Weddings: The Nights: Virgin on Her Wedding Night / Claiming His Wedding Night / One Wild Wedding Night

‘Even beautiful girls have to make an effort,’ the older woman scolded. ‘You haven’t had your hair done, or your nails.’

Caroline gazed down stonily at her mother. ‘The only thing you ever had against Valente was that he was poor. Now he’s rich he’s acceptable—more than acceptable.’

‘If you intend to keep on harping back to the past, I’ve got nothing more to say to you. But you need to make more of an effort to hold on to a man, Caro,’ Isabel spelt out sharply. ‘Maybe Matthew would have stayed home more often if you had paid more attention to your grooming.’

Such words spoken by her mother, who must have known all along how unhappy her daughter was in her marriage, stung Caroline like a hard slap in the face. She continued up to her bedroom and rifled the wardrobe without much interest to find something to wear. There was nothing stylish. Matthew, so profligate in his own habits and tastes away from home, had insisted that his wife wore plain clothes in the style his mother wore: skirts and sweaters, stiff formal dresses. She yanked out a cream brocade long-sleeved dress and jacket she had once worn to a wedding and went for a shower.

Matthew, she recognised for the first time, had been a bully, who had sapped her of energy and fight by continually undermining her. Her in-laws had blamed her for his constant absences, often suggesting that a child would have kept him home more. Caroline rather thought that a child would have made Matthew, who had been so determined not to grow up, run for the hills. Her marriage had been a blame game in which she’d been held responsible for everyone else’s sins and disappointments. And she would never know whether Matthew would have remained faithful if she had not been frigid in bed. Frigid. Such an awful, inappropriate word, Caroline reflected while she dried her hair and straightened it. It didn’t seem to her that that word came anywhere near describing the awful squirming panic and fear that consumed her at the threat of sex. She shivered, thinking again that it was so very typical of Valente to want what he could not have.

With a modicum of make-up applied, Caroline slid her feet into low-heeled cream shoes and went down to climb into the waiting limousine. Before she left her mother called her into the sitting room to say, ‘I’ll understand if you’re very late, but if you’ll take my advice you’ll be very restrained in your behaviour.’

Caroline almost laughed out loud with a scorn that was new to her. Here was her manipulative mother, telling her with the utmost hypocrisy that it was all right to sleep with Valente but that she believed saying no would keep him more safely hooked. But now it was her father whom Caroline was most concerned about, as he had none of her mother’s steel. If Hales shut down he would take it hard, because he would blame himself for the predicament of his former employees. What would that stress and sense of responsibility do to his heart? Caroline had to confront the risk that her father might die before he underwent the surgery that would prolong his life, and that awareness shook her up badly.

Valente watched Caroline cross the dining room to join him. Her outfit, a good deal less daring than the dress she had worn the night before, was fashioned of heavy brocade, covering her to wrist, throat and knee, and was as shapeless as a tube, barely hinting that there might be a female body beneath. Her hair, however, lay like a glossy cloud on her shoulders and framed her exquisite face. He met her huge grey eyes across the floor and recognised that she was as on edge as a condemned prisoner being herded to the gallows. It was an image that both disturbed and offended a man accustomed to female admiration and desire.

Caroline recognised the dark glow of appreciation in Valente’s intent gaze. It intimidated her, unnerved her, only reminding her of her own inability to respond. She was all covered up, nothing on show, but her modest apparel had failed to snuff out his interest.

‘That dress is so horrible I just want to rip it off you,’ Valente confided while Caroline was attempting to peruse the menu handed to her.

Caroline paled and lifted eyes that were so frankly fearful to his lean, darkly handsome face that he was pushed into adding, ‘That was a joke … okay? A joke with a sting, piccola mia. I look forward to seeing you dressed in designer clothes that fit you properly.’

‘I’ve lost weight since Matthew died … hardly anything I have fits,’ she confided, some of her tension easing at that explanation even while the frightening image of having her clothes ripped off struck her as ridiculous and finally faded from her mind.

He scored a lean forefinger over the back of her clenched hand, where it rested on the polished wood of the table. She trembled, feeling the tingling effect of his light touch the whole length of her arm. ‘Try to relax. You’re making me nervous.’

‘I didn’t think that was possible.’

‘With you, anything is possible,’ Valente riposted. ‘Are you worried about your father?’

Caroline grimaced. ‘Of course I am. He needs surgery urgently.’

‘But he is being treated by a state hospital, where there is probably a waiting list for such operations, and he will need to build up his strength before he can have one,’ Valente reminded her, for he had been present when her mother had spoken to the consultant the day before. ‘I could pay for that surgery privately, and your father could have it as soon as he was ready.’

Sheer surprise made Caroline blink, before focusing intently on his bronzed features and the stunning golden eyes fixed to her. ‘I can’t believe you’re offering me something like that—’

‘Why not? Whatever it takes, I want you back in my life.’

Her smooth brow indented, for he was so far removed from her in his way of thinking that she was appalled. ‘But you can’t bargain with people’s lives, Valente. Nobody should do that.’

Valente lounged back in his chair, black-lashed eyes reduced to a daunting sliver of hot gold resolve and challenge. ‘Whatever it takes,’ he repeated silkily, stubbornly unrepentant.

And that was the moment Caroline realised that he had made her an offer she could not in all conscience refuse …

CHAPTER SIX

‘YOU’VE won,’ Caroline conceded in a driven admission. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my father alive.’

‘That’s admirable, gioia mia. I admire loyalty,’ Valente countered smoothly. ‘That only leaves the terms to be discussed.’

Caroline wanted to empty the water jug over him, because he made no attempt to hide his strong satisfaction. Winning meant a great deal to Valente Lorenzatto, and he scared her because his ruthlessness appeared to respect no boundaries. By ‘terms’, he meant mistress or wife. He was driving her in a direction she did not want to go. For her own safety, she needed an arrangement which could not be set aside in the space of a moment. A mistress was too easily discarded—and she was convinced that he would quickly want to discard her, cutting her out of his life as quickly as he had come back into hers.

Valente wanted and expected only pleasure from her sex. In the past, women had fawned over him for his dark, sexy good-looks and potent personality. Sixth sense had warned her even then that he had enjoyed many conquests. Now, with the addition of wealth and position, Valente had to be downright irresistible to her sex. After all, even she was not totally impervious to his magnetic attraction. Although coping with a few gentle kisses was a far different challenge from sharing a bed and the ultimate intimacy with him, she acknowledged apprehensively.

The first course was served. Held by the dark shrewd gleam of Valente’s unyielding gaze, Caroline pushed the plate away.

‘Eat,’ he urged immediately, reaching across the table to push the plate back towards her again. ‘You’re as thin as a cardboard cut-out.’

Her face flamed. ‘I’m naturally thin.’

‘When I lifted you last night, you felt as light as a child in my arms.’

‘Your concern is nonsensical. I’m quite happy with myself the way I am,’ Caroline told him tartly, wondering if his tastes in women ran in the same direction as her late husband’s. She shuddered at the recollection of Matthew’s cruelly cutting comments about her boyish lack of curves.

‘If you’re planning to demand that I marry you, you’ll need to be a healthy weight to conceive,’ Valente pointed out coolly. ‘But I hope that isn’t the option you’re thinking of choosing.’

‘Why?’ Caroline asked starkly.

Valente slotted a knife and fork into her empty hands with military precision and no lack of determination. ‘I’m being honest. I don’t want to marry you. I’m not the same person I was five years ago. I don’t think the same. I don’t feel the same, either.’

Hotly flushed in receipt of that blunt rejection, coming at her even before she had voiced her own feelings, Caroline breathed, ‘You’re telling me. You used to be much warmer and more caring.’

‘Only those sterling qualities didn’t get you to the church on time,’ Valente fired back with sardonic bite, watching her eyes fall from his in discomfiture. He smiled a razor-edged smile. ‘I don’t want a wife. I want a mistress. I will be much more generous if you come to me on my terms.’

Caroline swallowed hard and skimmed her gaze round the dining room, noting that several women were looking in their direction, with Valente providing the focus for their attention. Other women would always want him, she reflected unhappily. And now she was about to work a confidence trick on him—because, while she might rail against his ruthlessness, wasn’t it dishonest of her to opt for marriage when she knew that she was unlikely to consummate it? Shame filled her, closely backed by fear, for she dreaded entering the minefield of matrimony again and the threatening challenge of the marital bed.

Valente watched her, trying to read the significance of her lowered lashes and the quivering vulnerability of her very kissable ripe pink mouth. It had been a torture to lie beside her without touching her the previous night. He had only to imagine what he would do with her when he got the opportunity and his body hardened instantly, the fierce, urgent arousal that had already disturbed his sleep for two nights returning to dig talon claws of very real hunger into his tall, powerful frame. What was it about her that made her so much more sexually alluring than other women?

But marriage would be a ridiculously high price to pay for fulfilment, he conceded grimly. In all likelihood the slaking of his desire for her would result in a rapid cooling-off of his interest, and a wife was not as easily shed as a mistress. On the other hand a child from such a marriage would ensure that he did not have to tie himself down on a more permanent basis to another woman in the future. It was imperative that he have a child at some stage to continue the family line, protect the extensive Barbieri estates for the next generation, and take charge of his own vast business empire.

‘It would have to be marriage.’ Caroline had to force out her final answer, because cheating didn’t come naturally to her and she was convinced that what she was doing was just that. But he had offered to cover the cost of her father’s heart surgery, to let her parents remain at Winterwood, and to ensure that jobs were safe at Hales Transport. It was his own fault that he had heaped the scales so heavily in his own favour. How could she possibly turn him down? He had the power to turn all their lives around, but if she married him he would also have the power to destroy her and complete the task that Matthew had begun.

In negotiation mode, Valente studied her like a cat studied a mouse getting ready to make a break for freedom. ‘Why?’

Feeling too warm under such pressure, Caroline unbuttoned her jacket and slid out of it, revealing a tantalising amount of bare skin, for the dress beneath was not as modest in cut when she bent down to eat. ‘Dad would never accept the other option. He’s an old-fashioned man …’

‘Plenty of couples live together these days without a wedding ring.’ Valente feasted his eyes shamelessly on the stimulating view of the rounded globes of her breasts and imagined having the right to touch and stimulate that sweet soft flesh. If he married her she would always be available, not just waiting at the end of a phone line for his call. It was a seductive thought, and the pressure that built at his groin was an exquisite pain.

‘I don’t think I could trust you to keep your promises unless I was your wife,’ Caroline stated forthrightly, and set down her knife and fork, amazed to discover that she had cleared her plate.

Valente was shocked out of his erotic reverie by that comeback.

Her grey eyes were silvery pale as frost and full of challenge, her fragile bone structure tautly outlined below her fair skin.

‘You don’t trust me,’ he said, unamused.

‘You don’t trust me, either.’

‘I won’t be a great husband.’