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‘Who’s Marge?’
‘She runs a small boarding kennels and takes in strays. I worked there for a few months while I was in an open prison. I still help out when I can. She has a whole network of volunteers, who provide foster homes for strays and try to rehome them. The same people also make those dog cushions and the like to sell for funds,’ she explained.
Vito had already lost interest. As Harvey settled on the rug by the single bed Vito paced deeper into the small room to take a considering look at the shabby furniture and the severe lack of personal effects and comforts. The rug on the linoleum floor was the sole luxury. ‘I can’t believe your family are leaving you to live like this.’
‘Look, living here is a lot more comfortable and private than a hostel dormitory would be,’ Ava replied with spirit. ‘Would you like coffee?’
‘I’ve just had a meal. I’m fine,’ Vito responded with a polite nod, stationing himself by the dirty window. He noticed that his breath was misting in the air; there was no heating. He was appalled to find her living in such surroundings and no longer marvelled at the fact that she had been wearing second-hand shoes.
‘You can take your coat off—I promise not to steal it!’
‘It’s too cold in here.’
Ava crouched down to switch on the gas fire. She used it for an hour every evening to heat the room before she went to bed. She smiled to herself. Vito might be tough but he loved heat. If there was no sunlight he had to have a fire on. Olly used to tease him about it. At the thought her smile died away as quickly as it had come and she wondered if she would ever be in Vito’s company without remembering the awful loss she had inflicted on him.
‘You said you wanted to speak to me,’ she reminded him, turning to face him.
His eyes glittered like black diamonds in the light from the lamp by the bed. ‘I have a suggestion to put to you.’
Ava rested her head to one side, copper-red hair glinting like fire across her dark jacket, strands of honey gold lightening the overall effect.
‘You look like a robin when you do that.’
Ava didn’t want to be compared to a bird. Since when was a robin stylish or sexy? It was more of a perky, cheeky bird, she reasoned, and then flushed at the way her mind was working, seeking a compliment, approval, anything other than his indifference, that was her and it was pathetic at her age to still be so needy!
‘I want to hold the Christmas party again this year,’ Vito continued doggedly. ‘Well, I don’t really want to but I believe it’s time.’
‘You mean you haven’t had one … since?’ Ava completed, her voice cracking a little on that final emphatic word, which encompassed so much.
A haunted darkness filled Vito’s stunning eyes, revealing a clear glimpse of pain, and it tore up something inside her. ‘No, not for three years,’ he responded flatly.
‘OK …’ Recognising that further enquiry would be unwelcome, Ava strove to match his detached attitude and ram down the pained feelings swelling inside her that sometimes felt too big and powerful to hold in. ‘So?’ she prompted jerkily, wondering what the subject could possibly have to do with her.
‘I want you to organise it—the party, the decoration of the house, the whole festive parade,’ Vito extended, a sardonic look on his handsome face.
‘Me? You want me to organise it?’ Ava was incredulous at the idea, utterly filled with disbelief.
‘You and Olly always took care of it for me before,’ Vito reminded her, noting how very white she had become, the subject no easier for her than it was for him. ‘I want you to do it again, deal with the caterers and all the fuss. I won’t be involved but I think my staff and neighbours should feel free to enjoy the event again.’
Finally, Ava accepted that he was making a genuine request but it did not remove her astonishment. ‘You can’t have thought this through. Me? Have you any idea what people would think and say about me doing the arrangements for the party again?’
Vito raised an incredulous brow. ‘I have never in my life stopped to worry about what other people think,’ he countered with resounding assurance. ‘It strikes me as the perfect solution. You will recreate Christmas in the same spirit as Olly did. The two of you revelled in all that traditional nonsense.’
Ava dragged in a ragged breath and had to literally swallow down the unnecessary reminder that Olly was gone. Nonsense, yes, she recalled helplessly, Vito had always believed the seasonal festivities were nonsense, only excepting those of a religious persuasion from his censure. Even so, he had tolerated her and Olly’s efforts to capture the magic of Christmas with the same long-suffering indulgence that an adult awarded childish passions.
‘I suggest you stay at AeroCarlton for what remains of the week and move into the castle at the weekend.’
‘M-move into the castle?’ Ava stammered, shaken at the suggestion.
‘You can hardly do the work from here,’ Vito pointed out, his measured drawl as cool as ice on her skin.
Christmas at Bolderwood, the stuff of dreams, Ava conceded abstractedly and familiar images washed through her mind: gathering holly and ivy from the forest, choosing the tree and dressing it, eating mince pies by the fire in the Great Hall. Even as she felt sick with longing at the recollection of happier times something snapped shut as tight as a padlock inside her brain. Christmas without Olly in what had once been Olly’s happy home: it was unthinkable. She didn’t deserve it, couldn’t even consider such an undertaking when she had for ever destroyed Christmas for Vito.
‘I couldn’t do it. It would be a frightful mistake to use me. It would offend people.’
‘If it does not offend me, why should it offend anyone else?’ Vito enquired with arrogant conviction. ‘You’re over-sensitive, Ava. You can’t live in the past for ever.’
‘You can’t forgive me!’ Ava suddenly cried in jagged protest. ‘How do you expect me to forgive myself?’
Vito cursed her emotional turbulence. Everything he controlled she expressed, but he saw her attitude as another sign that he was taking the right path. ‘It’s three years. It might feel like it only happened yesterday but it’s been three years,’ he pointed out harshly. ‘Life has to go on. Make this Christmas a proper tribute to Olly’s memory.’
Ava was struggling to suppress such a giant surge of emotion that her legs trembled under her and she braced her hand on the back of a chair, her eyes stinging with a rush of tears. Olly’s memory. It always hurt too much to examine her memories of him and then be forced to accept the reality of his death again.
‘Do you really think that my brother would have wanted to see you living like this?’ Face taut, eyes ablaze with impatience, Vito lifted both arms in an unusually dramatic gesture of derision.
Ava’s chin came up at that question and her spine straightened. ‘No, I know he wouldn’t have wanted this,’ she admitted grudgingly, blinking back the tears that had almost shamed her. ‘But I can’t help it.’
‘Che cosa hai! What’s the matter with you?’ Vito reproved, his dark deep voice growling over the vowel sounds. ‘You’re a fighter—I expected more from you.’
Mortified colour sprang up over her cheekbones, flooding her porcelain pale skin like the dawn on his Tuscan estate. That stray thought, far too colourful for a man who considered himself imaginative only in business, set his even white teeth on edge. He looked at her, grimly appraising her appearance in shabby clothes. Hair like molten copper in an unflattering ponytail, face dominated by bright blue eyes and that luscious mouth, garments too shapeless and poorly fitting to compliment even her slender figure. Nothing there to fascinate or titillate, he reasoned impatiently, but his attention roamed back to her delicate features and lingered. A split second later he was hard as a rock, his blood drumming through the most sensitive part of his body as he imagined that succulent mouth pleasuring him.
‘Yes, I’m a fighter,’ Ava breathed shakily, gazing back at him, feeling the change in the atmosphere and finding it quite impossible to ignore it. How could he make her feel this way without even trying? All right, he was very good-looking but surely she should have outgrown her teenaged sensitivity to his attraction? The pulse low in her pelvis was a nagging ache and she spun away restively, determined to get a grip on her physical reactions. After all, he had just challenged her pride, her belief in herself, and she could not let that stand unanswered. She might be afraid of other people’s reactions to her, but she was not prepared to admit the fact that rejection still hurt her way more than it should have done. ‘If you really want me to, I’ll do it … Christmas for you but don’t blame me if people think you’re crazy.’
Vito had fixed his brilliant eyes to Harvey, who had practically merged with the hearth rug in his relaxation. ‘I’ve already told you how much I care about that.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I prefer women who agree with me.’
‘No, you do not!’ Ava snapped back. ‘You just get bored and walk all over them!’
Vito felt that even walking over her might be fun and his black lashes dropped low on his reflective eyes. He was still in an odd mood, he acknowledged in exasperation, a mood of unease where random thoughts clouded his usually crystal-clear brain. He wondered if it was the season or talking about Olly that had disturbed him and settled for that obvious explanation with relief. ‘Staying at the castle may give you the opportunity to see your family again.’
‘It will shock them, annoy them, as they’ve made it quite clear they don’t want me back in their lives,’ she pointed out heavily. ‘But that’s their right and I have to accept it.’
Vito made no comment, still taken aback by what he had done. A spur of the moment idea had fired him up with an almost missionary zeal to make changes. Putting Ava in charge of Christmas was as much for her benefit as his own. It would toughen him up, banish the atrocious vulnerability that afflicted and destabilised him whenever he thought about his little brother. That was a weakness that Vito could not accept and he could no longer live with it and the necessity of constantly suppressing negative responses. He thought of all the people who had recommended therapy to deal with his grief and his beautifully moulded mouth took on a derisive slant. Therapy wasn’t his style. He didn’t discuss such things with strangers, nor would he ever have sought professional help for a loss he deemed to be a perfectly normal, if traumatic, life experience. He was totally capable of dealing with his own problem and by the end of the Christmas party, when Ava Fitzgerald departed from his life again, he would have finally made an important step in the recovery process. Avoiding her, acting all touchy-feely sensitive as he saw it, would have been the wrong thing to do, he acknowledged fiercely. He would deal with her in the present and move on, all the stronger for the experience.
‘Can I bring Harvey with me to the castle?’ Ava asked abruptly, realising that that would remove the dog from Marge’s small overcrowded house.
Dark brows drawing together, Vito frowned, for his antipathy to indoor animals had only allowed him to stretch as far as a guinea pig and goldfish even for Olly.
‘Honestly he won’t be any trouble!’ Ava promised feverishly, eager to persuade Vito round to her point of view. ‘It’s just Harvey will be put down if I can’t find a home for him because Marge hasn’t the room to keep him any longer. It’ll buy him a little more time, that’s all, and who knows? Someone may take a fancy to him on your estate.’
Vito surveyed Harvey, who was snoring loudly, remarkably relaxed for an animal apparently facing a sentence of death. He did not think he had ever seen a less prepossessing dog. ‘Is he some peculiar breed?’
‘No, he’s a mongrel. He was a stray but he’s young and healthy.’ Ava gave him a tremulous, optimistic smile. ‘He loves children too. He would be a great addition to the party if I put a Santa hat on him … or maybe I could dress him up like a reindeer?’
Vito groaned out loud at the thought of more festive absurdity. ‘Bring him with you if you like but don’t get the idea that I’ll keep him.’
‘Oh, I would never expect that.’ Ava laughed, released from tension and weak with relief on Harvey’s behalf. ‘I’ll keep him away from you. I know you’re no good with dogs. Olly told me you were bitten when you were a child!’
Annoyance coursed through Vito and his eyes veiled, his jaw line hardening. He was an extremely private man. He wondered what other inappropriate revelations his little brother had made and once again he reflected that the sooner Ava was out of his workplace, the better.
‘I’ll have to get permission from my probation officer to leave London,’ Ava told him suddenly, her expression anxious. ‘I see her every month.’
‘You’ll only be away a couple of weeks—why bother mentioning it?’
‘I’m out on parole, Vito. I have to follow the rules if I don’t want to end up back inside,’ she replied tightly.
Vito compressed his lips and gave an imperious nod of his handsome dark head in acknowledgement. ‘I’ll send a car to pick you up late Sunday afternoon.’
And then he was gone and the room felt cold and empty as if the sun had gone in. She sat down by the fire, all of a sudden cold on the inside as well and very shaky. What had she done? What madness had possessed her to agree to his proposition? The same madness that had made Vito Barbieri voice the suggestion? He wanted closure. She understood that, felt worse than ever when she thought about how hard it must have been for so reserved a male to deal with such a colossal tragedy. But on one level he was right—life went on whether you wanted it to or not and, just as he had done, she had to learn how to adapt to survive.
‘I understand you’ll only be here until Friday,’ Karen Harper remarked sweetly the following morning as she checked over the typing that Ava had completed and sent her out to cover Reception over lunch. ‘I had no idea just how friendly you were with the boss—’
‘Friendly would be the wrong word,’ Ava fielded awkwardly. ‘Vito’s still my boss.’
But the atmosphere around her for the rest of the week was strained and she was in receipt of more nosy questions than she wanted to answer. It was a relief to leave early on Friday to keep her regular appointment with Sally, her probation officer.
‘You’ll be staying in a real castle?’ Sally queried, goggle-eyed, as she made a note of the address.
‘Not a medieval one—Bolderwood is a Victorian house,’ Ava explained.
‘And owned by Oliver Barbieri’s brother,’ Sally slotted in, smiling widely at Ava. ‘He must be a very forgiving person.’
‘No, he’ll never forgive and forget where his brother’s concerned and I don’t blame him for that,’ Ava replied tautly, her expression sober beneath the older woman’s curious gaze. ‘But he thinks we both need to get back to normal and he sees this as the best way of achieving that.’
‘It’s still a remarkably generous gesture.’
Travelling down to Bolderwood Castle two days later in the opulent luxury of a limousine with Harvey asleep at her feet and her holdall packed in the boot, Ava was thinking that she had never known that Vito possessed such a streak of generosity. But she should have done, she reasoned ruefully. Hadn’t he given Olly a home when his kid brother was left alone in the world? A little boy he had only met a couple of times, a half-brother some adults might have thoroughly resented? Yet on the outside Vito Barbieri was as tough and inflexible as granite. In business he was as much feared as respected by competitors and at work—if AeroCarlton was anything to go by—his very high expectations and ruthless efficiency intimidated his employees.
As the familiar countryside passed the windows Ava grew increasingly tense. She was both terrified and exhilarated to be heading back to her childhood stomping grounds. Would she dare to visit her father or her sisters? She thought not, best not to push herself in rudely where she wasn’t wanted. Her father and sisters would only resent her for turning up uninvited on their doorsteps and putting them on the spot. Her eyes awash with moisture, she blinked back tears. She had to put her life back together alone but at least she still had her life.
‘You have a very negative attitude,’ Olly had once scolded her with his easy smile.
But then aside of his mother dying and his father having been an absentee parent, Olly had received a level of security, love and support from adults that Ava had never known. She knew that that was why she was prickly, suspicious of people’s motives and always prepared for the worst. As the limo waited for the giant electric gates to open at the foot of the castle drive Ava’s heart was in her mouth and she felt like scrambling out of the car and running away. Of course people were going to think she was utterly shameless and insensitive to come and stay at Bolderwood after what she had done!
The car headlights illuminated the rambling Victorian mansion in the distance. Complete with four turrets and a forest of Elizabethan-esque chimneys, the original architect had recklessly borrowed the style of almost every previous age to embellish his creation. Ava had always thought it was a madly romantic house built in the days when owners had loads of staff and constantly entertained guests. Vito had a very large staff but kept the entertaining to the minimum. Throwing open the doors of his private home for the Christmas party was a major challenge for a male who happily lived behind locked gates and electric fences the rest of the year.
Eleanor Dobbs, the slim brunette housekeeper in her thirties, greeted Ava at the imposing front door. ‘Miss Fitzgerald,’ she said without an ounce of discomfiture. ‘I’ll show you straight up to your room so that you can get unpacked.’
‘Just make it Ava,’ Ava urged, her cheeks flushed with intense self-consciousness. ‘How have you been?’
‘It’s been quiet here since your last visit,’ the older woman remarked on her efficient passage up the sweeping staircase. ‘We’re all very pleased that the Christmas party is to be held again.’
A fixed smile on her taut face as she made determined small talk, Ava found herself standing in the principal guest room without quite knowing how she had arrived there. It was a massive room with a charming en suite bathroom in the turret complete with window seat. A fire burned in the grate of the marble fireplace, flickering shadows across warm brocaded walls and antique mahogany furniture. She stared in astonishment at the imposing four-poster bed draped in embroidered gold silk.
‘Why have you brought me in here?’ Ava whispered.
‘Mr Barbieri asked me to prepare this room for you,’ Eleanor advanced.
Ava froze. ‘Where is Mr Barbieri?’ she asked tightly.
‘I believe he’s in his bedroom.’
The housekeeper departed and Ava expelled her pent-up breath in a hiss while she scanned the opulence of the room. Totally unsuitable, she reflected incredulously. Vito could not put her in the main bedroom reserved for only the most honoured VIPs. My goodness, there was even a fire burning in the grate! Harvey, no slowcoach at spotting the most warm and comfy place in the room, settled down on the rug and lowered his shaggy head down on his paws.
‘Don’t bother getting comfortable,’ Ava warned him ruefully. ‘We’re not staying in the five-star accommodation!’
Leaving Harvey, she crossed the landing at a smart pace to knock on Vito’s bedroom door while she waited outside with folded arms. When there was no answer she knocked again and waited with mounting impatience. Finally she just opened the door and went in, only to stop dead on the threshold at the sight of Vito emerging from his en suite clad in only a pair of black briefs.
For a split second she simply stared, eyes wide, mouth dropping open in shock and awkwardness. He had an incredible body because he worked out and swam regularly in the basement fitness suite. Vibrant skin the colour of honey glowed in the lamplight, drawing attention to his powerful shoulders, truly remarkable abs and a stomach as flat as a washboard. Short black curls accentuated his pectorals while a silky dark furrow of hair ran down over his concave belly and disappeared below the waistband of his briefs. With her attention lingering in that most private area, embarrassment bit deep into Ava and she spun around, rejecting the view and presenting him with her back. ‘I’m so sorry … I didn’t mean to interrupt you—’
‘At least close the door,’ Vito said drily.
She shoved the door shut, her face so hot she thought eggs could have fried on it. What on earth had she been doing staring at him like that? As if she’d never seen a half-naked man before—she hadn’t, though, apart from on the beach. Her lack of experience at almost twenty-two years of age affronted her pride. She was a case of arrested development, imposed by her years locked away in prison. Obsessed with Vito before she lost her freedom she had missed out entirely on the phase of youthful experimentation.
‘Che cosa a successo … what has happened?’ Vito drawled, cool as ice water with an edge of mockery.
Ava spun back to him, catching the sardonic hint of amusement written on his face as though on some level he relished her discomfiture. ‘I came straight to find you because you simply can’t plonk me in the main guest room!’ she shot at him. ‘It’s a very bad idea.’
Engaged in drawing up the zip on a pair of close-fitting designer chinos, his magnificent torso providing a stunning display as his hips arched back and the ropes of muscle across his abdomen flexed, Vito had never looked more assured or calm. Being half naked in her presence clearly did not trouble him in the slightest. ‘Let me decide what is appropriate,’ he advised.
‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?’ Ava snapped back at him heatedly, inflamed by his refusal to take the subject seriously. ‘Obviously I can’t trust you to do what is appropriate!’
His black brows were level above his spectacular dark deep-set eyes. ‘This is my house and I am the best judge of that. What I say goes here.’
His arrogant unconcern infuriated Ava. ‘How can you completely ignore how other people will feel about me staying here?’
An ebony brow lifted. ‘It’s none of their business.’
‘You have a hell of an attitude problem, Vito!’ Ava hurled.
‘Agreed,’ Vito fielded softly as he reached for the shirt draped over the back of a chair. ‘I never could stand being told what to do.’
The crack was not lost on Ava. She reddened, her lush mouth compressing. ‘I’m not trying to tell you what to do—’
Vito studied her with interest, noting that she had chosen to travel in her office skirt and shirt, the violin curves above and below her tiny waist pronounced in the outfit. He wanted to rip the restrained garments off her, clothe her in excessively feminine silk and lace lingerie so that he could picture her lying on his bed without even stretching his imagination. Seeing her in his bedroom, he decided, was a disturbingly intimate experience.
‘Sì, you are. You’re a real little bossy-boots—you always were,’ he riposted, watching her succulent lips part in surprise at the comeback, recognising the flare in her bright blue eyes with wicked anticipation.
Ava threw her head high, thick silky hair shimmering like a fall of molten copper round her cheekbones, eyes huge and fiery with defiance. ‘I am not a bossy-boots!’
‘Olly always did as he was told,’ Vito murmured silkily. ‘But be warned—I don’t. You’re in the main guest room purely because it was my decision to put you there.’
‘Then put me somewhere a little more humble!’ Ava cut in angrily.
In the strained silence that stretched in the wake of her demand, the atmosphere hissed and buzzed like a crackling fire.
