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‘So, what are you planning to do about our competitor, Bomark Logistics?’ Joe was asking eagerly when his daughter arrived.
‘I think there’s room for both businesses in the current market,’ Valente responded with care, glancing up to see Caroline in the doorway of the large conservatory where the patients entertained their visitors.
With her pale blonde hair casually pulled back from her lovely face, and wearing a dress the colour of lavender teamed with a short-sleeved cashmere cardigan, she exuded the fresh, natural appeal of a wild flower-and she still took her highly sophisticated husband’s breath away. As arousal stabbed into him like a particularly vicious knife he went rigid, and mentally regrouped from that over-the-top reaction to his first sight of her in thirteen days. She was incredibly pretty-but so were thousands of other women, he instructed himself grimly. He could not, however, prevent his wayward thoughts from reaching a peak of proud satisfaction over the knowledge that she was his wife, and therefore exclusively his. She had let him down badly once, and he would never give her the chance to do that again. But, flawed or otherwise, he was willing to admit that she was the one acquisition he was most proud of.
Caroline said her goodbyes to her parents before her return to Italy with Valente. While she talked to them she stole little glances at her husband, for she had missed his charismatic, unsettling presence more than she would ever have admitted during her visit to her former home. He was far too good-looking and sexually co
mpelling for her peace of mind. All too many nights since they had parted she had lain awake, wondering if he was awake too, if he was experiencing anything like the acute pain of separation that was tormenting her. She had worried that the gorgeous Agnese and all her predatory equivalents would be hovering around Valente, all too keen to offer him sexual consolation. She had feared that he might be tempted. He shot her a brief sidewise glance from dense dark-lashed eyes the colour of caramel toffee and she felt almost sick with longing, her mouth going dry, her heartbeat picking up speed.
‘It’s hard to believe that my parents think the sun rises and sets on you now, but it does make life much more simple,’ Caroline allowed, shaking her head over the meteoric leap in status he had contrived in the senior Haleses’ eyes as she and Valente followed his aides out of the visiting area.
‘But I should have been here with you when Joe had his op,’ Valente breathed in a tone of regret. ‘That was wrong.’
‘My parents know how busy you are, and you’ve been so generous in spite of old history,’ she said gratefully.
‘But business should never come before family. Ettore told me that once, and I should have listened harder. He was so busy making money in order to live like his forebears had lived that his children were like strangers to him. He gave them money and little else, and of course they took advantage. By the time I got to know him his descendants were picking his old bones as clean as a pack of vultures. They all enjoyed riding the gravy train at his expense,’ Valente revealed with a grimace. ‘That was why I agreed to try and steer the Barbieri family fortunes into more profitable waters.’
‘You cared about your grandfather. I’m glad you had that bond with him,’ Caroline said warmly.
Valente winced. ‘He was an honourable man, and was once a shrewd businessman in his own right, but by the time I met him he was going blind and was dangerously dependent on his family. He needed my help because he had learned that he couldn’t trust them any more.’
‘You didn’t seem very close to the cousins who came to our wedding,’ Caroline commented.
‘I’m not. I restored my grandfather’s fortunes, and he changed his will and left his property empire to me instead. You can imagine how popular that made me.’
‘You had rights too, as the son of your grandfather’s eldest child,’ Caroline argued.
‘The title of count, of course, went to my cousin, as he was born within marriage, unlike me, but he was denied the ancestral homes and the money,’ Valente revealed wryly. ‘Ettore didn’t trust him or his sisters to spend what needed to be spent on repairing the properties, and I must admit that I have spent a great deal more conserving them than I originally intended.’
‘How do your relatives live now?’
‘I set some of them up in business, and I employ another few and help out some of the older relations with an allowance. We don’t socialise much. In their eyes, I’ll always be the boy from the backstreet calle who shamed the family by exposing my father’s crime. Only Ettore was able to accept me as I am.’
As they crossed the gravel to the waiting limousine his aides were exchanging files. A gust of wind made one of the files flap open and caught a sheet of paper, which fluttered up into the air and fell down at Caroline’s feet. She stooped to pick it up and the name of the business and the familiar logo printed across the top startled her and made her stare: Bomark Logistics. It was some kind of a report. She passed it back to Valente’s aide without comment and wondered what dealings he had with the rival transport firm which had put Hales out of business. Was he trying to buy it? Take it over? Or was he checking out the opposition by some nefarious means?
That gave her two topics she wanted to discuss with him in some detail: Agnese Brunetti and Bomark logistics. Valente had a dark, secretive Venetian soul, and he fiercely conserved his privacy. She took a deep breath when she got into the limousine and turned to him, but by then he was already on the phone. It would be easier to tackle those topics on the flight back to Italy, she decided ruefully.
But Valente had other more pressing plans…
CHAPTER TEN
DARK eyes flashing hot gold, Valente caught Caroline in his arms within minutes of the jet taking off. ‘I missed you, bella mia.’
Her heart raced while she tossed her head in apparent surprise and her grey eyes sparkled with challenge. ‘You never mentioned it when you phoned. Not once.’
Valente threw his handsome dark head back, laughed in appreciation and shrugged a broad shoulder with magnificent disregard for such frills. ‘So, I’m not one of those guys who will say all the right things to feed your ego!’
Pained regret stirred inside her. ‘But you used to be much more…emotional, open and affectionate.’
His amusement evaporated. ‘Women like you toughened me up. Don’t complain about your own handiwork,’ he breathed harshly, bending his proud dark head to nuzzle the tender skin of her pale slender throat with his lips and the edge of his strong white teeth in an unexpectedly erotic salutation that made her nerve-endings execute a somersault.
‘You’re not being fair.’ Caroline was annoyed, tired of being censured for what had happened five years earlier. He had also made choices with far-reaching consequences, when he had left the country and made it impossible for her to contact him other than by letter.
‘Since when was life fair?’ In an effort to conclude the conversation, Valente kissed her with all the seething passion that had built up during her absence. He had not slept a night through since her departure.
Caroline’s hostility took a back seat while she trembled in convulsive response against his lean, powerful frame. His hands splayed to her small bottom to lift her and gather her closer, making her awesomely aware of the virile heat of his erection. ‘I want you so much I ache,’ Valente groaned.
And there would be no real conversation until after that stage, she recognised ruefully, and then just as quickly scolded herself for that thought. Only weeks ago he would not have dared to show her that passion, and she would have cringed away from him, still too damaged by her experiences with Matthew to have any prospect of rediscovering or enjoying her own sexuality.
