Virgin on Her Wedding Night (12 page)

She used the rest of the day, with the help of the staff, to set up her workshop in an allocated room at the back of the house. She sorted out her stock, and checked her mail for the first time in a couple of weeks. The little ornamental cats she had once collected sparkled in their gorgeous jewel colours on the windowsill, and she began to wonder how she could design a new line of jewellery with Murano glass. It took her a couple of hours to package the orders from her website and organise their dispatch. It was a wrench to leave the workshop without making anything, for she loved the creative thrill of designing a new piece, but by then it was time for her to get changed for her flight.

Shortly before her departure, Valente discovered her in her workshop. He smiled at the cat ornaments, most of which he had given her, and lingered to take a keen
look at the jewellery. He was very impressed, recognising the artistry and design in the well-crafted pieces. With a frown he switched off his mobile phone when it began its insistent ring.

‘You’re always so busy,’ she murmured tautly, tense at the prospect of leaving him, but thinking that with the long work hours he maintained she would hardly be missed.

‘I took almost a month off to be with you in Tuscany,’ he reminded her, framing her cheekbones with long graceful fingers, locking her in stasis by the simple act of focusing his brilliant dark eyes on her. ‘During that time I delegated, and blunders were made. This is pay-back time,
belezza mia
.’

Her eyes slid shut as he captured her mouth in an intoxicating kiss and suckled her swollen lips with devouring sensuality. Heat curled through her defenceless body, rousing a languorous throb of response in tender places. She couldn’t breathe for longing as he dipped his tongue in a moist sweep of her tender mouth.

‘Enough,’ Valente growled thickly, easing out onto the landing outside the room. Splaying a hand to her spine, he directed her down the magnificent staircase which gave access to his offices from the ground floor.

Her slender body all of a quiver, after that bone-melting kiss that had encouraged her to cling rather than walk away, Caroline negotiated the stairs slowly, for her legs felt as if they didn’t quite belong to the rest of her. There was a woman at the foot of the stairs—a gorgeous redhead with a luscious leggy figure revealed rather than concealed by the neat fit of the white linen dress she wore.

His lean, powerful frame tensing against Caroline’s,
Valente turned to say something to his wife as they stepped down into the outrageously grand foyer. Before he could speak, however, the woman neatly stepped between the two of them. Kissing Valente on both cheeks, she addressed him in a flood of Italian before finally sparing a rather mocking glance in Caroline’s direction. ‘I’m Agnese Brunetti, an old friend of Valente’s.
Dios mio
! You are really tiny! Do you speak Italian?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Of course Valente and I both speak to each other in Veneziano, the local dialect,’ Agnese shared, shooting Valente a rueful chummy smile. ‘We’re members of a very exclusive club. Every year there are fewer and fewer of us able to converse in the old way.’

Caroline was chilled to find herself looking up at the statuesque redhead. Matthew had betrayed her with other women too often for her to be anything other than suspicious of such a bold beauty. She knew instantly, in that strange way a woman could, that she was meeting the owner of the flamboyant silk robe left behind at the Tuscan villa. Still inconsequentially chattering in a mixture of what Caroline could only assume was Veneziano and English, Agnese touched Valente’s sleeve once and his lapel in a second, more lingering demonstration of physical ease, making no attempt to conceal her familiarity with him. On hyper-alert, Caroline picked up on the other woman’s every move and change of expression.

‘I’m sorry, but Caroline has a flight to catch,’ Valente breathed coolly, extracting them at speed from the encounter. He signalled one of his hovering staff and asked him to take Agnese Brunetti up to his office. ‘I’ll be with you shortly,’ he told her.

‘I’ve known Agnese for a long time,’ he added casually as he helped Caroline into the waiting motor launch tied up at the splendid front doors of the
palazzo
.

In a horizontal manner of speaking, Caroline affixed with an inner shudder of recoil. Agnese was his mistress. Past or present? All the way to the airport Caroline tormented herself with unwise comparisons. The beautiful redhead’s voluptuous curves had reminded her of Matthew’s preferences and made her feel inadequate. Suddenly it was a relief to be travelling back to England, to escape the pressure of her marriage and the humiliation of unrequited love and concentrate instead on her father’s health and her mother’s worries on the same issue.

Joe and Isabel Hales were still staying in a hotel, and Winterwood was in control of the builders, as work on both house and apartment proceeded at a rapid pace.

Having first inspected the impressive renovations taking place at Winterwood, Caroline checked into the same hotel as her parents and accompanied them to the hospital for her father’s admittance. Isabel was beside herself with concern that her husband might die on the operating table, and she needed her daughter to keep her calm.

Joe was in surgery for three hours, but the operation was pronounced a success. And, although her father was weak afterwards, within a few days Caroline could see his strength beginning to return. Valente had already had the brochures of several luxurious convalescent homes sent to Isabel, so that she could choose where she and her husband would stay after Joe was released from
hospital. Once that move was made, Caroline began to feel rather superfluous to requirements.

Valente phoned her every day. She wanted to ask about Agnese, but was determined not to sound like some clingy, over-possessive wife, suspicious of every woman who came near her husband.

And yet, in truth, Caroline reckoned that she
was
. In a loveless marriage it was a challenge for Caroline to believe that one woman could be enough for Valente.

At the end of the second week, Valente flew over from Italy to visit her parents. When he arrived at the convalescent home he had two of his business team in tow, for he had had a couple of business calls to make locally. Joe was asking her husband eager questions about the future for Hales Transport when Caroline arrived and found him there. It amazed her to see how relaxed her parents had become with him. It was hard to believe that just five years earlier they had behaved as though he was Public Enemy Number One. But his generosity towards them, and his care during a time of crisis, had reassured the older couple and given him the status of a trusted family member.

‘So, what are you planning to do about our competitor, Bomark Logistics?’ Joe was asking eagerly when his daughter arrived.

‘I think there’s room for both businesses in the current market,’ Valente responded with care, glancing up to see Caroline in the doorway of the large conservatory where the patients entertained their visitors.

With her pale blonde hair casually pulled back from her lovely face, and wearing a dress the colour of lavender teamed with a short-sleeved cashmere cardigan, she
exuded the fresh, natural appeal of a wild flower—and she still took her highly sophisticated husband’s breath away. As arousal stabbed into him like a particularly vicious knife he went rigid, and mentally regrouped from that over-the-top reaction to his first sight of her in thirteen days. She was incredibly pretty—but so were thousands of other women, he instructed himself grimly. He could not, however, prevent his wayward thoughts from reaching a peak of proud satisfaction over the knowledge that she was his wife, and therefore exclusively his. She had let him down badly once, and he would never give her the chance to do that again. But, flawed or otherwise, he was willing to admit that she was the one acquisition he was most proud of.

Caroline said her goodbyes to her parents before her return to Italy with Valente. While she talked to them she stole little glances at her husband, for she had missed his charismatic, unsettling presence more than she would ever have admitted during her visit to her former home. He was far too good-looking and sexually compelling for her peace of mind. All too many nights since they had parted she had lain awake, wondering if he was awake too, if he was experiencing anything like the acute pain of separation that was tormenting her. She had worried that the gorgeous Agnese and all her predatory equivalents would be hovering around Valente, all too keen to offer him sexual consolation. She had feared that he might be tempted. He shot her a brief sidewise glance from dense dark-lashed eyes the colour of caramel toffee and she felt almost sick with longing, her mouth going dry, her heartbeat picking up speed.

‘It’s hard to believe that my parents think the sun
rises and sets on you now, but it does make life much more simple,’ Caroline allowed, shaking her head over the meteoric leap in status he had contrived in the senior Haleses’ eyes as she and Valente followed his aides out of the visiting area.

‘But I should have been here with you when Joe had his op,’ Valente breathed in a tone of regret. ‘That was wrong.’

‘My parents know how busy you are, and you’ve been so generous in spite of old history,’ she said gratefully.

‘But business should never come before family. Ettore told me that once, and I should have listened harder. He was so busy making money in order to live like his forebears had lived that his children were like strangers to him. He gave them money and little else, and of course they took advantage. By the time I got to know him his descendants were picking his old bones as clean as a pack of vultures. They all enjoyed riding the gravy train at his expense,’ Valente revealed with a grimace. ‘That was why I agreed to try and steer the Barbieri family fortunes into more profitable waters.’

‘You cared about your grandfather. I’m glad you had that bond with him,’ Caroline said warmly.

Valente winced. ‘He was an honourable man, and was once a shrewd businessman in his own right, but by the time I met him he was going blind and was dangerously dependent on his family. He needed my help because he had learned that he couldn’t trust them any more.’

‘You didn’t seem very close to the cousins who came to our wedding,’ Caroline commented.

‘I’m not. I restored my grandfather’s fortunes, and he
changed his will and left his property empire to me instead. You can imagine how popular that made me.’

‘You had rights too, as the son of your grandfather’s eldest child,’ Caroline argued.

‘The title of count, of course, went to my cousin, as he was born within marriage, unlike me, but he was denied the ancestral homes and the money,’ Valente revealed wryly. ‘Ettore didn’t trust him or his sisters to spend what needed to be spent on repairing the properties, and I must admit that I have spent a great deal more conserving them than I originally intended.’

‘How do your relatives live now?’

‘I set some of them up in business, and I employ another few and help out some of the older relations with an allowance. We don’t socialise much. In their eyes, I’ll always be the boy from the backstreet
calle
who shamed the family by exposing my father’s crime. Only Ettore was able to accept me as I am.’

As they crossed the gravel to the waiting limousine his aides were exchanging files. A gust of wind made one of the files flap open and caught a sheet of paper, which fluttered up into the air and fell down at Caroline’s feet. She stooped to pick it up and the name of the business and the familiar logo printed across the top startled her and made her stare: Bomark Logistics. It was some kind of a report. She passed it back to Valente’s aide without comment and wondered what dealings he had with the rival transport firm which had put Hales out of business. Was he trying to buy it? Take it over? Or was he checking out the opposition by some nefarious means?

That gave her two topics she wanted to discuss with
him in some detail: Agnese Brunetti and Bomark logistics. Valente had a dark, secretive Venetian soul, and he fiercely conserved his privacy. She took a deep breath when she got into the limousine and turned to him, but by then he was already on the phone. It would be easier to tackle those topics on the flight back to Italy, she decided ruefully.

But Valente had other more pressing plans…

D
ARK
eyes flashing hot gold, Valente caught Caroline in his arms within minutes of the jet taking off. ‘I missed you,
bella mia
.’

Her heart raced while she tossed her head in apparent surprise and her grey eyes sparkled with challenge. ‘You never mentioned it when you phoned. Not once.’

Valente threw his handsome dark head back, laughed in appreciation and shrugged a broad shoulder with magnificent disregard for such frills. ‘So, I’m not one of those guys who will say all the right things to feed your ego!’

Pained regret stirred inside her. ‘But you used to be much more…emotional, open and affectionate.’

His amusement evaporated. ‘Women like you toughened me up. Don’t complain about your own handiwork,’ he breathed harshly, bending his proud dark head to nuzzle the tender skin of her pale slender throat with his lips and the edge of his strong white teeth in an unexpectedly erotic salutation that made her nerve-endings execute a somersault.

‘You’re not being fair.’ Caroline was annoyed, tired of being censured for what had happened five years earlier. He had also made choices with far-reaching con
sequences, when he had left the country and made it impossible for her to contact him other than by letter.

‘Since when was life fair?’ In an effort to conclude the conversation, Valente kissed her with all the seething passion that had built up during her absence. He had not slept a night through since her departure.

Caroline’s hostility took a back seat while she trembled in convulsive response against his lean, powerful frame. His hands splayed to her small bottom to lift her and gather her closer, making her awesomely aware of the virile heat of his erection. ‘I want you so much I ache,’ Valente groaned.

And there would be no real conversation until after that stage, she recognised ruefully, and then just as quickly scolded herself for that thought. Only weeks ago he would not have dared to show her that passion, and she would have cringed away from him, still too damaged by her experiences with Matthew to have any prospect of rediscovering or enjoying her own sexuality.

Headily conscious of the power Valente had given back to her, and convinced that no man who had been ‘playing away’ behind her back could possibly be so hot for her, Caroline found herself gurgling with appreciative laughter when he virtually dragged her into the sleeping compartment. Never had she felt so desirable, and yet at that moment, as they sought out the only privacy available to them, she felt more like a teenager than a grown-up. She was a willing partner when they shed their clothes in a heap and somehow synchronised into a heated, twisting, yearning tumble of bodies on the bed in urgent pursuit of the same elemental satisfaction. The excitement he generated with his first driving thrust
never dropped for so much as a second of their fevered lovemaking. When her release came it was explosive, and Valente stifled her noisy cries with his mouth and a deep sense of sweetness possessed her heart.

Drifting back from that ecstatic reunion of the senses, Caroline never wanted to move again, and marvelled that she had contrived to live without Valente for two weeks. She was finding an extraordinary peace in lying within the circle of his arms, for he was so rarely still and quiet. She could rejoice covertly in the wonderful smell of his damp bronzed skin and the glorious intimacy of being with him again when, five years ago, she had truly believed that hope and joy were gone for ever. And if it was different now, because he didn’t want her love, was
anything
perfect? Was she planning to give up what they had for a life in which she would be bereft without him? In that moment, she thought not.

‘We’ll be landing in less than an hour,
belezza mia
. We need to move.’ Valente shifted away from her with a sigh that she wanted to believe signified disappointment at that restricted time-frame.

Before he could leave her side, however, Caroline was determined to satisfy her curiosity on certain issues. ‘There are a couple of things I want to ask you about.’

‘Agnese?’ Valente guessed with alarming accuracy, turning his tousled curly dark head to shoot her an infuriatingly knowing glance. ‘Yes, we were lovers—and now it’s over because I have you.’

‘So why was she coming to see you?’

‘She was hoping that a month of marriage would have changed my mind and that I would be ready to take her back. Agnese doesn’t lack self-belief.’

‘Oh…’ His candour surprised her, for put under pressure Matthew had lied and lied and lied again, so that it had become hard for her to accept anything at face value. ‘Were you in love with her?’

‘It was more a convenient arrangement than a love affair.’

‘You’re saying that she was your mistress?’

‘Yes, I paid her bills, and she… Surely you don’t need me to explain any more?’

Involuntarily, Carole was shocked. ‘But it sounds so cold-blooded!’

‘It suited us both. Not everyone wants emotional ties and promises, Caroline,’ he imparted with sardonic cool.

‘I have just one more question,’ Caroline continued, half under her breath, studiously ignoring that wounding gibe. ‘What’s your involvement with Bomark Logistics back home?’

Valente went as still as a man who had been told a ticking time bomb was attached to him. ‘We’ll talk about that in depth when we get home,’ he responded with measured cool.

Caroline was bewildered by that response. In depth? What was he suggesting? Of the two issues, she had ironically considered the topic of Agnese Brunetti the more controversial and the least likely to lead to a satisfactory conclusion. She had even thought he might refuse to satisfy her inquisitiveness. After all, his relationship with Agnese before their marriage was really none of her business. The question about Bomark Logistics had only been asked out of casual curiosity. Why was he holding back on giving her an immediate explanation?

As they completed their trip back to the Palazzo Barbieri, Caroline became increasingly disturbed by Valente’s preoccupation. The tight lines of his bold profile and the grim set of his mouth made her tense, and uneasy as well. It was an anti-climax when Koko darted out of the shadows in the entrance hall and leapt at Caroline in welcome, only to struggle to be set down again so that she could enact the same welcome for Valente as well.

‘How on earth did you manage to persuade her into liking you?’ Caroline exclaimed, astounded to see her formerly hostile pet now winding round Valente’s trouser legs with a purr as loud as a steam engine.

‘You were gone. I had no competition. She was lonely,’ Valente pointed out, lifting the little Siamese and stroking her in reward for her enthusiastic greeting.

In the glorious drawing room, with the crimson light of the dying sun filtering in through the balcony doors across the muted antique colours of the beautiful Persian rug, he finally faced her. ‘How did you find out that I had a connection with Bomark Logistics?’

Caroline explained, and it transpired that Valente had not even noticed the tiny incident in which she had picked up the revealing document when the wind dropped it at her feet.

‘So, you don’t know anything,’ Valente pronounced, his ebony brows drawing together, the angles of his lean hard features saturnine in the dusk light. ‘I could lie. And I am tempted to lie, because I know you won’t like the truth. But in terms of business I did nothing wrong. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Caroline
pressed in growing bewilderment. ‘Have you bought out Bomark Logistics, or something? Did you think I would be annoyed at that because the firm put Hales out of business? I’m not that foolish…’

Valente surveyed her levelly. ‘I set up Bomark from scratch three years ago. I own it, and I am responsible for every move the firm has made since then.’

The blankness of shock had wiped all expression from Caroline’s face. ‘But that’s not possible. You own it? Have always owned it? I mean why…three years ago?’

‘I opened another haulage business in order to compete with Hales and had your manager, Sweetman, head-hunted into a London position,’ Valente clarified with reluctance.

‘But why?’ Caroline demanded again. ‘You actually
wanted
to put my family out of business?’

Valente nodded confirmation in silence. He had not expected her to be quite so shocked. A devious woman would have recognised the strings he had pulled and understood why without asking. Caroline, however, clearly did not comprehend what he was trying to explain.

‘I don’t understand. I know you must have been very angry and bitter when I didn’t turn up to marry you five years ago,’ she murmured tightly. ‘But why would you go to such appalling lengths to target a small family business?’

‘I blamed your family for what happened as much as I blamed you.’

A stricken look crossed Caroline’s visage. ‘But you
knew
there was no way I could have made it to the church. You
knew
how sorry I was that my message didn’t reach you in time,’ she reasoned feverishly. ‘I
know my parents behaved badly, and that you were treated unfairly, but I don’t believe that we did anything that could excuse you for deliberately setting out to destroy our business.’

Valente was wondering why she was saying that there had been no way she could have made it to the church. He was exasperated by his ignorance of the excuses she had no doubt employed in that letter, but determined not to expose it. As for this message she was now mentioning for the first time: he did not believe there had ever been one. Her family had wanted rid of him by any means, and ensuring that he was left standing like a fool at the altar had been a very effective method of deterring him from seeking any further contact.

‘I wanted you all to pay for what you did,’ Valente confessed.

A humourless laugh was wrenched from her soft pink mouth. ‘You don’t think three and a half years of marriage to Matthew Bailey was penance enough for me?’

Valente wore a guarded look that gave nothing away. ‘As far as I knew at the time you were enjoying a happy marriage with your childhood sweetheart. It was only after Bailey’s death that I learned that it hadn’t been quite that perfect.’

‘But Matthew and I were never childhood sweethearts!’ Caroline argued with spirit. ‘Where did you get that idea? We were friends—casual friends. I thought a lot of him, and I respected his opinion. I admit that I was entirely taken in by him until I became his wife. But there was never any romance between us—either before or after we married. I married him on the rebound.’

‘The phrase “childhood sweethearts” came from
your own father’s lips. Joe came to see me the week before our wedding and accused me of having come between you and Matthew and ruining your life. He said it was Matthew whom you really loved and he tried to buy me off.’

Caroline was aghast. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Dad had done that? I had no idea.’

‘There had already been enough bad feeling, and you were living on your nerves. I didn’t want to put you under any more pressure and I was confident that you loved me,’ Valente admitted, with a bitter twist to his handsome mouth.

‘I did love you…I
did
!’ Caroline proclaimed in a shaken tone. ‘But you never responded to my letters. You never phoned. You don’t
do
emotion or forgiveness, do you? The very fact it’s taken almost two months for us even to discuss the past says it all. You just scrubbed me out of your life like I didn’t matter to you!’

His lean strong face was darkening with indignation. ‘What did you expect after leaving me standing at the church? It would be a rare man who could forgive an offence of that magnitude.’

‘You just didn’t love me enough, Valente,’ Caroline condemned vehemently. ‘When you tell me now that you’ll never feel like that for me again, it’s not really that great a loss, is it? A man who really loved me would have overcome his injured pride and talked to me again—but not you. So much for love! You just deserted me.’

Lean, olive-skinned features hard with anger, Valente spread wide his arms and threw up both hands in a bold physical demonstration of his wrathful rejection of that scenario. ‘I…deserted…
you
?’

‘I was crushed. I thought I had nothing left to live for—and there was Matthew, being a very sympathetic and staunch friend in my hour of need,’ Caroline recalled, stinging tears filling her eyes as she looked back at that fateful period of her life. ‘Before very long my parents were pointing out how happy they would be if I married Matthew. He proposed. You weren’t there. I gave in to the pressure—a marriage of friends, Matt called it, but even our friendship didn’t last. Yes, I was an idiot, and I let myself fell into a stupid trap, but if I hadn’t been so unhappy I would never have been that silly!’

Her explanation bore not the smallest resemblance to Valente’s assumptions at the time. ‘I thought you had only used me to make Matthew jealous. I also believed that you had realised you loved him more than me.’

With an unsteady hand, Caroline dashed away her tears. ‘Well, maybe if you’d had enough interest you would have found out the truth for yourself.’ Her grey eyes darkened and her soft mouth compressed. ‘But why are we even having this conversation now?’

‘We’re having it because it’s a conversation we should have had a long time ago,’ Valente conceded between gritted white teeth, violently wound up by her accusations and full of rage, but refusing to parade the emotions storming through him.

‘All that doesn’t matter any more. I’m more interested in your ownership of Bomark Logistics,’ Caroline admitted, bringing the dialogue full circle back to what she saw as the most important question. ‘That you chose, three years after we broke up, to pursue a goal of revenge at any cost truly horrifies me. It proves all over again to me that I must be a rotten judge of character.’

‘I’m not like you,
bella mia
,’ Valente breathed. ‘When someone injures me I don’t turn the other cheek, and I never will.’

A belligerent glint in her usually soft gaze, Caroline drew herself up straight to her full height. She was so tense that her muscles ached in protest at her stance. ‘But to have set up another haulage firm solely to destroy my family’s livelihood is beyond forgiveness.’