Coercion to Love (8 page)

'You see, Mr Valenti,' Cass quite seriously explained, 'there really can be no excuse for what you did, no matter what the circumstances.'

He got up, a touch of irritation in his movements as he spun to face the window behind him where his valley sat bathed in the warm orange glow of a slowly dying onset.

A silence fell, the only sound in the room, the steady lick of the Venetian cased wall-clock hanging above the fireplace. Cass watched him clench and unclench his fist once or twice before he thrust it impatiently into his trouser pocket, and found herself chewing on her bottom lip half wishing there was some way he could come out of this smelling cleaner. She was beginning to acquire some respect for this man who was prepared to go to lengths to get his own way.

He turned suddenly, honing directly on to her sea-green watchful eyes. 'You are quite right, of course,' he conceded at last, a grim parody of a smile touching his eyes with a sombreness he made no effort to hide. 'There are no excuses worth voicing.'

He sat down again, shifting the file to one side in a way that said it now disgusted him as much as it did Cass. 'But I will say this,' he went on firmly, 'and without reserve. From the moment I discovered my daughter's existence, I have had only one aim in life, and that is to make up for the years she has been deprived of a father's love and support!'

'By threatening to take her away from me, who has loved and cared for her since the day she was born?' Cass challenged. 'By putting us through hell over the last twelve months while you pursued us like some avenging devil?'

He sighed in exasperation, then took a firm hold on his Latin temper. 'I concede that this whole thing between you and I began very badly and has proceeded to deteriorate ever since. Twelve months ago, when I made that phone call to you, I had only just learned that I had a daughter, and I was in a state of severe shock. I frightened you with my admittedly arrogant demands,' he acknowledged, 'and naturally you took flight before I had a chance to explain to you what my intentions were.'

"To bring Terry back here to live with you",' she quoted his own words of twelve months ago right back at him.

'No!' he denied. 'I wanted to bring you both here to live!' he corrected, bringing her green eyes flicking up to his to see the grim sincerity written on his face. 'For the last twelve months, Miss Marlow, you have been running, and I have been chasing after you to tell you just that.'

A new silence fell, one where at last her resolve to fight him to the death began to waver.

At no point over the last twelve months have I ever meant either you or Teresa any harm!' he insisted fiercely.

'Except for that file.' Cass eyed the offending manila folder with distaste. "That took a great deal of time to compile, going by its thickness. That, Mr Valenti, was meant much at a desire to hurt, to me.'

'Forget the file,' he growled, finding its return into the discussion irritating—then caught Cass's dry expression, and grimaced. 'OK-----' he sat back heavily in his seat '—so, desperate measures called for desperate mcans. I had come to the end of my patience with you,and the file was designed for the exact purpose I used it for—to pull you into line the moment I got close to you. In the end it was my ruin,' he then ruefully conceded. 'You make your point, Miss Marlow, with the lethal thrust of a rapier!

 He continued briskly. 'I want to get to know my daughter, and I want her to have a chance to get to know us. And I also think that, in your heart, you believe we both deserve that chance.'

He was right of course. In all conscience she had no right to keep father from daughter or vice versa. And, selfish or not, the  idea of losing Teresa frightened Cass enough to force her restlessly from the chair, her face pale as she turned from him.

The room was long and wide, with windows at either side found herself pacing the thick red carpet the floor to the opposite end of the room. In contrast to the view behind where he sat, this looked out on the central courtyard where the dying sun could barely penetrate. She could just make out the Venetian pots spilling with bright summer blooms, and the fountain sprinkling out fresh, clean water into the dry summer air.

As she stood there staring bleakly out, she saw her niece appear, skipping backwards as she chatted ten to the dozen to the old lady who appeared with her, leaning heavily on her walking-sticks as she moved.

'They feel something for one another already,' Carlo's voice said quietly just behind her, and Cass sighed shakily, ready to burst into tears.

As they watched, his mother stopped walking, her silvered head bending to catch something Terri was saying to her, then the old woman's head went back and she laughed out merrily, the sound ringing off the heavily perfumed walls.

Carlo's hands jerked up to grasp Cass's shoulders, and his voice pulsed with some deeply felt emotion as he murmured thickly, 'She has not laughed like that for years—not since the car accident she was involved in took the lives of my wife and my son, and left her as you see her now.'

'Y-your son?' Cass turned in his grasp to stare at him in horror. Of the several sharp shocks she received from that roughly voiced statement, the fact that he'd once had a son shocked her the most. 'I'm so sorry...'

'He was just four years old when I—lost him,' he said, 'and as blonde as Teresa is dark...' The words died, lost inside his thickened throat. Cass looked at him in mute sympathy, the only feature she could distinguish in the glowing gloom his eyes, shot raw with a deep and personal pain.

'You still miss him.' Not a question, but a husky statement of fact. It was written all over the tensely held face.

The hands absently curving the rounded cups of her shoulders gripped tensely. 'We all miss him,' he said. "He was a beautiful child.'

And—your wife?' Almost against her will Cass found herself asking the question. They were standing very close together, the emotion of the moment linking them by a mutual experience of loss.

'As Teresa would no doubt say...' a smile softened the tense lines around his mouth '... she was a princess. A beautiful golden princess...'

Cass stood, as stifled by his sadness as if it were her own, imagining that close and happy family who must have once lived in this valley in contentment. This man with his beautiful wife and son. That poor old lady out there who must have believed nothing could ruin their happiness. Then she thought of Liz and her disastrous relationship with Carlo, and suddenly she could not be see him capable of being as heartless as she had made aim out to be. It-just didn't fit with what she now knew of him. A man who had loved and lost one child did not casually discard the chance of loving another.

His gaze flickered down to collide with hers. They didn't speak, and, as they stood there gazing sombrely at each other, the dimness began to close them in, until it felt as if they stood alone in a dark, dark chasm of mutual sorrow, their bodies close, linked together by the sad mood of loss. A strange emotion began to stir inside Cass, the merest flicker of something alien to her budding into life and holding her attention focused on it in an attempt to identify just what it was. Then he moved, his dark head coming slowly down-wards until his mouth met the full, soft quiver of her lips. It was nothing like the attack he had laid on her earlier. In fact, it was not like a kiss at all in the real physical sense but more a spiritual search for something they had instinctively recognised in each other. She stood passive in his arms, her face turned up to the kiss.

'Cassandra,' he murmured, 'can we try to be friends?'

'Friends.' That's what this is, she thought as his mouth came back on to her own again, a gesture of friendship between us, nothing more.

His lips began to move on hers, gentle, searching, as light as gossamer, and as beautiful as life itself. 'I'm sorry,' she heard him say, and wondered hazily what he was apologising for.

His hands still curved her shoulders, gently moulding the sun-kissed warmth of her skin left exposed by the thin-strapped style of her dress, fingertips lightly caressing until they met with the silken fall of her hair, where they closed, tangling themselves into the thick bright mass of fire, to tug, ever so gently, until her throat was arched and her mouth was fully presented to his. Her hands slid up to grasp his waist. His skin felt hot to the touch beneath a covering of fine white linen. She sighed softly, and so did he.

'You taste of roses.' Again, the remark was made within the boundaries of the passive embrace. No hint of threat, no sexual implication. Cass closed her eyes, and allowed a growing flood of warmth to permeate her senses.

She must have trembled because he muttered something in Italian, and drew her closer to him, fitting her into the muscled contours of his body, drawing the breath from her on a shaky sigh which parted her mouth and allowed the moist tip of his tongue to explore the trembling opening.

She felt the intimacy of that caress like a lick of fire, and suddenly she was clinging to him for dear life, as sensation, the like of which she had never known before, began to shimmer through her. He pressed her closer, drag her to the long, hard length of his hot-skinned legs and all at once the passivity fled, chased away in hot tide of pleasure which thoroughly shook them both.

'Dio’ Carlo dragged his mouth away from hers. 'Dio, forgive me, I did not mean to-----!'

He jerked right away from her, breaking all body contact so that Cass stood there dazed and swaying, watching him through a haze of shocked sensuality, flinging himself to the centre of the room. 'Damn,' he muttered, then, 'Damn,' again. She closed her pulsing mouth, her tongue flicking out  to collect the moisture left there by his caressing tongue, and she heard his muffled choke as he spun his back to her.

Then silence fell on the darkened room, consuming e air until it was almost impossible to breathe in it. 'Are you all right?' he asked after a while.

'Yes,' she breathed, feeling no more 'all right' than it sounded. It had shaken them both, that strange kiss which had felt as if their spirits had touched briefly. Will you think over what we have discussed?'

'Yes,' she breathed again, unable to conjure up another single solitary word.

'Then go now, and find Teresa. My mother will have taken her to your suite by now. It is time for her bed, I should think.'

‘Yes-----' It started to slur thickly from her tongue, but she managed to drag it back this time, watching rough the crazy daze as he moved stiffly back behind be desk and abruptly sat down.

‘Cassandra..." he sighed, and her name slid from his like a caress, taking what little air she had left trapping it in her lungs '... please leave here before I make a complete mess of everything and kiss you again—for real this time...'

'Oh!' The mere fact that she was just standing there staring at him like a love-dazed idiot brought her tumbling back to life.

'Yes—oh,' he mocked, but, even so, the mockery was half meant for himself, his smile wry as he watched her move hastily for the study door. 'And—Cassandra?' he stalled her as the door came open in her trembling hand.

'Yes?' she whispered anxiously.

'Believe me, I did not mean that to happen.'

'I know,' she mumbled, unable to look at him, and glad of the enveloping darkness which hid her girlish blushes from him. Neither had she. Yet it had happened, and the results were far more worrying than the reasons for the kiss. 'It—it was just the—influence of the moment,' she excused them both shakily.

'Something like that,' he agreed, and she heard rather than saw his rueful smile as she made good her escape.

CHAPTER FIVE

The hectic flush was still high on Cassandra's cheeks when she entered her allotted suite. Beyond the half-open door to Terri's room a series of excited shrieks told their own story, the sound of Mrs Valenti's gentle voice and the more jolly one of Maria telling her that Terri was enjoying her new-found family.

Cass sighed shakily, her confusion mixed with a disturbing sense of personal uncertainty. What in heaven's name was happening to her?

'Ah, Cassandra!' Mrs Valenti appeared in the doorway so Terri's room, her smile a little uncertain. 'I hope we do not intrude, but Maria and I have been helping Teresa in to her night-things.'

'And she's been leading you a merry dance in the process, I would hazard a guess.' Cass managed to make her voice sound light with effort.

'She is certainly a very lively child,' the older woman agreed, then added more seriously, 'I—I wish to apologise to you, my dear, for the—altercation we had earlier. Will you please forgive an old lady her rudeness so that we can be friends?' Leaning heavily on her sticks, Mrs Valenti sent her an uncertain smile.

Cass felt her heart go out to this woman who had lost so much in one brutal blow. 'Of course,' she said warmly,

‘Hey Cass!' Thankfully, another voice cut through the  awkwardness as Terri bounced into the room. "Whete've you been?'

‘Talking to your daddy,' Cass informed her niece.

'Did he tell you about my present?'

'Present?' Cass blinked, having forgotten all about the present Carlo had taken his daughter off to see.

'Her name is Lucia,' she was told importantly.

'Whose name?' Cass frowned down at the child.

'My pony, of course!' Terri sighed impatiently. 'Didn't he tell you about her? She's got hair the same colour as yours, and a tail as white as cotton wool...'

A pony? Cass was thinking. Carlo has given Terri a pony? Anger began to rumble up inside her, thankfully dispelling all those other far more disturbing feelings she'd been struggling with. So, that was what he was up to, was it, using a different kind of blackmail?

Coercion to love!

'He said she's to be my very own, and that I've got to learn how to look after her properly, and how to ride her nicely, and he has a horse called Lucifer that looks the exactly same only he's bigger, and I've not to go near him 'cos he bites!'

'Who, your daddy?' Cass quizzed.

'No, silly,' the child giggled, sending a look of exasperation at her rapt audience, 'his horse!'