this appalling confrontation developed? She was supposed to be here for Tim’s benefit, wasn’t she? And so far, she was guiltily aware that she had made a very poor showing.
‘I’m sorry.’ It stuck in her throat but she persisted for her brother’s sake. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’
‘Nobody ever taught you how to curb it,’ Vito murmured harshly. ‘But I could have.’
You and who else, mister? But the aggressive question remained sensibly unspoken. She felt like a volcano about to erupt. And she knew she couldn’t. Only two people in the world had this effect on her. One was her father, the other was Vito. Rage took her over. Rage and fear. Instinctively she stifled her acknowledgement of that secondary emotion. Survival, to Ashley, meant never ever admitting that anything or anybody frightened her.
She cast him a glance in which desperate defiance and loathing mingled as blatantly as a blow. ‘I’m not into crawling…’
A winged dark brow elevated. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen you attempt such a feat.’
‘But you’d like a ringside seat, wouldn’t you?’ She leapt upright, too restive to remain still, too threatened by his proximity to stay so close. The sudden movement dislodged the loose topknot which confined her hair and a curling tangle of Titian red rippled down far below her shoulders in shining disarray. Irritably she thrust the fiery strands back from her slanted cheekbones, accidentally intercepting a lingering stare from Vito as she lifted her head high. ‘I know what you want to hear,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re thinking right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what you’ve been thinking from the moment I walked into this room!’
‘For the sake of peace, I hope not.’ It was a low-pitched growl which made the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck prickle.
His intonation threw her off balance for a second. Intent golden eyes watched her still with the grace of a gazelle in flight, sunlight glittering fire in that amazing curtain of vibrant hair. Her return look was blank.
‘You want to hear that I deeply regret not marrying you,’ she stated with characteristic bluntness.
‘Do I?’ Vito didn’t move a muscle.
She squared her shoulders, hoping that he was bigger than his fragile male ego when the cards were down. ‘I have to be honest so that we can get this hangover from four years ago out of the way.’
‘Oh, please be honest, cara,’ he encouraged lazily.
She swallowed hard. ‘If you must know, I’m still proud of the fact that I refused to become your possession. A life of round-the-clock surveillance and subjugation at your hands would have stifled me. It would never have worked.’
‘It worked in bed. Dio,’ Vito interposed in a sizzling undertone, ‘how it worked…’
Fierce heat pooled in the pit of her stomach. Flustered and embarrassed out of all proportion to the remark, she said nothing.
Vito surveyed her with formidable cool. The chill factor in the air was powerful. ‘It would have been such a sacrifice? To be my wife? To wear silk next to your skin, diamonds at your throat? I valued you far beyond your true worth.’
‘Well, if you have to think like a tradesman in enumerating the material advantages I missed out on, I expect you did,’ Ashley parried between clenched teeth. ‘But you knew from the start how I felt about marriage. You can’t say you weren’t warned. Marriage is a patriarchal institution which benefits men and oppresses women. It conditions my sex into dependence and passivity, lowers their status and deprives them of individuality.’
‘Feminist claptrap. Dio. I’ve never heard so much rubbish!’ Vito raked back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.
Her breasts swelled with anger. Jerkily she shrugged. ‘You are, naturally, entitled to your own opinion—as I am entitled to mine. In any case, I’m not here to resurrect a past that we’d both prefer to forget. Why can’t we leave personalities out of this? I didn’t come here to antagonise you. You make me say things I don’t mean to say. You always did,’ she completed accusingly.
‘You apologise with such finesse.’
In a passion of frustrated emotion, she whirled away. It had been a long time since she had voiced the beliefs she had first formed in her early teens. For some inexplicable reason, she didn’t feel the same religious fervour of conviction that she had once had. But that scarcely mattered now. Why should she apologise for saving them both from the long-drawn-out agonies of a disastrous marriage?
After five months, they had been at each other’s throats at least twice a day. Near the end, it had been like living on the edge of a precipice when you had a pronounced fear of heights. Tears stung her eyes. She was the one person who could reason with Vito on Tim’s behalf and yet she was the very worst messenger he could have had.
Time had not lessened Vito’s antipathy. She stole a covert glance at his rock-hard profile, absorbing the innate ruthlessness stamped into every slashing line of his stark bone-structure. No, they could never have parted friends. Vito came from a long line of blue-blooded, immensely wealthy and arrogant people. Negative responses had figured rarely in his experiences. Everything he wanted, he got. Everything he wished, happened. When your name was Cavalieri, the world was your oyster and the pearl at the centre was always yours. That Vito had been prepared to marry her in the very teeth of his family’s opposition had made her flat refusal all the more heinous a crime in his eyes.
‘If you could just bring yourself to withdraw the complaint against Tim,’ she pleaded tightly.
‘Why would I do that?’ Vito fielded drily. ‘If I think like a tradesman, I would obviously be striking a most unequal bargain. Freeing your brother from the punishment he most assuredly deserves would not fill me with any warm feeling of benevolence. His freedom is worth nothing to me. What is it worth to you?’
The casual enquiry struck her as savagely cruel. She trembled. ‘Anything…everything,’ she whispered, thinking of Tim’s smashed future and her mother’s fragile mental stability and the unending guilt which would be hers alone if she could not persuade Vito to change his mind.
‘Is it worth your own freedom?’
Her delicately pointed profile turned to him. ‘I don’t understand.’
Black-lashed golden eyes flamed over her tense figure, skimming across the feminine curves that even the unflattering clothing could not disguise and finally fanning at an outrageously leisurely pace back up to her burning cheeks. Only a hot-blooded Italian could have projected that much sexual menace into a single look. ‘Anything…everything? Intriguing,’ he murmured softly. ‘If you returned to my bed, it is possible that I might be persuaded to withdraw the complaint.’
Her slim hands closed convulsively together, the heated colour draining from her complexion. ‘That’s not funny, Vito.’
‘It wasn’t intended to be.’ He sank down with inherent grace on the edge of his immaculately tidy desk. ‘You come to me on my terms—entirely on my terms,’ he stressed, ‘and your brother goes free.’
‘That’s obscene!’ Ashley gasped.
‘You shared my bed once without love. You could surely share it just as happily with hatred,’
