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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 would 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!’
‘Precisely … but that fact didn’t stop me wanting you,’ Valente countered. ‘And you should be aware of the fact that the answer you give me now will impact on the lives of everyone connected with this business.’
Her fine brows drew together in a frown of consternation. ‘The answer to what question?’ she prompted in frustration.
Valente shook his arrogant dark head. ‘I’ve already told you what I want.’
‘Sex?’ Caroline shook her fair head in sincere wonderment over so preposterous a suggestion. He was young, movie-star handsome and rich, and any number of beautiful, sophisticated women would offer him no-strings-attached sex without hesitation. Why on earth should he decide to approach her?
‘I will be plain. I want you as my mistress.’
A rather shrill laugh was finally wrenched from Caroline. She knew she sounded hysterical and, fearful of him, realising just how out of her depth she was feeling, she walked hurriedly over to the window that overlooked the car park. That pedestrian view helped steady her nerves. How could he possibly want her as his mistress? It was true that five years earlier Valente had been hot for her. As she remembered the sexual urgency which she had withstood out of fear of making that final commitment to him a sharp little pang of reaction pierced low in her pelvis. Now, as then, she wondered if he would have swiftly lost interest had she slept with him. Would she have been as inadequate with him as she had been with Matthew? She scolded herself for that meaningless question, for it was far too late now to change anything. And, what was more, she didn’t want to remember her sexless marriage—even less did she want to think about it or beat herself up about it.
‘You really would be very disappointed if I agreed,’ Caroline replied shakily. ‘I just don’t have what it takes to meet the demands of a role like that. Some women are into sex, some women aren’t. I’m very much in the second category.’
Lean strong hands came down on her narrow shoulders and turned her back round to face him. He was very close, and the aromatic scent of his cologne mingled with the faint musky aroma of masculinity almost made her head spin. There was grim amusement now in his hard black-lashed golden eyes. ‘No, you’re not. You could never disappoint me. Did you disappoint Matthew?’
Reacting to that horribly accurate counter-question, Caroline put up her arms to break free of their connection and took several agitated steps away, spinning back to him to say, ‘You’re not listening to me, are you? What do I have to say to convince you?’
Exasperated by her skittish retreat when his whole body was humming for closer contact, Valente sent her a level look of warning. ‘Doing rather than saying would be more convincing. Come back to my hotel with me and give me a demonstration of your unsuitability.’
Her grey eyes widened to their fullest extent and hardened to glittering steel as her temper erupted. ‘What do you think I am? A whore?’ she shot back at him in furious condemnation.
‘The jury is still out on that one. Let’s not overlook the reality that, while you might not be a whore, you did sell yourself to the highest bidder five years ago,’ Valente derided without hesitation.
Caroline turned pale as milk at that comeback. ‘That’s not how it was—’
‘Why would I want to know how it was now?’ Valente interposed very drily. ‘If you must know I’m grateful I was saved from making the mistake of marrying you. When I do take a wife, I don’t want a gold-digger for the role.’
‘How dare you?’ Caroline lashed back at him, colour washing her cheekbones as his insults drove her indignation to even greater heights. ‘That’s not why I married Matthew! Money had nothing to do with it.’
‘What about social status?’ Valente quipped, shrugging back his shirt-cuff to glance at his watch. ‘I can only give you two more minutes. You’re wasting your breath, arguing with me. I know what you are and, strange as it may seem, no insult was intended. After all, I’m willing to pay a great deal of money for the privilege of having you in my bed.’
‘You can’t buy me …’
Valente rested cold dark eyes on her, his lack of conviction coolly emphasising his contempt. ‘Can I not? If you say no, I will close down this firm and put everyone out of work. I will also make no attempt to ease your parents’ plight …’
Reeling in shock from that deeply disturbing caveat, Caroline parted pale lips. ‘That would be utterly immoral and unjust—’
‘On the other hand, if you say yes to my proposition, I will invest in this business and ensure it prospers for many years to come,’ Valente informed her dulcetly. ‘I will also allow your parents to remain at Winterwood at my expense.’
‘That’s an impossible, absolutely disgusting choice to give me!’ Caroline gasped in growing disbelief. ‘You’re trying to blackmail me!’
‘Am I?’ Valente rested brilliant dark impenitent eyes on her flushed and furious face. ‘It depends what you want, doesn’t it? Come to me on my terms and you will be treated well and want for nothing that your heart desires. It’s a very generous offer from a man who has no reason to like you, much less respect you.’
‘If you neither like nor respect me, you can’t possibly want me that much,’ she threw back in breathless defiance.
His dark gaze burned scorching gold. ‘But I do. There’s no accounting for taste.’
Before she could guess his intention he had closed a hand over hers. While she stiffened, every muscle seizing taut, he proceeded to tug her across the space that separated them with cool determination. In a movement she could no more have prevented than she could have stopped breathing, Caroline broke violently free of his hold and fell back for support against the wall.
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ Valente demanded in a raw undertone, watching her breathe in and out with the rapidity and heaving bosom of a woman on the edge of panic. ‘Did you think that I was about to attack you?’
Caroline was mortified by her knee-jerk reaction, and suddenly terrified that he might guess she was something less then the average woman when it came to intimacy. ‘Of course not … I’m s-sorry,’ she stammered. ‘It’s just been a long time since anyone touched me.’
Valente studied her, sensing something more. She was very tense and jumpy—a far cry from the calm young woman of twenty-one whom he recalled. Still waters ran deep. He had never wanted to know what her marriage was like, that being a can of worms that he preferred to leave firmly closed. But he knew enough to suspect that marriage to her childhood sweetheart had proved to be no picnic for her: Bailey had mismanaged the business, spent a fortune he didn’t have on luxury goods and left his wife penniless. He had also been rumoured to have slept with other women.
‘Really, I don’t know what came over me,’ Caroline babbled, moving away from the wall, smoothing down her skirt and even trying to pitch a faint smile on to her strained mouth. Her pride had come to her rescue. She could not bear the idea that he might suspect just what an oddity she was in comparison to other women. That was her secret shame alone. How else could she feel about herself when she was still a virgin after almost four years of marriage? It was not a truth, however, that she was prepared to share.
‘No?’ Quite deliberately Valente strolled forward, keen dark golden eyes nailed to her delicate features. He closed an arrogant hand over hers in an unexpected rerun of events and she snatched in a startled breath, stiffening again. He drew her closer and angled down his proud dark head to taste her mouth, with a tender touch and skill that made her head swim as dismay collided with surprise. Instead of freezing, as fear and revulsion rippled through her to make her feel nauseous, she stayed still, wondering, waiting, helplessly curious.
She had forgotten what it was like to be kissed by Valente. His breath fanned her cheek and her knees turned to jelly. The citrus aroma of his cologne made her tummy perform a somersault and she trembled, every nerve-ending screaming in quivering alert. He didn’t touch her body, made no attempt to hold her, and that sense of retaining the freedom to move strengthened and soothed her. His expert mouth was smooth as silk on hers, searching and uniquely sensual, to the extent that she leant forward to deepen the connection. He captured her lips then, and parted them with feathery delicacy, pausing to suckle at her full lower lip with lethal eroticism before slickly invading the moist, responsive space beyond. Beneath her clothing her nipples peaked into straining prominence, and a small sound came from low in her throat.
As that revealing gasp escaped her, Valente lifted his handsome head, narrowed dark eyes executing an almost clinical inspection of her bemused expression. He stepped back from her. She might be tense, she might be nervous, but she was still hot and ready for him, he reflected with considerable satisfaction. He was so aroused by the scent and the taste of her that with very little encouragement he would have settled her on to the desk behind him and eased himself into the silky welcome of her body without further ado. The very thought of having hot casual sex with Caroline whenever and wherever he wanted excited him.
‘Time’s up, piccola mia,’ he told her softly as an urgent knock sounded on the door.
As taut as a bowstring, Caroline again skimmed damp palms down over her skirt. Her brain was working at the frantic speed of fright. ‘You can’t mean what you just said—what you … er … suggested,’ she framed unevenly.
‘Unlike you, I’m very into sex,’ Valente confided deadpan, watching colour surge up below her skin while her delicate bone structure froze beneath it. He marvelled that even after several years of marriage to a boor she could still be so prudish. But then, he reflected lazily, her attitude told him even more. Evidently Bailey had botched his role in the bedroom. That was a little piece of knowledge that Valente, who had never ever failed to please a woman, prized more than any other.
The door opened and a young man addressed him in an apologetic rush. Valente moved a silencing hand. ‘Abramo, I’m aware that I’m running late. Show Mrs Bailey back to her car—’
‘That’s not necessary,’ Caroline protested. ‘We have to talk about what you said right now—’
Valente turned cold dark eyes on her. ‘What would we talk about? There’s no room for negotiation. I’ll see you this afternoon at Winterwood.’
‘At … Winterwood? ‘Caroline exclaimed in horror.
‘It is my property. I’ll see you at four for a guided tour.’
Caroline was appalled.
Valente dealt her a slashing smile that had the effect of making her back away from him. ‘And warn the family that I won’t be using the tradesman’s entrance, piccola mia.’
‘Mrs Bailey?’ the PA prompted, holding the door invitingly wide for her exit.
Seeing that she had no other choice, Caroline left the office. She was trembling with rage. She never swore, but she wanted to hurl curses at Valente. She yearned for the physical strength to grab him by the lapels of his fancy suit and slam him up against the wall to make him listen to her!
Sadly, Valente was evidently driven by too powerful a compulsion for revenge to award her a more generous hearing. Five years ago she had jilted him at the altar. Her misplaced trust in another person and her illness had together plunged Valente into the humiliating position of a bridegroom left standing by his bride. Circumstances had left her unable to ensure that he was forewarned of her change of heart before he reached the church. Although Valente had been informed of those mitigating factors after the event, it was very plain that he still blamed her for what he had undergone that day. After all, she still blamed herself, recognising the appalling blow that her no-show must have dealt Valente’s ferocious pride. He had fought for her and lost, and his iron will could not accept defeat.
Even in the act of driving back home Caroline shivered. Valente had grown up fighting poverty and fighting for everything he’d ever wanted. That gritty raw-edged struggle for survival, the losses and slights he had endured, had ignited a primitive streak of dark cruelty and strength in him that had intimidated Caroline when she’d first known him. He’d had little time for her refined attitudes, and he’d downright despised her continuing allegiance to her parents, who had done everything they could to break up his relationship with her.
‘If you really love me, you can overcome anything,’ Valente had told her five years earlier.
He had expected so much from her, Caroline acknowledged painfully. But she had been raised too gently to have his power and his conviction, his ability to reject and ignore the feelings of those who did not share his objectives.
As her emotions shifted back and forth between past and present, memories that Caroline had long suppressed came floating back to the surface of her mind.
The summer after she’d completed her apprenticeship with a jewellery designer she had longed for the capital to set up her own business. That she’d been a child with aspirations to build her own business had been a severe disappointment to the Hales, who had hoped for a much more feminine and frivolous daughter, eager to enjoy the local social scene and find a suitable husband. Determined not to ask her parents for their financial help when they disapproved of her ambitions, Caroline had taken a temporary office job at Hales, so that she could save up the money she needed to start her company. Ironically that decision had shaken Joe and Isabel even more, for they had considered the transport firm too crude a working environment for their much-adored child.
Just two days after she’d started work in the office where administration was handled, Caroline had looked up and seen Valente for the first time. The liquid flow of his accented English had initially attracted her attention, but it had been her first mesmerising glimpse of his lean dark face which had made her stare. No words could ever hope to describe the intense sense of recognition and fascination that drop-dead beautiful face of his had fired her with. Ignoring her colleague, who had been trying to flirt with him, Valente had skimmed a glance over Caroline, his ebony-lashed eyes flaring hot gold in a lengthy appraisal. In the same moment Caroline had been lost to all reason, ensnared by his stunning gaze. It hadn’t mattered who or what he was. He had taken her prisoner with a single glance, and she would have followed him to the ends of the earth on the strength of it.
‘And you are …?’ Valente had murmured, poised by her desk.
‘Caroline—’
‘The boss’s daughter … our poor little rich girl!’ one of the other drivers had spelt out in warning, causing the warm blood of embarrassment to rise beneath her fair skin.
‘I’ll see you later, Caroline,’ Valente had breathed silkily. Just the timbre of his rich dark drawl had made her skin come up in goosebumps.
The afternoon had dragged while she’d pictured that lean dark face over and over again, recalling his high masculine cheekbones, narrow-bladed nose and wide, sensual mouth, wondering dizzily what it was about that precise arrangement of features that had made it almost impossible for her to look away from him again. Even though she’d been twenty-one years old, she’d fallen for Valente Lorenzatto with the speed and wholehearted enthusiasm of a schoolgirl.
In those days she had been no more experienced than an innocent schoolgirl, either. The safe cocoon of her cushioned upbringing had made her something of a misfit at art college. The aggressive sexual demands of the boys she’d met then had put her off anything more than the most casual dating. When she’d needed a partner for more formal occasions she’d invited Matthew Bailey—the boy next door and her closest friend. An introvert and shy, and cautious with strangers, she had already been carrying a load of guilt for disappointing her parents. In going for a college education Caroline had defied the wishes of the parents she loved for the first time. Valente had been the second and a by far more serious demonstration of her growing need for the freedom to act as an individual in her own right…
Refusing to agonise over the situation with Valente now, Caroline told herself that he just could not be serious, and to keep herself busy did the weekly shopping before returning home. There she found a note from her mother on the kitchen board, reminding her that her father had a hospital appointment that afternoon. Her parents had already left. Groaning, because she had forgotten about the arrangement, Caroline stowed away the groceries. By that stage her ability to shut out her recollection of Valente’s threat to close down Hales Transport was wearing dangerously thin.
Over two hundred people would lose their jobs, not to mention the knock-on effect on other neighbourhood businesses. Another local firm had gone bust several years earlier and the whole community had suffered a great deal. She knew that the stress of unemployment and the loss of a steady income could break up marriages and shatter families. To allow that to happen to others when she had been offered an alternative—no matter how outrageous—was a huge responsibility that rested on her shoulders alone.
And who more justly deserved that responsibility? Caroline asked herself angrily. Matt had made little effort to reduce his spending when Hales had lost contracts to Bomark Logistics. Instead, he’d bought a very expensive new company car and run up huge bills entertaining prospective clients, whom she suspected had never really existed. She had been no friend to the family business while she’d loyally kept her mouth shut about her husband’s failings. Guilt cut her deep. Matthew’s behaviour had been a deep source of shame to her, yet she had shrunk from distressing her parents or his with the news that Matthew was not to be trusted with the future of an ailing business. There again, nobody would have wanted to hear, and nor would any of them have listened to her or valued her opinion, she reflected heavily. Sexism had run through both sides of the family like a contagious disease. And Matthew had been idolised by his parents, who’d believed he was the keenest and cleverest businessman around.
Valente said he wanted sex from her, but how could she possibly still appeal to him to that degree? No, what he really wanted, Caroline decided ruefully, was revenge. And if by letting him have that revenge she could protect her parents from being evicted from their home and she save almost two hundred and fifty jobs at Hales, did she really have the right to refuse him?
Goodness, was she actually contemplating a new lifestyle as Valente Lorenzatto’s mistress?
A pained laugh was wrenched from her compressed lips. Valente would soon realise that he had struck a very bad bargain. She felt sick at the very idea of such a humiliation, but if that was what it would take to satisfy his desire for retribution could she really stand back and let so many other people suffer? It was her fault that Valente was angry and bitter, nobody else’s. She had let him down.
But how could she even consider surrendering to his demands? If she became intimately involved with Valente it would cause too much distress for her strait-laced parents, who had long believed that only shameless women slept with men they weren’t married to. A lurid affair would horrify and humiliate them, and her father’s health would never stand up to that upsetting challenge. Nor, in such circumstances, would Joe and Isabel Hale agree to continue living in a house owned and maintained by their daughter’s lover. But what if Valente could be persuaded to lower his expectations and settle for a one-night stand which could be kept a secret? She shifted uneasily on her seat, wondering in cringing embarrassment whether he would ask for his money back when she signally failed to please between the sheets.
Such thoughts made her feel sleazy, made her feel like the whore he had suggested she might be, and her pride was already in the dust. But, at the end of the day, a body was just a body, she told herself flatly, and it was highly unlikely that Valente would be violent or abusive. After all, he wanted her to want him, didn’t he? To want him so that it would hurt when he dropped her again? Couldn’t she pretend, suppress the fear, make a real effort to be normal? Tears burning the back of her eyes, she rammed shut the mental door threatening to open on her painful memories. Matthew would not have sought other lovers had she managed to be a good wife. Hadn’t he told her so, times without number? It was a heavy burden for her conscience to carry.
On the other hand, Valente was offering her an indefensibly corrupt arrangement which made her feel that she owed him nothing in terms of honesty. He was playing a cruel game with her. Did she have the nerve to fight for terms which would make an agreement possible?
CHAPTER THREE
CAROLINE was taken aback when not one but three luxury vehicles pulled up outside Winterwood shortly after four that afternoon. She had dimly assumed that Valente would arrive without an entourage. This would make a private chat impossible.
Valente emerged fluidly from his limo, his every movement laced with the predatory grace that was as much a part of him as his ability to breathe. He cut an impressive figure in his supremely elegant dark suit, which accentuated his broad shoulders, lean hips and long, powerful legs. He strode into the entrance hall closely followed by three other men. He already knew to expect the flashy décor, so it was his companions who stared in surprise when they realised that almost everything, from the fake marble pillars to the elaborate furniture, was gilded. It was bad taste central, Valente acknowledged with concealed amusement, the attempt of a nouveau riche family to present a country house in the guise of an historic stately home.
With unblemished cool, Valente introduced Caroline to an architect, a surveyor, and a keen-looking local man she recognised as the owner of a building firm well known for restoring period properties. ‘They’re here to see the house and get some plans down on paper. It would make more sense if they were allowed to explore at their own pace,’ he said.
Caroline was appalled that he was already making plans to alter her parents’ home. ‘Of course,’ she acceded. as if the matter was of no concern to her—because she knew that she had no grounds for interfering.
‘Where are your parents?’ Valente asked with a frown as his companions took off in different directions to do his bidding. He had expected to renew his acquaintance with the older couple who had in the past slighted him with their distaste, quite unaware that as an illegitimate Barbieri he had been abused by true professionals in that field and had developed a tough skin after enduring much more painful rejections and dismissals. He ran his unimpressed gaze over the faded jeans and the ruffled purple shirt that Caroline now sported. The outfit at least fitted her delicate figure and made her look much younger than her years. The shirt also lent a reflected purple depth to her silvery eyes, while less innocently outlining the rounded, tip-tilted firmness of her small bosom. His even white teeth clenched and his body reacted accordingly to those delectable breasts, even before he noted the tight fit of the denim over the curve of her hips.
