Rossellini's Revenge Affair

by Yvonne Lindsay

  YVONNE LINDSAY

  ROSSELLINI’S REVENGE AFFAIR

  This one is for Louise, my special first reader,

  in deep appreciation for your honesty and your friendship.

  I would also like to express my thanks to Sarah Glass

  for her information on the care of a comatose

  pregnant mum and her unborn child.

  Any mistakes in the story are mine entirely.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  One

  He despised and loathed her with every breath in his body.

  She was there, a woman apart. Alone. Widowed.

  Widowed when she should have been divorced.

  Tall, elegant, unnaturally composed. Had she even loved her dead husband? He doubted it. If she’d loved him, she would have let him go. Let him go to Maria instead of clinging to a marriage long dead.

  Oblivious to the biting wind that drove unrelenting sheets of rain against his skin, Raffaele Rossellini stood some distance from the scattering graveside mourners.

  He fed the anger that rose within him as if fuelling a log-filled fire with dry kindling. Would his treasured sister be lying in a hospital bed now, supported only by life-giving machinery, if the cool blonde in black had given in to her husband’s repeated requests to be set free? Set free before the birth of a child who would now never know its father or its mother.

  Grief rent him anew, dragging an unwilling groan of loss from deep inside his chest.

  He had done his duty and come today out of respect for the man his sister had loved. A man he himself had done business with and considered a friend. Soon Raffeale would be back at his sister’s side. Whether she knew he was there or not.

  Her life support would be terminated after the birth of the child. A birth doctors hoped to delay as long as possible to give the infant a chance at a stronger start to life. While Raffaele warred with the barbaric reasoning that another life should not be unnecessarily lost, it contradicted every measure of decency and grace his vibrant younger sister had possessed to keep her in suspension until the safe delivery of her child.

  He tried to tell himself it was what she would have wanted—she’d loved the baby so very much and looked forward to its birth—but knowing she would have given her life for her child did little to assuage the devastating loss of knowing she was already gone. There but not there. Living, yet not alive.

  Raffaele narrowed his eyes against the rain as he focussed on the golden head of the woman he knew only from hearsay. The widow of the man whose lifeless form had been laid to rest in the yawning grave before her. She stood in frozen isolation at the graveside without so much as a tear gracing her smooth pale complexion. Not even now, long after the last of her fellow mourners had gone, did she even have the decency to show any sense of loss.

  Bitterness warred with the rage that billowed inside him. He’d failed in his promise to his dying mother many years ago that he would protect his sister with everything in his power. Now it was too late to mend the irrevocable damage his indulgence in Maria’s whims had wreaked.

  When he’d discovered her affair with a married man he should have stepped in earlier, even though trying to stop his headstrong sister would have undoubtedly been impossible. Yet he should have done something to see her achieve her dream of marriage to the father of her child. He should have wrangled an introduction to Lana Whittaker and somehow, some way, used his considerable power to coerce her into agreeing to her husband’s request for dissolution.

  Too late. He was too late.

  The vivid image of his sister’s body, inert in her hospital bed yet swollen with the advent of new life, burned like a brand in his mind. Yes, he’d failed to protect Maria but he would not fail her unborn child.

  Raffaele Rossellini never made the same mistake twice.

  The child would grow up as his own; that was now his promise to Maria. Her son or daughter would be totally loved and, in time, would know all about his or her mother so she would not fade away as a distant memory.

  His eyes burned with unshed tears as he stared at the back of the woman at the graveside.

  He would not fail again.

  He swallowed against the grief that fought to escape from deep within him. One way or the other, he vowed silently, Lana Whittaker would know the power of the Rossellini wrath. He would make her pay. Make her pay for Maria’s suffering—the anguished phone calls he’d received at home, in Italy, when her pregnancy had been confirmed and she’d realised that Kyle would not be able to marry her before their child’s birth.

  Lana Whittaker would know regret as he knew it.

  She would know loss.

  Lana shivered beneath her sodden black wool coat acutely aware of the tall dark stranger who had hovered on the periphery of the crowd during the brief service and who now remained rooted to the spot, his gaze burning a hole in the back of her head.

  Who was he?

  She daren’t look back at him. If he was paparazzi, the last thing she needed right now was her face plastered across the tabloids. The circumstances of her husband’s death would filter out soon enough.

  How could Kyle have done this to them? To her? How could she not have seen—not have known—he was having an affair? She tried desperately, as she’d done so frequently in the past forty-eight hours, to remember if there had been a sign or a clue he hadn’t been happy. But there was nothing. He’d been his demonstrative and loving self even as she’d driven him to the airport for his business trip down to New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington. A trip he’d taken for one week each fortnight for the past three years.

  A trip he’d been taking to be with his lover!

  For a moment Lana almost gave into the welling urge to scream and rant and wail. To pull at her hair, her chest, her clothing. To give in to the wild anger and fear that tore at her equilibrium. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They’d been the perfect couple—devoted—everyone had said so.

  Tiny black spots spun wildly in front of her eyes. Breathe, she commanded, breathe. Don’t give in. Don’t give up to this. Keep the emptiness away.

  Lana dragged moisture-laden air into tightly squeezed lungs, desperate for some measure of purity back in her life. But nothing could assuage the yawning black hole that remained in her heart.

  “Mrs Whittaker? We should go now. The caterers have called to say the first of the mourners have arrived at the apartment.” The undertaker’s carefully modulated voice penetrated the chill that enveloped her mind. What was it about these people that they all talked in the same measured way? Didn’t they feel emotion?

  “Mrs Whittaker?”

  Lana drew in another breath and closed her eyes briefly, the shape and shadow of Kyle’s coffin as it lay in the ground embedded against her eyelids.

  “Yes, I’m ready.” But ready for what? Where was her future now? Her life—her dreams, her deepest love—lay in the ground with her husband’s lifeless body.

  The short journey home to her inner Auckland city apartment passed in a blur. People would be there, pressing their interminable, yet well-meant, condolences upon her. She had to hold it together for their sakes. Let them think for a little longer that Kyle had been the kind of guy they could mourn and remember with respect, instead of the man he really was.

  He’d lied to them a
ll.

  The mood in the apartment was sombre, a fitting tribute to the loss of a man who’d been revered by many as a financial genius. A man whose opinion had been sought on all levels.

  Within a couple of hours the caterers had cleaned up and the last of her guests were gone. Lana wondered if she would see any of them again once the truth hit the papers. Whether their condolences would wither into pity or, worse, scorn.

  Her lawyer had managed to get an injunction against the release to the media of details surrounding Kyle’s death only two short days ago, but it would expire at midnight.

  Then the onslaught would begin.

  Unbidden, the memory of the stranger at the graveside service plucked at her memory. Who was he? If he wasn’t paparazzi perhaps he’d been one of Kyle’s clients? She knew she’d never met him before, that much was certain. While she’d only caught a glimpse of his face, she would never have forgotten the gently sloping forehead, the slightly aquiline nose between deep-set dark eyes and the strong determined chin. His wasn’t the kind of face a woman forgot. Everything about him, even the cut and length of his coat, had shrieked European elegance.

  Lana shook her head in disgust. Here she was, her husband barely dead two days and she was looking at another man. Even though Kyle had been unfaithful it still didn’t give her the right to seek another. Not within her code of ethics.

  She walked slowly across the spacious formal lounge of the apartment, trailing her hand across the back of the expansive white leather couch where she and Kyle had curled up together, and watched the sun disappear across the distant Waitakere Ranges bordering Auckland’s western suburbs, before escaping to their room to make love. Sometimes they hadn’t even made it that far.

  Her fingers curled into a tight fist as the pain of his duplicity carved through the protective mantle of stoicism she’d hidden behind all day. How did women cope with the discovery that their husband had a mistress? How did they shoulder the weight of the lies they’d unknowingly been living and manage to go on?

  She felt angry—cheated. How dare he die like that—leaving so many questions unanswered? She didn’t even want to think about what she’d discovered on his laptop last night after the police had delivered his belongings from the wrecked vehicle to her. Miraculously it had survived the head-on impact of the crash, but a part of her wondered if she would have been better off not knowing its contents.

  Not knowing how he’d abused the trust of so many of his clients by filtering their investment funds to support his mistress in a waterfront home on Oriental Parade in Wellington. Not knowing how he’d used money from their joint savings account for the same purpose.

  Not knowing he was probably already under investigation for fraud. She would need to get the computer back to the police. They’d be very interested in its contents.

  Pain dragged like a serrated knife through her body, sending her to her knees on the plush cream-carpeted floor. She braced her hands on the carpet in front of her and let her head drop between her shoulders, pulling one shuddering breath into her lungs after the other. It was more than she could bear.

  On the coffee table at her side a picture frame caught her eye. She and Kyle had been out on a friend’s yacht, laughing at a private joke, their love and intense connection to one another shining from their eyes when the snap had been taken.

  A lie.

  Her marriage—the envy of all her friends and the union the society pages had, on their anniversary last year, extolled as the perfect example of a happy marriage—had been over for three years and she hadn’t even known it.

  With a sudden surge of anger, Lana reached out and hurled the portrait against the far wall. Oblivious to the shattering glass and buoyed by her fury, she lurched to her feet and, like a woman possessed, denuded the apartment of every last photo of the ‘perfect couple’.

  She ripped each celluloid image from its individually chosen frame, letting the frames jumble in an uneven stack on the table and tearing at the pictures frantically until they lay in a fractured mass of broken promises at her feet.

  Lies, all of them, lies.

  Only then did she give in to the grief that had plucked at her since the police had delivered the devastating news. Tears coursed down her cheeks and a shattered howl burst from her throat. She dropped onto the couch, oblivious to the sunset, oblivious to the passage of time. Aware only of the gaping empty hole that ached in her chest where her heart should be.

  Buzz! The strident sound echoed through the now darkened room and jolted her from her numbed misery. Her heart shuddered in her chest so loud she could almost hear its erratic beat echoing in the silence of the apartment. The security intercom, she finally realised through the fog of despair that enveloped her. Oh, no, she shivered, oh, please no. Not the press already?

  The intercom buzzed again. Who was on duty today? She couldn’t remember. But she should know. It was the kind of detail she always made a point of knowing. Hot tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away furiously. She would not cry. She had to hold it together. It was what she’d been trained to do her entire life as a diplomat’s daughter and what she perpetuated in her role as the head of fundraising for the underprivileged children’s charity she worked with.

  Suddenly the night security guard’s name sprang into her mind. With a shaking hand Lana pressed the talk button. “Yes, James.”

  “Sorry to disturb you, MrsWhittaker, but there’s a gentleman here to see you. I know it’s late, but he’s most insistent.”

  “I’m not seeing any reporters, James.”

  “He’s not a reporter, madam. He says this is a personal matter. His name is Raffaele Rossellini.”

  “I don’t know a Mr Rossellini. Please ask him to leave.”

  “Mrs Whittaker?” A deep, accented voice penetrated the air. Even through the speaker, it vibrated with strength and raw masculinity. “We haven’t met before, but I must see you. I was a friend of your husband’s.”

  “I knew all of Kyle’s friends, Mr Rossellini. I don’t know you.”

  “All of them, Mrs Whittaker?”

  The reality of his question hit her like a hard-fisted punch to the stomach. She hadn’t known about Kyle’s lover.

  “Come up.” She ground out through clenched teeth. “I can see you for ten minutes only.”

  “What I have to say will not take long.”

  Silence.

  He was already on his way.

  Lana quickly flicked on several lights, bathing the room in a warm glow that was in contrast to the cold ball of lead settled in the pit of her stomach.

  A sharp rap at her door saw her automatically smooth her dress over her hips and drag her fingers quickly through her hair. Too late to do any more than that. Whatever this guy wanted, it certainly wouldn’t make any difference how she looked.

  Raffaele stiffened as his nemesis opened the door before him. Dio! But she was beautiful. Surely this wasn’t the same woman whose composure had stung him so viciously at the funeral.

  Spiky dark lashes flanked her soft blue-green eyes, as if she’d recently wept. Her face was flushed and her hair tumbled. She looked soft, wounded, desperate for comfort—the kind of woman a man like him sheltered from the harsh realities of life. The kind of woman a man like him made love to long into the night, revelling in the length of her body, drowning in the glory of her hair and cherishing with every instinct known to him.

  Then, before his eyes, she metamorphosed into the cold-eyed and coolly dignified widow who’d stood at the graveside. He must have been mistaken. The glimpse of someone—something—totally different, an aberration only. The transformation was a stark reminder of his reason for being there.

  “Mrs Whittaker, Raffaele Rossellini. May I come in?”

  She looked surprised at the sight of him, as if she recognised him from somewhere. But that was impossible. He’d stayed well to the rear of the crowd at the cemetery, and their paths had never crossed before that. But there was something that int
rigued him about her, about how swiftly she’d masked her features. As if she hid behind a thick, yet transparent, wall.

  Of course she did, he chided himself. This was the real Lana Whittaker. The ice queen incarnate. The woman who’d insisted on holding on to a semblance of marriage, and therefore her pride, rather than let go of a man who no longer loved her.

  “Please, come in.” Leaving the front door open, she led the way down the short hall and through to the spacious, expensively decorated formal lounge. No wonder Kyle had needed money from him. Lana Whittaker was—as the Americans so charmingly put it—high-maintenance.

  Following in her wake, his nostrils were tantalised by a suggestion of her fragrance—surprisingly there was nothing harsh or dominating about the scent, instead it was intriguingly gentle and slightly sweet. A total contrast to the woman he knew she was.

  Did she do that deliberately, he wondered. Just to set the minds of weaker men astray? To lure and entice, then to coldly spurn any advances, all the while maintaining her formidable control? He silently vowed to see that control shattered before he left here tonight.

  Without even asking him to sit down she spun around to face him, squaring her shoulders as she met his gaze.

  “Well, Mr Rossellini. You wanted to see me. You have nine minutes left.”

  Anger rose within him, swift and sharp. She dared to challenge him without even knowing who he was? Raffaele clenched his jaw, bit back the retort that sprang to his lips and drew on the strength that had seen him drive and expand his family’s olive oil export business onto the forefront of the world stage, and successfully keep it there.

  “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, although I’m sure you didn’t come to pass on your condolences.” She held herself erect, her arms resting gracefully at her sides although for all the prickling vibes she gave off they could have been crossed across her willowy frame. “What do you want?” She demanded more insistently.