As the car drew to a stop outside one of the houses Lara leant forward and tapped the window. For a moment nothing happened. She tapped again, and suddenly it slid down with a mechanical buzz.
The driver was still facing forward, his left hand on the wheel. For some reason Lara felt nervous. Yet she was on a familiar street with people passing by the car.
‘Excuse me, we’re not in the right place. I’m just around the corner, on Marley Street.’
Lara saw the man’s jaw clench, and then he said, ‘On the contrary, cara. We’re in exactly the right place.’
That voice. His voice.
Lara’s breath stopped in her throat and in the same moment the man took off the cap and removed his sunglasses and turned around to face her.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, stupefied. In shock. Time ceased to exist as a linear thing.
His words from two years ago were still etched into her mind. ‘You will regret this for the rest of your life, Lara. You belong to me.’
And here he was to crow over her humiliation.
Ciro Sant’Angelo.
The fact that she’d said to him that day, ‘I will regret nothing,’ was not a memory she relished. She’d regretted it every second since that day. But she’d been desperate, and she’d had no choice. He’d been brutalised and almost killed. And all because she’d had the temerity to meet him and fall in love, going against the very exacting plans her uncle had orchestrated on her behalf, unbeknownst to her.
If she was honest with herself, she’d dreamed of this moment. That Ciro would come for her. But the reality was almost too much to take in. She wasn’t prepared. She would never be prepared for a man like Ciro Sant’Angelo. She hadn’t been two years ago and she wasn’t now.
Panic surged. She blindly reached for the door handle but it wouldn’t open. She tried the other one. Locked. Breathless, she looked back at him and said, ‘Open the doors, Ciro, this is crazy.’
But nothing happened. He responded with a sardonic twist of his mouth. ‘Should I be flattered that you remember me, Lara?’
She might have laughed at that moment if she hadn’t been so stunned. Ciro Sant’Angelo was not a man easily forgotten by anyone. Tall, broad and leanly muscular, he oozed charisma and authority. Add to that the stunning symmetry of a face dominated by deep-set dark eyes and a mouth sculpted for sin. A hard jaw and slightly hawkish profile cancelled out any prettiness.
He would have been perfection personified if it wasn’t for the jagged white ridge of skin that ran from under his right eye to his jaw. She could only look at it now with sick horror as the knowledge sank into her gut: she was responsible for that brutal scar.
He angled the right side of his face towards her, a hard light in his eyes. ‘Does it disgust you?’
She shook her head slowly. It didn’t detract from his beauty, it added a savage element. Dangerous.
‘Ciro...’ Lara said faintly now, as the truth finally sank in, deep in her gut. This wasn’t a dream or a mirage...or a nightmare. She shook her head. ‘What are you doing here? What do you want?’
I want what’s mine.
The words beat through Ciro Sant’Angelo’s body like a Klaxon. His blood was up, boiling over.
Lara Templeton—Winterborne—was here. Within touching distance. After two long years. Years in which he’d tried and failed to excise her treacherous, beautiful face from his mind.
A face he needed to see now more than he needed to acknowledge her question. ‘Take your hat off.’
Her bright blue eyes flashed behind the veil. He could see the slope of her cheek down to that delicate jaw and the mouth that had made him want to sin as soon as he’d laid eyes on it. Full and ripe. A sensual reminder that beneath her elegant and coolly blonde exterior she was all fire.
Her lips compressed for a second and then she lifted a trembling hand—another nice dramatic touch—and pulled off the hat and veil.
And even though Ciro had steeled himself to face her once again she took his breath away. She hadn’t changed in two years. She was still a classic beauty. Finely etched eyebrows framing huge blue eyes ringed with long dark lashes... High cheekbones and a straight nose... And that mouth... Like a crushed rosebud. Promising decadence even as her eyes sent a message of innocence and naivety.
He’d fallen for it. Badly. Almost fatally.
‘Not here,’ he said curtly, angry with himself for letting Lara get to him on a level that he’d hoped to have under control. ‘We’ll talk inside.’
Inside where? Lara was about to ask, but Ciro was already out of the car and striding towards an intimidating townhouse. Her door was opened by a uniformed man—presumably the real driver?—and Lara didn’t have much choice but to step out of the back of the car.
As she did, she noticed two or three intimidating-looking men in suits with earpieces. Security. Of course. Ciro had always been cavalier about his safety before, but she could imagine that after the kidnapping he’d changed.
The kidnapping.
A cold shiver went down her spine. Ciro Sant’Angelo had been kidnapped and brutally assaulted two years ago. Lara had been kidnapped with him, but she’d been released within hours. Dumped at the side of a road outside Florence. It had been the singularly most terrifying thing they’d ever experienced and she’d been the reason it had happened.
For a moment Lara hesitated at the bottom of the steps leading up to a porch and an open front door. She could see black and white tiles in the circular hallway. A grand-looking interior.
‘Mr Sant’Angelo is waiting.’
One of the suited men was extending his arm towards the house. He looked civil enough, but she imagined it was a very superficial civility.
She went up the steps and through the door. A sleek-looking middle-aged woman approached her with a polite smile. ‘Miss Templeton, welcome. Please let me take your things. Mr Sant’Angelo is waiting for you in the lounge.’
Numbly, Lara handed over her hat and bag, barely even noticing the use of her maiden name. She wore a light cape-style coat over her shift dress and she left it on, even though it was warm. She followed the woman, not liking the sensation that she was walking into the lion’s den.
The sensation was only heightened when she saw the tall figure of Ciro, his back to her as he helped himself to a drink from a tray on the far side of the room.
‘Would you like tea or coffee, Miss Templeton?’
Lara shook her head at the question from the woman and murmured, ‘No, thanks.’ The housekeeper left the room.
The muted sounds of London traffic could be heard through the huge windows. It was a palatial lounge, beautifully decorated in classic colours with massive paintings hanging on the walls. The paintings were abstract, and a vivid memory exploded into Lara’s head of when Ciro had taken her to an art gallery in Florence, after hours.
They’d only just met a few days previously, and she’d been surprised enough at his choice of gallery to make him say with a mocking smile, ‘You expected a rough Sicilian to have no taste?’
She’d blushed, because he’d exposed her for assuming that a very alpha Italian man would veer towards something more...classical, conservative.
She’d turned to him, still shy around him, wondering what on earth he was doing with her, a pale English arts student. ‘You’re not rough...not at all.’
He’d been like a sleek