Roccanti's Marriage Revenge

What was more, when she had agreed to marry Sergios, her father had looked at her with pride for the first time in her life. She would never forget that moment or the glow of warmth, acceptance and happiness she had felt. Her father had smiled at her and patted her shoulder in an unprecedented gesture of affection. ‘Well done,’ he had said, and she would not have exchanged that precious moment of praise for a million pounds. Zara was also convinced that marriage to Sergios would give her freedom, which she had never known. Freedom primarily from her father, whose temper she had learned to fear, but also freedom from the oppressive expectations of her perfectly groomed, socially ambitious mother, freedom from the boring repetition of days spent shopping and socialising with the right people in the right places, freedom from the egotistical men relentlessly targeting her as the next notch on their bed post … freedom—she hoped—that would ultimately allow her to be herself for the first time ever.

‘And what happens when you do meet someone you can love?’ Bee enquired ruefully in the lingering silence.

‘That’s not going to happen,’ Zara declared with confidence. She had had her heart broken when she was eighteen, and, having experienced that disillusionment, had never warmed the slightest bit to any man since then.

Bee groaned out loud. ‘You’ve got to be over that lowlife Julian Hurst by now.’

‘Maybe I’ve just seen too many men behaving badly to believe in love and fidelity,’ Zara fielded with a cynical gleam in her big blue eyes. ‘If they’re not after my father’s money, they’re after a one night stand.’

‘Well, you’ve never been that,’ Bee remarked wryly, well aware that, regardless of the media reports that constantly implied that Zara had enjoyed a wide range of lovers, her sibling appeared to be sublimely indifferent to most of the men that she met.

‘But who would ever believe it? Sergios doesn’t care either way. He doesn’t need me in that department—’ Zara would not have dreamt of sharing how welcome that lack of interest was to her. Her reluctance to trust a man enough to engage in sexual intimacy was too private a fact to share, even with the sister that she loved.

Bee froze, an expression of even greater dismay settling on her expressive face. ‘My goodness, are you telling me that you’ve actually agreed to have one of those open marriages with him?’

‘Bee, I couldn’t care less what Sergios does as long as he’s discreet and that’s exactly what he wants—a wife who won’t interfere with his life. He likes it as it is.’

Her sister looked more disapproving than ever. ‘It won’t work. You’re far too emotional to get into a relationship like that at such a young age.’

Zara lifted her chin. ‘We made a bargain, Bee. He’s agreed that the kids and I can live in London and that as long as I don’t work full-time I can continue to run Edith’s business.’

Taken aback by that information, Bee shook her head and looked even more critical. Zara’s parents had simply laughed when Zara’s aunt, Edith, died and left her niece her small but successful garden design business, Blooming Perfect. The Blakes had sneered at the idea of their severely dyslexic daughter running any kind of a business, not to mention one in a field that required specialist knowledge. Their father had stubbornly ignored the fact that in recent years Zara, who had long shared her aunt’s love of well-groomed outdoor spaces, had successfully taken several courses in garden design. Huge arguments had broken out in the Blake household when Zara stood up to her controlling snobbish parents and not only refused to sell her inheritance but also insisted on taking a close interest in the day to day running of the business.

‘I want … I need to lead my own life,’ Zara confided with more than a hint of desperation.

‘Of course, you do.’ Full of sympathy when she recognised the tears glistening in Zara’s eyes, Bee gripped the younger woman’s hands in hers. ‘But I don’t think marrying Sergios is the way to go about that. You’re only going to exchange one prison for another. He will have just as much of an agenda as your parents. Please think again about what you’re doing,’ Bee urged worriedly. ‘I didn’t like the man when I met him and I certainly wouldn’t trust him.’

Driving away from the specially adapted house that Bee shared with her disabled mother, Zara had a lot on her mind. Zara knew that it didn’t make much sense to marry in the hope of getting a new life but she was convinced that, as a renowned entrepreneur in his own right, Sergios would be much more tolerant and understanding of her desire to run her own business than her parents could ever be. He would be even happier to have a wife with her own interests, who had no need to look to him for attention, and her parents would at last be proud of her, proud and pleased that their daughter was the wife of such an important man. Why couldn’t Bee understand that the marriage was a win-win situation for all of them? In any case, Zara could no more imagine falling in love again than she could imagine walking down the street stark naked. A marriage of convenience was much more her style because love made fools of people, she thought painfully.

Her mother, for a start, was wed to a man who regularly played away with other women. Ingrid, a former Swedish model from an impoverished background, idolised her husband and the luxury lifestyle and social status he had given her by marrying her. No matter what Monty Blake did or how often he lost his violent temper, Ingrid forgave him or blamed herself for his shortcomings. And behind closed doors, her father’s flaws were a good deal more frightening than anyone would ever have guessed, Zara thought, suppressing a shiver of recoil.

A moment later, Zara parked outside Blooming Perfect’s small nursery. Rob, the manager her father had hired, was in the cluttered little office and he got up with a grin when she came in. ‘I was just about to call you—we have a possible commission from abroad.’

‘From where?’ Zara questioned in surprise.

‘Italy. The client has seen one of the gardens your aunt designed in Tuscany and apparently he was very impressed.’

Zara frowned. They had had several potential clients who backed off again the minute they realised that her aunt was no longer alive. ‘What did he say when you told him she passed away?’

‘I told him you do designs very much in the spirit of Edith’s work, although with a more contemporary approach,’ Rob explained. ‘He was still keen enough to invite you out there on an all-expenses-paid trip to draw up a design. I gather he’s a developer and he’s renovated this house and now he wants the garden to match. By the sounds of it, it’s a big bucks project and the chance you’ve been waiting for.’

Rob passed her the notebook on his desk to let her see the details he had taken. Zara hesitated before extending a reluctant hand to accept the notebook. For the sake of appearances she glanced down at the handwriting but she was quite unable to read it. As a dyslexic, reading was always a challenge for her but she had always found that actual handwriting as opposed to type was even harder for her to interpret. ‘My goodness, what an opportunity,’ she remarked dutifully.

‘Sorry, I forgot,’ Rob groaned, belatedly registering what was amiss, for she had had to tell him about her dyslexia to work with him. He dealt with what she could not. Retrieving the notebook, he gave her the details verbally instead.

While he spoke Zara remained stiff with discomfiture because she cringed from the mortifying moments when she could not hide her handicap and colleagues were forced to make allowances for her. It took her right back to the awful days when her father had repeatedly hammered her with the word ‘stupid’ as he raged about her poor school reports. In her mind normal people could read, write and spell without difficulty and she hated that she was different and hated even more having to admit the problem to others.

But Zara’s embarrassment faded as enthusiasm at the prospect of a genuine creative challenge took its place. Apart from the designs she had worked on with Edith, her experience to date encompassed only small city gardens created on a restricted budget. A larger scheme was exactly what her portfolio lacked and, handled well, would give Blooming Perfect the gravitas it needed to forge a fresh path without relying so heavily on her late aunt’s reputation. In addition if she made such a trip now it would ensure that Sergios and her family appreciated how seriously she took her new career. Perhaps then her family would stop referring to the design firm as her hobby.

‘Phone him back and make the arrangements,’ she instructed Rob. ‘I’ll fly out asap.’

Leaving Rob, Zara drove off to check the progress of the two current jobs on their books and found one in order and the other at a standstill because a nest of piping that nobody had warned them about had turned up in an inconvenient spot. Soothing the customer and organising a contractor to take care of the problem took time and it was after six before Zara got back to her self-contained flat in her parents’ house. She would have preferred greater independence but she was reluctant to leave her mother alone with her father and very much aware that Monty Blake made more effort to control his temper while his daughter was within hearing.

Her indoor pet rabbit, Fluffy, gambolled round her feet in the hall, welcoming her home. Zara fed the little animal and stroked her soft furry head. Within ten minutes of her return, Ingrid Blake, a beautiful rake thin woman who looked a good deal younger than her forty-three years, joined her daughter in her apartment.

‘Where the heck have you been all afternoon?’ her mother demanded impatiently and at the sound of that shrill tone Fluffy bolted back into her hutch.

‘I was at the nursery and I had some jobs to check—’

‘The nursery? Jobs?’ Ingrid grimaced as if Zara had said a rude word. ‘When is this nonsense going to stop, Zara? The nursery can only ever be an interest. The real business of your life is the wedding you have to arrange—there’s dress fittings, caterers and florists to see and that’s only the beginning—’

‘I thought we had a wedding organiser to take care of most of that for us,’ Zara responded evenly. ‘I’ve made myself available for every appointment—’

‘Zara,’ Ingrid began in a tone of exasperation, ‘don’t be more stupid than you can help. A bride should take a more active role in her own wedding.’

‘Don’t be more stupid than you can help’ was a comment that could still cut deep, like a knife slicing through tender flesh, for Zara still looked back on her school years as a nightmare. Her lack of achievement during that period was, even now, a deep source of shame to her.

‘This is more your wedding than mine,’ Zara finally felt pushed into pointing out, for she couldn’t have cared less about all the bridal fuss and frills.

Ingrid clamped a thin hand to a bony hip and swivelled to study her daughter with angry eyes. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Only that you care about that sort of thing and I don’t. I’m not being rude but I’ve got more on my mind than whether I should have pearls or crystals on my veil and Sergios won’t care either. Don’t forget that this is his second marriage,’ Zara reminded her mother gently, seeking a soothing note rather than piling logs on the fire of her mother’s dissatisfaction.

In the midst of the dispute, Rob phoned Zara to ask how soon she could fly to Italy and he kept her on the line while he reserved her a flight in only two days’ time. Too impatient to wait for Zara to give her her full attention again, Ingrid stalked out of the apartment in exasperation.

Left alone again, Zara heaved a sigh of relief. At least in Italy she would have a break from the wedding hysteria. Nothing mattered more to her mother than the appearance of things. Zara’s failure to hog the gossip columns with a string of upper class boyfriends had offended Ingrid’s pride for years and her mother had revelled in Tom’s escapades in nightclubs with his posh pals. Ingrid, however, was determined that her daughter’s wedding would be the biggest, splashiest and most talked about event of the season.

Sometimes Zara marvelled that she could have so little in common with her parents. Yet Zara and her father’s sixty-year-old unmarried sister had got on like a house on fire. Edith and Zara had shared the same joy in the tranquil beauty of a lovely garden and the same unadorned and practical outlook on the rest of life. Her aunt’s death, which had occurred within months of her brother’s car crash, had devastated Zara. Edith had always seemed so fit that her sudden death from a heart attack had come as a terrible shock.

Zara dressed with care for her flight to Italy, teaming a khaki cotton skirt and jacket with a caramel coloured tee and low-heeled shoes. She anchored her mass of pale hair on top of her head with a judicious clip and used the minimum of make-up, apprehensive that her youth and looks would work against her with the client. After all, nobody knew better than a girl christened a dumb blonde at fourteen that first impressions could count for a lot. But, at the same time, as she stepped off her flight to Pisa she knew that her brother, Tom, would have been proud of her for sticking to her guns when it came to Blooming Perfect and making it clear how close the business was to her heart.

A driver met her at the airport and she was whisked off in the air-conditioned comfort of a glossy black four-wheel drive. The stupendous rural scenery of misty wooded hillsides and ancient medieval towns soothed nerves left ragged by a last-minute difference of opinion with her mother, who had objected bitterly once she realised that Zara was flying off to Italy for a long weekend.

‘And how is your fiancé going to feel about that?’ Ingrid had fired at her daughter.

‘I have no idea. I haven’t heard from him in a couple of weeks but I left a message on his phone to let him know that I would be away,’ Zara had countered gently, for Sergios was not in the habit of maintaining regular contact with her and she perfectly understood that he saw their marriage to be staged three months hence as being more of a practical than personal connection.

‘He’s a very busy man,’ Ingrid had instantly argued on her future son-in-law’s behalf.

‘Yes and he doesn’t feel the need to keep constant tabs on me,’ Zara pointed out quietly. ‘And neither should you. I haven’t been a teenager for a long time.’

Ingrid had pursed her lips. ‘It’s not like you’re the brightest spark on the block and you know how dangerously impulsive you can be—’

Recalling that dig as she was driven through the Tuscan hills, Zara felt bitter. Only once in her life had she been dangerously impulsive and had paid in spades for that miscalculation. Even four years on, Zara still burned and felt sick at the memory of the humiliation that Julian Hurst had inflicted on her. She had grown up very fast after that betrayal, but even though she had never been so foolish again her parents continued to regularly remind her of her lowest moment.

The car turned off the road and her thoughts promptly turned to where she was headed, she sat up straighter to peer out of the windows. The lane became steep. If the house stood on a hill, as seemed likely, the garden would have wonderful views. Her first glimpse of the old stone building basking in the late afternoon sunshine made her eyes widen with pleasure. A traditional set of box-edged beds adorned the front of the villa, which was much bigger and more imposing than she had expected. Designing anything for an individual who owned such a beautiful property would be a major creative challenge and she was thrilled at the prospect.

As the driver lifted out her weekend bag the front door opened and a dark-haired woman in her thirties, elegantly dressed in a business suit, greeted her. ‘Signorina Blake? Welcome to the Villa di Sole. I’m Catarina—I work for Signore Roccanti. He will be here shortly. How was your flight?’