Ruthlessly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded

‘It suits you.’ Vicenzo’s eyes swept down, taking in the way Cara’s skin had started to go even more golden, an explosion of freckles marking every exposed surface.

He held something up then—a card. Cara recognised it. It was the sympathy card she’d sent to the Valentini offices in London all those weeks ago. It felt as if a lifetime had passed since then.

‘I only received this when I went back to Rome. Any personal post gets couriered over once or twice a week, depending on how urgent it looks. It was with a batch of other sympathy notes and cards, so I didn’t see it till just a couple of days ago.’

Cara swallowed. ‘I sent it that week…after the crash. I didn’t know what to do—how to get in contact with you. I asked at the hospital, but they wouldn’t give out any details…’

Vicenzo remembered that week, hearing his assistant on the phone to someone at the hospital, telling them that under no circumstances were they to give out any personal family information. He could see from the postmark that Cara had sent the card to his office before he’d met her that night. Its simple message of condolence had reached down deep within him and clenched tight.

The revelations he’d faced in the last twenty-four hours rushed up and made him want to push her away. To somewhere he didn’t have to deal with her simple and yet explosively alluring sexuality, and all her contradictions as she stood before him now.

‘Why did you send the card, Cara? What were you hoping to achieve if I got it?’

Cara couldn’t keep the bitter edge out of her voice. For a moment there, when she’d seen him watching her, she’d fancied that something had changed. But of course it hadn’t. ‘Nothing. I sent it because I wanted to extend my condolences…I didn’t know what else to do.’ She turned her head to look away, scared he might see the emotion she was trying to keep down. The awful paltriness of her sympathy card mocked her.

He sighed heavily and against her will she looked back, schooling her expression. To her surprise he looked almost… defeated.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you worked at the club, Cara?’

She froze. ‘How did you find out?’

Vicenzo smiled a small grim smile. ‘When I got to Rome someone called Rob had been calling every day, looking for a way to reach you. I finally allowed one of his calls to be put through, and he informed me that you are due some tax back on your wages and he was sure you’d need it. He wanted to know how to send it to you. He was rather bullying in his demands to know how you were.’

Cara couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Rob bullying Vicenzo over the phone, but she quashed the smile when she saw how Vicenzo was looking at her so intensely. ‘I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t have believed me, and I didn’t have the energy to fight.’ She shrugged one slim freckled shoulder and looked away for a second. ‘It looked bad. I could see that.’

‘You said it was like a second home to you,’ he said, almost accusingly.

Her eyes met his. ‘It was like a second home. Rob, his boyfriend Simon, and Barney on the door were…are…like family to me.’

Vicenzo shook his head. She could see him trying to figure it all out.

Cara crossed her arms. ‘I used to drive Cormac to the club every night…’ She couldn’t look at Vicenzo when she told him this, so she turned and looked down, absently kicking at the grass. ‘He used me like a kind of taxi service. He’d make me wait outside, so that he could leave whenever he wanted.’ Cara’s back was very rigid. ‘One night the weather was horrendous, and I was trying to study in the car.’

She cast a quick glance to Vicenzo. His jaw was hard, and it made a flutter run through her belly. She looked away again, out to sea.

‘Barney took pity on me and brought me into his little office, so I could study in the warmth. He made me tea, gave me biscuits…it became a routine then. I’d drop Cormac off, and go and study in Barney’s office.’

‘How did you go from tha

t to working there?’

Vicenzo’s voice had an edge that made Cara cross her arms tighter. She knew she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he didn’t believe her. In an effort to communicate this to him she turned back to face him, not letting herself be daunted by the speculative look in his eyes.

‘One night Simon was in a tizzy because his door hostess had called in sick at the last minute. He was understaffed as it was… I offered to step in. It worked out well, and when that hostess left he asked me if I’d take over on the door.’

Cara’s thoughts went inward.

‘Cormac gave the job his blessing because he wanted to impress Simon—and after all—’ she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice ‘—once I was earning money it meant he could charge me rent for my room in his apartment.’

‘He charged you rent?’ Vicenzo couldn’t keep the incredulity from his voice. What Cara spoke of now was so far removed from what he’d believed…

He saw the way her chin tilted up, the defiant light in her eyes. The pride. And felt a sinking sensation in his chest. He knew it wouldn’t take much to check out her story, and he was horribly aware that if he instructed his accountants in Rome to go through Cormac’s accounts with a fine-tooth comb they would probably find some regular amount of money being deposited into one of them. And, a small voice reminded him, she’d said that morning in London that she hadn’t had access to the account in her name. He had to concede now that he’d seen absolutely no evidence to prove that she had ever received funds from it. The memory of her reaction to the earrings mocked him now. And the plain clothes she insisted on wearing. Those were not the actions of a spoiled princess.

Cara could almost see the cogs whirring behind Vicenzo’s eyes as he tried to assess everything she was saying, and it was too much to have him stand there and deliberate. She turned away abruptly, holding herself so tight she thought she might crack. ‘I told you that things weren’t as they seemed.’

Cara willed him to just leave—go back to Rome, or anywhere, and leave her alone. This was why she’d held back; to have him know the intimate anatomy of her life was to invite a level of pain that she’d been avoiding.

But suddenly Vicenzo was much closer, and Cara felt a warm hand come to her chin, bringing her head around and tipping it up where she couldn’t avoid his gaze. It lit a fire through her that she was terrified he’d see. It was as if telling him the truth and needing so badly for him to believe her had stripped back a layer of skin, bringing her desire to the surface, where she couldn’t hide it or deny it.