‘There is no need for that.’ Vitale flung wide the passenger door as if he expected that she would still scramble into the car like an obedient dog.
The delicate bones of her face prominent below her fine skin, Zara fixed scornful lavender eyes on him and ignored the invitation. ‘So you slept with me to try and wreck my Dad’s big business deal with Sergios. At least I know what a four letter word of a man you are now,’ she breathed. ‘You used my business to lure me into a trap, deliberately deceived me, took inexcusable advantage of my trust and stole my virginity—’
‘Your virginity?’ Vitale stressed with incredulous bite. ‘You couldn’t have been a—’
‘I was. You were my first lover. I don’t sleep around. Were you foolish enough to believe all the rubbish printed about me in newspapers?’ Zara demanded fierily, standing up now, narrow shoulders thrown back as she voiced her feelings without embarrassment. ‘Of course now I wish I hadn’t slept with you but I’m even more relieved to find out firsthand what an unscrupulous bastard you are, so that I can ensure that I have nothing more to do with you—’
‘Zara—’
‘No, you listen to me for a change!’ Zara told him, interrupting with raw driving determination. ‘I didn’t do anything to harm you or your sister. I didn’t even know you existed until I met you. If you had a problem with my father you should have had the courage and decency to talk to him about it and left me out of it. You had no excuse whatsoever for dragging me into your vengeful attack on him.’
Vitale withstood that verbal onslaught in brooding silence. Perhaps, she thought wildly, he realised that she was entitled to her say.
‘Are you getting into the car?’ he enquired flatly.
‘No, call me a taxi. I wouldn’t take a lift off you if I was dying!’ Zara flung back at him, stepping forward to reach into the car and yank out her case again with a strength born of pure anger.
Vitale made use of his cell phone. ‘The taxi will be here in ten.’ He lowered the phone again and studied her. ‘Was I truly your first lover?’
Zara used two very rude words to tell him where to go and she shocked him with that succinct retort almost as much as she shocked herself, for she was not in the habit of using that kind of language. At the same time, though, she was not prepared to stand there exchanging further conversation with a man who had deliberately set out to ensnare and hurt her.
‘You might as well sit down indoors to wait,’ Vitale advised curtly.
Zara shot him a look of loathing and remained where she was. ‘You ensured that the paps saw me here with you—that’s why you kissed me!’ she suddenly realized. Her eyes were full of bitter condemnation and contempt but she was ashamed as well because even though Sergios would not be marrying her now he would surely be embarrassed by that sort of publicity and he had done nothing to deserve that from her.
The truth, Vitale had pronounced, when he told her the story about his sister—was that what it was? She knew there could be many shades of the truth and she doubted his version. Had Monty Blake honestly stood by and let some young pregnant girl drown? It would surprise her if it was true. She didn’t like her father and feared him when he was in a temper. He had adored her brother, Tom, the clever son he had longed to see follow in his narcissistic footsteps, but Zara had only ever been a disappointment to him. Her father was obsessed with money and social status. He had a mean amoral streak, a violent temper and a tendency to lash out physically, but he had never done anything, to her knowledge, that suggested he might be downright evil.
It dawned on her then that her father would kill her for getting involved with another man and offending Sergios. Even in the sunshine, a chill of genuine apprehension ran down Zara’s taut spine and turned her skin clammy and cold. Only the brave crossed Monty Blake. Her mother would be outraged as well. And Zara would have to avoid Bee to ensure that her half-sister did not get involved in her troubles because her father would go spare if Bee supported her. In fact, Zara recognised painfully, she wasn’t going to be anybody’s flavour of the month after that photo of her kissing Vitale appeared in print. She might not have been engaged to Sergios, but even without an official announcement lots of people had guessed that a wedding was in the offing.
Vitale watched the taxi disappear down the wooded lane. It was over and, honour satisfied, he could return to his smooth, civilised existence, organising multimillion-euro deals and travelling between the apartments he owned round the world. He had done what he set out to do, smoothly and effectively. He should be pleased that after so many years the only kind of justice that a man of Monty Blake’s greed would understand was finally about to be served to him. But impending victory had a strangely hollow and unsatisfying feel.
In his mind’s eye the banker renowned for his cold calculation and emotional detachment could still see Zara Blake’s pale heart-shaped face and the incredulity etched in her eyes. In a sudden movement he punched the wall with a clenched fist. It was a crazy thing to do and he was not a man who did crazy things and it hurt like the very devil. Blood from his bruised and scraped knuckles dripped on the tiled floor but that aberrant surge of violence did serve to vent a little of the raging sense of frustration Vitale was struggling to suppress. He had no idea why he felt this way.
Had Zara been a virgin? He saw no reason for her to lie on that score and he had only dismissed the suspicion because it had seemed so unlikely that a rich and beautiful party girl could still be that innocent at her age. He recalled her lack of assurance in the bedroom and his wide, shapely mouth twisted as he acknowledged that he had been guilty of believing what he had read in the media about her. Few party girls were virgins, but she had been and he had ignored his suspicion precisely because it had suited him to do so. Had he known the truth about Monty Blake’s daughter would he still have used her as a weapon to strike at her father? He could not answer that question. He still wondered why there had been no man before him and then he shook his head, killing the thought as well as that dangerous seed of burning curiosity. It was done and there was no going back. Now he only had to wait for Demonides to ditch the buyout of the Royale hotel group at an inflated price and he would have achieved his final goal.
Even so, for the very first time Vitale was tentatively questioning the desire for revenge that had driven him since the age of thirteen. It was like probing a ragingly sensitive tooth. As a boy he had known it would be a foolish waste of time to stage a personal confrontation with his sister’s former lover. Monty Blake would simply lie to him as he had lied at the inquest. He was a vain and devious man, not to be trusted with women. Vitale shut out the reflection that the end might not always justify the means. He had done what had needed to be done. The scornful condemnation in those amazing lavender eyes could not destroy the painful memories of his innocent and trusting sister or his powerful need to hit back on her behalf. Loredana hadn’t been a ‘someone’. She had had no powerful connections—at least, Vitale adjusted grimly, none who cared enough to question the judgement of accidental death made at that inquest.
In comparison, Zara Blake meant nothing to him, less than nothing, he affirmed with vigour. He was not an emotional man. In all likelihood he would never see her again. Unless she proved to be pregnant, he thought abruptly, and, after what he had done, wouldn’t that be a disaster to end all disasters? He still could not credit that he could have taken that risk with her. Since when had sex been so overwhelming an event? He had always been proud of his self-control, not a trait that came naturally to those of his bloodline, he conceded grimly. So, how could passion have betrayed him to that extent? In truth it had been an extraordinary weekend—Zara had defied his expectations at every turn and precious little had gone according to plan.
But why was he questioning his behaviour? Why the hell had he smashed his fist into a wall? He was a goal-orientated man and, having achieved his objective, he ought to be celebrating. After all, Demonides was never going to go ahead and marry Zara Blake once he saw that photo of her in another man’s arms in the newspapers. Vitale decided that the problem was that he had got too close to his quarry. He had found her intensely desirable and quite impossible to resist, and all that was wrong was that the shock of that was still ricocheting through a man who rated his strength of mind and self-discipline as exceptional.
‘Ignore them, darling,’ Jono advised Zara in a tone of crisp dismissal as he helped her stack another box in the van he had borrowed to help her move into her new home. Fluffy was peering out of her carrier, little round eyes full of anxiety. The rabbit hated change and travel of any kind.
A pair of enormous sunglasses anchored on her nose, Zara endeavoured to look indifferent to the pair of reporters shouting rude questions while taking photos to record her departure from her parents’ elegant town house. If only she had moved out and embraced independence long ago, she reflected ruefully, she wouldn’t be feeling quite so lost. On the other hand, every cloud had a silver lining. This was the first day of her new life, she reminded herself bracingly. Her parents might have thrown their troublesome daughter out and washed their hands of her, but at least she was now free to do as she liked and concentrate on Blooming Perfect.
Jono glanced at Zara’s tense profile before he drove off and squeezed her hand in a comforting gesture. ‘Things will get better once you can settle into your new flat.’
‘They could hardly get worse.’ Blond and blue-eyed, Jono, a successful PR consultant, was one of the few friends who had stuck by Zara when the proverbial had hit the fan ten days earlier.
As a well-known socialite and the rumoured future bride of one of the world’s
wealthiest men, Zara had been extremely popular. Stripped of her father’s money and the luxury lifestyle that had accompanied it, she had learned that she was more of an acquired taste in the friendship stakes. She would no longer be able to afford the shopping expeditions, the trips abroad or the expensive pastimes that she had once taken for granted. Of course, given the chance Bee would have stood by her side, but Zara had been determined not to enrage her father even more by encouraging her half-sister to get involved in her problems.
After all, Zara accepted that she had made some very bad decisions and it was the way of the world that she should have to pay the price for her mistakes. That photo of her with Vitale after spending the weekend with him in what had been gruesomely described as a ‘love nest in the Tuscan hills’ had appeared in one of the murkier tabloids. Sergios had wasted little time in cutting her loose. Her former bridegroom’s phone call, Zara recalled with a cringing sense of mortification, had been a masterpiece of icy restraint. Sergios had not reproached or condemned her, he had merely pointed out that it was obvious that they would not suit and that had been that. He had rung off while she was still stuck like a record in a groove trying to apologise for the sort of scandal and behaviour that no woman could adequately apologise for.
In comparison to Sergios’ moderation, her parents’ fury had known no bounds. Things had been hurled in vicious verbal onslaughts that had almost inevitably led to Monty Blake’s raging demand that his daughter move out from below his roof. But, she acknowledged ruefully, at least her enraged father had confined himself to vocal abuse and retained some shred of control over his temper. Sadly that was not always the case.