‘It doesn’t matter to me... that sort of thing is really not important,’ Simon had soothed when she sobbed out her shame and despair after that dreadful afternoon when she had almost ended up sharing Carlo Saracini’s bed. ‘Of course I forgive you:
Simon and his family had moved next door when she was ten and he was fourteen. He had been the odd one out in his large, extrovert family. Quiet and unambitious, his greatest interest wildlife photography. Simon had been an oddity to his rugby-mad father and brothers. And Jessica had been a lonely child, painfully conscious from an early age that her mother had no time for her or her father.
Simon had heard Jessica sobbing her heart out in the summer house the day she came home early from school and saw Carole half-undressed with a strange man. Simon had climbed over the wall and she had been so shocked by what she had seen that she had told him. He had been very kind and comforting. He had put his arm round her and listened, showing her the easy affection she craved.
The adult world had come to her door that day. Simon had explained that she mustn’t tell her father or anyone else about that accidental glimpse. He had been naive too in his assumption that her mother didn’t make a habit of that sort of thing. Jessica hadn’t been very much older before she had learnt that there was always another man in Carole’s life and that her father simply tried to pretend not to know about those men.
Indeed she had soon realised that her mother’s frequent affairs were food for the juiciest gossip in town. That knowledge had been an agonising humiliation to live with during the sensitive teen years.
And throughout it all, Simon had been there for her. Her best friend, her adolescent hero. By the time she had reached seventeen, both their families had begun to view them as inseparable. But, looking back, she now recalled that Simon had never talked of love or marriage or children with her, not until his family and other people began teasing them repeatedly about when they planned to tie the knot.
He had actually gone down to work in London for over a year, coming back on only odd weekends, and she had thought she was losing him, had actually wondered if Simon had ever been hers to lose, if indeed he was striving to break away from the popular belief that they were childhood sweethearts destined to marry.
Then out of the blue, the Christmas she was eighteen, Simon had asked her to get engaged. Even when he’d carefully stressed his wish for a long engagement, Jessica had been ecstatic, convinced that together they were a match made in heaven. There was nothing she could not tell Simon, nothing, it seemed, that they could not discuss. In every way they had seemed to complement each other, unlike her parents who didn’t have a single thought in common.
Dear God, but she had been so innocent, she reflected now, tucking the photo into her overnight bag. Blind right to the bitter end. When had it finally occurred to her that the average male would have lifted the roof when his bride-to-be very nearly fell into another man’s bed a week before the wedding? Her betrayal should have mattered to Simon. It should have been important to him. And forgiveness should not have come so quickly and easily to his lips. Ironically, Jessica had been far more upset than Simon had been. She had wanted to cancel the wedding but Simon had pleaded with her, telling her how much he needed her, and in the end, she had allowed herself to be persuaded...
The limousine ate up the miles back to the hotel and with every mile her tension mounted another unbearable notch. Not only was she being forced to face a savage humiliation, but also to accept the necessity of bargaining with Carlo for her father’s sake. She did not yet know if Carlo would even agree to what she had already promised in his name.
Jessica didn’t approach the night receptionist. With the chauffeur bringing up the rear with her bag and waving away the proffered attentions of the porter, she was terrified of being asked where she was going and why she wasn’t signing the hotel register. The man flicked her a glance, said nothing, and then her pale cheeks fired on a worse thought. Did he think she was a call-girl? Didn’t hotels discreetly ignore those sort of comings and goings?
A waiter opened the door of Carlo’s suite.
Carlo was standing by the fireplace, talking on the phone in rapid Italian. He looked past Jessica and made a signal to his chauffeur, briefly connected with Jessica’s taut stance several steps inside the room and said carelessly in an aside, ‘I was about to dine without you, cara:
Her gaze fell on the table exquisitely set for two. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast but she did not feel hungry. The waiter lit the candelabra, dimmed the lights and then uncorked the wine and hovered.
Carlo cast the phone aside and crossed the room in a couple of long strides. Confident hands undid the sash at her waist, parted her coat and slid it off her tense shoulders as if she were a doll to be undressed.
‘Pour the wine and leave us,’ he murmured to the waiter, a hand touching her narrow back as he walked her to the table, tugged out a chair and sat her down.
With a not quite steady hand she reached for her glass as soon as it was filled.
‘One glass only,’ Carlo decreed with dark satire. ‘I would hate to be accused of getting you drunk a second time.’
Heat crawled up her slender throat. She couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t think of anything beyond the fact that she was here in Carlo’s suite and expected to share his bed tonight. ‘I think the receptionist thought I was a call-girl.’
‘Surely not?’ Carlo parried silkily. ‘A high-class hooker would never be so badly dressed.’
Her teeth clenched. ‘I didn’t come here to be insulted.’
‘I think you came here to take whatever I choose to hand out,’ Carlo flicked back, skimming her taupe skirt and blouse with a curled lip. ‘When you kept me waiting, I mistakenly assumed you were dressing up for the occasion—’
A choked laugh that was no laugh at all escaped her. ‘What occasion?’
‘I ordered all your favourite foods.’
So he had. She hadn’t noticed. He had to have a phenomenal memory.
‘I remember everything about you:
He sounded as if he expected a round of applause.
‘We have to talk about my father,’ she opened in a rush.
‘You haven’t met my eyes once since you entered this room.’
Involuntarily, she clashed with glittering gold alive with impatience above a set jawline. Evidently she was not delivering the required responses.
‘This won’t work if you can’t do better than this,’ he said drily, unfeelingly.
‘Don’t threaten me...’ she warned tautly, great violet eyes nailed to his hard dark features. ‘I function even less efficiently under threat. Now ... can we talk about my father?’
‘I prefer to eat to the accompaniment of light conversation.’
Her gaze damned him to hell and back. She dug into the pâté with sudden appetite. She worked through the next two courses without speaking unless forced. If anyone lost their appetite it was Carlo, finally thrusting his plate away with an imprecation and tossing aside his napkin as he rose from the table.
‘You sulk like a little girl.’
‘I am not sulking. Carlo.’ Jessica embarked slowly on her dessert, it having long since occurred to her that the longer she spent eating, the longer she stayed out of the bedroom. ‘You wanted me here. I came. You wanted me to eat. I am eating.’
‘I won’t prosecute your father.’ The statement was coolly