‘You still haven’t told me that he hit you, and he did,’ Vito countered darkly. ‘I saw it in his face and yours. I wanted to keep on hitting him. It would have given me immense satisfaction.’

‘Don’t! He didn’t really hit me,’ she protested. ‘Not the way you read about but… but I was always afraid that he would because he got so angry with me.’ Uneasily she swallowed, suppressing those memories.

‘No wonder you wanted your freedom at university.

You had never had any before.’ The flat syllables were curiously clipped.

‘No.’ She was glad that he understood.

He asked her if she was hungry. Her stomach rebelled at the mere thought of food. Once or twice she tried to initiate conversation but Vito had become disturbingly uncommunicative. But then, he had just met the in-laws from hell, she reflected in strong chagrin. Yet she felt curiously at peace. Questions that had troubled her for much of her childhood had been answered. She was not in herself so repulsive that her father couldn’t love her. No, she had become the innocent victim of her mother’s affair, the focus of all her father’s bitterness.

They separated when they got home. Vito said he had some calls to make.

‘I’ll order a late lunch,’ she said.

‘I’m not hungry.’ The harsh edge to his response made her tense. She wondered what on earth was wrong. His darkly handsome features were shuttered by a fierce constraint beyond her comprehension, but before she could speak he was taking the stairs two at a time.

An hour later she went in search of him. Their chauffeur passed by her on the stairs, carrying two cases. With a frown, Ashley walked into Vito’s bedroom suite. He was standing at the window like someone in a trance, blistering tension emanating from him in waves.

‘I didn’t know you had another trip,’ she murmured tightly. ‘You didn’t mention it.’ Vito swung round. ‘I’m returning to Italy. I can’t stay here.’

‘You’re leaving?’ White as a sheet from the sheer shock of his sudden change of heart, Ashley simply stared at him. ‘But you said-‘

‘That I wanted to stay until the baby was born,’ he completed. ‘But we both know that that isn’t what you want.’

She locked her hands together before they could betray her by shaking. Her fingers twisted into each other. ‘I don’t understand.’

Vito released his breath jerkily, his dark eyes locked to her. ‘I think it’s past time that I stopped knocking my head up against a brick wall and simply took account of your wishes for a change.’

Only hours ago he had been fighting with her to convince her that he should stay. She just couldn’t believe that he now wanted out…without warning… without discussion… without anything. ‘But I didn’t say that I wanted you to leave-‘

‘You don’t need to. I know how you feel about me,’ he asserted almost thickly, his strong bone-structure prominent with strain beneath his golden skin. ‘To persist in the face of such odds would be utter insanity. I’m not blaming you. Considering what I’ve done…’ He faltered and sucked in air, shifted an expressive hand. ‘Well, you’ve been very tolerant, much more tolerant than I had any right to expect in the circumstances. But I have to face facts. You would be a lot more comfortable if I weren’t here-‘

‘If you’re trying to convince me that you’re doing this for my benefit rather than your own, you’re not getting anywhere!’ Ashley threw at him in a shaken undertone, crossing her arms over her breasts as if she needed that support.

‘Hennessy will be happier if I’m not around and so will I be,’ Vito admitted with sudden stark force. ‘What has Josh got to do with this?’

‘Madre di Dio!’ Vito swore rawly, swinging away from her again. ‘You’re involved with him and I am the intruder, not he, since I forced you into this marriage. Clearly he was on the scene at the time and I could hardly expect you to admit the fact. Now you will be free to continue your liaison-‘

Did his conscience require the sop that she had another man waiting for her? Dear God, she had totally forgotten that Vito had heard Pietro referring to her holding hands and weeping over Josh that day. There had been so much else happening, it had completely slipped her mind. She looked at Vito, rigid, brooding and unbelievably tense, not exactly the last of the liberated husbands in her own opinion. And here he was, giving her carte blanche to… dear heaven, how dared he?

‘I haven’t the slightest intention of becoming involved with Josh,’ she snapped out. ‘Unlike you, I don’t flit like a butterfly from one person to another.’

‘I didn’t flit to Carina’s arms,’ Vito bit out with lancing bitterness. ‘I fell into them in a drunken, mindless stupor!’

Ashley stilled. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s really not important-‘ ‘It is to me!’

Reluctantly he turned back to her. ‘I considered her to be a close friend,’ he confided. ‘And one evening, not very long after I had learnt of your visit to that clinic, I went to her apartment…’

‘And?’ Ashley prompted fiercely.

‘I needed someone to talk to but I was very drunk,’ he spelt out with distaste, a dark flush of embarrassment accentuating the hard slant of his cheekbones. ‘The next morning I woke up in her bed with no memory whatsoever of how I had got there.’

Deeply pained by the image, Ashley turned her head away.

‘That’s why I married her. She loved me. I believed that I had taken advantage of that. I felt that I had to marry her,’ he admitted tautly. ‘I thought that you had someone else, I thought that you had had an abortion-‘

‘Yes,’ she conceded strickenly.

‘My father was so ill that my mother urged haste. It was complete madness.’ Vito emitted a humourless laugh. ‘I had lost you. I really didn’t care what I did and in that state I married. Only after the wedding did Carina confess that nothing had happened that night. So you see, cara… I was an absolute fool. Had my wits been about me, I might have suspected that I was too incapable of a night of passion, but my wits weren’t about me.’

He hadn’t told her the truth about his marriage to Carina because that truth had made him feel stupid. Carina had trapped him in the only way she could, relying on his sense of honour to close the bars on that trap.

His mouth tightened. ‘I should be entirely honest with you. That wasn’t the only reason I married her. She loved me and I wanted you to know that I could get on with my life without you. Not quite the best reason for marrying anyone… least of all a woman worthy of more than I was ever able to give her-‘

‘She made her choice.’

Vito grimaced. ‘She knew I didn’t love her but she had this sunny belief that in the end I would. She put up the photos everywhere. They made me feel guilty… that’s why it took me so long to have them put away. It was almost as though she was afraid that I forgot she existed if she wasn’t immediately in front of me!’

Ashley winced.

Vito straightened. ‘I did try to make her happy, but I failed. I couldn’t manufacture love to order. I’m really not very good in relationships…in fact, I’m bloody useless!’

‘No, you’re not. If she knew that you didn’t love her, she must surely have known that there would be problems-‘

‘Which of us are so practical about attaining our heart’s desire?’ His lustrous dark eyes clung to her briefly and then he squared his broad shoulders and turned away. ‘Four years ago, I was so crazy about you I would have married you the first week we met. That wasn’t practical either, was it? And that’s why I’m leaving now. I don’t want your pity.’

‘Why would I pity you?’ Ashley demanded in a rush of bitterness. ‘You were out for revenge, Vito, and you certainly took it!’

‘I never wanted revenge,’ Vito contradicted with a harsh laugh. ‘I wanted you… I needed you, and within days I knew I was still in love with you!’

Ashley gaped at him, transfixed.