by Abby Green
An hour later she opened the last paper—a broadsheet. She didn’t expect to find anything much, so she turned the pages half-heartedly and held back a yawn. Her lower back twinged and she longed for bed. But then she jerked upright, as if adrenalin had just been injected into her veins. Her heart reacted first, its beats accelerating out of control as she looked down at a picture of Vicenzo Valentini, standing with another man. She couldn’t look away from him, her eyes avidly taking in those strong, harsh features softened in a rare smile which made him look more gorgeous than was humanly possible. The black and white of the image only highlighted his stark masculine beauty. That chiselled jaw.
He looked happy. He looked satisfied. He looked unconcerned.
Her hand went unconsciously to her still-flat belly. What right did he have to look so happy? While she sat here in near poverty, pregnant with his child, after he had decided to play God with her life? She closed her eyes, misery swamping her. Even now the knowledge of her brother’s methods appalled her—how far he would have gone and how duped Allegra had been. Because, as Cara well knew, the only person her brother had ever loved was himself.
She looked again at Vicenzo Valentini’s smiling face. The impeccable tuxedo and urbane surface just made his deception even worse. All the humiliated hurt and pain she felt from his premeditated revenge surged up through her, as strong as if it had happened yesterday. It had all been an act, a sham. His desire for her had never been what she had thought and believed. Had he really desired her at all?
He was due to appear at a function in Dublin the very next night, to celebrate the launch of his new restaurant. Cara might have imagined that he’d done this on purpose, just to send her another warning, but she knew that was irrational. It was just an unbelievably cruel coincidence.
She read the article again—more slowly this time. At the function he was due to announce a merger with a well-known Irish-based entrepreneur, Caleb Cameron, which would see Valentini’s homewares business franchised out to exclusive department stores around the country.
With Vicenzo Valentini so close it was as if he was taunting her all over again. She knew she had to do something while he was so close; had to make him see that he couldn’t ride roughshod over someone’s life—her life. He was responsible for the life growing in her belly, and something deeply visceral was urging her to consider confronting him.
Vicenzo Valentini stifled the urge to rip the bow-tie from his throat, fling it to the ground, open his top button and walk as fast as he could out of the packed ballroom and far, far away. Back to his island, Sardinia, where it would be quiet and the sky would be so filled to the brim with stars that he always fancied he could just reach out a hand and pluck one from the inky depths.
What was wrong with him? He felt disgruntled, irritable. Hadn’t been feeling right for weeks now. Two months, to be exact—wasn’t that right? He froze, immediately rejecting that thought and the accompanying vivid images that came with it. His face darkened to a glower, making the person who had been approaching him turn and walk away. Pain hit him squarely in the solar plexus, along with a surge of guilt that he did not want to acknowledge. Two months ago he’d started the healing process, started avenging his sister’s untimely death. So, if that was the case, why did he feel anything but on the path to being healed?
He forced his mind away from uncomfortable thoughts as he saw his good friend Caleb Cameron come towards him in the crowd with his petite wife Maggie. Her long red curly hair gave Vicenzo an uncomfortable jolt, even though it wasn’t even the same colour as—He ruthlessly quashed the direction of his thoughts, disgusted with himself.
The two men greeted each other heartily, both strikingly handsome and effortlessly attracting lots of attention.
Caleb said mockingly, ‘Finally. I thought we’d never persuade you to set up shop here.’
Vicenzo ignored his friend’s easy teasing and bent down to kiss Maggie on both cheeks. She was heavily pregnant with their second child.
She turned and rebuked her husband gently, before taking Vicenzo’s hand in both of hers and saying sympathetically, ‘It’s been too long, and we were so sorry we couldn’t get to Allegra’s funeral. It must have been heartbreaking for you and Silvio.’
Touched by the genuine emotion, Vicenzo felt something tighten in his chest as he witnessed their easy warmth and intimacy. Caleb was unbelievably doting and protective of his wife, and had been for as long as Vicenzo had known them—just after they’d got married, when he’d done a business deal with Cameron, some two years previously. Seeing them together, while always a pleasant experience, invariably had a slightly claustrophobic effect on Vicenzo. He didn’t doubt for a second that Cameron was blissfully happy, but Vicenzo knew that the domestic life could never be for him. No woman would occupy that space in his life. He had vowed a long time ago to not be like his father and give himself to a woman who might one day have the power to devastate her family. It irritated him intensely to be thinking of that again…for the second time in as many months.
Caleb tucked Maggie into his side and put a proprietorial hand on her huge belly. Vicenzo saw her roll her eyes at him, as if they were sharing a joke, and the tight feeling intensified in his chest. He forced a smile, focusing gratefully on Caleb’s conversation.
A few minutes later Maggie drew their attention to the arrival of a mutual acquaintance. Vicenzo looked back, and in the distance by the doors he caught a flash of dark red hair, pale skin. The sound in the room faded. His skin prickled. It couldn’t be. And yet could it? Hadn’t he been acutely aware of where he was ever since he’d got off the plane just an hour before? Hadn’t seeing Maggie just now made him think of her? His heart thudded against his chest.
Cara stood outside the ballroom in the exclusive city centre hotel for a long moment. Nerves rendered her temporarily immobile. People jostled past her, looked at her curiously, but she wasn’t aware. She had to hold onto that sense of injustice, the rage that beat in her breast, or she’d fail and leave and Vicenzo Valentini would never know the consequences of his actions. Because she certainly didn’t have the resources to chase him back to Italy.
She took a deep breath and reassured herself that once the deed was done she could get out of there, go home, and feel at least a little vindicated. She pushed through the door, wincing at the noise and the crush of bodies. She hadn’t bothered to dress up, having thrown away the dress she’d worn that night in London. She was dressed in jeans and a plain T-shirt under a light jacket, with no make-up and her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
She saw him almost immediately. His back was to her but she’d know him anywhere. Her own body, traitor that it was, seemed to throb in response. Her blood felt heavy in her veins and her heart started thumping even as she tried to negate the effect. But that tall, powerful physique was so intimately familiar—the arrogant tilt to his head, the black hair cut short, close to his skull. The straight spine. She had traced that bare spine with her fingers as she’d arched underneath him. She could remember the salty taste of his skin, the way he’d filled her so completely that—
Cara stumbled. How could she get through this?
Among the people he stood with was the other man from the photograph, as intimidatingly gorgeous asVicenzo and undoubtedly as rich. This was a rareified world. She quashed the flutter of fear that told her to turn and run and pushed forward, every step bringing her closer and closer to Vicenzo Valentini.
Vicenzo felt a prickling at the back of his neck. A hint of danger the moment before the snake strikes. He stifled the urge to turn, telling himself he was being ridiculous. But then Caleb halted mid-sentence, Maggie looked to Vicenzo’s right, and an evocative scent teased his nostrils. It was clean and had the unmistakable tang of musky rose. It was very distinctive and very recent in his memory banks. Already his body was responding violently, in a way he hadn’t felt in…weeks. The shocking realisation hit him hard.
With the strangest feeling in his chest he turne
d his head, and there stood Cara Brosnan, staring straight up at him with those huge hazel-flecked green eyes. Her lashes stood out lush and black against the paleness of her skin. Not an ounce of make-up. Time seemed to stand still for a long moment as they stared at each other. His body’s response ratcheted up about a thousand notches.
He heard Maggie ask curiously, ‘Do you know this woman?’
Everything slammed back into Vicenzo—everything this woman had been responsible for. He reacted from a place of deep shock and something that felt suspiciously like guilt. His instinct was to lash out. He denied the response she was evoking with every fibre of his being and drawled easily, ‘No, I don’t believe I do.’ And then he turned away from her and back to Caleb and Maggie, who were looking from him to Cara with undisguised interest.
Vicenzo wasn’t in the habit of not being able to face unpalatable truths. He never shied away from confrontation. And yet right here, right now, for the first time in his life he was reacting with such force to an emotion he didn’t want to explore that he was effectively sticking his head in the sand. The utter ignominy of this made him even angrier.
Cara blinked stupidly for a few seconds. She simply could not believe that he had done that. Denied her very existence. Rage boiled upwards and she started to shake uncontrollably. She’d had all sorts of plans for coming in here and being cool, calm and articulate—but now she knew that was out of the window.
She was barely aware of the other couple standing there as she marched purposefully round to stand right in front of Vicenzo. The look in Vicenzo’s eyes was explicit. It said Don’t even dare. Well, she did. She had to.
Her voice shook but she was beyond caring. ‘How dare you pretend not to know me?’
‘Brosnan!’ Vicenzo’s voice was like the crack of a whip, stinging her skin.
Cara smiled triumphantly, even as every part of her shook so badly she didn’t know how she remained standing. ‘If you don’t know me, then how do you know my name?’
A pulse beat hectically at Vicenzo’s temple. Cara knew she only had the element of surprise for another few seconds at the most. She turned to face the other couple, barely taking them in even as she thought, This man is a colleague of Vicenzo’s. If she could damage his reputation, even just a bit…
A hush had fallen in the crowd around them. ‘Did you know that two months ago your friend here was in London with me?’ Cara pointed a shaking finger at her chest.
She took a deep breath. ‘He deliberately set out to—’
Her words were cut off as pain lanced her upper arm. She realised that Vicenzo had gripped it and was forcibly moving her away and through the crowd, propelling her easily, as if she weighed little more than a feather.
She opened her mouth, and as if reading her mind his head turned. Fierce eyes glared at her. ‘Not another word, Brosnan.’
The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and suddenly they were through the main door of the ballroom, held back by an open-mouthed waiter. Before she knew it Vicenzo had marched her over to a secluded corner in the lobby and brought her to a stumbling halt in front of him. Cara was breathing harshly, and immediately brought a hand to her arm, rubbing it distractedly. The fact that his eyes dropped there for a moment and his cheeks flushed was no comfort.
‘You didn’t have to manhandle me out of there like a two-year-old.’
One brow shot up, and Cara quailed slightly. She’d never seen him look so furious. And how was it that she could be so aware of his devastating appeal in the traditional tuxedo? If anything, he was even more handsome than she remembered, and it skewered her like a knife to be so aware of him after his contemptible treatment of her.
‘Oh, no? And what would you have had me do? Let you blurt out the sordid truth? That you were responsible for—’
‘Stop it!’ Cara hissed desperately, suddenly overwhelmed at facing him at such close proximity. Where he’d held her burned like a brand.
He stood tall, crossing his arms. He was huge and forbidding. ‘What are you doing here, Miss Brosnan?’
‘What are you doing here?’ she counter-attacked, trying to buy time, knowing full well the reason why he was there. Her anger was fast dissolving into a mass of churning confusing emotions now she was faced with him.
‘I have business here. Not that it’s any concern of yours.’
Cara took in a shaky breath and looked away for a second. She was here now. She had to do this. This was what she had come for. He had to know what he had done.
She looked up at him and forced herself to stand tall. ‘Well, I have business here too. With you.’
Vicenzo stepped close to her and watched her reaction. Her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed rose. Her scent teased his nostrils again, and yet she obviously hadn’t come to beguile. In fact he was surprised she hadn’t been stopped at the door, she was so casually dressed. It took a will greater than he possessed not to let his eyes drop down her body, taking in the high swells of her breasts. He had a vivid memory of cupping one breast, of how it had fitted into his palm perfectly and how the tight tip had felt under his thumb. And the taste of it. How it had firmed and puckered even more under his tongue.
In an instant he was rewarded with a raging throbbing erection in his trousers, and the unwelcome reminder that not one woman since had turned his head or fired his libido. He was turned on like a schoolboy watching a woman undress for the first time. He couldn’t believe it.
Self-disgust made him snarl. ‘Well? What would that be? Tell me here and now, or I’ll have you thrown out on the street—because as far as I’m concerned we’ve concluded any business.’
Cara refused to be intimidated. She matched his actions, stepping closer, so that only inches separated them. She saw the flash of something in his eyes and felt emboldened. She seized the momentary confidence and drew on her towering sense of injustice. It washed away any concerns about what the ripple effect would be from telling him this news.
‘Well, unfortunately that’s not the case. That business would be the fact that I’m pregnant with your baby. I’m afraid the consequences of your revenge that night are more far-reaching than you’d anticipated.’
Try a lifetime!
Vicenzo went very still for a moment and then stood back, slashing a hand through the air. Something almost like relief crossed his features, making Cara’s insides contract as if to protect herself from pain.
‘Not possible. I used protection.’
Pain struck deep at his fervent denial. Cara’s hands clenched by her sides, and her heart thumped unevenly. ‘Well, it must have split or broken or something—because, whether you like it or not, I’m pregnant. With your baby.’
Vicenzo had a sudden image of Caleb and Maggie, and the way Caleb had been so tenderly protective of Maggie and her bump just moments ago. He fought off a wave of something suspiciously like nausea and comforted himself with the fact that Cara was lying through her teeth. She had to be.
He laughed derisively. ‘It took you two months to figure out a way to get back at me? And you’ve come up with this? What did you think would happen? That I’d jump to attention and beg you to marry me for the sake of our child? Couldn’t you find another poor deluded billionaire to take you in—Sebastian Mortimer, perhaps? The real father?’
Cara’s heart clenched so hard and so painfully that all she saw was black for a moment. She managed to stay standing and bite out, ‘I told you before. I did not sleep with that man and I couldn’t imagine a worse fate than marrying you. All I want is to let you know what your actions have led to—especially in light of your free and easy lifestyle. I don’t want to be accused of keeping your baby a secret when you’re wining and dining your latest model-turned-actress girlfriend.’
Vicenzo turned sideways and Cara acted on pure impulse, thinking that he was about to walk away, dismissing her again. The hurt was too much. She had to say something to make him believe her. She grabbed at his sleeve, stopping him. He looked down, his eyes like fli
nty ice.
Cara blurted it out before she could censor herself. ‘I hate to admit this to you, but I was a virgin that night.’ Bitterness laced her voice. ‘Not that you even noticed. This baby is yours—no one else’s.’ She gave a laugh that came out somewhere between a strangled cry and a moan of pain. ‘Do you really think that after that night I went looking for someone else to impregnate me, just so I could track you down and pass the baby off as yours?’
Vicenzo’s whole body stilled. He could hear the words, they were registering on his consciousness, but somehow he wasn’t aware of them, of their import. She had to be lying. Had to be. But then all too quickly a vivid memory came back of her standing strangely vulnerable in front of him, in that plain white underwear. He’d put her apparent gaucheness down to artifice. But there had also been that fleeting moment when he’d suspected—his mind seized on that thought.
It was too much to take in.
Shaking his head, as if to negate the awful suspicion running through him, gathering force as it did so, he said faintly, ‘Not possible.’
