The Italian's Vengeful Seduction

by Bella Frances

  ‘No, you don’t—not again.’

  She saw his reflection in the glass and felt his hand slide round her waist. He grabbed her against his side and without losing stride walked her right out of the room, along the corridor and through the sliding doors.

  Her bruised leg bumped against his, and her neck seared with pain as she tried to wrench away, but the more she pulled the closer he held her.

  Two beeps and she was back in the car. Two seconds and she was being driven away.

  ‘Make no mistake—I don’t want to spend any more time with you than you do with me. But for the next ten hours you’re a high-risk concussion patient. And, much as I would rather leave you in the capable hands of the staff at St Bart’s, I think they’ve had more than enough of your nonsense for one day.’

  She said nothing. She saw nothing. A sob welled like lava in her chest. Her eyes burned like molten glass.

  ‘So you’ll come to my home for the night. You’ll stay there until I know you’re in the clear. And then you’ll get a cab to wherever you want. You might not have any shred of a conscience, Stacey, but I’ll be damned if I’ll have you on mine a second time. Got that?’

  ‘Consider yourself absolved,’ she spat, but her burning throat, aching head and lack of sleep coupled with her whole collapsing world dumbed it down to one thick sob that she stifled with her fist. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and twisted herself to the side, so she didn’t even have to breathe the same air as him.

  ‘If it wasn’t for your mother I’d put you in a cab to Montauk and send you back there. But she didn’t deserve your selfish histrionics back then and she doesn’t deserve them now. So let’s say you and I agree to put up with one another until you’ve calmed down and I can safely pass back the burden of responsibility to her.’

  ‘What are you talking about? The only person responsible for me is me.’

  She felt the words but could barely say them—they wedged in her throat like hot bricks. Everything hurt...everything ached. But she kept her face to the side. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her so weak and vulnerable.

  The car sped on.

  Calls were placed and received.

  He demanded and instructed and rattled off orders that made her head spin even more. A mechanic to check out his car, a pause on a half-dozen meetings, a bunch of flowers and a tennis bracelet to some woman whose shelf life had expired.

  ‘Address?’ he barked at one point.

  She jumped but refused to look round.

  ‘Give me your address, Stacey, and I’ll get your stuff picked up. Unless you’ve got a better idea?’

  Still she stared out of the window, the wonder of this whole unfolding drama making her feel more and more incredulous, more and more disorientated.

  ‘Am I too rich to deserve basic manners from you? Is that it? Is it only poor people who are worth bothering about?’

  ‘I can’t believe that I ever bothered about you, that’s for sure. I might have made a lot of mistakes back in the day, but thinking you were anything other than a giant egotistical hypocrite was the biggest.’

  He barked out a laugh.

  ‘Still at it, Stacey? Still opening that mouth and firing out your poison darts? You still think that’ll fix all your problems, honey?’

  ‘Don’t “honey” me. I’m not your honey.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth? You’re no one’s honey, are you? That would require you to be soft and sweet. You might look like butter wouldn’t melt, but all you want to do is bite people’s heads off. You know, I’ve been with you less than three hours and already I can feel my cortisol levels are sky-high. I live a pretty full-on life, and yet I haven’t felt this much stress since the last time I saw you—ten years ago—do you know that?’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise I was responsible for your stress levels. How selfish of me! To bounce off your car and then insist that you drive me to your fancy hospital with all those super-friendly people who made me feel so at home. And then I beg you to make me stay overnight in your house while you threaten me with my mother! I am beyond inconsiderate.’

  ‘This sarcasm is a new and even more unattractive trait.’

  ‘Even more unattractive than I already am? Wow. I’ve hit pay-dirt!’

  ‘Enough!’

  He had stopped the car outside a huge pair of gates. He pulled on the brake so quickly that she slammed back in her seat. For a second they both froze, and in the startled moment that followed she thought she saw a flash of concern and an apology hovering at his mouth. But he shook his head and growled, unbuckled his seat belt and swivelled right round to face her.

  ‘That’s just about as much as I can bear to hear. What the hell’s got into you? You know damn well that you were the most attractive girl I ever knew.’

  Stacey stared, shocked. Marco’s jaw was fixed and tense, his lips an angry line. His eyes blazed. In the still of the moment all she could hear were their breaths, shallow, panting, slightly out of synch.

  He was so close now that she could see faint lines around his eyes—lines that had never been there before. Lines from laughter and sunshine that she had never shared with him. Lines from good times in faraway places with people she would never know. She’d made him laugh once. They’d had so much to laugh about back in Montauk.

  There was no laughter now.

  Tension. Tight across the breadth of his shoulders and in the thick column of his neck. She noticed now the full bloom of his masculinity—the man who had once been the boy. The boy she had once loved.

  ‘You are a very attractive girl,’ he added, his voice quieter now, a mere imprint of those deep, fierce tones. ‘I don’t know what’s happened, Stacey. I thought your hard edges would have rubbed off by now. But seems like you’ve got more and more jagged and angry with the world.’

  With each word his voice softened. Her defences began to crumble. She could take everything the world could throw at her when it was hostile. She could defend and attack in equal measure. She was a match for anyone—male or female—and she never, ever left anyone in any doubt as to how they measured up in her eyes.

  But she could not take kindness. It undid her at the very foundations. All her strength was sapped away, like a finger pulled from the dam.

  The tears finally sprang and tumbled one after another in hot, wet streams down her cheeks.

  His eyes filled with concern.

  ‘You’re crying,’ he said softly. ‘Stacey, I’m sorry. I’ve never seen you cry.’

  ‘Yes, I’m crying—and I never cry. I never cry!’ she sobbed, furiously rubbing at her face and gulping back the sobs that threatened to choke her. ‘I was fine—and now look at me. I don’t need your help. I don’t want you. I don’t need anyone and I don’t need you to contact my mom. She doesn’t need to know any of this. It’s fine. I’m fine.’

  She rubbed and rubbed and gulped and sobbed and her nose began to burn. She searched in her little purse. But she didn’t have a tissue—she was never that organised. She wasn’t like her mother. Her poor mother who’d crumple if she thought anything had happened to her.

  ‘I haven’t contacted Marilyn. I wouldn’t do that. I’m not all monster, you know. Here.’

  She looked through the blurred shapes that were all her eyes could see and saw Marco offering her a pure white linen handkerchief.

  ‘Take it,’ he said when she turned away. ‘For God’s sake, it’s only a piece of cloth. Come here, then.’

  And he cupped her chin in his hand and began to dab her eyes and her cheeks. She smelt the spicy blend of his cologne and felt the gentle press of his fingers with every touch. She felt strength. She felt kindness. She couldn’t bear it.

  She pulled away.

  ‘I hate you, Marco,’ she sobbed into the linen square. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘I hate you so much.’

  He sat back. She could hear him laugh in between blowing her nose.

  ‘Plenty do
, sweetheart. Plenty do.’

  ‘We both know that’s a lie,’ she said, giving her nose one final blow. ‘Unless you’ve had a personality transplant in the last five minutes. Those nurses were all over you like a rash. It kind of made me want to hurl.’

  He laughed again. It was the best medicine she could have wished for.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘And I thought it was from eating those pastries. You looked as if you hadn’t seen food in days.’

  He turned back to the road and nosed the car in through the double gates.

  ‘No. Although that would be a great excuse,’ she said, her voice still thick with tears and tiredness. ‘They were amazing. And the coffee.’

  She swallowed, shook her head.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, cursing her own selfishness. ‘Thanks for getting me checked out. I appreciate it.’

  He parked the car in front of a villa—pillars, wide windows and a terracotta-tiled roof. Planters stuffed with flowers and miniature trees and topiary. A rich man’s house. A very rich man’s house.

  She flipped down the visor to look in the mirror. Panda eyes—the eyeliner had completely melted and seeped into her eye sockets. She pressed with her knuckle to wipe away what she could. Even her nose was swollen and red. She’d never looked worse in her life.

  ‘Forget it. The staff did it all. I’ll pass on your thanks to Lydia and the team.’

  Instantly she saw Lydia’s perfect hair, Lydia’s perfect face. She slammed the visor shut on her own disastrous image.

  ‘If it’s all the same I’ll pass on my own thanks. To those that deserve it.’

  ‘There you go again. Flying off in some crazy direction, damning people whose only crime is not coming from the same social class as you. You want to tone that down, Stacey, or it’ll start to show on your face. And then you’ll be left an angry and bitter old woman—all alone.’

  With that he got out of the car, closed the door and walked towards his house.

  She sat in silence, enveloped by his words as they settled all around her, harsh and hurtful. But the truth of them was clearer than a clarion call. She knew she didn’t make friends easily. She knew she attracted men but just as quickly scared them away. She knew she was lonely to the bones of her being.

  But she’d rather be lonely than patronised, or mocked, or judged.

  Marco stopped, turned, raised a solemn eyebrow and held out his hand in a gesture of welcome. Or sufferance.

  She didn’t feel welcome. She felt backed into a corner by Marco’s conscience.

  What a guy. She could imagine the porch gossips already: ‘You know he even looked after Stacey Jackson in his own house when her mother was out of town.’

  With the last of her strength she stifled the agony of her body and her head and her heart and swung herself out of the car. She could feel the cords of the town pulling tight round her neck. She could feel them pulling her back there, like fishermen landing their catch.

  But nothing had made her more sure of her decision to have left the place than spending this time with Marco. She hated that world. She hated everything he stood for. And she was counting down the seconds until she could be back on the road, doing her thing, as far away from those parochial, judgemental pains in the ass as it was possible for her to be.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘BEDROOM’S AT THE end of the hall. Bath’s en-suite. Terrace is accessed from every room.’

  He tossed his keys down onto the gleaming worktop and watched them slide right into the fishbowl. It was empty. Had been since...always. Despite every girlfriend who had ever passed through having the notion that she was going to fill it up one day. Thank the Lord that had never happened. The last thing he needed was a goldfish as hostage to his so-called commitment phobia. On top of everything else.

  What women didn’t get, of course, was that he was the most committed guy he knew. Commitment was the reason he got out of bed in the morning. But it wasn’t anything to do with pledging his troth to a woman—after the upbringing he’d had, pledging his troth was the last thing that was ever going to happen. Why not just give his legal team a million-dollar retainer and cut straight to the divorce?

  It baffled him. Completely.

  No, commitment was all about getting things back to the way they should be. And right now he was this close to getting it all back. This close.

  Yes, only these next two days to get through and then he’d be back in Montauk, lounging in the Polo Club and watching Preston Chisholm slide the vellum deeds of Sant’Angelo’s—the final part of the Borsatto estate—across the table for him to sign.

  Ten long years he had waited for this moment. Ten years of being in hock to poverty, to shame, and worst of all to pity. He could handle almost everything, but the twisted compassion that some of the Montauk natives dished out amounted to nothing short of blackmail.

  He reached for the coffee machine, thinking of the women who had held their breath, hoping that poverty would reduce him to becoming some sort of gigolo. Women who’d been so-called family friends. Young and old alike. And the men who’d relished watching Vito Borsatto’s son lose every last cent, every brick, every blade of grass that the most influential family in the Hamptons had ever owned. Generations of Borsattos had built it up. And in one short year it had all gone.

  That was when he’d truly known who his friends were. Finding out his father was a philandering compulsive gambler and his mother was a vain, narcissistic drunk hadn’t given him a lot of cachet. He had watched them destroy themselves and then one another and had been able to tell no one. Because the shame had been almost the worst thing of all.

  Watching as first the gangsters and then the banks had rolled in to take the estate in chunks. And then the biggest gangster of all: Chisholm Financial Management. Gangsters in three-thousand-dollar suits with fewer scruples than any of the rest. Standing in the dilapidated summerhouse that last day, when the devil himself, Mr Chisholm Senior, had arrived personally to evict him. The pleasure he’d taken in marching him off his own land—the last of the Borsattos. Mother and father long gone. Nothing left but dirt and dust.

  Marco drained the last dregs in his cup and poured another.

  ‘You get through a lot of coffee. Anybody ever tell you that?’

  She’d been there that day. Stacey Jackson. She’d turned the town upside down with her attitude and her disappearance. And then she’d swanned back in as if nothing had happened. As if she’d expected some kind of welcome committee...

  Was it any wonder he had a jaded view of women? They were after you for your money or your body. Your house or your head. All of them wanted a piece of something. He hadn’t met a woman yet who hadn’t let him down. Including his own mother. Women equalled trouble—especially this one.

  ‘Maybe I could have one, if it’s not too much trouble?’

  He kept his back to her, pulled another cup from the cupboard and poured.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, slowly turning to hand it to her. ‘Sorry. Maybe I’ve been living on my own too long.’

  She pulled out a chair and eased herself onto it, cradling the cup between her hands. And, dammit, he was drawn to her. Even though she should have her own ‘Wanted’ poster for crimes against humanity, there was something hugely seductive about her. It was all sex appeal, of course. Something in the way she wore his jacket. Something about how the shoulders dwarfed her and enveloped that body. Something that suggested ball-breaker Stacey was a vulnerable little girl underneath all that attitude. Despite what he knew about her.

  ‘Living on your own? Oh, come on,’ she said, taking a sip and watching him over the rim, those huge blue eyes underscored with the inky remnants of her tears. ‘I bet you’ve been beating them off with a stick, Marco. A hottie like you.’

  He looked at her—looked at the highlighting of her breasts in the shadow between his lapels.

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever had to beat off a woman, no,’ he said.

  There was a very slight p
ause. A shared moment when he knew and she knew that there was another agenda at work between them. There had been back then and it was just as strong now.

  She took another sip and put the cup down—slowly.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘I’m not really interested in your bedroom antics.’

  He nodded. ‘Maybe we should clear that up now. So there’s no doubt.’ He held her gaze across the table.

  ‘Meaning...?’

  ‘Meaning that I didn’t invite you here for anything other than a place to stay until you’re in the clear. It’s my duty—I’m responsible for your accident.’

  Her eyes suddenly blazed.

  ‘Are you suggesting that I’m trying to seduce you?’

  ‘Stacey, would you get off your high horse for one goddamn moment? I’m not suggesting anything. I want you to know that while you’re here I won’t take advantage. That’s all. We had a thing once, but we’re both adults now and we can stay overnight in the same house without you worrying that I’m going to make a pass.’

  She smirked her lopsided smile and hid behind the curtain of her hair in that way that she did.

  She pushed her cup away. ‘That’s very noble of you, Marco. It hadn’t crossed my mind that you might want to—to go back there, if I’m honest. But it’s mature of you to make sure there are no misunderstandings.’

  She chose that moment to ease the jacket from her shoulders and twist round to place it over the back of the chair. It might have been complete coincidence, but as she raised her arms his eyes slid all by themselves to the satiny gleam of her breasts, caught in the criss-cross of black fabric across the bodice of her dress. And of course his body reacted.

  ‘You can count on it,’ he said, still watching as she rearranged herself on the seat.

  Then she looked pointedly at him and feigned a look of surprise.

  ‘I’m sorry—have I spilled something?’ she said, looking down at her chest. Then she took her time readjusting those goddamn straps over one breast and then the other, wriggling and jiggling her flesh and flicking at little flecks of invisible dust. It was a car crash. He couldn’t look away. She was teasing him out of his mind. Just as she’d used to. Teasing but never giving out. At least not to him.