A Vengeful Passion

CHAPTER TWO

‘I’M SURE you’ll understand that I’m not being rude when I ask you to be brief.’

Vito indicated the chair placed in readiness about six feet from the desk. If his secretary had stepped forward with a blindfold, Ashley wouldn’t have been surprised. ‘I’ll be as brief as possible.’

A satiric black brow elevated. ‘Bearing in mind that I have no desire to hear a plea for clemency on your brother’s behalf.’

Crushed before she could even warm up, Ashley was relieved when a phone buzzed and he stretched out an impatient hand. As his attention switched from her, she breathed again. The temptation to study him was overpowering. He was incredibly attractive. Hard cheekbones slashed his strong, dark features, highlighting the proud temperamental flare of his nose and a mouth that was a wide, blatantly sensual arc. But, if you were a woman, it was the eyes you noticed first and remembered longest. Vito had stunningly beautiful eyes, golden as the purest precious metal in sunlight or dark as darkest ebony.

In defiance of her every wish to the contrary, Vito still radiated a dark, savage sexuality boldly at variance with a three-piece suit and a silk tie. Every woman between fifteen and fifty raised her chin and sucked in her stomach when Vito passed. And she was not, she learnt, dragging her disobedient eyes from him, the exception that broke the rule.

As she lowered her lashes, her skin heated. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was racing. She was badly shaken by her adolescent response to all that raw, blatant masculinity. Anger followed predictably in the wake of that lowering awareness. He replaced the phone, uttering a bland apology for the interruption.

‘You want me to get down on my knees and beg, don’t you?’ As the hot, thoughtless words burst from her, shrill with resentment, she could have bitten her tongue out for that loss of control.

Vito lounged back in his swivel chair, insultingly unsurprised by the verbal assault. Far too perceptive eyes of gold ran over her flushed face. ‘Exactly why are you here?’ he asked, politely ignoring her outburst.

‘To talk about Tim and why he did it. You’re probably not aware of it, but your nephew—’

Vito dealt her a narrowed glance. ‘Insulted you to your brother?’ he interposed. ‘It was a regrettable incident.’

Ashley stiffened. ‘Regrettable?’

‘Pietro lost two of his front teeth,’ Vito returned drily. ‘The question of family loyalties was settled with their fists. Pietro came off worst and he has been honest with me. I see no connection between that episode and your brother’s inexcusable invasion of my home.’

‘So you had chapter and verse on Act One. What about Act Two?’ Ashley pressed with spirit. ‘Tim was cornered outside school and beaten up by four boys, one of whom was your nephew.’

‘When did this take place?’

Ashley had to think for a second or two before slinging the date at him with relish.

‘On that day, Pietro was attending his cousin’s wedding in Rome,’ Vito responded even more drily. ‘He could not possibly have been present.’

Her chin came up. ‘If he wasn’t there, he organised it.’

Vito set the gold pen in his hand very decisively down on the glass desktop. ‘You are now entering the realms of fantasy. Pietro would not have involved himself in so cowardly an act. Unless you have evidence on which to base these allegations, I would advise you to drop this line of argument.’ Ice cool dark eyes rested on her. ‘Pursue it and you will find it a most unproductive course.’

She was furious that she did not possess the exact details of that incident. Four youths had attacked Tim. That was the sum total of her knowledge. She ground her teeth together on an explosive retort. The atmosphere had all the encouraging warmth of a polar freeze. Biting her lower lip, she murmured, ‘I understand that the enmity between your nephew and my brother originally related to some rivalry over a girl—’

His sculpted bone-structure set. ‘And what possible relevance does that information have to the current situation?’

Ashley stiffened. ‘The connection is pretty obvious from where I’m sitting!’

‘Then we would appear to be seated in very different positions,’ Vito drawled with biting sarcasm. ‘I fail to see the smallest connection.’

‘You’re not prepared to allow me anything, are you?’ she snapped back at him, her temper simmering.

A chilling smile formed on his lips. ‘But then, in your place, I would have come through that door and endeavoured to make what apology I could for such conduct. Your sole reason for being here appears to be a blind determination to foist some measure of blame upon Pietro or, indeed, upon some unknown girl,’ he delineated with sardonic emphasis. ‘If that were not so contemptible, I would be entertained by your efforts to excuse the inexcusable.’

A red-hot flush climbed with painful slowness beneath her translucent skin. Her approach had been all wrong. She didn’t need him to tell her that. Vito, hatefully polished veteran of many a brilliant diplomatic manoeuvre. Just entering this office had taken every shred of courage in her armoury. Under threat, Ashley went on the offensive. If Vito had been decent enough to see her earlier, she could have controlled that flaw in her own make-up. But Vito had made her suffer through an agonising morning of uncertainty, adding to her stress and strain. Vito had successfully smashed her composure before she even walked into this room.

‘I was…I am very upset,’ Ashley reasoned tautly. ‘Tim’s been under considerable pressure recently with his exams so close. I simply wanted you to have a clearer picture of his state of mind.’

‘But I have not the remotest interest in his state of mind,’ Vito said without a flicker of emotion. ‘He is neither a child nor a mental incompetent. He is responsible for his own actions.’

She focused on a point safely to the left of him. This was it. This was her cue to explain why Tim had reacted so violently to Pietro’s taunts. This was her cue to tell Vito that their relationship had, in the messy aftermath of their break-up, extracted a heavy toll from her future. But how could she possibly manage to tell Vito about her pregnancy? Vito, of all people? How on earth could she discuss something that was so deeply personal a grief that she had never yet managed to discuss it with anyone?

In a weak moment she had allowed Susan to know that she was carrying Vito’s child. She had trusted Susan to be careful with that information. She should have known better. Her father had overheard Susan and Arnold talking about her pregnancy and the secret had been out with a vengeance!

Hunt Forrester had always been the first to sneer when other people’s children got into trouble. He would boast of the rigid discipline within his own home, censuring other more liberal parents and smirking over the unlikelihood of any of his children making the same mistakes.

The discovery that she was pregnant had outraged her father. The fear of his own loss of face in the local business community, should her condition become known, had been enough to make him disown her. The further news that the father of her child was already married to someone else had been the last straw.

She had been four months pregnant when she’d miscarried, although most of her family had assumed that the loss of her baby was not a natural event. She had been hoist with her own petard. In her teens she had been very outspoken about her determination never to marry or have children. Everyone knew that abortions were relatively easily available and everyone had assumed that she had finally chosen that option. No, she could not tell Vito…Vito, who was so exceptionally fond of children, Vito, with whom she had once enjoyed several heated debates on the subject of a woman’s right to choose. Vito would not believe her either and, if he thought for one moment that she had chosen that option, he would despise her even more than he did now.

‘Tim is only eighteen,’ she started afresh, ramming back the bitter pain of her memories. ‘And some of this is my fault. I never discussed…I mean, he knows nothing about what happened between us. He made certain incorrect assumptions but I had no idea how he felt until this happened…’

The silence dragged on. Vito could use silence like a weapon. She had never been able to understand how he achieved that effect but he did. He sat there, supremely at ease, cool, calm and immensely self-assured. He intimidated her. Her slender hands clenched even more tightly round the bag on her lap. ‘Look, I’m not trying to excuse him—’

‘But that is precisely what you are guilty of,’ he countered.

The word ‘guilt’ sent spectral fingers of alarm wandering down her rigid spinal cord. ‘If Tim receives a prison sentence, his whole life will be destroyed. He lost his head, Vito. He’s very sorry for what he’s done.’

His gaze was unwaveringly direct. ‘Then where is he?’

‘He doesn’t know that I’m here.’ She floundered wildly for a second. ‘And I don’t know why you’re even asking me that. It’s unfair. You’ve stirred up the police so much, he’d probably be arrested if he came anywhere near this building!’

‘Agile,’ Vito murmured softly, appreciatively. ‘I had forgotten how agile you could be. But tell me, if either I or any member of my family had been in the path of that car, do you think your charming brother would have stepped on the brakes?’

Bone-white, she flinched. ‘Why do you want to make what he did even worse than it already is? He ran amok with your car. He didn’t try to kill somebody! It was done on impulse while he was under the influence of alcohol. He didn’t know what he was doing until it was too late!’

Vito made a flexible bridge of long brown fingers. ‘Is that alarming assurance intended to soften my heart? Those who break the law should be punished. Cushioning your brother from the consequences of his own behaviour would not be in his best interests.’

‘It was only your blasted car, Vito!’ she slashed back at him furiously. ‘He didn’t plan to crash it. There’s punishment and punishment. Sending a teenager to prison for smashing up a car and a stupid fountain is what I call over-reaction. It will destroy Tim!’

‘It’s most unlikely that he’ll go to prison for a first offence.’

‘But it’s not his first—’ In horror, she caught back what remained of that killing sentence.

Black lashes dropped reflectively low on brilliant dark eyes. ‘My conscience may then rest in peace. Quite deliberately you have sought to mislead me by contending that his behaviour was quite out of character. But if he has broken the law before, he most definitely deserves what he has coming to him. Clearly the first warning was insufficient to curb his violent tendencies.’

A steel band of tension was now throbbing across her brow. She had come here to help Tim. So far, all she had done was fuel the flames of Vito’s outrage. ‘Have you ever met Tim?’

‘Very briefly,’ Vito conceded. ‘I recognised him at my nephew’s party and had a short conversation with him. He bears a marked resemblance to you in both colouring and temperament.’

‘Do you think I have violent tendencies as well?’ she demanded bitterly as she realised that Vito, probably quite unwittingly, had been responsible for connecting her brother with her for the benefit of the rest of his family.

He ignored the gibe. ‘He has your eyes,’ he said very quietly, his sensual mouth hardening. ‘You both possess considerable physical appeal but in his case, as in yours, it is distinctly superficial on closer acquaintance.’

Temper stormed through her and she lifted her head high. ‘You do have to concede one mitigating factor, however…’

He sighed, glancing fleetingly at his watch, boredom somehow screaming from the tiny gesture, making her even more determined to explode him out of his offensive detachment. ‘And what is that?’

Ashley fixed huge emerald-green eyes accusingly on him. ‘Each and every one of us has the capacity to go off the rails if the provocation is great enough. You once did so yourself, but I gather that I’m not supposed to remember that occasion.’

His golden features shuttered, his jawline clenching hard. ‘The reminder is both unnecessary and irrelevant. I don’t suffer from blackouts.’

In that split-second she came dangerously close to losing control. It had cost her dear to remind him of that last meeting. Rape? No, not rape. In bitter anger it had begun, and in savage passion it had ended. Not an act of love or even of desire. A final, humiliating expression of all-male contempt which had destroyed her pride for many, many months afterwards. Mastering her fury now was the hardest thing she had ever done and she only managed the feat by concentrating on her brother.

‘I’d plead with you if I thought it would make any difference,’ she admitted starkly.

‘It wouldn’t abate my anger one jot.’

Ashley thrust up her chin. ‘OK. What about financial restitution?’

Vito dealt her a cold smile. ‘Your family do not have the means. That “stupid fountain” you referred to was a sculpture, a quite irreplacable work of art. The car? A Ferrari F40 with one or two little extras custom-built to my requirements. I paid four hundred thousand pounds for it four years ago and it’s already a collector’s item.’

‘Four h-hundred th-thousand pounds for a car?’ Ashley stammered in disbelief.

‘It was a limited edition put out to celebrate Ferrari’s fortieth anniversary.’

‘It’s obscene…all that money for a car!’ Ashley gasped helplessly. ‘And the money means nothing to you!’

Vito shifted a lithely expressive hand. ‘And everything to you.’

‘Once we loved each other…’ Every charged syllable hurt her throat, decimated her pride.

‘Really?’ Vito prompted. ‘How strange that you should talk of love now when you made no reference to the emotion while we were together.’

Golden eyes dwelt unreadably on her hot cheeks and she evaded that appraisal. ‘Can we stick to Tim?’

‘You were the one who chose to stray into the past,’ he reminded her.

‘Only because I was stupid enough to try and appeal—’

‘To some vein of sentimentality I might possess?’ he guessed with derision. ‘I’m not sentimental about sex.’

The assurance roared like a shockwave through her. She felt not only humiliated, she felt cheated. ‘But you—’

‘You destroyed what I felt for you.’ It was an icy growl.

‘You had a pretty similar effect on me!’ she traded.

A dark, forbidding anger glimmered in his gaze. ‘I actually believed that you would grow out of your ridiculous ideas. I actually honoured you with a proposal of marriage—’

‘Oh, let’s not make the mistake of referring to that offer in terms of honour!’ Ashley flung back at him furiously. ‘You made it painfully apparent that you thought you were doing me one very big favour. And you wanted a good excuse to avoid the gold-plated Plain Jane your parents kept on throwing at your head! That is, until you came to your senses and got your calculator out and snatched at her with both greedy hands!’

Without warning, Vito sprang up and strode forward to face her. His dark features were set like granite. ‘If you ever refer to my late wife like that again, I may well choose to forget that you are a woman and give you the response that you truly deserve!’

‘L-late? As in g-gone?’ As he towered over her, six feet three inches of ferocious threat, she bowed her head, shattered by the news and cursing her impulsive tongue and the venom that could trip off it so easily in his radius. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Vito grated.

‘All right. I can’t really be sorry because I didn’t know her!’ Ashley slammed back at him with more truth than tact. ‘But I’m sure she was a saint and a wonderful person, quite unlike me…’

‘Most unlike you,’ he breathed tautly in agreement. ‘You have the face of a Botticelli angel, the temperament of a virago and the amorality of a natural whore. On no count do you have the smallest resemblance to Carina.’

Ashley had turned very pale, beads of perspiration dampening her brow. She was devastated by the vicious response she had invited. ‘Dear God,’ she muttered shakily. ‘I must have been out of my mind when I got mixed up with you!’

A tiny pulse was beating in the hollow below one aristocratic cheekbone. ‘We were both temporarily insane.’

Ashley slowly shook her head. Carina was dead. Carina was just a name and a face in a glossy magazine spread to her. It had been the wedding of the year in Italy, the amalgamation of two great fortunes. Vito hadn’t wasted any time. One month after he had walked out on her, he had become engaged, and one month after that he had married. Carina had floated down the aisle, radiant in blinding white. And she had been radiant, ecstatically happy to have won Vito even by default. The bride had very obviously been in love.

However, Vito had married without love, without even the spur of sexual attraction. On their wedding night, Ashley had felt suicidal…the pain had been that bad, that unendurable. Until that day, she had been unable to bring herself to believe that he could actually go through with it.

But Vito had gone through with it. He had cut Ashley out of his life with terrifying immediacy and precision. And no regrets. Remembering still had the power to chill her to the marrow. She, who had once been so strong, had been broken like a toy and cast aside. She had learnt the hard way that she was no cleverer and no less vulnerable than any other woman in love. In the long, anguished months that had followed, she had lived in a kind of twilight world where she had co-existed with a ghost. In the end, she had been forced to confront and accept the most painful truth of all. Vito had never loved her. If he had, he couldn’t have married another woman.

Stilling a reflexive shiver, she stared at his hand-stitched Italian leather shoes. He hates me, she thought weakly, he hates me because once he was foolish enough to ask me to marry him and I had the audacity to say no. Dear lord, how had this appalling confrontation developed? She was supposed to be here for Tim’s benefit, wasn’t she? And so far, she was guiltily aware that she had made a very poor showing.

‘I’m sorry.’ It stuck in her throat but she persisted for her brother’s sake. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’

‘Nobody ever taught you how to curb it,’ Vito murmured harshly. ‘But I could have.’

You and who else, mister? But the aggressive question remained sensibly unspoken. She felt like a volcano about to erupt. And she knew she couldn’t. Only two people in the world had this effect on her. One was her father, the other was Vito. Rage took her over. Rage and fear. Instinctively she stifled her acknowledgement of that secondary emotion. Survival, to Ashley, meant never ever admitting that anything or anybody frightened her.

She cast him a glance in which desperate defiance and loathing mingled as blatantly as a blow. ‘I’m not into crawling…’

A winged dark brow elevated. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen you attempt such a feat.’

‘But you’d like a ringside seat, wouldn’t you?’ She leapt upright, too restive to remain still, too threatened by his proximity to stay so close. The sudden movement dislodged the loose topknot which confined her hair and a curling tangle of Titian red rippled down far below her shoulders in shining disarray. Irritably she thrust the fiery strands back from her slanted cheekbones, accidentally intercepting a lingering stare from Vito as she lifted her head high. ‘I know what you want to hear,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re thinking right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what you’ve been thinking from the moment I walked into this room!’

‘For the sake of peace, I hope not.’ It was a low-pitched growl which made the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck prickle.

His intonation threw her off balance for a second. Intent golden eyes watched her still with the grace of a gazelle in flight, sunlight glittering fire in that amazing curtain of vibrant hair. Her return look was blank.

‘You want to hear that I deeply regret not marrying you,’ she stated with characteristic bluntness.

‘Do I?’ Vito didn’t move a muscle.

She squared her shoulders, hoping that he was bigger than his fragile male ego when the cards were down. ‘I have to be honest so that we can get this hangover from four years ago out of the way.’

‘Oh, please be honest, cara,’ he encouraged lazily.

She swallowed hard. ‘If you must know, I’m still proud of the fact that I refused to become your possession. A life of round-the-clock surveillance and subjugation at your hands would have stifled me. It would never have worked.’

‘It worked in bed. Dio,’ Vito interposed in a sizzling undertone, ‘how it worked…’

Fierce heat pooled in the pit of her stomach. Flustered and embarrassed out of all proportion to the remark, she said nothing.

Vito surveyed her with formidable cool. The chill factor in the air was powerful. ‘It would have been such a sacrifice? To be my wife? To wear silk next to your skin, diamonds at your throat? I valued you far beyond your true worth.’

‘Well, if you have to think like a tradesman in enumerating the material advantages I missed out on, I expect you did,’ Ashley parried between clenched teeth. ‘But you knew from the start how I felt about marriage. You can’t say you weren’t warned. Marriage is a patriarchal institution which benefits men and oppresses women. It conditions my sex into dependence and passivity, lowers their status and deprives them of individuality.’

‘Feminist claptrap. Dio. I’ve never heard so much rubbish!’ Vito raked back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.

Her breasts swelled with anger. Jerkily she shrugged. ‘You are, naturally, entitled to your own opinion—as I am entitled to mine. In any case, I’m not here to resurrect a past that we’d both prefer to forget. Why can’t we leave personalities out of this? I didn’t come here to antagonise you. You make me say things I don’t mean to say. You always did,’ she completed accusingly.

‘You apologise with such finesse.’

In a passion of frustrated emotion, she whirled away. It had been a long time since she had voiced the beliefs she had first formed in her early teens. For some inexplicable reason, she didn’t feel the same religious fervour of conviction that she had once had. But that scarcely mattered now. Why should she apologise for saving them both from the long-drawn-out agonies of a disastrous marriage?