The Man Who Risked It All

‘Precisely.’

He watched Marco go pale, aware of the reason behind his terror. The famous Clemente name was synonymous with fine wines, honesty and charity. It headed some of the biggest charitable organisations in Italy alongside the Tolle name. Their two families had been close for as far back as he could remember—which was the reason he’d kept his rift with Marco so low-key. They still shared a business relationship. They met often at charitable and social events. He’d allowed Marco to laugh off rumours about the cooling of their friendship, and he knew he’d let him get away with it because it was less cutting to his ego than to let anyone learn the real truth.

‘Hey you guys, wave to the crowd,’ their team manager prompted from behind them.

Like an obedient puppet Franco raised his arm and waved while beside him Marco did the same thing, switching on his famously brilliant smile and charming everyone as he always did. Franco put on his helmet to give his hands something else to do. The moment he did so he lost his own smile. The two of them climbed into the boat’s open cockpit. They strapped themselves in. Their race advisor was droning the usual information into his earpiece about wind speeds, the predicted height and length of the ocean swell. They did their pre-start checks, working with the unison of two people used to knowing what the other was thinking all the time. They had been childhood friends, through adolescence and into adulthood together. He would have staked his life on Marco always being there as a deeply loyal friend through to his dotage. Growing old together, kids, grandkids … Warm summer evenings spent watching the sun go down while drinking the best wine the Clemente cellars had to offer and reminiscing about the good old times.

The twin engines fired, their throaty roar a sweet song to Franco’s marine engineer’s ears. They took her out towards the start line—a streak of bright white amongst the dozen other powerboats splashing the glistening ocean with bright primary colours and bold sponsor logos, all of them holding back on the throttle like crouching dragons, ready to roar into action the split second they were given the go.

He glanced sideways at Marco. Franco didn’t know why he did it—the old sixth sense they’d used to share making him do it. Marco had turned his head and was looking at him. There was something written in his eyes … a stark desperation that clutched like a giant fist at Franco’s chest.

Marco broke the contact by turning away again, then Franco heard the low sound of Marco’s voice in his ear. ‘Sono spiacente, il mio amico.’

Franco was still fighting to grasp what Marco had said to him as the engines gave a throaty roar and they shot forward. It took all of Franco’s concentration to keep them on a straight line.

Too fast, his brain was registering starkly. Marco had just said he was sorry, and he was taking them out much too fast …

CHAPTER ONE

LEXI was in a meeting when the door to Bruce’s office suddenly flew open and Suzy, the very new junior assistant, burst in.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she rushed out breathlessly, ‘but Lexi has just got to see this—’

Her riot of blonde curls bouncing around a pretty face flushed with excitement, Suzy snatched up the television remote from where it lay next to the coffee machine and aimed it at the television. Everyone else gaped at her, wondering where she’d got the nerve to barge in here like this.

‘A friend sent this news link to my Twitter,’ she explained, hurriedly flicking through channels. ‘I’m seriously not into mega crashes, so I almost stopped watching, but then your face flashed up on the screen, Lexi, and they mentioned your name!’

Crystal blue waters topped by deep azure skies suddenly filled the fifty-inch flat screen. A second later half a dozen long streaks of raw engine power suddenly shot across the water, flying like majestic arrows and kicking up huge plumes of foaming white spray in their wake. Before anyone else had even clicked on what was happening, an icy chill of recognition made Lexi jerk to her feet.

High-speed powerboat racing was for the super-rich and reckless only—the whole sleek, surging, testosterone-packed spectacle was a breathtaking display of excess. Excess money, excess power, excess ego—and an excessive flouting of the risks and the dangers that held most people awestruck. But for Lexi it was like watching her worst nightmare play out in front of her eyes, for she knew what was about to happen next.

‘No,’ she whispered tautly. ‘Please switch it off.’

But no one was listening to her, and, anyway, it was already too late. Even as she spoke the nose of the leading craft hit turbulence and began to lift into the air. For a few broken heartbeats the glistening white craft stood on its end and hovered like a beautiful white swan rising up from sea.

‘Keep watching.’ Suzy was almost dancing on the spot in anticipation.

Lexi grabbed hold of the edge of the table as the mighty powerboat performed the most shockingly graceful pirouette, then began flipping over and over, as if it was performing some wildly exciting acrobatic trick.

But this was no trick, and two very human bodies were visible inside the boat’s open cockpit. Two reckless males, revelling in sleek supercharged power that had now turned into a violent death trap as shards of debris were hurled out in all directions, spinning like lethal weapons through the air.

‘This highly dangerous sport suffers at least one fatality each season,’ some faceless narrator informed them. ‘Due to choppy conditions off the coast of Livorno there had been disputes as to whether this race should begin. The leading boat had reached top speed when it hit turbulence. Francesco Tolle can be seen being thrown clear.’

‘Oh, my God, that’s a body!’ somebody gasped out in horror.

‘His co-driver Marco Clemente remained trapped underwater for several minutes before divers were able to release him. Both men have been airlifted to hospital. As yet unconfirmed reports say that one man is dead and the other is in a grave condition.’

‘Catch her, someone.’ Lexi heard Bruce’s sharp command as her legs gave way beneath her.

‘Here …’ Someone leapt up and took hold of her arm to guide her back down onto her chair.

‘Put her head between her knees,’ another voice advised, while someone else—Bruce again—ground out curses at Suzy for being such a stupid, insensitive idiot.

Lexi felt her head being thrust downwards but she knew even as she let them manhandle her that it wasn’t going to help. So she just sat there, slumped forward, with her hair streaming down in front of her like a rippling river of burnished copper, and listened to the newsreader map out Francesco’s twenty-eight years as if he was reading out his obituary.

‘Born into one of Italy’s wealthiest families, the only son of ship-building giant Salvatore Tolle, Francesco Tolle left his playboy ways behind him after his brief marriage to child star Lexi Hamilton broke down …’

The ripple of murmurs in the room made Lexi shiver, because she knew a photograph of her with Franco must have flashed up on the screen. Young—he would look young, and carelessly happy, because that was how—

‘Tolle concentrates his energies on the family business these days, though he continues to race for the White Streak powerboat team—a company he set up five years ago with his co-driver Marco Clemente, from one of Italy’s major winemaking families. The two men are lifelong friends, who …’

‘Lexi, try and drink some of this.’

Bruce gently pushed her hair back from her face so he could press a glass of water to her lips. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone so she could just listen, but her lips felt too numb to move. Locked in a fight between herself, Bruce and the sickening horror she had just witnessed, suddenly she saw Franco.

Her Franco, dressed in low riding cut-offs and a white T-shirt that moulded to every toned muscle in his long, bronzed frame. He was standing at the controls of a slightly less insane kind of speedboat, his darkly attractive face turned towards her and laughing, because he was scaring the life out of her as he skimmed them across the water at breakneck speed.

‘Don’t be such a wimp, Lexi. Come over here to me and just feel the power …’

‘I’m going to be sick,’ Lexi whispered.

Squatting down in front of her, the oh-so-elegant and super-cool Bruce Dayton almost tumbled onto his backside in an effort to get out of the way of the threat. Stumbling to her feet, Lexi stepped around him and moved like a drunk across the room, a trembling hand clamped across her mouth. Someone opened the door for her and she staggered through it, making it into the cloakroom only just in time.

Franco was dead. Her dizzy head kept on chanting it over and over. His beautiful body all battered and broken, his insatiable lust for danger brutally snuffed out.

‘No …’ she groaned, closing her eyes and slumping back against the cold tiled wall of the toilet cubicle.

‘Not I, bella mia. I am invincible …’

Almost choking on a startled gasp—because she felt as if Franco had whispered those words directly into her ear—Lexi opened her eyes, their rich blue-green depths turned black with shock. He was not there, of course. She was alone in her white-walled prison of agony.

Invincible.

A strangled laugh broke free from her throat. No one was invincible! Hadn’t he already proved that to himself once before?

A tentative knock sounded on the cubicle door. ‘You OK, Lexi?’

It was Suzy, sounding anxious. Making an effort to pull herself together, Lexi ran icy cold trembling fingers down the sides of her turquoise skirt. Turquoise like the ocean, she thought hazily. Franco liked her to wear turquoise. He said it did unforgivably sexy things to her eyes …

‘Lexi … ?’ Suzy knocked on the cubicle door again.

‘Y-yes,’ she managed to push out. ‘I’m all right.’

But she wasn’t all right. She was never going to be all right again. For the last three and a half years she had fought to keep Franco pushed into the darkest place inside her head, but now a door had opened and he was right here, confronting her when it was too late for her to—

Oh, dear God, what are you thinking? You don’t know he’s dead! It might be Marco—

It might be Marco.