by Lynne Graham
‘Loredana and I had different surnames. Her name was Barigo.’ His lean strong face had taken on a shuttered aspect that warned her she had touched on a sensitive subject. Vitale, she realised belatedly, had family secrets as well.
‘Why on earth did you tell him that we were getting married?’
Vitale threw back his handsome dark head and settled his moody gaze on her. ‘I’m convinced that when you consider your options you’ll see that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by becoming my wife—’
‘How?’ Zara interrupted baldly. ‘I’ve already told you how I feel about you.’
‘Take a risk on me.’
Her lips compressed. ‘I don’t take risks—’
‘But I do. That’s why I’m the CEO of a major investment bank,’ Vitale told her with savage assurance. ‘It makes sense for you to give marriage a chance for our child’s sake. If it doesn’t work out, we can get a divorce. But at least we’ll know that we tried.’
Taken aback by his speech, Zara was momentarily silenced. For our child’s sake, four little words that had immense impact on her impression of Vitale Roccanti, much as his earlier defence of her against her father had had. Slowly but surely Vitale was changing her opinion of him. Her father might not have added anything positive to her life but Vitale, she sensed, would be a far different prospect in the parenting stakes. Vitale was willing to put his money where his mouth was and put their baby’s needs to the top of the pile. He was a handsome, wealthy and successful man yet he was still willing to give up his freedom to provide a more stable background for the child he had accidentally fathered. She could only admire him for that and admit that, given the choice, she would much prefer to raise her child with two parents.
‘If we get married and it falls apart, it would be very upsetting for everyone concerned.’
‘I would find watching you raise my child with another man infinitely more upsetting,’ Vitale countered with blunt emphasis. ‘All I’m asking you to do is give us the opportunity to see if we can make it work.’
‘It’s not that simple—’
Vitale released his breath in a driven hiss of impatience. ‘You’re the one making it complicated.’
Zara’s tiny frame was rigid. Could she take a risk and give him another chance? But marriage wasn’t an experiment. She could not marry him on a casual basis and walk away without concern if it failed. In her experience failure always bit deep and hurt. And just how far could she trust a man she couldn’t read with any accuracy? ‘I don’t know enough about you. I can’t forget that you plotted and planned against me.’
‘I can put that past behind us if I have to, angelina mia. Our child’s needs take precedence,’ Vitale contended.
The silence buzzed. Her troubled gaze lingering on his wide, sensual mouth, she recalled the taste of him with a hot liquid surge low in her tummy that she struggled to quell. The tender flesh between her thighs dampened and a pink flush of awareness covered her face. Tensing, she looked hurriedly away from him.
‘But I will be honest—I also want you,’ Vitale conceded in a dark driven undertone, startling her with that additional admission. ‘That’s not what I chose, not what I foresaw and certainly not what I’m comfortable with. But it is how I feel right now. Ever since we were together in Italy I’ve wanted you back in my bed again.’
Although she flushed, Zara stood a little straighter, strengthened by that raw-edged confession. It did her good to know that he was not quite as in control as he liked to pretend. Every time she looked at him she had to fight her natural response to his sleek dark magnetism. The idea that he had to fight the same attraction had considerable appeal. He bent his arrogant head, eyes narrowed to track her every change of expression with a lethal sensuality as integral to him as his aggressive take on life.
‘All right, I’ll give marrying you a trial for three months,’ Zara declared, tilting her chin. ‘If we can’t make it work in that time we have to agree to split up without any recriminations on either side.’
‘A sort of “try before you buy” option?’ Vitale drawled silkily.
‘Why not?’ Feeling as though she was somewhat in control of events again, Zara settled her soft full lips into a wary smile. She could handle being attracted to him as long as he was attracted to her. If she kept a sensible grip on her emotions there was no reason why she should get hurt. Furthermore, after what he had done to her she would never make the mistake of viewing him through rose-coloured glasses again.
His hand curving to her narrow shoulder, Vitale lowered his head and claimed her mouth with his. As he pried her lips apart with the tip of his tongue an arrow of sizzling heat slivered through her with such piercing, drugging sweetness that she shivered violently in response. She dug her nails into her palms to stop herself from reaching out to him and she stood there stiff as a board while the greedy warmth and excitement of desire washed through her every skin cell, filling her with restless energy and longing.
He lifted his head again, dark golden eyes blazing with unconcealed hunger. ‘I’ll make it work for us,’ he swore.
But the very fact that he acknowledged a need to work at their marriage was, to her way of thinking, the most likely reason why their efforts would fail. Natural inclinations often outgunned the best of good intentions, she reflected worriedly. Only when the going got tough would they discover how deep their commitment to a practical marriage could actually go.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TWO weeks before the wedding, Vitale arranged to pick Zara up for lunch. Not having seen him at all in the preceding week owing to his demanding schedule, she was surprised by the invitation.
‘I thought you were always too busy during the day for this sort of thing,’ Zara reminded him of his own words on the phone several nights earlier as she climbed into his car.
‘As a rule I am but this is rather different. We’re going to see your father,’ Vitale revealed grimly.
Her head swivelled, eyes bright with dismay and curiosity in her disconcerted face. ‘Why the hell are we meeting up with Dad?’
‘It’s time I asked those questions about my sister’s death,’ Vitale volunteered tight-mouthed, his brooding tension palpable in the taut lines of his face. ‘Now that we are getting married those questions have to finally be answered. He’s your father. I can’t leave you out of this.’
‘I’m not sure I want to be there,’ she confessed, disturbed by the prospect of being on the sidelines of such a sensitive confrontation. ‘Although it hardly matters as relations currently stand between me and my parents, Dad won’t forgive me for being present if you’re planning to humiliate him.’
‘I see no advantage to doing that,’ Vitale admitted flatly fingers flexing and tightening round the steering wheel. ‘I phoned your father first thing this morning and told him that I was Loredana’s brother and that I need him to tell me the truth of what happened the night she drowned. He’s had a few hours to think over his options.’
‘And you think an upfront approach will work like some kind of magic charm with him?’ Zara pressed doubtfully.
‘Your father is not a stupid man. What does he have to lose? He knows I probably can’t disprove anything he says. There were only two crew members on board that yacht. The stewardess, who was also the cook, died. Rod Baines, the sailor in charge of the boat, suffered head injuries and remembered very little about that night after he had recovered.’
Monty Blake was in his office on the first floor of the elegant flagship hotel of the Royale chain. He was standing by the window when they entered and he swung round, his mouth tightening with annoyance when he saw his daughter. ‘Did you know about this connection when you got involved with the man you’re planning to marry?’ he demanded accusingly.
‘That’s not relevant. Why don’t you just tell Vitale what happened that night?’ Zara replied evenly.
‘I told the full story at the inquest many years ago—’
‘Yes, I believe
you magically found yourself in the rescue dinghy and then fell conveniently unconscious while the yacht sank,’ Vitale breathed witheringly. ‘How long were you a part of my sister’s life before that night?’
The older man grimaced. ‘I wasn’t a part of her life. I hardly knew her—’
‘But she was pregnant—’
‘Not by me, as I stated at the inquest,’ Zara’s father insisted quick as a flash. ‘I was never intimate with her.’
Vitale frowned. ‘Do I look like a fool?’
‘I never got the chance. Check out the dates if you don’t believe me. I met Loredana at your uncle’s country house, dined with her the following week while I was at our hotel in Rome and invited her to go sailing with me at the weekend. She was a very beautiful young woman but it was a casual thing,’ he declared, shooting a look of discomfiture at his daughter. ‘I had quite enough complications in my life. Your mother and I were hardly speaking to each other at the time.’
Zara stiffened. ‘Nothing you tell us will go beyond these walls,’ she promised uneasily.
‘Loredana was in a very emotional mood when she joined me that weekend,’ Monty Blake revealed. ‘Over our meal she admitted that she’d had a row with some boyfriend and that she was pregnant. It was hardly what I had signed up for when I invited her onto the yacht for a pleasure trip and we had a difference of opinion when I asked her why she had agreed to join me on board—’
‘An argument?’ Vitale queried darkly, his suspicions obvious.
‘There was no big drama,’ the older man replied wearily. ‘Apparently Loredana only accepted my invite because she wanted to make her boyfriend jealous. She hoped he would try to stop her seeing me but he didn’t and she was upset about that. When she started crying I suggested she retire to her cabin for the night—and I mean no disrespect when I say that I’d had quite enough of her histrionics by then.’
Vitale managed not to flinch but he did remember his sister as being a very emotional and vivid individual, easily roused to laughter, temper or tears. There had been no reference to an argument, no mention of Loredana’s supposedly troubled state of mind during the inquest. But for all that there was a convincing ring of authenticity to the older man’s story and he could imagine how irritated Monty Blake must have been when he realised why Loredana had accepted his invitation and that his seduction plans were unlikely to come to anything.
‘Your sister made me feel like I was too old to be chasing girls her age,’ Zara’s father claimed with a curled lip. ‘She depressed me. I didn’t go to bed. I sat up getting very drunk that night and fell asleep in the saloon. Some time during the night, Rod, the chap in charge of the boat, woke me up, said there was a bad storm. He told me to go and fetch your sister and Pam, the stewardess, while he sorted the escape dinghy. He said the two women were together …’ Monty shook his greying head heavily. ‘I was drunk and the generator failed, so the lights went out …’
‘And then what did you do?’ Vitale growled.
‘Your sister wasn’t in her cabin and I didn’t know my way round the crew quarters. The yacht was lurching in every direction. I couldn’t see where I was going or keep my feet. I started shouting their names. Water was streaming down the gangway. It was terrifying. I fell and hurt myself. I rushed back up on deck to get Rod to help but Rod had been injured and he was bleeding heavily from a head wound.’ Something of the desperation Monty Blake had felt that night had leaked into his fracturing voice and stamped his drawn face with the recollection of a nightmare. ‘The boat was sinking and I panicked. Is that what you want me to admit?’
‘All I want is the truth,’ Vitale breathed tightly, almost as strained as Zara’s father.
‘Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t a hero, but with the sea pouring in I was too scared to go below deck alone again,’ he gritted in a shamed but also defiant undertone, as if that was a moment and a decision he had weighed many times over the years that had passed since that fateful night. ‘I pulled on a life jacket and helped Rod into his, struggled with the dinghy while he tried to tell me what to do. I can’t swim, you know … I never learned. The boat was going down, there was no time for a search, no time to do anything else—’
‘You hardly knew her,’ Vitale remarked with hollow finality. ‘You saved yourself. I don’t believe it would be fair to judge you for that. ‘
Zara never did get lunch. They left the hotel in silence.
Neither of them had any appetite after that meeting. She knew Vitale’s thoughts were still on his dead sister. She knew the truth had been hard for him to hear. Loredana had been very young and agreeing to go sailing with a virtual stranger had clearly been an impulsive act. Her father had been drunk and less than brave in an emergency, but only a special few were willing to risk their own life for another person’s and it wouldn’t be fair to blame him for falling short of a heroic ideal.
‘No, there’s not even a hint of a little bump!’ Bee declared two weeks later on Zara’s wedding day, as she scrutinised her half-sister’s stomach from every angle. Bee reckoned that only a woman who had never had a weight problem would have fallen pregnant and then chosen a figure-hugging wedding gown calculated to reveal the smallest bulge. Luckily for Zara, she had no surplus flesh to spoil the perfect symmetry of her flowing lace dress.
Zara studied her reflection, grateful that her pregnancy did not yet show. True, her breasts were a little fuller, but that was the sole change in her shape that she had noticed. Her gown was slender and elegant, maximising her diminutive height. ‘I hope Vitale doesn’t think I’m overdressed.’
‘How can you be overdressed at your own wedding?’ Bee demanded.
‘When it’s a quiet do with only a couple of witnesses attending,’ Zara pointed out, wincing at that reality.
‘Does that bother you?’ Bee asked worriedly. ‘I know this can’t be the sort of wedding you ever expected to have.’
‘It’s what I want. I was never into all the fuss and frills of the wedding arrangements Mum insisted on when I was supposed to be marrying Sergios,’ Zara admitted, a look of discomfiture crossing her delicate features, ‘and this wedding is still only a formality—’
‘I think it’s a little more than a formality when the man you’re about to marry is the father of your baby,’ Bee cut in with some amusement.
‘I’m very grateful that Vitale’s willing to share that responsibility.’
Bee pulled an unimpressed face. ‘Which is exactly why you picked a gorgeous dress and got all dollied up in your fanciest make-up and shoes for Vitale’s benefit?’ she teased. ‘Please, do I look that stupid?’
Zara said nothing, for it was true that she had gone to no end of trouble to look her very best for the occasion. She had not required a church full of guests as an excuse to push the glamour boat out. But it had taken an ironic ton of make-up and every scrap of artistry she possessed to achieve the natural effect she had sought. The natural effect she knew he admired. Her shoes, sparkling with diamanté, were the very cute equivalent of Cinderella’s slippers. To satisfy the something-old rhyme she had her late brother’s school badge tucked into her bra and her thigh sported a blue garter. If the wedding was only a formality why had she bothered with all those trappings?
The circumstances being what they were, she had only invited her half-sisters to share the brief ceremony with her. Bee was accompanying her to the church and Tawny had promised to meet them there. Afterwards she and Vitale were flying straight out to Italy. She had packed up her apartment, surrendered it and had spent the previous night with Bee. She was retaining Rob to manage Blooming Perfect in London. She was hoping that there would be sufficient demand for her services in Tuscany for her to open another small branch of the business. Fluffy had already flown out to her future new home. Zara, however, was as apprehensive as a climber hanging onto a frayed rope: she was terrified that she was doing the wrong thing. In one life there was only room for so many mistakes and on this occasion she was very conscious that
she had a child’s welfare to consider.
The car Vitale had sent to collect her drew up outside the church. She got out with Bee’s assistance and her younger sister, Tawny, hurried towards her.
‘Zara!’ she exclaimed, pushing a long curl of fiery copper hair out of her eyes. ‘You look amazing! Who is this Italian? And why didn’t I get the chance to meet him before this?’
‘I’m pregnant and we’re in a hurry,’ Zara confided, watching her sibling’s bright blue eyes shoot wide in surprise and drop almost inevitably to her stomach.
‘Oh …’ Tawny grimaced. ‘And you’re marrying him? I hope you know what you’re doing—’
‘When does Zara ever know what she’s doing?’ Bee chimed in ruefully. ‘She never takes the long view.’
‘My sisters are supposed to be universally supportive on my wedding day,’ Zara cut in with a warning frown. ‘Get supporting.’
And nothing more was said. Her siblings escorted her up the church steps and smoothed out the hem of her gown in the porch. The organ began to play and the doors opened for Zara to walk down the aisle. Marriage, she was thinking on the edge of panic, marriage was such a big complex step. Was she even cut out to be a wife? There was so much she didn’t know about Vitale, so much they hadn’t discussed. He was waiting at the altar, his head held high, and she needn’t have worried about being overdressed because he and the man by his side were kitted out in fancy grey morning suits.
At the exact moment that Vitale turned his handsome head to look at her, his gaze every bit as edgy as her own, her apprehension evaporated because he smiled. A wolfish smile that took him from being a very good-looking guy to an absolutely gorgeous one. There was admiration in his gaze and she basked in it.
‘Like the dress,’ he breathed in a discreet aside before the vicar began to speak. ‘You look wonderful.’
The last knot of tension in her stomach dissolved into a feeling of warmth and acceptance. The ceremony progressed and her hand stayed steady as he slid a wedding ring on her finger. And then almost dizzyingly fast the service was over, the organ music was swelling and Vitale was escorting her back down the aisle, a light hand resting on hers. In the porch he met her siblings and she learned that his companion was his lawyer and also a friend from his university days.