LITMIR.BIZ

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he reminded her.

      ‘Only because I was stupid enough to try and appeal—’

      ‘To some vein of sentimentality I might possess?’ he guessed with derision. ‘I’m not sentimental about sex.’

      The assurance roared like a shockwave through her. She felt not only humiliated, she felt cheated. ‘But you—’

      ‘You destroyed what I felt for you.’ It was an icy growl.

      ‘You had a pretty similar effect on me!’ she traded.

      A dark, forbidding anger glimmered in his gaze. ‘I actually believed that you would grow out of your ridiculous ideas. I actually honoured you with a proposal of marriage—’

      ‘Oh, let’s not make the mistake of referring to that offer in terms of honour!’ Ashley flung back at him furiously. ‘You made it painfully apparent that you thought you were doing me one very big favour. And you wanted a good excuse to avoid the gold-plated Plain Jane your parents kept on throwing at your head! That is, until you came to your senses and got your calculator out and snatched at her with both greedy hands!’

      Without warning, Vito sprang up and strode forward to face her. His dark features were set like granite. ‘If you ever refer to my late wife like that again, I may well choose to forget that you are a woman and give you the response that you truly deserve!’

      ‘L-late? As in g-gone?’ As he towered over her, six feet three inches of ferocious threat, she bowed her head, shattered by the news and cursing her impulsive tongue and the venom that could trip off it so easily in his radius. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘No, you’re not,’ Vito grated.

      ‘All right. I can’t really be sorry because I didn’t know her!’ Ashley slammed back at him with more truth than tact. ‘But I’m sure she was a saint and a wonderful person, quite unlike me…’

      ‘Most unlike you,’ he breathed tautly in agreement. ‘You have the face of a Botticelli angel, the temperament of a virago and the amorality of a natural whore. On no count do you have the smallest resemblance to Carina.’

      Ashley had turned very pale, beads of perspiration dampening her brow. She was devastated by the vicious response she had invited. ‘Dear God,’ she muttered shakily. ‘I must have been out of my mind when I got mixed up with you!’

      A tiny pulse was beating in the hollow below one aristocratic cheekbone. ‘We were both temporarily insane.’

      Ashley slowly shook her head. Carina was dead. Carina was just a name and a face in a glossy magazine spread to her. It had been the wedding of the year in Italy, the amalgamation of two great fortunes. Vito hadn’t wasted any time. One month after he had walked out on her, he had become engaged, and one month after that he had married. Carina had floated down the aisle, radiant in blinding white. And she had been radiant, ecstatically happy to have won Vito even by default. The bride had very obviously been in love.

      However, Vito had married without love, without even the spur of sexual attraction. On their wedding night, Ashley had felt suicidal…the pain had been that bad, that unendurable. Until that day, she had been unable to bring herself to believe that he could actually go through with it.

      But Vito had gone through with it. He had cut Ashley out of his life with terrifying immediacy and precision. And no regrets. Remembering still had the power to chill her to the marrow. She, who had once been so strong, had been broken like a toy and cast aside. She had learnt the hard way that she was no cleverer and no less vulnerable than any other woman in love. In the long, anguished months that had followed, she had lived in a kind of twilight world where she had co-existed with a ghost. In the end, she had been forced to confront and accept the most painful truth of all. Vito had never loved her. If he had, he couldn’t have married another woman.

      Stilling a reflexive shiver, she stared at his hand-stitched Italian leather shoes. He hates me, she thought weakly, he hates me because once he was foolish enough to ask me to marry him and I had the audacity to say no. Dear lord, how had this appalling confrontation developed? She was supposed to be here for Tim’s benefit, wasn’t she? And so far, she was guiltily aware that she had made a very poor showing.

      ‘I’m sorry.’ It stuck in her throat but she persisted for her brother’s sake. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’

      ‘Nobody ever taught you how to curb it,’ Vito murmured harshly. ‘But I could have.’

      You and who else, mister? But the aggressive question remained sensibly unspoken. She felt like a volcano about to erupt. And she knew she couldn’t. Only two people in the world had this effect on her. One was her father, the other was Vito. Rage took her over. Rage and fear. Instinctively she stifled her acknowledgement of that secondary emotion. Survival, to Ashley, meant never ever admitting that anything or anybody frightened her.

      She cast him a glance in which desperate defiance and loathing mingled as blatantly as a blow. ‘I’m not into crawling…’

      A winged dark brow elevated. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen you attempt such a feat.’

      ‘But you’d like a ringside seat, wouldn’t you?’ She leapt upright, too restive to remain still, too threatened by his proximity to stay so close. The sudden movement dislodged the loose topknot which confined her hair and a curling tangle of Titian red rippled down far below her shoulders in shining disarray. Irritably she thrust the fiery strands back from her slanted cheekbones, accidentally intercepting a lingering stare from Vito as she lifted her head high. ‘I know what you want to hear,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re thinking right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what you’ve been thinking from the moment I walked into this room!’

      ‘For the sake of peace, I hope not.’ It was a low-pitched growl which made the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck prickle.

      His intonation threw her off balance for a second. Intent golden eyes watched her still with the grace of a gazelle in flight, sunlight glittering fire in that amazing curtain of vibrant hair. Her return look was blank.

      ‘You want to hear that I deeply regret not marrying you,’ she stated with characteristic bluntness.

      ‘Do I?’ Vito didn’t move a muscle.

      She squared her shoulders, hoping that he was bigger than his fragile male ego when the cards were down. ‘I have to be honest so that we can get this hangover from four years ago out of the way.’

      ‘Oh, please be honest, cara,’ he encouraged lazily.

      She swallowed hard. ‘If you must know, I’m still proud of the fact that I refused to become your possession. A life of round-the-clock surveillance and subjugation at your hands would have stifled me. It would never have worked.’

      ‘It worked in bed. Dio,’ Vito interposed in a sizzling undertone, ‘how it worked…’

      Fierce heat pooled in the pit of her stomach. Flustered and embarrassed out of all proportion to the remark, she said nothing.

      Vito surveyed her with formidable cool. The chill factor in the air was powerful. ‘It would have been such a sacrifice? To be my wife? To wear silk next to your skin, diamonds at your throat? I valued you far beyond your true worth.’

      ‘Well, if you have to think like a tradesman in enumerating the material advantages I missed out on, I expect you did,’ Ashley parried between clenched teeth. ‘But you knew from the start how I felt about marriage. You can’t say you weren’t warned. Marriage is a patriarchal institution which benefits men and oppresses women. It conditions my sex into dependence and passivity, lowers their status and deprives them of individuality.’

      ‘Feminist claptrap. Dio. I’ve never heard so much rubbish!’ Vito raked back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.

      Her breasts swelled with anger. Jerkily she shrugged. ‘You are, naturally, entitled to your own opinion—as I am entitled to mine.

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