Читать книгу Stolen Bride - Sally Carr - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

CARA looked at the woods, sunk in shadowy silence, the sun glinting through the trees, then at Finn. ‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ she asked softly.

‘You made your choice back there in the church,’ he said quietly. ‘Now you have to decide whether to go on or back down.’

She gazed steadily into his face, the nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said as decisively as she could. ‘I’ll come.’

‘Attagirl.’ He smiled encouragingly, and to her astonishment she felt herself beginning to smile back.

‘Right, come on,’ he said briskly. ‘Out of the car.’

‘Out?’ she echoed. ‘But we’re in- the middle of nowhere!’ Suddenly she looked at him with new eyes, their previous conversation doing nothing to stop the panic spattering through her veins. ‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered. ‘You’re not—’

‘A part-time rapist?’ he supplied softly, a look in his eyes she couldn’t quite interpret. ‘Or maybe a mad axe murderer?’ He shook his head. ‘No, these days I seem to get my kicks out of ruining Mafia weddings.’

‘My family hasn’t got anything to do with the Mafia,’ she said hotly. ‘I keep telling you.’

Finn looked disinterestedly out the window. ‘If you say so,’ he said calmly. ‘Maybe I’ve got this all wrong, after all. Maybe I should just drop you off here. And then you can go home, explain everything in that wonderfully persuasive way you have, and everything’ll be hunky-dory.

‘Your uncle will be terribly understanding, of course, and Luca...’ He paused. ‘Well, Luca will probably just have a couple of aspirin and a lie-down in a darkened room and then forget all about it.’

‘Leave my family out of this,’ she snapped.

He leant towards her. ‘Honey, I would love to leave your family out of this. But I don’t think that’s quite what they have in mind. The sooner we get to England and I get some protection for you, the better.’

Their eyes locked, and Carenza bit her lip. ‘Why do you want me to get out of the car?’ she asked steadily.

‘Because we need to do something about that dress,’ he replied. ‘It’s just the tiniest bit of a giveaway, don’t you think?’

She stared at Finn for a long moment, her thudding pulse subsiding. Then with an effort she nodded and got out of the car. She stood by the door, uncertain, watchful as he got out on his side with an easy grace.

There was something about him that drew the eye, that made her want to look at nothing else, but when he turned and glanced at her over the top of the car, she felt herself beginning inexplicably to blush.

He was coming around to her side, and she turned to meet him, beginning to attempt a smile and then instinctively freezing as she noticed the knife in his hand.

He waggled it at her and she stepped back, wondering whether she should try to run. The strange thing was, she didn’t feel frightened of him. But maybe he really was a crazy man. Madmen often seemed charming, didn’t they? Perhaps he was someone with violent delusions. She took another step back and felt the car hard against her.

‘What...what are you doing?’ Her voice was wobbly, but she couldn’t help it. She forced herself to lift her chin and look him straight in the eye.

‘Here,’ he said impatiently, turning the knife around and handing it to her, handle first. ‘Take it.’

She looked at it blankly as her fingers curled around it, noting mechanically as the tension eased out of her body that it was just an ordinary penknife, and then stared at him. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ she asked.

.He moved his hands irritably. ‘I don’t know,’ he retorted. ‘But you have to do something with that dress of yours. Cut those frilly bits off, cut it shorter, anything. I don’t care, but make it look more like a normal dress.’

She gazed at the creased white silk and then at him. ‘I can’t cut this up,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a work of art. It was made by Elsa Schiapparelli in nineteen thirty something. The hand-stitching alone—’

His jaw clenched and he took a step towards her. ‘I don’t care if it was made by Elsa the lion in Born Free, just do something with it!’

She looked into his lean, lightly tanned face and bit her lip. ‘Maybe I could borrow some of your clothes,’ she said at last.

He slapped his forehead with his hand. ‘You know,’ he said softly, ‘I thought I had everything for this trip. The penknife that has so many attachments I’m sure there’s a fold-up bicycle among them, an idiot-proof camera, a well-respected credit card. And you know what? I left all my dresses at home. Isn’t that extraordinary?’

Cara ripped the flowers from her hair and threw them on the ground. She wanted to stamp on them, she was so suddenly, furiously angry. ‘You are the most impossible man I have ever met,’ she stormed. ‘You just walk in and steal me from my wedding as though you had ice water in your veins, and now you are acting like an outraged duchess at the idea of me wearing one of your shirts.’

Finn’s mouth opened and then closed with a snap. Without another word he yanked open the boot and tore out a grip. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So sometimes you’re allowed to have better ideas than me. But we’ve wasted enough time. It’ll be dark soon, and I want to get moving.’ He smiled. ‘I keep thinking I hear a fleet of Mercedes thundering up the road, with Luca at the head doing his impersonation of Vlad the Impaler.’

A thin chill went down her spine as she thought of how terrifying Luca could be when he was angry. She looked straight into Finn’s face.

‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded.

‘You don’t look particularly scared at the idea of being chased by Luca,’ she said softly.

He shrugged. ‘He hasn’t caught me yet,’ he replied quietly. ‘And in any case, I’m more worried about you.’ He looked at the sky and then at her. ‘At least I stand no chance of him deciding to marry me.’

‘It’s not funny,’ she said shortly.

‘I’m not laughing,’ he replied. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you got a move on.’

Cara stepped towards him, then turned around. In a voice as impersonal as she could make it, she said, ‘You’ll have to undo me. I can’t reach all the catches.’

There was a short sigh and then silence, but she knew that he was standing right behind her. It wasn’t the feel of his body heat, or the soft brush of his breath on the nape of her neck, but something about his presence she simply couldn’t explain. Something she had never before experienced. And as his fingers began to free each cunningly hidden hook and eye, fleetingly touching her skin, she drew in a sharp breath.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked softly, ‘did I stick a pin in you by mistake?’

‘No,’ she replied unsteadily.

‘There,’ he said, his voice almost too controlled as he freed the last hook.

She turned quickly. ‘Finn—’ She was so close to him, he was almost embracing her. ‘Why...’ She swallowed. ‘Why are you doing this, really? Why did you step in like that?’

He said nothing, but his arms closed about her, and he held her hazel eyes with his. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to rest the palms of her hands on his shirt. She could feel the play of his muscles under the cotton, and wondered what his chest looked like without... She shook her head. This was ridiculous. Why couldn’t she get a grip on reality? It must be some sort of emotional reaction to everything that had happened, she thought. But she didn’t pull away. Somehow, inexplicably, she didn’t want to.

His fingers brushed her cheek. ‘You are a very beautiful woman, Cara,’ he said softly.

‘That’s not an answer,’ she accused, determined to hang on to the last shreds of her self-control, in spite of the fact that it felt so right, so comforting, to be held by him.

There were a few faint freckles on his high cheekbones. ‘What sort of answer would you like?’ he murmured, taking the pins from her carefully styled dark gold hair and watching it cascade thickly down her back.

‘A sensible answer,’ she said, trying hard and failing to look away.

‘Like this?’ he asked, as he bent his head and kissed her.

Her body tautened at the feel of his lips on hers, coaxing, flattering, not at all like Luca’s. She pulled away at that thought, but Finn’s hands were warm on her back and, astonished at herself, she relaxed.

His lips pressed harder, became more demanding, his fingers trailing down her spine, and Cara reached up to touch his hair, the palm of her hand sliding over his jaw, the faint roughness of his cheek. This was an experience she wanted to go on forever.

And then he stopped. His hands dropped to his sides and he looked at her and smiled grimly. ‘Some wedding this is turning out to be.’

It was as if he had broken a spell. Her face flaming, she pulled back, and he let her go. ‘I don’t know why I let you do that,’ she snapped, snatching away her hands.

His fingers imprisoned one of her wrists and he lifted it to his mouth, kissing the pulse point, holding her once more with his eyes.

‘Let me go,’ she demanded, knowing he could feel the blood thundering through her veins.

‘I wouldn’t move too fast if I were you, princess,’ he remarked. ‘That dress is staying up now by sheer willpower.’

‘I said, let me go,’ she snarled.

With a little smile he dropped her hand, and after a mock bow, he turned and walked to the edge of the trees.

Cara breathed out in one gusty sigh. Making sure he had his back to her, she let the dress drop to her feet. She ran to his suitcase, her high heels wobbling perilously in the soft earth. With a muttered oath, she kicked them off, knelt and flipped the catches on the case, then began rummaging desperately through his clothes.

‘There’s a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts at the bottom,’ said Finn.

She looked up to find him staring at her. ‘Go away!’ she screamed.

‘Cara,’ he said gently. ‘We’re not exactly in the fitting rooms of Saks Fifth Avenue. Get the damned clothes and get in the car.’ Blushing furiously, she did as he said, pulling on the shirt and running to the passenger seat as he stuffed the dress, the wreath and her shoes into his case.

‘Attagirl,’ he said, sliding into the driving seat and taking a good look around. ‘Just getting dusk now. It’ll be fully dark in a few minutes, and with luck no one will notice us at all on the autostrada.’

Cara stared at him, the memory of what they had done suddenly becoming horribly real. ‘Luca’s men will see us get on,’ she whispered. ‘They’ll be watching for us when we go through the toll booth.’

He glanced at her. ‘We’re not going through the toll booth,’ he said at last, starting the car and driving onto the road.

‘But there is no other way,’ she objected.

Finn shook his head. ‘This road leads to the con-struction site for the new section of the autostrada,’ he said equably. ‘I was looking at it yesterday, funnily enough, and it’s just about completed. We just get on it, drive along till we hit the main autostrada and then, voilà.’

‘Are you French?’ she asked after a short pause, thinking for the first time of that strange lilt to his otherwise perfect English. ‘Because you are certainly mad.’

‘Irish American, actually,’ he said mildly.

‘Even worse,’ she replied glumly, shrugging irritably as he glanced sidewise at her.

‘Have you any better ideas?’ he inquired.

She shook her head.

‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘At least this one has the advantage of surprise. No one will be expecting us to use this route, and when we get on the autostrada we just keep on it till we hit the French border.’

‘Uncle Pancrazio is a very powerful man,’ she told him. ‘And so is Luca. They have contacts everywhere, and they’re not going to stop until they find us.’

‘You think we should give up?’ Finn asked softly.

Cara clasped her hands together tightly. ‘I don’t know why you stepped in like that this afternoon,’ she began. ‘I don’t believe it was anything to do with your stupid book. But maybe you should just drop me off here and get away on your own. The risk is too great for you. I...I’ll go back to my family and apologise.’

‘And marry Luca,’ Finn added softly.

‘He probably won’t want me now,’ she said shakily. ‘Anyway, I can stand up for myself. Don’t bother about me.’

Finn screeched to a stop among the piled-up building materials on the road site. Cara put her hands out to stop herself from hitting the windscreen, then looked at him. ‘What did you do that for?’ she demanded.

Finn was glaring at her, and she sat up straight. ‘Well?’ she asked, trying hard and failing to stare him down.

‘If you think I went through all that this afternoon just so you could turn yourself into some sort of sacrificial virgin on my behalf,’ he snarled, ‘you better think again.’

‘It’s the only reasonable way out,’ she said furiously.

‘All this talk of escape to England is just so much hot air. There’s no way they’re not going to catch us.’

He stared hard at her. ‘Just tell me, once and for all,’ he said grimly. ‘Do you or do you not want to marry Luca?’

Cara moved her hands impatiently, pleadingly. ‘Of course I don’t want to marry him. I told you the truth. I just got led along by degrees until I found myself right on the edge of the chasm. But the price you’ll pay for pulling me back is too great.’

‘What do you think your family will do if they catch us?’ His voice was soft, almost conversational, as if he was discussing the outcome of a local election.

She looked at her lap. ‘I don’t know,’ she said dully.

He reached over and tipped her chin. ‘Cara, that’s the first time you’ve tried to lie to me, and you’re not very good at it. We both know that we’ve gone too far to back down. If you went back now, your life wouldn’t be worth living.’

‘At least I would be alive,’ she replied bitterly. ‘You have to get away. You’ve risked enough.’

A slow smile spread over his face as he looked at her.

‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What are you smiling at?’

‘You,’ he replied, putting the car into gear and beginning towards the distant ribbon of lights that marked the autostrada. ‘You’re a very brave woman, Cara, but I think I’ll take a rain check on your offer.’

‘It’s no use arguing with you, is it?’ she asked softly.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not this time. And do me a favour, will you?’

‘What?’ she asked.

He flicked her a glance. ‘Do up your damn seat belt before I have a nervous breakdown.’

It was almost fully dark, and there was no moon. Cara pulled off her tights and pulled on Finn’s shorts. They were impossibly big on her, but with luck the shirt would hide the bagginess. She glanced at Finn, tensing as he slowed down.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘There are cars guarding the slip road,’ he said. ‘Your family is more thorough than I gave them credit for.’ He glanced at her and squeezed her hand. ‘But maybe we can still get through. Get in the back, on the floor.’

Without a word, she did as he said. Finn drove steadily towards Luca’s men. He wound down the window, and she held her breath. There were shouts and then Finn answered. ‘Would you believe it,’ he yelled in perfect Italian. ‘Three pairs of lovers on this stretch of Godforsaken road, and none of them were our birds. I’m going to take a turn on the autostrada, see if they’ve managed to escape the net.’

Cara lay on the floor behind his seat, her fists clenched, waiting for the angry shouts to come, the gunshots, willing Finn to accelerate, get the hell out of this crazy place. But he just kept going smoothly on.

‘It’s all right,’ he said at last, slipping into English as if it were the most natural way in the world to speak to her. ‘You can come out now.’

Warily she risked a quick look out the window. She could see nothing except the swift passing lights of cars. They were on the autostrada. Stiffly she got up and climbed into the front seat. ‘You have the luck of...’ She shrugged helplessly.

‘The Irish?’ he supplied, smiling into the darkness.

‘Of the devil!’ she retorted.

‘Why are you so cross?’ he asked mildly.

‘I am not cross!’ she snapped.

‘Of course not.’

There was silence, and she looked at the cars going by. For the moment, at least, she was free.

‘You could have got yourself killed back there,’ she said at last.

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But there are worse fates.’

She stared at him wonderingly. ‘Such as?’

He cocked a glance at her, then stared at the road. ‘Such as marrying Luca Finzi,’ he said quietly.

It had been dark for hours, but it was still hot and it had not taken Cara long to discover that Finn’s hire car had no air-conditioning.

The stale, warm fumes blowing in through her window from the traffic were giving her a headache. She had a cramp in her right foot, which no amount of rubbing would get rid of. And every few moments she had to look over her shoulder, as if somehow she could pick out Luca’s car from all the others.

‘Relax,’ soothed Finn. ‘It’s highly unlikely they know what kind of car we have, or the registration. They don’t even know for certain that we’re on the autostrada or what direction we’re going in.’

Cara bit her lip. ‘I may be naive, Finn, but I’m not stupid. They’re bound to have figured out by now that it was you on the slip road. And you know as well as I that they. can’t be far behind.’

She looked at his strong profile in alternate shade and light from the other cars. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said quietly. ‘What odds do you give for our success?’

He sighed. ‘I’d rather give odds on a dead horse winning the Kentucky Derby, if you want the truth,’ he said at last. ‘But we’re not done yet.’

They both looked in silence at the road ahead, then Finn glanced at her. ‘It’s not entirely hopeless, you know,’ he said. ‘At this precise moment, we’re free.’

‘You always were free,’ she replied softly. ‘You didn’t have to rescue me.’

He didn’t reply to that, and Cara wondered again if some ulterior motive had prompted him to come to her aid. There had to be one. He couldn’t have done it just for the sake of a book. Money, maybe? Had some other family decided the marriage would make Luca and her uncle a too-powerful combination and paid Finn to step in?

She thought of the look in Finn’s eyes when he had taken her hand in the church and sighed. Somehow she didn’t like to think he had accepted money to take her away. And besides, nobody, not even she, had known she would rebel like that at the last moment.

Maybe he was just crazy. After all, who in his right mind would bring out a book like that about Luca and then attend his wedding?

And why would a complete stranger help her for her own sake? And how did he know she spoke English?

Finn’s voice broke in on her thoughts. ‘You’re thinking so loudly it’s disturbing me,’ he remarked. ‘What’s bugging you now?

She swallowed. ‘I was wondering if you were safe to be with,’ she said frankly. ‘Because I am beginning to think you are certainly not right in the head.’

He shrugged. ‘Can you think of anybody in your family who is completely sane?’ he inquired. ‘Your uncle, for instance—’

‘Leave my uncle out of it!’ she broke in hotly.

‘All right,’ Finn went on. ‘Luca, then. Now there is a man who is definitely one plate short of a picnic basket. He is so macho your uncle probably keeps him on a leash and feeds him the remains of door-to-door salesmen.’

Cara stared at him. No one had ever spoken so casually about her family before. So insultingly. ‘How dare you!’ she fumed.

He turned to look at her briefly. ‘Okay, so I was exaggerating, but so what? The trouble with you, Cara, is that you’ve been brought up to accept unquestioningly everything your uncle and Luca tell you.’

Her mouth opened but she could think of nothing to say.

He went on. ‘I’ve studied the way your family does business for a long time. And I thought nothing could surprise me about them any more. But I have to admit I was as surprised as Luca when you turned at the altar and just said no. He looked like a guy whose pet rabbit had just pulled a gun on him.’

Cara’s jaw clenched. ‘So you think I’m just a pet rabbit?’

He held up his hand. ‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘When you arrived at the church I thought you were a sacrificial lamb. Now...’ He put his hand on the steering wheel. ‘Now, I don’t know what to make of you. Except that you’re probably as crazy as you think I am.’

She stared out the windscreen. Sacrificial lamb, indeed. Just who did this man think he was?

He glanced at her. ‘You must be tired,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Try to sleep.’

‘I don’t want to,’ she snapped. And was immediately angry with herself for how childish she sounded. She rubbed her hands over her face and tried to stifle a yawn. ‘I can’t sleep. I still don’t even know if I can trust you or not.’

‘I’m the only hope you’ve got,’ he said drily. ‘And, in any case, what do you think I’m going to do—try to rape you with one foot on the accelerator? Interesting idea,’ he added meditatively. ‘Especially on the autostrada. But I have to admit I’m not that much of an acrobat.’

She leaned her head back. He really had the most beautiful voice, she thought sleepily. But the things he said with it! She had never, ever met a man like him.

Soon she fell into an uneasy doze, peopled with unsettling images. Finn glanced at her face, and with a wry smile kept on driving.

She woke with a start as he pulled into a service station. ‘Where are we?’ she asked muzzily.

‘Past Rome,’ he replied. ‘Nearly at Florence. ‘It’s about two o‘clock, and if we keep this up, we should be in France for lunch tomorrow.’

Lunch. Her brain seemed to wake up all of a sudden at the word, and she tried to remember when she had last eaten. She looked at him hopefully. ‘I don’t suppose we could have something to eat now?’ she ventured.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘Keep your head down.’

Cara looked at the parking area in front of the shop and restaurant. Even at this hour in the morning it was busy. And noisy. The people were mostly families and some young couples, all eating snacks and laughing in the velvet darkness. There was no danger here. Nobody looked like one of Luca’s men.

But it was still difficult not to feel scared. Not to wonder if even now Luca was pulling up behind them and getting out of his car... She shook herself crossly. She mustn’t think like that. She couldn’t afford to panic.

Sliding down in her seat, Cara noticed a briefcase on the floor. She must have knocked it off the back seat when Finn was smuggling her past Luca’s men. She grabbed the handle to heft it up, but the catch hadn’t been fastened, and a bundle of papers cascaded over the floor.

Muttering crossly under her breath she began to pick them up, and then stopped, amazed, as she read her name.

The papers were cuttings, from English newspapers, and she frowned in concentration as she began to read. Talking to Finn had brought everything she had forgotten flooding back.

Including some things, maybe, that were best left untouched in her memory, like Sarah and her uncle having that enormous row when she had been about eleven. Sarah had left shortly after that. All that had been left were a few classic novels with Sarah’s name written on the flyleaf. Occasionally Cara read them, but only occasionally. The clean, expensive smell of the thick cream pages was enough to bring back the memory of a woman she had once hoped would become her stepmother. And who instead had disappeared out of her life for ever.

‘Carenza Gambini.’ She stared in amazement at her printed name, her mind focusing once more on the present. What was she doing in a newspaper? ‘The beautiful but obviously gormless niece of one of the Mafia’s greatest mobsters is set to marry the equally ruthless Luca Finzi. She better get his breakfast eggs just right, or Lucky, as he is so imaginatively known, will probably be signing quite another contract for her. Until death do they part...’

Cara’s heart pounded as she read the piece over and over again. Is this what people all over England had read about her? There was a crunch of gravel by the car and she looked up, straight into Finn’s eyes.

‘And may I ask why you’re rummaging around in my briefcase?’ he demanded.

She held the cutting out to him with shaking fingers. ‘Did you have anything to do with this?’ she demanded.

He looked straight into her eyes. ‘I wrote it.’

‘You wrote it!’ she screeched. ‘It’s rubbish!’

He shrugged. ‘It pays.’

She pushed against the door. ‘Let me out of the car,’ she snapped.

‘What are you going to do?’ he drawled. ‘Stick me with a hairpin?’

‘Let me out!’ she repeated.

‘It’s all gravel out here,’ he said. ‘You’ll hurt your feet.’

She glared at him. ‘I want to hurt you!’

He shifted his weight and opened the door. She swung her legs out of the car. He was right, it was gravel. Determinedly she stood to face him, then grabbed at her shorts as they fell down.

‘You could use your tights as a belt,’ Finn offered.

‘Don’t give me advice,’ she snarled. ‘How many other lies have you written about me?’

He rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know. After meeting you I’m not sure what the truth is any more.’

Crossly she stamped her foot on the gravel and stifled a yelp of pain. ‘How dare you call me gormless!’

‘It was a logical assumption,’ he replied calmly. ‘Given that you had just agreed to marry Luca.’

She pulled out another cutting and waved it in his face. ‘And this!’ she yelled. ‘This one claims I spend all my time shopping!’

‘Don’t you?’ he asked, interested.

She drew in her breath sharply and glared at him. ‘I’m going to the ladies’,’ she snapped, and before he could do anything she had spun round and scuttled barefoot to the main building, the gravel like hot coals on her feet.

In the ladies’ her face looked like a ghost’s in the brightly lit wall of mirrors. She rubbed hastily at her cheeks with a dampened paper. towel. With almost savage satisfaction she wiped off the too-bright lipstick and the thick mascara the professional make-up girl had insisted on.

That had been for the wedding pictures, she had been told. She had hated it, but naturally enough, her opinion had not been taken into account. She ran her fingers through her disordered hair and rinsed her mouth.

Strange, really, that she should belong to such a thoroughly Italian family and yet look nothing like them. Thick gold hair, pale skin that, if she wasn’t careful, burnt before it tanned, and those wide hazel eyes.

Her father had been like that, too, her uncle had said. A throwback to Roman times, he had told her, laughing. But her parents had died when she was a baby, and the photographs she had of them were blurred and mostly out of focus.

Perhaps Finn could tell her more. She had never seen the book he had written about Luca. She had just accepted that it was a lie. Money-grubbing filth, as Luca had put it. Now she began to think she would very much like to read it.

Washing her face and hands in cool water was heaven after that long, hot drive. She soaked another paper towel and bathed the back of her neck, then, shrugging helplessly at her reflection, went outside.

The car was not where Finn had parked it. She registered the fact almost unconsciously, and then as she realised the implications her heart flopped sickeningly.

He had left her. Deserted her. She stared at the spot where the car had been, then looked wildly around. Had he really gone?

She almost screamed when a hand descended on her shoulder and spun her round. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Finn snapped.

She gazed at him in shock. ‘I... I told you, I went to the ladies’,’ she replied as calmly as she could.

‘On which planet?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know how long you’ve been? I could have filled up ten cars at that gas station in the time it’s taken you to mess about in there.’

She glared at him, anger replacing her fear. ‘What’s it to you?’ she retorted.