She didn’t move, only folded her arms, which plumped her breasts. “I don’t know how they do things in Italy, but this is Canada. We have laws against wrongful dismissal.”
He left the door closed, frustration morphing into fury. A desire to crush. He’d never met anyone who had lit his fuse as quickly or made it burn so hot. White and blistering. But he kept his tone icy cold.
“Italy has laws against theft. Most go to jail for it. Some, apparently, escape to Canada before they’re convicted. Perhaps I should take that up with your government.”
Her breath sucked in and her pulse throbbed rapidly in her throat. Her eyes were hot and bright. Tears? Ha.
“You’re being paid back,” she said through clenched teeth. “That can’t happen if I don’t have a job, can it?”
“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t make sense for me to give you money so you could give it back to me, would it? No gain in that for me.”
“What do you mean, ‘even if it were true’?” She dropped her fists to her sides.
“Let’s pretend such a thing as compensation is even possible, since the design of my self-driving car had potential to earn indefinitely, but I’ve never seen a red cent from anyone, so—”
“Where has it been going, then?”
The sharpness of her tone sent a narrow sliver of doubt through him, thin as a fiber of glass, but sharp enough to sting because he almost fell for her outrage. He very nearly wanted to believe her, his body was that primed for her on a physical level.
But that was a Fagan for you. They could make you believe anything.
He shook off his moment of hesitation with a snap of his head. Trust led to treachery. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, trust her.
“Don’t pretend your father has made any effort to compensate me. He hasn’t. He can’t.”
That took her aback. Her complexion faded to gray, sending a brief shadow of concern through him.
“Of course he can’t.” Her brows pulled into a distressed knot. “He’s dead.”
She looked from one of his eyes to the other, expression twisted in confusion, as if she thought he ought to know that.
He didn’t keep tabs on a man who had cost him a fortune and set his family back, leaving him at his most vulnerable. Dante was so furious at her temerity, at her attempt to work another con on him, and with himself for being momentarily drawn by her, he let one vicious word escape.
“Good.”
It was far below him. He knew it even before her lips went white. Her mouth pulled at the corners as she tried to hold on to her composure, but those wide, far from plain Jane eyes of hers grew so dark and wounded, he couldn’t look into them.
“You’ve done me a favor,” she said with a creak in her voice. “I’d rather starve than work for someone who could say something like that.”
She moved to open the door, but his hand was still on the latch. Her body heat mingled with his own, charging the air. The scent of fresh mountain air and wildflowers filled his brain, making him drunk.
“Let me out.”
He saw the words form on her pink lips more than heard them. They rang in his head in a fading echo. He didn’t want to. The encounter had become so intense, so fast, he was reeling, not sure if he’d won or lost. Either way, it didn’t feel over.
Cold fingertips touched the back of his hand. Her elbow caught him in the ribs before she pushed down and pulled the door open, head ducked. Her body almost touched his. He thought he heard a sniff, then he was staring at her ass—which was even more spectacular than he’d imagined.
She escaped.
He slammed the door closed behind her, trying to also slam the door on his impossible desire for her. On the entire scene.
There was no reason he should feel guilty. The wrong her father had done him had been malicious and far-reaching. Dante had foolishly dropped the charges in exchange for an admission of guilt and a promise of compensation, letting the man escape because, at the time, his life had been imploding. His grandfather’s sudden death had meant Dante had to set aside his own pursuits and take over the complex family business. Its interests ran from vineyards to hotels to exports and shipping.
All of that had been put in jeopardy by the loss of the seed capital his grandfather had allowed him to risk on his self-driving car dream. The consequence of trusting wrongly had been a decade of struggle to find an even keel and come back to the top—yet another reason he wanted to give his grandmother some attention. He had neglected her while he worked to regain everything she and her husband had built.
Cami Fagan ought to be grateful all he had done was refuse to hire her.
Nevertheless, that broken expression of hers lingered in his mind’s eye. Which annoyed him.
Someone knocked.
He snarled that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then flicked the lock on the door.
* * *
Cami was shaking so hard, she could barely walk. She could barely breathe. Each pant came in as a hiss through her nose and released in a jagged choke.
Get away was the imperative screaming through her, but she could hardly see, she was so blinded by tears of grief and outrage. Good? Good? Had he really said that? What a bastard!
She was so wrapped up in her anguish, she almost missed the faint voice as she charged past an old woman sitting on a bench, half a block from the Tabor’s entrance.
“Pi fauri.”
Despite drowning in emotion, Cami stopped. She and her brother always stopped, whether it was a roadside accident or a panhandler needing a sandwich.
Swiping at her wet cheeks, she raked herself together. “Yes? What’s wrong?”
“Ajutu, pi fauri.”
Cami had a few words in a dozen languages, all the better to work with the sort of international clientele who visited destinations like Whistler. In her former life, she’d even spent time with Germans and Italians, picking up conversational words, not that she’d used much beyond the very basics in recent years.
Regardless, help was fairly universal, and the old woman’s weakly raised hand was self-explanatory.
“I’m sorry, do you speak English? Qu’est-ce que c’est?” No, that was French and the woman sounded Italian, maybe? “Che cos’ è?”
The woman rattled out some breathless mumbles, but Cami caught one word she thought she understood. Malatu. Sick. Ill.
She seated herself next to the woman, noting the senior was pressing a hand to her chest, struggling to speak.
“I’m calling an ambulance. We’ll get you to the hospital,” Cami told her, quickly pulling out her mobile. “Ambulanza. Ospedale.” One didn’t race with champions down the Alps without hearing those words a few times.
She could have gone back into the Tabor and asked Karen to call, but she had her first-aid certificate, and this was exactly the type of thing she’d been doing since her first housekeeping position at a motel. The woman was conscious, if frightened and very pale. Cami took her pulse and tried to keep her calm as she relayed as much information as she could to the dispatcher. With the woman’s permission, she was able to check her purse and provide the woman’s name along with some medication she was taking.
“Do you have family traveling with you? Can I leave a message at your hotel?”
Bernadetta Ferrante pointed toward the Tabor, which sent a little shiver of premonition through Cami, but what were the chances? Dante Gallo seemed to be traveling with an entourage. Bernadetta could be related to anyone in there.
She asked a passerby to run into the hotel to find Bernadetta’s companion, then pointed into the sky as she heard the siren. “Ambulanza,” she said again. “It will be here soon.”
Bernadetta nodded and smiled weakly, fragile fingers curling around Cami’s.
“What the hell have you done?” The male voice was so hard and fierce, it made both of them jump.
Cami briefly closed her eyes. Of course it was him. What were the chances of two head-on collisions in a row?
&n
bsp; Bernadetta put up a hand, expression anxious.
Dante said, “Non tu, Noni,” in a much gentler tone, before he returned to the gruff tone and said, “I’m speaking to her.”
The ambulance arrived at that moment. Cami hovered long enough to ensure she wasn’t needed to give a statement, then slipped away. Bernadetta was already looking better, eyes growing less distressed as she breathed more easily beneath an oxygen mask, while Dante left to fetch his car and follow to the hospital.
Cami trudged through the spitting spring rain to the next bus stop, only wanting distance from that infernal man. At least the crisis had pulled her out of her tailspin. Tears never fixed anything. She had learned that a long time ago. What she needed was a new plan. While she waited for the bus, she texted her brother.
My job fell through. Can I sleep on your couch?
Copyright © 2018 by Dani Collins
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CONSEQUENCE OF HIS REVENGE
by Dani Collins,
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ISBN-13: 978-1-488-09905-2
Subtle Revenge
First published in 1983
This edition published in 2018
Copyright © 1983 by Carole Mortimer.
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