Bartering Her Innocence (4 page)

She thought he might leave then. She was hoping he might realise they had nothing more to say to each other and just go. But while he pulled his long legs in and sat up higher in the chair, he did not get up. His eyes lost all hint of laughter and took on a focus—a hard-edged gleam—that, coupled with his pose, with his legs poised like springs beneath him, felt almost predatory. If she turned and ran, she thought, even if there was a way to run in this cluttered showroom, he would be out of his chair and upon her in a heartbeat. Her own heart kicked up a notch, tripping inside her chest like a frightened gazelle.

‘When your mother first came to me for a loan,’ he said in a voice that dared her not to pay attention to each and every syllable, ‘I was going to turn her down. I had no intention of lending her the money.’

She didn’t say anything. She sensed there was no point in asking him what had changed his mind—that he intended telling her anyway—even if she didn’t want to know. On some very primal level, she recognised that she did not want to know, that, whatever it was, she was not going to want to hear this.

‘I should see about that coffee—’ she said, making a move for the stairs.

‘No,’ he said, standing and barring her exit in one fluid movement, leaving her wondering how such a big man could move with such economy and grace. ‘Coffee can wait until I’ve finished. Until you’ve heard this.’

She looked up at him, at the angles and planes of his face that were both so beautiful and so cruel, looked at the place where a tiny crease betrayed a rarely seen dimple in his cheek, studied the shallow cleft in his chin, and she wondered that she remembered every part of him so vividly and in such detail, that nothing of his features came as a surprise but more as a vindication of her memory.

And only then she realised he was studying her just as intently, just as studiously, and she turned her eyes away.
Because she had stared at him too long
, she told herself,
not because she was worried what he might be remembering about her.

‘I didn’t have to lend that money to your mother,’ he continued. ‘But then I remembered one long night in a room warmed by an open fire, with sheepskin rugs on the floor and a feather quilt to warm the wide bed. And I remembered a woman with skin the colour of cream with amber eyes and golden hair and who left too angry and much too soon.’

She glared at him, clamping her fists and her thighs and refusing to let his words bury themselves in the places they wanted to go. ‘You lent my mother money to get back at me? Because I slapped you? You really are mad!’

‘You’re right. I can’t give you all the credit. Because in lending your mother money, I saw the opportunity to take back Eduardo’s home—this palazzo—before it collapsed into the canal from neglect. I owed Eduardo that, even if I wanted nothing to do with his wife. But that wasn’t the only reason. I also wanted to give you a second chance.’

‘To slap you again? You make it sound so tempting.’ Right now her curling fist ached to lash out at something. Why not his smug face?

He laughed at that. ‘Some say a banker’s life must be dull: days filled with endless meetings and boring conversations about corporate finance and interest rate margins. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Sometimes it can be much more rewarding.’

‘By dreaming up fantasies? Look, I don’t care how you while away your hours—I really don’t want to know—just leave me out of them.’

‘Then you are more selfish than I thought—’ his voice turned serious ‘—your mother is in serious financial trouble. She could lose the palazzo. In fact she
will
lose the palazzo. Don’t you care that your mother could be homeless?’

‘That will be on your head, not on mine. I’m not the one threatening to throw her out.’

‘And yet you could still save her.’

‘How? I don’t have access to the kind of funds my mother owes you, even if I did want to help.’

‘Who said anything about wanting your money?’

There was a chilling note to his delivery, as if she should indeed know exactly what kind of currency he was considering. But no, surely he could not mean
that
?

‘I have nothing that would interest any banker and convince them to forgive a debt.’

‘You underestimate yourself,
cara
. You have something that might encourage this banker to forgive your mother’s debt.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so!’

‘Listen to what I offer, Valentina. I am not a beast, whatever you may think. I do not want your mother to suffer the indignity of being thrown out of her home. Indeed, I have an apartment overlooking the Grand Canal ready and waiting for your mother to move into. She will own it free of any encumbrance and she will draw a monthly pension. All that stands in the way is you.’ He smiled, the smile of a crocodile, the predator back in residence under his skin.

Her own skin prickled with both suspicion and fascination. He was a beautiful specimen of a man. He always had been. But she’d known the man, she’d known what he was capable of, and her self-protection senses were on high alert. ‘And are you going to tell me what I have to do in order to win this happy ever after for my mother?’

‘Nothing I know you will not enjoy. I simply require you to share my bed.’

She blinked, expecting to wake up at any moment. For surely she was so jet-lagged that she’d fallen asleep on her feet and was busy dreaming a fantasy. No, not a fantasy.
A nightmare.
‘As simple as that?’ she echoed. ‘You’re saying that you will let my mother off the hook, you will gift her an apartment in which to live and pay her an allowance, and all I have to do is sleep with you?’

‘I told you it was simple.’

Did he imagine she was? Did he not realise what he was asking her? To sell herself to him like some kind of whore—and all to save her mother? ‘Thank you for coming, Signore Barbarigo. I’m sure you don’t have to trouble Carmela to find your way out. I’m sure you can find the way.’

‘Valentina, do you know what you are saying no to?’

‘Some kind of paradise, apparently, the way you make it sound. Except I’m not in the market. I’m not looking for paradise. I certainly wouldn’t expect to find it in your bed.’

‘You might want to reconsider your options. I do not think you are giving this offer the serious consideration it deserves.’

‘And I don’t think you’re giving me any credit for knowing when I’ve heard enough.’

‘And your mother? You care not for what happens to her?’

‘My mother is a big girl, Mr Barbarigo. She got herself into this mess, she can damned well get herself out of it.’

‘And if that means she loses the palazzo and ends up homeless?’

‘Then so be it. She’ll just have to find somewhere else to live, like anyone else who overspends their budget.’

‘I’m surprised at you. Her own daughter, and you will do nothing to help her.’

‘You overplayed your hand, Luca, imagining I even cared. I will play no part in your sordid game. Throw my mother out if you must. Maybe then she might learn her lesson. But don’t expect me to prostitute myself to bail her out. When I said what we had was over, I meant it.’

He nodded then, and she felt a rush of relief like she had never known before. She had just consigned her mother to her fate, it was true, but it was no worse a result than she had come here half expecting. Perhaps if her mother had been more of a mother, one who inspired loyalty and affection, she might even consider Luca’s barbaric bargain. For five minutes at least. Then again, a mother like that would never put her in a position such as this. A mother like that would never have fallen victim to such an opportunistic despot.

‘In that case you give me no choice. I will go. And I will call your father and let him know the bad news.’

‘My father?’ she asked, with an ice-cold band of fear tightening around her chest. Lily had been talking to her father on the phone when she’d arrived and she’d never got around to finding out exactly why, even though it had seemed odd. What had they cooked up between themselves? ‘Why would you call him? What’s Mitch got to do with this?’

‘Does it matter? I thought you wanted no more part of this.’

‘If it’s about my father, then of course it concerns me. Why would you need to call him?’

‘Because Lily spoke to him today.’

‘I know that,’ she snapped, impatient. ‘And?’

‘And he didn’t want to see your trip wasted. Lily told me he would do anything for you, and apparently she was right. He offered to put up the farm as security if you could not find a way to help.’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘I
CAN
’
T
believe you dragged my father into this!’ Tina burst into her mother’s room, livid. There was no risk of waking her, she’d just ordered Carmela to bring her brandy. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

Luca had departed, taking his smug expression with him but leaving a poisoned atmosphere in his wake and now Lily wasn’t the only one with a headache. Tina’s temples pounded with a message of war.

‘What are you doing in here? What’s all this screaming?’

Tina swiped open the curtains in the dark room, letting in what little light remained of the day. Too little light. She snapped on a switch and was rewarded by a veritable vineyard lighting up above her mother’s bed head, clusters of grapes in autumn colours, russets and pinks and golds, dangling from the ceiling amid wafer-thin ‘leaves’ of green and pink. For a moment she was too blindsided to speak.

‘What the hell is that?’ she demanded when at last she’d found her tongue.

‘You don’t like it?’ her mother said, sitting up, looking up at the lights, sounding surprised.

‘It’s hideous. Just like everything else in this glass mausoleum.’

‘Valentina, do you have to be so rude? I’ll have you know I don’t buy things to please you.’

‘Clearly. But right now I’m more concerned about whatever it was you got Dad to agree to. Luca said he’d put the farm on the line. For you. To bail you out. If I couldn’t find a way.’

‘You saw Luca?’ Lily scambled from the bed, pulled on a rose-pink silk robe that wafted around her slim body as it settled. ‘When? Is he still here?’

‘He’s gone and good riddance to him. But not before he put his seedy deal on the table. Were you in on it, mother dearest? Was it you who came up with the idea of swapping your daughter for your debt?’

Lily blinked up at her. ‘He said that?’ And her mother looked so stunned Tina knew there was no way she could have been in on it. ‘That does explain a few things, I suppose. Well, aren’t you the lucky one. And I thought he wasn’t interested in sex.’

‘You didn’t! Oh, please God, tell me you didn’t proposition him.’

She shrugged, sitting at a table, picking up a cloth in one hand, a glass dolphin in the other, absently rubbing its head. ‘Turning fifty is no joy, Valentina, you mark my words. Nobody wants you. Nobody sees you. You might just as well be invisible when it comes to men.’

‘There’s nothing flattering about being asked to be someone’s mistress, Lily!’

‘But of course there is. He’s a very good-looking man.’ And then she stopped rubbing and stared into the middle distance as if she was building an entire story around the possibilities. ‘Just think, if you play your cards right, he might even marry you...’

‘I told him I wouldn’t do it.’

Her mother looked at her, and Tina saw an entire fantasy crashing down in her eyes. ‘Oh.’

‘And that’s when he told me about Dad, and agreeing to put up the farm. Is that why you were on the phone to him, Lily? Looking for a Plan B in case I couldn’t save you? Begging for favours from a man you abandoned with a baby more than twenty-five years ago? A man who by rights should hate your guts.’

‘He doesn’t, though. I think Mitchell was the only man who ever really loved me.’

‘Well, you sure made a mess of that.’

‘I still don’t understand what your problem is. People would kill to sleep with Luca Barbarigo.’

And the desire to shock her mother just for once, instead of being the one who was always shocked, was too great. ‘That’s just it. I
have
slept with him.’

‘You sly girl,’ she said, swapping the dolphin for another, this one with a baby swimming alongside. ‘And you never let on? So why make such a big deal out of it now?’

And that simple question told her more about her mother than she ever wanted to know. ‘It ended badly.’

‘Because he didn’t express his undying love for you? Oh God, Valentina, you’re so naive sometimes.’

Her mother’s words stung, deep inside where she’d promised she’d never hurt again. And maybe that was why she said it. Because she didn’t want to be the only one hurting here. ‘He said I was a chip off the old block. That, like you, I did my best work on my back!’

Her mother paused, forgetting momentarily about the delicate glass dolphin in her lap that she’d been lovingly dusting till then. And then she laughed, absolutely delighted. ‘He said that? And you didn’t take it as a compliment?’ She took one look at her daughter’s stricken face. ‘You didn’t, did you?’ She shrugged and started polishing again, before she gave it a final check in the light and replaced it with another ornament. Rub rub rub. Polish polish polish. And the more she polished, the more Tina’s nerves screamed.

‘Would you please stop doing that?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Dusting those wretched ornaments of yours.’

‘Valentina,’ her mother said, incensed, rubbing on, ‘they’re Murano glass, they deserve to be shown to best advantage. Of course I have to dust them.’

‘I was pregnant, you know!’

Lily looked up at her, and this time she put the ornament right back on the side table where it had come from. Finally, Tina thought. Finally she managed to look aghast. ‘You were pregnant? To Luca Barbarigo?’

Tina nodded, a sudden tightness in her throat, a sudden and unbidden urge to cry stinging her eyes as she released a secret she had been holding inside for too long. Finally her mother might understand.

Finally.

Lily just sat there and shook her head. ‘So why didn’t you make him marry you?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t you know how rich he is? His family were once Doges of Venice. He’s Venetian nobility and you didn’t marry him?’

‘Lily, we had a one-night stand. One night. A baby wasn’t part of the deal. Anyway, I lost the baby. And thank you so much for asking about the fate of your grandchild!’

‘But if you’d married him,’ her mother continued, unabashed, ‘then we wouldn’t be in this mess now.’

Tina’s world reeled and spun. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I lost the baby. At twenty weeks. Do you have any idea what that’s like, giving birth to a child that is destined to die?’

Lily flicked away the argument as if it were no more than a speck of dust on one of her ornaments. ‘You didn’t really want a child, did you? Besides, you could have been married by then. You would have been, if you’d told me at the time. I would have arranged your marriage within a week.’

‘And what if I didn’t want to get married?’

‘That’s hardly the point. You should have made him do the honourable thing.’

Tina doubted she had ever hated her mother quite so much. ‘Like you made Mitch do when you got pregnant? Tell me, Lily, were you hoping for a miscarriage once you had that ring on your finger? Were you hoping to escape the birth once you had the husband, given you never really wanted a child?’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Isn’t it? Sorry I didn’t oblige. Lucky, though, in a way, given the mess you’re in now.’

She turned to leave. ‘Goodbye, Lily. I don’t expect to see you again while I’m here.’

‘Where are you going?’

And she looked back over her shoulder. ‘To hell. But don’t go thinking it’s on your account.’

* * *

The taxi dropped him back at the water door of his own palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal. Aldo came down to meet him, swinging open the iron gate as he alighted from the vessel. ‘And the company you were expecting?’

‘A change of plan, Aldo. I will be dining alone tonight. I will eat in the study.’

Luca crossed the tiled floor and took the marble steps up into the house three at a time. A temporary change of plan, he had no doubt. Once Valentina slept on the choices she had, she would see she had no choice at all. She would soon come crawling, begging for him to rescue her family from the nightmare of her mother’s making.

He entered the study, but eschewed the wide desk where his computer and work waited patiently and went straight to the windows instead, opening a window door leading to a balcony and gazing out over the canal at night, the vaporettos lit up with the flash of a hundred cameras, the heavy barges that performed the grunt work in place of trucks. Never did he tire of the endless tapestry of life in Venice, the slap of water against the pilings, the rich tenor strains of a gondolier as he massaged his gondola’s way along the canals. But then his family had been here for centuries after all. No wonder he sometimes felt his veins ran not with blood but with water from these very canals.

It spoke to him now. Told him to be patient. That he was closer than he thought.

He saw the colour of her eyes in the golden light from a window across the canal. Amber eyes and hair shot with golden lights—she might have lost weight, she might have been travelling for more than a day and the skin under her eyes tired, but the intervening years had been good to her. She was more beautiful than he remembered.

And he hungered for her.

But she would soon come crawling.

And he would have her.

* * *

She got the address from Carmela, who hugged her tight to her chest before putting her at arm’s length and kissing her solemnly on both cheeks. ‘You come back if you need anything, anything at all. You come back and see Carmela. I will help you,
bella
.’

She hugged the older woman back, clutching the piece of paper with the address and the rough map Carmela had drawn for her. Luca had said it wasn’t far. It didn’t help that evening had closed in and that the canals were inky-black ribbons running between islands of jam-packed buildings, it didn’t help that she knew she had been awake for a dozen hours too many to feel alive, but she was running on anger now, her veins infused with one hundred per cent fury, and there was no way she was staying in her mother’s house a moment longer and no way she could have slept if she tried.

She made a mistake with the vaporetto, boarding the wrong one in her rush to get away and she had to get off at the next stop and backtrack to find another. She found herself lost in the dark
calles
three times, stumbling onwards as if she were blind until she found a sign on a wall with a name she recognised, telling her she was on the right track.

But all of these inconveniences just gave her the time to think. To reconsider why she was so prepared to jump into the lion’s den—a place she had promised herself never to go again.

It wasn’t for her mother, she knew. She’d been prepared to turn her back and walk away and leave her mother to her own devices.

It wasn’t for herself. Oh God, no. She hated him after what he’d said, and what he’d done. Hated him for not caring when he could have. Hated him for the unsettling, unwanted effect he had on her, even in the midst of hating him. She wanted nothing more to do with the man.

No, this was for her father, who somehow thought that if he helped Lily in this current crisis, he was making it easier on his daughter. What had Lily told him of her plight? What dramas had she woven around the thin ribbons that still bonded them together, even after a divorce of more than twenty years?

But their property was operating on a shoestring, already mortgaged heavily to the banks. Another mortgage, another bad season would see her father’s dream ruined.

She could not let him do that, for whatever misguided sense of loyalty he still had.

She could not let it happen.

She made another wrong turn and swore under her breath as she retraced her steps again. But all of the inconveniences of her journey, all these frustrations fed into her anger. So by the time she reached the sign on the locked gate that announced she was at the right number of the right street, she felt ready to tear the gate apart with her bare hands. Instead she pressed a buzzer, waited impatiently the few seconds for a response and asked to see Luca Barbarigo.

When she met with hesitation, she countered it with, ‘Tell him it is Tina Henderson...
Valentina
Henderson. He will see me.’

A few moments later the gate clicked open and a stony-faced valet met her at the door, giving her a once-over that told her that in faded jeans and a cheap zip-up jacket she was seriously underdressed for a meeting with his boss. But that was okay because she had plans for her wardrobe. ‘Signore Barbarigo will receive you in the study,’ he said, before gesturing for her backpack. ‘If you would care to leave your bag?’

‘I’m good with it,’ she said, her hand on the shoulder strap, ‘if it’s all the same to you.’ Luca would be under no misapprehension why she was there if she had anything to do with it. He would know she meant business if she turned up with her pack. Besides, if she was going to be sharing the master’s bedchamber, it was going to have to be carried upstairs at some stage.

The valet nodded, his disapproval clear on his set features, and led the way up the wide flight of stairs leading to the noble floor. A stunning palazzo, she registered as they climbed, with terrazzo floors and stuccoed walls and heavy beamed ceilings so high they were in no way oppressive.

Or were they?

Only one flight of steps, but suddenly she needed oxygen, as if the air was thinner the higher they climbed. But it wasn’t the air, she knew. It was being here, in the lion’s den, about to take on the lion at his own game.

It was anticipation, both terrifying and delicious, for what would come next.

And what could have been a spike of fear and the chance for cowardice to surface and set her fleeing down the stairs turned into a surge of strength. Did he really think she could be forced into something, to tumble meekly into his bed? Damn the man but she would not crawl to him like some simpering virgin begging for favours.

The stairs opened to a sitting room so elegant it could feature in a magazine—maybe the sofas and dark timber leant towards the masculine—but the overall effect was of light and space.

How her mother’s house was meant to look, it occurred to her. Probably had looked, before Eduardo had taken her for his wife and she’d become addicted to the factory shops of Murano and let her passion for glass suck up every last euro and every available inch of space.