by Lynne Graham
'I didn't,' he murmured with dark satire.
But he had. He had. His life had gone on afterwards.
Hers had stopped dead. It hadn't been worth it, none of her proud defences had been worth it four years ago. In one sense she had driven him away, had brought about her own downfall. Had he known that she loved him, he would have trusted her more than he had and that day he wouldn't have sat in the car instead of crossing the street to speak to her.
'I phoned you…I phoned you in Italy,' she told him in a rush. 'I was going to tell you about the baby-' His ebony brows drew together. 'I received no call-' 'Giulia came to the phone. She said you were in the middle of your engagement party…I didn't say anything,' Ashley confessed starkly. 'There really wasn't anything to say.'
He groaned something in Italian but he said nothing in his own defence. His dark features broodingly tense, he avoided meeting her eyes, but a surge of blood lay like a betraying line across his blunt cheekbones. He started up the car again. 'It's getting late,' he said flatly.
'Can't we forget about lunch?' she enquired hopefully. 'Phone and make an excuse?' He tensed. 'No.'
'I don't feel like socialising.'
'It's out of the question. We have to show,' he asserted wryly.
Half an hour later, she was dredged from the all consuming energy of her thoughts by the strange realisation that the car was passing familiar landmarks. They were within ten miles of her family home, she registered uncomfortably.
'Where do these people live?' she asked stiffly. 'Not far from here.'
'I grew up around here,' she divulged reluctantly. 'You could be more precise.'
'You can give me directions when we reach your home town.'
Ashley stopped breathing. 'Is that where they live?' she demanded.
Vito cast her a rueful glance and sighed. 'I'm taking you home, cara.'
She froze in shock. 'I don't believe you!'
'I phoned your mother yesterday and she invited us down to lunch-'
'Stop the car!' Ashley gasped. 'I'm not going!' 'Yes, you are,' Vito contradicted flatly. 'And you're going to mend fences. It's my fault that you're at odds with your family. This is the one thing that I can do for you-'
'Do for me?' she echoed, on the edge of hysteria. Completely misunderstanding the source of her distress, Vito dealt her a soothing but arrogant smile. 'They won't reject you. Your mother can't wait to see you. She was in tears on the phone.'
Ashley could believe that, but she was equally well aware that her mother had made not the slightest effort to see her in recent years. Sylvia Forrester had abided obediently by her husband's rules, so why on earth was she inviting them to lunch? Was it possible that time had softened her father? She wanted to believe that so much it hurt. She had missed her mother desperately, would have long since arrived up on the doorstep of her own volition had she not been conscious that such defiance would only cause more trouble for her mother. 'My father hates me,' she confided tightly.
'Fathers don't hate their children. My father would have been equally outraged if one of my sisters had lived with a man outside marriage. The situation is quite different now that we are married, and tempers will have cooled long ago,' he drawled with complete conviction.
He didn't understand, and already they were driving through the town. He didn't need her directions. Staverston wasn't that big and her father's car showroom dominated the end of the main street. Her home was only fifty yards beyond, set back from the road, an Edwardian detached behind a low brick wall. Climbing out of the car, Vito scanned her paralysed stillness. 'Come on,' he urged.
Susan answered the doorbell, looking pale and tense. Vito introduced himself with immense calm. 'We're out in the garden,' she said uncomfortably. 'Mum invited us down. I hope you don't mind.'
'The more, the merrier,' Ashley quipped. 'Tim?' 'He's in Greece with his friends. Dad's treat.' Ashley moved towards the French windows which led out to the garden and abruptly Susan barred her path, embarrassment and anxiety mingling in her gaze. 'Dad doesn't know you're coming,' she shared in a tremulous rush. 'I can't believe Mum's doing this-' Before Ashley could respond, her father's harsh voice sounded forth from the kitchen. 'You utterly stupid woman!' he was thundering in a well-remembered tone that brought Ashley out in a cold sweat. 'I'm not going to eat foreign muck like that! All this palaver for that gutless fool Arnold? How dare you waste my money on…'
For a timeless moment of horror the three of them were a frozen tableau. Ashley could hear her mother's voice raised in a hideously familiar whine of apology and placation. Her stomach turned over sickly.
'Do come out into the garden,' Susan said almost pleadingly to Vito.
Ashley was cringing with humiliation, unable to look at Vito, her cheeks as scarlet as her sister's. Vito would have to draw on every ounce of his well-bred savoir-faire to get through even a brief meeting with her father. She was unnerved by the prospect of the coming scene and devastated by the news that her mother had invited them without her father's permission.
Beyond the French windows, she watched her father’s stocky but broadly built figure powering angrily out to the patio where Arnold was sitting reading a newspaper. Her hand touched Vito's, staying him. 'I think I'd better do this on my own,' she said tautly.
'Good idea,' Susan cut in brightly. 'Let me get you a drink, Vito.'
Ashley crossed the patio. Her father was telling Arnold that only wimps played golf and Arnold was calmly agreeing with him, impervious to the insult intended. A quiet, unaggressive man, Arnold flatly refused to be drawn into disputes with his difficult father-in-law.
'Dad.' Her voice wavered as she fell still in the sunlight, her shoulders back, her chin raised high. Hunt Forrester rose like an angry bull at a gate, his full face set in lines of disbelief. 'What the hell are you doing here’. Ashley forced herself forward. 'D-don't you think it's time we made peace?'
'You shameless little bitch, how dare you show your face here?' he roared, striding over to grip her by the shoulders. 'I told you never to come back, didn't I? You don't belong to this family any more! You never did, you little slut! But you can't leave us alone, can you? You damn near put Tim in prison with your shenanigans-'
'Dad, please…' His fingers were biting like steel pincers into her shrinking flesh. With every spitting syllable he was giving her a violent shake to punctuate his fury.
'Release my wife.' Vito's intervention carried at least ten generations of aristocratic cool and disdain.
'Stay out of this, Vito!' Ashley cried fearfully.
'Or you might get hurt,' Hunt Forrester sneered, sizing up the younger man's superbly well-cut suit and silk shirt, his contempt blatant.
'Your daughter is pregnant,' Vito delivered icily. Ashley was dizzy and sick. Somewhere in the background she could hear her mother quietly sobbing. It was all so horribly familiar but for the first time she realised that she didn't need to be afraid of her father. Vito would not allow him to harm her.
'So that's how you got him to the altar!' her father gibed hatefully. 'Second time lucky, it seems-'
Pressing her back with one formidable hand, Vito hit her father so hard that he went flying back on to the lawn. Susan screamed. Arnold flew upright. Ashley sagged back in shock against the table, her knees too wobbly to hold her.
'If you want a fight,' Vito was snarling, 'pick on someone more your own size!'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARNOLD socked a clenched fist into his palm, his normally serious features alive with pleasure. 'That was some punch!' he crowed, shaking his head in admiration.
'At least you've more gumption than that idiot behind me!' Hunt growled as he picked himself up. 'But you can take your wife and get out-'
'If they go, I go!' The tremulous threat turned all their heads. Sylvia Forrester looked in despair at her younger daughter. 'Could I stay with you for a while?' 'What…what the devil's going on here?' Hunt ejaculated incredulously. 'Have you gone out of your mind, Sylvie?'
'I should have done it years ago… didn't have the guts.' Sylvia extended a shaking hand to Ashley. 'But when I couldn't go to my own child's wedding…I realised how terribly weak I'd become. I'm so sorry I let him do this to you.'
'You're very welcome in our home, Mrs Forrester,' Vito said gently.
'Now just a minute here-' Ashley's father blustered. 'Call me Sylvia,' her mother said shyly. 'You're very kind-'
'He bloody hit me!' Hunt thundered in disbelief. 'And you deserved it.' Trembling in spite of Ashley's supportive arm, Sylvia murmured, 'I'm going to tell her why you treat her the way you do. She has the right to know.'
'No!' Hunt roared.
'Let's go indoors,' Vito suggested.
In bewilderment, Ashley glanced back to where her father was left standing alone. Her head was swimming. She had not thought it possible that her mother could take such a stance against her father. Nor could she even begin to imagine what Sylvia could possibly have to tell her that could upset her father to such an extent.
'Susan, I think you and Arnold should go home,' her mother sighed. 'I'll phone you later.'
As her sister and her husband left the room with pronounced reluctance, her father appeared in the doorway. 'Please don't tell them,' he gritted. 'It's none of their business.'
'You made it Ashley's business.' Her mother lifted her tear-streaked face up. 'Everybody's suffered for my mistake. You should have divorced me. Instead you've taken it out on all of us for over twenty years.'
'Sylvie-' Hunt looked grey, strangely shrunken in stature.
'I-I had an affair.' Sylvia stumbled over the admission, didn't meet anyone's eyes. 'And your father found out. When I discovered that I was pregnant, I…I wasn't sure that it was your father's child-'
'Oh, dear God-' Ashley collapsed down into the nearest chair, absolutely devastated by what she believed was coming.
Quietly her mother was crying. 'Your father knew… and wh-when you were born with all that red hair, so different-looking from Susan… you see, we both assumed that you couldn't be his child and I was so ashamed… so grateful that your father was prepared to bring you up as his.'
But he hadn't been able to meet that challenge, Ashley completed strickenly. She was appalled by what her mother had revealed.
'I believe that Ashley misunderstands,' Vito murmured. 'You cannot be telling her that she is not her father's child. Tim and Ashley could pass for twins.'
'The other m-man had sandy hair,' her mother whispered unsteadily. 'We forgot that my grandmother had been auburn-haired. It wasn't until Tim was born six years later that we realised that we'd made a mistake, and by then the damage to Ashley's relationship with her father was already done. He still behaved as though she wasn't his… I think that every time he looked at her he remembered that other man.'
The silence went on forever. Ashley's father was hunched in a chair, his spread hands covering his face. He looked like a man on whom a sentence of death had been pronounced. Ashley was in a complete daze. Unconsciously she focused on Vito for what to do or say next. Her heart had gone out to her mother but a second later she experienced an astonishing pang of pity for her father. Her mother's confession had broken him by depriving him of all dignity. Yet Ashley had learnt much more. Her father must have loved her mother a great deal not to divorce her. But unhappily he had been punishing her ever since.
'Do you still want to leave with us?' Vito asked her mother calmly. Ashley repressed an almost hysterical giggle. Trust Vito to stay in control when the rest of them were all falling apart at the seams in front of him.
There was a long silence.
'I-I think that Hunt and I have a lot to discuss,' Sylvia said hesitantly. She stood up with an air of fledgling confidence and control that shook her daughter. There was a new strength in her mother's stature.
'We'll get lunch at a hotel.' With complete cool, Vito whisked Ashley out to the hall.
Sylvia engulfed her daughter in an emotional embrace. 'I'm so sorry, but I can't leave your father when he's like this.'
'She won't leave him,' Vito asserted as they drove off. 'He's gone to pieces. I think that little scene just cleared the air for them both. The truth needed to come out. It's a shame it didn't happen sooner for your benefit. ' Ashley stole a glance at him. His hard-edged profile was fiercely clenched; the skin pulled tight over his angular cheekbones. She had been wrong to believe that the episode had not affected him, although she could not really understand why he should look so shattered. For he did. Pale and shattered.
'Tell me what it was like growing up with a father like that? With a mother who didn't stand up for you and a brother-in-law who evidently chose to stand on the sidelines as well?'
Her hands were shaking. She couldn't find any of her flippant responses. She was still too disturbed by what had occurred. 'Scary,' she confided jerkily. 'Lonely.' Vito vented a harsh expletive.
'Everybody suffered,' she extended. 'I think Tim got away the lightest because he was a boy and Dad's favourite. Susan married Arnold to escape. There was so much tension…so many arguments. I always fought him. Looking back, it seems so stupid but he picked on me.' And all of a sudden something that she had never ever talked about was finding its own voice and the memories were spilling out of her almost faster than she could frame the words to describe them. The constant criticism and belittling.The sarcasm and the punishments. The fact that her mother had often paid the price for her defiance. The guilt. The shame that her father could find her so unworthy of attention or affection.
'You still haven't told me that he hit you, and he did,' Vito countered darkly. 'I saw it in his face and yours. I wanted to keep on hitting him. It would have given me immense satisfaction.'
'Don't! He didn't really hit me,' she protested. 'Not the way you read about but… but I was always afraid that he would because he got so angry with me.' Uneasily she swallowed, suppressing those memories.
'No wonder you wanted your freedom at university.
You had never had any before.' The flat syllables were curiously clipped.
'No.' She was glad that he understood.
He asked her if she was hungry. Her stomach rebelled at the mere thought of food. Once or twice she tried to initiate conversation but Vito had become disturbingly uncommunicative. But then, he had just met the in-laws from hell, she reflected in strong chagrin. Yet she felt curiously at peace. Questions that had troubled her for much of her childhood had been answered. She was not in herself so repulsive that her father couldn't love her. No, she had become the innocent victim of her mother's affair, the focus of all her father's bitterness.
They separated when they got home. Vito said he had some calls to make.
'I'll order a late lunch,' she said.
'I'm not hungry.' The harsh edge to his response made her tense. She wondered what on earth was wrong. His darkly handsome features were shuttered by a fierce constraint beyond her comprehension, but before she could speak he was taking the stairs two at a time.
An hour later she went in search of him. Their chauffeur passed by her on the stairs, carrying two cases. With a frown, Ashley walked into Vito's bedroom suite. He was standing at the window like someone in a trance, blistering tension emanating from him in waves.
'I didn't know you had another trip,' she murmured tightly. 'You didn't mention it.' Vito swung round. 'I'm returning to Italy. I can't stay here.'
'You're leaving?' White as a sheet from the sheer shock of his sudden change of heart, Ashley simply stared at him. 'But you said-'
'That I wanted to stay until the baby was born,' he completed. 'But we both know that that isn't what you want.'
She locked her hands together before they could betray her by shaking. Her fingers twisted into each other. 'I don't understand.'
Vito released his breath jerkily, his dark eyes locked to her. 'I think it's past time that I stopped knocking my head up against a brick wall and simply took account of your wishes for a change.'
'You don't need to. I know how you feel about me,' he asserted almost thickly, his strong bone-structure prominent with strain beneath his golden skin. 'To persist in the face of such odds would be utter insanity. I'm not blaming you. Considering what I've done…' He faltered and sucked in air, shifted an expressive hand. 'Well, you've been very tolerant, much more tolerant than I had any right to expect in the circumstances. But I have to face facts. You would be a lot more comfortable if I weren't here-'
'If you're trying to convince me that you're doing this for my benefit rather than your own, you're not getting anywhere!' Ashley threw at him in a shaken undertone, crossing her arms over her breasts as if she needed that support.
'Hennessy will be happier if I'm not around and so will I be,' Vito admitted with sudden stark force. 'What has Josh got to do with this?'
'Madre di Dio!' Vito swore rawly, swinging away from her again. 'You're involved with him and I am the intruder, not he, since I forced you into this marriage. Clearly he was on the scene at the time and I could hardly expect you to admit the fact. Now you will be free to continue your liaison-'
Did his conscience require the sop that she had another man waiting for her? Dear God, she had totally forgotten that Vito had heard Pietro referring to her holding hands and weeping over Josh that day. There had been so much else happening, it had completely slipped her mind. She looked at Vito, rigid, brooding and unbelievably tense, not exactly the last of the liberated husbands in her own opinion. And here he was, giving her carte blanche to… dear heaven, how dared he?
'I haven't the slightest intention of becoming involved with Josh,' she snapped out. 'Unlike you, I don't flit like a butterfly from one person to another.'
'I didn't flit to Carina's arms,' Vito bit out with lancing bitterness. 'I fell into them in a drunken, mindless stupor!'
