A satiric black brow elevated. ‘Bearing in mind that I have no desire to hear a plea for clemency on your brother’s behalf.’
Crushed before she could even warm up, Ashley was relieved when a phone buzzed and he stretched out an impatient hand. As his attention switched from her, she breathed again. The temptation to study him was overpowering. He was incredibly attractive. Hard cheekbones slashed his strong, dark features, highlighting the proud temperamental flare of his nose and a mouth that was a wide, blatantly sensual arc. But, if you were a woman, it was the eyes you noticed first and remembered longest. Vito had stunningly beautiful eyes, golden as the purest precious metal in sunlight or dark as darkest ebony.
In defiance of her every wish to the contrary, Vito still radiated a dark, savage sexuality boldly at variance with a three-piece suit and a silk tie. Every woman between fifteen and fifty raised her chin and sucked in her stomach when Vito passed. And she was not, she learnt, dragging her disobedient eyes from him, the exception that broke the rule. As she lowered her lashes, her skin heated. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was racing. She was badly shaken by her adolescent response to all that raw, blatant masculinity. Anger followed predictably in the wake of that lowering awareness. He replaced the phone, uttering a bland apology for the interruption.
‘You want me to get down on my knees and beg, don’t you?’ As the hot, thoughtless words burst from her, shrill with resentment, she could have bitten her tongue out for that loss of control.
Vito lounged back in his swivel chair, insultingly unsurprised by the verbal assault. Far too perceptive eyes of gold ran over her flushed face. ‘Exactly why are you here?’ he asked, politely ignoring her outburst.
‘To talk about Tim and why he did it. You’re probably not aware of it, but your nephew-‘
Vito dealt her a narrowed glance. ‘Insulted you to your brother?’ he interposed. ‘It was a regrettable incident.’
Ashley stiffened. ‘Regrettable?’
‘Pietro lost two of his front teeth,’ Vito returned drily. ‘The question of family loyalties was settled with their fists. Pietro came off worst and he has been honest with me. I see no connection between that episode and your brother’s inexcusable invasion of my home.’
‘So you had chapter and verse on Act One. What about Act Two?’ Ashley pressed with spirit. ‘Tim was cornered outside school and beaten up by four boys, one of whom was your nephew.’
‘When did this take place?’
Ashley had to think for a second or two before slinging the date at him with relish.
‘On that day, Pietro was attending his cousin’s wedding in Rome,’ Vito responded even more drily. ‘He could not possibly have been present.’
Her chin came up. ‘If he wasn’t there, he organised it. ‘
Vito set the gold pen in his hand very decisively down on the glass desktop. ‘You are now entering the realms of fantasy. Pietro would not have involved himself in so cowardly an act. Unless you have evidence on which to base these allegations, I would advise you to drop this line of argument.’ Ice cool dark eyes rested on her. ‘Pursue it and you will find it a most unproductive course.’
She was furious that she did not possess the exact details of that incident. Four youths had attacked Tim. That was the sum total of her knowledge. She ground her teeth together on an explosive retort. The atmosphere had all the encouraging warmth of a polar freeze. Biting her lower lip, she murmured, ‘I understand that the enmity between your nephew and my brother originally related to some rivalry over a girl-‘
His sculpted bone-structure set. ‘And what possible relevance does that information have to the current situation?’
Ashley stiffened. ‘The connection is pretty obvious from where I’m sitting!’
‘Then we would appear to be seated in very different positions,’ Vito drawled with biting sarcasm. ‘I fail to see the smallest connection.’
‘You’re not prepared to allow me anything, are you?’ she snapped back at him, her temper simmering.
A chilling smile formed on his lips. ‘But then, in your place, I would have come through that door and endeavoured to make what apology I could for such conduct. Your sole reason for being here appears to be a blind determination to foist some measure of blame upon Pietro or, indeed, upon some unknown girl,’ he delineated with sardonic emphasis. ‘If that were not so contemptible, I would be entertained by your efforts to excuse the inexcusable.’
A red-hot flush climbed with painful slowness beneath her translucent skin. Her approach had been all wrong. She didn’t need him to tell her that. Vito, hatefully polished veteran of many a brilliant diplomatic manoeuvre. Just entering this office had taken every shred of courage in her armoury. Under threat, Ashley went on the offensive. If Vito had been decent enough to see her earlier, she could have controlled that flaw in her own make-up. But Vito had made her suffer through an agonising morning of uncertainty, adding to her stress and strain. Vito had successfully smashed her composure before she even walked into this room.
‘I was… I am very upset,’ Ashley reasoned tautly. ‘Tim’s been under considerable pressure recently with his exams so close. I simply wanted you to have a clearer picture of his state of mind.’
‘But I have not the remotest interest in his state of mind,’ Vito said without a flicker of emotion. ‘He is neither a child nor a mental incompetent. He is responsible for his own actions.’
She focused on a point safely to the left of him. This was it. This was her cue to explain why Tim had reacted so violently to Pietro’s taunts. This was her cue to tell Vito that their relationship had, in the messy aftermath of their break-up, extracted a heavy toll from her future. But how could she possibly manage to tell Vito about her pregnancy? Vito, of all people? How on earth could she discuss something that was so deeply personal a grief that she had never yet managed to discuss it with anyone?
In a weak moment she had allowed Susan to know that she was carrying Vito’s child. She had trusted Susan to be careful with that information. She should have known better. Her father had overheard Susan and Arnold talking about her pregnancy and the secret had been out with a vengeance!
Hunt Forrester had always been the first to sneer when other people’s children got into trouble. He would boast of the rigid discipline within his own home censuring other more liberal parents and smirking over the unlikelihood of any of his children making the same mistakes.
The discovery that she was pregnant had outraged her father. The fear of his own loss of face in the local business community, should her condition become known, had been enough to make him disown her. The further news that the father of her child was already married to someone else had been the last straw.
She had been four months pregnant when she’d miscarried, although most of her family had assumed that the loss of her baby was not a natural event. She had been hoist with her own petard. In her teens she had been very outspoken about her determination never to marry or have children. Everyone knew that abortions were relatively easily available and everyone had assumed that she had finally chosen that option. No, she could not tell Vito… Vito, who was so exceptionally fond of children, Vito, with whom she had once enjoyed several heated debates on the subject of a woman’s right to choose. Vito would not believe her either and, if he thought for one moment that she had chosen that option, he would despise her even more than he did now.
‘Tim is only eighteen,’ she started afresh, ramming back the bitter pain of her memories. ‘And some of this is my fault. I never discussed… I mean, he knows nothing about what happened between us. He made certain incorrect assumptions but I had no idea how he felt until this happened.’