by Abby Green
Cara recoiled, her eyes huge. ‘No. I didn’t know what Cormac was planning—that is not until last week, I swear. I liked your sister…’
Pain gripped Cara again at how she’d failed to help—and yet she hadn’t had enough time. Vicenzo advanced towards the bed and she recoiled back even further. He said something rude in Italian—undoubtedly a curse.
‘Of course you liked my sister, Miss Brosnan. She represented your easy ride to a future where you would never have to worry about money again.’ He clicked his fingers, making Cara flinch. ‘All your brother’s debts gone, in an instant.’
When he called her Miss Brosnan she felt her heart shrivel a little inside her. It cast a slur on the passion they’d shared in this very room. She could see it now: his resemblance to Allegra. She’d noticed it last night, but of course she had had no frame of reference for it.
Cara found some strength under the laser-like gaze and scooted up in the bed, kneeling, holding the sheet around her with both hands. She still had to make sense of all of this. Her head hurt with so many questions.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll help you, shall I?’
Cara gulped. He looked positively intimidating, a muscle beating in his tight jaw, glaring down at her. A million miles from the man who had become her first lover.
‘As soon as your brother realised that Allegra was heiress to a substantial part of the Valentini fortune he pursued her with nothing more in mind than to rape her for her wealth.’
Cara flinched at his words but he went on.
‘He introduced her to drugs to make her more malleable, make her dependent on him totally. And all the while he was doing this he was keeping me busy at home with a bogus takeover bid, ensuring I wouldn’t check up on her.’ Vicenzo laughed harshly. ‘After all, she was here working—a grown woman, as she kept reassuring me, well able to take care of herself. Why should I be worried about her?’
Cara felt sick. She’d witnessed her brother’s actions. What Vicenzo said now didn’t surprise her, but she’d had no idea how influential Cormac had been over Allegra. She’d only ever seen Allegra come and go, stay the night a few times. She’d seemed sweet, perfectly happy. It had only been when he’d revealed his plans that she’d begun to see Allegra as a potential victim. And that revelation had come far too late.
Cara swallowed painfully. ‘If you knew this—’
‘That’s the problem.’ His voice was unbearably harsh, the lines in his face tightly drawn. ‘I didn’t know. Until we figured out that Brosnan’s bid was bogus. Immediately I suspected he was up to something more, and I also realised that he was the new boyfriend Allegra had been so cagey about. I put an investigative secret security detail on her and your brother.’
‘That’s how you knew me,’ Cara breathed, new shock flooding her system.
He didn’t answer. Just continued ruthlessly. ‘Your brother had quite a taste for trust fund girlfriends, but he was in dire straits and desperate when he met Allegra. Unfortunately by the time I found all this out and got to London…it was too late.’
The bleak, haunted tone in his voice reached out to Cara, hitting her heart directly. But before she could say anything in her defence he was rounding on her.
‘And you…’ His eyes flicked up and down, taking in her half-covered body, derision and disgust in his eyes. ‘You and your brother killed my sister. But he’s gone and can’t be held accountable. You, however, walked away from that crash without a scratch.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Isn’t fate serendipitous?’
The true horror of her situation finally spread through Cara. She sank back on her heels, her hands shaking now, unable to stay upright. Vivid images of the crash came back—the awful driving rain, the twisted metal. the smell of petrol and smoke. The dreadful silence after the terrible screeching and tearing had finally stopped.
‘It was an accident,’ she said faintly, her insides in a black knot. Only the other day she had sent a sympathy card to the Valentini offices in London, not having any idea of their address in Sardinia. She’d felt so ineffectual…had wanted to do something—make some kind of contact with Allegra’s family. She’d asked at the hospital but they’d been tight-lipped about what the family were doing, where they were, and Cara had figured that they must have already taken Allegra home. Evidently he hadn’t received the card. Or if he had, she imagined now that it would have added salt to the wound.
He was as cold as ice. Utterly unmoved. ‘It may have been deemed a tragic accident, thanks to the weather, but I’ve no doubt that if you both hadn’t seen fit to use my sister so heinously then she would still be alive today.’
Cara clutched at her chest, her pain indescribable—because his raw words hit home with the precision of an arrow. His grief was tangible. ‘Please—you don’t understand. I played no part in my brother’s life.’ Except as his unpaid slave.
Vicenzo laughed out loud and stepped back. The sound jarred. ‘Oh, really? From the age of sixteen you’ve lived with him in that luxurious penthouse apartment. There’s no record of you attending school or for that matter college in the UK—despite your claim to have obtained a degree. From the age of seventeen you became a regular at his favourite club, and from what I saw last night you learnt how to seduce and beguile at an early age. I have photos of you falling out of that club at four a.m. under the arm of various Z-list celebrities.’
Cara remembered seeing that actress in the queue last night and felt bile rise. ‘Stop it. That’s not how it was.’
But he didn’t stop. He paced, making her feel dizzy. ‘You and your brother were thick as thieves, Miss Brosnan. You hostessed his parties for him—no doubt entertaining his friends along the way.’
The minute he said that the horrible memory of the other night came back to her—what Cormac’s friend had expected of her in repayment of a debt she’d not even known about.
‘Please. Stop,’ she begged weakly. Cara knew she was retreating somewhere inside herself, unable to believe how twisted Vicenzo believed everything to be. How horribly wrong he was.
He finally stopped, and looked at her with an expression so dispassionate it was almost worse than all the words and revelations.
‘The account in your name, which was regularly topped up to the tune of almost a million, damns you the most. Your brother was bankrolling you for being his accomplice. It’s just a pity all that money wasn’t his.’
Cara looked up bleakly, not even surprised that he knew about the account, or the fact that Cormac had been rogue trading, getting further and further into debt. Nothing would surprise her any more. She hadn’t even known about the account until she’d found a bank statement in her name on her brother’s desk in the apartment just weeks ago. She’d naively assumed the money was his earnings. To say she’d been shocked would be an understatement.
Cormac had set it up in her name as her legal guardian, before she’d come of age, he had been using her name to protect himself. It still made her sick to think of how he’d implicated her in such a way. The existence of an account like that in her name had the potential to ruin any chance for a professional future in business, and now Vicenzo Valentini knew about it too. Cara felt as if she were suffocating.
‘I had no access to that account.’ She knew he wouldn’t believe her.
‘Tell me another story. This is so entertaining.’
She was right. She closed her eyes for a long second, wishing futilely that when she opened them again he would be gone, she would be alone. But when she did he was still there. The dark avenging angel. Pain started to solidify in her chest.
‘Why did you sleep with me?’ she said quietly, not looking in his eyes but somewhere down by his feet.
He shocked her by coming close, to rest a hand on the bed, bending down. A hand took her chin and forced her gaze to meet his. She sucked in a breath, his scent washing over her, making her nerves jangle painfully.
Vicenzo steeled his body not to respond, hating the fact th
at through all this Oscar-winning act of injured innocence he still wanted her. He gave thanks now for the will-power he’d exerted last night not to kiss her properly. It had taken all his strength not to plunder those soft pink lips, but at the last moment something had stopped him. It was the fact that he’d wanted to kiss her with a hunger that went beyond anything he’d ever felt with another woman. He couldn’t think about why for the first time in his life he’d realised how intimate it was to kiss a woman on the mouth.
‘I slept with you, dear Cara, because after meeting you—’ his eyes flicked over her ‘—after seeing you in the flesh, I decided that this would be a far more satisfactory way to confront you with the truth. The morning after you believed you’d seduced another millionaire into taking care of you.’
Numbness spread through her, taking the pain to another place.
‘I’m not so stupid as to believe for a second that you won’t pick yourself right up from where we’ve left off and find another sucker—after all, you didn’t waste any time clearing Cormac’s debts, did you? I know all about the little visit you were paid by the Honourable Sebastian Mortimer the night before last, the morning after which your brother’s debts were mysteriously settled.’ His mouth thinned. Self-derision smacked him. He’d been as much in thrall to this woman as the other man, ‘You’re expensive.’
Nausea at his interpretation of something that might have been rape rose, making a cold sweat break out on her brow. Cara’s voice was shaky as she tried to ignore his touch. ‘I didn’t sleep with him, and if you’d bothered to check properly you’d have seen that the debts were paid off before he came to see me.’ She winced inwardly as soon as she said this, knowing how he’d twist it. And he did.
Vicenzo quirked a cynical brow. ‘Well, he was obviously aware of your charms and paid you in advance.’
That was it. Cara ripped his hand down and scrambled back, her limbs not working properly. The burning heat of hatred was starting to spread through her at his monumental scorn. At how he’d so awfully misconstrued the reality of her life with her brother. She felt so raw and flayed and exposed she couldn’t begin to tell him how it had really been. She could only protect herself now with whatever she could.
She backed away from the bed clutching the sheet. It lay between them with its tousled sheets, the smell of their sex an all too mocking reminder of a seduction and consummation that had been two different things for two very different people. The fact that he obviously hadn’t even realised that she’d been a virgin was something Cara gave silent thanks for now. To be vulnerable in front of this man was to invite personal annihilation.
Her legs were like jelly. ‘You have it all figured out so perfectly, Mr Valentini. Perhaps if you’ve finished your crude version of this kangaroo court you’d be so kind as to let me get dressed? Then I can take myself out of your sight.’
Vicenzo’s eyes flashed, and he stood there for a long moment regarding her. Cara bit her lip, tensed her jaw—anything to stop the awful burning emotion from erupting from her chest. The backs of her eyes stung hotly, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before she collapsed. It was all too much to take in.
‘Don’t worry, Miss Brosnan, I wouldn’t come within three feet of touching you again. My only regret is that, unlike my sister, you had no innocence to give away. I’m doing to you exactly what your brother planned on doing to her. It pains me that you won’t feel an ounce of the devastation that she would have felt. Perhaps it’s a blessing that she never got to that point?’
He walked to the door then, and Cara fought not to sag just yet. He turned back one last time, and with a look that seared her all the way through right to her heart, leaving her in no doubt as to his utter disgust of her, he left. Cara heard the outer door open and close.
For a long time she just stood there, numb, staring into the space he’d occupied. And then, as if she’d been lacking oxygen, she sucked in a huge, choking, gasping breath. And with it came a surge of nausea. She made it to the bathroom just in time and retched pathetically into the bowl until there was nothing left but bile. Weak and shaking, she slumped by the toilet, unaware of the tears running down her cheeks.
And then she thought of something. He’d never kissed her. Not on the mouth. Not after that first glancing, fleeting kiss that had made her yearn for more. And he’d avoided her pathetic attempts to kiss him. Cara saw it so clearly now. That obvious bid to avoid what many considered to be an even more intimate act than the ultimate penetration. All that tenderness of feeling had been a mere illusion, her own flight of romantic fancy projected onto the situation. He had taken her with cruel ruthlessness to teach her a lesson. They hadn’t made love, they’d had sex. He’d wanted her to feel like a cheap whore, and she did.
That was what finally got through to her. She hunched over pitifully, unable to keep the awful sobbing back. Somehow realising that was the hardest thing to bear of all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two months later, Dublin
CARA tried to keep the expression of naked pleading off her face. But she was desperate. The middle-aged man across the desk from her took off his spectacles.
‘I’m afraid that you simply don’t have the hands on experience I’m looking for. I think you’ll find that many firms will feel the same.’
Cara knew she was fighting a losing battle, so she picked up the bag at her feet and stood up. She straightened her shoulders and held out a hand.
‘Thank you for taking the time to meet with me, Mr O’Brien, and I appreciate your comments. I would just ask that if any vacancies come up for junior appointments in your firm you’d keep me in mind.’
He shook her hand firmly. ‘Of course I will, my dear. We’ll keep your CV on file.’
Along with hundreds of others, no doubt, thought Cara. It was the same story everywhere. A global recession loomed on the horizon, and everyone was nervous and tightening their belts, letting go of superfluous employees. It was the worst time to be inexperienced and coming home looking for a job. And yet when she walked out into a glorious late-spring day she knew she was glad to be away from London. Away from what had happened there.
Cara crossed the busy road, and when something caught her eye, she cursed her lack of foresight for unconsciously taking the direction she had. She was now faced with the brand-spanking-new restaurant that had just opened on one of the busiest corners of Dublin’s city centre streets. Valentini’s. Just one in the hugely successful chain of distinctively coloured green, white and red restaurants that were dotted all over the world, selling not only a cuisine experience unparallelled but also everything from food and Italian delicacies to homewares. What they offered was a slice of Italian life, a promise of sunshine and a lazier way of living.
The ironic thing was, having had no idea then of who Allegra’s brother was and yet knowing that Allegra was somehow connected to the family, the local Valentini’s coffee shop in London had become a refuge for Cara. She’d spent hours in there in her spare time, studying or reading, making a cappuccino last for as long as possible, relishing her rare solitude. And now here was one in Dublin, mocking her with its gleaming façade. Its robust sheen of success. Its reminder of the owner. Vicenzo Valentini obviously wasn’t suffering the downslide in the global economy. But she had to concede that it was just a cruel coincidence of timing, as no doubt his plans to set up in Dublin would have been made many months before.
She averted her eyes and hurried past, a feeling of nausea mounting. Nausea was all too familiar to her. She’d been throwing up every morning for the past month, feeling worse and worse. Finally, after a visit to the doctor last week, she’d confirmed her worst fear. She was pregnant. On some level Cara knew she was still in shock, unable to take it in. She hadn’t even contemplated what she wanted to do in terms of contacting Vicenzo; that was a stretch too far at the moment.
Blindly she walked down the street, feeling very close to tears all of a sudden. The most important thing right now was to
get a job. As it was she only had enough money to cover the rent in her dingy studio flat for another month, never mind to fund bringing a baby into the world. She fought the panic back and ducked into a newsagents to buy a stack of daily papers, ignoring the dwindling change in her purse.
A short while later Cara got off the bus and trudged to her flat. Halfway there the heavens opened, and in seconds she was soaked to the skin, the fickle Irish weather showing its true colours. A couple ran past her, holding hands and laughing, the woman sheltering under her boyfriend’s coat. Cara felt as though something infinitely precious and delicate had been ripped from her which could never be restored. It was innocence and optimism. For that brief moment before Vicenzo Valentini had dropped his bombshell she’d tasted a sliver of happiness for the first time in years.
Her heart hardened as she pushed her front door open. He had ripped away her fragile, nebulous hopes and dreams, and she hated him with an intensity that scared her.
In her bathroom she stepped out of her wet clothes as exhaustion snaked through her body. She left them where they lay and pulled on an old robe. She caught her reflection in the mirror and stopped dead. She looked gaunt. The freckles stood out harshly against her pale skin. Her face looked too long, the cheekbones too stark. Her mouth was pursed. Her eyes looked shadowed, haunted. And her hair hung in rats’tails over her shoulders, its normal red vibrancy dulled.
Her hands went to her belly. She looked down, tears blurring her eyes before she could stop them. After Cormac had died Cara had foolishly thought she’d be free to start over—free to live her own life. And yet fate had stepped in and slapped her across the face. She looked back up and wiped her tears away, blew her nose on some toilet paper. She had to eat. Had to take care of herself. Had to find a job. Had to somehow support herself and this child. It still stunned her, the immediate all-consuming love and protection she’d felt for this little being as soon as she’d found out, despite the circumstances of its conception. There was a deeper emotion attached to that too, but Cara didn’t want to analyse it. She went and heated up some of the homemade soup left over from the day before. When she sat down she noticed the letter lying on the table beside her—a letter she’d opened that morning. Panic threatened to come back, robbing her of her appetite. She couldn’t deal with it now. She could only deal with one thing at a time, and that letter was a step too far. But the threat that lay starkly on the white paper made her tremble inwardly. She forced herself to eat, not to think of it, and then she set about going through the newspapers methodically. She circled any job vacancies and listed them in order, so that tomorrow once again she could start the rounds of calls and CV-drops to companies.
