Caroline got into bed and cried for her own stupidity, while Koko made plaintive cries in sympathy. Caroline saw that five years earlier she had got caught like a fly in a spider’s web. Both sets of parents had had a good reason for encouraging a marriage between their offspring. The Haleses had got a healthy investment sum to bolster their transport firm, in return for the assurance that Matthew would soon be in charge of it and its ultimate owner as their son-in-law. The Baileys had wanted a safe niche for Matthew, who had demonstrated a worrying inability to settle down to one job and stick to it, and of course they had also wanted a grandchild. Only Caroline had been too naïve to spot the reality that her marriage was much more a business agreement than a relationship between two people. It infuriated and shamed her that she had not had the wit to see that background at the time.
She spent a good deal of the following day with her father, waiting patiently while he underwent tests and soothing him in the aftermath, for he hated being told to rest. Early afternoon she returned home to her workshop, to finish the order she had to complete. It was only when that was achieved that she allowed herself to recall that she was due to have dinner with Valente in less than an hour.
‘Are you only bothering to get ready now?’ Isabel snapped in disbelief when she saw her daughter heading upstairs. ‘You look a total mess!’
‘Thanks,’ Caroline replied.
‘Even beautiful girls have to make an effort,’ the older woman scolded. ‘You haven’t had your hair done, or your nails.’
Caroline gazed down stonily at her mother. ‘The only thing you ever had against Valente was that he was poor. Now he’s rich he’s acceptable-more than acceptable.’
‘If you intend to keep on harping back to the past, I’ve got nothing more to say to you. But you need to make more of an effort to hold on to a man, Caro,’ Isabel spelt out sharply. ‘Maybe Matthew would have stayed home more often if you had paid more attention to your grooming.’
Such words spoken by her mother, who must have known all along how unhappy her daughter was in her marriage, stung Caroline like a hard slap in the face. She continued up to her bedroom and rifled the wardrobe without much interest to find something to wear. There was nothing stylish. Matthew, so profligate in his own habits and tastes away from home, had insisted that his wife wore plain clothes in the style his mother wore: skirts and sweaters, stiff formal dresses. She yanked out a cream brocade long-sleeved dress and jacket she had once worn to a wedding and went for a shower.
Matthew, she recognised for the first time, had been a bully, who had sapped her of energy and fight by continually undermining her. Her in-laws had blamed her for his constant absences, often suggesting that a child would have kept him home more. Caroline rather thought that a child would have made Matthew, who had been so determined not to grow up, run for the hills. Her marriage had been a blame game in which she’d been held responsible for everyone else’s sins and disappointments. And she would never know whether Matthew would have remained faithful if she had not been frigid in bed. Frigid. Such an awful, inappropriate word, Caroline reflected while she dried her hair and straightened it. It didn’t seem to her that that word came anywhere near describing the awful squirming panic and fear that consumed her at the threat of sex. She shivered, thinking again that it was so very typical of Valente to want what he could not have.
With a modicum of make-up applied, Caroline slid her feet into low-heeled cream shoes and went down to climb into the waiting limousine. Before she left her mother called her into the sitting room to say, ‘I’ll understand if you’re very late, but if you’ll take my advice you’ll be very restrained in your behaviour.’
Caroline almost laughed out loud with a scorn that was new to her. Here was her manipulative mother, telling her with the utmost hypocrisy that it was all right to sleep with Valente but that she believed saying no would keep him more safely hooked. But now it was her father whom Caroline was most concerned about, as he had none of her mother’s steel. If Hales shut down he would take it hard, because he would blame himself for the predicament of his former employees. What would that stress and sense of responsibility do to his heart? Caroline had to confront the risk that her father might die before he underwent the surgery that would prolong his life, and that awareness shook her up badly.
Valente watched Caroline cross the dining room to join him. Her outfit, a good deal less daring than the dress she had worn the night before, was fashioned of heavy brocade, covering her to wrist, throat and knee, and was as shapeless as a tube, barely hinting that there might be a female body beneath. Her hair, however, lay like a glossy cloud on her shoulders and framed her exquisite face. He met her huge grey eyes across the floor and recognised that she was as on edge as a condemned prisoner being herded to the gallows. It was an image that both disturbed and offended a man accustomed to female admiration and desire.
Caroline recognised the dark glow of appreciation in Valente’s intent gaze. It intimidated her, unnerved her, only reminding her of her own inability to respond. She was all covered up, nothing on show, but her modest apparel had failed to snuff out his interest.
‘That dress is so horrible
I just want to rip it off you,’ Valente confided while Caroline was attempting to peruse the menu handed to her.
Caroline paled and lifted eyes that were so frankly fearful to his lean, darkly handsome face that he was pushed into adding, ‘That was a joke…okay? A joke with a sting, piccola mia. I look forward to seeing you dressed in designer clothes that fit you properly.’
‘I’ve lost weight since Matthew died…hardly anything I have fits,’ she confided, some of her tension easing at that explanation even while the frightening image of having her clothes ripped off struck her as ridiculous and finally faded from her mind.
He scored a lean forefinger over the back of her clenched hand, where it rested on the polished wood of the table. She trembled, feeling the tingling effect of his light touch the whole length of her arm. ‘Try to relax. You’re making me nervous.’
‘I didn’t think that was possible.’
‘With you, anything is possible,’ Valente riposted. ‘Are you worried about your father?’
Caroline grimaced. ‘Of course I am. He needs surgery urgently.’
‘But he is being treated by a state hospital, where there is probably a waiting list for such operations, and he will need to build up his strength before he can have one,’ Valente reminded her, for he had been present when her mother had spoken to the consultant the day before. ‘I could pay for that surgery privately, and your father could have it as soon as he was ready.’
Sheer surprise made Caroline blink, before focusing intently on his bronzed features and the stunning golden eyes fixed to her. ‘I can’t believe you’re offering me something like that-’
‘Why not? Whatever it takes, I want you back in my life.’
Her smooth brow indented, for he was so far removed from her in his way of thinking that she was appalled. ‘But you can’t bargain with people’s lives, Valente. Nobody should do that.’
Valente lounged back in his chair, black-lashed eyes reduced to a daunting sliver of hot gold resolve and challenge. ‘Whatever it takes,’ he repeated silkily, stubbornly unrepentant.
And that was the moment Caroline realised that he had made her an offer she could not in all conscience refuse…
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU’VE won,’ Caroline conceded in a driven admission. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my father alive.’
‘That’s admirable, gioia mia. I admire loyalty,’ Valente countered smoothly. ‘That only leaves the terms to be discussed.’