have used her as a weapon to strike at her father? He could not answer that question. He still wondered why there had been no man before him and then he shook his head, killing the thought as well as that dangerous seed of burning curiosity. It was done and there was no going back. Now he only had to wait for Demonides to ditch the buyout of the Royale hotel group at an inflated price and he would have achieved his final goal.
Even so, for the very first time Vitale was tentatively questioning the desire for revenge that had driven him since the age of thirteen. It was like probing a ragingly sensitive tooth. As a boy he had known it would be a foolish waste of time to stage a personal confrontation with his sister’s former lover. Monty Blake would simply lie to him as he had lied at the inquest. He was a vain and devious man, not to be trusted with women. Vitale shut out the reflection that the end might not always justify the means. He had done what had needed to be done. The scornful condemnation in those amazing lavender eyes could not destroy the painful memories of his innocent and trusting sister or his powerful need to hit back on her behalf. Loredana hadn’t been a ‘someone’. She had had no powerful connections—at least, Vitale adjusted grimly, none who cared enough to question the judgement of accidental death made at that inquest.
In comparison, Zara Blake meant nothing to him, less than nothing, he affirmed with vigour. He was not an emotional man. In all likelihood he would never see her again. Unless she proved to be pregnant, he thought abruptly, and, after what he had done, wouldn’t that be a disaster to end all disasters? He still could not credit that he could have taken that risk with her. Since when had sex been so overwhelming an event? He had always been proud of his self-control, not a trait that came naturally to those of his bloodline, he conceded grimly. So, how could passion have betrayed him to that extent? In truth it had been an extraordinary weekend—Zara had defied his expectations at every turn and precious little had gone according to plan.
But why was he questioning his behaviour? Why the hell had he smashed his fist into a wall? He was a goal-orientated man and, having achieved his objective, he ought to be celebrating. After all, Demonides was never going to go ahead and marry Zara Blake once he saw that photo of her in another man’s arms in the newspapers. Vitale decided that the problem was that he had got too close to his quarry. He had found her intensely desirable and quite impossible to resist, and all that was wrong was that the shock of that was still ricocheting through a man who rated his strength of mind and self-discipline as exceptional.
‘Ignore them, darling,’ Jono advised Zara in a tone of crisp dismissal as he helped her stack another box in the van he had borrowed to help her move into her new home. Fluffy was peering out of her carrier, little round eyes full of anxiety. The rabbit hated change and travel of any kind.
A pair of enormous sunglasses anchored on her nose, Zara endeavoured to look indifferent to the pair of reporters shouting rude questions while taking photos to record her departure from her parents’ elegant town house. If only she had moved out and embraced independence long ago, she reflected ruefully, she wouldn’t be feeling quite so lost. On the other hand, every cloud had a silver lining. This was the first day of her new life, she reminded herself bracingly. Her parents might have thrown their troublesome daughter out and washed their hands of her, but at least she was now free to do as she liked and concentrate on Blooming Perfect.
Jono glanced at Zara’s tense profile before he drove off and squeezed her hand in a comforting gesture. ‘Things will get better once you can settle into your new flat.’
‘They could hardly get worse.’ Blond and blue-eyed, Jono, a successful PR consultant, was one of the few friends who had stuck by Zara when the proverbial had hit the fan ten days earlier.
As a well-known socialite and the rumoured future bride of one of the world’s wealthiest men, Zara had been extremely popular. Stripped of her father’s money and the luxury lifestyle that had accompanied it, she had learned that she was more of an acquired taste in the friendship stakes. She would no longer be able to afford the shopping expeditions, the trips abroad or the expensive pastimes that she had once taken for granted. Of course, given the chance Bee would have stood by her side, but Zara had been determined not to enrage her father even more by encouraging her half-sister to get involved in her problems.
After all, Zara accepted that she had made some very bad decisions and it was the way of the world that she should have to pay the price for her mistakes. That photo of her with Vitale after spending the weekend with him in what had been gruesomely described as a ‘love nest in the Tuscan hills’ had appeared in one of the murkier tabloids. Sergios had wasted little time in cutting her loose. Her former bridegroom’s phone call, Zara recalled with a cringing sense of mortification, had been a masterpiece of icy restraint. Sergios had not reproached or condemned her, he had merely pointed out that it was obvious that they would not suit and that had been that. He had rung off while she was still stuck like a record in a groove trying to apologise for the sort of scandal and behaviour that no woman could adequately apologise for.
In comparison to Sergios’ moderation, her parents’ fury had known no bounds. Things had been hurled in vicious verbal onslaughts that had almost inevitably led to Monty Blake’s raging demand that his daughter move out from below his roof. But, she acknowledged ruefully, at least her enraged father had confined himself to vocal abuse and retained some shred of control over his temper. Sadly that was not always the case.
She had done a search on the Net in an effort to dig up the story of her father and the yacht episode. The sparse facts available had left her none the wiser when it came to apportioning blame. An Asian earthquake and the resulting waves had caused the hired yacht to sink in the middle of the night. Apparently it had happened very quickly. One member of the crew and a passenger called Loredana, described as an Italian fashion model, had been listed missing, presumed drowned. When her father was already furious she had seen little point in mentioning an incident that would only madden him even more. Furthermore, if even an inquest had failed to extract any damaging admission of culpability from the older man she had little faith in the likelihood of her own persuasive powers doing a better job. And why wasn’t she being more honest with herself? She had not brought up that business with the yacht because she was frightened of pushing her father’s temper over the edge. No, she had been too much of a coward.
The studio apartment she had rented was a masterpiece of clever design in which the minimum possible space was stretched to cover the essentials but it covered nothing well, Zara conceded ruefully as she unpacked, aghast at the lack of storage space. If there was little room for the requirements of ordinary life, there was even less for Fluffy. A neighbour had already informed Zara that no pets were allowed in the building and had threatened to report her to the landlord. Just then that seemed to be the least of Zara’s worries, though. By the time she had finished shopping for bed linen, food and kitchen necessities, the balance in her bank account had shrunk alarmingly. Bearing in mind that she had only the small salary she could draw from her late aunt’s business, she would have to learn to do without things if she didn’t want to run into debt. Now that she was in a position to work full-time it would have suited her to dispense with Rob’s services as manager, but, owing to Zara’s dyslexia and the restrictions it imposed, Rob had become an essential component in the successful running of the business.
She went to bed early on her first night in the apartment. The instant she closed her eyes in a silence disturbed only by the sounds of traffic the anguish she had fought off to the best of her ability all day flooded back: the intense sense of loss and betrayal, the conviction that she had to be the most stupid woman ever born, the swelling, wounding ache of deep hurt. And she walled up that giant mess of turmoil and self-loathing, shut it out and reminded herself that tomorrow was another day.
That same week in his Florence head office, Vitale’s oft-admired powers of concentration let him down repeatedly in meetings when his mind would drift and his shrewd dark eyes would steadily lose their usual needle-sharp focus. The teasing image of a tiny blonde haunted his sleep and shadowed his working hours
