Amory relived painfully. “Then I was escorted out of the building by two security guards... it was a nightmare!’
Those must have been Carlo’s instructions. Hadn’t her father deserved just a little bit more consideration? Couldn’t he have been allowed to retain even a tiny sliver of dignity?
*Dad...’ Her voice suspended by choking tears, Jessica darted across the room to offer comfort but her father pulled away from her.
‘I would have treated a thief the same way—’ The admission was stark.
‘You’re not a thief!’
But Gerald Amory made no response.
Every which way Jessica looked, she felt responsible. She should have been there for her father, should have seen that he was in trouble. A week after Carlo had bought Amory Engineering, Jessica’s mother had walked out and started a divorce. The amount of cash from the sale had proved too severe a temptation for Carole Amory. Bad as the marriage had been, Gerald Amory had been utterly devastated. Her father had adored her mother. He had been terrifyingly loyal and forgiving through her every extra-marital affair. He would have done anything to keep her ... he had crawled, begged, pleaded. The only person relieved by Carole’s departure had been her daughter.
But she should have seen the immense vacuum that had opened up in her father’s life. She had watched him turn into a workaholic, living and breathing business and profit because that was all he had left. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that, as the firm thrived and made all the money her greedy mother could ever have wanted, her father must have bitterly resented the fact that the firm was no longer his and that those healthy profits had come too late to sustain his shaky marriage?
But gambling ... ?
‘It was somewhere to go, something to do,’ he proffered while she stared back at him aghast. ‘And then I started losing and I thought I couldn’t go on losing forever...’
The silence went on and on and then abruptly and without any warning, Gerald Amory rose heavily from his seat and moved with the shambling gait of a much older man towards the front door.
‘Where are you going?’ Jessica demanded, her violet eyes almost purple with the strength of her distress.
‘Home ... I need to be on my own, Jess ... please understand that.’
In despair, she hurried down the path after him, ‘Dad, we can cope better with this together! Please stay,’ she pleaded.
‘I’m sorry. Not now, Jess,’ he breathed tightly, unable to look at her.
Cope with the shame, the publicity, the court case? With the loss of his home, his job, his self-respect? Would he be able to cope? It was a tall order, she registered dully, especially for a man of his age. But what alternative was there? You coped, you survived. If Jessica had learnt anything in recent years, it was that truth. Yet struggle as she did she could no longer keep her mind fully focused on her father’s problems. The past was surging back to her, the past she had buried six years ago...
The day she had met Carlo Saracini she had been in London, shopping for her trousseau in the company of a friend. It had been less than two months before her wedding to Simon. She hadn’t been wearing her engagement ring. One of the stones had worked loose and it had been in the jeweller’s for repair.
She had been standing chatting to Leah at a busy intersection, waiting on the lights changing so they could cross. Somebody behind her in the crowd had pushed her and she had fallen into the road, practically beneath the wheels of Carlo’s chauffeur-driven limousine.
She didn’t remember falling. She had knocked herself out. What she did remember was coming dizzily back to consciousness before the ambulance arrived and focusing on the most extraordinary golden eyes above hers. She had been suffering from concussion. As a child she had had a story-book about a tiger with eyes that were pools of brilliant gold. So, naturally she had stared. She had never before seen eyes that shade.
‘Stay still... don’t speak.’ Carlo had been rapping out autocratic instructions in every direction, including hers.
‘I’m fine—’
‘Keep quiet,’ she had been told.
‘It’s only my head and I want to get up...’ She had begun trying to move.
A brown hand like a giant weight had forestalled such daring.
‘Look...I want to get up,’ she had said again, embarrassed eyes flickering over the gathering crowd of onlookers.
‘You are not getting up... you could have injured your spine.’
Her temper had begun to spark. ‘My spine is OK...I’m OK—’
‘We will have a doctor tell us that.’ He had continued to stare down at her with the most phenomenal intensity and then he had run a forefinger almost caressingly along her delicate jawbone. ‘I shall never forgive myself for hurting something so incredibly beautiful...’
Leah had been totally useless, having hysterics somewhere in the background. Jessica had found herself in a private ambulance, accompanied not by her friend but by Carlo.
‘She will follow in my car,’ he had asserted, getting in the way of the paramedics while simultaneously telling them what to do.
She just hadn’t had the strength to fight Carlo Saracini off that day. Her head had been aching fit to burst and her stomach churning with nausea. She had shut her eyes to escape, telling herself that this volatile and domineering foreigner was simply attempting to make amends for an accident which hadn’t been his fault in the first place.
She had been taken to a clinic, subjected to an alarmingly thorough examination against her will and tucked into a bed in a very expensively decorated room.
‘I want to go home,’ she had protested to the nurse. ‘This is so unnecessary.’
Carlo had strode through the door, splintering waves of vibrant physical energy that seemed to charge the very atmosphere and drive out all tranquility.
‘Where’s Leah?’ she had whispered, shaken that he was still around.
‘I had her taken home. She was too distressed to be of any assistance. I understand that your parents are abroad and will not be home until tomorrow. Do you wish me to contact them?’
‘I don’t even know your name,’ she had begun through clenched teeth.
‘Carlo Saracini,’ he had murmured with a slashing and brilliant smile. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I just want to go home... don’t you ever listen to anything people say?’
‘Not if I don’t want to hear it,’ Carlo had admitted.
‘Look, all this...’ She had indicated the fancy room with embarrassment. ‘It’s not necessary. I fell into the road. Your car didn’t touch me. It’s not as if I’m going to sue you or anything, and all this fuss—’.
‘Is my wish,’ he had inserted silkily, scanning her slender shape beneath the bedclothes with blatant appreciation, making her cheeks ignite into sudden colour and sweeping
