The Italian's Vengeful Seduction

by Bella Frances

  ‘How long has it been?’ she asked. ‘You were—what?—nineteen last time I saw you in Montauk?’

  ‘Yes. Nineteen. Just before I hit the road. And you—you were still in high school?’

  ‘Yes, I was sixteen. Thought I knew it all.’

  She’d been sixteen. She’d been a mess. She’d come home that night to find that her mother had sold the car—their last remaining luxury. She’d been fired from her part-time job for using her mouth against a customer who’d insulted her, and she’d learned she’d been given the Tramp of the Year award by her classmates. Yeah, she’d been a mess, all right. So when Marco had caught up with her and asked her if the rumours were true she’d laughed in his face.

  Of course they were true. Did he think he was special?

  He’d turned his back on her and she’d done what any abandoned daughter would have done. She’d gone looking for Daddy.

  ‘We all thought we knew it all,’ Marco said. ‘Comes with the territory. Refusing to listen and making the wrong choices. Isn’t that what growing up is all about?’

  She rolled her eyes, remembering.

  ‘Are you talking about the night I left home?’

  ‘Not especially. But I reckon it kind of fits the bill,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Okay, so hitch-hiking wasn’t my best plan—but how was I to know that my mother would mobilise everyone with a torch and a conscience. I was only gone three days.’

  ‘I know. I was there. Torch. Conscience. Ticket to Rio burning a hole in my back pocket.’

  Stacey cringed, remembering. It had been the worst weekend of her life. She’d bounced like a boomerang from one disaster to another. Her hare-brained scheme about finding her dad had spectacularly backfired and she’d come home with no money and absolutely no illusions that he was anything other than a sorry, selfish excuse for a man.

  ‘Sorry I delayed your trip. But you made it to Rio in the end, right?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Not that year—change of plan. But it didn’t matter. I would have gone anywhere as long as it wasn’t Montauk.’

  Stacey nodded. She knew exactly what he meant.

  ‘If I never see the End of the World, Long Island, again it’ll be too soon,’ she said.

  They travelled for the next few minutes in silence, to the outskirts of town and the start of more exclusive addresses. Places where Marco would be right at home and where Bruce’s name probably wouldn’t cut it.

  He turned the car into a lushly planted car park. A red cross and the words ‘St Bartholomew’s Medical Center’ in deeply etched silver writing warned in hushed tones that this was the domain of the elite. Exclusively. The building itself was solid and secure, white stone, and for a moment a sense of calm descended. She felt it. She sat. Still. Silent.

  ‘I don’t think this will take too long. Then you can be on your way. But if there is any damage don’t worry—I’ll cover it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she managed to say. ‘Good of you.’

  She reached for the handle.

  ‘Stacey. A moment.’

  She swallowed, then turned—carefully. He was sitting back in his seat, one elbow on the armrest, one hand on his knee. The picture of easy, moneyed charm. Like a warm, sunny welcome after the grim, gritty night. Sure and solid and secure. Exactly how she’d once felt in his company. Safe from the never-ending stream of her mother’s suffocating worries.

  Yes, he’d had it all back then—he’d even had a heart. Unlike most of his friends, she’d never thought him shallow. Or smug. Or arrogant. On the contrary. Somehow he’d made her feel—valuable. That she had as much to offer as any other human being. But it turned out that had all been in her imagination. Because at the end of the day as soon as he’d thought she was anything less than perfect he’d cast her aside faster than yesterday’s trash.

  She took a second—took him in. God, but he was handsome. He had lost all the soft traces of boyhood and taken on the harder mantle of manhood. His eyes, dark and deep, were fixed onto hers. She’d always had a thing for dark-eyed men, and now she remembered this was where it had all begun. But no one had the full package like Marco—eyelashes short and thick, and long, wide brows that framed his dark, enigmatic look so perfectly. The blue-black shading of his stubble perfectly outlined his mouth and the blunt cut of his jaw.

  She couldn’t draw her eyes away. The air in her lungs suddenly seemed to be completely lacking. His lips—those fabulous full lips that she remembered—parted. Then there was nothing but the shadow between them, the beat of her heart and the anticipation that rocketed all the way to throb between her legs.

  ‘Marco...’ she breathed.

  He moved not a single muscle. There was just the flick of his eyes as they roamed across her face. He didn’t reach across to grab her, didn’t accidentally brush up against her leg—he even managed to keep his gaze above her jaw. He was completely and utterly impassive. And, worse, she felt that he was mocking her.

  ‘Put my jacket round your shoulders before we go inside. You’ll feel more comfortable.’

  He opened the door and she hissed out the breath she’d been holding in. What a fool. What a fool! She had actually contemplated kissing him—kissing him! And—worse—she’d thought he was going to kiss her too. She must be out of her mind. After all this time? That bump had definitely gone to her head. She had to get her game on or she was going to let herself turn into a pile of mush.

  And a woman with no home, no job and no money could not afford to be mushy.

  Marco opened the door and stood there, ready to shield her with his jacket. She swung her legs out noting that the thigh-length split in the skirt of her dress was leaving even less to the imagination than the bodice. Another notch down in his estimation, no doubt. Ignoring the pain, she held on to the sides of the car and eased herself to her feet.

  ‘Too kind,’ she said, slipping her arms into the deep sleeves he held out and wrapping the navy silk jacket around her. He closed the door and clicked the remote key to lock it. Two beeps. One for every ten billion, she’d guess.

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ he said, every inch the uninterested chaperone.

  She felt the weight of his world envelop her in heavy fabric and wide shoulders. It was as if gold had been spun into the cloth and wishes might fall out of the sleeves. Life was not fair. Not at all.

  ‘You’ve clearly done well for yourself, Marco. I think it was a beat-up farm truck I last saw you driving. Win a little on the slot machines?’

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. His father had been a compulsive gambler. Damn. She scrunched her eyes closed, remembering.

  ‘I don’t gamble, Stacey—in fact I despise it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It was all she could say, and she felt the thrust of his anger. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘I can’t forget. We lost everything due to my father’s gambling. Everything.’

  She knew. It had been the very thing that had bound them together at one point—Marco’s rapid fall from the elite ranks of Montauk society all the way down to the gutter. All the way, but not quite. He was a Borsatto after all.

  ‘If I had my way I’d shut down every toxic casino in this town. And the others.’

  ‘I’m glad not everybody sees it that way. I’ve made a living from them one way or another these past ten years.’

  ‘You’re entitled to your view,’ he said, as if it was the most stupid thing he’d ever heard. Then he turned and began to walk towards the building.

  She watched his retreating back, outlined against the white marble.

  So what if he’d lost it all? She’d never had it in the first place.

  She started after him, her heels dragging on the gravel of the car park.

  ‘Not everyone who gambles is a loser, you know.’ She fired the words into his back.

  He paused. ‘I guess not,’ he said, turning slowly, judging her.

  In the smallest slide of his eyes he was tel
ling her that she had been found completely and utterly lacking. He stood there, framed in the white-pillared entrance. Sheets of black glass wrapped around the building behind him. Sunlight sparkled.

  ‘But in my experience there are a hell of a lot more sinners than saints.’

  ‘More whores than Madonnas? Is that what you’re saying? Because I’m dressed like this?’

  His mouth curved a little. He shook his head.

  ‘I was talking about the customers, Stacey. Not the staff.’

  There she went again—jumping to conclusions and shooting her mouth off like an unmanned artillery gun. She threw him her worst possible look but he didn’t flinch.

  ‘You told me you don’t normally dress like that. So I assume it’s your “uniform” if you were working today?’

  Before she got a chance to answer an immaculately presented woman in a sleeveless tailored dress and heels, with the most perfect hair Stacey had ever seen, clicked across the marble entrance, hand extended, smiling her Ivy League best.

  ‘Mr Borsatto, how pleasant to see you.’

  ‘Thank you, Lydia, nice to see you too. I’m afraid I haven’t got a scheduled appointment today, but I’d be obliged if you would arrange urgent scans for this lady.’

  Stacey eyes flashed to the name badge which read ‘Executive Administrator’, whatever that was, even as the lovely Lydia arched her eyebrows then swept her with an all too familiar look. The one that said, What’s the likes of you doing with the likes of him? That said, You don’t belong here. The one that she’d endured over and over in her youth. That always ended with her losing her temper—because what gave them the right?

  But then she looked at Marco, and for a moment she was right back in Montauk. Right back in the little café where she’d worked and where ‘the crowd’ had hung out. Where he’d keep his eyes on her in a long, intense stare, telling her he had her back.

  Back then.

  ‘And we’ll need the best possible St Bart’s welcome, Lydia. Miss Jackson and I have had a minor traffic accident, unfortunately. But she’s kindly agreed to get herself checked out. Just to reassure me that she hasn’t done any lasting damage.’

  Was she imagining it? Or was there a warning in those tones?

  Whatever—the cold, calculating eyes of the other woman told Stacey that it didn’t make one blind bit of difference what Marco said. They both knew that she was a little plastic flower in his otherwise perfect garden. Here today, gone tomorrow. So don’t go getting any big ideas.

  Stacey pulled Marco’s jacket round her shoulders. If the pink-faced, bull-headed Bruce Decker couldn’t get to her, there was no way on this earth that this pristine princess was going to.

  ‘Did you catch that, Lydia?’ she said, stalking right past her and slipping her a little of her best acid. ‘The. Best. Possible. St Bart’s. Welcome.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  STACEY LIFTED ANOTHER glossy magazine and began to flick the pages noisily. She took a sip of the pretty spectacular Italian coffee they’d served her and remembered again that money wasn’t everything. But it sure could gild the world in a million beautiful ways.

  This may be a hospital, she thought, but it oozes more luxury than a five-star hotel.

  Even the scornful Lydia had been as good as instructed, and it was ‘no trouble at all’ to get Stacey everything Marco had asked for. And it seemed he had asked for everything. She’d been scanned and quizzed and prodded and now she was back in a private room, surrounded by all manner of things to eat or drink or read while she waited for some kind of decision.

  She flicked on, through pages and pages of fashion, jewellery, homes and gossip. Exotic locations in European cities and tropical beaches. Jaw-droppingly handsome men and sombre-faced stick-thin women. Make-believe worlds that some people actually lived in.

  People like Marco.

  She looked up from the magazine to see he had stopped pacing for a moment and was sipping on a tiny espresso. Framed by two giant palms and some expressionist art, he was the very image of the self-made superhero. He could slide right onto the pages of this magazine and the world would sigh and drool and smile indulgently at how one man could have just so much going on.

  He turned to put down the cup and walked out to take a call, and of course her eyes landed on the perfect male curve of his backside. His legs were clearly outlined in his trousers—strong and long. The man worked out. Of course he did. Back in the day he’d been an athlete and a team player. A hero and one of the crowd. Every single girl had wanted him to ask her out and every guy had wanted to be his buddy. The whole world had loved him.

  And they still did. Including the crack team of nurses who kept zapping into her airspace like killer flies, patently ignoring Stacey while directing all their queries to him. It was as if he was some kind of deity, while she was completely invisible, or too stupid to know and understand what was happening to her. And it was sending that prickle of anger up her spine again.

  ‘Where is Mr Borsatto?’ asked Lydia, bustling in briskly for the third time.

  ‘I don’t know,’ drawled Stacey, deliberately feigning interest in her magazine. ‘Down the hallway doing some brain surgery?’

  She ignored the tutting sound and continued to flick through the magazine. Everyone was getting on her nerves. The pain in her back had eased, but her head was pounding mercilessly and a purple bruise had begun to bloom along her thigh. That wasn’t their fault—she knew that—and if she was hostile to them it was because they were the kind of people who judged a person by net worth. It didn’t seem to matter what you brought to the table—it was all down to how much you had in the bank.

  And pay-cheques didn’t write themselves, she reminded herself grimly. Her cheques from Decker’s were overdue and her fairy godmother was still AWOL. And this fabulous new job in New York City wasn’t going to happen by magic.

  She had to go and find it herself. She’d wasted too much time here already.

  She swung herself round and tried to stand up. Pain shot up her spine and her head throbbed and pulsed. Nausea heaved in her stomach and she gripped her brow and closed her eyes. She hadn’t slept in over eighteen hours and it was beginning to take its toll.

  From the corridor came the unmistakably commanding voice of Marco. She could hear the dreaded word ‘concussion’ as the conversation moved itself towards her. That was the last thing she needed to know. She didn’t have time for it. She had a life to get on with.

  ‘Ready?’ he said, appearing round the door, with not-a-hair-out-of-place Lydia beside him.

  ‘Always,’ she said, swallowing down some bile and trying to stand as still as possible so as not to hurt her head.

  They continued their conversation, still ignoring her.

  Her head continued to pound. She needed to get out of here...lie down. Go and die quietly somewhere she didn’t need to listen to the vowels of the super-rich.

  Marco picked up his jacket, still ignoring her. He held it out—an unasked-for modesty cloak in case her bare flesh offended any of the nice patients or staff in the hospital.

  The prickle of anger became a surge that she couldn’t ignore. She stepped away from the bed and stood as upright as she could.

  ‘Hello! Over here! Anyone planning to tell me what’s happening? Or is it the kind of news that’s only shared with rich people?’

  Marco turned to stare. He frowned, lowered the jacket.

  ‘Your scans are clear. Everything’s fine apart from the bruising.’

  His eyes slid over her face, her neck and chest, and rested fleetingly on the slashes of fabric across her breasts. Just that, even now, still made her body pulse in anticipation.

  ‘You’re quite badly bruised.’

  They both stared at her as if she was something the cat had dragged in. Dragged in to their state-of-the-art uptown hospital. What did they care about the person under the stupid dress? The working girl who’d ended up here because she’d had enough of being leered over and bull
ied? Who’d had enough and made one of her trademark escapes—right into the path of Mr Hotshot’s limo?

  ‘Yes, the bruises are from where I got hit on the leg, Marco,’ she said, and tugged at the thigh-length split in her skirt to expose the red and blue bruises. ‘By you.’

  He stared. She bent her knee and twisted her leg like the best showgirl Vegas could offer.

  Lydia tutted and bustled off out of sight.

  ‘Seen enough?’ she asked, staring right into his eyes.

  ‘I’ve seen far too much,’ he flashed right back.

  ‘Yeah, but you never got to touch—did you, Marco?’

  ‘One of the few who didn’t, Stacey. Let’s not forget that.’

  Only once before in her life had Stacey felt a punch of pain so hard that tears had sprung and she hadn’t been able to hold them back. And it hadn’t been when her father had left and never come back. It hadn’t been when none of the girls had wanted to be her roommate at summer camp. And it hadn’t been when she’d hitched her way to Philly, to her dad’s new house, to find that he had a new wife and a new family and thought it would be better she didn’t visit, if it was all the same to her.

  No, she’d managed to hold herself together each of those times. But then she’d returned from Philly and headed straight to the Meadows—longing to see Marco, longing to tell him she’d lied, that her anger had made her say those stupid things. Longing to tell him what she’d found out about her dad.

  But Marco Borsatto had had his own troubles. That same day he’d been evicted. He’d had no time for a stupid girl who had caused the community such pain. That was when she’d first learned the true meaning of ‘breakdown’.

  Now, just like then, her throat burned, her eyes burned and her chin wobbled uncontrollably. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stepped back—once, then twice. He would not see her like this—nobody would. She spun on her heel, looked for the door. Getting away from Marco Borsatto for a second time became the most important thing in her life.