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Registering that all-over distinctively masculine appraisal, Caroline reddened and felt warm all over, as if her temperature had gone haywire. Valente had always had that effect on her. Unlike many very good-looking men, Valente had never gone through a New Man or metrosexual phase. He was an aggressive alpha male who emanated high-voltage sexuality and potent virility. Women of all ages were always aware when Valente was around. ‘My parents are out … my father has a hospital appointment.’
‘Their absence should only make life simpler, ‘Valente remarked. ‘Let’s get on with this. I have a tight schedule.’
He revealed no interest, indeed his frown merely deepened, as she showed him through to the handsome main reception rooms where her mother had spared no expense in either colour scheme or embellishment. ‘Look, you can’t possibly want to live here,’ she told him sharply. ‘I can’t believe that you would have sufficient use for this house, or that it could ever be made over in your style.’
‘If you were waiting here to welcome me when I arrived for a visit, I could learn to like it. In any case—’ a sleek black brow quirked with sardonic cool ‘—what could you possibly know about how I live now?’
‘The designer clothes and the limousines speak for you. This house was never in that class even when it was new!’
‘Sniping at me won’t drive me away, and nor will it win you favours,’ Valente breathed lazily. ‘This property belongs to me and I will do as I like with it.’
‘But my parents—’
‘I don’t want to hear another word! I have a hearty contempt for sob stories,’ Valente incised with chilling bite. He shifted a lean brown hand in dismissal when she attempted to show him the kitchen quarters, and headed for the main staircase instead. ‘Neither of your parents has ever worked a day in their lives, or even had the good sense to cut back on their lifestyle when their business began going down. I refuse to see them as victims of anything but their own self-indulgence.’
Silenced by that harsh condemnation, Caroline swallowed back the protest that her parents deserved a little more sympathy because as their income had dwindled so their household budget had had to be slashed. All extras had been shaved away, the housekeeper and the gardener laid off. Valente was not the man to give her family sympathy, for there was too big a difference between their backgrounds. Caroline had never wanted for anything while Valente had grown up in poverty with a mother whose ill-health had killed her by the time he was eighteen. His tougher experiences had ensured that only major affliction could ignite his compassion.
‘Even so, your parents did not deserve your husband’s betrayal of their trust,’ Valente continued drily with an observation that caused Caroline to stumble on the stairs.
His hand shot out to steady her and he stepped behind her to prevent her from falling backwards. Momentarily, his body braced hers, with all the heady heat and masculinity of his powerful frame. She quivered and then tensed, fighting her awareness of his proximity with all her might.
‘What on earth are you implying?’ Caroline asked curtly.
‘Your late husband was nothing more than a thief, who helped himself to profits even when the business was struggling—’
On the landing, Caroline spun round to face him, agitation and anger colouring her heart-shaped face. ‘He may have spent unwisely on some items, but he was not a thief!’
‘My auditors and the firm’s accountant could tell you otherwise and show you plenty of proof. Your husband set up a dummy business account and he milked it every opportunity he got.’
Her attention resting on the sombre planes of Valente’s darkly handsome features, Caroline registered the depth of conviction in his own words and paled. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain. Odd, that, isn’t it, piccola mia?’ Valente remarked softly. ‘Your parents thought I would plunge their little princess into a squalid life, and yet it was the golden, public-school-educated boy-next-door who had the criminal streak and the bad habits. He couldn’t keep his hands out of the till or off his employees!’
Caroline saw red. Trembling in the grip of fury and humiliation, she lifted her hand and slapped him—crack!—across one proud olive cheekbone. ‘Matthew’s dead … show some respect!’
‘Don’t ever dare to hit me like that again.’ Eyes black as coals and angrily bright as diamonds, Valente made his warning soft and low and icy.
‘You took me by surprise. It won’t happen again,’ Caroline told him in a rush, shocked at her complete loss of temper and control.
‘I have no respect for your late husband … or you, for that matter … because you stayed with him until the bitter end. Yet you knew what he was capable of, didn’t you?’ he condemned with lethal accuracy. ‘I saw your face. You weren’t sufficiently shocked to have been ignorant of his greed or his selfishness—’
Still trembling, Caroline moved so that one of the men who had accompanied him into the house could get past her and head down the stairs. ‘I didn’t know about the account you mentioned,’ she admitted in a pained whisper. ‘I knew he had been extravagant but I had no idea that he might actually be stealing. Please don’t publicise the fact—’
‘Even dead, Matthew’s sacred and untouchable, is he?’ Valente derided in disbelief.
‘His parents would never recover from the disgrace if what you’ve just told me got out. He can’t be punished now. Let his family keep their memories of him clean and intact,’ she pleaded vehemently.
Valente was outraged by that plea. Did she truly expect him to throw a cloak of respectful concealment over her late husband’s fraud? Bailey—the guy who had supplanted Valente in her heart and in her bed?
Caroline read the anger in the clenched set of his fabulous bone structure, and the grim glow of displeasure in his hard dark gaze. A kind of panic threatened what remained of her composure and she shifted her feet restively. This was a meeting she had known she had to get right, but instead it was going badly wrong.
From round the corner drifted the sound of male voices engaged in lively dialogue about where to carve out extra bathroom space in the old house.
Before they could be interrupted, and Valente distracted by them, Caroline reached a sudden decision. She opened the door into the unused master bedroom suite behind her and closed a hand over Valente’s sleeve to tug him in there with her. ‘We have to talk …’
‘What about? I made you a simple proposition,’ he declared, with more than a hint of impatience, although he twisted his hand around to catch her fingers in the grip of his. ‘This morning you were undecided—’
Caroline leant back against the door to close it. ‘I was not undecided. I made it very clear that what you were suggesting was out of the question.’
‘Except when I was kissing you,’ Valente tossed in lazily, his satisfaction at that recollection patent. His long fingers stroked the sensitive skin of her inner wrist and she felt her nipples tighten and tingle with awareness beneath her clothing. While he tried not to wince at the wall panels of pseudo-Georgian flowers picked out in lime-green and white, and the ludicrously opulent furniture which was so far removed from any Georgian ideal of elegance, Caroline was incapable of noticing anything.
Her face was flaming, shame and confusion having assailed her in a twin attack as her body reacted to the touch of his clever fingers. He had no idea of how inadequate she was and she dragged her hand free. Weighing up the potential future of the employees at Hales, however, Caroline ignored the twang of her conscience. She had already warned Valente what she was like. It would be his own fault when he discovered that she was incapable of providing him with the level of sexual entertainment he expected. In any case he was trying to blackmail her, and she needed to use every possible weapon in her repertoire to fight back.
‘I could never become your mistress,’ she told him baldly. ‘It would kill my parents. They’re too old to handle that, Valente. Nor could they accept such a relationship and still live under this roof.’
Lean, strong face implacable, Valente moved back to the door. ‘Why did you bring me in here?’ His beautiful mouth took on a sardonic curl as he cast a speaking glance over the dusty reproduction sleigh bed, brilliant black eyes flicking up again to rest on her earnest face. He was unimpressed, for she had seemed equally sincere five years earlier when she told him how much she loved him. ‘For a crazy moment I saw the bed and thought that maybe you wanted to pay me something on account … a first instalment, as it were.’
Consternation gripping her as he reached for the doorknob, Caroline blocked his passage while a blaze of temper roared through her. There it was again, the suggestion that she was a cheap and easy slut, and she hated him for it when she had given him no grounds to view her in that light. ‘Why won’t you talk to me or listen?’ she hissed. ‘I will do just about anything to protect the workers at Hales, but don’t ask me to hurt or upset my parents. They could only accept the set-up you suggested if we got married!’
Valente flung back his arrogant dark head and laughed as though she had said something uproariously funny. ‘Che idea! I’m not the romantic I was five years ago, when you appealed to my protective instincts. Nor am I so hot for your tiny body that I would surrender my freedom for even a short period of time.’
Mortified colour flooded her cheeks when she appreciated that he had taken her declaration as a serious suggestion—which it had not been. It had simply occurred to her that the only way her parents would accept her intimacy with Valente or his financial help would be if he was her husband. In actuality the prospect of being married again, ensnared in a nightmare pretence of a relationship whilst being subjected to male demands, had as much attraction for Caroline as a dose of the plague, and she went white. She had hated being married, had felt trapped and helpless. But she found herself thinking that marrying Valente would be a much safer solution for her family than her becoming a mistress who might well be discarded within days, along with his generous promises. After all, she knew, even if he didn’t, that she was the last woman alive likely to fulfil his fantasies in the bedroom.
‘But then it wouldn’t have to be a normal marriage. I mean one that lasts,’ Caroline could not resist pointing out in a grudging undertone.
His sleek ebony brows pleated. ‘Maledizione! How could you seriously think that I would marry you?’ he demanded with incredulous bite. ‘Naturally I can understand why you would prefer that option. The divorce settlement would be worth millions, and we both know that although you hide it well there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for that amount of money!’
Barley able to credit that she was having such a conversion with Valente, Caroline fixed affronted grey eyes on him. ‘I thought pre-nuptial agreements dealt with that sort of threat these days. I know you don’t believe it, but I don’t want your wretched money—’
‘There’s no way I would stoop to the level of marrying you!’ Valente spelt out with disdainful emphasis. ‘You’re a lying, deceitful, mercenary little witch. Get the idea of marriage right out of your head now.’
Caroline kept her head high. ‘I’m afraid it’s the only option I could accept—’
‘But what would I get out of it—apart from a sense of self-sacrifice?’ he fielded with unconcealed scorn, outraged by her cheek in even suggesting the idea, when she had stood him up at the altar five years earlier.
‘Then accept that I will never be your mistress, Valente. Evidently we’ve reached stalemate.’ Tilting her chin, Caroline opened the door and walked back out on to the landing with as much dignity as she could muster.
‘I would want a child.’
Lashes flipping up in bewilderment over her startled eyes, Caroline froze in her tracks. She was stunned by that entirely unexpected announcement.
‘An heir to follow in my phenomenally successful footsteps, piccola mia,’ Valente mused silkily. ‘How does that idea grab you?’
Caroline had turned pale, knowing that he had just presented her with yet another impossible challenge. ‘It doesn’t.’
Valente released a cruelly amused laugh. ‘I didn’t think it would, but that’s the final offer on the table, cara mia. If I take you as a wife there has to be something more in it for me than sex. In that department I have endless choice and no reason to choose marriage. But a child would be the perfect sweetener to the deal.’
‘Sadly, I’m not a whore or a brood mare.’
Valente cast her a lingering glance in the entrance hall. ‘All women are capable of playing the whore for the right man … or the right opportunity. I wanted you the first time I saw you and I still want you. You’ve upped the stakes and so must I. I’ll consider your idea if you spend the night with me at my hotel.’
Paralysed to the spot by that stunning proposition, Caroline gazed back at him with huge disbelieving eyes.
‘I always play hardball, and if you want a wedding ring for what you can get out of me as a legally wedded gold-digger, I expect to preview the merchandise,’ Valente delivered silkily. ‘I’m tied up in meetings until ten tonight. I’ll see you then.’
White as milk at that crack about merchandise, not to mention his belief that she had only mentioned marriage in the hope of reaping a greater financial profit from him, Caroline muttered, ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Final word, last chance,’ he quipped, closing his arms round her slight body without warning and sealing her to his lean, powerful frame. ‘The game is over, angelina mia. Take your chance while you can, because it won’t come round again.’
Even a hint of what he probably saw as passion but she saw as potential coercion caused all the colour to bleed out of her complexion. It took every ounce of her self-command not to succumb to the urge to fight him off like an attacker. His strength, his very forcefulness, intimidated her. He dipped his mouth with comparative lightness down on to parted lips, and this time around she did not respond. In a sick daze of enforced tolerance, she was as still and unresponsive as a doll. Releasing his hold on her, he lifted his handsome dark head again, his shrewd, dark-as-night eyes arrowing over the frozen pallor of her face.
‘Is this little demonstration your final answer?’ Valente demanded, his musical, lilting Italian accent roughened and brusque in tone.
And she almost said yes. But something unrecognisable inside her surged up at the last moment with another answer entirely. It was an answer that took her aback almost as much as it surprised him. ‘No … no, it’s not!’
The fierce tension in Valente’s tall, powerful physique eased infinitesimally. He turned to smoothly greet the men descending the stairs. A few minutes later the cars outside were pulling away and heading back down the drive. But Caroline was welded to the spot long after they had vanished from view. Her sense of horror at the invitation he had made in the most demeaning of terms had momentarily deprived her of the ability to think straight. And then the phone rang.
It was her parents. They had been invited to dine with her father’s brother, Charles, who lived near the hospital, and would not be coming home until the following day. Her primary reaction was relief, and that shocked her, but she had no desire to discuss her meeting with Valente, or his visit to the house, as she knew she would have to lie about what had passed between them.
Only slowly did it dawn on her that she was now free to go to Valente’s hotel—but of course she wouldn’t do that. How could she? But Caroline’s subconscious mind had long nourished the disloyal suspicion that had she married Valente rather than Matt her marriage would have been consummated. It had been foolish to believe that she and Matt could change overnight from platonic friends into keen bed partners. Others more experienced with sex than she had been might have managed that jump, but she had failed miserably. From the first she had been shy, awkward and inhibited, discovering too late that the physical response Valente had awakened with ease had been sadly absent with the man she married. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong between her and Matt, and once that pattern had been set it had been too late to change it.
What if it was different with Valente? Could she be like any other woman with him? It was an exciting question for a woman who was too afraid to even consider dating, and had long since assumed that she would be alone for the rest of her life. She shrugged off the memory of her moment of panic when Valente had last kissed her, because she badly wanted to believe that he could be the magic key to banish her inadequacy. What if she had a few drinks to loosen up first? Wouldn’t that give her more nerve and take care of her shyness and inhibitions? All she needed to do was get past that awful instant when panic threatened to sink in…
Bolstered by an inordinate amount of vodka, Caroline rebelled against the conservative wardrobe which Matt had insisted she should wear. He had made her feel old before her time, deeming make-up, nail varnish, shorter skirts and figure-flattering garments unsuitable for a married woman of her age. She reached into the back of the wardrobe for a dress she had bought when she was dating Valente, but which she had neither worn nor discarded. It was silvery blue, short, and it enhanced her slight curves. She left her hair down, the way she knew he liked it. Sheer tights and high-heeled sandals completed the look, but she was so startled when she saw her provocative reflection in the mirror she froze.
What sort of a woman dressed up for a one-night stand with a man who was planning to try her out as he might test-drive a new car? A really desperate woman, she acknowledged with a shame-faced shiver. It shook her that she might be even more desperate to discover whether she could be as sexy and desirable as any other woman than she was to become Valente’s wife in order to help the Hales employees and her parents. What did that say about her?
A long, long time ago, before other influences prevailed, Valente had briefly transformed her into the woman she very much wanted to be. A strong woman, sure of her own judgement, ready to take the risk of loving and marrying a man who inhabited a totally different world from her own.
Her parents had gone off the deep end when they’d discovered she was dating one of the drivers at Hales. They had despised Valente even before they’d met him, making wild accusations against him and forming even wilder assumptions, saying he would only use and abuse her, insisting that he was only interested in marrying her because she stood to inherit Hales. A good part of their melodramatic reaction had been based on Valente’s deprived background and lack of money, and Caroline had almost come to hate her parents for their arrogant prejudice.
Within weeks she had gone from being a devoted daughter to a deeply unhappy rebel, defying their demand that she give up Valente. But Matt had proved equally opposed to the relationship, and as he’d been a close friend his opinion had naturally influenced her.
‘You don’t have anything in common with him. He’s not one of us,’ Matt had argued loftily. ‘You’ve never gone without anything you wanted. How could you possibly cope with the life you would have with him? And don’t you owe your parents more than this? It’s not unreasonable for them to want their only child to stay in the UK and marry an Englishman, willing to treat them with the respect and consideration they deserve!’
Gnawing guilt had taken the edge off her every moment with Valente, and then her feelings had swung violently against her parents when Hales had stopped giving work to Valente. She’d had no doubt that he was being deliberately excluded. He’d had to find other loads and runs to continue making a living and coming to the UK. That had been when she’d agreed to be his wife, outraged by the unjust treatment he had suffered at her family’s hands.
Tearing herself free of those disturbing memories, and shrinking from an awareness of her immaturity and over-reliance on the opinions of others, Caroline studied her reflection in the mirror afresh and took another slug of vodka for good measure. She could be strong again. She could change everything around if she could just manage to share a bed with Valente for one night. Could that be so difficult? Once she had been madly in love with Valente. He was gorgeous. And surely he was so sexually experienced that he would soothe her nerves and help her to relax with him?
Downstairs the doorbell buzzed and she checked her watch. It was the taxi she had ordered. She descended the stairs, still feeling horribly sober and nervous, and wondered in dismay when the kick of the alcohol would hit and hopefully give her the backbone she lacked.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHILE a business report was being summarised for his benefit by a member of his personal team Valente checked his watch, his dark, reflective gaze continually straying to the entrance door to his hotel suite. The growing pressure at his groin increased in concert. Would Caroline dare to put in an appearance?
His wide, sensual mouth hardened into a sardonic line. He had set her a trap and he was keen to see if she would fall into it and drown. After all, if she was willing to respond to so demeaning a sexual summons, it pretty much proved that there was nothing she would not do to get her hands on his wealth. And if there was one field in which Valente Lorenzatto excelled, it was in his ability to spot women so greedy that they would mortgage their souls to the devil for money.
Caroline, however, existed on an altogether more devious plane, and Valente had discovered that fact too late. Five years earlier he’d had complete faith in her. Indeed, her apparent vulnerability and innocence had charmed him, and that awareness still rankled. Right up until that day in the church it had never occurred to Valente that she might be a clever, deceitful fake—the kind of woman who would calculatingly pit one man against another to achieve her own ends. And the exercise had worked very well for her. Bailey, who’d had a womanising reputation, had got jealous and soon afterwards decided to marry her. Valente had learned the truth about Caroline the hard way, and this time around he was determined not to be influenced by crocodile tears or sad tales about her devoted parents.
Caroline got giggly in the hotel lift, and when she closed her eyes the world around her seemed to revolve. She so rarely touched alcohol—and never in quantity—that she was unsure whether she was mildly tipsy or guilty of having seriously overdone it. In addition, instead of discovering a new strain of confidence and sparkling sexiness, she felt nervous, abstracted and dizzy.
The door of the suite was opened not by Valente, as she had expected, but by one of his staff. She walked with care in the high heels she wore. Valente’s veiled dark eyes locked on to her, taking in the unbound tumble of her silvery blonde hair, lingering on the raspberry-tinted pout of her full mouth before skimming down to the swell of her breasts framed by the low neckline and the long silky length of leg revealed by the short skirt.
She took Valente’s breath away: she was all woman, in a way he had never seen her before. Gone was the girlie-girl with the demure look he remembered, and gone was the stressed-out frumpy widow he had met that morning. From her shiny fall of pale hair to her huge misty grey eyes and the perfectly packaged little body below, she looked spectacular. The pressure at his groin became an aggressive throb of arousal. She had virtually nosedived into the trap he had set. He had not bargained on the discovery that he might fall into the same trap with her … for the desire to send her back home was nowhere to be found.
As she settled herself with surprising clumsiness into an armchair across the room, and her dress slid up over her slender thighs to expose more of their perfection than he wanted to share with his companions, Valente quickly dismissed his staff.
‘Valente,’ she whispered as the door closed on their departure. On her inviting lips the syllables of his name ran together with the suggestion of a slur. In his grey striped shirt—he had discarded both jacket and tie—he had a vital male presence that made her heart race. A five o’clock shadow of dark stubble roughened his handsome jawline and his tousled black hair was beginning to form curls. Through the fine cotton shirt she could see more than a hint of the dark whorls of hair outlining his powerful pectoral muscles. Matthew had liked to wax, but Caroline had always liked a man to look like a man, and few met the demands of that role as easily as Valente did. His height, breadth and strength, not to mention his strikingly handsome features, gave him a uniquely masculine quality of raw potent sexiness. Her mouth ran dry.
‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ he admitted with cruel candour.
Colour lining her cheekbones as she registered that he had been working, because he had really not expected her to meet his challenge, Caroline closed her hands together tightly. ‘Obviously you’re better at blackmail than you realise.’
‘But one always has a choice, cara mia,’ he reminded her lazily, watching her fingers dig into the back of her other hand and knowing she was drawing blood.
‘Perhaps I should have told you to go to hell,’ Caroline slung back, surprise at his attitude awakening her temper as well as a savaging sense of stupidity—because it seemed to her that he had only invited her as an exercise in humiliation.
‘But you didn’t,’ Valente drawled, noting that she was slurring her words again and wondering if it was possible that she could have been drinking heavily. When he had known her she had hardly touched alcohol.
‘It’s not too late! Is this some sort of a game you play? You tell me what you want and once it’s there you don’t want it any more?’ Caroline demanded shakily, because her brain was almost too befuddled to find the right words with which to fight her own corner.
Valente dealt her a wondering appraisal. ‘Haven’t you learned yet that that’s what men are like?’ he breathed. ‘Most of us find that what we can’t have is much more desirable.’
‘I think I should leave.’ Caroline reared upright in one driven movement, and in the same instant her stomach gave a violent lurch of nauseous response that made her skin break out in perspiration.
‘Porca miseria … no!’ Torn between by an attack of rampant indecision alien to him and a fierce desire to sate his sexual hunger without further ado, Valente sprang upright as well. He straightened just in time to see her sway. Her clear complexion had turned the colour of putty. ‘What’s wrong? Are you ill?’
‘Bathroom …’ she muttered urgently from behind the hand she had clamped betrayingly to her mouth.
Moments later Caroline fell awkwardly to her knees on the tiles that floored the pale designer bathroom and was horribly sick—sicker than she had ever been in her life. She was appalled by the exhibition she was making of herself, and in between the retches gasped horrorstricken apologies.
‘Drunkenness is a big turn-off for me,’ Valente declared icily from the doorway. ‘Shout if you need assistance. Otherwise I’ll wait in the drawing room.’
‘Don’t you have any compassion?’ Big fat tears rolled down Caroline’s face as she choked and spluttered in the misery of disgrace.
‘No, and you would do well to remember the fact,’ he fielded without remorse, and the door snapped shut.
She had to hang onto the vanity unit to stay upright while she washed and freshened up as best she could. Although she had been sick, she still felt extremely unsteady on her feet. She took off her shoes and carried them.
Having resolutely banished the image of her suffering from his mind, Valente had returned to work on his laptop. He was in a very bad mood. The son of a father who had been an alcoholic, and abstemious in his own habits, he was disgusted by the state she was in. How dared she show up in that condition? How could she believe that such behaviour was acceptable to him? Did she think that he would want her at any cost, in any state, even drunk? For a male as fastidious as he was with women, it was an offence of no mean order.
She came into the room quietly, but he could still see how much of an effort it was for her just to put one foot in front of the other. His lean, breathtakingly handsome face hard as granite, he surveyed her with derision.
With half of her make-up washed off she was wan, and her smile was long gone. Barefoot, she no longer looked anything like a woman in her mid-twenties. She was so tiny, so delicate in build, with a ridiculously small waist and the fine bones of a bird. He shut off that dangerous train of sympathy-grabbing appreciation and flattened his expressive mouth into a stern line. This was the woman he would have married—the woman who probably would have been the mother of his first child by now.
‘I’m sorry. I was foolish … I don’t drink very often and I just drank far too much before I came out,’ Caroline confided in a sudden desperate rush. ‘I thought it would stop me being so nervous. I thought it would make me stronger—’
‘You’re not a teenager any more. You ought to know better,’ Valente retorted drily. ‘Drunks are never as entertaining as they imagine they are. You can’t even walk in a straight line. It’s not at all attractive.’
