'Looking scared would only encourage him.' She glanced anxiously at her watch. 'I should be going.' Vito was striding through the hall when she returned home. She paled like a thief caught with her hand trapped in the till. 'You weren't due back until tomorrow'

'Should I look under the bed? Search the cupboards?' he teased.

Huddled inside her coat with her stomach sucked in, she looked at him blankly. 'For your lover,' he supplied rather drily. 'It was supposed to be a joke.'

Amus.e.m.e.nt failed her. As he searched her face, his dark features set hard, making him look tired, irritable. '''Welcome home, caro. I've missed you so much,'" he breathed with glancing satire in a high-pitched treble.

She flushed, her shoulders drooping under the weight of her depression. 'I'm sorry.'

'The last thing I need right now is an apology. Dio, what am I? Your gaoler, that you need to cringe when you see me?' he murmured in a fierce undertone.

The burden of her own secrecy constrained her. And what would he have done had she thrown herself into his arms? Such a demonstration would scarcely have been welcome when he no longer found her desirable. The pa.s.sion had burnt out just as she had known it would, and when he wouldn't even argue with her she knew their relationship was on the rocks. Either that or he was sickening for something, she reflected morosely as she sat down in the palatial drawing-room.

'Mr Angeli, madam.'

Ashley glanced up from her magazine with a frown.

Who? Their staff didn't normally show a visitor in until they had established that the visitor was welcome...with one notable exception. Family members. And there, smirking like a cartoon baddie in a comic strip stood Pietro.

'Vito's upstairs if you want him.' She decided to call his bluff, every muscle in her slight body drawn unnaturally tense.

Pietro strolled over to her. 'You must think I'm stupid. He's in Milan.'

Ashley edged upright uneasily. 'He's upstairs.' He laughed. 'You wish!'

'Are you threatening me?' she enquired in disbelief. He drew out a cigarette and lit it with a flourish.

'What do you think?'

'I'd prefer you not to smoke,' she said quietly.

His dark eyes rested on her flatly. He was a very handsome boy, but there was something frighteningly unboyish about the cool way in which he looked her over, as if she was a piece of female flesh on a slab. 'If you think I'm about to listen to some cheap little tart telling me what I can and can't do in my uncle's house, you're even dumber than you look.'

'I'd like you to leave, Pietro.' She drew in a deep, shaky breath.

'I don't think so. You've got it made here, haven't you? I'd hate to rock the newly married boat,' he mocked. 'And I could, believe me. Giulia tells me he's very jealous ... nearly made a scene at the engagement party. I can't imagine it myself. I always saw my uncle as a very astute guy, more into banking than bonking-'

'Get out!' she demanded unsteadily.

'You're as over-sensitive as your little twerp of a brother. I did for him nicely, didn't I?' He gave her a self-satisfied smile. 'My friends gave him a right going over, taught him quite a lesson. You should learn from his mistakes. I think you're going to be very nice to me indeed in the near future.'

Ashley was feeling physically sick. Pietro was a teenager like Tim, just a kid, she had to keep on telling herself. But that he should crow about having had her brother beaten up really shook her.

'So do I tell Uncle Vito that I saw you holding hands and weeping over the good doctor this lunchtime or do I keep quiet?' he taunted.

'You tell him whatever you see fit,' she dared. Pietro grimaced. 'But you see, once I start talking, I might get carried away. I might tell him about the money you took to dump him the last time-'

'What?' she interrupted hoa.r.s.ely, unable to believe her ears.

'My mother told me about it. It's an open secret in the family,' he shared, enjoying her shock. 'You got a big fat cheque and he got Carina as a consolation prize.' 'I never cashed that cheque!' Ashley gasped, her head reeling.

'Uncle Vito's got a lot of pride ... I don't think he's going to be too happy to find out he was dumped for a price-'

'You repulsive little swine!' Ashley suddenly erupted, shuddering with the force of her distaste. 'Have you any idea of how much you could hurt your own grandmother? The damage you could do to her relationship with Vito?'

He called her something foul. What happened next was a blur. Sick and dizzy, Ashley staggered, feeling the darkness threaten to fold in. She made it back down on to the sofa just as Pietro let out a strangled yell. When she raised her swimming head, she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Vito had his nephew pinned up against the wall with one powerful hand and he was spitting at him in staccato Italian. Uncontrollable rage was the only possible description for the mood her husband was in. He was shaking Pietro as a terrier shook a rat before it went for the jugular.

In sudden alarm, Ashley leapt upright. 'You're hurting him, Vito!'

Her use of English caused Vito to switch to the same language. 'You dare to enter my home and threaten my pregnant wife?' he was roaring. 'When I am finished with you, you will wish you were dead!'

Ashley rather thought he might be, but on the brink of interference she fell back, the paralysis of deeper shock sinking in. Vito had said 'my pregnant wife'. A humming noise interfered with her eardrums. Without the smallest of warnings, she keeled over in a dead faint.

CHAPTER TEN.

WHEN Ashley came round, she was lying on her bed. In a flash, everything came back. Vito knew she was pregnant. All her ridiculous precautions had been a complete waste of time. In addition, she now knew why he had changed towards her. At the back of her mind, she had feared the cause had been that last row when she had raved at him like a madwoman. Now she knew differently.

'How do you feel?' Vito enquired with an anxious tremor in the normally level tenor of his voice. 'Should I call a doctor?'

She refused to open her eyes. 'No, that would be making a fuss.'

Vito sighed. 'I'm afraid I have already made a fuss.

I've called the family doctor out.'

'Then why did you bother asking me?'

'I was hoping for a sensible answer,' he admitted heavily. 'You know that I know now-'

'How?'

'That last night in Sri Lanka ... I overheard your conversation with Priya.'

Her lashes flew up, revealing incredulous green. 'You didn't look as if you'd overheard!' she protested.

Gracefully he shrugged a shoulder. 'The ability not to betray emotion is useful in the banking world.'

She flinched, turned her head away. 'You should have told me. I feel a fool-'

He released his breath. 'I did hope that you would tell me freely if I gave you time. I was also very surprised,' he confessed quietly. 'Was it that nigh-' 'Yes!' she whipped the word at him to shut him up on a painful subject.

'You won't believe me, but I really am sorry-' 'You're right. .. I don't!'

'You weren't ready for this. It was badly timed,' he murmured tautly.

'My pregnancies usually are. I'm astonished that you're not over the moon!'

'Am I allowed to be?'

She said nothing, drained of response. She stared at the wall. His behaviour since they had returned to London was understandable now. He had been conserving her energies for the baby. Nothing but peace, quiet and tranquillity for the baby's benefit. Nothing else mattered, obviously.

'You've got what you want, so leave me alone,' she mumbled bitterly.

'Do you really think that this is what I want?'

His only answer was her defensively turned back. 'If you hadn't fainted, I might have throttled my nephew,' he remarked, trying a new tack. 'He wouldn't be much of a loss.'

'I was about to enter the room when I heard something that he was saying. I waited until I heard it all,' he delivered. 'And if I don't sound quite myself, it could be because I've had a number of severe shocks this afternoon. '

She worried at her lower lip with her teeth. Exactly how much had he heard? Slowly she turned over again. Vito was standing by the window, tall, dark and very still. He was emanating turmoil in waves though. The atmosphere was crackling with tension.

'It would appear that Pietro lied to me about his dealings with your brother-' 'My delinquent, violent brother?'

Vito flinched, and, annoyingly, the sight gave her no satisfaction. Instead she found herself wanting to offer comfort. Vito was one of those people who very rarely found themselves in the wrong. A perfectionist with a strong sense of fair play, he now found himself in a most invidious position. Tim had certainly not deserved a prison sentence for losing his head. Tim had been most brutally provoked - Ashley was sure of that after what she herself had undergone at Pietro's hands. And Tim hadn't even told her about the accusation concerning the money she had supposedly taken. Tim had known it for a lie. But did Vito?

'I misjudged him as badly as I misjudged my nephew. My only excuse is that I have had very little contact with Pietro in recent years and until I actually heard him speaking to you I would have continued to defend him because ... because he is family.' He made the admission through bloodlessly compressed lips. 'Since his father died, we have all spoilt him, indulged him, self-evidently ruined his character.'

'Oh, stop blaming yourself,' Ashley groaned. 'He's a conceited, nasty, vicious little creep. Any family as large as yours is bound to have at least one revolting specimen.'

'I very much regret that both you and your brother should have had to suffer at his hands-'

'I've suffered more at yours.'

As quickly as she said it, she regretted it. She didn't know him in this mood. He was under great strain. His stance, his clenched features and pallor told her that. But he was also still very much in control. There was iron in Vito's soul. A lesser man might have buckled beneath the revelations he had had to endure. But not Vito. He was ashamed of his nephew's behaviour. He felt it as a personal slight. However, he was not about to set her free in rest.i.tution. Not now that she was pregnant, she acknowledged painfully.

'Is it true that my mother gave you money?'

The iron control was under threat now. She sat up, meeting the savage darkness of his challenging gaze and she knew that he very much wanted to hear that Pietro had been talking rubbish. 'She came to see me the day before you asked me to marry you-'

His even white teeth gritted in a flash against his dark skin. 'And she offered you money to get out of my life?'

Ashley bent her head. 'No, she wasn't as crude as that. She put the cheque on the table as she left. I expect she thought you were keeping me and she didn't want me to-' She winced as he said a very rude word in Italian. 'That's all there really is to it.'

'If you don't tell me, I'll get it out of her,' he spelt out icily, but his tone belied the smouldering anger of humiliation in his hard stare. 'I want to know exactly what was said.'

Ashley didn't have the energy for a struggle with the sheer overwhelming force of Vito's will. 'What do you think?' she muttered dully. 'That I wouldn't be able to fit, that I wouldn't be able to cope, that I'd embarra.s.s you. I didn't have the right background, the right religion, the right anything. In short, I would ruin your life.'

His back was turned to her, the defensive bunching of his muscles visible even through his well-cut jacket. Without warning, he struck the wall with a coiled fist, making her flinch. 'She was wrong,' he whispered, savagely sardonic. 'I didn't need you to ruin my life. Then and now, I was perfectly capable of doing that for myself.'

'She did it with the best of intentions. She didn't know me. She must have been worried about your father-'

'I'll never forgive her,' Vito swore violently. 'I was no helpless teenager in need of her protection!'

'A son is always a son no matter what age he is.' 'You defend her?' He surveyed her with complete incredulity. 'Why?'

Ashley sighed. 'I think she saved us from making a bad mistake.'

Harsh lines indented the curve between his nose and mouth. He was rigid, palpably restraining the rawness of his emotions with the thinnest remaining edge of control. 'What a shame that she couldn't whisk you out of harm's way this time. It seems that she would have done both of us a very big favour.'

Ashley turned white as though he had struck her, and in a way he might as well have done, so complete was that bitter force of his rejection. She bowed her head, closed her eyes, struggling to absorb the immensity of her pain and conceal it from him.

The doctor's arrival was a welcome interruption. He walked into an atmosphere that could have been cut with a knife. Complete rest and calm and no upsets was his practical prescription. Dinner was brought to her on a tray. She napped for a while after she had eaten, having given up waiting for Vito to reappear. '

Much later she opened her sleepy eyes on lamplight. Vito was casting a long shadow by the window. He wore neither tie nor jacket. With his black hair tussled and his jaw line darkly shadowed, he failed his usual standards of perfect grooming. He also had a gla.s.s in his hand.

'What time is it?' she muttered.

'Midnight...later.' With an infinitesimal shrug, he sighed. 'I really don't know.' The syllables dragged ever so slightly.

That very faint slur betrayed him. His mother was right all along, she decided. I'm the kiss of death to Vito ... I'm driving him to drink.

He cleared his throat. 'I've seen Lorena, Pietro's mother. She knows now what he has done. She intends to return to Italy with him. She is very close to her late husband's family and believes that they will help her to exercise greater control over his son. I am not so optimistic. I suspect that Pietro will remain a problem.'

Ashley surfaced from the bedding with the sensual glide of a mermaid emerging from the waves. She sat up, righting the slipping satin strap of her diaphanous nightdress. 'You've had a busy evening,' she said, combing her fingers slowly through her vibrant mane of hair so that it fell in a silken ma.s.s across her pale shoulders. It was so much wasted effort. The male who would have been electrified by such a display a mere fortnight ago still didn't spare her a glance. 'I'm feeling much better,' she added.

'Good.' The tone was strained. He stared moodily down into the crystal gla.s.s he held. 'I seem to have this extraordinary talent for destroying what you hold dear. Yet you must accept that I never intended, never planned for it to be that way. I thought I had the right ... I thought that you owed me this chance-'

Unbearably taut, she whispered, 'I'm not sure I follow.'

He threw back his head and laughed with savage amus.e.m.e.nt. Her entire attention was fiercely locked to him, her heartbeat racing even in that moment of stress to the raw, virile power of his male beauty. 'I have never been afflicted by any great degree of humility,' he confided shamelessly. 'You see, I thought that I could make you love me.'

A hoa.r.s.e sound of distress escaped her. A shudder of reaction forced a pa.s.sage through her tense body. He confirmed her own suspicions but it had been many weeks since she had dwelt on those suspicions which would have clouded and ruined that final, glorious month in Sri Lanka.

'I actually thought that if I pushed all the right b.u.t.tons, it would happen. You would wake up one day and, far from wanting to stick a knife between my ribs,' he a.s.serted harshly, 'you would think, I cannot live without this guy. And you would cling like ivy, cleave like Eve to Adam in the Bible-'

'I think I get the picture, Vito.' It took her a full thirty seconds to even make her voice work and it emerged rusty and flat, unable to rise above the tremendous pain she was fighting to hide. No wonder he had decided not to get her pregnant. He had been far more intent on revenge and he had gone to a lot of effort ... in fact he had gone to the most unbelievable lengths to push what he had called 'the right b.u.t.tons'. And had she been honest with him, he might have been spared all that tedious exertion. He had actually got what he wanted far more quickly and easily than he could ever have guessed. She was so desperately hurt, so horribly humiliated that she wanted to die.

He released his breath in a hiss. 'I was incredibly conceited-'

'Yes.' And with just cause, she conceded wretchedly.

She had been a vulnerable target, a willing victim.

'To even think that after all that I had done to you, you could even ... even begin to care for me again,' he practically muttered, sounding rather peculiar.

Since she hadn't brought herself to look once at him in the last few minutes, she presumed it was the effect of the alcohol. 'C-crazy,' she managed jerkily half under her breath.

'It was unforgivable.'

Dumbly she nodded agreement.

'Manipulative, calculating,' he breathed raggedly, an edge of something remarkably similar to desperation in his delivery. 'I can't help being like that. .. '