A Vengeful Passion

Hunt Forrester had always been the first to sneer when other people’s children got into trouble. He would boast of the rigid discipline within his own home, censuring other more liberal parents and smirking over the unlikelihood of any of his children making the same mistakes.

The discovery that she was pregnant had outraged her father. The fear of his own loss of face in the local business community, should her condition become known, had been enough to make him disown her. The further news that the father of her child was already married to someone else had been the last straw.

She had been four months pregnant when she’d miscarried, although most of her family had assumed that the loss of her baby was not a natural event. She had been hoist with her own petard. In her teens she had been very outspoken about her determination never to marry or have children. Everyone knew that abortions were relatively easily available and everyone had assumed that she had finally chosen that option. No, she could not tell Vito…Vito, who was so exceptionally fond of children, Vito, with whom she had once enjoyed several heated debates on the subject of a woman’s right to choose. Vito would not believe her either and, if he thought for one moment that she had chosen that option, he would despise her even more than he did now.

‘Tim is only eighteen,’ she started afresh, ramming back the bitter pain of her memories. ‘And some of this is my fault. I never discussed…I mean, he knows nothing about what happened between us. He made certain incorrect assumptions but I had no idea how he felt until this happened…’

The silence dragged on. Vito could use silence like a weapon. She had never been able to understand how he achieved that effect but he did. He sat there, supremely at ease, cool, calm and immensely self-assured. He intimidated her. Her slender hands clenched even more tightly round the bag on her lap. ‘Look, I’m not trying to excuse him—’

‘But that is precisely what you are guilty of,’ he countered.

The word ‘guilt’ sent spectral fingers of alarm wandering down her rigid spinal cord. ‘If Tim receives a prison sentence, his whole life will be destroyed. He lost his head, Vito. He’s very sorry for what he’s done.’

His gaze was unwaveringly direct. ‘Then where is he?’

‘He doesn’t know that I’m here.’ She floundered wildly for a second. ‘And I don’t know why you’re even asking me that. It’s unfair. You’ve stirred up the police so much, he’d probably be arrested if he came anywhere near this building!’

‘Agile,’ Vito murmured softly, appreciatively. ‘I had forgotten how agile you could be. But tell me, if either I or any member of my family had been in the path of that car, do you think your charming brother would have stepped on the brakes?’

Bone-white, she flinched. ‘Why do you want to make what he did even worse than it already is? He ran amok with your car. He didn’t try to kill somebody! It was done on impulse while he was under the influence of alcohol. He didn’t know what he was doing until it was too late!’

Vito made a flexible bridge of long brown fingers. ‘Is that alarming assurance intended to soften my heart? Those who break the law should be punished. Cushioning your brother from the consequences of his own behaviour would not be in his best interests.’

‘It was only your blasted car, Vito!’ she slashed back at him furiously. ‘He didn’t plan to crash it. There’s punishment and punishment. Sending a teenager to prison for smashing up a car and a stupid fountain is what I call over-reaction. It will destroy Tim!’

‘It’s most unlikely that he’ll go to prison for a first offence.’

‘But it’s not his first—’ In horror, she caught back what remained of that killing sentence.

Black lashes dropped reflectively low on brilliant dark eyes. ‘My conscience may then rest in peace. Quite deliberately you have sought to mislead me by contending that his behaviour was quite out of character. But if he has broken the law before, he most definitely deserves what he has coming to him. Clearly the first warning was insufficient to curb his violent tendencies.’

A steel band of tension was now throbbing across her brow. She had come here to help Tim. So far, all she had done was fuel the flames of Vito’s outrage. ‘Have you ever met Tim?’

‘Very briefly,’ Vito conceded. ‘I recognised him at my nephew’s party and had a short conversation with him. He bears a marked resemblance to you in both colouring and temperament.’

‘Do you think I have violent tendencies as well?’ she demanded bitterly as she realised that Vito, probably quite unwittingly, had been responsible for connecting her brother with her for the benefit of the rest of his family.

He ignored the gibe. ‘He has your eyes,’ he said very quietly, his sensual mouth hardening. ‘You both possess considerable physical appeal but in his case, as in yours, it is distinctly superficial on closer acquaintance.’

Temper stormed through her and she lifted her head high. ‘You do have to concede one mitigating factor, however…’

He sighed, glancing fleetingly at his watch, boredom somehow screaming from the tiny gesture, making her even more determined to explode him out of his offensive detachment. ‘And what is that?’

Ashley fixed huge emerald-green eyes accusingly on him. ‘Each and every one of us has the capacity to go off the rails if the provocation is great enough. You once did so yourself, but I gather that I’m not supposed to remember that occasion.’

His golden features shuttered, his jawline clenching hard. ‘The reminder is both unnecessary and irrelevant. I don’t suffer from blackouts.’

In that split-second she came dangerously close to losing control. It had cost her dear to remind him of that last meeting. Rape? No, not rape. In bitter anger it had begun, and in savage passion it had ended. Not an act of love or even of desire. A final, humiliating expression of all-male contempt which had destroyed her pride for many, many months afterwards. Mastering her fury now was the hardest thing she had ever done and she only managed the feat by concentrating on her brother.

‘I’d plead with you if I thought it would make any difference,’ she admitted starkly.

‘It wouldn’t abate my anger one jot.’

Ashley thrust up her chin. ‘OK. What about financial restitution?’

Vito dealt her a cold smile. ‘Your family do not have the means. That “stupid fountain” you referred to was a sculpture, a quite irreplacable work of art. The car? A Ferrari F40 with one or two little extras custom-built to my requirements. I paid four hundred thousand pounds for it four years ago and it’s already a collector’s item.’

‘Four h-hundred th-thousand pounds for a car?’ Ashley stammered in disbelief.

‘It was a limited edition put out to celebrate Ferrari’s fortieth anniversary.’

‘It’s obscene…all that money for a car!’ Ashley gasped helplessly. ‘And the money means nothing to you!’

Vito shifted a lithely expressive hand. ‘And everything to you.’

‘Once we loved each other…’ Every charged syllable hurt her throat, decimated her pride.

‘Really?’ Vito prompted. ‘How strange that you should talk of love now when you made no reference to the emotion while we were together.’

Golden eyes dwelt unreadably on her hot cheeks and she evaded that appraisal. ‘Can we stick to Tim?’

‘You were the one who chose to stray into the past,’ he reminded her.

‘Only because I was stupid enough to try and appeal—’

‘To some vein of sentimentality I might possess?’ he guessed with derision. ‘I’m not sentimental about sex.’

The assurance roared like a shockwave through her. She felt not only humiliated, she felt cheated. ‘But you—’

‘You destroyed what I felt for you.’ It was an icy growl.

‘You had a pretty similar effect on me!’ she traded.

A dark, forbidding anger glimmered in his gaze. ‘I actually believed that you would grow out of your ridiculous ideas. I actually honoured you with a proposal of marriage—’

‘Oh, let’s not make the mistake of referring to that offer in terms of honour!’ Ashley flung back at him furiously. ‘You made it painfully apparent that you thought you were doing me one very big favour. And you wanted a good excuse to avoid the gold-plated Plain Jane your parents kept on throwing at your head! That is, until you came to your senses and got your calculator out and snatched at her with both greedy hands!’

Without warning, Vito sprang up and strode forward to face her. His dark features were set like granite. ‘If you ever refer to my late wife like that again, I may well choose to forget that you are a woman and give you the response that you truly deserve!’

‘L-late? As in g-gone?’ As he towered over her, six feet three inches of ferocious threat, she bowed her head, shattered by the news and cursing her impulsive tongue and the venom that could trip off it so easily in his radius. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Vito grated.

‘All right. I can’t really be sorry because I didn’t know her!’ Ashley slammed back at him with more truth than tact. ‘But I’m sure she was a saint and a wonderful person, quite unlike me…’

‘Most unlike you,’ he breathed tautly in agreement. ‘You have the face of a Botticelli angel, the temperament of a virago and the amorality of a natural whore. On no count do you have the smallest resemblance to Carina.’

Ashley had turned very pale, beads of perspiration dampening her brow. She was devastated by the vicious response she had invited. ‘Dear God,’ she muttered shakily. ‘I must have been out of my mind when I got mixed up with you!’