little scrap of information she could find out about him. He took sugar in his coffee and he liked chocolate. He supported several children’s charities that dispensed medical aid in developing countries. He had suffered a challenging childhood when his parents broke up and his father took to alcohol and other women to assuage his grief. He loved to drive fast and collected cars. Although he had perfect teeth he hated going to the dentist. The recollection of all those once very much prized little facts sank Ava dangerously deep into the clinging tentacles of the past she had buried.
‘We’ll talk in my office next door,’ Vito decreed, having come off the phone. He moved away from the table and opened a door on the other side of the room. ‘Leave the damn trolley!’
That impatient exclamation made her hand shoot back from the handle she had automatically been reaching for. Colour ran like a rising flag up her slender throat into her heart-shaped face, flushing her cheeks with discomfiture.
Stunning eyes narrowed, Vito studied her, his attention descending from the multicoloured topknot that was so unfamiliar to him, down over her pale perfect face with those big blue eyes, that dainty little nose and lush, incredibly tempting mouth and straight away he felt like loosening his collar because he felt too warm. Memory was pelting him with images he had put away a long time ago. Ava in a little silver shimmery slip of a dress, lithe curves only hinted at, legs that went on for ever. He breathed in slow and deep. The taste of Ava’s mouth, her hands running up beneath his jacket over his shirt in an incredibly arousing way. Sex personified and prohibited, absolutely not to be touched under any circumstances. And he had broken the rules, he who never broke such rules, who prided himself on his self-control and decency. True, it had only been a kiss but it had been a kiss that should never have happened and the fallout from it had destroyed his family.
Emerging from that disturbing flash of recollection, Vito was tense as a steel rod. He would sack her, of course he would. Having her in the same office when he would not be moving on until the reorganisation was complete was inappropriate. Utterly inappropriate, just like his thoughts. He would not keep the young woman who was responsible for his brother’s death in one of his businesses. Nobody would expect him to, nobody would condemn his reasoning. But quick as a flash he knew someone who would have done … Olly, caring, compassionate Olly, who had once acted as the voice of Vito’s unacknowledged conscience.
Ava moved unsteadily past him, bright head high, refusing to show weakness or concern. Vito was tough, hard, ruthless and brutally successful in a business environment, willing to take a risk and fly in the face of adversity, everything Olly had never been. And yet that had not been the whole story either, Ava conceded painfully, for, macho as Vito undoubtedly was he had been so supportive of the news that Olly was gay, admitting that he had already guessed. Vito had suspected why, like Ava, Olly was the odd one out at school.
And she still remembered Olly laughing and joking in enormous relief at his brother’s wholehearted acceptance.
A prickling wash of tears burned below Ava’s lowered lids and a flood of anguished grief gripped her for the voice she would never hear again, for the supportive friend she had grown to love.
CHAPTER TWO
THE film of dampness in her eyes only slowly receding, Ava shook her bright head as though to clear it and glanced around herself. The office was massive with an ocean of wooden flooring surrounding a contemporary desk and one corner filled with relaxed seating and a coffee table. Everything was tidy, not one thing out of place, and it exactly depicted Vito’s organised, stripped-back style, the desk marred only by a laptop and a single sheaf of documents.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I recognised you,’ Vito admitted flatly.
‘It was just as much of a shock for me. I didn’t know you owned this business.’ Ava’s strained eyes darted over him, absorbing the strong angle of his cheekbones, the stubborn jut of his chin and then falling helpless into the melted honey of his beautiful eyes. Eyes the shade of old gold, fringed by outrageously long and luxuriant black lashes. Her heart started to pound as if he had pressed a button somewhere in her body and her mouth ran dry as a bone.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded sardonically. ‘I assumed you’d reapply to medical school once you were released.’
Ava froze, her facial muscles tightening. ‘No—’
Vito frowned. ‘Why not? I’ll agree you couldn’t expect the university to hold open your place until you got out of prison but you were a brilliant student and I’m sure they would be willing to reconsider you.’
Ava stared steadily back at him but she wasn’t really focusing on him any longer. ‘That time’s gone. I can’t go back there …’ She hesitated, reluctantly recalling how excited she and Olly had been when they had both received offers to study medicine at the same university. It was unthinkable to her that she could now try to reclaim what Olly had for ever lost because of her. ‘I’m here because I needed a job, a way of supporting myself.’
An enquiring ebony brow quirked in surprise. ‘Your family?’
Ava raised her chin. ‘They don’t bother with me now. I haven’t heard from any of them since I was sentenced.’
‘They are taking a very tough line,’ Vito commented, suppressing a stab of pity for her that he felt was inapt.
‘They can’t forgive me for letting them down.’
‘People forgive much worse. You were still a foolish teenager.’
Ava snatched in a shuddering breath, her hands knotting into fists by her sides. ‘Have you forgiven me?’
Vito went very still, his body rigid with sudden screaming tension, his face hard beneath his bronzed skin. His cloaked eyes lashed back to her with a hint of flaring gold, bright as an eagle hunting for prey. ‘I can’t.’
Ava felt as sick as if he had punched her and she didn’t know how she had dared to ask that crazy question or even why she had asked it. What other answer could she have expected from Olly’s brother?
‘He was the only family I had,’ Vito breathed in curt continuation, his handsome mouth compressing into a harsh line.
Ava was trembling. ‘He was pretty much irreplaceable. So what now?’ she asked baldly, forcing herself to move away from the topic of Olly before she lost control and embarrassed herself even more. ‘You can’t want me working here even temporarily.’
‘I don’t,’ Vito admitted grimly, for he had far too many unsettling memories attached to her and his brother and he hated such reminders. He swung away from her with surprising grace for so large a man and moved behind his desk. She needed the job, the chance to take up her life again. He recognised that: he just didn’t want her doing it around him. She had stolen Olly’s life and now she had her own back. Or did she? Her entire family had cut her loose. She had also given up her dream of becoming a doctor. Where was his sense of fair play? Did he usually kick people when they were already down and out? She was struggling: he could see it in the shaky set of that luscious mouth, in the fierce tension of her slim body. Given the opportunity his little brother would, he knew, have urged him not to punish Ava for what had happened. Typical Olly, always the peacemaker, Vito reflected broodingly, his even white teeth gritting as he searched inside himself for some similar strain of compassion and found only the yawning emptiness that the loss of his brother had created.
‘So do you want me to leave immediately?’ Ava enquired flatly, fighting to keep the unsteadiness out
