by Kate Walker
She had let herself dream that Vito had meant it when he had said, ‘I came for you.’ She’d even allowed herself to be seduced, enticed by the flattering declaration that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind and so he wanted—needed—to spend more time with her. The lying, cheating declaration that had just been deliberately aimed at one thing and one thing only—getting her back into his bed.
And the two-faced bastard was getting married!
‘You…!’ she began but the fierce, burning-eyed glare that Vito flung in her direction silenced her in a split-second and he turned his attention back to the stunned-looking estate agent.
‘Well?’
‘Well—yes, I’m sure that Mrs Hastings will agree. She’s looking for a quick sale and this must be one of the quickest on record. But—er—don’t you think that perhaps you should be asking someone else before you make the final decision? Wouldn’t your fiancée like to have a say in this? Wouldn’t it be better if you let her see the place first?’
‘She’s already seen it,’ Vito stated calmly, startling Emily so much that the glass of water jerked in her hand, spilling some of the liquid over the sides.
‘She loves the house. But if you’d like me to make sure, I will. Emily…’
For the first time since he had come to sit down he turned towards her fully, angling his long body so that he was facing her, looking into her stunned and bewildered eyes.
‘Would you like to continue to live here?’
Now what was he doing? Was he deliberately setting out to twist the knife that he had so brutally stabbed into her already wounded heart? Not content with announcing that he was getting married and that he wanted to buy the house—her home—for himself and his fiancée, now he had the cruel nerve to ask…
‘Don’t do this to me! How can you even ask me such a question? You know I would but…’
‘Molto bene.’
Vito actually reached out and patted her hand before turning back to where Joe McKenzie was sitting in stunned silence, watching the interplay between them.
‘You see, there is no problem, none at all. My fiancée loves the house as much as I do and she wants to live here too.’
‘What?’
Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her brain was totally scrambled and none of this made any sense.
‘Vito, what are you—why are you saying that?’
What was he saying? In her confusion, she almost thought that he had told Joe that she was his fiancée, but surely that couldn’t possibly be right?
‘I know, tesoro…’
Vito’s calm, soothing tone made her blink in disbelief, and the gentle, understanding smile he sent her way only piled more confusion on top of disbelief.
‘I know we said that we would keep our coming marriage secret for a time but when you want this house so much and Signor McKenzie is in a position to arrange the deal for us, I knew you wouldn’t mind.’
‘But…’ Emily spluttered but Vito swept on, ignoring her attempt to protest.
‘So I can leave that with you, signor?’
He was standing up, shaking hands with Joe, ushering him towards the door, and Emily could only watch them go, fake a smile and try to get her mind back into focus.
She couldn’t start an argument now, not when Joe was clearly already intrigued enough. It was obvious that he was as keen as could be to get out and report back to Ruth. He had much more of a story than he had ever dreamed he’d have to tell. So she wasn’t going to risk saying anything more in front of him. Ruth would just love to think that the supposed engagement was already in trouble—maybe even over before it had started. That thought gagged her as successfully as if Vito had actually bound a cloth right over her mouth.
So she couldn’t say anything now. But she only had to wait a few minutes and then she was going to give the arrogant, domineering, interfering Vito Corsentino several pieces of her mind!
He was coming back, strolling into the room with that devastatingly sexy prowl he had, and he was looking totally smug—well, she was going to enjoy wiping that self-satisfied expression from his handsome face.
Realising that she was still clutching the glass of water, holding it as if it were a weapon, she set it down carefully on the coffee-table. Otherwise, the temptation to throw the glass or at least its contents right in Vito’s face might just prove too much for her. Then she stood up—she needed to be able to look him right in the face for this—and waited until he was close enough for her to see the gleam of satisfaction deep in those dark eyes.
But not for long.
‘So what the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
That got his attention. He blinked hard, just once, and to her delight she saw the glint of amusement leave his gaze. Instead, the look he turned on her was pure, wicked innocence, so guileless and open that she almost felt she could imagine him in a choirboy’s cassock and ruff.
But she also knew that the look was a total fake, carefully assumed just for her benefit.
‘Playing, carissima?’ he questioned. ‘I don’t believe I know what you mean. There is no game.’
‘Oh, come off it! Don’t try and use the “I am but a poor, simple Italian—I do not understand your language” card!’ Emily scoffed. ‘You speak English almost as well as I do and you know very well what I mean.’
The smile lingered but something had changed in his eyes. The light faded fast, leaving them bleak and cold in a way that drained all the warmth from his smile, made it hard and distant, sending a sensation of something nasty and uncomfortable sliding down her spine.
‘I understand the English,’ he stated, clipped and crisp, even the lyrical accent almost totally erased, ‘but I do not see the reason for it.’
‘You don’t think that I might object to you moving in and taking over my life, dictating what is going to happen and when?’
‘And when did I do that?’
‘When?’
Emily threw up her hands in exasperation, sparing a moment to be grateful for the fact that she no longer held the water glass. The contents would have gone everywhere if she did.
‘Do you have to ask? Just here, just now—you barged in and…’
‘I bought you a house.’
Did Vito really not understand what she was trying to say or did he not comprehend the reasons why she objected? It had to be one or the other that had turned those stunning features into the taut, intimidating mask that made her feel as if every word she said had slammed hard against a brutal iron barrier, making it impossible to reach him.
‘And this is a problem—why?’
‘You didn’t just buy me a house!’ Emily exclaimed, knowing that as she spoke the words she could understand something of his hostility.
Declared out loud like this, it sounded impossibly petty and ungrateful to be throwing his gift back in his face. But the problem was that it was not just the gift—it was everything else that came with it.
‘You set out to take over my life—buying this house for me when I didn’t ask you to, dictating everything I should do…telling Joe we’re engaged, for God’s sake…You must know that he’ll go and tell Ruth everything you said just now. And then when it all turns out to be a pretence—’
‘But it will not.’
‘Of course it will—it has to…we’re not getting married!’
‘Oh, but we are.’
If it had been said with any sort of bravado, or a touch of anger, or even the tiniest hint of triumph then Emily would never have believed Vito’s answer. But the reality was that it was stated in such a calm, flat, matter-of-fact way that it hit home like a bullet to her heart, leaving her staring with shocked, unfocused eyes, gasping for breath as she struggled to accept what she had heard.
‘Don’t be crazy, Vito,’ she managed in a voice that had no strength to it at all. ‘And please stop playing games. Give me one good reason why we’re likely to get married when we don’t even like, let alone love e
ach other.’
Those broad shoulders under the pale blue shirt shrugged off her comment with insulting carelessness.
‘Love doesn’t come into this,’ he stated coldly, taking several steps forward until he was standing directly opposite her, looking down into her indignant, hostile face. ‘We don’t come into it—except as the ones who have to take responsibility for our actions.’
And then, of course she knew where he was going with this. She’d known it from the start, just hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself. He was going to say that they must marry for the baby and only for the baby.
And she knew that she couldn’t bear to let that happen. She didn’t dare to ask herself why it must not happen. She only knew that it couldn’t.
Desperation clawed at her thoughts, ripping through the thick fog that clouded them, letting in a tiny speck of light, showing her a path she could take.
Of course. She should have thought of that sooner. It should have been so obvious, so undeniable. But just the idea of Vito claiming her as his fiancée had fused so many circuits in her brain that she hadn’t been able to see what was right before her face.
She snatched at the answer in the way that a drowning man would grab at any piece of flotsam that drifted by. It was a way out and she had to take it even though the sudden bitter wrench of her heart as she formed the words in her mind almost made her hesitate, almost drained all her courage from her.
‘Vito, don’t do this! You know it isn’t going to work—that it’s totally impossible. Even if I wanted to marry you—what good would it do? You know very well that you couldn’t possibly afford this house.’
She knew her point had struck home when she saw his face change again. Even the cold light that had been in his eyes died, and his mouth clamped into a thin, hard line.
‘And that matters to you, does it?’
‘It matters because you’ve just told the estate agent that you’ll buy this house—and pay him his commission. He might have swallowed your story and gone away dreaming of the fastest sale he’s ever had in his life, the easiest income he’s ever earned, but you forget I’ve seen your flat and the way you live. You don’t have a hope of buying a place like this.’
What had she said now, to change his expression yet again? What had she said that brought a hint of a smile back to his mouth, but a smile that was made from pure ice, no trace of warmth in it at all?
‘You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you, mia angela? But I’m afraid that I’m going to have to disillusion you. You see, you have it all wrong. You saw the way I was living and naturally you assumed that it was the way I always lived—but that is not so.’
That worrying smile grew, became cruel, hateful. It was the smile that might have been on the face of a hunting cat just before it leapt to tear its small, frightened prey into tiny pieces.
‘No?’
It was just a voiceless croak. Try as she might, she couldn’t make a sound; her throat was too parched, her lips painfully dry. Nervously Emily slicked her tongue over them to ease the discomfort and tried again.
‘No?’
This time it worked. But she wished that she hadn’t spoken when she saw the cold burn of his eyes, the faint flare of something that made her shiver in apprehension.
‘No, tesoro,’ he murmured, lacing the words with deadly softness. ‘No, it’s not the truth at all. Al contrario—the reality is that if I wanted I could buy this house—and you—a hundred times over.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE’D known that the truth had to come out some time, Vito admitted to himself. There was no way that Emily could continue to believe that the small flat he’d been living in when they had met was really the way he lived—the only lifestyle he knew. But if he was honest then he would have preferred it not to have been like this.
The timing was really not the best. Just when he had thought that things were going the way he wanted them, the realisation that the Vito Corsentino she had met five months before was not the real Vito Corsentino had caused Emily to slam the brakes on hard. But he did at least owe her an explanation.
‘Perhaps we should sit down,’ he said, gesturing towards the settee.
‘Why—will I need to?’ Emily enquired tartly, making him draw in his breath in an exasperated hiss and rake both hands forcefully through his hair. She was as prickly as a hedgehog, determined not to yield an inch.
‘I just thought you’d prefer to be comfortable. You need to take care of yourself.’
The glare she flung at him said without words she had been looking after herself for five months, without him! But surprisingly she conceded to do as he said—though he noticed that she chose one of the big armchairs and not the settee so that he couldn’t go and sit beside her.
But sitting opposite, on the arm of the other armchair, he could see right into her face, watch every expression that slid across her features, hope to read what was going through her mind.
‘I was taking time out when we met.’
Those blue eyes slanted him a distinctly suspicious look. One that said he was going to have to work hard at this if he was going to convince her.
‘Time out from what?’
‘From the business that Guido—my brother—and I run.’
‘Guido—the man who came to Amber’s wedding?’
‘Yes.’
It was as Vito nodded in response to the wary question that he remembered what his brother had told him about his meeting with Emily at that wedding. She had fainted, Guido had said. Collapsed so badly that she had fallen onto the floor from the pew in which she’d been sitting. And then later, at the hotel where the reception should have been held, she’d accosted him, calling by his brother’s name. Calling him Vito. He’d known she was lying when she’d claimed she hadn’t thought about him once in the five months they’d been apart, but still the recollection of what Guido had told him about her reaction made him pause to consider.
‘So what is this business? It’s big, I presume?’
He saw her eyes flick towards the window and knew she was thinking about the sleek, expensive car parked outside the house.
‘Big enough. Guido and I built up Corsentino Marine from nothing. Years ago, when we first started out on trying to rebuild the company’s fortunes, Guido and I made a promise to each other. We were working twenty-four hours every day that God sent. We never had holidays, never had days off. So we swore an oath—if we succeeded as we dreamed, before we were thirty, then for both of us our thirtieth year would be free—to do with as we pleased. To stop being Corsentino of Corsentino Marine—and, later, Corsentino Leisure—and just be ourselves—Guido and Vito. Living where we wanted and doing what we wanted while the other one ran the business on his own.’
Those blue eyes that were fixed on him had widened. This was not what she expected; it was written all over her pretty face.
‘You could afford to do that?’
‘We could both afford never to work again if we wanted. Guido’s a year older than I am so he had his break year first. He went to America; spent a year there as a photographer.’
And had come home with a broken heart, he recalled, allowing himself a small, secret smile at the way that Guido’s life had worked out since.
‘That was when he met your friend Amber. The first time. Before he appeared at her wedding last week.’
‘She’s not exactly a friend of mine. The man she was supposed to have married, Rafe St Clair, was a friend of Ma—of my husband.’
Something about the way she said the other man’s name caught on Vito’s nerves.
‘You didn’t like him? St Clair, I mean?’
‘I didn’t trust him. And to be honest—no, wait a minute, you’re trying to distract me from the fact that you lied to me.’
‘Not lied. Be honest, you didn’t exactly ask any questions. Neither did I.’
His tone darkened as he remembered the way he felt when he had realised that he should have asked those questi
ons. He could still taste the bitterness that disillusionment had left in his mouth. And by the way that hot colour washed Emily’s cheeks, she was thinking much the same thoughts.
‘So your brother spent his year being a photographer. And I take it that this year it was your turn and you wanted to spend some time in England? What did you want to do?’
‘Carving.’
‘Carving? You mean in wood?’
‘Exactly. My family were boat builders by trade. In the past they would have got their hands dirty—done the job themselves. I expect that the love of wood and making things in it was passed down to me from my ancestors. That was why I had the flat by the shore. I would collect driftwood and see what it said to me. See what shape or animal was inside it.’
‘Those wooden creatures in your flat—they were your work?’
‘They were.’
‘But they were wonderful—beautiful.’
‘Grazie.’
Did she know what it did to her face when it lit up that way in enthusiasm? The way that her eyes seemed to glow, and a wash of colour flooded her cheeks? The curve of her mouth begged for his kisses and that smile could have brightened the darkest night.
The hard, hot kick of sexual hunger that hit at him made him wince inwardly. And yet somehow this time it was so very different. He had come here today to get that physical need out of his system, but he’d been stopped dead in his tracks by the realisation that Emily was pregnant. There was no way now that he was going to be able to sate himself on her and walk away. So what did he put in its place?
Marriage seemed the obvious answer. With a baby on the way, the only answer. So what the hell was she doing being so damn stubborn about the idea?
Unless she had good reason not to marry him.
What if the baby wasn’t his after all? He’d believed her—but women lied about these things. Loretta was proof of that.
‘So now that you know the truth about me—does that make things easier for you?’
