His Wedding Ring Of Revenge. Julia James

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СКАЧАТЬ English, and it was totally obvious that he was Italian. No English male could ever look that svelte, that beautiful…

      He cut her short.

      ‘I know exactly who you are,’ he said. He spoke in English, completely fluent, his Italian accent doing nothing to soften the flat harshness of his words. ‘You’re the bastard daughter of my father’s whore.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      ELEVEN years later his voice was just as harsh, just as flat, the Italian accent just as unsoftened.

      ‘So, you’ve finally decided to cash in your last asset.’

      His eyes went on surveying her, completely without expression.

      Yet as his unblinking, impassive gaze rested on her she could see, very deep at the back of his eyes, a flash of gold.

      Emotion pinpointed her, like a sniper’s bullet. And just as deadly.

      That flash of gold came only at two moments.

      The first was when, as she knew he must be now, he was keeping a leash on that tight, white rage that could lash out with such lethal devastation.

      He had done that with the very first words he had ever said to her.

      If she’d had any instinct whatsoever for survival then, she knew, with bitter accusation, she would have made sure they were the last words he’d ever spoken to her.

      But that stupid, gormless fourteen-year-old had had no such instinct. Only one for encompassing with sure, deadly accuracy her own total ruin.

      She felt her nails curve with a minute jerk into the soft leather of her handbag. And that was why she knew about the other moment when that flash of gold in his eyes came.

      Out of nowhere, after the last seven years of ruthless, relentless suppression of any feeling to do with the man who was now sitting there, not three metres away from her, came a bolt of memory that she would have given her right hand not to be remembering now, here.

      No! No!

      She forced the memory aside.

      You are here for one thing only. One purpose. One aim.

      A single business transaction.

      She sharpened the focus of her gaze on him.

      Feel nothing. Remember nothing.

      He sat there, waiting for her to pitch. He knew she would pitch. It was what he had let her in to do. It was the sole justification for her continued existence as a data field in his mind. She didn’t exist otherwise.

      Did I ever exist?

      The question came, treacherous, pointless.

      No, she had never existed for him. Not her, not Rachel Vaile.

      Not the person she was—her soul, her mind, her personality, her likes and dislikes—nothing, about the person she was existed for him.

      Not even my body existed for him.

      I thought it did, in my naïve stupidity. I thought that at least my body existed.

      But it hadn’t. Only one thing had mattered to him about her.

      Over the wastes of eleven long years his words echoed in her mind.

      ‘I know exactly who you are—you’re the bastard daughter of my father’s whore…’

      That was who she was to Vito Farneste. It was all she ever had been. All she ever would be.

      And then, into the welling seepage of old, old bitterness, a new thought came. One that made her vicious with sudden satisfaction.

      She would be more to Vito Farneste.

      If he wanted to do business with her.

      Her shoulders pulled back with a minute, almost invisible straightening. Her gaze rested on his blank, impassive face, no trace of emotion, none whatsoever, in her eyes.

      And she pitched.

      ‘There are conditions,’ she began.

      Vito held himself still. Every fibre, every muscle in his body was under total control.

      It was essential.

      If he had not imposed such ruthless control over his body it would have hurled itself from his chair, thrust past his desk and his hands would have curved around the shoulders of the woman who dared, dared to stand there offering him conditions, and he would have shaken her, and shaken her and shaken—

      His mind slammed down. Even allowing himself the image was lethal. It might take over and become reality.

      Instead, he merely continued sitting there, quite motionless.

      Surveying her.

      Rachel Vaile.

      Crawling out of the woodwork after seven years.

      Although in an outfit like that she wouldn’t be soiling her knees or laddering her stockings by crawling anywhere.

      His eyes took in every detail.

      The hair, the suit, the nails, the accessories.

      He ran up a price tag for the total look.

      Five hundred pounds? Easily—another few hundred if you added the shoes and the handbag.

      Where was she getting the money from?

      The answer knifed through his head, making the question obsolete.

      Other men.

      Well… He eased the sudden, inexplicable tensing of his shoulders as the answer formed in his mind. She certainly had the right genes for it.

      A family profession…

      He went on surveying her.

      Not that she needed the family link to trade on. Her looks had matured at last. She was, he thought dispassionately, at the very peak of her physical appeal now. And she certainly knew how to package herself.

      The knifeblade went through him again, but he ignored it. It was as incomprehensible as it was irrelevant.

      He went back to studying her physical appeal.

      She didn’t flaunt that racehorse leanness, that ash-blonde fall of hair, those wide, haunting eyes and the tender mouth…

      No!

      A blade sliced down over his mind.

      Fine. She looked superb. Resplendent. Fantastic.

      So what? Now move on. Her looks had nothing to do with him.

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