Virgin on Her Wedding Night (6 page)

For an instant Valente thought she was staging a bogus faint, like in the final shot of a melodrama, and he groaned out loud. But something about the stillness of her small shape drew him closer to examine her. He crouched down beside her inanimate body and tried to rouse her again. She had not tripped or struck her head, But when she failed to show any sign of life other than continuing to breathe, grudging concern coloured his cynicism. He rang Reception and asked for a doctor to be called. Offered first aid assistance, he gave a negative answer. If, as he suspected, alcohol was the cause of her collapse, the fewer people who knew about it the better. He picked her up, only to be troubled by how little her slight body weighed, and carried her into the bedroom. He studied her stillness, wondering if he should have called an ambulance instead, or even if he should just be bundling her into his limo to head to the local A&E himself.

The smudged mascara couldn’t hide the purple shadows below her eyes that accentuated her pallor, or the reality that, with the exception of breast and hip, she was exceedingly thin. It was barely five minutes before a doctor arrived at the door; by chance, the older man had been checking in at Reception when Valente had called down and, having overheard the conversation, had offered his services.

Dr Seaborne took one frowning look at his diminu
tive patient and asked what age she was. Valente was outraged at having to rifle through Caroline’s bag to provide proof of her age on her driving licence before the man was satisfied that he was not some predator with a preference for underage girls. In the midst of that interrogation her mobile phone began ringing. Valente switched it off.

Deeply unimpressed by his inebriated patient, the doctor checked Caroline over as best as he could, and said that he saw no point seeking further medical help simply because she had passed out.

Although severely ruffled by the treatment he had received for the sin of harbouring a very youthful-looking drunk in his hotel suite, Valente knew he could not possibly have her delivered home unconscious without being forced to make the sort of explanation he had no intention of making to her parents. Furious with her for landing him into such an untenable situation, he stripped off her dress and slotted her into the bed—but not before wincing at her unexciting white underwear topped by the sin of tights rather than the tantalising appeal of stockings…

Caroline had to break through layers of discomfort to battle into full wakefulness. Her head ached, her mouth was dry as a bone and her stomach felt distinctly sensitive. Pulling herself up against the pillows with a moan of self-pity, she opened her eyes on a totally unfamiliar room. In a panic, she lurched out of bed, blinking in dismay as her head swam just a little—and she recoiled in horror when the bedroom door opened wider to frame Valente.

‘I heard you get up. I’ll order breakfast for you.’

In the act of trying to wrap herself in the duvet in a hurry, her face hot enough to fry eggs on, Caroline reeled back against the bed for support. ‘No, thanks,’ she said weakly, appalled to acknowledge that she had failed to go home the night before and that she remembered next to nothing about their meeting after being ill.

Exotically, wildly handsome, and extremely well-groomed in his black designer-cut suit and cerise silk shirt, Valente leant back against the doorjamb like a model straight out of a glossy magazine. ‘Eat. It’ll make you feel better, and possibly a couple of painkillers would help too.’

‘Why didn’t you take me home?’ Caroline gasped, looking anywhere but at him. And in the midst of that evasive activity she finally noticed that the pillow beside hers bore the imprint of a head. ‘My goodness…no—we slept together?’

‘The sofa was too small for me.’

Caroline settled aghast grey eyes on him. ‘Did we…? I mean…?’

Valente gave her a slicing look of derision. ‘Do I look so desperate for sex that I would make use of a comatose body?’

As he had no doubt intended, Caroline shrank again, and hugged the duvet all the tighter to her shivering figure. ‘So we didn’t, then. That’s good,’ she managed to say.

‘Quite.’ A slanting ebony brow lifted. ‘But don’t ever drink like that again.’

‘I won’t,’ she said tightly. ‘It was a hideous mistake, and I learn from my mistakes.’

‘Some men would have taken advantage of you in
that condition. You were in no state to look after yourself and that’s dangerous,’ he framed harshly.

‘Right…okay…message more than received,’ Caroline countered, squirming with shame. ‘If it’s all right with you I’m going to take a shower.’

Valente waved a helpful hand in the right direction. ‘Breakfast will be waiting when you’re ready.’

After stooping to pick up the silver-blue dress from the floor, Caroline wore the duvet into the bathroom. Only then did she wonder what time it was, and take on board the reality that she had stayed out all night. Her watch let her know it was only eight o’clock, and she knew her parents were unlikely to get home until lunchtime at the earliest since her Uncle Charles was an elderly bachelor and a most gracious host. Thanking her lucky stars for that reality, Caroline shed the concealment of the duvet and stepped into the shower.

What a disaster she had been in the seduction stakes! How could she have been so foolish as to drink so much? If anything she had damaged her own cause irreparably, because now Valente was disgusted with her. So, once more, the virtue she no longer wanted had been conserved. A shiver of regret ran through her at the thought of how unattractive her behaviour must have been. It wasn’t that she particularly
wanted
to be attractive to Valente, she reasoned doggedly, only that that supposed attraction appeared to be the only bargaining chip she had.

Putting on the previous night’s clothes was not a pleasurable exercise either. She did the best she could with her hair, but the mirror warned her that too much
alcohol had given her a pale, puffy face that looked both plain and tired. She reluctantly joined Valente in the dining annexe off the drawing room. He handed her painkillers and a glass of water first, and she took them without comment because she still felt awful. A large selection of food was on offer, and she nibbled modestly at a few items in the vague hope of settling her stomach. While she ate, and he drank copious amounts of black coffee, Valente described the doctor’s concerns of the evening before, and before very long she wanted once again to sink through the floor in shame.

‘Your phone was ringing last night. I switched it off,’ he told her finally.

Caroline hadn’t even checked her phone, and she fished it out of her bag and switched it on again. She frowned when she realised she had missed a whole heap of calls. Cold, clammy anxiety gripped her when she realised that her Uncle Charles and on two occasions her mother had made those calls, in an unsuccessful but clearly urgent attempt to get in touch with her.

‘What is it?’ Valente prompted.

Caroline was already frantically clicking on her uncle’s number.

The older man answered his phone quickly. ‘Caroline? Thank goodness I’ve finally got hold of you,’ he exclaimed, before telling her that her father had suffered what Charles referred to as ‘a funny turn’ the evening before, and had been taken into hospital. Her mother had accompanied her husband, and had already phoned Charles that morning to ask if he thought she ought to call the police because she couldn’t get hold of her daughter.

‘I’ll go straight to the hospital,’ Caroline stated, in a daze of disbelief and horror at what had been happening while she lay asleep.

‘Hospital?’ As she stood up, Valente closed a hand round her arm to still her. ‘What’s going on?’

Her eyes brimming with guilty tears of anxiety, Caroline explained in harried tones while dialling the number of the hospital which her uncle had given her. She wanted to ensure that her mother would receive a message of reassurance as soon as possible.

‘I’ll take you there right now,’ Valente declared, contacting his staff in turn to issue instructions. ‘Why would your mother have wanted to call the police, though? Do you never stay out overnight?’

‘Of course not. I didn’t worry about last night because I assumed they were safe at Charles’s house. I should have known better,’ she lamented, her conscience eating her alive because she had not been available to offer help and support when she was needed. ‘Now they’ll know I didn’t come home, and they’ll be terribly shocked and upset by that. Who am I supposed to say I was with? If I admit it was you, it’ll be like Armageddon.’

‘You’re an adult, not a child,
piccola mia.
An explanation shouldn’t be necessary. You were married for several years.’ Brilliant dark eyes assailed her and her tummy somersaulted in response. ‘I can hardly believe that you are still allowing your parents to rule you to this extent.’

‘It’s not like that!’ Caroline proclaimed angrily. ‘I rarely go out at night, and they know I don’t have a boyfriend, so of course they would worry when they dis
covered that I wasn’t at home in the middle of the night. Unlike you, I lead a very quiet life. Why on earth did you switch off my phone?’

‘The doctor I had summoned to attend to you was waiting to speak to me, and you were in no fit state to deal with a phone call.’

His argument was unanswerable.

Caroline hung her head. ‘I feel so cheap, walking out of a hotel dressed in last night’s clothes. Everybody will know I’ve had a one-night stand.’

‘I should be so lucky,’ Valente quipped, soft and low. ‘The minute we got together it was guaranteed to go wrong. There could not be two more different people on this planet than you and I.’

In the grand foyer on the ground floor, Caroline tried to behave like the invisible woman for the benefit of any interested parties who might choose to regard her as a slut for being seen wearing a cocktail dress at breakfast time. Valente, however, closed a hand over hers and urged her into the hotel boutique.

‘I called ahead,’ he breathed as a saleswoman approached them with a smile.

‘Mr Lorenzatto? I believe we have exactly what you’re looking for.’

With a smile, she extended a dressy sapphire-blue raincoat for Caroline to try on.

Caroline was duly inserted into the coat and the sash pulled tight at her waist. ‘Perfect,’ Valente pronounced, flexing a gold credit card before urging her back into the foyer again.

‘I’ll have to pay you for this,’ Caroline muttered uncomfortably, but she was relieved to have the means of
concealing a dress that would have looked highly suspicious to her mother.

‘You don’t ever pay,’ Valente riposted. ‘That’s the main advantage of being the mistress of a very rich man.’

‘I didn’t know I was still in the running,’ Caroline said breathlessly, suddenly aware that his staff and security team were all waiting beside the fleet of cars parked at the front of the hotel, and eying her with intense curiosity. She blushed to the roots of her hair.

Valente noted that every man in their radius was unashamedly staring at the little figure by his side. Even when she made no effort to attract masculine attention she oozed femininity, cuteness and sex appeal from every pore. He clenched his even white teeth hard. Just minutes earlier he had been thinking that enough was enough, and he didn’t want to be involved in the complexities of any form of relationship with Caroline. But the thought of leaving her free, if poor, to be scooped up by some other man had zero attraction for him.

He turned smouldering dark golden eyes on her again. ‘But you want to stay in the running, don’t you?’

Her lashes swept up on her bright eyes and she nodded very slowly in agreement, although she couldn’t quite believe what she was doing.

‘So,’ Valente breathed huskily, ‘you believe that you can do better than last night?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Caroline told him blithely, refusing to give way to her usual sense of failure and low expectation.

His own expectations on a stimulating sexual high, Valente smiled wolfishly down at her for the first time since that unforgotten solitary vigil at the church.

‘Y
OU
don’t need to come in with me,’ Caroline told Valente as the limousine drew up outside the hospital.

Valente simply ignored the statement.

Almost running to keep up with his long stride, Caroline made a second attempt to deter him before they reached Reception. ‘You must have loads of more important things to do,’ she said breathlessly.

Valente discovered on which ward her father was from a receptionist, who gave him the kind of star-struck treatment a famous celebrity might have received for an unannounced visit. At a trot, to match his ground-breaking progress through the busy corridors, Caroline clutched at his jacket-sleeve to bring him to a halt. ‘You can’t let Mum and Dad see you. You can’t let them know I was with you last night.’

He gave her anxious face a long, steady scrutiny. ‘Are you a child or an adult?’

‘This is not about me or you—it’s about my father’s health. He mustn’t have any shocks or upsets right now. He’s on a waiting list for heart surgery,’ she explained in an urgent undertone.

‘I would still like to speak to your parents…’

‘You’re the guy who owns their business and is about to chuck them out of their home,’ she reminded him bluntly. ‘Why would they want to see you when they’re already worried sick about Dad’s health?’

Finally, Valente agreed to wait round the corner from the side ward where she was directed to find her father. From there, however, once the curtains round the bed were partially drawn back, he had a perfect view of Joe Hales. The older man’s face was an unhealthy colour, his rasping breathing audible even from where Valente stood. Joe was wired up to a monitor; his wife was seated by his side. Valente was shocked by how much Caroline’s parents had aged since he had last seen them. Isabel had shrunk in stature even more.

But as Caroline’s mother broke into urgent speech, Valente soon appreciated that she might have become thinner, and her back more bent with her advancing years, but her abrasive controlling personality had not mellowed at all.

‘Where were you last night?’ Isabel demanded accusingly. ‘We’ve been worried sick about you.’

‘Now, now…’ Joe Hales interposed, striving to give his daughter a reassuring smile from blue-tinged lips as Caroline squeezed his hand affectionately. ‘We don’t want her sitting home every night at her age.’

‘I had a meeting with Valente,’ Caroline responded, striving to stick to the truth as far as she could. ‘I knew you were staying with Uncle Charles and I switched my phone off. I’m so sorry you weren’t able to get in touch with me.’

‘You went behind our backs to see that Italian?’ her mother hissed, in a tone of furious disbelief.

‘But you knew that I was seeing Valente yesterday
morning,’ Caroline pointed out in a quiet, defensive tone, aimed at reminding Isabel that raised voices could be clearly heard through the rest of the ward. ‘How are you feeling, Dad?’

‘Tired, that’s all. Your mother’s been a tower of strength,’ Joe declared, endeavouring to calm his wife down with a change of topic.

‘We can’t just let this go. It’s a matter of decency,’ Isabel pronounced truculently. ‘I refuse to have any conversation with you at all, Caro, until you tell us why you didn’t come home last night.’

A pulsing silence fell while Caroline attempted to come up with a convincing story. Could she pretend that she had been at Winterwood all along and simply hadn’t heard the phone ringing? Shouldn’t she be adult enough to stand her ground and insist on her right to some privacy? It was not the time or the place. The look in her mother’s cold blue eyes cut like glass through Caroline’s frantic guilty thoughts, panicking her, making her feel like the worst daughter in the world, while once again making her painfully aware that she would never know happiness until she had garnered the strength to stand her ground against such domination. The ensuing awful silence, which she did not know how to fill, cut at her nerves like a slashing whip.

Valente brushed back the curtains and took up position by her side, greeting her parents with a cool and calm that knocked Caroline sideways before saying, ‘Last night I wouldn’t let Caroline go back to an empty house. Winterwood is remote, with your nearest neighbour living a considerable distance away. In your absence, I thought it made more sense for Caroline to spend the night at the hotel.’

Her eyes fiery, Isabel Hales opened her mouth to speak and closed it again only when her husband leapt thankfully on that explanation, which fitted in beautifully with his old-fashioned outlook. He found it perfectly acceptable that Valente should be protective towards his daughter. ‘That was the best idea in the circumstances. No harm done,’ Joe pronounced with relief, his eyes sliding shut, as if he was struggling to stay awake, and then slowly opening again.

‘Of course Caroline protested,’ Valente quipped.

‘Y-yes,’ Caroline stammered, overpowered by his intervention and his ready wits. ‘Dad, you look like you need to get some sleep.’

‘Let me offer you a lift home.’ Valente addressed Isabel Hales. ‘You must be exhausted if you’ve been here all night.’

‘Joe needs me,’ Isabel delivered, with a suspicious look at the tall, broad Italian.

‘I’ll be all right. You should come back later,’ her husband urged, reaching out a hand to grasp his wife’s in a reassuring gesture.

Valente noted the glitter of tears in Isabel’s gaze and registered that she had a human side after all. For all her seeming superficiality and affectation, she was deeply attached to her husband.

Isabel was stiff and sore after sitting for so long, and required her daughter’s support to stand up and walk with her stick. She spoke to the ward sister on the way out, and they left the hospital at a much slower pace than when they had arrived. Caroline was amazed that her mother had agreed to accept a lift home from Valente, but, spotting the tremulous line of the older
woman’s mouth, recognised that her energy resources were dwindling.

Once Isabel Hales became aware that Valente’s preferred mode of travel was a limousine, with accompanying security staff, she was much more forthcoming and chatty. Caroline was astonished when her mother broke into animated conversation and smiled, as if Valente was an old friend rather than someone she had only recently professed to despise. It soon dawned on her that her mother was hopelessly impressed by Valente’s evident wealth and she was mortified, painfully conscious that Valente was quite capable of making the same shameful and embarrassing deduction.

Having insisted on assisting her mother from the car and walking her to the front door, Valente rested a lean, possessive hand on Caroline’s slight shoulder and bent down to say, ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow.’

Looking up to find black-lashed dark golden eyes intent on her, Caroline trembled and felt the pound of her heartbeat behind her breastbone. All of a sudden it was a challenge to speak or breathe, and instinct made her pull away as if he was crowding her—which indeed he was. ‘There’s no need.’

‘There’s every need,’ Valente contradicted, without a second of hesitation.

‘I’ll be at the hospital with Dad.’

‘But you will hardly be there all day,’ Isabel Hales interposed in a tone of admonishment.

‘I have an order of jewellery to finish before Friday,’ Caroline added tautly, incredulous at her mother’s sudden alarming change in attitude.

‘We’ll have dinner together tomorrow evening,
bella mia.
I’ll send the car to pick you up at seven,’ Valente countered.

‘Mum, what are you doing?’ Caroline pressed in a driven undertone the instant the front door had flipped shut behind the two women.

‘What are
you
doing?’ Isabel enquired in dulcet return. ‘Your one-time lorry driver is now filthy rich and just as keen as he ever was…’

‘Of course he isn’t!’ Caroline snapped, bending down to pet Koko, who had come bounding up gracefully to greet her return.

The older woman gave her an amused glance. ‘This is not the time to be shy, Caro. I saw how he looks at you. He owns our business. He owns our home. You’re working your fingers to the bone with that wretched jewellery enterprise and you’re as poor as a church mouse. A rich husband would solve all our problems very nicely.’

‘No—no, he wouldn’t!’ Caroline repudiated that audacious suggestion with rare vehemence, causing her mother to raise a minatory brow. ‘I’ve got no intention of ever marrying again!’

‘Not all men are like Matthew,’ Isabel said drily as Caroline was heading for the stairs.

With Koko cradled in her arms and purring like a steam engine, Caroline stilled and slowly turned round. ‘What do you mean by that?’

In the act of walking into the sitting room, Isabel heaved a sigh. ‘Naturally I knew that Matthew had other…shall we say…interests? The PA with the large chest whom he hired at such great expense? The blowsy barmaid down at The Swan? The garage-owner’s wife? Need I continue?’

‘No. I had no idea you knew. You never said anything.’ The delicate bones of Caroline’s face had set hard, and a sense of deep humiliation was creeping over her. Her mother’s calmness as she took a seat amazed her daughter almost as much as the extent of her knowledge about her late son-in-law’s extra-marital affairs. As her grip on the elegant Siamese cat tightened, Koko made a little cry of complaint and leapt down to the carpet to stalk angrily away, tail held rigidly upright to express her disapproval.

‘It was none of my business—’ Isabel contended.

Something sharp pierced Caroline and freed up her temper. ‘Wasn’t it?’ she interrupted, with a bitterness that she usually kept hidden. ‘You raved about Matthew. You thought he was perfect because he had a private education and a well-bred accent. You never looked beyond the surface. You persuaded me that my friendship with Matthew would make a much batter basis for marriage than what you called my “wild infatuation” with Valente!’

As Caroline’s voice rose in volume, Isabel frowned. ‘Control yourself, Caro. I’m willing to admit that Matthew was something of a disappointment as a son-in-law, but you could hardly expect me to have guessed that he had a secret fetish for sluttish women with big bosoms!’

White as a sheet at that unexpectedly blunt reminder of her late husband’s preferences, Caroline quivered with the fierceness of the emotions she was fighting to suppress. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you knew? It would have made such a difference to me if I’d been able to confide in you.’

‘I wouldn’t have wanted to discuss something so dis
tasteful. You already knew what to do. Like a sensible wife, you turned a blind eye. It was nothing to do with me.’ For the second time, Isabel denied any responsibility.

Caroline spun away, her eyes burning. She had not initially chosen to turn a blind eye. Matthew had refused to tolerate what he’d angrily labelled as ‘interference’ in his private life. Time and time again her husband had reminded her that she was an abnormal wife, and that
she
had driven him into seeking out other women who could give him what he needed. And the women Matthew had found truly attractive had been the very opposite of Caroline—outgoing, sexually skilled and voluptuous women, willing to try everything that Caroline was not. Just thinking about how trapped she had felt with him, once he was running her family’s business and seemingly the very apple of their eyes, made Caroline feel nauseous.

‘You and Matthew had so much in common. It should’ve been a match made in heaven. His parents certainly thought so,’ Isabel remarked with regret. ‘And we thought Matthew would be perfect for our needs as well.’

Caroline’s brow pleated. ‘Your needs?’ she queried.

‘Don’t be naïve, Caro,’ Isabel censured. ‘Naturally we always hoped you’d bring home a husband who could take over the firm for us. Matthew was from the right background and he had great management experience.’

Caroline was studying the older woman in growing horror. ‘Is that why you were so keen on me marrying him?’

‘You were very attached to him. You’d known him all your life.’

‘Why did Matthew’s parents suddenly decide to invest in Hales when we got married?’ Caroline cut in tightly.

‘They wanted him to settle down, and we were all keen for him to take over the business. It was a natural development.’

‘Was it really?’ her daughter replied, less than convinced, belatedly conscious that her marriage had included an ‘understanding’ and a business angle between the two families that she had remained utterly unaware of at the time.

‘Giles Sweetman was already nearing retirement when he left us, and your father thought the firm was ready for a shake-up. Matthew was young and dynamic.’

‘So the Baileys only invested in the firm because Matthew was taking over as manager. Is that the only reason he wanted to marry me?’

An angry flush marked the older woman’s cheeks. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Caro. Matthew loved you—’

‘No,’ Caroline cut in flatly. ‘He never loved me. I can assure you of that. But he had expensive tastes, and his parents were getting tired of keeping him. I can see that back then it would’ve seemed worth his while to marry me when I was coming to him with Hales as a dowry.’

‘My goodness, what an imagination you have!’ Isabel exclaimed. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’

Caroline choked back the furious words ready to leap on to her tongue and gritted her teeth, for she could see no point in arguing about a marriage that was no longer in existence. ‘I’m going up to bed now.’

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you.’

‘No, you’ve never understood me,’ Caroline said painfully.

‘Oh, don’t go all pathetic,’ Isabel sniped in exasperation. ‘Your father and I thought we were doing the very
best we could for you when we encouraged you to marry Matthew—you used to call him your best friend!’

‘I loved Valente,’ Caroline said shakily, a great frightening wave of emotion washing through her.

‘And going by what I saw today you can still have him…if you’re clever enough to reel him in again,’ Isabel responded with superior amusement.

Caroline got into bed and cried for her own stupidity, while Koko made plaintive cries in sympathy. Caroline saw that five years earlier she had got caught like a fly in a spider’s web. Both sets of parents had had a good reason for encouraging a marriage between their offspring. The Haleses had got a healthy investment sum to bolster their transport firm, in return for the assurance that Matthew would soon be in charge of it and its ultimate owner as their son-in-law. The Baileys had wanted a safe niche for Matthew, who had demonstrated a worrying inability to settle down to one job and stick to it, and of course they had also wanted a grandchild. Only Caroline had been too naïve to spot the reality that her marriage was much more a business agreement than a relationship between two people. It infuriated and shamed her that she had not had the wit to see that background at the time.