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‘If you carry my child, as you state emphatically that you do, there is only one course of action. In half an hour we will leave for Rome and we will be married.
‘Much as the thought of marrying you turns my insides, it’s not an institution I’ve ever held in any esteem, so it won’t cost me any emotion. It’ll ensure legitimacy from the outset for the Valentini heir, and I can keep an eye on your every move. It’ll also save my reputation; our shares have already been dropping in value on the back of this potential scandal.’
Cara felt the colour draining from her face as she struggled to take this in. ‘Never. I’d never marry someone like you,’ she breathed with horror.
Vincenzo went ominously still and said silkily, ‘Then are you willing to sign a legal document to renounce all claims that this child is mine? And to vow that you will have no further contact with me for the rest of your life? Because that is the only other alternative to marriage.’
Abby Green got hooked on Mills & Boon® romances while still in her teens, when she stumbled across one belonging to her grandmother in the west of Ireland. After many years of reading them voraciously, she sat down one day and gave it a go herself. Happily, after a few failed attempts, Mills & Boon bought her first manuscript.
Abby works freelance in the film and TV industry, but thankfully the four a.m. starts and the stresses of dealing with recalcitrant actors are becoming more and more infrequent—leaving more time to write!
She loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her through her website at www.abby-green.com. She lives and works in Dublin.
RUTHLESSLY BEDDED, FORCIBLY WEDDED
BY
ABBY GREEN
PROLOGUE
VICENZO VALENTINI stood for a long moment looking down at the set and cold features of the dead woman. His baby sister. She was only twenty-four. Her whole life ahead of her. But not any more. That life had been snuffed out like a candle in the mangled wreckage of a horrific car crash. And he’d been too late to stop it, to protect her. What felt like a granite block weighted down his insides.
He should have followed his instincts and insisted that she come home weeks ago…if he had he would have realised how much danger she was in.
That thought made his fists clench as pain and guilt surged through him, so strong that he shook with the intensity it took to not let it out in front of the anonymous morgue attendant. He’d been kept away deliberately. A crude ruse to ensure he didn’t come to check up on his sister. When he thought of how awfully futile it made him feel he wanted to rant and rail, to smash something. He fought to regain control. He had to keep it together. He had to bring his sister home. He and his father would mourn her there. Not in this cold country where she had been seduced out of her innocence and led down a dark path to this tragic end. He stretched out a shaking hand and ran a finger down one icy cold cheek. It almost undid him. The crash hadn’t marked her face, and that made it even harder to bear, because like this she might almost be eight again, clinging onto Vicenzo’s hand tightly. Summoning all his control, he leant forward and pressed a kiss against her clammy, lifeless forehead.
He stood and turned away abruptly, saying in a voice clogged and hoarse with grief, ‘Yes. This is my sister. Allegra Valentini.’ A part of him couldn’t believe he was saying the trite words, that this wasn’t just an awful nightmare. He stepped out of the way jerkily to let the attendant zip the body bag back up.
Vicenzo muttered something unintelligible and strode from the room, feeling constricted and claustrophobic, making his way up through the hospital, just wanting to get back outside and breathe in fresh air. Although that was laughable. The hospital was right in the smog-filled centre of London.
Outside, he sucked in deep breaths, unaware of the gaping looks he drew with his tall, lean body, and dark olive-skinned good-looks. He stood out like an exotic beacon of potent masculinity against the backdrop of the hospital in the harsh early-morning light.
He saw nothing, though, but the pain inside him. The doctor had described it as a tragic accident. But Vicenzo knew it had been much more than an accident. His fists clenched at the sides of his body in rejection of that platitude. Two people had died in the crash: his sister—his beautiful, beloved, irrepressible Allegra—and her duplicitous lover, Cormac Brosnan. The man who had calculatedly seduced her, with one grasping hand out for her fortune and the other hand holding Vicenzo back from interfering. Rage burned inside him again. He’d had no inkling of Brosnan’s influence and cunning until it was too late. He knew it all now, but that information amounted to nothing any more, because it couldn’t bring Allegra back.
But one person had survived the crash. One person had walked out of this hospital just an hour after being admitted last night. The words of the doctor came back to him. ‘Not even a scratch on her body—unbelievable, really. She was the only one wearing a seatbelt and undoubtedly it saved her life. Lucky woman.’
Lucky woman. The words made a mist of red rage cloud Vicenzo’s vision. Cara Brosnan. Cormac’s sister. Reports stated that Cormac had been behind the wheel of the car, but even so Cara Brosnan had been no less responsible. Vicenzo’s hands clenched even harder, his jaw so tight it hurt. If he’d only got here sooner he would have made sure that she had not walked anywhere until he’d looked her in the eye and made it his business to let her know that he would make her atone. He’d had to endure that soul-destroying moment when the doctor had informed him that his sister had had high levels of drugs and alcohol in her system.
His driver, who must have seen him standing on the steps of the hospital, pulled up in front of him, the powerful engine of the sleek car purring quietly. Vicenzo forced himself to move and sat in the back. As they swung away from the front of the grim hospital he had to stifle a moment of blind panic, stop himself demanding that the car be stopped so he could go back and see Allegra one more time. As if he had to make sure for himself that she was really dead. Really gone.
But he didn’t. And he willed the awful, uncustomary feeling of panic down. She was dead. Only her body lay back there. He was aware that this was the first time in years anything had struck him through the iron-clad high wall he’d built around his emotions. And his heart. He’d grown strong and impervious since that time. And he had to draw on that strength now. Especially for his father’s sake. On the news of the death of his beloved only daughter his father had suffered a minor stroke and was still in a hospital—albeit stable enough to allow Vicenzo to make this trip.
As they entered the London rush hour mayhem, his mind seized once again on the woman who had played her part in causing this awful tragic day. Her brother was dead. But she was no less accountable than he for what they had planned to do together. They were a team. She might have walked free for now, but Vicenzo knew he wouldn’t rest until he had forced her to feel even a measure of the pain he felt right now. The fact that she’d walked from the hospital so soon after the crash made the bitter feeling even stronger. She’d got away scot-free.
He had to wait now—for papers to be processed, red
