by Julia James
But you couldn’t leave it behind, could you? You’ve let it haunt you, poison you, all your life since. Destroying all your chances to find happiness with another man. Just for the sake of a man like Vito!
They were nearly at the hospital. She took a deep breath.
Let Vito be behind me now. Let me finally be rid of him, free of him. Free of wanting him. Please—
Her prayer was pleading, urgent.
But even as the words formed in her mind her body gave a different message.
The memory of that night with him seared through her brain, and she bit down hard on her lip, trying to stifle it. Trying to douse the flame that had leapt in her blood.
It was as if she could feel the touch of his hand on her body, the feel of his mouth on her breast, the thrust of his body into hers…
Feel the urgency, the terrible, desperate urgency, of wanting him, wanting him, now, even now…
The taxi stopped. She jolted out of the memory.
Reality crushed back in, bringing the habitual heaviness of heart whenever she arrived at the hospital.
She paid off the driver and went inside.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Vaile—you look very smart today!’
The receptionist—a familiar face by now—smiled brightly. Everyone was cheerful here. Relentlessly so. They had to be. Rachel understood.
‘Do go on through,’ the receptionist said, after Rachel had signed in.
Her mother was not sleeping. She was in a drowsy, sedated state, her mind clouded and confused. But her face lit as Rachel came in, and she reached out a weak hand to her.
Rachel’s heart gave its customary painful squeeze as she looked at her dying mother and sat down, taking Arlene’s frail hand in hers. She gave her mother time to accustom herself to her daughter’s presence. Then, after a little while, she leant forward and carefully, tenderly, kissed her gaunt cheek. She took a breath, steadying her nerves.
This was it. No going back once she had said what she had come to say.
She smiled. Making the smile light her eyes, her face.
‘I’ve got something to tell you—something wonderful…’
Vito straightened abruptly in his chair.
‘She went where?’
‘The McFarlane Clinic in Hampstead, Mr Farneste. She took the Northern Line Underground to—’
‘Where is she now?’ Vito interrupted the man from his security agency with ruthless unconcern for the method Rachel had used to travel that afternoon.
‘The subject returned to her home address at approximately six-thirty p.m. One of our operatives is watching the building, but the subject has remained within since returning there.’
Vito sat back again, his mind racing. A hospital?
What the hell was Rachel doing visiting a hospital?
‘What kind of hospital is it?’ he demanded.
‘The McFarlane Clinic is a private general hospital. It—’
Once again Vito cut across him.
‘Keep your man outside her flat. I’m on my way there. Phone me on my mobile number if she leaves the building.’
He cut the connection and stood up, tossing the phone down on the low coffee table.
What the hell was she doing at a hospital?
Was she ill?
The shaft of fear came from nowhere.
Illogical. Irrational. Incomprehensible.
He fought it—hard. He didn’t want to feel anything for Rachel Vaile. Certainly not the irrational fear that had just sliced through him. Maybe she was just visiting someone. Maybe she wasn’t there for herself, but someone else.
But who? Who meant so much to Rachel that she would go and visit them right after crossing the Atlantic?
Right after becoming Mrs Vito Farneste…?
His mouth set in a grim line.
Lover-boy. Was that who she’d gone to see?
Gone to taunt…
Taunt a man incarcerated in a hospital bed…
Grim-faced, he strode across the vast expanse of cream-coloured pure wool carpet and into the entrance hall. He punched the call button on the elevator.
It was time to visit his bride…
Rachel stared blankly at the screen of her laptop. She was supposed to be concentrating on translating the particularly tricky legal document that lay beside the computer. Her hefty Spanish dictionary was open on the table.
But she couldn’t concentrate on her task.
Jet lag. That was what it must be. Crossing the Atlantic too quickly, too often. Even though she’d slept on the flight back from Miami, she still felt exhausted. Maybe it was just from being cramped sitting in an economy seat after the luxury of a private jet on the way out to Antillia.
Or maybe it was an exhaustion of the soul, not the body…
Her face was sombre.
I’ve done the right thing—I know I have.
Deliberately she recalled her mother’s face as she had told her the ‘something wonderful’. Through the pain and the confusion in her mother’s face a light had lit.
‘Oh, my darling.’ Her mother’s voice had quavered. ‘Is it true? Is it really true?’
She had gazed, eyes blurring, perhaps, but fixed steadily, at the miraculous piece of paper that had achieved for her daughter what she had never been blessed with. Gazed at the photos of the fairytale wedding, her beautiful daughter in her gown with the Farneste emeralds around her neck—a true Farneste bride, with a true Farneste bridegroom beside her.
‘Tell me!’ she had begged Rachel hazily. ‘Tell me everything!’
And Rachel had told her. Woven a fairytale romance that would have sat easily on the shelves of a library. A story in which Vito Farneste had met her again at a party, a party for the senior executives of a company she translated for, to celebrate a product launch. There’d been other VIPs there, she had told her mother, at a posh London hotel, and Vito had been one of them.
Eyes meeting across a crowded room, initial disbelief at each other’s presence, and then—oh, miraculously—Vito begging forgiveness for how he had treated her all those years ago. He had been a callow youth. Rachel had told her mother that he’d said that to her.
He’d invited her out.
‘I didn’t want to say anything to you, Mum—I didn’t want to upset you in case… Well, in case it didn’t work out,’ Rachel had said.
Then she’d smiled. ‘But it did work out—that was the wonderful thing! And, Vito—well, he just swept me away! Literally! He took me to the Caribbean, and—oh, Mum—it was like something out of a film! He’d organised a special wedding on our very own honeymoon island and we were married Mum—married! Look!’
She’d held out her left hand and let her mother touch the ring circling her finger.
‘Oh, my darling,’ her mother had breathed again, and Rachel’s heart had constricted to see the joy light her eyes.
Then it had constricted again, as her mother had gazed at her, her expression making Rachel want to weep, and said, ‘I can die happy now.’
The knife in her heart stabbed again in recollection, and Rachel stared unseeing at her screen.
I did the right thing. I know I did…
She repeated it like a mantra. But even as she did she felt a hollow open up inside her. The hollow that had been there ever since she had left Antillia. A feeling of such emptiness that it could never be filled.
She had wrenched Vito Farneste from where he had haunted her for seven long poisoned years. Their vile, ugly confrontation had destroyed the ghost that had invaded her when she was eighteen, never to leave. But now she had this gaping, tearing emptiness inside her.
She would never see him again.
The knowledge should be nothing but relief, grim satisfaction. However badly she had behaved, forcing him to marry her as she had, his behaviour on the island had wiped out—brutally, devastatingly—any self-recrimination she might have been harbouring. He had destroyed completely any last frail vestige of hope that he might face up to
what he’d done to her in the past.
She stared, grim-visaged, at the screen. He thought you’d lied to him deliberately—not telling him who you were, luring him on to trap him…that you’d planned it all with your mother…
Her jaw set. Luring him? Good God, she’d been an eighteen-year-old virgin still in the schoolroom! Just how alluring could that be, for heaven’s sake? He’d been six years older than her, an experienced operator—oh, yes, very experienced!—who’d been helping himself to beautiful women since he was a teenager! Her mother had told her in that ghastly, horrible aftermath all about his reputation, his track record as a playboy, a lothario, a libertine…
No, she thought bitterly, accusing her as he had like that wouldn’t wash! The boot had been totally on the other foot—though she’d been too stupid to see it at the time. All he’d done was try and twist his way out of it, put the blame on her!
Well, no way, Mr Drop-Dead Handsome Fallen Angel Farneste! You don’t slime your way out of this that easily!
She let the anger roil within her, feeling its cleansing, coruscating power. Anger was what she wanted to feel, needed to feel. Anger at everything Vito Farneste had ever said, ever done.
Her jaw set even more tightly, tension pulling down the muscles of her neck until they ached, as she faced up to the final cause of her anger… He’d been able to take her to his bed again as easily as he had taken her that first trusting, gullible time.
Anger sliced through her. Deep and vicious. But not just at Vito. No, the biggest target was herself.
He deceived me twice—twice!
The old saying came to her: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Well, shame on her, all right. Not just for her stupidity, criminal though it was, or for her folly in wishing, hoping, so stupidly that he had changed…but shame—deep, abiding shame—that she could not wash him out of her, that even knowing Vito Farneste for whom he was, a fallen angel, she could still desire him…
But I ran! When he said those things to me I ran! I didn’t succumb to him! I didn’t yield again!
And now he’s gone. Gone from my life for ever. And I can be glad…at last I can be glad…
So why did the emptiness inside her feel as though it were eating her?
Rachel read the sentence again and frowned. No, it wasn’t quite right. She reached for the dictionary. There had to be a more graceful way of expressing the point, which would be accurate, but not clumsy.
She was flicking the thin pages of the thick book when the Entryphone rang. She paused, tensing. The Entryphone buzzed again.
Memory of the last time she’d had a visitor here jumped immediately. Not even a week ago—but in that brief space of time she had been drowned in a maelstrom of tormented emotion.
The buzz came again.
It was probably just a charity collector, or someone getting the wrong flat. It couldn’t be a social call. Since her mother’s illness she’d cut out her social life completely—it was too painful, too unreal, to go out with former colleagues as she’d used to do when she was working. Some had tried to stay in touch, but she’d turned them away, unable to bear the normality of lives untouched by incipient death, unwilling to spend any free time she had from her freelance work apart from her mother.
While she still had her.
She spent as much time as she could with her mother. Just sitting with her in her room, sometimes reading to her, or chatting if her mother felt up to it. Sometimes attending to the precious little things that even the dying still clung to, such as brushing out her mother’s hair, manicuring her nails. Sometimes she took her laptop with her and sat with it on her knees, working while her mother lay there, with the radio playing music softly.
Making up for all the years she hadn’t spent with her mother when she was young.
She had wondered, when she had first conceived her desperate plan to achieve for herself the one thing that her mother had not, what on earth she would say to her about why her lifestyle had not altered a jot since marrying Vito Farneste. And then she’d realised it wouldn’t be a problem. She had said as much that afternoon.
‘I’ll still come and see you just as much, Mum. Vito works a lot in London now—so we’ll be living here. Oh, I’m sure there’ll be trips to Rome, and Turin, but he knows I want to be here. With you…’
Her voice had trailed off.
‘That’s very good of him,’ her mother had said, and there had been gratitude in her voice that had torn at Rachel. ‘Not to keep you from me while…while I’m so ill. I…I know he won’t want anything to do with me… I understand that.’ Her eyes had dimmed a little, as if she was remembering painful things. ‘He…he was always very close to his mother. It…it was hard for him. Seeing Enrico with me. It made him hard…’
Her words had faded, taking too much strength from her failing body.
The buzz at the door came again—louder and more insistent.
She was suddenly glad of the interruption, breaking off the chain of memory.
Pushing back her chair on the worn carpet, she crossed the bedsit to the door and picked up the phone. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.
The sound of Vito’s voice at the other end made her clutch at the doorjamb. A bubble of hysteria beaded in her. What was that phrase? It was like déjàvu all over again…
And here was Vito Farneste, turning up on her doorstep again.
What for this time? Last time it had been to drop a bomb-shell in her lap.
What would it be this time?
‘Open the door, Rachel.’
Vito’s harsh voice demanded acquiescence. She let him have what he wanted—he would probably have his goons, or whatever, break the door down otherwise. She would end up being liable for the damage, and she could ill afford the expense right now.
She buzzed him in, taking the few brief moments while he climbed the stairs to her floor to try and steady her suddenly thumping heart.
Adrenalin surged.
The fear hormone. That was all it was. And with good reason. She knew that.
A sudden rush of panic that she was mad to let Vito anywhere near her again—let alone into her bedsit—almost overcame her. Then it was too late. There were footsteps outside the bedsit door and a peremptory rapping.
Slowly she opened the door to him.
As her eyes set on him she felt the adrenalin rush her body again.
Fear—it was just fear, that was all.
It was OK for it to be fear. Fear in respect of Vito Farneste was natural. Safe.
Any other cause of an adrenalin rush in his presence was not safe. Not safe at all.
Don’t look at him!
But the adjuration was useless. Her eyes were sucked to him, unable to tear themselves away.
He was in a business suit. Dark, fine-tailored cloth, Italian in design, and so incredibly beautifully cut that he could have been parading it on a catwalk. But Vito wasn’t the type to go flouncing down a runway.
Power radiated from him. Sheer, sheathed masculine power.
Her breath caught.
She fought for sanity, for safety.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded rudely, still pointedly holding the door open, even though he’d walked inside the bedsit. He’d cast a look around it disdainfully, the way he’d done the first time he’d marched in here.
He’s probably never been anywhere this awful in his life, she thought bitterly. Well, she wasn’t about to apologise for it. For anything.
His eyes swept back to her, lancing at her. Then he reached and took the door from her, shutting it urgently.
‘Why did you visit the McFarlane Clinic this afternoon?’ he demanded.
It was like a punch to her stomach.
‘Wh—what?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You heard me. Why did you visit the McFarlane Clinic this afternoon?’ he repeated.
Belatedly, she grabbed together what self-possession she could.
‘That’s no busi
ness of yours,’ she gritted.
‘Are you ill?’
She’d shaken her head before she could stop herself.
Something changed minutely in his face. But then, like a curtain coming down, an expression replaced it that chilled her to the core.
‘Are you pregnant?’
CHAPTER NINE
THE question had come out of nowhere. It was something that up to this moment had not even crossed his mind. But the instant it flashed into his head he realised, with a hollowing sensation in his guts, that he might just have discovered that Rachel Vaile had been playing a much more skilful game than he’d allowed for.
Had he let himself be led up the garden path as to why she had really suddenly appeared out of the blue, eager to cash in on the Farneste emeralds at this particular moment?
Even though he’d safeguarded himself in the pre-nup from being ripped off by any future claims for child maintenance, even though he’d made damn sure he’d been protected up to the hilt on their wedding night, she might still have outmanoeuvred him. If she’d married him already pregnant…
Christo, was this what this farce was all about? Saddling him with another man’s child—a child the natural father refused to marry her for? So she’d looked around for another rich sucker to be a golden meal ticket? OK, so he could always insist on a paternity test, and a negative result would see her off, but he’d bet his last euro she’d go to the tabloids with it and make as much fuss as she could, just to be vindictive.
He looked at her now, his expression icy.
She had gone as white as a sheet.
The kick to his guts was absolute.
So it was true…she was carrying another man’s child.
Fury jackknifed through him.
But it was not, he recognised with disbelief, rage at Rachel.
It was rage at the man who had impregnated her.
Impregnated her and refused to marry her…
And rage at her too—for letting another man touch her. Like a light flashing on out of total darkness, momentarily blinding him, he felt a surge of raw, primitive possessiveness rake through him.
