Vito growled, his anger unhidden.
In the simmering silence Ava perused the newspaper again. No, on one score Vito had proved correct: the item contained no lies, simply the facts inviting people to make their own judgement of how appropriate it was for Vito to be entertaining his brother’s killer. In the photo taken yesterday, having taken fright at the sudden appearance of the photographer, she was clinging to Vito, leaving little room for doubt that theirs was an intimate relationship. The article would certainly raise brows and rouse condemnation. Her face burned, guilt and regret assailing her. Vito had been good to her. He did not deserve public embarrassment on her behalf. She should never have come to Bolderwood: returning to the scene of her crime had been asking for trouble. It hurt that she had made the mistake but that Vito was being asked to pay the price.
All she could do was leave: the solution was that simple. Gossiping tongues would fall silent once people realised she was no longer around. She hurried upstairs to her room, dug her rucksack out from between the wardrobe and the wall and proceeded to pack it with her original collection of sparse clothing. She discarded the outfit he had bought her but kept on the underwear. She wondered if someone would give her a lift to the local railway station, checked her purse to see if she had enough for the fare: she didn’t. She would ask Vito for a sub on her salary although she cringed at the prospect of directly approaching him for money and accepting it from him. It would feel downright sleazy.
Without warning the door opened. Vito scanned the small pile of clothing on the bed, the open rucksack, and shot a gleaming, cutting look at her that would have withered a weaker woman. ‘Madre di Dio! What the hell are you doing?’
Ava ducked the direct question. ‘I should never have come here in the first place—it was asking for trouble! I did try to warn you about that.’
Vito shifted a silencing hand. ‘Enough with the lie-down-and-die mentality,’ he derided. ‘You’re tougher than that.’
‘Maybe I thought I was but I’ve just realised that you can’t beat social expectations, you can’t flout the system and then complain when you become a target.’
‘No, you can’t if you’re a coward.’
Blue eyes darkening with fury, Ava pushed her chin up. ‘I’m not a coward.’
‘You’re getting ready to scuttle out of here like a rat leaving a sinking ship,’ Vito contradicted without hesitation. ‘What else is that but cowardice?’
‘I’m not a coward!’ Ava proclaimed, inflamed by the charge. ‘I can take the heat.’
‘Then take it and stay.’
Ava snatched in an uneasy breath. ‘It’s not that simple. You don’t need this … er … trouble right now.’
Vito squared his big broad shoulders. ‘I thrive on trouble.’
Ava tore her strained gaze from the bold challenge in his features, her heartbeat quickening. She wondered how long it would be before she could picture that darkly beautiful face without that happening. Here she was, twenty-two years old, and she was as infatuated as a teenager with a man who could only hurt her. That was not a record to boast about and the best thing she could do for both of them was sever the connection in a quick, clean cut that would cause the least possible damage. Vito was a stubborn guy. The very idea that he should conform to social mores was anathema to him. Vito was always ready to fight to the death to defend his own right to do as he liked. A textbook knee-jerk reaction from an arrogant, aggressive male.
‘Look,’ Ava breathed on a more measured note, ‘all the party arrangements are in place. I’ll leave clear notes and contact details for all the outside help I engaged—’
‘I don’t give a
flying … damn …’ he selected between gritted white teeth ‘… about the party! You know how I feel about Christmas.’
‘Can Harvey still stay?’ Ava prompted anxiously.
The animal concerned voiced a little whine and pushed his muzzle anxiously against Vito’s thigh, his need for reassurance in the tense atmosphere pronounced.
Vito groaned out loud at the question. ‘I think you’d have to kidnap him to take him away.’
Ava nodded woodenly because she knew she was going to miss Harvey’s easy companionship and affection. Of course she would miss Vito too but that would be good for her, character-building, she told herself urgently. She had let herself get too dependent on Vito and that was dangerous. It was better to get out now on her terms at a time of her choosing rather than wait for his inevitable rejection. ‘I have to leave.’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Vito decreed harshly.
‘Be reasonable,’ Ava urged. ‘I can’t stay after that story was published in the papers … as if people around here even need reminding of what I did!’
‘It doesn’t bother me,’ Vito fired back without scruple.
‘Well, it bothers me!’ Ava flared back at him out of all patience, her hands planted on her slim hips for emphasis. ‘And what difference does it make anyway? So, we part a few days earlier? This was only ever going to last two weeks.’
Eyes smouldering between thick black lashes over that assessment, Vito shifted closer with silent fluid grace. ‘Says who?’
‘Says me!’ Ava thumped her chest in emphasis with a loosely coiled fist. ‘Do you think I’m stupid, Vito? Did you think I wouldn’t appreciate that once the party was over, we were too?’
His face set even harder. ‘I never said that.’
‘Yeah, like you were planning to come calling at my humble bedsit on a regular basis!’ Ava scoffed in disbelief. ‘Why can’t you at least be honest about what we have here?’
‘Do you think that could be because when I dare to disagree with you, you immediately accuse me of subterfuge?’ Vito queried smooth as silk, a sardonic ebony brow raised.
Ava was getting more and more worked up over her inability to get through to him. He was dancing around words, refusing to match her candour, selfishly complicating things when she wanted it all done and dusted, neat and tidy and over while she still had the strength to deal with it. Before she even realised what she was doing, both her hands lifted in frustration and thumped his broad hard chest instead. ‘It’s over, Vito! Fun while it lasted but now the writing’s on the wall.’
‘Not on my wall,’ Vito fielded, closing strong hands round her waist and lifting her right off her startled feet to lay her down on the well-sprung bed.
‘What the heck are you talking about?’ Ava snapped back at him in bewilderment, scrambling breathlessly back against the headboard to stay out of his reach.
‘My agenda, rather than yours … sorry about that,’ Vito delivered rawly, dark golden eyes glittering like starlight in his lean taut features as he came down on his knees at the foot of the big bed and began to move closer again. ‘It’s not over for me yet. Sorry, if that disrupts your rigid timetable. But I still want you …’
Sentenced to involuntary stillness by his extraordinary behaviour, Ava stared fixedly at him. He was stalking her like a predatory jungle cat ready to pounce. ‘Now just you stop right there!’ she warned him shrilly.
She drove him insane, Vito acknowledged darkly. Somehow every time they clashed she brought emotion into it, the emotion he shunned and she unleashed like a tidal wave. ‘I’m not stopping,’ Vito almost purred with assurance. ‘And you know I don’t back down …’
That dark sensual voice of his was compelling, sending a deeply responsive echo strumming right through her taut length. ‘You know I’m right, Vito.’
‘You always think you’re right,’ Vito husked. ‘But on this occasion, you’re wrong. I want you.’
A jolt of desire shot through her, making her achingly aware of the heat at her feminine core. Her cheeks burned with mortification. ‘We only got out of bed a couple of hours ago!’ she slung.
‘And I’m still hungry, bella mia,’ Vito growled deep in his chest, drawing level with her to bend his head. ‘Doesn’t that disprove your theory that I’m ready to let you go?’
‘You don’t let me do anything!’ Ava launched back at him in a rage. ‘And I know you well enough to know that you won’t be ready to let me go until you make that decision.’
His fingers feathered slowly through her tousled coppery hair and curved to her taut jaw. ‘You’re a lot of hard work but I still burn for you.’
Ava flung back her head in defiance. ‘Well, my flame’s gone out. Common sense snuffed it,’ she traded.
‘What the hell does common sense have to do with this?’ Vito demanded thickly, crushing her stubbornly compressed mouth beneath his and revelling in the way her soft full lips opened for him as the tip of his tongue scored that sealed seam.
His mouth devoured her and she wanted to eat him alive, powered by a frantic desire that terrified her when she was trying so hard to make him see sense. But there was no sense in that all-encompassing overwhelming hunger that gripped her. Her hands came up of their own volition to cup his high cheekbones and then threaded into his thick silky hair. The spicy scent and taste of him only made her want more … always more. When did she reach satiation level? When would that terrible craving ease enough to allow her to hold it at bay?
‘I’m packed, I’m leaving,’ she mumbled obstinately when he freed her swollen mouth long enough to let her breathe again.
‘I could chain you to the headboard to keep you here,’ Vito told her silkily as he closed a possessive hand round a full breast below her sweater, a thumb massaging the already swollen peak. ‘Now doesn’t that open an interesting field of possibilities?’
Ava trembled, sexual frissons of sensation running through her like liquid lightning. ‘Only if you’re a perv,’ she told him doggedly.
‘You like it when I’m dominant in bed,’ Vito traded with fiery erotic assurance in his stunning eyes.
Ava planted her hands to his shoulders and pushed forward, off balancing him back against the pillows. A wolfish grin split his bronzed features and he laughed with rich appreciation, hauling her down on top of him with shocking strength to take her mouth again with ravishing force. She shivered violently, insanely aware of the male arousal resting like a red-hot brand against her and the hand sliding down over her quivering stomach below her unfastened jeans to tease her with knowing expertise.
‘Don’t forget that I’m an equal opportunities employer,’ Vito reminded her raggedly, lifting her out of her jeans with more haste than finesse.
‘I’m in the middle of packing!’ Ava raked at him in a frustration steadily becoming more laced with self-loathing.
‘But you’re not going anywhere now,’ Vito pointed out, shedding his jeans with positive violence and drawing her back up against him, all hot and ready and hard.
‘We should have discussed this like civilised adults—’
‘You talk too much,’ Vito told her, delicately tracing her lush opening with carnal skill and then, having established her readiness from the whimper of anguished sound that exited her straining lungs, he shifted over her and sank into her with a raw primal sound of satisfaction that she found insanely arousing.
That fast the moment to stand her ground was lost and her body took over, her hips angling up to accept more of him … and then more and then, heavens, the pulsing, driving fullness of him was pushing her closer and closer to the edge she had never thought to visit again with him.
In the aftermath, his heart still thundering over hers, she held him close, adoring the weight and intimacy of him that close, wanting and barely resisting the urge to cover him in kisses. But while her body was satisfied, her brain was not and with every minute that passed she was seeing deeper into herself. She wanted to run away because she was scared
of getting hurt. Why was she likely to get hurt? Solely because she felt too much for him. She was hopelessly, deeply and irretrievably attached to Vito Barbieri, indeed as much in love as a woman could be with a man. For too long she had denied her true feelings, suppressed them and refused out of fear to examine them.
‘And now you’re thinking too much … for a sensible adult,’ Vito reproved, noting her evasively lowered lashes and mutinously closed lips before he lowered his handsome head to rub a stubbled cheek against the soft slope of her breast and drink in the familiar scent of her with a sense of bone-deep satisfaction. ‘This isn’t complex. We’re in a good place right now … don’t spoil it, gioia mia.’
‘I need a shower,’ she said stubbornly, whipping her clinging arms off him again.
‘You are so obstinate,’ Vito grated, rolling off her with sudden alacrity and viewing her with forbidding cool from the other side of the bed.
‘Whatever turns you on,’ Ava replied glibly.
And she did, any time of day, every time, all the time, Vito mused grudgingly, watching the lithe swing of her slim curvy hips and spotting the tattoo of his name inked onto her pale skin as she vanished into the bathroom. Ava had taught him what a weekend was, how to walk away from work, daydream in important meetings. She was like an express train to a side of life he had never known before and sometimes it spooked him. He should have let her leave, a little voice intoned deep in the back of his mind, get his work focus back on track, return to … normal? Yet being with Ava felt astonishingly normal even when her backchat was ricocheting off the walls around him. The phone by the bed buzzed and he flipped over to answer it.
In the shower, Ava was scrubbing the wanton evidence of her weakness from her skin when Vito appeared in the doorway, a towering bronzed figure with a physique to die for.
She rammed the shower door back. ‘Don’t I get peace anywhere?’ she sniped.
‘That was Eleanor on the phone. Your sisters have arrived for a visit—she put them in the drawing room.’
Ava froze in stark shock and equally sudden pleasure. ‘Gina and Bella have come here to see me?’