The feel of his arm around her had made her almost faint with joy. He’d paused at a nearby gelataria, and she’d hovered, delicious with indecision, over the myriad flavours to choose from. Then they’d strolled along, cornet in hand, back towards the Via Corso, across the busy shopping street into the Centro Storico to seek out the glory of the Pantheon.
He’d told her about Rome—all the tourist things, the history things, the modern, gossipy things—smiling at her, laughing with her, and she’d been enthralled, enchanted.
Blinded. Completely blinded.
Completely unable to see what he’d been doing.
There had been a clue she should have seen—a massive clue, totally obvious with hindsight. But not at the time. Not to her—not poor, stupid, little inexperienced eighteen-year-old her.
In all their time together he had barely touched her. Nothing beyond that arm around her shoulder at the Trevi Fountain, or an accidental brushing of fingers when he’d handed her an ice-cream, or the touching of her arm as he’d pointed something out in the Roman Forum.
But nothing else. Nothing else at all.
Until that last fatal night.
Anguish pierced her. Roughly she drew the shabby curtain across the wardrobe alcove and went into the tiny kitchenette, hardly more than a cupboard, to run water for the kettle.
She didn’t want to remember! She didn’t want to remember that night. That night—the last one she was to spend in Rome—when, instead of taking her back to Jenny’s father’s apartment, as he always had done every night, after a last coffee in one of the old piazzas, he’d taken her instead to an elegant eighteenth-century building which housed the baroque splendour of the Farneste apartment.
Where, with all the skill and experience of the consummate Italian playboy lover, Vito Farneste had seduced her.
She could feel her eyes sting, pain buckle through her.
It had been an effortless seduction. She had gone into his arms—his bed—rapturously, breathlessly, adoringly. So, so willingly. Her mouth melting under the kisses with which he had dissolved her frail, hopeless resistance to him.
But what eighteen-year-old girl could have resisted Vito Farneste? Could have resisted that lean, svelte body, that beautiful, sculpted face, that sable hair, those dark, long-lashed eyes and that skilled, sinful mouth…?
In two blissful, dreamlike weeks she had fallen so helplessly, so hopelessly in love that giving herself to Vito had been an act of homage, of adoration. She had clung to him, clasped his body to her, as his honeyed stroke had opened to her a heaven she had not even known existed, could ever exist.
And in the morning he had thrust her into hell.
A hell so agonising she had never known she could feel such pain.
She had awoken, naked in his arms, after he’d taken her through the gates of paradise itself, and lain dazed with bliss and happiness in the huge, ornate bed. Then, horror-struck, had heard the sound of the front door opening, and voices, felt Vito tensing suddenly, every muscle rigid, and then, like some slow, endless nightmare, the bedroom door had opened and her mother had walked in.
She could see, as if in slow motion, her mother’s face frowning at the closed heavy drapes, her head turning to see the naked figures in the bed.
And recognition dawning on her horror-struck face.
Even now, seven years later, she could still feel the horror of it all. Still feel cold sweat break out down her spine.
Her mother screaming. Screaming with fury, with outrage. Enrico charging in, demanding to know what the hell was going on. Herself cowering, mortified, beneath the sheets covering her nakedness, wanting only to die.
And Vito.
Shameless. Unashamed.
Callous, uncaring.
So cruel.
She could hear him now. She would always hear him.
Her mother yelling at him in Italian, her face distorted. Enrico angry, his hand slashing through the air.
And Vito. Vito coolly climbing out of bed. Uncaring that he had not a stitch on. Pulling on his trousers and drawing up the zip with insolent unconcern.
Turning to Arlene.
‘Seduce her?’ he had drawled in a tight, hard voice, making sure he was speaking English so Rachel could understand it, understand exactly what he was saying. ‘Hardly. She was gagging for it.’
Water splashed over her hands, jarring her back to the present. She shut her eyes, trying to block out the memory, block out the past.
But she couldn’t. It was there now, piercing her flesh, those vile, ugly words searing through her again, as they had that hideous morning eight years ago. When she had finally, bitterly realised just what Vito Farneste had been doing all along.
Deliberately, cold-bloodedly taking her inexperienced, naïve, gagging for it eighteen-year-old self to bed for one purpose only.
To part her from her virginity.
And by so doing strike at the woman he loathed with every fibre of his being.
Her mother’s words, hurled at her in that hideous aftermath, when Vito and Enrico had gone, had stung like a whip.
‘My God, you fool, Rachel. You fool!’ Arlene had screamed at her. ‘Couldn’t you see what he was doing? Didn’t you find it just a tiny, tiny bit suspicious that a man like Vito Farneste should show the slightest interest in an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl? Vito doesn’t waste his precious time on anyone who isn’t a supermodel or a film star! He’s got women eating out of his hand! They queue up for the privilege! Couldn’t you see he was that kind of man? Didn’t you realize he couldn’t possibly be interested in you?’
Her mother had shaken her daughter’s shoulders, fingers digging into her skin.
‘He got you into bed to get at me! He knows how protective I am of you! So he thought it would be really amusing to seduce you. He hates me like the plague—he’d do anything to get at me!’
Anything—even to the point of forcing himself to have sex with a schoolgirl virgin.
Who’d been gagging for it…
No!
By force of will she blocked her mind and switched on the kettle. She mustn’t think, wouldn’t think.
Not about the past seven years ago. Not about the past two hours ago.
How could I have gone to him and asked him to marry me? How could I have?
She must have been insane to think that she could force his hand like that.
Anguish buckled through her all the same.
But I had to try! I had to!
The force driving her to confront him this afternoon had been compelling. A force so great she had not been able to walk away from the obligation to at least make the attempt. Two emotions, each unbearable, twisted within her to make a formidable, unopposable imperative.
Grief.
And guilt.
Again, as she poured boiling water over the teabag slumped in the chipped mug, her hand shook and a wave of grief and pain washed over her.
Her mother was dying. Lying there in her hospital bed, her face and body ravaged by the rogue cells that were devastating