by Lynne Graham
Valente lounged back in his chair, black-lashed eyes reduced to a daunting sliver of hot gold resolve and challenge. ‘Whatever it takes,’ he repeated silkily, stubbornly unrepentant.
And that was the moment Caroline realised that he had made her an offer she could not in all conscience refuse…
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU’VE won,’ Caroline conceded in a driven admission. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my father alive.’
‘That’s admirable, gioia mia. I admire loyalty,’ Valente countered smoothly. ‘That only leaves the terms to be discussed.’
Caroline wanted to empty the water jug over him, because he made no attempt to hide his strong satisfaction. Winning meant a great deal to Valente Lorenzatto, and he scared her because his ruthlessness appeared to respect no boundaries. By ‘terms’, he meant mistress or wife. He was driving her in a direction she did not want to go. For her own safety, she needed an arrangement which could not be set aside in the space of a moment. A mistress was too easily discarded-and she was convinced that he would quickly want to discard her, cutting her out of his life as quickly as he had come back into hers.
Valente wanted and expected only pleasure from her sex. In the past, women had fawned over him for his dark, sexy good-looks and potent personality. Sixth sense had warned her even then that he had enjoyed many conquests. Now, with the addition of wealth and position, Valente had to be downright irresistible to her sex. After all, even she was not totally impervious to his magnetic attraction. Although coping with a few gentle kisses was a far different challenge from sharing a bed and the ultimate intimacy with him, she acknowledged apprehensively.
The first course was served. Held by the dark shrewd gleam of Valente’s unyielding gaze, Caroline pushed the plate away.
‘Eat,’ he urged immediately, reaching across the table to push the plate back towards her again. ‘You’re as thin as a cardboard cut-out.’
Her face flamed. ‘I’m naturally thin.’
‘When I lifted you last night, you felt as light as a child in my arms.’
‘Your concern is nonsensical. I’m quite happy with myself the way I am,’ Caroline told him tartly, wondering if his tastes in women ran in the same direction as her late husband’s. She shuddered at the recollection of Matthew’s cruelly cutting comments about her boyish lack of curves.
‘If you’re planning to demand that I marry you, you’ll need to be a healthy weight to conceive,’ Valente pointed out coolly. ‘But I hope that isn’t the option you’re thinking of choosing.’
‘Why?’ Caroline asked starkly.
Valente slotted a knife and fork into her empty hands with military precision and no lack of determination. ‘I’m being honest. I don’t want to marry you. I’m not the same person I was five years ago. I don’t think the same. I don’t feel the same, either.’
Hotly flushed in receipt of that blunt rejection, coming at her even before she had voiced her own feelings, Caroline breathed, ‘You’re telling me. You used to be much warmer and more caring.’
‘Only those sterling qualities didn’t get you to the church on time,’ Valente fired back with sardonic bite, watching her eyes fall from his in discomfiture. He smiled a razor-edged smile. ‘I don’t want a wife. I want a mistress. I will be much more generous if you come to me on my terms.’
Caroline swallowed hard and skimmed her gaze round the dining room, noting that several women were looking in their direction, with Valente providing the focus for their attention. Other women would always want him, she reflected unhappily. And now she was about to work a confidence trick on him-because, while she might rail against his ruthlessness, wasn’t it dishonest of her to opt for marriage when she knew that she was unlikely to consummate it? Shame filled her, closely backed by fear, for she dreaded entering the minefield of matrimony again and the threatening challenge of the marital bed.
Valente watched her, trying to read the significance of her lowered lashes and the quivering vulnerability of her very kissable ripe pink mouth. It had been a torture to lie beside her without touching her the previous night. He had only to imagine what he would do with her when he got the opportunity and his body hardened instantly, the fierce, urgent arousal that had already disturbed his sleep for two nights returning to dig talon claws of very real hunger into his tall, powerful frame. What was it about her that made her so much more sexually alluring than other women?
But marriage would be a ridiculously high price to pay for fulfilment, he conceded grimly. In all likelihood the slaking of his desire for her would result in a rapid cooling-off of his interest, and a wife was not as easily shed as a mistress. On the other hand a child from such a marriage would ensure that he did not have to tie himself down on a more permanent basis to another woman in the future. It was imperative that he have a child at some stage to continue the family line, protect the extensive Barbieri estates for the next generation, and take charge of his own vast business empire.
‘It would have to be marriage.’ Caroline had to force out her final answer, because cheating didn’t come naturally to her and she was convinced that what she was doing was just that. But he had offered to cover the cost of her father’s heart surgery, to let her parents remain at Winterwood, and to ensure that jobs were safe at Hales Transport. It was his own fault that he had heaped the scales so heavily in his own favour. How could she possibly turn him down? He had the power to turn all their lives around, but if she married him he would also have the power to destroy her and complete the task that Matthew had begun.
In negotiation mode, Valente studied her like a cat studied a mouse getting ready to make a break for freedom. ‘Why?’
Feeling too warm under such pressure, Caroline unbuttoned her jacket and slid out of it, revealing a tantalising amount of bare skin, for the dress beneath was not as modest in cut when she bent down to eat. ‘Dad would never accept the other option. He’s an old-fashioned man…’
‘Plenty of couples live together these days without a wedding ring.’ Valente feasted his eyes shamelessly on the stimulating view of the rounded globes of her breasts and imagined having the right to touch and stimulate that sweet soft flesh. If he married her she would always be available, not just waiting at the end of a phone line for his call. It was a seductive thought, and the pressure that built at his groin was an exquisite pain.
‘I don’t think I could trust you to keep your promises unless I was your wife,’ Caroline stated forthrightly, and set down her knife and fork, amazed to discover that she had cleared her plate.
Valente was shocked out of his erotic reverie by that comeback.
Her grey eyes were silvery pale as frost and full of challenge, her fragile bone structure tautly outlined below her fair skin.
‘You don’t trust me,’ he said, unamused.
‘You don’t trust me, either.’
‘I won’t be a great husband.’
‘As long as you’re not violent or abusive I can cope with that.’
Valente’s black luxuriant lashes dropped down to conceal his startled gaze. For the first time he felt an acute stab of curiosity to know more about her marriage to Matthew Bailey. ‘I will be neither.’
‘We’re agreed, then?’ Caroline prompted anxiously.
There was a cool, unforgiving darkness in his measuring gaze. ‘We’ll get married as soon as it can be arranged.’
‘Did you mean it when you said you wanted a child?’ she whispered after the next course was served, for she was barely able to believe that he had agreed to her option.
‘Si, gioia mia. There has to be some advantage for me in the arrangement.’
In the circumstances it was crazy, but she felt hurt by the cold calculation of that declaration. He talked and behaved as if he wanted her at any cost, but quite evidently his intelligence ruled him more than his passion if he could say such a thing. She was outraged by his assumption that providing him with a child could be styled as an acceptable demand in any
agreement. Yet she saw no point in arguing, because she was convinced that he would soon cancel their agreement and divorce her when she disappointed him in the bedroom. They would never get near the stage of conceiving a child, which meant that once again she would be letting him down. It was a thought that cut through Caroline like a knife. All of a sudden it seemed to her that no matter what she did, she did it wrong.
At the end of the meal Valente insisted on taking her home, accompanying her out of the hotel with a light hand at her spine and relieving her of the immediate anxiety that he might be expecting a more intimate demonstration of commitment from the woman he had just agreed to marry.
Midway through the journey he changed his mind about their destination. Her mother was with her father at the hospital, and the limousine headed there instead.
‘The sooner we tell your parents the better. Your father will have less to worry about,’ he stated confidently.
Caroline was mortified when her mother reacted with unconcealed delight to their announcement. Wealth evidently cancelled out all Isabel’s former objections to Valente. Caroline could not bring herself to look at Valente, but the look of acceptance and relief in her father’s shadowed eyes reinforced her belief that what she was doing was right in so far as it affected her family and the business. Beyond that level she refused to think.
On the way back to Winterwood, Valente discussed his plans for the house and the provision being made for a self-contained apartment on the ground floor which would be adapted to suit her parents’ needs. ‘They will, of course, be free to use the rest of the house when we’re not there.’
‘Where will we be?’
‘We’ll be based in Venice, but I inherited other properties from my grandfather.’
‘I didn’t know you had a grandfather alive-or one rich enough to own properties in the plural,’ she confided in great surprise.
‘I’ll fill you in some time.’ Valente lifted an almost languid hand and gently tucked a stray strand of pale hair back behind her ear. Brilliant dark eyes welded to her, he slowly lowered his handsome dark head. She stayed still and shut her eyes tight, a restive heat curling between her thighs, heightening her awareness. He brushed his lips slowly back and forth over hers and she quivered, parting her lips for him, curious rather than scared.
‘I want you very much, belleza mia. Tell your mother I won’t wait for a big fancy wedding. Assure her that I will cover any bill, no matter how outrageous, but that it has to take place within the next two weeks. My staff will assist.’ He dipped his tongue sensuously slowly into the tender interior of her mouth.
‘Two…weeks?’ Caroline gasped, jerking her head away. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Impatient. I’ll apply for a special licence,’ Valente traded huskily, long fingers closing to her chin to steady her for a slow, deep kiss that went on for so long she felt dizzy. She marvelled that she liked his mouth on hers, the light pressure, the subtle seduction of his tongue, and she was also terrifyingly conscious of the hand he had braced on her thigh, of how easily he might push up her dress to access more intimate places. At the very thought of that, she tensed.
‘Of course there’s no reason why we should wait to share a bed, gioia mia,’ he added as he straightened and lifted his hand from her thigh. ’But you want me to wait, don’t you?’
Her nerves as tight as piano wires, Caroline whispered shakily, ‘Yes…yes, I do.’
’I’ve waited so long already, belleza mia. I’ll keep you in bed for a month when I finally get you there,’ he promised thickly.
And anguish washed through her, for she knew that he would soon be disillusioned and that he would hate her. She remembered how, five years earlier, she had once innocently longed for his lovemaking, even while holding back out of the fear that sex might be all he wanted from her. Shy though she had been, however, she had wanted that final intimacy and had never feared his passion. She’d had complete faith in him-a faith that had proved as reliable as shifting sand when it was challenged by others. That weakness was her fatal flaw, and telling Valente how afraid she had been back then that marrying him would be a bad mistake would only infuriate him. Then he would leave her, and she would lose him all over again. Her parents would be homeless, Hales Transport would close down, and her father would have to wait a long time for his surgery. Either way, no matter what she did, she would be responsible for everything that went wrong. He had said he admired loyalty. How much would he admire hers when she cheated him for the benefit of her family?
‘What’s up?’ Valente demanded, recognising the strain pinching her profile into tightness.
‘Nothing’s up.’
Caroline twisted to look at him. The moonlight arrowing into the back of the luxury car accentuated the strong angles and defined hollows of his hard handsome features. For the first time in more years than she wanted to remember she wanted to make physical contact with a man of her own volition. She wanted to smooth that aggressive jawline already roughening with stubble, trace that arrogant Roman emperor’s nose and that beautiful, brutally stubborn mouth. Without warning, as her tense fingers quivered with longing, it hit her like a tidal wave that the very idea of admitting her sexual inadequacy and watching Valente turn away from her in angry disgust was altogether more than she could bear. Fear of the future swiftly formed a cold hard knot inside her.
Joe Hales stared as Caroline descended the stairs in her wedding dress. It was a classic design, chosen because it would not swamp her small frame in an excess of fabric. Her gown had jewelled straps on the shoulders, and it fitted her like a glove to below the hip, where it flared into a fuller skirt. She wore a short veil, held by a silver tiara on top of her upswept hair.
‘You look as pretty as a picture,’ her father told her proudly, his eyes glassy with tears. ‘I don’t understand why your mother thought that you wearing a proper wedding gown would be in bad taste.’
‘Matthew,’ his daughter proffered, in one succinct word of explanation. ‘But, as you know, Valente wanted me to wear a gown.’
The older man’s eyes crinkled at the corners with wry amusement. ‘Your mother doesn’t like to be contradicted.’
‘Neither does he,’ Caroline remarked ruefully, thinking of the various tussles there had been over such decisions during the past two weeks, not to mention the outraged descent of Matt’s parents when they realised she was remarrying. Caroline had chosen to withstand the older couple’s condemnation with dignified understanding, but her mother had not been so tolerant of their interference.
Valente, unfortunately, was no more tolerant of views other than his own. He was determined to behave as if her first marriage had never happened, and had swiftly vetoed the suggestion of a civil ceremony with Caroline dressed in a suit in a pastel shade. On several occasions Caroline had been put in the thankless position of playing piggy in the middle between Valente and Isabel, who had craved more time in which to turn her daughter’s second wedding into the flashiest in local living memory. Never in her life before had Caroline been kept so relentlessly busy.
Valente had returned to Italy within days of agreeing to marry her, and he had ruled her by phone ever since, reeling off commands as if she was an employee rather than his bride-to-be. Almost all her possessions, including the contents of her workshop, had already been professionally packed and sent off to Venice. Her mother had wanted to stage an evening party after the wedding, but Valente had insisted that the bride and groom would be leaving in the afternoon for Italy. Koko, duly micro-chipped and inoculated for her travels, had been flown out in advance that very morning to Valente’s home.
Hales Transport was still in business, and a new warehouse was being commissioned-a comforting sign of an anticipated expansion in trade. In the same two-week period complex alterations to Winterwood had been agreed, after a lengthy meeting with an architect and her parents, who had had considerable input into the design of their new apartment. Joe and Isabel were overjoyed to be staying on at Win
terwood, and delighted by the prospect of a modern and easily-maintained home. While the work on the house was being done they would be staying in a comfortable hotel at Valente’s expense. He had also instructed his staff to rehire their former housekeeper and gardener to take care of the property in the Haleses’ absence. As a final footnote to the speed and effectiveness of Valente’s virtual takeover of all their lives, her father was now scheduled for surgery at a private hospital the following month-Valente would be footing the bill.
The pre-nuptial agreement Caroline had had to sign had been rigorous in its detail. It had shocked her, covering as it did everything from infidelity to her allowance and the amount of travelling she would be allowed to do. If they had a child she would have to continue living in Italy even if the marriage ended in divorce. Every sin she might commit would affect the size of her divorce settlement, which was set for an amazing amount of cash. She had signed without arguing a single clause. If Valente honoured the promises he had already made, she expected nothing more from him.
But now that the wedding was upon her Caroline was as jumpy as a cat on hot bricks during the drive to the church. It was the same church at which she had failed to show up five years before. Valente had refused the suggestion that another venue might be preferable. A red carpet ran down the steps-probably one of the many ‘extras’ which Valente’s staff had organised. Photographs were taken as she entered the old building. She could not shake a daunting sense of déjà vu, because for years she had wondered what her life would have been like had she married Valente instead.
Glorious flowers embellished almost every visible inch of the rather austere interior of the church. She repressed the memories of her first wedding day, during which Matthew had begun to show his true colours. But Valente was not Matthew, she reminded herself furiously, striving to rouse herself and maintain an upbeat mood. Valente turned from the altar to look at her and all her anxiety momentarily died away. He looked gorgeous in his elegant grey morning suit, and his stunning dark golden eyes rested on her with an unconcealed appreciation that lit her up inside with relief and pleasure.