Читать книгу Blackmailed For Her Baby - Elizabeth Power - Страница 8

‘ONE more take, Blaze! That’s it! Toss back that glorious mane of yours and smile. Smile up at the child. She’s your daughter, remember. Higher! Lift her higher! Perfect! That’s beautiful, darling! Bea-u-ti-ful!’

The gushing praise from the cameraman was as synthetic, Libby thought, as the relationship between herself and the giggling baby suspended high above her head. Like the nickname someone had given her at the outset of her career that had helped propel her up the ladder to supermodel status following a chance discovery at a small fashion show she had paraded in for a local charity.

What did it matter to the Press and the public that she was weary of pretending? That behind the shining trademark of her heavy red hair, the clothes and make-up and the pure artifice in standing in a summer meadow, promoting an exclusive range of skincare, which purported to make her skin as soft as that of any baby’s, she was still just Libby Vincent. Or rather Vincenzo, she thought with a pained mental grimace. An average girl from an average background, who couldn’t run away from who she really was no matter how hard she tried, or from the far from average burden of guilt she carried everywhere.

‘OK! That’s it! Beautiful, darling. Perfect!’

With an indiscernible sigh, she brought her arms down and the child with them, mercifully relieved that the shoot was over. She didn’t think she could have endured another second.

The snowy fabric of her peasant skirt brushed her slender calves as she trudged back through the long grass. The baby she was reluctantly cradling crooned up at her, revealing two small white teeth, its little button nose wrinkling as it grasped her camisole with one tiny pink hand.

Libby dragged air through her lungs, a longing of such intensity sweeping over her that for an endless moment she couldn’t seem to breathe as she fought the urge to clasp the infant fiercely to her.

Keeping a tight rein on her galloping emotions, her flawless features rigid as stone, somehow she made it back to the mobile make-up unit, where the rest of the team were waiting.

‘Here.’ The emotion clogging her throat made her sound decidedly curt as she thrust the child towards its mother, while the baby, obviously sensing the tension in Libby, began to bawl, her eager little arms outstretched as the other woman took her, leaving Libby to spin determinedly away.

‘Isn’t she a cutie?’ Fran, a mature brunette with two growing boys of her own, couldn’t help drooling as Libby approached, seeking only the seclusion of the huge green trailer behind them.

Beneath the make-up that Fran had applied so expertly earlier, Libby’s face felt like a tight, tense mask. ‘If you say so.’

‘You’d forgotten, Fran.’ It was the cynical voice of Steve Cullum, one of the technicians who had once asked Libby out and received the same polite brush-off for which she was renowned with the opposite sex. ‘Blaze doesn’t do maternal. Or any other sort of relationship for that matter.’

It was something the Press often speculated about. Her past. The lack of men in her life. Even, at times, her sexuality.

“Beneath the fire, is there only ice?” one tabloid newspaper had printed after she had refused to give them an interview, share with them her views on love, on marriage, on children.

And why should she? she thought bitterly now. These things were private. Which was why, unsurprisingly, they had never found out her real name, never been able to connect her with Luca.

Anguish speared her as she thought about the boy she had married; about the tragic waste of life when he’d been killed in that car accident less than a year later. She had loved Luca; had had plenty of thoughts and feelings then. But that was a long time ago, before her emotions had been numbed by events and actions that were too damning even to think about; when loving had come naturally and she’d believed that happiness was everyone’s birthright—even hers.

Inwardly she ridiculed herself for her gross naïvety. Because of course that was before she had met the prejudice and disapproval of the Vincenzo family. Before she’d felt his father’s tyranny; known the cutting censure of Luca’s darkly commanding older brother.

A prickly sensation lifted the hairs on the back of her neck as the disturbing features of Romano Vincenzo reared up before her eyes. A man who was lethally attractive and ruthlessly uncompromising. A man definitely not to be crossed. It hadn’t just been mutual dislike that she had shared with Romano Vincenzo. It had been something more. Something much stronger and intensely profound that she had never been able to put a name to, and which she certainly wasn’t going to waste any time wondering about six years on.

It was all in the past, and over the years she had become adept at hiding her emotions, which she did now, crushing her unwelcome reverie beneath a bright smile as Fran asked, ‘Are you coming to the party tonight, Blaze?’

‘You try and stop me!’ It was a first-rate performance she was giving and she knew it; knew also that it was one she would have to keep up until she could change, get back to the Porsche and slam out of there, away from the turmoil of her unwelcome thoughts; of memories—resurrected by a simple skin-cream commercial—which she couldn’t bear to face. ‘After a week of staying in every night, getting up at four am and coming here to be bitten by mosquitoes,’ she forced out laughingly over her shoulder, ‘I’m going to party till dawn!’

Well, what had he been expecting? Romano thought, standing there in the trailer, when Libby, not looking where she was going, almost collided with him. That she had changed?

He caught her small gasp, felt her warmth and closeness and the pure femininity of her washing over him on a sensual wave.

‘Buon giorno, Libby.’ His senses, normally so controlled, were leaping into overdrive, making his heart race, his voice take on a husky quality as he watched the colour drain from the smooth texture of her high, Slavic cheekbones, saw her lush red mouth open in a gesture of pure shock.

‘I’m sorry, Blaze…’ Fran’s voice followed her in, quickly contrite, breaking in on the whirling chaos of her thoughts. ‘I meant to tell you. I’m sorry, Mr Vincenzo…’ The woman’s tone had changed in deference to the tall, tanned Italian hunk looming there in the aperture of her mobile studio and whose dark designer suit couldn’t conceal the hard masculinity of the man beneath. ‘I hadn’t forgotten you were waiting…’

Romano’s sleek black hair gleamed like jet as he gave a curt nod before reaching around the stunned Libby and pulling the trailer’s sliding door closed with a rattling firmness that blocked out Fran and the rest of the world.

He hadn’t changed, some small functioning part of Libby silently acknowledged. A high-profile entrepreneur, with that overall impression of lithe fitness and impeccable style, he still dominated any room he happened to walk into, still held sway over others with that bred-in-the bone confidence and effortless authority.

‘Wh-what are you doing here?’ Struck by the ridiculous notion that her thoughts must have conjured him up, Libby found herself as she’d always been in this man’s company, a mixture of tongue-tied nervousness and challenging rebellion. And then, as shock receded and rational thought took over, she was urging in a voice strung with blind panic, ‘What’s wrong? What is it? Is something the matter?’

Some racing emotion darkened the long green eyes gazing up at him from beneath their rich mahogany lashes as they had done from the covers of countless glossy magazines over the years.

‘Not that I know of.’

He saw her eyes close, the pressing of those long, feathery lashes against the alabaster skin a response he understood and accepted, though not without a measure of surprise.

‘How long have you been here?’ Weak-kneed with relief—from this unexpected encounter with Luca’s brother—Libby tried to get a grip on her errant thoughts.

‘Long enough.’

His deeply-accented voice was as rich as she remembered it, his face as hard-boned and as classically structured, from his high intellectual forehead, straight nose and that forceful, darkly shadowed jaw to those penetrating black eyes that had always seemed to probe right down into the depths of her soul.

Her nostrils flaring, guardedly she demanded, ‘Why didn’t you make yourself known?’

His wide masculine mouth compressed, a mouth that could curl with disdain or make a woman’s bones melt in the blaze of one smile. ‘And miss watching the nation’s loveliest model playing at doting motherhood?’

His double-edged compliment hit home hard and she swept determinedly past him, the brush of his jacket as their shoulders collided sending a tingling friction across her bare skin.

She gave a nonchalant little shrug, her feelings held on a throttle-tight leash. ‘It isn’t a role I’d normally have chosen.’ In fact she had tried to refuse the job, but it was her agent who had warned her of the inadvisability of turning down such opportunities and who had won in the end.

Something flickered in Romano’s eyes beneath his midnight-black lashes.

‘Is that why you handed the kid over like she was a sack of potatoes?’

‘Did I?’ It was hard trying to pretend he wasn’t unsettling her when even to her own ears her voice was shaking. ‘I thought I was being careful.’

The firm mouth tugged downwards. ‘As careful as you were when you handed over Giorgio?’

‘Giorgi?’ The name escaped her like a helpless little plea. He’d said there was nothing wrong, but something had to be because in all these years he had never chosen to patronise her with so much as a social call. ‘He’s all right, isn’t he?’

It was only a heartbeat before he answered, and yet it seemed an eternity.

‘That hasn’t worried you for the past six years. So why should it suddenly concern you now?’

She couldn’t tell him how much she had grieved for the baby son she had been forced to hand over so cruelly; how much she ached to see him, know him, her concern for his welfare and her need to be with him an excruciating pain that tore at her constantly no matter how many days, weeks, months or years dragged by.

‘You wouldn’t be here if it didn’t concern Giorgio,’ Libby breathed, feeling like a slave begging for mercy from a powerful master who held the key, not just to her happiness, but also to her very existence on this earth. ‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’ Her eyes were dark pools against the pale oval of her face. ‘Or are you taking some sort of warped satisfaction out of seeing me suffer?’

‘Suffer?’ A thick eyebrow arched darkly against his tanned forehead. ‘You? I don’t think so, Libby. A moment ago you had nothing on your mind but partying until dawn.’

Libby felt something snap inside of her and the next moment, to her own horror, she was flying at him, fingers clamping like angry claws onto the expensive cloth of his jacket, her teeth clenched in an agony of frustration.

‘Are you going to tell me? Or am I going to have to rip it out of you?’ she sobbed, suddenly all too conscious of his physicality and the sheer power of him, the knowledge that he could subdue her with just one gram of his latent strength should he choose to do so.

Fortunately he didn’t. Instead he caught her angry hands and held them against his chest, bringing her startlingly alive to the hard warmth of him beneath the impeccable cut of his clothes.

Some hot emotion burned in the incredibly dark gaze resting on her lips, strangely at odds with the deepening furrow between his eyes. ‘Easy. Take it easy,’ he advised hoarsely.

If he was truthful with himself, Romano thought, he was shocked by the strength of her reaction to what had, after all, been his unprovoked taunts. But what human being wouldn’t feel justified in making them? he vindicated himself with his jaw clenching. Knowing exactly what made this single-minded little opportunist tick? But perhaps that was the reason for her wild and totally unexpected outburst. Guilt, it occurred to him suddenly. She’d be less than human if what she had done hadn’t left her with some measure of remorse, so perhaps she had suffered. Because she was human, and very much a woman, two aspects he was vitally aware of now as he became conscious of the slender bones of her wrists beneath the hard pressure of his fingers, felt the life that was pulsing through her like the fluttering of a frantic sparrow so that he had to harden his swerving convictions and try to focus on her as the heartless little gold-digger she had proved herself to be, because he could deal with that.

‘So there’s a flame beneath the fire,’ he recognised mockingly, obviously wise to that unkind headline about her. ‘But then we always suspected I’d be the one to bring it out in you, didn’t we, cara?’

‘Wh-what are you talking about?’ Libby stammered. He couldn’t have the slightest notion of the way he had used to affect her—still affected her!—could he? she wondered hectically. Couldn’t have guessed how he had plagued her troubled dreams even when she was happily married to his brother. But that was only because she had been so young, so overawed and intimated by him, she exonerated herself. Because she had loved Luca! She still loved Luca!

And Giorgio…

Her green eyes clouded over now as fear and grief, despair and a repression of feelings that she wasn’t equipped to deal with coalesced with her maternal longing so that she swayed unsteadily under the weight of them.

‘I think you’d better sit down.’

Catching his husky recommendation, shockingly aware of one iron-strong arm across her back, Libby did as she was told, dropping down onto the chair angled away from the mirror and Fran’s pots of creams, mascara wands and lipstick phials.

Rocking back on his heels, Romano dragged in a deep breath. She wasn’t going to like hearing what he had to say.

Wedging her hands between her knees to stop them trembling, Libby stared up at him as though he had just descended from a cloud.

‘Would you mind repeating that?’ she whispered.

His features were passive, his eyes hard and assessing. ‘I think you heard me, Libby.’

Yes, she had, she realised, stunned, disbelieving. She hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that Romano Vincenzo was actually here—on the shoot—let alone got her brain round the demands he was suddenly making. In a minute, she thought, she would wake up and find that this was all some crazy dream, yet contrarily she knew he was anything but a figment of her imagination.

Here in this superficial world she inhabited, where everyone called her ‘Blaze’ and no one cared a jot for her beyond how well she could pretend to love the product they wanted to sell, he was the only representation of anything real; of her past, of which he was a vital part; of Luca and the girl she had once been. Only he knew who she really was. Or thought he did, she corrected bitterly.

‘You want me to go to Italy with you?’

To see Giorgio…

She had never once expected that any member of the Vincenzo family would allow her to do that, let alone insist upon it.

She was trembling so much that she had to do something—anything—so she got up, moving like an automaton over to the couch where she had left her own clothes. Mindlessly, she started to peel off the skirt she had worn for the commercial with fingers that shook.

Watching his brother’s widow, Romano couldn’t believe how calmly she could carry on functioning as though he had said nothing, his eyes dark, judgemental slits in the hard lean, structure of his face.

Coldly he regarded the way the virginal fabric slithered down her long, golden legs, pooled alluringly around her ankles, the way she stepped nimbly out of it in nothing but her lacy white camisole and briefs.

‘Had it been left to me I would never have entertained the thought of coming here,’ he stated with grim assurance. ‘I did so only because of a five-year-old who can’t understand why it is that he doesn’t have a mother. Who’s trying to make sense of what it is he’s done wrong.’

Libby choked back a small stifled cry as Romano continued, deaf and blind to how he was hurting her.

‘A kid who’s so distressed at being goaded by his peers he doesn’t want to go to school any more. Won’t sleep. Won’t eat properly. Won’t even play with his friends.’ A five-year-old going on six who couldn’t be placated with a new pony or a trip to Disneyland. Who foolishly believed his Zio Romano could make anything happen—including bringing home the mother who didn’t want him!

The child had been pushing him and pushing him until Romano—always able to solve the most intricate problems in his multi-faceted business empire—didn’t know what else to do. His trusting nephew. A bright, intelligent kid. Luca’s son.

He hadn’t realised just how many problems the boy had until recently. His mother had been right, though, he accepted grudgingly. His father would never have let Libby Vincent—as he’d recently discovered she called herself—near his grandson. That was if she had ever entertained any desire to see Giorgio, which he strongly doubted. The demands of a growing, energetic youngster would simply have put paid to her shallow, artificial life!

She was tugging off her camisole and, unable to help himself, Romano gazed broodingly at the willowy arc of her raised arms as she pulled it over her head, at the smooth, golden contours of her slender back.

Her skin was the texture of silk, her tapering waist amazingly small above the gentle flare of her hips. Unashamedly, as she turned slightly, his gaze flickered upwards to the outer curve of one beautifully shaped breast and desire kicked him in the loins, making his breath lock beneath the hard cage of his ribs.

She was a model. Just a face and body to promote whatever lucrative opportunities came her way. She was used to undressing in front of others. Yet now, as he found himself resenting every other man who must have seen her like this, he realised that her power to ensnare was as strong and as lethal to him now as it had ever been.

Because he had been bewitched by this girl! Had fallen under her spell from the first moment he had met her and she had fixed him with those proud yet wary emerald eyes. Wary, because she had known at once that he could see right through her; recognise—just as his parents had—what a scheming little gold-digger she was.

And yet that still hadn’t stopped him wanting her—stopped him envying Luca—or from lying awake at night, mentally beating himself up for allowing himself to become totally captivated by his younger brother’s wife.

She had appeared like a breath of spring in a jaded world, possessing a quiet maturity that went way beyond her years. But that cultivated innocence that was the other side of the coin—and which sometimes almost roused in him a ludicrous desire to protect—hadn’t fooled him. She was as heartless as he’d believed her to be—and as mercenary.

She was pulling on a cheesecloth shirt, for which he was extremely grateful, because even the reminder of what this girl was really like couldn’t cool the fierce desire she aroused in him, more strongly now, if that were possible, than she had in the past.

Tensely Libby fumbled with the buttons of her shirt, glaringly self-conscious of the way Romano had been looking at her ever since she’d unthinkingly pulled off her clothes. As if he wanted to wrench the rest from her body, she realised, with heat tingling along her nerve-endings, reawakening her to the frightening power of his sexuality.

‘My son is giving you problems and your family suddenly decides it wants to invite me back into its oh-so-loving circle!’ Her injured little statement was strung with all the bitterness she had harboured towards the Vincenzo family since she had been a vulnerable and powerless teenager.

‘Not the family,’ he negated tersely. ‘My mother is against it. And my father—as I’m sure you must know—is dead.’

Yes, she knew that. It had made all the papers six months ago. The demise of a man as wealthy as Marius Vincenzo didn’t go unreported. There had been a piece about Romano too. It was that that she had soaked up with the thirst of someone parched while knowing that they were drinking from a poisoned well. It had been a brief account of how an important area of Vincenzo-held interests—once floundering under Marius Vincenzo—had started to flourish again when his son had taken over to pull it out of stormy waters and, with his head for business and fearless judgement, shares had rocketed now that he was fully in command. His achievements really were quite remarkable. Since the demise of Luca’s grandfather, there was no doubt among the Vincenzo males where the real influence and talents really lay.

‘I’m sorry,’ she uttered curtly, experiencing a pang of guilt because she couldn’t feel any regret. Marius Vincenzo had been a tyrant and she had disliked him more than it was possible to dislike anyone. ‘For you, that is,’ she felt she had to add, because it wasn’t in her nature to be hypocritical. ‘And your mother,’ eventually she decided to tag on.

Sophia Vincenzo hadn’t liked her, any more than her overbearing husband had. In fact the only thing she had had in common with her rather frosty-tongued mother-in-law was that they had both loved Luca. A love that had festered hatred on the woman’s part towards Libby after the death of the woman’s favourite and idolised younger son.

The light from the high windows of the trailer emphasised the hard lines around Romano’s mouth as he dipped his head, acknowledging her. Her condolences had surprised him though. She had had as little time for his parents as they had had for each other, he thought cynically, remembering the farce of a united front his parents had shown to the world.

‘Well, then,’ Libby accepted pointedly, telling herself not to get too excited, hope for too much, though every cell was leaping from even the smallest chance of seeing her son again. ‘If your mother’s against it, there’s little more to be said, is there? After all, she’s his guardian.’

‘No.’

That incisive response brought Libby’s gaze flying to his. He was so big and darkly dominating in the confined area of the trailer that she could feel him, touch him, breathe him in almost, his lethally magnetic presence with the subtle spice of the cologne he used infiltrating the space around them, percolating the very air she needed to fill her lungs.

‘My mother’s too weary these days to cope with an energetic child. I’m the boy’s official guardian now.’

‘But I thought…’ Libby’s words tailed off. How could it be possible? Her son. Her baby. In the care of Romano Vincenzo? The man who had made his distrust of her felt in the way his parents had never done. Subtly and with a hard-edged intelligence that had hurt even more because, surprisingly, there had been odd times when he had shown snatches of consideration towards her.

‘You thought what, Libby?’ His hard mouth twisted with bitter derision. ‘That he’d be handed over to someone else? Packaged off as just a nuisance? In the way?’

As he thought she had packaged him off when Luca had died?

‘So you see, cara,’ he said with a controlled softness that sent shivers through her yearning insides, ‘whatever you decide to do, or how you act or decide to treat my nephew, you’re only answerable to me. Well?’

One thick eyebrow moved questioningly as she reached for her jeans. She could sense his eyes following her every movement as she pulled them on, hips moving with unintentional sensuality in her keenness to wriggle into them, her breath quickening from what he might be thinking, and from the sudden reckless speculation of what it would be like to have those long, dark hands shaping every curve of her lissom frame.

‘Well what?’ she challenged acridly, pushing the fitted shirt into her waistband, her movements agitated from the outrageous and unwelcome images that had suddenly invaded her mind. ‘I come back and fill the gap in Giorgio’s life until you suddenly decide you don’t need me any more?’ She couldn’t bear that. Didn’t think she could cope with the heartache of parting from him again once she had been allowed to play even a small part in his life. And yet she would! she resolved desperately. No matter how much it cost her emotionally, she would do it! Just to see him. Be with him again. Hold him in her arms, if only for the shortest time.

‘It’s Giorgio who needs you,’ Romano reminded her coldly. ‘I, fortunately, have been spared that particular privation.’

His words stung, as he’d intended them to.

‘Have you really?’ It was a shrill little retaliation as she battled not to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. Proudly she faced him with her head held high. Yet now, as her eyes clashed with the glittering depths of his, she was shocked to recognise the familiar desire she’d become accustomed to seeing in the eyes of nearly every man she met, only with this man she could tell it was a dark obsession for which he despised himself.

Way down inside her something throbbed. Some equally dark emotion she didn’t want to acknowledge.

‘Why do you hate me so much, Romano?’ For all her maturity her voice still quavered as that eighteen-year-old’s had done. ‘Is it because you hold me responsible for Luca’s death?’

His features seemed to darken from a well of repressed emotion. Clearly it still hurt to talk about the brother who had been six years his junior.

‘I’ve never blamed you for that.’

‘Well, bravo!’ Libby’s head came up in a toss of flaming cynicism. ‘Why not? Your father did!’

‘But I’m not my father!’ He was only barely restraining a surprising degree of anger, as something in what she had said sent a surge of colour slashing across his hard-boned cheeks. A second later, however, and he was back in control, though his features were still rigid as he said with marked acceptance, ‘Luca was careless in his driving that day—and he paid for it.’ He saw a shadow cross her face, swift as a bird, leaving a crease between the fine arches of her velvety brows. ‘And hate,’ he said now, ‘is rather too strong a word I’d use to describe any emotion I felt in connection with you. Hate is the flip-side of love—’ his tone derided, his sharp eyes assessing her for every change of expression, the smallest chink in her wavering composure ‘—and I think we’d both agree that whatever else was bubbling under the surface of our relevant personalities, love certainly didn’t come into it.’

Uncomfortably, Libby swallowed. However had they managed to get on to this?

Deciding though that he was merely trying to unsettle her, she ignored the prickly tension creeping through her to say, ‘So if I did agree to what you’re asking, what am I expected to do at the end of it all? When things improve? Just walk away?’

‘That shouldn’t be too difficult for you.’

Libby’s breath seemed to catch in her lungs as his remark drove into her like an antagonist’s spear.

‘How do you know what would be difficult for me? How do you know what it’s like? What it’s ever been like for me?’ she challenged, her flush deepening, her breasts rising and falling heavily from a long-buried anger that had no outlet, no hope of ever being assuaged.

‘My heart bleeds for you,’ he said, one long, tanned hand coming to rest on his ribcage. He knew only too well about women who gave up their babies for a better life!

‘You don’t have one!’ From the little she had read about him, there didn’t seem to be one woman among this very eligible billionaire’s acquaintance who could keep him interested for more than a few months, let alone commit him to undying devotion to her!

He laughed without humour, long ebony lashes drooping, concealing the darkened depths of his beautiful eyes. ‘That, cara mia, is rich coming from you. How much more heartless can you get than a woman who abandons her child?’

‘I didn’t abandon him!’ Pain, raw and crushing propelled Libby to her feet. She could feel his contempt beating against her like a tangible thing. ‘Anyway, I’m not the first woman ever to have had a baby adopted!’

‘No, you’re not the first by any means,’ Romano agreed, disdain twisting his mouth as he delivered with hard incision, ‘but it takes a certain kind of girl who can hand over her baby purely for cash!’

Libby felt as if she’d been hit in the solar plexus, the cruelty of his statement almost making her double up. She had to restrain a strong urge to punch her late husband’s brother right back between his spectacular eyes.

He must, however, have seen the anguish corrugating her forehead because he said with quiet, yet unmistakable censure, ‘It does sound rather distasteful, doesn’t it?’

Raw with emotion, Libby couldn’t answer. Nor could she get to grips with the fact that he could actually believe it.

‘Dio sa! You don’t deserve it, Libby. But I’m offering you the chance to make amends.’

‘Make amends?’ She looked at him obliquely, hot, angry tears smarting against her eyes. Just who did he think he was? Her judge and jury? ‘How magnanimous of you!’ she bit out, her defences in shreds. But, needing to ease the ever-present guilt, redeem herself in her own eyes if no one else’s, she was crying out in bitter denial, ‘I didn’t sell my child!’

The firm masculine mouth tugged with grim scepticism. ‘Find a way of telling that to Giorgio when he grows up.’

Pain darted across Libby’s already tortured features, pale now against the rich red lustre of her hair. ‘That surely isn’t what you…what your parents…’ She couldn’t bring herself to finish. It was too awful even to contemplate that they might have said as much to the little boy.

‘You think I’d be—’ he broke off, his eyes hard ‘—let anyone be that cruel?’

A surge of relief lifted Libby’s chest. Luca’s brother might feel only contempt for her, but he did seem to have some sensitivity where Giorgio was concerned.

‘I have evidence of it, Libby,’ he went on in those deep, relentless, self-assured tones. ‘You were paid…’ He paused before spelling out the exorbitant sum of money that his father had drafted into her bank account on the handing over of her eight-week old son. ‘And unless my accounts are well and truly—what is the expression?—up the creek—there isn’t any doubt that all the money was cashed within a few months.’

Well, he owed me something! Libby wanted to scream, though nothing had, or ever could, compensate for, or ease the loss of her child.

‘Yes, I cashed it,’ she uttered vehemently, because she had no intention of explaining to this hard-headed Italian who had formed so many erroneous opinions about her what she had done with the money. He was a Vincenzo after all and, with the exception of Luca, just like the rest. ‘I had to live.’

‘Si.’ There was only raw cynicism in his reply as his gaze fell on a back issue of a leading magazine someone had left on the cosmetics shelf. The cover featured a Ferrari with Libby draped over its gleaming red bonnet, dripping with the gold jewellery she had been advertising. ‘And quite well if that fancy car you drive out there and that string of homes you appear to own besides your expensive London apartment are anything to go by. One in Jersey. A couple on the continent. Two beach houses in Florida. Not bad for a girl who started out without a bean to her name.’

No, she had all that, she accepted gratefully. But, just like with the money, it was none of his business, and she was darned if she’d be made to feel accountable to him for why she had invested in so many homes!

Her chin coming up, exposing the pale line of her throat, she said simply, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to throw at me?’

His dark gaze plundered hers as though searching for something beyond their defensive green depths.

‘I appreciate that you have commitments. That it isn’t going to be easy for you to…drag yourself away.’ Carefully chosen words, Libby felt, to make each statement a precision-aimed snipe. The lining of his jacket gleamed darkly as he reached for something in his inside pocket, the action exposing the dark shading of body hair through the fine material of his shirt. ‘So name your price,’ he invited silkily. ‘I’m sure together we can come to a suitable figure.’

To see Giorgio? He thought she needed payment before she’d consider helping her son!

‘How dare you?’ She lashed out at the black leather folder he was opening, almost hitting it out of his hands. ‘Get out! Get out of here if all you can do is stand there and sling insults at me!’

From the way his brows lifted, clearly her reaction had taken him unawares. His hands were remarkably steady, though, as he repocketed the offending cheque-book. ‘Forgive me,’ he said coldly. ‘I forgot. These days Vincenzo money doesn’t hold the same attraction for you that it did.’

‘No, that’s right,’ Libby breathed, hating him more with every second that passed. If he wanted to think the worst about her, then let him think it! ‘And as for my car and all my houses…I do have my image to think about!’

She thought he would come back with some further cutting remark, but all he did was stand there looking down at her for a few dissecting moments from his superior height.

Eventually he took something out of his wallet, handed it to her. A card with the familiar Vincenzo logo printed at the top. ‘I’ll be here in London for a couple of days, ‘ he stated in a cool, unperturbed voice. ‘If you’ve a glimmer of conscience or compassion behind that beautiful face of yours—call me. It might do you good to step down into the real world for a while—see how the other half lives.’

His comments flayed as he pushed back the sliding door, his broad shoulders filling for a moment the gap he had created, before he stepped lithely down from the trailer and strode away.

Staring after his lean, elegant figure, Libby felt frustrated tears bite behind her eyes. The real world, he’d said. Was that what he called the Vincenzo mansion and its accompanying millions? When it was his and his family’s world that had taught her how the other half lived! The half who could buy anything, threaten anything, just as long as they got exactly what they wanted, when they wanted it, regardless of who got hurt!

Her knuckles whitening as she gripped the open door, anguish a crushing weight in her chest, she almost gave in to the urge to call him back. Tell him that she would go to Italy with him. Now if he demanded it of her. Agree to anything he stipulated just so long as she could see Giorgio again. But he was already folding himself into the low sports saloon parked in front of her own favoured Porsche that he had spoken of so critically, and the next instant the powerful car was growling away.

Without even bothering to cream off her make-up, Libby packed up her few belongings and followed his example. The day, accommodatingly bright and cloudless for the shoot, was turning overcast as she headed back to the city and the rain had set in heavily before she had got very far. She tried to keep her mind on her driving, but even concentrating hard on the wet road through the double speed of the windscreen wipers couldn’t keep the bitter memories at bay.