The Italian's Rags-To-Riches Wife
She had spoken with a low, grim vehemence that was at one with her unappealing appearance. It irritated Allesandro. He had no wish to be here, none whatsoever, and now, for his pains, this fright of a girl was trying to send him off with a flea in his ear.
He sat back in the chair. It was time to cut to the chase.
‘Perhaps you do not realise,’ he said, and his dark eyes rested unreadably on his target, ‘that your grandfather is a very wealthy man. One of the richest in Italy. It would be, Miss Stowe, to your clear material advantage to accede to his wishes.’
For answer she leant forward slightly, her hands touching the top of the table across from him.
‘I hope he chokes on his wealth!’ she bit out. ‘Just go! Right now! Tell him, since you’re his messenger boy, that so far as I’m concerned I have no grandfather! Just like his son had no daughter!’
Anger seared in Allesandro’s face.
‘Tomaso was not responsible for your father’s refusal to acknowledge you!’
‘Well, he clearly did a lousy job of bringing up his son! That was something he did have responsibility for, and he failed miserably! His son was despicable—so why should I have the slightest time for a man who brought up his son to be like that?’
Allesandro got to his feet. The sudden movement made the chair legs scrape on the flagstoned floor.
‘Basta!’ More Italian broke from him, sounding vehement. Then he cut back to English. ‘It is as well that you are refusing to visit your grandfather. You would be a great disappointment to him. As it is,’ he said cuttingly, ‘I am now facing the task of telling an old, sick man, mourning the tragic death of his only son, that his last remaining relative on earth is an ill-mannered, inconsiderate, self-righteous female prepared to condemn him sight unseen. I’ll take my leave of you.’
Without another word he strode out of the room, back down the corridor to the front door. She heard the front door thump shut, and then the sound of an engine starting, of a car moving off, soon dying away.
She was, she realised, shaking very slightly.
Aftershock, she thought. Out of nowhere, for the first time in her life, contact had been made by her father’s family in Italy. All her life his name had been excoriated, all mention of him—and they had been few and far between—prefixed by condemnation and unforgiving hostility. She had grown up from infancy with her mother dead, and her grandparents making it extremely plain to her just how despicable her father had been.
But now he’s dead…
A stab of pain went through her again. She had never expected—let alone wanted—to see him, or meet him, or know anything more about him. Yet to have been told so bluntly that he was dead had still been a shock. For a second so brief it was extinguished almost as soon as it occurred, a sense of grief went through her.
My father is dead. I never knew him, and now I never will…
Then she rallied. She knew enough about him to know that he would not have been worth knowing.
He rejected you. Rejected you so entirely that he completely and absolutely ignored your existence. He didn’t give a damn about you…
He was nothing but a spoilt, self-indulgent playboy, who used women like playthings. Getting away with it because he was rich and handsome.
Like the man who was sent here.
Unwillingly, her eyes flicked to where he had been sitting, and her expression soured even more. Then she straightened her shoulders. There was work to be done, and she had better get on with it. Grim-faced, she plodded back out into the yard, and set off to gather another load of kindling in the rain.
Allesandro sank into the soft chintz-covered armchair with a sense of relief and looked around the warm, elegant drawing room of the Lidford House Hotel, which his PA had booked for an overnight stay before flying back to Rome. Now this was the way a country house in England should be—not like Laura Stowe’s decaying ruin.
He took a sip of martini, savouring its dry tang as if it were washing a bad taste out of his mouth. Dio, but the girl was a termagant! Without a redeeming feature—in appearance or personality—to her name. Though he had resented Tomaso’s manipulation of him, now he could only pity the man for his granddaughter. He wouldn’t wish her on anyone! Allesandro’s face shadowed momentarily. Tomaso’s disappointment would be acute. It did not take much to realise that what he had been hoping for was not just comfort in his bereavement but also, eventually, a hope of his own progeny.
Well, he could whistle for a husband for the girl—that much was plain. As plain as she herself was.
He took another sip of his martini, enjoying the warmth from the roaring fire in front of him.
In other circumstances he would have pitied the girl for her complete lack of looks. But her manners and personality had been so abrasive, so unpleasant, that they put her beyond pity.
Impatiently he reached for the leatherbound menu to decide what to have for dinner. Tomaso’s unlovely granddaughter was no longer his concern. He had done what Tomaso had asked, and if she were refusing to come to Italy, so be it.
It was not his problem.
Except when Allesandro returned to Italy, he discovered that Tomaso did not see it that way.
‘He’s done what?’ Two days later, Allesandro’s voice was rigid with disbelief.
But the question was rhetorical. The answer to it was in front of his eyes, in the tersely worded memo that his PA had silently handed him. Signed by the chairman of Viale-Vincenzo, informing him that his services as chief executive would no longer be required.
A rage such as he had never known permeated through Allesandro. He might still be a major shareholder in Viale-Vincenzo, but now he would no longer even have day-to-day control of the company, let alone the long-term control that the chairmanship would have given him. He knew exactly what was behind this. Tomaso had not accepted Laura Stowe’s refusal to visit him. Allesandro had balked at spelling out just how hostile the girl had been to him. Now he wished he’d been less sensitive of Tomaso’s feelings.
‘Get me Tomaso on the phone,’ he ordered savagely. ‘Now!’
CHAPTER TWO
LAURA picked up the post that had fallen through the letterbox, her expression bleak. Yesterday’s post had brought grim news. A final reminder from the taxman warned her that late payment would incur interest charges, and a letter from the auction house had valued the remaining antiques at considerably less than the sum the taxman required.
Despair and fear were gnawing at her. Day by day she was edging closer to the bleak prospect of having to sell Wharton. Her heart clawed at the thought.
I can’t sell! I just can’t! There has to be something—something I can do to keep it going!
If she could just pay the taxman, she would have a chance. She could raise a mortgage on the property and then use the money to convert the house into a holiday let, as planned. The lettings would then pay the mortgage and maintenance costs. But if she couldn’t pay the tax…
Desperation knifed through her again.
As she continued to consider her bleak future, her hands stilled suddenly on one of the letters. It was a thick white envelope, and the stamp was Italian. Grimly she ripped it open. Inside were three things: a letter, an airline ticket…
And a cheque.
A cheque drawn on Viale-Vincenzo. In a sum that brought a rasp to her throat.
Slowly she looked at the letter, written on company paper. It was not informative, merely drew her attention to the enclosed cheque and ticket. As she flicked open the ticket she saw it was from Heathrow to Rome, and was dated for a week’s time. It was also executive class. Attached to the back of the letter was a second page of closely printed Italian that she could not understand. Obviously this document must explain that the cheque was a gift in return for her visiting her grandfather in Italy.
Carefully, Laura replaced everything inside the envelope, and went to sit down at the kitchen table. She stared at the envelope in front of her, so different from yesterday’s communication from the Inland Revenue and the auctioneer.
Suddenly temptation, like an overpowering wave, swept through her.
I’ll pay the cheque back—every last penny, with interest!—once I’ve got the mortgage through. But the taxman won’t wait—I’ve got to settle that first, in any way I can!
But not this way, she riposted mentally. She couldn’t touch a penny of Viale money! Her grandfather would turn in his grave if she did—especially after the way Stefano Viale had treated his daughter..
But surely the Viale family owed him, too?
They owe you—and your mother, and your grandparents—for all the years of struggle, because of what your father did. They owe you…
Not a penny in child maintenance had her mother received. It had been Laura’s grandparents who had kept her and her mother, who had brought her up, paid for her education and keep, shod and housed her. Stefano Viale—whose father, according to the handsome lordly gofer who had told her, was one of the richest men in Italy—had not parted with a penny of his money.
The cheque’s just back-payment. That’s all!
But if she did take the cheque, she would have to do what it was bribing her to do. Her stomach hollowed. She would have to go to Italy and face her father’s family.
Her face hardened. She had to save Wharton. It was her home, her haven! She had always lived here, helping to take the burden of its upkeep off her increasingly frail grandparents. She couldn’t lose it now! She just couldn’t! She stared blankly at the cheque in her hand, stomach churning.
I’m going to have to do it. I’m going to have to go to Italy. I don’t want to—I don’t want to so badly that it hurts. But if I want that money—money I need to help save Wharton—then I’m going to have to do it.
Laura stared out of the porthole over the fleecy white clouds, her expression tight. With every atom of her body she wished to heaven she was not here. But it was too late now. She was on her way, and there was nothing she could do about it.
‘Champagne?’ The flight attendant, a tray of foaming glasses in her hand, was smiling down at her, as if she didn’t look totally out of place in an executive class seat.
‘Thank you,’ said Laura awkwardly, taking a glass. Well, why not? she thought defiantly. After all, she had something to drink to.
She lifted her glass a fraction.
‘To Wharton,’ she whispered. ‘To my home. And damn my father’s family!’
A man was holding up a sign with her name on it as she walked out into the arrivals section at Fiumicino airport. Landing in Rome had been strange. She had seldom been abroad. There had been a school trip to Brussels, and her grandparents had once taken her to the Netherlands. But Italy, of course, had been out for obvious reasons.
And she didn’t want to be here now. Resentment, resistance, and a horrible churning emotion she could not name sat heavily on her as she clumped after the man holding the sign, who was now carrying her single piece of luggage. Outdoors, the difference in temperature from still-wintry Devon struck her. It was not warm, but it was definitely mild. Thin sunshine brightened the air, but it could not brighten her mood. The ordeal ahead of her suddenly seemed very real. She clenched her jaw and climbed into the back of the smart black saloon that had been sent for her.
It was only as she sank into the deep, soft leather of her seat that she realised she was not alone in the car.
Allesandro di Vincenzo sat beside her. His dark eyes surveyed her critically.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you finally came. I thought the fat cheque I paid you might change your mind.’
His voice was caustic, as was the look he gave her.
The intervening time since his rain-sodden descent on Laura Stowe had not improved her looks, observed Allesandro critically. She looked every bit as much of a fright now as she had then. Oh, she’d clearly made some degree of effort to look less bedraggled than before, but to hopeless effect. Although she was no longer wearing those unspeakable corduroy trousers and that thick unravelled jumper, her skirt was ill-fitting, clearly cheap, and her blouse bagged around her bust and waist. She wore thick stockings and heavy-soled flat shoes. Her hair was unkempt, completely unstyled, and still tied back with an elasticated band in a clump at the back of her neck. Her eyebrows still beetled across her brow, and she wore no make-up whatsoever. As his gaze narrowed, he knew why. Because it wouldn’t do anything for her.
Nothing could—that much was obvious.
His mouth tightened. Tomaso was welcome to her. After this second round of even more base manipulation, Allesandro’s sympathy for Tomaso was at rock-bottom—even allowing for the old man’s emotional state. He would deliver the girl and get back to his life—running Viale-Vincenzo, at least as CEO again, even though Tomaso was still holding out on the chairmanship. If the old man reneged on that again, now that he’d actually delivered the damn girl to him…He snapped his mind away and opened his laptop, immediately burying himself in work and ignoring the other passenger in the car.
Laura spent the journey staring out of the window. They seemed to be heading deep into the Italian countryside, rather than heading into Rome. But wherever her grandfather was, she didn’t want to meet him.
She also didn’t want to be in a car with Allesandro di Vincenzo. It had been an unpleasant surprise to see him again. A discomforting one. She’d always done her best in life to avoid the company of men, removing herself before they did. A man who was as ridiculously good-looking as Allesandro di Vincenzo, with all his expensive glamour and effortless sex appeal, simply made her even more acutely uncomfortable. Even without all the business about her father and his family, it was totally obvious that a man like that would endure her company only under duress.
A shuttered look showed in her face. She’d read somewhere that beautiful women and handsome men tended to be nicer than those not so beautiful or handsome. The reason, the article had explained, was that the beautiful people had always been feted and welcomed and admired, and so naturally they found the world a good place to live in. Plain people, like herself, were far less sure of a welcome by others. It made them awkward and self-conscious, uncertain.
Well, that was true of her, she thought, staring up through the windscreen. She’d felt an outsider all her life, thanks mainly to the circumstances of her birth. But then adolescence had arrived, bringing home to her the tough truth about her appearance, and that sense of being an outsider—shut out from the normal activities of her age group—had been exacerbated a thousand times.
Laura had finally realised that she had two choices in life. Either to be bitter about being so unattractive, or to get over it and move on. There were other things in life that were worthwhile, and if she just totally ignored her own appearance then she wouldn’t be bothered by it.
And now she refused to be troubled by it. She wore clothes she could afford, which were serviceable and comfortable. She didn’t bother about her hair—never spending money getting it cut, just tying it back out of the way. And as for make-up, she’d save her money for something more useful. Like groceries and bills.
And what did she care about a man like Allesandro di Vincenzo, as alien to her as if he’d come from another planet, looking at her with disdain? It was a lot easier when he was doing what he was doing now—completely ignoring her. Immersed in his laptop, he tapped away at the keyboard.
He must, she realised, be a key part of Viale-Vincenzo. He was clearly rich, and there was an aura of command about him even though he must only be in his early thirties, she surmised.
She gave a private sour smile as she gazed out of the window, then deliberately forced her mind away from the man in the car. Instead, she looked at the passing countryside as the car sped smoothly along the autostrada.
This was Italy—the cypresses, the olive groves, the fields and the hills, the vineyards and the red-tiled houses. All bathed in sunlight.
This is my country, as much as England is.
Something stirred inside her, but she crushed it down. She might be half-Italian, but it was by accident only, not intent. Her upbringing was English—all English. This was an alien place. She did not belong here. It meant nothing to her. Nothing at all.
Deliberately, she started to run through all the repairs that needed doing at Wharton. That was the only place that meant anything to her.
Not anything here.
Laura got out of the car and looked around her. Involuntarily, her eyes widened. The house in front of her was huge. A grand, aristocratic villa, no less, made of cream-coloured stone. Sash windows marched along the frontage, winking in the sunlight and on the other side of the gravelled drive on which the car had drawn up formal gardens stretched away down a gentle slope. Even at this time of year she could see the grounds were perfectly manicured.
Tension knotted inside her like a ball of steel wool.
She was here, in Italy. Inside this vast house was her only living relative. The father of the man who had fathered her. Father of the man who had destroyed her mother with his callousness and cruelty, and who had refused to acknowledge his own daughter’s existence.
She wanted to run. Bolt. Get away as fast and as far as she could. She wanted to go home, be home—the only home she had ever known, the only home she wanted. She wanted nothing, nothing of what was here.
She stared about her. That strange pang came again, very deep within. If the man who had fathered her hadn’t been the complete bastard that he had, she might have known this place. Might have been brought here for holidays. Might have run laughing through the gardens as a child. Her mother might have been here too—alive and happy with the man she loved…
But Stefano Viale had not been interested in love, or marriage, or his own daughter. He had made that very, very plain.
Inside her head, she heard again her grandmother’s stricken voice.
‘He never wrote, not once. Never answered any of your mother’s letters. She was heartbroken—just heartbroken. Not a single letter, not a single kind word to her. He’d taken her innocence, used her and thrown her away!’
Laura’s expression hardened. That had been the reality she had grown up with.
Father? She didn’t have one. She never had.
And she didn’t have a grandfather either. Whatever the man waiting for her inside wanted to call himself.
‘This way.’
The terse, impersonal tones of Allesandro di Vincenzo interrupted her baleful thoughts. She was being directed indoors, and with an increasing sense of oppression she walked inside into a vast marble-floored entrance hall.
Allesandro strode past her, towards a pair of double doors beyond. He threw them open and walked in. Tomaso was there, at his desk by the window. He looked up immediately. There was a taut expression on his face. Tense. Expectant.
Suddenly, for all that the old man had manipulated him shamelessly, Allesandro felt he could not do this to him. He should go in first, warn the old man what he was about to get by way of a granddaughter. Then he crushed his compunction. Tomaso was playing hardball—deliberately using Allesandro’s desire for control of Viale-Vincenzo in order to make him do what he wanted. And if what he wanted was his deeply unpleasant granddaughter, he could have her.
Behind him Allesandro could hear the heavy plod of unfeminine feet shod in flat clumpy shoes that no Italian woman this side of a lunatic asylum would even have possessed, let alone worn.
The old man was getting to his feet.
‘Tomaso—your granddaughter,’ announced Allesandro, his voice studiously expressionless. ‘Laura Stowe.’
But Tomaso was not looking at him. He was staring past the younger man to the female figure that had walked in behind him. Allesandro watched his face as the old man’s expression changed.
It became bland, unreadable.
‘Laura—’ said Tomaso, and held his hand towards her.
The girl was standing there, ignoring the hand that stretched out to her. Her face was shuttered, the way it had been the entire journey. The lack of expression made the girl look like a pudding—one of those stodgy English ones, with suet in them.
‘I am your grandfather,’ said Tomaso. The face might be bland, Allesandro thought, eyes narrowing minutely, but the voice was not. It was audibly suppressing emotion.
Something flickered angrily in the girl’s face.
‘My grandfather is dead. You are merely the father of the man who ruined my mother’s life.’
The aggression in her tone was unequivocal. For a moment Allesandro saw new emotion in Tomaso’s face. Shock. Naked and raw.
The girl held her pitiless gaze.
‘The only reason I’m here,’ she told him, ‘is because that man—’ she nodded curtly in Allesandro’s direction, and he felt a spurt of vicious anger both at her manner, and at what he knew was coming next ‘—bribed me to come.’
‘He bribed you?’ The old man’s voice was a disbelieving echo.
‘Yes.’ Allesandro watched, aghast, as the girl spoke bluntly. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you, or anyone connected with the man who treated my mother so unforgivably! I can’t imagine why you thought I would have the slightest desire or interest in meeting you—any more than the man who fathered me had the slightest desire or interest in my existence, or in what he’d done to my mother!’ A sharp, tight breath made her pause, and then she went on. ‘I’m sorry your son is dead—but it’s nothing to do with me. Nothing. Because your son wasn’t anything to do with me. He made that totally clear even before I was born!’
Shock edged Tomaso’s face. ‘This is not how I—This is not—’ He faltered. He looked across at the girl, half turned away. ‘I thought—I thought you would be glad—glad that I had sought you out…’
His face greyed, and then suddenly his hand was clutching at his heart. Allesandro started forward, catching him as he fell.
The next hour was endless. Allesandro had immediately summoned an ambulance, and Tomaso had been rushed to hospital. To Allesandro’s relief he was soon pronounced out of danger, even though he was being kept in overnight for monitoring.
Whatever kind of seizure Tomaso had had, Allesandro knew only one thing. That harpy, with her venomous tirade, had been responsible. His eyes darkened now, as he glared at the girl sitting stony-faced in the car taking them back to Tomaso’s villa. Her hands were clenched in her lap. She’d sat just like that in the hospital lobby while Allesandro had accompanied Tomaso into the ward.
‘Is he going to be all right?’ she asked suddenly.
‘You care?’ Allesandro derided.
‘I told you—I’m sorry his son is dead, and I’m sorry he collapsed. I wouldn’t want him to die. I wouldn’t want anyone to die.’ Her voice was terse and jerky.
‘Big of you,’ he replied. ‘But if you really want to be big, you’d better do what he wants and stay at the villa until he’s well enough to see you. God knows why he should want to, but he said he did before I left him.’
He got no answer from her, only a shoulder turning away from him, maximising the distance between them. The movement irritated him. If there was a female in the world less likely to engage his interest, she was beyond imagining.
CHAPTER THREE
LAURA sat on the bed in the bedroom she’d been shown to by one of the household staff, and stared out of the window. The view was beautiful. Formal Italianate gardens, just like in a guidebook, and then a vista of olive groves, narrow dark cypresses and rolling hills.
She turned away. She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to be in Italy, in her grandfather’s villa—