CHAPTER THREE
Tim had defended her. And in her name he had been baited, beaten up and humiliated. Tormented by his inability to silence Pietro, Tim's rage and resentment had inevitably centred on Vito, the male he viewed as the author of all his sister's misfortunes. He had probably intended to drive Vito's Ferrari away and leave it somewhere, giving Vito a scare. Ashley was absolutely certain that Tim had not meant to damage it. Like most teenage boys, Tim was car crazy. The wanton destruction of such an exclusive car would have been beyond him. Ashley was convinced that, filled with Dutch courage and fired by an adolescent desire for the only revenge within his reach, Tim had embarked on a stupid, boyish prank that had concluded in the kind of disaster he could not have dreamt up in his worst nightmares. But no court would view his outrageous conduct in such a mellow light. The court would not hear about the provocation Tim had endured for so many weeks beforehand either. Hadn't Tim already suffered enough? 'Aren't you responsible for everything that drags our family down?' Susan had condemned bitterly. All of a sudden the stark truth of that accusation seemed cruelly apt.
You break the rules, you pay the price. Four years ago, she had moved into Vito's apartment, well aware that she was contravening her father's staunchly moral principles. Faced with his fury, she had refused to hang her head in shame. She had been defiant to the last and in the end she had paid a high price for that defiance, but it had occurred to her recently that she had not been the only one to pay that price.
The scant references Tim had made to that period of their lives had made it painfully obvious that· her behaviour had caused her mother tremendous distress.
'Unlimited sex, whenever I want it…' Ashley's teeth ground audibly together as she elbowed her passage out of the lift. Seething over the treatment she had received, she stalked from the building. How dared he speak to her like that? How dared he? Well, you did what you could and you failed, she told herself bracingly. Tim's stricken face lurched into her conscience. Missing her step, she stumbled and nearly fell, horror darkening her eyes. And it was there, right there in the middle of the crowded pavement with people pushing past her on either side, that the harsh reality of Tim's predicament finally struck home hard. Her self-righteous fury evaporated, leaving her limp and shaken.
Dear heaven, was she actually planning to stand back and watch her kid brother go to prison? Guilt swallowed her alive. Vito had at least agreed to see her. And what had she done with that opportunity? Instead of pursuing Tim's cause with suitable tact and humility, she had gone off on an emotional tangent, dredging up personal issues which had had no place in the dialogue. She had blown Tim's one hope of freedom, wilfully, recklessly blown it for the selfish satisfaction of provoking Vito.
Her stomach gave a nauseous lurch. With so much at stake, only a lunatic would have behaved as she had. It was useless to plead that she could never have foreseen this sequence of events… it did not make her any less responsible for the results. And what her mother had endured then would be as nothing to what she would endure at the mere thought of the son she idolised going to prison. Emotionally fragile as she was at the best of times, it was very possible that the crisis would push Sylvia Forrester into another breakdown. That danger was as unthinkable to Ashley as the risk of her little brother ending up in a cell, and the means to defeat both threats were, she registered dully, within her own hands.
Was it too late? Ashley straightened her shoulders and breathed in as she turned in her tracks. She had to dig very deep for the courage to walk back into the Cavalieri Bank. Hot-cheeked, she approached the reception desk, inwardly cringing at the necessity. One of the receptionists approached her. 'Mr di Cavalieri phoned down to say that you could go straight up, Miss Forrester. '
In bewilderment, Ashley blinked. How could Vito possibly be expecting her? How could he have known that she would return before she knew it herself?
In the lift she fancied that she felt the weight of a ball and chain on her ankle. Pacing down that wide corridor again, she imagined she could hear the clank of the heavy links as Vito rattled her chain. But already her agile brain was working back over their previous dialogue with greater cool. It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense that Vito should demand that she marry him. Vito was highly sexed but he was no slave to that sex-drive. He had proved that fact when he walked away to marry another woman, disdaining any attempt to continue a relationship in which marriage would not be the end result. Furthermore, so much bitterness lay between them now-how could he possibly still find her desirable? Was it true after all, that old cliche which said that men were different, more easily able to separate all emotion from the physical? Was Vito playing some sort of crazy power game with her?
He was a tall, lithe silhouette by the tinted wall of glass that filtered light into the ultra-modem room. He contemplated her in silence. What lay behind those impassive dark eyes was anybody's guess. But suddenly she was aware as she had not allowed herself to be aware earlier that she was facing a brilliant adversary, infinitely more experienced in tactical warfare than she was.
'How did you know that I'd come back?' she prompted when it seemed to her that the nail biting silence might soon contrive to suffocate her if she didn't break it. An eloquent dark brow lifted. 'The fury, the walkout, the truculent reappearance? The pattern is not unfamiliar to me.'
Burning colour drenched her pallor. 'You've got me over a barrel.'
'Crude,' he acknowledged. 'But apparently true. I never credited you with so much family feeling.'
She evaded his scrutiny; conscious that he might believe he had some grounds to betray surprise on that point. In the past, she had strenuously resisted his desire to meet her family and had inevitably been forced to behave as though family ties were unimportant to her. But how could she have taken him home to witness at first hand the atmosphere in her own home? How would he have reacted to the discovery that her father loathed all foreigners? Her father had more prejudices than a roomful of people could acquire between them in a lifetime. Vito would have been politely appalled and she would have cringed with embarrassment. The difference in their backgrounds would have been even more mortifyingly apparent.
'What possible pleasure could you receive from forcing me into marriage?' she demanded in helpless frustration.
'What force do I employ? You have the gift of free choice.'
'That's not fair!' she argued in growing desperation. 'Life isn't always fair.'
'You're demanding the impossible!'
'Then we have nothing further to discuss.' It was said with cool finality.
'We could talk about this,' she proffered curtly, playing for time.
'We have a great deal to talk about. We'll lunch at my apartment.'
Thrown by the suggestion, she stared up at him. 'Lunch?'
'I'm hungry.' Vito was already shrugging his magnificent physique into a superb cashmere coat. Perfect calm and sublime insouciance blended in the graceful lift of one ebony brow.
'I thought you had a house here now.'
'The apartment is more convenient during working hours.'
A private lift ran from his office suite down to an underground car park where a car awaited them. 'So… what are you in?' Vito enquired as the limousine nosed a forceful passage out into the slow moving traffic. 'Your brother was not disposed to satisfy my curiosity on the evening that we met.'
'In?' she repeated uncertainly.
'Your career,' he clarified with impatience. 'The career that you chose in place of me.'
'Oh.' Studying her tightly linked hands, she paled and decided to lie. 'The retail trade.' It wasn't entirely a lie, she reasoned. Until she had obtained some qualifications in child-care at evening classes, she had been employed at a large department store.
'You surprise me. It was not the field I believed you would choose. I assumed you would choose something more high-profile.'
She shrugged, evading his sardonic scrutiny. No, she couldn't tell him. It would be the ultimate humiliation. How could he guess? she reasoned frantically. Had she completed her course in accountancy, this would only have been her first year in paid employment. Vito would scarcely be looking for the trappings of success. Why should she tell him that he had been right all along? Right to say that she was on the wrong course? Right to suspect that at heart she had neither the interest in the subject nor the natural affinity with figures to shine in that field?
