Coercion to Love (6 page)

'I think, caro, it may be a good idea if you and I explore the room next door while your aunt looks through the cupboards in here to see if there is anything she may like to—borrow.' He didn't make the same mistake of calling them Cass's clothes, as he had done with Terri, but the implication was certainly there for her to pick up on if she dared to.

He was staring at her curiously, and Cass knew he was puzzled by her passive attitude in all of this. She was puzzled by it too; but she refused to let him see that. Instead she gave Terri an encouraging smile which sent the child off towards the other room with her hand tucked firmly in her father's.

Cass remained where she was, heart heavy as she listened to them talking to each other as they explored Terri's bedroom. Then the fear that he may get back here before she had done something to make herself look respectable sent her sliding off the bed and over to the long bank of cupboards, finding, to her surprise, just about everything a woman could need in the way of clothes, from casual summer outfits to exquisite evening gowns the likes of which Cass had never owned in her life.

This wasn't right. None of it was right, she frowned as she sent her eyes along a long row of light cotton day dresses that she knew, even without taking one out and studying it, would fit her as if they'd been bought exclusively for her.

And there was the rub, she acknowledged. Just as the room next door had been designed specifically for Terri, this room and all its contents were here for her. What was he actually playing at? she wondered as she quickly selected a pale blue sundress and searched out a pair of skimpy cotton briefs from one of the drawers before making for the bathroom to change.

It couldn't be, could it, that he wanted her to stay here as well? Had always intended it that way? No. She thrust that idea right out of her head. She just didn't dare believe anything nice about him. He was the man who had cast Liz off to cope alone, and if he thought he could win Terri's heart by first softening her aunt's then he had another think coming!

She arrived back in the bedroom to find them both waiting for her, Terri wearing a pair of white shorts and a yellow T-shirt. Carlo stood behind the child, tall and proud, his hand possessive where it rested on the child's shoulder.

He lifted his gaze to Cass, then went perfectly still, his eyes traveling over her from the fresh crackling fall of quickly drying hair and down her slender figure opened in pale blue cotton.

'You are very beautiful, Miss Marlow,' he murmured huskily.

Startled by the unexpected remark, Cass just stared at him, shy heat pouring into her cheeks. He watched it happen with a kind of fascination that further upset her senses, and her tongue cleaved itself to the suddenly parched roof of her mouth.

Then, thankfully, Terri was breaking the moment, her voice, soft and dreamy. 'My mummy was the most beautiful lady in the whole wide world,' she sighed. 'Wasn't my mummy beautiful?' she enquired of her father.

'Yes,' he answered gruffly. 'She was very beautiful.'

Cass was instantly hostile again. Kill that if you dare! She defied him over the top of the child's head, and he had to look away, his tanned cheeks drawing inwards.

'Come on,' she said to Terri, holding out her hand to her. 'I thought you were hungry, and Mr Valenti won't bother to feed us if we don't get a move on.'

But Terri was too busy frowning over some small problem of her own to notice the hand. 'If he's my daddy,' she asked her aunt, 'then why do you call him Mr Valenti?'

The air was suddenly too thick to breathe.

That was the last thing Cass had expected her to say, and, by Carlo's reaction, the very last thing on earth he had expected to hear! He jerked to attention, his gaze blackening with enough emotion to completely overlay his composure. And Cass quivered as the steel bands around her chest tightened.

It was over. That first hurdle she had deliberately instigated with a resentment which cut deep into her soul was now negotiated.

She looked down at Terri's frowning little face, wondering achingly how much confusion was tumbling around the little girl's head if Cass's own head was whirling with the complexity of it all! Then she caught the child's hand in hers and said, with as much cool as she could muster,

'Because he is Mr Valenti to me. But what you call him, Terri, is your own decision.'

Then, with an outward calm that nowhere near reflected the turmoil clamouring inside her, she turned towards the suite door. 'Where do we go from here, Mr Valenti?' she enquired, and knew that he knew she was asking far more than just the way to the food Terri had demanded.

Carlo made for the door, his back ramrod stiff, and face carefully averted from both of them as he led the way out of the suite. Cass and Terri followed hand in hand across the hall towards the door which opened on to the central courtyard. He didn't glance around, didn't show any sign that he was even aware they were there, and Cass's aching heart went out to the little girl, who was suddenly very subdued. She had made a monumental move towards him just then by announcing that she knew who he was. And Carlo, fool that he was, had not risen to the occasion. Terri would not easily forgive him for that.

'Maria!' The woman was just crossing the courtyard as they appeared, and, hearing her name called, she stopped, turning that beaming smile on them as Terri let go of Cass's hand to run towards her.

'What the hell do you think you're playing at?' Carlo's hand, coming like a manacle around her wrist, spun Cass around to face him.

'What did you expect me to do?' she threw back angrily. 'Terri asked the question and I told her the truth! Did you expect me to lie?'

'You bitch!’ he spat, his face so white that his eyes glowed black against the taut skin. 'You couldn't even  me a chance to coax her’

'You ungrateful swine.' Cass gave a violent tug at her captured wrist. He refused to let it go. 'How long would you have kept the truth to yourself?' she demanded. 'I know how your twisted mind works, signore. You've already proved you don't care a damn about anybody's feelings but your own!'

'That is not true!' he denied. 'I-----'

'You've been so busy compiling your dirty dossier of lies about my sister,' she cut in bitterly, not interested in anything he had to say, 'that you didn't even notice that you had a far more powerful weapon over me than your filthy slander of Liz!'

His head went back, hauteur blocking out his discomfort at her bitter attack. Cass flayed him with her eyes, a malevolence she had never known herself capable of holding her features tense and hard.

'It didn't once occur to you, did it, that if I was prepared to fight you to hell and back to protect her mother's memory then I wasn't about to disillusion her about her thankless father? God,' she choked, so angry that she was trembling with it, 'she's part of both of you, dammit!'

Tears stung hotly at her eyes, the tremors running through her so violent that he had to feel them. 'I could no more hurt that child by poisoning her mind about you than I could cut her little throat! You only had to say to me that you were going to inform Terri of who you were, and you would have had me beaten! She likes what I like, loves where I love!' As the emotion began to take her over, so her voice deepened into a husky vibrancy.

'From the moment she set eyes on you she felt some kind of affinity. I noted it straight away. I thought you did too, but all you saw,' she derided contemptuously, 'was your own personal goals and what your cynical intelligence told you how to achieve them! Oh, get your hand off me!' she choked, tugging at her imprisoned wrist. 'Your touch makes my skin crawl!'

Carlo had stood so utterly silenced by her outburst that Cass would have found it funny if she weren't so angry. But her final cutting remark sent the air sucking in to his lungs, and he snapped his hand away from her, his harsh face closing like a door being slammed tight shut.

'As you say, Miss Marlow,' he murmured stiffly, going all Italian on her by executing a curt bow. 'I seem to have misjudged you, and for that I apologise.'

‘But not for the lies you've concocted about my sister.' She refused the apology, turning away from him in time to see Terri disappear through a door with Maria. 'Where you could only think of yourself and your wants,' she went on tightly, 'I can only consider Terri's. My own feelings dare not even be given air space—or you can be assured, signore, that she would be screaming blue murder now rather than skipping trustfully beside one of your damned servants!'

They glared at each other across the width of the open doorway. He looked ready to kill her, and she was angry enough to wish he would just try it! She had never felt so physically roused by another person before. It was as though every impassioned sense she possessed had ignited in response to this man.

And just look at him! She thought in angry resentment. His neatly styled black hair had hardly a strand out of place, when, metaphorically speaking, Cass had just dragged him by it to the ground! He wore his clothes as if they had been made exclusively for him—which, she then cynically supposed, they probably had! And the body beneath had a whipcord power to it that disturbed her whenever he so much as came near her!

He disturbed her in a lot of ways, she acknowledged the silence between them stretched to breaking-point and still they continued to glare at each other. Just about her every sense she possessed was on red alert, and throbbing in warning against him! Sexual aggression simply oozed from him. Angry or not, cold-hearted or not, the man had something which made her own stomach twist in response, and forced her to accept why her sister had been so captivated, so damned gullible with him!

She shuddered, blinking herself firmly out of her breathless trance—only to feel the heat sting along her cheeks when she caught his eyes intent on her. While she had been dissecting Carlo Valenti, he had been doing the same thing to her!

Their eyes met, and something deeply personal passed between them. Shaken by it, she went to turn away, but his hand came up, fingers curling around her chin and lifting it so that she had to continue looking at him. He didn't speak, those long fingers cool against her flushed skin, but something in the dense blackness of his gaze made her quiver, and she stood transfixed by it, wanting to deny it, scoff at it even, but knowing she couldn't.

The sound of skipping feet had them jerking apart, and Cass turned her head in time to see Terri come running back across the courtyard. The child stopped in front of them, her eyes flicking sharply from one taut adult face to the other.

'Maria says there's food through that door over there,' she informed them slowly. 'I came back to get you, Cass,' she said, in a way that told both adults whom she gave her allegiance to.

Carlo gave a small grimace, and Cass involuntarily matched it as she struggled to pull herself together.

'Really?' she answered over-brightly. 'Then let's get to it, kiddo—before you fade away!' And she reached out to take the little girl's hand.

It was only as they reached the door across the courtyard that Terri seemed to remember her father. She stopped, turned and frowned when she saw him still standing where they had left him, his thoughts turned entirely inwards.

'You can come too, if you like,' she invited offhandedly, and Cass had to smile at the child's guile as she coolly ordered the master of this beautiful place around as if he were a servant.

Thick black lashes lifted in time to catch that smile, his eyes darkening in a way which trapped the air in Cass's lungs and flicked at the fragile tenure of her control once again. Then he was coming towards them, his movements so lithe and graceful that both she and Terri watched him, unable to drag their eyes away.

When he reached them, his daughter gravely offered him her spare hand. Carlo smiled, and just as gravely accepted it. ‘Thank you,' he said.

'You're welcome,' replied Terri in a way which set the fine hairs on Cass's body tingling. They had sounded so very alike then.

It was a strange trio who moved from the inner courtyard to an outer terrace, where the warm air was weighed down with the sweet scent of summer blooms. In front of them the wooded hills rose lush and green, the late afternoon sun sparkling just above the tops of the trees.

The terrace was shaded by a latticed canopy laden with heavily perfumed flowers. In the centre of the floor stood a round table set for four, and sitting at it was the most elegant old lady Cass had ever set eyes on. Now what? she wondered.

CHAPTER FOUR

The woman smiled as they approached. 'Ah, so you are here at last.' With a slow deliberation she rose to her feet, the silk of her dark blue dress rustling as she moved. 'Good afternoon, Miss Marlow,' she greeted politely, but her eyes were fixed greedily on Terri's curious face, the open desire to know and love so strong that even Cass could not suspect it.

'This is Signora Elicia Valenti, Miss Marlow,' Carlo formally introduced. 'My mother,' he explained, then went down on his haunches beside his daughter, and, by using her name quietly, demanded the child's attention. 'This nice lady is your nonna, Teresa, and she has been wanting to meet you for a very long time.'

Mrs Valenti started jerkily, the action almost overbalancing her from her precarious, half-standing stance, and the fingers she had been resting lightly on the table-top tensed, her lined face paling as she shot her son a concerned, questioning look. Carlo gazed steadily back, and silent messages passed between them.

His mother, Cass guessed, had not expected that instant reference to her relationship to Terri, and she was stunned by it.

'Nonna?' Terri repeated slowly. 'What's a nonna, Cass?' She gave a questioning tug at Cass's hand.

'A grandmother, poppet,' she explained. 'Nonna is the Italian name for a grandmother.'

Her small brow puckered. 'I haven't had one of those before, have I?'

'No, darling, you haven't had a grandmother before.'

Will I like having one?'

While the other two people present were essentially ignored by the child, Cass endeavoured to answer this  awkward question. She began by joining Carlo at Terri's level while all around them the air began to buzz with a listening tension.