Virgin On Her Wedding Night

by Lynne Graham

  Koko coiled round Caroline’s ankles, loudly crying for attention, and she talked indulgently to her pet while serving breakfast. She skipped eating in her eagerness to write down the urgent list of things to be done that was already unfolding inside her head. But the first list only led into the making of a second. Time, cost and location were crucial factors. At their time of life her parents would not want to move out of the area. It would take ages to track down the right property and save up enough money for a standard rental deposit.

  It was fortunate that Caroline adored her adoptive parents. Whilst on one fundamental issue they had once given her what turned out to be very bad advice, they had always sincerely believed that they were putting her best interests first. And now that the elder Haleses were reliant on her financial help, she was happy to repay the debt that she felt she owed them in any way that she could.

  The phone rang while she was washing the dishes. ‘Can you get that?’ she called to her father, who was reading his newspaper in the room next door.

  The phone was answered. An instant later Caroline heard an urgent low-voiced exchange between her parents that she couldn’t follow and, recognising that they sounded upset, she dried her hands to go and join them

  ‘Caro…will you come here for a moment?’ her mother asked stiffly.

  The phone was extended to her almost as though it was an offensive weapon. ‘Valente Lorenzatto,’ the older woman pronounced between tremulous lips.

  Caroline froze like a wax dummy, her face wiped clean of expression. It was a name she had not heard spoken in all the months since she had become a widow, but it still had the power to make her lose colour and shiver as though a cold wind was cutting through her clothes. Valente, whom she had once loved beyond bearing; Valente, whom she had contrived to wrong beyond all possibility of forgiveness. She could not credit that he would have any reason to contact her. Gripping the cordless phone in a damp palm, she walked out into the hall and turned in an aimless circle.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, her voice a mere whisper of sound.

  ‘I want to arrange a meeting with you,’ Valente breathed in his dark, deep-accented drawl which danced teasing fingers down her taut spinal cord. ‘As the new owner of Hales Transport and your family home, I have our mutual interests to discuss.’

  It was too shattering a claim for Caroline to accept all at once. ‘You own Hales…and the house?’ she questioned in stark disbelief.

  ‘It’s staggering, isn’t it? I made my fortune, as I said I would,’ Valente murmured with a surreal cool that mocked her quivering tension. ‘Sadly, you backed the wrong horse five years ago.’

  Caroline almost laughed out loud-for she had found that out the hard way, and not for reasons he would ever comprehend. What snatched her out of the mesmeric hold of the past was the sight of her parents, staring at her across the hall, evidently having heard what she’d said. Their faces betrayed their profound shock and dismay. The merest mention of Valente Lorenzatto put them on edge, never mind a personal phone call and the suggestion that he might be the new possessor of what had so recently been theirs.

  ‘It can’t be true!’ Isabel Hales protested in a jagged cry of disbelief.

  Caroline very much hoped that it was not true. But she had once, long ago, read about Valente’s first big business deal, which had netted him millions on the stock exchange. She had paid a high price for that knowledge, too, when Matthew had found out that she had done a Google search for Valente on their home computer. She had never allowed herself to succumb to that unhealthy streak of curiosity again-not even after she’d become a widow. The past, she believed, was more safely left where it belonged.

  ‘He was only a lorry driver…it’s impossible that he could have made so much money!’ Joe Hales proclaimed loudly.

  ‘It ought to be impossible,’ his wife agreed, tight-mouthed.

  Caroline kept the phone crammed hard up against her ear to prevent Valente from overhearing these embarrassing comments. The fact that her father’s father had also been a lorry driver, a self-made man who’d built up his business from nothing by dint of hard work, was never ever mentioned in her home. The older Haleses were ashamed of the humble beginnings of their families and had hugely admired Matthew’s parents, who had enjoyed private education and were distantly related to titled people. Joe and Isabel Hales were snobs, had always been snobs and would probably be buried as unrepentant snobs, Caroline thought sadly. Valente had never stood on a level playing field with them. He had been judged for what he did and where he came from rather than as the highly intelligent and motivated individual that he was.

  Caroline wandered into another room to gain privacy. ‘Why do you want to see me?’ she asked half under her breath.

  ‘You’ll find out when we meet,’ Valente delivered with impatience. ‘Eleven tomorrow morning, in what used to be your husband’s office.’

  ‘But why on earth…?’ Her voice faltered to a halt as the connection was cut without warning.

  ‘Let me have that phone, please,’ Joe Hales urged his daughter, and she listened while the older man contacted his solicitor to demand the name of the new owner of Hales Transport.

  ‘That Italian boy…’ Isabel Hales wore an expression of furious distaste. ‘I imagine he’s finally found out that you’re a widow. It’s typical of him-why can’t he leave you decently alone?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Caroline could not even be amused by her mother referring to a six-foot-three-inch male of thirty-one years of age as a boy. Valente had never been a boy, she reckoned painfully. He had always had a maturity way beyond his years. She was no more entertained by her mother’s ludicrous suggestion that Valente might still cherish a romantic interest in her.

  A look of astonishment on his face, her father replaced the phone. ‘Everything that was once ours has been bought up by a very large Italian-based collection of companies known as the Zatto Group,’ he proffered dully.

  Valente had turned the tables on them, reversing the natural order of things in her mother’s opinion. Of all of them, Caroline was the least surprised.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FOR the meeting, Caroline had chosen to wear her only suit-a tailored black skirt and jacket teamed with a cream silk shirt. She had bought it to wear for her first sales pitch to the high-end London jewellery store which had been successfully selling her designs for the past year. Since then she had lost weight, and the fit was now more than a little loose on her. With her hair swept up, and a modest smattering of make-up to give her the natural colour she lacked after a stressed-out sleepless night, she looked harried when she climbed out of her hatchback car at Hales Transport the next morning.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Bailey,’ Jill, one of the receptionists, greeted her, with surprising good cheer for a member of a workforce that had been suffering from mass anxiety over the firm’s uncertain future for many weeks. ‘Isn’t this an exciting day?’

  Caroline blinked uncertainly and brushed a straying strand of pale hair back from her too-warm brow. ‘Is it?’

  ‘The new boss is flying in. We’re becoming part of a big business group that’s worth billions. It can only be good news for us,’ Jill opined chirpily.

  ‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ remarked Laura, the senior receptionist, looking up from her computer screen to cast a rueful glance at Caroline. ‘Have you never heard of that expression “a new broom”? There’s no guarantee that we’ll all keep our jobs, or even that this business will still exist six months from now.’

  A cold trickle of apprehension rolled down Caroline’s taut spine. She was really worried about what might happen to their former employees at Hales Transport. And that concern ran even deeper as she was guiltily conscious that her late husband had taken financial risks but had neglected the day-to-day running of the firm during the last year of his life.

  Breathing in deep, she took a seat in the waiting area. ‘Let’s all hope for the best,’ she urged Laura.

  ‘I’m sure y
ou could just go up and wait in the office,’ Jill told her innocently. ‘It’s not as if you don’t know your way around.’

  Her colleague frowned at that advice. ‘I think Mrs Bailey will be more comfortable waiting down here.’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Caroline hastened to declare, her face warming in response to the curious glances she received from a group of employees passing by to mount the stairs. The low-pitched buzz of conversation that broke out among them made her skin heat even more as an anguished surge of self-consciousness gripped her.

  Caroline had avoided coming to Hales Transport during the last months of Matthew’s life, and in the time since his sudden death in a car crash. The fear that people were talking about her, even laughing at her, had kept her at a distance. Her in-laws and parents had censured her for not attending work-related events with them, but Caroline had no desire to pose as Matthew’s martyred widow.

  After all, there had to be others who were aware of or had at least suspected her late husband’s extra-marital interests. As the effects of his lifestyle had taken a firmer hold Matthew had become considerably less discreet about the double life he’d been leading. All the moments of cringing embarrassment and hurt that Caroline had endured had left their mark on her. She had been a fool-a stupid, blind fool-and a dupe. It was almost impossible for her to recall that Matthew had once been her closest friend, since their marriage had soon put paid to that bond. She suppressed her thoughts, rejecting her deeply unhappy memories

  ‘He’s here!’ the younger receptionist hissed in excitement when a long dark limousine pulled up outside. Two Mercedes cars arrived simultaneously, and their passengers were disgorged first. A phalanx of men in business suits collected on the steps and parted like the Red Sea for the passage of a tall, powerful figure sporting a heavy cashmere overcoat in spite of the spring sunshine.

  ‘He’s even more handsome than in his photos,’ Jill sighed dreamily.

  The breath caught in Caroline’s throat as she focused on the lean, strong face below the swept back, cropped, but defiantly curly hair. Hair that she knew Valente only kept in order with frequent haircuts-hair that had been longer when she’d first known him. And how she had once loved to run her fingers through those black curls. Frozen in her seat, she had literally stopped breathing. Seeing Valente when she had believed that she would never, ever see him again was a surreal experience.

  He was an astonishingly handsome man, she conceded in a daze. He had dark, deep eyes that could turn as hotly golden as the heart of the sun, level brows, stunning cheekbones, and an arrogant blade of a nose that would have looked at home on the marble face of a classic Roman statue. He was all her past sins come back to haunt her at once, reminding her of the heartbreak and the fear and the craving that had once torn her apart. In a designer business suit he emanated a sleek elegance and assurance that was totally Italian. Even in jeans and a sweater, she recalled, Valente had had the art of looking as if he had just stepped off a fashion catwalk.

  ‘Caroline,’ he murmured, pausing at the foot of the stairs to note her presence in that dark, unforgettable drawl that was inherently sexy. ‘Come up to the office. I’ll see you straight away.’

  Painfully aware of suddenly being the centre of attention as curious heads turned in her direction, Caroline avoided the perceptible chill of his hooded dark gaze and rose upright. His informality had just made it obvious that they had a prior history-one which she hoped nobody else could remember. It was a history which Valente could only hate her for, she acknowledged unhappily. Crippling guilt twisted inside her stomach and threatened to overpower her. She had known he would never forgive her for what she had done. Nor would he ever recognise the pressure she had buckled under, squeezed between everybody she loved, trying to please everyone and ending up by pleasing no one. He would only despise such weakness.

  A skimming appraisal of Caroline’s drab, loose-fitting suit, and of her hair twisted up into a dreary girlish plait at the back of her head, gave Valente’s handsome mouth a sardonic curl. He wanted to see her white-gold hair flowing loose over an outfit that complemented her slender figure and delicate colouring. Black gave her all the appeal of a wraith. He wanted to eradicate every hint of Matthew Bailey’s good-living little widow, who fixed the flowers in the local church and made jewellery in her spare time. He wanted so much-and, at that first moment, even twenty-four hours felt like too long a wait for fulfilment.

  One of his PAs raced ahead of them to throw open the door of the main office. The room was familiar to Caroline-a first-class display of Matthew’s love of ultra-modern furniture and design-though it was out of keeping with the style of the building and had been created at ruinous expense.

  Valente shrugged off his coat and the PA bore it away. He turned to look at Caroline, seeing the sun slant through the window to glitter over the pale crown of her head. She looked at him directly, her misty grey eyes wide and dark with bewilderment and tension. A lusty throb of sexual awareness infiltrated Valente at groin level, and roused him so thoroughly that he was grateful for the concealment of his jacket. He couldn’t wait to give her the lingerie.

  Meeting that lingering sensual appraisal head-on, Caroline felt her body react in a way she had honestly thought it no longer could. Matthew had told her that she was useless in bed, and that she turned him off so much he could not even stand to share a room with her. He had been very frank and very cruel. It was ironic, therefore, that she should now feel her nipples tingle as they swelled, and a startling kick of heat in her pelvis in response to a male whom instinct warned her had it in him to be a great deal more cruel. Her body, which had inhabited a sort of dead zone for years, was suddenly reacting again, and coming alive in a way that unnerved her.

  ‘So, you own everything now,’ Caroline remarked brittly, fighting to shut down that physical awareness which shamed and affronted her on every level.

  ‘Si, piccola mia.’ Drawing level, Valente stared down at her with brooding eyes, noting the rapidity of her breathing while he savoured the pale perfection of her skin, the flickering colour of her eyes and the soft pink invitation of her surprisingly full mouth. That fine profile, the flutter of her soft curling lashes on her cheeks, the nervous tightening of the tiny muscles round her tender mouth spoke of vulnerability and brought out the predator in him-because he knew that she was at heart nothing more than a callous little gold-digger with great acting skills. She was his polar opposite in looks and personality but, regardless, the minute he saw her again he wanted her with a fierce power and impatience that was already disturbing his equilibrium.

  ‘You should have had more faith in me,’ Valente continued in the same tone of laidback cool, his rock-hard self-discipline controlling him.

  Caroline snatched in a sharp breath. ‘What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? I am-’

  ‘I don’t want an apology.’ Valente’s interruption cut like a slashing knife through her softer voice. He was dangerously still, his big, powerful frame taut with pent-up energy and anger as he watched her. Her face was as devoid of emotion as a doll’s, only her wide eyes revealing her anxiety. She was different; she had changed, he registered with a frown, had become a woman who no longer wore her every feeling on her face. Presumably she had finally grown out of being the very much indulged daughter of older parents and had learned to stand on her own feet. Such very small feet too, he reflected, sheathed in no-nonsense flat pumps that had all the sex appeal of carpet slippers. He decided then and there that he would make a bonfire of her entire wardrobe.

  ‘I don’t understand why you would want everything that used to belong to my family,’ Caroline admitted.

  ‘Don’t be so modest,’ Valente chided.

  Caroline stood poker-straight, making the most of her every diminutive inch of height. ‘I’m not being modest. I don’t even know why you asked me to meet you here.’

  ‘That’s simple,’ Valente murmured softly. ‘I hoped we could come to a civil agreement which wo
uld give each of us what we most want. I’ll go first on that issue-I want you in my bed.’

  Caroline was so astonished by that statement that she opened her mouth and hastily shut it again. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’ she enquired curtly.

  ‘I work hard and I play hard. I take my sex-life too seriously to joke about it. Unfortunately I haven’t got much more time to give you this morning. There are too many other claims on my attention,’ he imparted smoothly. ‘But naturally I’m aware that you and your parents are having a very hard time at present.’

  ‘Yes.’ Caroline gave that jerky confirmation still unnerved by his previous crack, wondering what on earth she would do if he was to make her some outrageous offer in that line. Tell him that she was the last woman in the world capable of fulfilling a man’s expectations in the bedroom? That it was a horrible black joke to even consider her in that guise?

  ‘Obviously there’s a great deal I could do to alleviate your current situation.’ Dark lashes dipping low on his stunning gaze, Valente purred that assurance. ‘But you would have to persuade me that it would be worth my while.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m up to persuading you to do anything-nor do I follow your meaning,’ Caroline told him stiltedly

  ‘I still want the wedding night you denied me…’

  Caroline was jolted into reaction by that blunt reminder. ‘But we didn’t get married!’