Virgin on Her Wedding Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘What would we talk about? There’s no room for negotiation. I’ll see you this afternoon at Winterwood.’
    ‘At…Winterwood? ‘Caroline exclaimed in horror.
    ‘It is my property. I’ll see you at four for a guided tour.’
    Caroline was appalled.
    Valente dealt her a slashing smile that had the effect of making her back away from him. ‘And warn the family that I won’t be using the tradesman’s entrance, piccola mia .’
    ‘Mrs Bailey?’ the PA prompted, holding the door invitingly wide for her exit.
    Seeing that she had no other choice, Caroline left the office. She was trembling with rage. She never swore, but she wanted to hurl curses at Valente. She yearned for the physical strength to grab him by the lapels of his fancy suit and slam him up against the wall to make him listen to her!
    Sadly, Valente was evidently driven by too powerful a compulsion for revenge to award her a more generous hearing. Five years ago she had jilted him at the altar. Her misplaced trust in another person and her illness had together plunged Valente into the humiliating position of a bridegroom left standing by his bride. Circumstances had left her unable to ensure that he was forewarned of her change of heart before he reached the church. Although Valente had been informed of those mitigating factors after the event, it was very plain that he still blamed her for what he had undergone that day. After all, she still blamed herself, recognising the appalling blow that her no-show must have dealt Valente’s ferocious pride. He had fought for her and lost, and his iron will could not accept defeat.
    Even in the act of driving back home Caroline shivered. Valente had grown up fighting poverty and fighting for everything he’d ever wanted. That grittyraw-edged struggle for survival, the losses and slights he had endured, had ignited a primitive streak of dark cruelty and strength in him that had intimidated Caroline when she’d first known him. He’d had little time for her refined attitudes, and he’d downright despised her continuing allegiance to her parents, who had done everything they could to break up his relationship with her.
    ‘If you really love me, you can overcome anything,’ Valente had told her five years earlier.
    He had expected so much from her, Caroline acknowledged painfully. But she had been raised too gently to have his power and his conviction, his ability to reject and ignore the feelings of those who did not share his objectives.
    As her emotions shifted back and forth between past and present, memories that Caroline had long suppressed came floating back to the surface of her mind.
    The summer after she’d completed her apprenticeship with a jewellery designer she had longed for the capital to set up her own business. That she’d been a child with aspirations to build her own business had been a severe disappointment to the Hales, who had hoped for a much more feminine and frivolous daughter, eager to enjoy the local social scene and find a suitable husband. Determined not to ask her parents for their financial help when they disapproved of her ambitions, Caroline had taken a temporary office job at Hales, so that she could save up the money she needed to start her company. Ironically that decision had shaken Joe and Isabel even more, for they had considered the transport firm too crude a working environment for their much-adored child.
    Just two days after she’d started work in the office where administration was handled, Caroline had looked up and seen Valente for the first time. The liquid flow of his accented English had initially attracted her attention, but it had been her first mesmerising glimpse of his lean dark face which had made her stare. No words could ever hope to describe the intense sense of recognition and fascination that drop-dead beautiful face of his had fired her with. Ignoring her colleague, who had been trying to flirt with him, Valente had skimmed a glance over Caroline,