A Vengeful Passion. Lynne Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ you can’t be serious…you can’t be,’ she stammered.

      Glittering dark eyes rested on her with a fierce, wholly physical intensity. ‘It would have to be marriage…’

      ‘Why the hell would you want to marry me now?’ she blistered back at him, abruptly relocating the power of proper speech.

      A satiric smile slanted his expressive mouth. ‘But you know the answer to that question, cara,’ he said smoothly. ‘You told me why four years ago. I want a servant to pick up after me, a devoted slave to massage my ego and a bimbo to show off in designer clothes. And, last but not least, sex…unlimited sex, whenever I want it. Only marriage could supply me with all these essentials.’

      Involuntarily her jaw dropped, oxygen escaping her lungs in a shattered sound of disbelief. She had long since forgotten those bitter words. Vito, she registered with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, had not.

      ‘In addition,’ he continued, luxuriant lashes dropping reflectively low as he looked her over again with incredibly offensive thoroughness, ‘beneath that ridiculous miniature terrorist outfit you sport lurks a perfect body and a very beautiful woman. I still want to possess that woman. And why should I not when the means are within my grasp?’

      ‘You’re crazy!’ she cried. ‘Absolutely stark, staring mad!’

      ‘Am I?’ Vito surveyed her with a brand of cold, grim satisfaction that made her skin crawl. ‘Are you telling me that I could get you any other way? I want you, Ashley. That is the only card you have to play. Whether or not you choose to play it is entirely up to you.’

      ‘I’d sooner be dead than married to you!’ Stinging conviction lanced from every biting syllable.

      ‘Is that your final answer?’

      In three enraged steps, Ashley reached the door and swung helplessly round to vent yet another last word. ‘You vengeful bastard!’ she hissed in disgust. ‘I hope you burn in hell for what you’ve said to me today!’

      ‘And I would warn you that “where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury”.’ Contemptuous amusement glittered in his unyielding gaze as he absorbed her bewilderment. ‘Haven’t you ever read The Taming of the Shrew, Ashley?’

      In her desperate haste to depart, she cannoned into the stalwart solidarity of his secretary, who was hovering anxiously outside. ‘How can you work for a chauvinistic, woman-hating swine like that?’ she demanded shrilly on her way past.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘UNLIMITED sex, whenever I want it…’ Ashley’s teeth ground audibly together as she elbowed her passage out of the lift. Seething over the treatment she had received, she stalked from the building. How dared he speak to her like that? How dared he?

      Well, you did what you could and you failed, she told herself bracingly. Tim’s stricken face lurched into her conscience. Missing her step, she stumbled and nearly fell, horror darkening her eyes. And it was there, right there in the middle of the crowded pavement with people pushing past her on either side, that the harsh reality of Tim’s predicament finally struck home hard. Her self-righteous fury evaporated, leaving her limp and shaken.

      Dear heaven, was she actually planning to stand back and watch her kid brother go to prison? Guilt swallowed her alive. Vito had at least agreed to see her. And what had she done with that opportunity? Instead of pursuing Tim’s cause with suitable tact and humility, she had gone off on an emotional tangent, dredging up personal issues which had had no place in the dialogue. She had blown Tim’s one hope of freedom, wilfully, recklessly blown it for the selfish satisfaction of provoking Vito.

      Her stomach gave a nauseous lurch. With so much at stake, only a lunatic would have behaved as she had. It was useless to plead that she could never have foreseen this sequence of events…it did not make her any less responsible for the results.

      Tim had defended her. And in her name he had been baited, beaten up and humiliated. Tormented by his inability to silence Pietro, Tim’s rage and resentment had inevitably centred on Vito, the male he viewed as the author of all his sister’s misfortunes. He had probably intended to drive Vito’s Ferrari away and leave it somewhere, giving Vito a scare. Ashley was absolutely certain that Tim had not meant to damage it. Like most teenage boys, Tim was car-crazy. The wanton destruction of such an exclusive car would have been beyond him.

      Ashley was convinced that, filled with Dutch courage and fired by an adolescent desire for the only revenge within his reach, Tim had embarked on a stupid, boyish prank that had concluded in the kind of disaster he could not have dreamt up in his worst nightmares. But no court would view his outrageous conduct in such a mellow light. The court would not hear about the provocation Tim had endured for so many weeks beforehand either. Hadn’t Tim already suffered enough? ‘Aren’t you responsible for everything that drags our family down?’ Susan had condemned bitterly. All of a sudden the stark truth of that accusation seemed cruelly apt.

      You break the rules, you pay the price. Four years ago, she had moved into Vito’s apartment, well aware that she was contravening her father’s staunchly moral principles. Faced with his fury, she had refused to hang her head in shame. She had been defiant to the last and in the end she had paid a high price for that defiance, but it had occurred to her recently that she had not been the only one to pay that price.

      The scant references Tim had made to that period of their lives had made it painfully obvious that her behaviour had caused her mother tremendous distress. And what her mother had endured then would be as nothing to what she would endure at the mere thought of the son she idolised going to prison. Emotionally fragile as she was at the best of times, it was very possible that the crisis would push Sylvia Forrester into another breakdown. That danger was as unthinkable to Ashley as the risk of her little brother ending up in a cell, and the means to defeat both threats were, she registered dully, within her own hands.

      Was it too late? Ashley straightened her shoulders and breathed in as she turned in her tracks. She had to dig very deep for the courage to walk back into the Cavalieri Bank. Hot-cheeked, she approached the reception desk, inwardly cringing at the necessity. One of the receptionists approached her. ‘Mr di Cavalieri phoned down to say that you could go straight up, Miss Forrester.’

      In bewilderment, Ashley blinked. How could Vito possibly be expecting her? How could he have known that she would return before she knew it herself?

      In the lift she fancied that she felt the weight of a ball and chain on her ankle. Pacing down that wide corridor again, she imagined she could hear the clank of the heavy links as Vito rattled her chain. But already her agile brain was working back over their previous dialogue with greater cool.

      It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense that Vito should demand that she marry him. Vito was highly sexed but he was no slave to that sex-drive. He had proved that fact when he walked away to marry another woman, disdaining any attempt to continue a relationship in which marriage would not be the end result. Furthermore, so much bitterness lay between them now—how could he possibly still find her desirable? Was it true after all, that old clich;aae which said that men were different, more easily able to separate all emotion from the physical? Was Vito playing some sort of crazy power game with her?

      He was a tall, lithe silhouette by the tinted wall of glass that filtered light into the ultra-modern room. He contemplated her in silence. What lay behind those impassive dark eyes was anybody’s guess. But suddenly she was aware as she had not allowed herself to be aware earlier that she was facing a brilliant adversary, СКАЧАТЬ