four years ago she would have strolled into this impressive building in jeans and a T-shirt and an unconcerned smile.
Then, it wouldn’t have bothered her that she looked shabby and out of place. In those days she had been secure in herself. But she wasn’t now. As the axe of retribution had fallen on every hope, dream and attachment she had ever cherished, her self-confidence had dive-bombed accordingly.
Vito wasn’t going to see her. She tasted the concept, retreated from it fearfully. All right, so they hadn’t parted friends. In fact, they had parted on the most violent terms of mutual hatred, but somehow she had assumed that Vito would opt for the civilised response.
‘Miss Forrester?’ It was the receptionist again. ‘If you’re prepared to wait for another hour, Mr di Cavalieri may be able to see you. It’s not definite now,’ she warned. ‘His senior secretary is trying to squeeze you in before lunch.’
Ironically, that condescension sent fury hurtling through Ashley. ‘How very kind of her,’ she said sharply.
‘You can wait on the top floor,’ she was told frigidly.
The top floor was sumptuous. Involuntarily she was impressed, and that annoyed her again. The svelte brunette on the desk looked her over covertly. The loose khaki jacket and cotton trousers she wore were the closest thing she had to a suit. Her hair was doing its usual stint of falling down, dropping untidy tendrils round a face that already felt horribly hot. In all, she felt a mess.
By the end of another hour, she was a limp rag. All her carefully thought out opening speeches and follow-ups had deserted her. Vito, she was convinced, was deliberately keeping her waiting. Vito had the art of subtle, mindbending cruelty at his polished fingertips.
‘Mr di Cavalieri will see you now.’
Gulping, she scrambled upright, hating him for having reduced her to a bag of nerves, harassed by unwelcome memories. A middle-aged woman greeted her at the foot of the corridor. ‘I’m afraid Mr di Cavalieri can only give you ten minutes.’
Ten minutes to plead Tim’s case to a male who not only loathed her but also equated dropping a sweetie paper on the pavement with crime? She hung on to a hysterical howl of laughter. Ten minutes was better than nothing and, knowing Vito’s capacity for holding on to a grudge, nothing was what she had almost received.
Double doors spread wide into an enormous office. An acre of plush carpet stretched before her. She could see a desk with a computer bank and several phones. Psychologically, it was a most intimidating backdrop, reminding her quite unnecessarily that she was entirely on Vito’s ground with nothing between her and desperation but the flimsy hope that he did not recall their last meeting quite as accurately as she did…
Her skin dampened. Vito was in view now. Taller than she remembered, darker than she remembered, about a hundred times more staggeringly attractive than she had ever allowed herself to remember. All the sophisticated trappings were there: the superbly elegant suit, the absolutely unshakeable good manners that were prompting that coldly polite smile. But they were only a fa;alcade on a fiercely elemental nature and an immense and arrogant ego, a galaxy away from her New-Age-man ideal.
‘Thanks for seeing me.’ It wasn’t the opening she had planned. Indeed, it sounded demeaningly humble to her own ears.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I’M SURE you’ll understand that I’m not being rude when I ask you to be brief.’
Vito indicated the chair placed in readiness about six feet from the desk. If his secretary had stepped forward with a blindfold, Ashley wouldn’t have been surprised. ‘I’ll be as brief as possible.’
A satiric black brow elevated. ‘Bearing in mind that I have no desire to hear a plea for clemency on your brother’s behalf.’
Crushed before she could even warm up, Ashley was relieved when a phone buzzed and he stretched out an impatient hand. As his attention switched from her, she breathed again. The temptation to study him was overpowering. He was incredibly attractive. Hard cheekbones slashed his strong, dark features, highlighting the proud temperamental flare of his nose and a mouth that was a wide, blatantly sensual arc. But, if you were a woman, it was the eyes you noticed first and remembered longest. Vito had stunningly beautiful eyes, golden as the purest precious metal in sunlight or dark as darkest ebony.
In defiance of her every wish to the contrary, Vito still radiated a dark, savage sexuality boldly at variance with a three-piece suit and a silk tie. Every woman between fifteen and fifty raised her chin and sucked in her stomach when Vito passed. And she was not, she learnt, dragging her disobedient eyes from him, the exception that broke the rule.
As she lowered her lashes, her skin heated. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was racing. She was badly shaken by her adolescent response to all that raw, blatant masculinity. Anger followed predictably in the wake of that lowering awareness. He replaced the phone, uttering a bland apology for the interruption.
‘You want me to get down on my knees and beg, don’t you?’ As the hot, thoughtless words burst from her, shrill with resentment, she could have bitten her tongue out for that loss of control.
Vito lounged back in his swivel chair, insultingly unsurprised by the verbal assault. Far too perceptive eyes of gold ran over her flushed face. ‘Exactly why are you here?’ he asked, politely ignoring her outburst.
‘To talk about Tim and why he did it. You’re probably not aware of it, but your nephew—’
Vito dealt her a narrowed glance. ‘Insulted you to your brother?’ he interposed. ‘It was a regrettable incident.’
Ashley stiffened. ‘Regrettable?’
‘Pietro lost two of his front teeth,’ Vito returned drily. ‘The question of family loyalties was settled with their fists. Pietro came off worst and he has been honest with me. I see no connection between that episode and your brother’s inexcusable invasion of my home.’
‘So you had chapter and verse on Act One. What about Act Two?’ Ashley pressed with spirit. ‘Tim was cornered outside school and beaten up by four boys, one of whom was your nephew.’
‘When did this take place?’
Ashley had to think for a second or two before slinging the date at him with relish.
‘On that day, Pietro was attending his cousin’s wedding in Rome,’ Vito responded even more drily. ‘He could not possibly have been present.’
Her chin came up. ‘If he wasn’t there, he organised it.’
Vito set the gold pen in his hand very decisively down on the glass desktop. ‘You are now entering the realms of fantasy. Pietro would not have involved himself in so cowardly an act. Unless you have evidence on which to base these allegations, I would advise you to drop this line of argument.’ Ice cool dark eyes rested on her. ‘Pursue it and you will find it a most unproductive course.’
She was furious that she did not possess the exact details of that incident. Four youths had attacked Tim. That was the sum total of her knowledge. She ground her teeth together on an explosive retort. The atmosphere had all the encouraging warmth of a polar freeze. Biting her lower lip, she murmured, ‘I understand that the enmity between your nephew and my brother originally related to some rivalry over a girl—’
His
