‘You really do hate me, don’t you?’ she pressed, huge pale silvery eyes focussed on him with disturbing intensity.
‘I wouldn’t waste that much emotion on you, piccola mia. What was done was done five years ago. Now, I think it’s time for me to call my driver so that he can take you safely home,’ Valente delivered.
‘How can I go home when I don’t know what’s going to happen next?’ Caroline exclaimed.
Valente dealt her an incredulous appraisal. ‘If this was a trial view of what you might be like as a wife, you’ve bombed with spectacular effect.’
‘I wouldn’t want to marry you anyway!’ Caroline yelled at him, full volume. ‘I promised myself that I would never get married again because being tied to the wrong person is my definition of hell! Not to mention the fact that you’re sarcastic, cold and callous, manipulative, hypocritical, unscrupulous and sexually deviant!’
‘Sexually deviant?’ Valente launched back at her, only troubling to argue that one phrase of her outraged description of his character.
‘How else would a normal man describe summoning his former fiancée to a hotel like she’s a prostitute?’
‘Define “normal”,’ Valente invited. ‘I’d say I’m still in that class, but possibly a little more adventurous and imaginative than most. If you hadn’t wrecked it, it could have been a very sexy scenario.’
‘For someone with no morals!’ Caroline raged, finally into her stride and ignoring the horribly light-headed swirl she was in, and the fact that her view of Valente appeared to be coming and going and fogging over while her own voice had developed a horrible echo in her ears. ‘I don’t know how to do “very sexy”, or “deviant”, which is why I had to get drunk to come here. But I did it with the right intentions—to help other people.’
Valente was intrigued rather than repulsed by that feisty attack. He was also surprised to discover that the thought of teaching her how to do sexy and deviant in the bedroom had a tremendous appeal that had nothing at all to do with revenge, punishment or good business.
‘To help other people?’ he traded sardonically, unimpressed. ‘Why do you always play the victim? You came here tonight because you were set on saving your own little carcass from the threat of homelessness and poverty, because you would very much enjoy the status and luxury of being my wife, and because, much as you want to deny it with your martyr act, you want a good excuse to get into my bed.’
‘That’s absolutely a lie!’ Caroline snapped shrilly, taking a jerky, uncertain step forward—before crumpling down in a heap on to the carpet like a wind-up doll whose battery had suddenly gone flat.
For an instant Valente thought she was staging a bogus faint, like in the final shot of a melodrama, and he groaned out loud. But something about the stillness of her small shape drew him closer to examine her. He crouched down beside her inanimate body and tried to rouse her again. She had not tripped or struck her head, But when she failed to show any sign of life other than continuing to breathe, grudging concern coloured his cynicism. He rang Reception and asked for a doctor to be called. Offered first aid assistance, he gave a negative answer. If, as he suspected, alcohol was the cause of her collapse, the fewer people who knew about it the better. He picked her up, only to be troubled by how little her slight body weighed, and carried her into the bedroom. He studied her stillness, wondering if he should have called an ambulance instead, or even if he should just be bundling her into his limo to head to the local A&E himself.
The smudged mascara couldn’t hide the purple shadows below her eyes that accentuated her pallor, or the reality that, with the exception of breast and hip, she was exceedingly thin. It was barely five minutes before a doctor arrived at the door; by chance, the older man had been checking in at Reception when Valente had called down and, having overheard the conversation, had offered his services.
Dr Seaborne took one frowning look at his diminutive patient and asked what age she was. Valente was outraged at having to rifle through Caroline’s bag to provide proof of her age on her driving licence before the man was satisfied that he was not some predator with a preference for underage girls. In the midst of that interrogation her mobile phone began ringing. Valente switched it off.
Deeply unimpressed by his inebriated patient, the doctor checked Caroline over as best as he could, and said that he saw no point seeking further medical help simply because she had passed out.
Although severely ruffled by the treatment he had received for the sin of harbouring a very youthful-looking drunk in his hotel suite, Valente knew he could not possibly have her delivered home unconscious without being forced to make the sort of explanation he had no intention of making to her parents. Furious with her for landing him into such an untenable situation, he stripped off her dress and slotted her into the bed—but not before wincing at her unexciting white underwear topped by the sin of tights rather than the tantalising appeal of stockings...
Caroline had to break through layers of discomfort to battle into full wakefulness. Her head ached, her mouth was dry as a bone and her stomach felt distinctly sensitive. Pulling herself up against the pillows with a moan of self-pity, she opened her eyes on a totally unfamiliar room.
In a panic, she lurched out of bed, blinking in dismay as her head swam just a little—and she recoiled in horror when the bedroom door opened wider to frame Valente.
‘I heard you get up. I’ll order breakfast for you.’
In the act of trying to wrap herself in the duvet in a hurry, her face hot enough to fry eggs on, Caroline reeled back against the bed for support. ‘No, thanks,’ she said weakly, appalled to acknowledge that she had failed to go home the night before and that she remembered next to nothing about their meeting after being ill.
Exotically, wildly handsome, and extremely well-groomed in his black designer-cut suit and cerise silk shirt, Valente leant back against the doorjamb like a model straight out of a glossy magazine. ‘Eat. It’ll make you feel better, and possibly a couple of painkillers would help too.’
‘Why didn’t you take me home?’ Caroline gasped, looking anywhere but at him. And in the midst of that evasive activity she finally noticed that the pillow beside hers bore the imprint of a head. ‘My goodness … no—we slept together?’
‘The sofa was too small for me.’
Caroline settled aghast grey eyes on him. ‘Did we …? I mean …?’
Valente gave her a slicing look of derision. ‘Do I look so desperate for sex that I would make use of a comatose body?’
As he had no doubt intended, Caroline shrank again, and hugged the duvet all the tighter to her shivering figure. ‘So we didn’t, then. That’s good,’ she managed to say.
‘Quite.’ A slanting ebony brow lifted. ‘But don’t ever drink like that again.’
‘I won’t,’ she said tightly. ‘It was a hideous mistake, and I learn from my mistakes.’
‘Some men would have taken advantage of you in that condition. You were in no state to look after yourself and that’s dangerous,’ he framed harshly.
‘Right … okay … message more than received,’ Caroline countered, squirming with shame. ‘If it’s all right with you I’m going to take a shower.’
Valente waved a helpful hand in the right direction. ‘Breakfast will be waiting when you’re ready.’
After stooping to pick up the silver-blue dress from the floor, Caroline wore the duvet into the bathroom. Only then did she wonder what time it was, and take on board the reality that she had stayed out all night. Her watch let her know it was only eight o’clock, and she knew her parents were unlikely to get home until lunchtime at the earliest since her Uncle Charles was an elderly bachelor and a most gracious host. Thanking