by Lynne Graham
Caroline was bewildered by that response. In depth? What was he suggesting? Of the two issues, she had ironically considered the topic of Agnese Brunetti the more controversial and the least likely to lead to a satisfactory conclusion. She had even thought he might refuse to satisfy her inquisitiveness. After all, his relationship with Agnese before their marriage was really none of her business. The question about Bomark Logistics had only been asked out of casual curiosity. Why was he holding back on giving her an immediate explanation?
As they completed their trip back to the Palazzo Barbieri, Caroline became increasingly disturbed by Valente’s preoccupation. The tight lines of his bold profile and the grim set of his mouth made her tense, and uneasy as well. It was an anti-climax when Koko darted out of the shadows in the entrance hall and leapt at Caroline in welcome, only to struggle to be set down again so that she could enact the same welcome for Valente as well.
‘How on earth did you manage to persuade her into liking you?’ Caroline exclaimed, astounded to see her formerly hostile pet now winding round Valente’s trouser legs with a purr as loud as a steam engine.
‘You were gone. I had no competition. She was lonely,’ Valente pointed out, lifting the little Siamese and stroking her in reward for her enthusiastic greeting.
In the glorious drawing room, with the crimson light of the dying sun filtering in through the balcony doors across the muted antique colours of the beautiful Persian rug, he finally faced her. ‘How did you find out that I had a connection with Bomark Logistics?’
Caroline explained, and it transpired that Valente had not even noticed the tiny incident in which she had picked up the revealing document when the wind dropped it at her feet.
‘So, you don’t know anything,’ Valente pronounced, his ebony brows drawing together, the angles of his lean hard features saturnine in the dusk light. ‘I could lie. And I am tempted to lie, because I know you won’t like the truth. But in terms of business I did nothing wrong. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Caroline pressed in growing bewilderment. ‘Have you bought out Bomark Logistics, or something? Did you think I would be annoyed at that because the firm put Hales out of business? I’m not that foolish…’
Valente surveyed her levelly. ‘I set up Bomark from scratch three years ago. I own it, and I am responsible for every move the firm has made since then.’
The blankness of shock had wiped all expression from Caroline’s face. ‘But that’s not possible. You own it? Have always owned it? I mean why…three years ago?’
‘I opened another haulage business in order to compete with Hales and had your manager, Sweetman, head-hunted into a London position,’ Valente clarified with reluctance.
‘But why?’ Caroline demanded again. ‘You actually wanted to put my family out of business?’
Valente nodded confirmation in silence. He had not expected her to be quite so shocked. A devious woman would have recognised the strings he had pulled and understood why without asking. Caroline, however, clearly did not comprehend what he was trying to explain.
‘I don’t understand. I know you must have been very angry and bitter when I didn’t turn up to marry you five years ago,’ she murmured tightly. ‘But why would you go to such appalling lengths to target a small family business?’
‘I blamed your family for what happened as much as I blamed you.’
A stricken look crossed Caroline’s visage. ‘But you knew there was no way I could have made it to the church. You knew how sorry I was that my message didn’t reach you in time,’ she reasoned feverishly. ‘I know my parents behaved badly, and that you were treated unfairly, but I don’t believe that we did anything that could excuse you for deliberately setting out to destroy our business.’
Valente was wondering why she was saying that there had been no way she could have made it to the church. He was exasperated by his ignorance of the excuses she had no doubt employed in that letter, but determined not to expose it. As for this message she was now mentioning for the first time: he did not believe there had ever been one. Her family had wanted rid of him by any means, and ensuring that he was left standing like a fool at the altar had been a very effective method of deterring him from seeking any further contact.
‘I wanted you all to pay for what you did,’ Valente confessed.
A humourless laugh was wrenched from her soft pink mouth. ‘You don’t think three and a half years of marriage to Matthew Bailey was penance enough for me?’
Valente wore a guarded look that gave nothing away. ‘As far as I knew at the time you were enjoying a happy marriage with your childhood sweetheart. It was only after Bailey’s death that I learned that it hadn’t been quite that perfect.’
‘But Matthew and I were never childhood sweethearts!’ Caroline argued with spirit. ‘Where did you get that idea? We were friends-casual friends. I thought a lot of him, and I respected his opinion. I admit that I was entirely taken in by him until I became his wife. But there was never any romance between us-either before or after we married. I married him on the rebound.’
‘The phrase “childhood sweethearts” came from your own father’s lips. Joe came to see me the week before our wedding and accused me of having come between you and Matthew and ruining your life. He said it was Matthew whom you really loved and he tried to buy me off.’
Caroline was aghast. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Dad had done that? I had no idea.’
‘There had already been enough bad feeling, and you were living on your nerves. I didn’t want to put you under any more pressure and I was confident that you loved me,’ Valente admitted, with a bitter twist to his handsome mouth.
‘I did love you…I did!’ Caroline proclaimed in a shaken tone. ‘But you never responded to my letters. You never phoned. You don’t do emotion or forgiveness, do you? The very fact it’s taken almost two months for us even to discuss the past says it all. You just scrubbed me out of your life like I didn’t matter to you!’
His lean strong face was darkening with indignation. ‘What did you expect after leaving me standing at the church? It would be a rare man who could forgive an offence of that magnitude.’
‘You just didn’t love me enough, Valente,’ Caroline condemned vehemently. ‘When you tell me now that you’ll never feel like that for me again, it’s not really that great a loss, is it? A man who really loved me would have overcome his injured pride and talked to me again-but not you. So much for love! You just deserted me.’
Lean, olive-skinned features hard with anger, Valente spread wide his arms and threw up both hands in a bold physical demonstration of his wrathful rejection of that scenario. ‘I…deserted…you?’
‘I was crushed. I thought I had nothing left to live for-and there was Matthew, being a very sympathetic and staunch friend in my hour of need,’ Caroline recalled, stinging tears filling her eyes as she looked back at that fateful period of her life. ‘Before very long my parents were pointing out how happy they would be if I married Matthew. He proposed. You weren’t there. I gave in to the pressure-a marriage of friends, Matt called it, but even our friendship didn’t last. Yes, I was an idiot, and I let myself fell into a stupid trap, but if I hadn’t been so unhappy I would never have been that silly!’
Her explanation bore not the smallest resemblance to Valente’s assumptions at the time. ‘I thought you had only used me to make Matthew jealous. I also believed that you had realised you loved him more than me.’
With an unsteady hand, Caroline dashed away her tears. ‘Well, maybe if you’d had enough interest you would have found out the truth for yourself.’ Her grey eyes darkened and her soft mouth compressed. ‘But why are we even having this conversation now?’
‘We’re having it because it’s a conversation we should have had a long time ago,’ Valente conceded between gritted white teeth, violently wound up by her accusations and full of rage, but refusing to parade the emotions storming through hi
m.
‘All that doesn’t matter any more. I’m more interested in your ownership of Bomark Logistics,’ Caroline admitted, bringing the dialogue full circle back to what she saw as the most important question. ‘That you chose, three years after we broke up, to pursue a goal of revenge at any cost truly horrifies me. It proves all over again to me that I must be a rotten judge of character.’
‘I’m not like you, bella mia,’ Valente breathed. ‘When someone injures me I don’t turn the other cheek, and I never will.’
A belligerent glint in her usually soft gaze, Caroline drew herself up straight to her full height. She was so tense that her muscles ached in protest at her stance. ‘But to have set up another haulage firm solely to destroy my family’s livelihood is beyond forgiveness.’
‘I wanted you. All along, my only goal was to gain access to you.’
‘But you started this three years ago, when Matthew was still alive and I was his wife!’
Valente veiled his black-lashed unrepentant gaze. He had pinned his colours to the mast and he wasn’t the man to retreat. ‘Whether you were married or otherwise made no difference to me.’
Caroline rested shaken eyes on him and then turned away, wandering over to the windows to stare sightlessly out at the superbly evocative Venetian skyline. He was so aggressive, so destructive, so unashamed of the methods he had employed. In a word? Ruthless. Yet once he had shielded her from that side of his character, persuading her that he was a much more humane and understanding character. This was the man she loved?
‘No cost was too high to pay, was it?’ Caroline accused in a sudden surge of disgust as she totted up the consequences of his behaviour. ‘What do you think the slow decline of Hales and the loss of those contracts did to my father’s health? It broke his heart. It was his father’s firm, and he was horribly ashamed that he couldn’t keep it in business. You didn’t care that you were hurting my family because you still thought I had let you down.’
His jawline took on an even more stubborn angle. He stood there with the macho air of a male urging her to throw whatever she liked at him and see how well he would withstand the barrage. ‘You did let me down.’
‘How did I let you down? By falling ill? By being in hospital the night before our wedding? How was that my fault?’ Caroline launched at him shakily. ‘That was fate. The second thoughts and the doubts and fears that tormented me the next morning while you were at the church were my fault. I admit that, but I still wasn’t well enough to get out of that bed and do anything for myself.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Valente was forced to growl, the reference to hospital having cut through his reserve and ignited his frustration. ‘I told you that I didn’t read your letters.’
‘Any…of them?’ she prompted unsteadily, before turning away, her hand crammed to her wobbly mouth. Further speech seemed pointless. She had poured out her heart in those letters and all to no avail-for he had not even taken the time to read what she had written.
Pulling herself back together again, Caroline focused on Valente with stark denunciation in her eyes. ‘You’re not the man I thought you were even five years ago. You’re more damaged than I could ever have realised. Although you set out to destroy my family, you forgave the family of the man who raped your mother… I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you forgive my parents or me?’
Rigid with self-discipline, Valente bit back the hot words brimming on his lips and watched her turn on her heel and walk to the door. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to lie down…I’m scared I’ve got another migraine coming on,’ she admitted grudgingly, rubbing her fingers across the tightness beginning to band round her temples. ‘And then I’m flying back to England as soon as it can be arranged-because you scare me.’
‘How do I scare you?’ Valente demanded angrily, outraged by that indictment.
‘You tell me you’ve been plotting against me and my family for years and you don’t understand why I’m scared of you?’ Her voice broke at the height of that incredulous question. ‘Do you think that’s normal behaviour?’
Caroline lay on their bed in a stupor of distress and shock. How could he have been so cruel as to deliberately destroy her family’s livelihood? All right, her parents were not his parents, but they were at a vulnerable age. Had he no conscience at all? Of course, how many people had shown Valente love? No doubt his mother had loved him, but she had died when he was only a teenager, and only after gifting him the bitter knowledge that he was a child born of rape. Valente had only ever known the rougher, more painful faces of lust and love. He still believed Caroline had let him down deliberately five years earlier. How could any man be so stubborn in holding on to his convictions? Yet now, ironically, she understood him so much better, for his image was now clear in her mind. He had scorned her love in the present because he had no faith in her past claims of love. The love of women like Agnese Brunetti had been for his money, and his lean, powerful body, not for the essential male behind the fine feathers.
And no feathers came more fine, Caroline conceded, studying the opulent grandeur of her surroundings with pained eyes. The child of rape had triumphed in worldly terms, but not before suffering many vicissitudes and rejections. It hurt to appreciate that she only figured as one more rejection in his chequered life, yet she had loved him so much. And whatever he had felt for her had been strong enough, enduring enough, to bring him back to her five years on. In fact, over a long period of time he had put in an enormous amount of effort to ensure that when he did re-enter her life he was in an unbeatable position of power and influence. It would be a bit of a come-down for him if he was ever to realise that all he had really had to do was make himself available, and one or way or another she would have come back to him of her own free will.
Valente leafed impatiently through the contents of his safe in the library. He was in a blind rage, and the feeling of being almost out of control unnerved him. At last he extracted a letter, no longer white and fresh, in a fat, battered envelope. Why had he kept it when he refused to lower himself to the level of reading it? He had dumped all those that came afterwards unread. Well, now he would find out what Caroline had been talking about…doubtless some stupid tangle of lying excuses designed to make him think better of her.
He sat down with a glass of the Villa Barbieri’s finest wine and ripped open the envelope with something less than his usual cool. There were eight pages of Caroline’s handwriting to be assimilated. He flattened the first sheet to read, and the breathless over-the-top opening made him acknowledge for the first time how young Caroline had still been in those days, ‘My dearest, darling, beloved Valente…’ it began.
Something twisted inside him, and he began to read with more appetite than he had had when he first lifted the letter. She claimed to have been rushed into hospital with a burst appendix the night before their wedding. Valente went cold, for he was recalling the small seam of scar tissue on her lower abdomen which he had noticed and intended to ask her about-until the pull of her proximity had driven the seemingly minor matter from his mind. Adrenalin pumping through him, he read on at speed. She had been on the operating table fighting for her life while he had been waiting for her at the church. She had asked her father to ensure that Valente was informed and brought to see her, but Joe Hales had passed on that responsibility to Matthew instead. Matthew had, in turn, refused to leave the hospital until Caroline was out of danger.
Reeling in shock from what he had learned, Valente plunged upright and strode off to find Caroline straight away. He did not know what he was going to say to her. He only knew that it was of the utmost importance that he talked to her, as he had never talked to her in the entirety of their relationship, and that was a challenge he was not even sure he could meet.
He glanced into her workshop before he went upstairs. The glass cats still sparkled in the light coming through the window. He was touched that she had kept them all these years.
<
br /> A floorboard creaked in the master bedroom and Caroline’s lashes swept up: Valente was stationed at the foot of the bed, rather like the Grim Reaper in a designer suit. ‘Have you got a migraine?’ he asked.
‘No, I think it was just the tension getting to me.’
‘I never read that letter you sent me five years ago,’ Valente admitted harshly.
‘There were at least six of them.’
‘I dumped them without reading them-but I kept the first one you sent.’
Her smooth brow indented. ‘Why would you keep it and not read it?’
‘I was like an addict resisting temptation,’ Valente confided, squaring his chin. ‘Even as recently as two months ago I was proud of my ability to resist opening that letter. I didn’t want to read your excuses for fear that I would mellow towards you, and my pride wouldn’t allow me to run that risk.’
Conscious that Valente had to be in a very strange mood to be talking about such promptings, Caroline slowly levered herself up from her prone position. ‘You resisted my letter as if it was a dangerous drug?’ she rephrased, wondering if she could possibly have heard him right-because she had never dreamt that he might suffer from such quixotic thoughts and reactions.
‘I didn’t read it until tonight. It was a…a devastating experience,’ he confessed in a jerky undertone, his strain pronounced. ‘You were sick. I wasn’t there when you needed me.’
‘Nobody told you I needed you or that I was ill.’
‘But I should have considered the possibility.’
‘I tried to phone you that evening-’
Valente rested tormented dark eyes full of regret on her. ‘I chucked my mobile phone off the bridge into the river beside the church because I didn’t want to be tempted into phoning you. I wanted to be strong.’
‘Well, you were certainly that,’ Caroline conceded. ‘Why didn’t it occur to you that something had to be badly wrong?’