Virgin On Her Wedding Night Page 3

  ‘Precisely…but that fact didn’t stop me wanting you,’ Valente countered. ‘And you should be aware of the fact that the answer you give me now will impact on the lives of everyone connected with this business.’

  Her fine brows drew together in a frown of consternation. ‘The answer to what question?’ she prompted in frustration.

  Valente shook his arrogant dark head. ‘I’ve already told you what I want.’

  ‘Sex?’ Caroline shook her fair head in sincere wonderment over so preposterous a suggestion. He was young, movie-star handsome and rich, and any number of beautiful, sophisticated women would offer him no-strings-attached sex without hesitation. Why on earth should he decide to approach her?

  ‘I will be plain. I want you as my mistress.’

  A rather shrill laugh was finally wrenched from Caroline. She knew she sounded hysterical and, fearful of him, realising just how out of her depth she was feeling, she walked hurriedly over to the window that overlooked the car park. That pedestrian view helped steady her nerves. How could he possibly want her as his mistress? It was true that five years earlier Valente had been hot for her. As she remembered the sexual urgency which she had withstood out of fear of making that final commitment to him a sharp little pang of reaction pierced low in her pelvis. Now, as then, she wondered if he would have swiftly lost interest had she slept with him. Would she have been as inadequate with him as she had been with Matthew? She scolded herself for that meaningless question, for it was far too late now to change anything. And, what was more, she didn’t want to remember her sexless marriage-even less did she want to think about it or beat herself up about it.

  ‘You really would be very disappointed if I agreed,’ Caroline replied shakily. ‘I just don’t have what it takes to meet the demands of a role like that. Some women are into sex, some women aren’t. I’m very much in the second category.’

  Lean strong hands came down on her narrow shoulders and turned her back round to face him. He was very close, and the aromatic scent of his cologne mingled with the faint musky aroma of masculinity almost made her head spin. There was grim amusement now in his hard black-lashed golden eyes. ‘No, you’re not. You could never disappoint me. Did you disappoint Matthew?’

  Reacting to that horribly accurate counter-question, Caroline put up her arms to break free of their connection and took several agitated steps away, spinning back to him to say, ‘You’re not listening to me, are you? What do I have to say to convince you?’

  Exasperated by her skittish retreat when his whole body was humming for closer contact, Valente sent her a level look of warning. ‘Doing rather than saying would be more convincing. Come back to my hotel with me and give me a demonstration of your unsuitability.’

  Her grey eyes widened to their fullest extent and hardened to glittering steel as her temper erupted. ‘What do you think I am? A whore?’ she shot back at him in furious condemnation.

  ‘The jury is still out on that one. Let’s not overlook the reality that, while you might not be a whore, you did sell yourself to the highest bidder five years ago,’ Valente derided without hesitation.

  Caroline turned pale as milk at that comeback. ‘That’s not how it was-’

  ‘Why would I want to know how it was now?’ Valente interposed very drily. ‘If you must know I’m grateful I was saved from making the mistake of marrying you. When I do take a wife, I don’t want a gold-digger for the role.’

  ‘How dare you?’ Caroline lashed back at him, colour washing her cheekbones as his insults drove her indignation to even greater heights. ‘That’s not why I married Matthew! Money had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘What about social status?’ Valente quipped, shrugging back his shirt-cuff to glance at his watch. ‘I can only give you two more minutes. You’re wasting your breath, arguing with me. I know what you are and, strange as it may seem, no insult was intended. After all, I’m willing to pay a great deal of money for the privilege of having you in my bed.’

  ‘You can’t buy me…’

  Valente rested cold dark eyes on her, his lack of conviction coolly emphasising his contempt. ‘Can I not? If you say no, I will close down this firm and put everyone out of work. I will also make no attempt to ease your parents’ plight…’

  Reeling in shock from that deeply disturbing caveat, Caroline parted pale lips. ‘That would be utterly immoral and unjust-’

  ‘On the other hand, if you say yes to my proposition, I will invest in this business and ensure it prospers for many years to come,’ Valente informed her dulcetly. ‘I will also allow your parents to remain at Winterwood at my expense.’

  ‘That’s an impossible, absolutely disgusting choice to give me!’ Caroline gasped in growing disbelief. ‘You’re trying to blackmail me!’

  ‘Am I?’ Valente rested brilliant dark impenitent eyes on her flushed and furious face. ‘It depends what you want, doesn’t it? Come to me on my terms and you will be treated well and want for nothing that your heart desires. It’s a very generous offer from a man who has no reason to like you, much less respect you.’

  ‘If you neither like nor respect me, you can’t possibly want me that much,’ she threw back in breathless defiance.

  His dark gaze burned scorching gold. ‘But I do. There’s no accounting for taste.’

  Before she could guess his intention he had closed a hand over hers. While she stiffened, every muscle seizing taut, he proceeded to tug her across the space that separated them with cool determination. In a movement she could no more have prevented than she could have stopped breathing, Caroline broke violently free of his hold and fell back for support against the wall.

  ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ Valente demanded in a raw undertone, watching her breathe in and out with the rapidity and heaving bosom of a woman on the edge of panic. ‘Did you think that I was about to attack you?’

  Caroline was mortified by her knee-jerk reaction, and suddenly terrified that he might guess she was something less then the average woman when it came to intimacy. ‘Of course not…I’m s-sorry,’ she stammered. ‘It’s just been a long time since anyone touched me.’

  Valente studied her, sensing something more. She was very tense and jumpy-a far cry from the calm young woman of twenty-one whom he recalled. Still waters ran deep. He had never wanted to know what her marriage was like, that being a can of worms that he preferred to leave firmly closed. But he knew enough to suspect that marriage to her childhood sweetheart had proved to be no picnic for her: Bailey had mismanaged the business, spent a fortune he didn’t have on luxury goods and left his wife penniless. He had also been rumoured to have slept with other women.

  ‘Really, I don’t know what came over me,’ Caroline babbled, moving away from the wall, smoothing down her skirt and even trying to pitch a faint smile on to her strained mouth. Her pride had come to her rescue. She could not bear the idea that he might suspect just what an oddity she was in comparison to other women. That was her secret shame alone. How else could she feel about herself when she was still a virgin after almost four years of marriage? It was not a truth, however, that she was prepared to share.

  ‘No?’ Quite deliberately Valente strolled forward, keen dark golden eyes nailed to her delicate features. He closed an arrogant hand over hers in an unexpected rerun of events and she snatched in a startled breath, stiffening again. He drew her closer and angled down his proud dark head to taste her mouth, with a tender touch and skill that made her head swim as dismay collided with surprise. Instead of freezing, as fear and revulsion rippled through her to make her feel nauseous, she stayed still, wondering, waiting, helplessly curious.

  She had forgotten what it was like to be kissed by Valente. His breath fanned her cheek and her knees turned to jelly. The citrus aroma of his cologne made her tummy perform a somersault and she trembled, every nerve-ending screaming in quivering alert. He didn’t touch her body, made no attempt to hold her, and that sense of retaining the freedom to move strengthe
ned and soothed her. His expert mouth was smooth as silk on hers, searching and uniquely sensual, to the extent that she leant forward to deepen the connection. He captured her lips then, and parted them with feathery delicacy, pausing to suckle at her full lower lip with lethal eroticism before slickly invading the moist, responsive space beyond. Beneath her clothing her nipples peaked into straining prominence, and a small sound came from low in her throat.

  As that revealing gasp escaped her, Valente lifted his handsome head, narrowed dark eyes executing an almost clinical inspection of her bemused expression. He stepped back from her. She might be tense, she might be nervous, but she was still hot and ready for him, he reflected with considerable satisfaction. He was so aroused by the scent and the taste of her that with very little encouragement he would have settled her on to the desk behind him and eased himself into the silky welcome of her body without further ado. The very thought of having hot casual sex with Caroline whenever and wherever he wanted excited him.

  ‘Time’s up, piccola mia,’ he told her softly as an urgent knock sounded on the door.

  As taut as a bowstring, Caroline again skimmed damp palms down over her skirt. Her brain was working at the frantic speed of fright. ‘You can’t mean what you just said-what you…er…suggested,’ she framed unevenly.

  ‘Unlike you, I’m very into sex,’ Valente confided deadpan, watching colour surge up below her skin while her delicate bone structure froze beneath it. He marvelled that even after several years of marriage to a boor she could still be so prudish. But then, he reflected lazily, her attitude told him even more. Evidently Bailey had botched his role in the bedroom. That was a little piece of knowledge that Valente, who had never ever failed to please a woman, prized more than any other.

  The door opened and a young man addressed him in an apologetic rush. Valente moved a silencing hand. ‘Abramo, I’m aware that I’m running late. Show Mrs Bailey back to her car-’

  ‘That’s not necessary,’ Caroline protested. ‘We have to talk about what you said right now-’

  Valente turned cold dark eyes on her. ‘What would we talk about? There’s no room for negotiation. I’ll see you this afternoon at Winterwood.’

  ‘At…Winterwood? ‘Caroline exclaimed in horror.

  ‘It is my property. I’ll see you at four for a guided tour.’

  Caroline was appalled.

  Valente dealt her a slashing smile that had the effect of making her back away from him. ‘And warn the family that I won’t be using the tradesman’s entrance, piccola mia.’

  ‘Mrs Bailey?’ the PA prompted, holding the door invitingly wide for her exit.

  Seeing that she had no other choice, Caroline left the office. She was trembling with rage. She never swore, but she wanted to hurl curses at Valente. She yearned for the physical strength to grab him by the lapels of his fancy suit and slam him up against the wall to make him listen to her!

  Sadly, Valente was evidently driven by too powerful a compulsion for revenge to award her a more generous hearing. Five years ago she had jilted him at the altar. Her misplaced trust in another person and her illness had together plunged Valente into the humiliating position of a bridegroom left standing by his bride. Circumstances had left her unable to ensure that he was forewarned of her change of heart before he reached the church. Although Valente had been informed of those mitigating factors after the event, it was very plain that he still blamed her for what he had undergone that day. After all, she still blamed herself, recognising the appalling blow that her no-show must have dealt Valente’s ferocious pride. He had fought for her and lost, and his iron will could not accept defeat.

  Even in the act of driving back home Caroline shivered. Valente had grown up fighting poverty and fighting for everything he’d ever wanted. That gritty raw-edged struggle for survival, the losses and slights he had endured, had ignited a primitive streak of dark cruelty and strength in him that had intimidated Caroline when she’d first known him. He’d had little time for her refined attitudes, and he’d downright despised her continuing allegiance to her parents, who had done everything they could to break up his relationship with her.

  ‘If you really love me, you can overcome anything,’ Valente had told her five years earlier.

  He had expected so much from her, Caroline acknowledged painfully. But she had been raised too gently to have his power and his conviction, his ability to reject and ignore the feelings of those who did not share his objectives.

  As her emotions shifted back and forth between past and present, memories that Caroline had long suppressed came floating back to the surface of her mind.

  The summer after she’d completed her apprenticeship with a jewellery designer she had longed for the capital to set up her own business. That she’d been a child with aspirations to build her own business had been a severe disappointment to the Hales, who had hoped for a much more feminine and frivolous daughter, eager to enjoy the local social scene and find a suitable husband. Determined not to ask her parents for their financial help when they disapproved of her ambitions, Caroline had taken a temporary office job at Hales, so that she could save up the money she needed to start her company. Ironically that decision had shaken Joe and Isabel even more, for they had considered the transport firm too crude a working environment for their much-adored child.

  Just two days after she’d started work in the office where administration was handled, Caroline had looked up and seen Valente for the first time. The liquid flow of his accented English had initially attracted her attention, but it had been her first mesmerising glimpse of his lean dark face which had made her stare. No words could ever hope to describe the intense sense of recognition and fascination that drop-dead beautiful face of his had fired her with. Ignoring her colleague, who had been trying to flirt with him, Valente had skimmed a glance over Caroline, his ebony-lashed eyes flaring hot gold in a lengthy appraisal. In the same moment Caroline had been lost to all reason, ensnared by his stunning gaze. It hadn’t mattered who or what he was. He had taken her prisoner with a single glance, and she would have followed him to the ends of the earth on the strength of it.

  ‘And you are…?’ Valente had murmured, poised by her desk.

  ‘Caroline-’

  ‘The boss’s daughter…our poor little rich girl!’ one of the other drivers had spelt out in warning, causing the warm blood of embarrassment to rise beneath her fair skin.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Caroline,’ Valente had breathed silkily. Just the timbre of his rich dark drawl had made her skin come up in goosebumps.

  The afternoon had dragged while she’d pictured that lean dark face over and over again, recalling his high masculine cheekbones, narrow-bladed nose and wide, sensual mouth, wondering dizzily what it was about that precise arrangement of features that had made it almost impossible for her to look away from him again. Even though she’d been twenty-one years old, she’d fallen for Valente Lorenzatto with the speed and wholehearted enthusiasm of a schoolgirl.

  In those days she had been no more experienced than an innocent schoolgirl, either. The safe cocoon of her cushioned upbringing had made her something of a misfit at art college. The aggressive sexual demands of the boys she’d met then had put her off anything more than the most casual dating. When she’d needed a partner for more formal occasions she’d invited Matthew Bailey-the boy next door and her closest friend. An introvert and shy, and cautious with strangers, she had already been carrying a load of guilt for disappointing her parents. In going for a college education Caroline had defied the wishes of the parents she loved for the first time… Valente had been the second and a by far more serious demonstration of her growing need for the freedom to act as an individual in her own right…

  Refusing to agonise over the situation with Valente now, Caroline told herself that he just could not be serious, and to keep herself busy did the weekly shopping before returning home. There she found a note from her mother on the kitchen board, reminding her that her f
ather had a hospital appointment that afternoon. Her parents had already left. Groaning, because she had forgotten about the arrangement, Caroline stowed away the groceries. By that stage her ability to shut out her recollection of Valente’s threat to close down Hales Transport was wearing dangerously thin.

  Over two hundred people would lose their jobs, not to mention the knock-on effect on other neighbourhood businesses. Another local firm had gone bust several years earlier and the whole community had suffered a great deal. She knew that the stress of unemployment and the loss of a steady income could break up marriages and shatter families. To allow that to happen to others when she had been offered an alternative-no matter how outrageous-was a huge responsibility that rested on her shoulders alone.

  And who more justly deserved that responsibility? Caroline asked herself angrily. Matt had made little effort to reduce his spending when Hales had lost contracts to Bomark Logistics. Instead, he’d bought a very expensive new company car and run up huge bills entertaining prospective clients, whom she suspected had never really existed. She had been no friend to the family business while she’d loyally kept her mouth shut about her husband’s failings. Guilt cut her deep. Matthew’s behaviour had been a deep source of shame to her, yet she had shrunk from distressing her parents or his with the news that Matthew was not to be trusted with the future of an ailing business. There again, nobody would have wanted to hear, and nor would any of them have listened to her or valued her opinion, she reflected heavily. Sexism had run through both sides of the family like a contagious disease. And Matthew had been idolised by his parents, who’d believed he was the keenest and cleverest businessman around.

  Valente said he wanted sex from her, but how could she possibly still appeal to him to that degree? No, what he really wanted, Caroline decided ruefully, was revenge. And if by letting him have that revenge she could protect her parents from being evicted from their home and she save almost two hundred and fifty jobs at Hales, did she really have the right to refuse him?