Scandals Of The Ruthless: A Shadow of Guilt

It was only then that she noticed the white square of paper with a typewritten message near the biggest box..

Valentina, I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of ordering you some dresses. You’d mentioned that you hadn’t had time to shop....

At the bottom of the note there was just a simple G.

First of all Valentina felt the predictable rise of hot rage—how dared Gio presume to buy her clothes? But then the note was so impersonal—he hadn’t even written it by hand. He must have got his secretary to type it out.

Then her cheeks got hot with embarrassment. Had he thought she looked completely out of place last night in her chain-store dress? He’d told her she looked stunning but the truth was that he’d probably offered up that platitude to every woman there. She’d never catered for such a prestigious event before; she’d never had to dress up.

She saw her dress now, hanging where she’d left it last night on the back of the bedroom door, and it looked unbearably shabby and worn next to these designer concoctions of perfection. Her embarrassment levels went up a notch. Gio evidently didn’t want her showing him up with his important guests and friends.

For a second intense vulnerability hit Valentina when she entertained the notion of putting one of these dresses on, and seeing Gio’s reaction to her. Would he want her then? In spite of her unwelcome virginity? Did she want to seduce him?

Humiliation, never far, made hot colour seep up into her face and rebellion fired her blood as she ignored the beautiful creations and resolutely pulled on her own dress and shoes. Valentina pushed down the voice telling her she was being ridiculously childish and when she was ready she left her room to go back to work.

* * *

It was some hours later before Valentina felt the familiar tingle of awareness. Much to her chagrin, she’d just dropped a pen from nerveless fingers for about the tenth time that evening and was bending down to pick it up.

His impeccably polished shoes came into her line of vision and she sucked in a deep fortifying breath before straightening up.

Her mouth dried. Tonight Gio was wearing a white shirt and that white bow tie. It was slightly askew as if he’d been pulling at it impatiently, giving him a rakish air. Faint stubble lined his jaw. Valentina struggled to find her equilibrium, hating that he’d caught her before she had a chance to compose herself. And then she thought of the typed note and the dresses, and forced ice into her veins.

She hitched up her chin and said in her coolest voice, ‘You didn’t have to go to the trouble of sending someone out to buy me dresses. If you’d told me what was required I could have taken an hour to go out and buy something myself.’

Gio’s eyes flashed with displeasure. ‘The idea was that you choose one to wear tonight.’

Valentina welcomed the surge of anger and glanced around to make sure no one was near before hissing at him, ‘I’m not one of your mistresses, Gio.’

Gio opened his mouth to respond but suddenly they were interrupted by one of his aides, who Valentina dimly recognised as working on the equestrian side of things.

He was saying sotto voce, ‘Excuse me Signor Corretti, but Sheikh Nadim of Merkazad has just arrived with his wife. I thought you’d want to know. We’ve settled his horses into the stables already.’

Valentina knew that Sheikh Nadim was one of the most important guests Gio had been expecting. She saw a muscle clench in Gio’s jaw and felt quivery inside. He just looked at her for an intense moment and then bit out a curt, ‘We’ll continue this later.’ And he strode off with his PA.

Valentina had little time to think about his thinly veiled threat because she was quickly swamped by more guests and making sure that everyone was being catered to, and that the champagne was kept flowing.

* * *

Much later, Gio was ripping open his bow tie and opening the top button of his shirt as he made his way to Valentina’s rooms. It was long after everyone had finished up for the night.

Sheikh Nadim of Merkazad, an old friend of Gio’s, had invited him back to his hotel for a nightcap and he hadn’t been able to refuse. Gio usually loved any chance he got to talk about horses and racing with Nadim, but not this time. Eventually his friend had chuckled ruefully and said, ‘I’ll release you from your misery. Go and find her, my friend. I know that tortured look well. I saw it in my own mirror often enough.’

Gio shook his head now—he couldn’t ever imagine when Nadim and his Irish wife, Iseult, hadn’t been completely and soppily in love. In truth he found it hard to be around them—to witness that level of utter devotion and absorption. It made him feel all at once claustrophobic and yet curiously restless, yearning for something he couldn’t articulate.

Ruthlessly pushing aside such incendiary lines of thought, Gio took the stairs now two at a time, his blood humming at the thought of seeing Valentina.

* * *

Valentina was still pacing in her room an hour after she’d returned from the empty marquee. Gio had disappeared at some stage and she hated the way she’d felt disappointed that he hadn’t returned to explain whatever he’d meant by ‘We’ll continue this later.’

He’d obviously gone back to the luxurious hotel in Syracuse where most of the guests were staying, and where she knew there was an exclusive nightclub. Her hands curled to fists without her even realising it as she had a vision of Gio standing at the side of the dance floor with throbbing music and lights highlighting any number of beautiful women he could have within a mere flick of his fingers. Experienced women.

A peremptory knock sounded on her door and Valentina stopped dead, breath caught in her throat. Superstitiously she didn’t move and it came again, along with a familiar voice that sounded positively angry. ‘Valentina!’

Livid with herself for the relief she was feeling but also because she’d let him get to her so much she stalked to the door and said through it, ‘It’s late, Gio, what do you want?’

On the other side of the door Gio bit back the succinct answer he wanted to give: you. Instead he said, ‘I told you I’d talk to you later.’

Valentina’s voice, husky enough to set his nerve endings alight and yet cool enough to try, and fail, to douse them floated through. ‘I’m tired and going to bed. We can talk tomorrow.’

Valentina had a sudden morbid fear of Gio coming through the door. The sting of rejection came back vividly. She knew if she was in close proximity to him she might not be able to disguise her far too disturbing emotions. Or the fact that she wanted him with a hunger that was shameful.

Gio’s voice came back hard and implacable as the wood of the door. ‘Either you let me in, Valentina, or I use the master key to let myself in.’

Valentina crossed her arms and hissed out, ‘That’s a blatant infringement of my employee rights. If you do any such thing I’ll quit right now and sue you for harassment!’

The eloquent answer to that was the unmistakable sound of a key going into her lock and turning. The door opened to reveal a dark and dishevelled-looking Gio with bow tie hanging completely askew now, his jacket hanging off one finger. And Valentina felt the inevitable surge of electricity between them like a doom-laden klaxon going off.

He was in and the door was shut firmly behind him again before she’d recovered from the shock. Gio’s dark eyes were running over her and he said throatily, ‘We hadn’t finished our discussion about your wardrobe.’

Those words returned Valentina to reality with a bump. She moved away, tightening her arms across her chest. ‘I am not discussing this with you now. So if you don’t mind...?’

Gio casually threw his jacket onto a nearby chair and leant back easily against the door, and looked at her. ‘I don’t mind at all—you can do what you like once we’ve finished our conversation.’

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u65b7c152-176d-5663-a414-baa8b1db717f)

VALENTINA LOOKED FROM the strewn jacket to him and then turned and paced away, glad she’d at least taken off her shoes because her legs felt wobbly enough at the moment. She turned back, feeling seriously jittery now and threatened to have her private space invaded like this, especially when she thought of the frothy lace excuses for underwear in the boxes in the other room. ‘I told you, Gio—I’m not one of your mistresses so please don’t feel like you have to kit me out in a similar manner.’

Gio flushed and Valentina took a step back.

His voice rang with indignation. ‘I’ve never had a mistress in my life—lots of one-night stands that I’m not proud of, but no mistress. I’ve never wanted to spend that much time with a woman.’

It was Valentina’s turn to flush. She felt confused and didn’t like the warm glow his words left in her gut. ‘So...why did you...?’ She trailed off and then tacked on, ‘Look, if you felt that I was letting you down with my own clothes you could have just said something and I’d have gone shopping myself.’

Gio straightened up from the door and ran a hand through his hair, messing it up. ‘Dio. I didn’t feel as if you were letting me down. Damn it, Valentina, you could have been dressed in a sack and still outshone every woman there. You’d mentioned that you hadn’t had time to shop....’

The glow of warmth in Valentina’s gut spread and she panicked when she recalled her earlier vulnerability, the temptation to put on one of the dresses, wanting to look beautiful for Gio. That suddenly galvanised her into movement and Valentina stalked into the bedroom and gathered all the dresses up, along with the shoes, underwear and jewellery, in her arms.

Uncaring of the fact that she was leaving a trail behind her, she was only intent on getting rid of Gio and this reminder of how fragile she was around him. She came back and dumped it on a chair near him, the red dress slithering to a silken mound on the floor.

Valentina was breathing far more heavily than that little trip had warranted. She crossed her arms again and looked at Gio, who caught her gaze with a suspiciously impassive expression.

‘Look, I appreciate it, really. But I can buy my own clothes and I’ll go shopping tomorrow.’

A little scared by Gio’s lack of reaction Valentina blurted out, ‘It’s not as if you went to the trouble of getting them yourself....’ She flushed when she thought of the exquisite underwear and had a sudden fantasy that Gio had looked at it and imagined her in it. That spurred her back into the bedroom and she returned holding out the typewritten note. She held it up like evidence at a trial. ‘Look! Your assistant wrote this—you probably weren’t even aware of what you were signing.’

Gio’s arms were crossed now and he growled softly, ‘Yes, I was, because I wrote that note. No one else. Just like I had the boutique send over a selection of dresses and I chose the ones I thought would suit you best.’