it was his niece, Donatella!’
‘Donatella?’
His reaction to her name was extreme—brutal. As if venom had somehow entered his bloodstream, his body went suddenly rigid, his head jerking back to expose the strong column of his neck.
‘Y...yes.’ Stuttering with surprise, Harper could only stare up at him in astonishment.
‘You are telling me that Donatella Sorrentino chose this dress for you?’
‘Yes. Why, does it matter?’
His reply was a violent oath in a foreign tongue. Releasing her shoulders, he leapt to his feet, for a second glaring down at her dishevelled body with undisguised hatred burning in his eyes. Then turning, he moved as if he was desperate to get away from her.
Harper stared at the broad expanse of his back in total shock. She could see the bunched muscles of his biceps flexing as he folded his arms in front of him, his shoulder blades jutted rigidly beneath the fine fabric of his shirt.
She pulled her eyes away, looking down at herself with distress, horror even. Her breasts were fully exposed, still tingling from where Vieri’s mouth had been, her nipples hard and throbbing. Snatching up the strap of the dress, she pulled it back over her shoulder, struggling to tuck herself back into the tight bodice. And only just in time.
Vieri swung back round to look at her again, resentment scoring his face, as if he had somehow hoped she had disappeared while his back was turned.
‘You need to go to bed.’ It was an order, a cruel dismissal, his blue-black eyes still alight with fury.
Harper certainly wasn’t going to challenge him. She couldn’t get away fast enough. Leaping off the sofa, she snatched up the skirt of her dress and swept past him, heading for her rooms as fast as she could, marching through her dressing room and into her bedroom and slamming the door behind her. Only then did she let herself breathe, leaning back against the door, slowly sliding down until she was crouched on the floor in a puddle of red satin. Only then did she let herself surrender to the misery and injustice of it all, to the painful burn of tears that blocked her throat.
‘NEED ANY COMPANY?’
Vieri tightened his grip around the tumbler of whisky in his hand. He growled his negative reply, leaving the heavily perfumed female hovering beside him no room for doubt. The only company he wanted right now was the alcohol in his glass and the hope that enough of it would numb his murderous thoughts.
He had chosen this dingy bar, in a far from salubrious area of Palermo, because he didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to see anyone. Signalling to the barman to refill his glass, he took another deep slug of whisky, returning the glass to the sticky bar top with a thud. He’d drink this and then he’d go. Being here was doing nothing to improve his state of mind and he could already feel the beginnings of an alcohol-induced headache starting to thrum at his temples.
Donatella Sorrentino. He repeated her name in his head, feeling his muscles tighten, his skin crawl. The idea that she was here, somewhere in Palermo, at the same time as him filled him with a bitter loathing that refused to abate. He imagined that he could feel her evil presence all around him, even though he knew she would never frequent a place like this. But like a rat in a sewer she was there, unseen, a dark, malevolent presence.
Presumably she was back in Palermo because she had heard about Alfonso and was circling the water like a predatory shark. Well, she was going to be sorely disappointed. She might be Alfonso’s niece, his only living relative, but, as his godfather’s executor, Vieri knew for a fact that she wasn’t going to get a cent of his inheritance. The entire estate was to be divided between the many charities he supported. Alfonso had disowned his niece long ago, on the night his brother had been gunned down in the street—the night Donatella hadn’t so much as shed a tear for her father.
It disgusted Vieri to think that he could ever have been taken in by that woman. That he could have gone to bed with her, made love to her, planned a future with her. Blind to her faults, he had still been pining for her even after she had so unceremoniously dumped him. But discovering her final act of treachery had changed all that. And his misplaced devotion had turned into a heavy, poisonous weight that had sat inside him ever since.
He had only found out the truth by accident. Months after he and Donatella had gone their separate ways, Vieri had been dating a local girl when she had let slip that her sister was a nurse in a private clinic and that Donatella Sorrentino had been in for a termination. With a tidal wave of fury Vieri had known, right at that very moment, that the child had been his. Dates had been demanded, his poor unsuspecting girlfriend left with no choice but to extract the details from her sister. And they fitted perfectly. The child was his. Without even mentioning it to him, Donatella Sorrentino had had an abortion, terminated his child. A child that would have been the only family he had ever had.
Thanks to Alfonso, he had never had the chance to exact his revenge. Instead of tracking down Donatella with a view to God knew what, he had been put on a flight to New York, forced to concentrate on making a new life for himself. And now, of course, he was very grateful for that. He hadn’t laid eyes on Donatella since the day she had told him their affair was over. But the thought of her here, in Palermo, filled him with a towering rage. And the idea that she had chosen Harper’s dress, come anywhere near her, in fact, exploded white lights behind his eyes.
Swirling the last of the liquor around in his glass, Vieri swallowed it in one gulp. It wasn’t helping. It couldn’t erase the thought of that evil woman tainting his Harper. His Harper? Where had that come from? Since when had he started to think of Harper McDonald as his? He drummed his fingers on the bar top. But there was no denying that Harper filled his thoughts more and more, that something about her, everything about her, made her impossible to ignore. Not just in a sexual way, although that was a powerful force, but in a more deep-rooted emotional way that was totally unfamiliar to him. A way that he didn’t want to examine.
Vieri put his head in his hands. This evening had been a disaster. His plan had been to let Harper enjoy the ball, then take her back to the apartment, soften her up by telling her that Leah was safe and well and then hit her with the fact that their ‘arrangement’ had been changed. That they were, in fact, going to have to get married. Vieri suspected that Harper wouldn’t take the news well, as indeed he hadn’t, but there was no alternative. They were in too deep. This was going to have to happen and somehow they had to deal with it.
But the plan had started to unravel very early on, triggered by seeing those predatory men’s hands all over Harper on the dance floor. And taking her out to the courtyard hadn’t helped, his control slipping dangerously when faced with the fierce temptation of her seductively sexy body. He had just about managed to keep a hold of himself and get her back to the apartment when they had started to argue, any ideas he had had of coaxing her into compliance replaced by bitter recriminations, macho chest-beating and veiled threats. It was not the way he had intended it to go. Especially when, on hearing himself telling her she could pack her bags and leave, the strangest sensation had crept over him. A sort of hollow emptiness, a panic almost, at the thought of losing her. It had come out of nowhere, that acute sense of loss, of abandonment. And the worst of it was, he knew it had nothing whatever to do with their ‘arrangement’ and everything to do with the way he was starting to feel about her. The way she had got to him.
Something that had been all too evident when he had given in to the thundering in his head and started to kiss her.
