that the car was passing familiar landmarks. They were within ten miles of her family home, she registered uncomfortably.
'Where do these people live?' she asked stiffly. 'Not far from here.'
'I grew up around here,' she divulged reluctantly. 'You could be more precise.'
'You can give me directions when we reach your home town.'
Ashley stopped breathing. 'Is that where they live?' she demanded.
Vito cast her a rueful glance and sighed. 'I'm taking you home, cara.'
She froze in shock. 'I don't believe you!'
'I phoned your mother yesterday and she invited us down to lunch-'
'Stop the car!' Ashley gasped. 'I'm not going!' 'Yes, you are,' Vito contradicted flatly. 'And you're going to mend fences. It's my fault that you're at odds with your family. This is the one thing that I can do for you-'
'Do for me?' she echoed, on the edge of hysteria. Completely misunderstanding the source of her distress, Vito dealt her a soothing but arrogant smile. 'They won't reject you. Your mother can't wait to see you. She was in tears on the phone.'
Ashley could believe that, but she was equally well aware that her mother had made not the slightest effort to see her in recent years. Sylvia Forrester had abided obediently by her husband's rules, so why on earth was she inviting them to lunch? Was it possible that time had softened her father? She wanted to believe that so much it hurt. She had missed her mother desperately, would have long since arrived up on the doorstep of her own volition had she not been conscious that such defiance would only cause more trouble for her mother. 'My father hates me,' she confided tightly.
'Fathers don't hate their children. My father would have been equally outraged if one of my sisters had lived with a man outside marriage. The situation is quite different now that we are married, and tempers will have cooled long ago,' he drawled with complete conviction.
He didn't understand, and already they were driving through the town. He didn't need her directions. Staverston wasn't that big and her father's car showroom dominated the end of the main street. Her home was only fifty yards beyond, set back from the road, an Edwardian detached behind a low brick wall. Climbing out of the car, Vito scanned her paralysed stillness. 'Come on,' he urged.
Susan answered the doorbell, looking pale and tense. Vito introduced himself with immense calm. 'We're out in the garden,' she said uncomfortably. 'Mum invited us down. I hope you don't mind.'
'The more, the merrier,' Ashley quipped. 'Tim?' 'He's in Greece with his friends. Dad's treat.' Ashley moved towards the French windows which led out to the garden and abruptly Susan barred her path, embarrassment and anxiety mingling in her gaze. 'Dad doesn't know you're coming,' she shared in a tremulous rush. 'I can't believe Mum's doing this-' Before Ashley could respond, her father's harsh voice sounded forth from the kitchen. 'You utterly stupid woman!' he was thundering in a well-remembered tone that brought Ashley out in a cold sweat. 'I'm not going to eat foreign muck like that! All this palaver for that gutless fool Arnold? How dare you waste my money on…'
For a timeless moment of horror the three of them were a frozen tableau. Ashley could hear her mother's voice raised in a hideously familiar whine of apology and placation. Her stomach turned over sickly.
'Do come out into the garden,' Susan said almost pleadingly to Vito.
Ashley was cringing with humiliation, unable to look at Vito, her cheeks as scarlet as her sister's. Vito would have to draw on every ounce of his well-bred savoir-faire to get through even a brief meeting with her father. She was unnerved by the prospect of the coming scene and devastated by the news that her mother had invited them without her father's permission.
Beyond the French windows, she watched her father’s stocky but broadly built figure powering angrily out to the patio where Arnold was sitting reading a newspaper. Her hand touched Vito's, staying him. 'I think I'd better do this on my own,' she said tautly.
'Good idea,' Susan cut in brightly. 'Let me get you a drink, Vito.'
Ashley crossed the patio. Her father was telling Arnold that only wimps played golf and Arnold was calmly agreeing with him, impervious to the insult intended. A quiet, unaggressive man, Arnold flatly refused to be drawn into disputes with his difficult father-in-law.
'Dad.' Her voice wavered as she fell still in the sunlight, her shoulders back, her chin raised high. Hunt Forrester rose like an angry bull at a gate, his full face set in lines of disbelief. 'What the hell are you doing here’. Ashley forced herself forward. 'D-don't you think it's time we made peace?'
'You shameless little bitch, how dare you show your face here?' he roared, striding over to grip her by the shoulders. 'I told you never to come back, didn't I? You don't belong to this family any more! You never did, you little slut! But you can't leave us alone, can you? You damn near put Tim in prison with your shenanigans-'
'Dad, please…' His fingers were biting like steel pincers into her shrinking flesh. With every spitting syllable he was giving her a violent shake to punctuate his fury.
'Release my wife.' Vito's intervention carried at least ten generations of aristocratic cool and disdain.
'Stay out of this, Vito!' Ashley cried fearfully.
'Or you might get hurt,' Hunt Forrester sneered, sizing up the younger man's superbly well-cut suit and silk shirt, his contempt blatant.
'Your daughter is pregnant,' Vito delivered icily. Ashley was dizzy and sick. Somewhere in the background she could hear her mother quietly sobbing. It was all so horribly familiar but for the first time she realised that she didn't need to be afraid of her father. Vito would not allow him to harm her.
'So that's how you got him to the altar!' her father gibed hatefully. 'Second time lucky, it seems-'
Pressing her back with one formidable hand, Vito hit her father so hard that he went flying back on to the lawn. Susan screamed. Arnold flew upright. Ashley sagged back in shock against the table, her knees too wobbly to hold her.
'If you want a fight,' Vito was snarling, 'pick on someone more your own size!'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARNOLD socked a clenched fist into his palm, his normally serious features alive with pleasure. 'That was some punch!' he crowed, shaking his head in admiration.
'At least you've more gumption than that idiot behind me!' Hunt growled as he picked himself up. 'But you can take your wife and get out-'
'If they go, I go!' The tremulous threat turned all their heads. Sylvia Forrester looked in despair at her younger daughter. 'Could I stay with you for a while?' 'What…what the devil's going on here?' Hunt ejaculated incredulously. 'Have you gone out of your mind, Sylvie?'
'I should have done it years ago… didn't have the guts.' Sylvia extended a shaking hand to Ashley. 'But when I couldn't go to my own child's wedding…I realised how terribly weak I'd become. I'm so sorry I let him do this to you.'
'You're very welcome in our home, Mrs Forrester,' Vito said gently.
'Now just a minute here-' Ashley's father blustered. 'Call me Sylvia,' her mother said shyly. 'You're very kind-'
'He bloody hit me!' Hunt thundered in disbelief. 'And you deserved it.' Trembling in spite of Ashley's supportive arm, Sylvia murmured, 'I'm going to tell her why you treat her the way you do. She has the right to know.'
'No!' Hunt roared.
'Let's go indoors,' Vito suggested.
In bewilderment, Ashley glanced back to where her father was left standing alone. Her head was swimming. She had not thought it possible that her mother could take such a stance against her father. Nor could she even begin to imagine what Sylvia could possibly have to tell her that could upset her father to such an extent.
'Susan, I think you and Arnold should go home,' her mother sighed. 'I'll phone you later.'
As her sister and her husband left the room with pronounced reluctance, her father appeared in the doorway. 'Please don't tell them,' he gritted. 'It's none of their business.'
'You made it Ashley's business.' Her mother lifted her tear-streaked face up. 'Everybody's suffered for my
