Stolen Bride
Sally Carr
Bride on the run…Standing in front of the altar, bouquet in hand, Cara Gambini realized she didn't love Luca Finzi and didn't want to marry him. Fortunately, help was available in the form of an infuriatingly charming, all-American hero.Finn Cormac walked into the church and offered Cara a choice–she could marry a man of dubious character and even more dubious business dealings, or allow a perfect stranger to steal her away from her own wedding. It was no contest–Cara opted for the stranger!
“You’re a dangerous woman to know, Cara Gambini.” (#uf49e8061-8671-5629-a226-cfdf6dc46d2c)About the Author (#u7c7d6c00-4f34-51fa-9e3e-a404cc8cab2a)Title Page (#ubaea66c0-de2b-5b99-88c1-8e5a18069434)CHAPTER ONE (#u92c252ed-24c3-5ece-bd01-965734f5ed58)CHAPTER TWO (#uecf013c1-fefe-562f-a925-a727c034b4da)CHAPTER THREE (#udea8aa04-77ab-5d81-938d-ebc36350be45)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“You’re a dangerous woman to know, Cara Gambini.”
She stared at him, amazed. “Dangerous?” she echoed. “Me?”
Finn nodded. “Yes, you. I don’t know you, and I don’t know how serious you are about getting away....
Have you any idea of what you want to do now? A plan, maybe?“
“A plan?” she echoed blankly. She had never before in her life been asked such a question. Everybody else always made plans for her. Suddenly Cara found herself thinking of possibilities and consequences. And all of them looked black.
She eyed the stranger a little doubtfully. “What about you? Do you have a plan?”
He scratched his jaw. “Oh, plenty,” he agreed. “But, unfortunately, I made most of them before I attended your wedding. And none of them included a runaway bride with half the thugs in Naples on her tail.”
Sally Carr trained as a journalist and has worked on several national newspapers. She was brought up in the West Indies, and her travels have taken her nearly all over the world, including Tibet, Russia and North America. She lives with her husband, two dogs, three goldfish and six hens in an old hunting lodge in Northamptonshire, England, and has become an expert painter and decorator. She enjoys walking, gardening and playing the clarinet.
Stolen Bride
Sally Carr
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS cold in the church, away from the pounding heat outside, but Cara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
She took a glance once more at the man standing next to her, and then down at her dress, the heavy silk dragging away from her waist like an ice slope. In a few moments she was going to marry a man she knew she couldn’t love, and there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t back down now.
Behind her, she knew, the church was packed with the two families who looked upon this moment as the final seal on the relationship between them. A medieval view, maybe, but one that still held in this part of Italy. Especially when it concerned the future good fortune of the family.
Cara clasped and unclasped her fingers. What was it the priest had just said? By her side, Luca seemed to be taking everything in, listening gravely to the man’s words. His neck, reddened where he had shaved it, bulged slightly over his collar. It reminded her suddenly of a wild turkey her uncle had once shot, and she looked hurriedly away.
There were huge candles, as thick as her arm, burning everywhere in the church, their flames steady in the still air. And there was incense, too, its sharp smell pricking her nostrils. She shook her head irritably. Why did this ceremony keep reminding her of a funeral? It was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
She shot another surreptitious glance at her bridegroom. She had always known Luca. Treated him as the big brother she had never had. And when he had suggested marriage she had been initially excited by the idea. She had never been encouraged to have a career, and being the wife of an important man like Luca seemed rather glamorous. She had been very flattered that he had chosen her.
How foolish she had been. She stared woodenly at the priest and bit her lip. It hadn’t taken her.that long to realise that Luca had chosen her because ... well, because it made good business sense. Her uncle was one of the most powerful men in this part of Italy, and whoever married her could soon follow suit.
But her dawning realisation over the past few weeks that Luca didn’t love her hadn’t actually hurt as much as she thought it would. Why was that? And then there was the discovery last night that he had a mistress, too. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, the woman was at the back of the church right at this minute. She quelled the urge to turn and stare at her.
Everything was going so smoothly. So fast. She shivered again and then stiffened as the priest turned to her. All she had to do was agree with him. She stared at Luca and swallowed as her eyes met his. If anything, she was slightly taller than him, and he had used that often to make her feel clumsy and awkward. The priest repeated the question, and still she could say nothing.
Behind her she could feel the congregation stirring. It was right that she should hesitate, they seemed to be saying, but not this much. Just who did she think she was?
Cara half turned to Uncle Pancrazio for support, but he merely smiled and motioned her to carry on. She jerked her head round and looked at Luca once more. His hard brown slightly bloodshot eyes stared coldly into hers, and suddenly her mind was made up. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered at last.
Had anybody heard? Or had she merely thought she had spoken? She scrunched up a handful of white silk in her left hand and gripping it tightly, she repeated the word more loudly. ‘No.’
There was a stunned silence in the church, and she swallowed hard at the expression on Luca’s face. ‘I can’t marry you.’ She forced the words out. ‘Truly. I thought I could love you, but I can’t. Please don’t be upset. You ought to find—’
But there was an uproar in the church by now, and Luca was turning to the priest. ‘Get on with the ceremony,’ he ordered.
The priest looked worriedly at Cara and then at the rest of the congregation. There were too many men in rather bulky jackets for him to refuse.
Half-unbelieving that she was being ignored, Cara turned to her relatives. ‘Uncle Pancrazio,’ she pleaded, ‘you’ve got to stop this. I don’t love Luca. I can’t go through with it.’
He looked at her for a long moment, but when he replied it was to Luca, not her. ‘It’s just nerves,’ he replied at last, and then signalled to the priest. ‘Carry on. There is no problem.’
Cara stared at him dumbly as Luca’s fingers enclosed her wrist and pulled her to his side. ‘You will pay for shaming me like this,’ he grated. ‘I—’
‘Just stop right there,’ said a new voice. Cara turned wildly, her wrist burning in Luca’s grip, to see the whole congregation staring at a lone man standing in the aisle. He was tall, taller than Luca, with dark hair and deep blue eyes. Everyone, including the many bodyguards lining the pews, seemed mesmerised by him.
Luca spun round and Cara, stumbling a little, was forced against him. Carefully she righted herself, holding herself as far away from him as she could.
But Luca tightened his grip, and she gasped as his fingers bit into her flesh. ‘Who are you to stop this wedding?’ he roared. ‘What right do you have here?’
His voice boomed around the church, echoed and died away. Only silence was left. So sudden and so deep it seemed a physical thing. All her relatives, everyone she knew, Luca’s family, her uncle’s business colleagues, people who together could make more noise than an average football crowd just by saying their prayers, seemed struck dumb. Even Luca seemed suddenly uncertain, his authority reduced to blustering.
Cara’s eyes rose to meet the stranger’s, and she felt an odd little lift in her heart. ‘I have the oldest right in the world,’ he drawled. ‘This woman just happens to be my wife.’
Her breath seemed to catch in her throat at his words. She could feel Luca staring at her, questioning the stranger’s words, but she wouldn’t return the look, knowing even he could read the truth in her eyes.
He was coming closer now, the stranger, that long-legged stride looking so slow and in reality so fast. He was wearing a blue linen shirt and white chinos, his hair not black as she had thought, but a deep dark brown, his eyes as blue as a summer sky at midnight.
He had a look in those eyes that dared her to tell the truth, and trusted her not to. The look in the eyes of a man determined to release a wild thing from a trap, even though it might turn on him.
He strolled up to her, and seemingly with no effort at all, took her hand from Luca’s. She did not resist, even though she could feel the eyes of every single one of her relatives staring at her in pure shock. And still they were silent.
She knew how they felt. It was as though she was being hypnotised. As though she was dreaming. Her fingers felt cold in his warm ones, and she realised suddenly she was shivering uncontrollably.
He nodded curtly at Luca and then looked at her once more. ‘Come along, darling.’
She looked at her fingers almost with surprise as they curled instinctively in his, and then, as she gazed into his eyes once more, she gave him the ghost of a smile and let him lead her towards the door.
‘It is a lie!’ shouted Uncle Pancrazio, his voice echoing around the church’s high ceiling. ‘What do you think you are doing! Of course she is not married.’
Cara looked into the stranger’s eyes and then at her uncle. ‘It is true.’ She forced the words out, feeling oddly light-headed at the lie she was telling. Was it really her speaking? ‘Last summer—’
‘Just keep walking,’ whispered the stranger, urging her along as she gabbled at her uncle. ‘Whatever happens, don’t stop.’
‘Last summer!’ roared her uncle. ‘You faithless—I will kill you both!’
‘Run!’ yelled the stranger, pulling her out of the church and down the sweeping stone steps. ‘There’s a killer in there!’ he shouted at a knot of bodyguards, now bounding towards them from the waiting cars, already loosening their jackets and reaching inside for their guns. ‘Quick! I’ll look after her.’
As the chaos of shouting, milling bodies erupted in the church doorway, Cara breathlessly stumbled almost headlong down the steps and then down the deserted street. The stranger was fumbling in his pockets as he ran, pulling out some keys and then opening a car door. He got in and pushed open the door on the other side. ‘Get in,’ he ordered.
Cara stood irresolute. ‘But—’ she began.
‘No buts,’ he snapped. ‘We haven’t time. Your family will come round that corner in ten seconds flat, and they’re not going to be carrying violin cases.’
Cara took one wild glance back and then somehow squeezed herself and the billowing dress into the passenger seat. Her veil parted from the wreath of fresh flowers on her head and bobbed briefly in the air behind them before dragging down onto the dust. It was the last thing she saw before the stranger wrenched the car round a tight bend and she finally managed to shut the door.
They drove in silence for several miles, the stranger concentrating tautly on driving as fast as he could, his eyes constantly flicking to the rear-view mirror.
Cara tightly clasped her hands, which were trembling almost uncontrollably. Was this really happening? It was so... She shrugged and gave up looking for a description. Her brain seemed to have simply frozen in shock.
She pinched the skin on the back of her hand. Could she be dreaming all this? It was hot in the car, and the sun was blazing straight in her eyes. Blinking a little, she moved her legs slightly, and the silk of her dress rustled coldly against her skin. She definitely wasn’t dreaming.
She looked at the stranger out of the corner of her eye. What on earth had she done? He could be anybody. He could be the sort of attacker her uncle and Luca were always on guard against. And she had actually let him take her away. Luca had once called her stupid, she remembered, and she had been furiously angry. Maybe he had been right after all.
She turned her head to look carefully at the stranger’s face and then back at her lap. ‘Who are you?’ she said at last. And then without waiting for an answer demanded, ‘Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me? Are you kidnapping me? What—’
He lifted one hand off the steering wheel, and she instinctively recoiled. Was he going to hit her, like Luca had once done? But the stranger was merely holding his hand, palm outward, like a traffic policeman.
“My name is Finn Cormac,’ he said at last.
English. He was speaking English. But how did he know she would understand? Her eyes widened at the implications of that. No one had spoken English to her for a long, long time. But it was not something she could ever forget how to speak. It was the language of her childhood, of happy times, of the finishing school she had been to when she was eighteen, when she had had her one and only glimpse of freedom.
She stared at him, wondering exactly how much he did know about her. ‘But who—’ she began.
‘No.’ He waggled his hand and she fell silent. ‘If you’re going to jabber at me, you can get out of the car. Now is not the time for twenty questions.’
Her mouth closed and she looked at him warily. He didn’t look like a kidnapper. But then what did one look like? And besides, it had been her defiance at the altar that had set this whole thing in motion.
She subsided in her seat, confused by the strangeness of his name and the unreality of what was going on. Questions still buzzed around her brain, but she recog-nised the sense of what he had said. Now was not the time for them.
‘I am Carenza Gambini,’ she said at last. ‘But everyone calls me Cara.’
He nodded. ‘I know.’
She breathed in deeply, then looked sidewise at him. He was driving very fast, with utter concentration on the road ahead. She almost didn’t like to disturb him. She tried to think of what her family was doing. Her uncle had been furious. The way he had shouted at her had been almost enough to stop her in her tracks.
And he had turned so paper white when she had followed the stranger that he had looked ill. She felt a sudden shaft of guilt and then thought about the way Luca had pulled her to him. Did he care enough about her to follow?
‘Do you think Luca will really come after me?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Are you joking?’ demanded Finn, his foot hard on the accelerator. ‘Is this Italy or Iceland?’
She breathed out slowly. Of course Luca would come after her. They all would. It had been a stupid question. She knew her family better than anyone. But she had been thinking in terms of how Luca felt about her. Maybe he did love her, after all. ‘Maybe she had just made a terrible mistake.
‘He doesn’t love me,’ she offered, hoping Finn would contradict her. Hoping she had been wrong.
‘You’re his property, sweetheart,’ replied Finn matter-of-factly. ‘And you’ve hurt his pride.’
She felt as though all the air had been knocked out of her. She had just heard, for the first time, someone else—and a complete stranger, at that—express all her secret doubts about the way Luca regarded her—that she was a piece of property. Valuable, maybe, in terms of what marrying her meant. But that was all.
It was something that up until now she thought only she knew. Just who was this man sitting next to her? Helping to boot Luca so surely, right in the middle of his pride?
‘Maybe he won’t...hurt you,’ she offered, not sure at all what she was saying. ‘I mean, when I’ve explained...’
‘I heard you trying a bit of explaining at the altar,’ replied Finn drily. ‘Maybe I’m not very observant, but somehow, he didn’t look too bowled over by your reasoning.’
‘He’s... he’s very hot-blooded,’ began Cara.
‘So am I,’ drawled Finn, taking the turn for the autostrada. ‘And I’d like to stay that way.’
The entrance to the autostrada was getting closer, but before they reached it, Finn took a sharp right turn down a cart track into a small wood. He drove carefully through the trees, the car’s suspension protesting loudly at the pits and bumps, before coming to a stop as the trees began to thin out by the side of another road.
He switched off the ignition and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll wait here until dark. I don’t want to take any chances of someone spotting you. I don’t think anyone saw the car, and only an idiot would expect us to hide right under your relatives’ noses.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that Luca is exactly in the genius class. But I reckon this is our best chance. We’ll be all right here for a while.’
She breathed out, a little shakily, noting the use of the word we and not sure what it implied. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But I want to know—’
He sighed and she stopped, uncertain once more about the kind of man she was dealing with. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he drawled. ‘You’re in deep trouble, if you hadn’t already realised it.’ He waved his hand at the trees and smiled. ‘We are not out of the woods yet.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t care,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Nothing could be worse than being Luca’s wife.’
Finn shifted easily in his seat. ‘Well, there’s something in that,’ he conceded.
She decided to begin again. ‘Who are you? Are you...’ She swallowed. ‘Are you someone with a grudge against my uncle?’
He looked at her reflectively. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘And before you start on that catalogue of questions you’ve obviously got, I might as well say that I’m not sure I want to tell you too much about me. You’re a rather dangerous woman to know, Cara Gambini.’
She stared at him, amazed. ‘Dangerous?’ she echoed. ‘Me?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, you. I don’t know you, and I don’t know how serious you are about getting away from your family.’
‘I want to get away from Luca, not my family,’ she said hotly.
‘Is there a difference?’ he asked gently.
There was silence while Cara looked woodenly at her dress. Then he asked, ‘Have you any idea what you want to do now? A plan, maybe?’
‘A plan?’ she echoed blankly. She had never in her life been asked such a question. Everybody else always made plans for her. Suddenly Cara found herself thinking of possibilities and consequences. And all of them looked black.
She eyed the stranger doubtfully. ‘What about you? Do you have a plan?’
He scratched his jaw. ‘Oh, plenty,’ he agreed. ‘But unfortunately I made most of them before I attended your wedding. And none of them included a runaway bride with half the thugs in Naples on her tail.’
She bit her lip and stared at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you have no idea what we’re going to do at all?’
He gazed levelly at her. ‘No.’
She met his eyes and noticed little dark flecks in the deep blue. With an impatient shake of her head, she tore her gaze away and stared out the window. For the first time in her life, she was truly on her own. And she would have to start making some decisions. Fast.
‘Okay,’ she said at last, a lump rising in her throat as she grasped the door handle. ‘I’ll get out of your way then.’
He reached across her, his hand on hers, her body stilling at the close contact. His face was only inches from her own, his eyes probing deep into hers. Then he pulled back, her hand imprisoned in his, and gazed at her for a few moments.
‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ he said softly. ‘First of all, is there any place that you could safely go? Somewhere Luca and your uncle won’t be able to coerce you?’
‘There is only my uncle’s home,’ she said in a low voice. Finn was stroking the back of her fingers with his thumb, almost as if it was helping him think. Her first instinct, to pull away completely, slowly melted at the oddly comforting sensation.
‘Maybe,’ she began diffidently, ‘maybe it would be all right if I went home. If I tell them it wasn’t nerves, that I truly don’t love Luca, then maybe they’ll listen.’
‘Really?’ Finn drawled. His eyes gazed into hers, and she reddened and looked away.
‘I’m sure my uncle wants only what is best for me,’ she said in low voice.
‘Uh-huh,’ he replied, his tone loaded with disbelief, and she glanced angrily at him.
‘Who are you to pass such judgement on my family?’ she demanded.
‘Let’s say I’m an interested observer,’ he said at last.
‘Observer?’ she echoed. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Finn—’
‘Cormac!’ she interjected, pulling her hand away and glaring at him. ‘Finn Cormac. I know now! You are the...’ She tried to think of a suitable swear word and failed. “The...thing who wrote all those lies about Luca’s family. You made millions out of blackening his name. You—’
He held up his hand. ‘Save it,’ he interrupted. ‘In the first place, everything I wrote was true. Luca is just one step ahead of the police at the moment, and two steps from a very long jail term. And in the second, the money I made out of that book, I earned. Unlike the fortune his family has extorted and stolen and been bribed with over the last thirty years.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘That’s a lie,’ she whispered.
‘Okay.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a lie, and your jilted bridegroom is a saint in disguise. So what are you going to do about it?’
She jerked open the car door. ‘I’m going home,’ she snarled, angry tears beginning to fill her eyes.
‘To marry Luca?’ he said softly.
Her hand stilled on the door. ‘What else can I do?’ she said in a low voice. ‘I have nowhere else to go. I have no one but my family.’ She swallowed a sob. ‘Luca’s not so bad, I suppose.’
Finn shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with a woman in the late twentieth century,’ he said. ’Have you no independence at all?’
She stiffened her body and stared at him. ‘Independence?’ she echoed, trying to match his tone. ‘In my family? How can I be independent? I have no money, I am not qualified to do anything except...’ She waved her hands. ‘Except marry, run a home and bring up children.’
She glared at him. ‘Maybe if I’d been brought up somewhere else I’d be running an oil company, like in those soaps you see on TV. But I wasn’t, and I’m not, and I can’t help it.’
He looked at her for a long moment and then lifted his hands helplessly and dropped them. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I suppose that was a rather stupid remark.’
Cara relaxed a little at his tone. ‘I know that I have led a very sheltered life,’ she said carefully. ‘But I never saw it as something particularly to regret until I found myself locked into marrying Luca.’
She shrugged self-consciously, ‘If I’m honest, at first I liked the idea. I thought of the nice big house we would live in, and I imagined the dinner parties, the clothes...’ Her voice faltered. ‘The children I would have.’
She bit her lip and then went on more steadily. ‘And then little by little, I realised that in every picture I conjured up, none of them contained Luca.’
She raised her eyes to Finn’s. ‘Not one,’ she repeated. ‘Isn’t that crazy? It was as if I was just day-dreaming. And then someone, I forget who, someone made a joke about my wedding night, and I realised that I really was going to marry Luca, that it was all set, and that after all the things I had imagined—the ceremony and the fuss and the party—1 was actually going to have to get into bed with him.’
Her voice trailed away and she swallowed. ‘You probably think this was really silly of me, that it took so long to come to grips with reality. But Luca has always been in my life. I just never thought of him as a husband.’
Her eyes rested briefly on Finn’s face and then slid away while she waited for him to tell her how stupid she had been. Why on earth had she told him all that? He was a stranger who at best probably thought she was as dim as Luca did. She oughtn’t to be telling him anything.
It was with a bolt of pure shock that she felt him take her hand and raise it to his lips. ‘What... what are you doing?’ she blurted.
He kissed her hand and smiled at her. ‘Just a spur of the moment thing,’ he drawled. ‘But it seems kind of appropriate to kiss the person who’s belted Luca Finzi right where it hurts.’
She tugged her hand away. ‘Well, don’t,’ she said, more sharply than she meant to. It was just silly, the way he was making her feel. Desperately, she cast around for something to say. Anything.
‘If I could choose,’ she said hurriedly. ‘If I was independent, then maybe I would go to England.’ She looked him straight in the eye and tried to ignore the way her heart was thumping erratically. ‘My nanny was English, and my uncle always used to listen to her. He said Sarah talked a lot of sense. Maybe if I went to her, he would listen again.’
There was a long silence, so long that she looked away and began to wonder if he had lost interest in the whole conversation. Maybe he was waiting for her to get out of the car.
Then he sighed, and she looked quickly at him. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’
‘It stinks,’ he said simply.
Her eyes narrowed, but before she could say anything Finn went on, ‘Let’s get this straight, okay? Just so there’s no confusion. We are on the run from the Mafia and you think the only person they will listen to is some decrepit old nanny of yours who probably spends most of her days mumbling over her knitting?’
Cara thought of the last time she had seen Sarah. Even now her nanny wouldn’t be more than fifty, and her natural elegance was the kind that drew all eyes. Her jaw dropped at the picture Finn was drawing, but in the circumstances his conclusions were probably reasonable enough. She just had to get him to see her point of view. ‘You’re being over the top,’ she said as calmly as she could.
‘Over the top?’ he echoed. ‘Me? Uh-uh. There’s somebody in this car who has a screw loose, and it’s certainly not me. Not even a baby would think that your answer to Mary Poppins will be able to wave a magic wand and save you.’
Cara shrugged angrily. ‘Take me back to the church, then,’ she said recklessly.
He grabbed her other arm and gave her a little shake. ‘Are you crazy?’
She glared at him. ‘Do what you like,’ she snapped. ‘I’m perfectly sane. And so is Sarah. She’s the only one that stands any chance of making my uncle listen.’
He looked at her scathingly, and she burst out, ‘Well, she is! And for your information I don’t think she does much knitting.’
‘Probably past it,’ snapped Finn. ‘Isn’t there anybody else you know?’
‘No one,’ Cara said firmly. ‘She is our best bet, truly.’
‘So why wasn’t she at the wedding?’ he demanded.
Cara shrugged. ‘Uncle Pancrazio said she was too ill to come.’
Finn nodded. ‘That figures,’ he said drily.
Cara realised she was pleating a small square of her dress. ‘Would you lend me the money for a plane ticket to England?’ she asked at last, not daring to look up.
‘No,’ he replied, and her heart sank. ‘There’s no way you could get on a plane without being spotted and stopped by Luca’s men,’ he added. ‘I’m going to England. I have contacts there who may be of use. I’ll take you.’
‘In the car?’ she said blankly. ‘With you? All the way to England?’
He smiled mockingly at her. ‘I think you have the gist of the idea.’
‘On my own, with you?’ she added again, just to be quite certain.
‘Of course,’ he said casually. ‘It would be a business arrangement.’
Her head jerked up and she stared him straight in the face, her pulse suddenly thundering in her ears.
He gazed blandly at her. ‘But it would be to our mutual benefit... and even enjoyment, I hope.’
She licked dry lips. So that was it. She might have known there was a price attached. ‘You want me to...’ But she couldn’t say it. Couldn’t bring herself to put into words what Finn might be suggesting.
His fingers brushed her cheek. Her voice when it came seemed very old and far away. ‘Go to hell,’ she told him.
His fingers paused, then he tipped her face to his, his eyes darkening as he took in her exasperation. ‘I do believe,’ he drawled, ‘that you think I’m expecting you to go to bed with me.’
Her heart was jumping so much she felt like it was bouncing into her throat. ‘What other kind of a proposition would a man like you make?’ she asked.
His hand slid around the back of her neck and drew her closer. ‘Would you accept?’ he asked.
She sat upright, her nerves twanging at his tone and his touch. ‘What do you think I am?’ she asked miserably.
‘The question is,’ he corrected softly, ‘what do you think you are? Since the idea of you paying your way by going to bed with me wasn’t actually what I had in mind.’
A slow flush crept up her skin at his words, flooding her throat and then her face until she was crimson. ‘It never occurred to me that a man like you could have any other sort of proposition in mind,’ she said as bitingly as she could.
‘Well, if you’re willing to consider it, I am,’ he drawled. ‘What exactly did you have in mind? Instalment payments?’
Her hand made a sharp cracking sound on his cheek before she had consciously thought of retaliating.
But before she could withdraw her hand his fingers enclosed her wrist and he was staring at her, his eyes inky pools. ‘You count yourself so little,’ he said harshly. ‘And other people even less. Do you really think I am the kind of man who would blackmail a woman into bed?’
The look in his eyes was too searing, too probing. She twisted away from him and looked in silence at the woods. ‘I don’t know what kind of a man you are,’ she admitted at last. ‘Except that you must be crazy to be helping me like this.’
‘Did your family make you this suspicious?’ he asked softly. ‘This jumpy?’
‘It’s none of your business,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
She knew without looking that he was leaning towards her, moving close. Too close for comfort. She pressed herself against the door and turned to face him. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she yelled in sudden panic. ‘Don’t you dare!’
‘What would you do if I did?’ he demanded. ‘Have a fit of the vapours?’
She gasped as if he had slapped her, but he continued, ‘Don’t you want to know what I was going to suggest? Or are you planning on running up that road all on your own? Because I guarantee you won’t get very far.’
She tore her eyes away from him and stared at her hands. ‘What was your proposition?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘I want some inside information about your family,’ he said. ‘I’m writing a new book, and you’re perfectly placed to tell me all sorts of things I would never be able to find out otherwise.’
Her heart sank. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree,’ she said dully. ‘I keep telling you. You’ve got it all wrong about my family.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m willing to take the risk,’ he said. ‘Provided you tell me what you know.’
‘But I don’t know anything,’ she burst out. ‘Truly.’
He shrugged. ‘Then I’m the loser. But I’m willing to take that chance. I’ll take you to England, and when we get there you can tell me what you know. Is it a deal?’
She lifted her hands helplessly. ‘You’re just...’
‘Is it a deal?’ he repeated.
Cara dropped her hands and sighed. ‘How long do you think the journey will take?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Three, maybe four days. Maybe less.’
Four days on her own with a man she had never met before. She looked into his blue, blue eyes and felt herself beginning to flush a deep red. ‘It’s... impossible,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know if I can trust you.’
For one split second he looked absolutely exasperated, then he calmly leant over her once more and pushed the door open. ‘Give my love to Luca, won’t you?’
CHAPTER TWO
CARA looked at the woods, sunk in shadowy silence, the sun glinting through the trees, then at Finn. ‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ she asked softly.
‘You made your choice back there in the church,’ he said quietly. ‘Now you have to decide whether to go on or back down.’
She gazed steadily into his face, the nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said as decisively as she could. ‘I’ll come.’
‘Attagirl.’ He smiled encouragingly, and to her astonishment she felt herself beginning to smile back.
‘Right, come on,’ he said briskly. ‘Out of the car.’
‘Out?’ she echoed. ‘But we’re in- the middle of nowhere!’ Suddenly she looked at him with new eyes, their previous conversation doing nothing to stop the panic spattering through her veins. ‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered. ‘You’re not—’
‘A part-time rapist?’ he supplied softly, a look in his eyes she couldn’t quite interpret. ‘Or maybe a mad axe murderer?’ He shook his head. ‘No, these days I seem to get my kicks out of ruining Mafia weddings.’
‘My family hasn’t got anything to do with the Mafia,’ she said hotly. ‘I keep telling you.’
Finn looked disinterestedly out the window. ‘If you say so,’ he said calmly. ‘Maybe I’ve got this all wrong, after all. Maybe I should just drop you off here. And then you can go home, explain everything in that wonderfully persuasive way you have, and everything’ll be hunky-dory.
‘Your uncle will be terribly understanding, of course, and Luca...’ He paused. ‘Well, Luca will probably just have a couple of aspirin and a lie-down in a darkened room and then forget all about it.’
‘Leave my family out of this,’ she snapped.
He leant towards her. ‘Honey, I would love to leave your family out of this. But I don’t think that’s quite what they have in mind. The sooner we get to England and I get some protection for you, the better.’
Their eyes locked, and Carenza bit her lip. ‘Why do you want me to get out of the car?’ she asked steadily.
‘Because we need to do something about that dress,’ he replied. ‘It’s just the tiniest bit of a giveaway, don’t you think?’
She stared at Finn for a long moment, her thudding pulse subsiding. Then with an effort she nodded and got out of the car. She stood by the door, uncertain, watchful as he got out on his side with an easy grace.
There was something about him that drew the eye, that made her want to look at nothing else, but when he turned and glanced at her over the top of the car, she felt herself beginning inexplicably to blush.
He was coming around to her side, and she turned to meet him, beginning to attempt a smile and then instinctively freezing as she noticed the knife in his hand.
He waggled it at her and she stepped back, wondering whether she should try to run. The strange thing was, she didn’t feel frightened of him. But maybe he really was a crazy man. Madmen often seemed charming, didn’t they? Perhaps he was someone with violent delusions. She took another step back and felt the car hard against her.
‘What...what are you doing?’ Her voice was wobbly, but she couldn’t help it. She forced herself to lift her chin and look him straight in the eye.
‘Here,’ he said impatiently, turning the knife around and handing it to her, handle first. ‘Take it.’
She looked at it blankly as her fingers curled around it, noting mechanically as the tension eased out of her body that it was just an ordinary penknife, and then stared at him. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ she asked.
.He moved his hands irritably. ‘I don’t know,’ he retorted. ‘But you have to do something with that dress of yours. Cut those frilly bits off, cut it shorter, anything. I don’t care, but make it look more like a normal dress.’
She gazed at the creased white silk and then at him. ‘I can’t cut this up,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a work of art. It was made by Elsa Schiapparelli in nineteen thirty something. The hand-stitching alone—’
His jaw clenched and he took a step towards her. ‘I don’t care if it was made by Elsa the lion in Born Free, just do something with it!’
She looked into his lean, lightly tanned face and bit her lip. ‘Maybe I could borrow some of your clothes,’ she said at last.
He slapped his forehead with his hand. ‘You know,’ he said softly, ‘I thought I had everything for this trip. The penknife that has so many attachments I’m sure there’s a fold-up bicycle among them, an idiot-proof camera, a well-respected credit card. And you know what? I left all my dresses at home. Isn’t that extraordinary?’
Cara ripped the flowers from her hair and threw them on the ground. She wanted to stamp on them, she was so suddenly, furiously angry. ‘You are the most impossible man I have ever met,’ she stormed. ‘You just walk in and steal me from my wedding as though you had ice water in your veins, and now you are acting like an outraged duchess at the idea of me wearing one of your shirts.’
Finn’s mouth opened and then closed with a snap. Without another word he yanked open the boot and tore out a grip. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So sometimes you’re allowed to have better ideas than me. But we’ve wasted enough time. It’ll be dark soon, and I want to get moving.’ He smiled. ‘I keep thinking I hear a fleet of Mercedes thundering up the road, with Luca at the head doing his impersonation of Vlad the Impaler.’
A thin chill went down her spine as she thought of how terrifying Luca could be when he was angry. She looked straight into Finn’s face.
‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded.
‘You don’t look particularly scared at the idea of being chased by Luca,’ she said softly.
He shrugged. ‘He hasn’t caught me yet,’ he replied quietly. ‘And in any case, I’m more worried about you.’ He looked at the sky and then at her. ‘At least I stand no chance of him deciding to marry me.’
‘It’s not funny,’ she said shortly.
‘I’m not laughing,’ he replied. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you got a move on.’
Cara stepped towards him, then turned around. In a voice as impersonal as she could make it, she said, ‘You’ll have to undo me. I can’t reach all the catches.’
There was a short sigh and then silence, but she knew that he was standing right behind her. It wasn’t the feel of his body heat, or the soft brush of his breath on the nape of her neck, but something about his presence she simply couldn’t explain. Something she had never before experienced. And as his fingers began to free each cunningly hidden hook and eye, fleetingly touching her skin, she drew in a sharp breath.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked softly, ‘did I stick a pin in you by mistake?’
‘No,’ she replied unsteadily.
‘There,’ he said, his voice almost too controlled as he freed the last hook.
She turned quickly. ‘Finn—’ She was so close to him, he was almost embracing her. ‘Why...’ She swallowed. ‘Why are you doing this, really? Why did you step in like that?’
He said nothing, but his arms closed about her, and he held her hazel eyes with his. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to rest the palms of her hands on his shirt. She could feel the play of his muscles under the cotton, and wondered what his chest looked like without... She shook her head. This was ridiculous. Why couldn’t she get a grip on reality? It must be some sort of emotional reaction to everything that had happened, she thought. But she didn’t pull away. Somehow, inexplicably, she didn’t want to.
His fingers brushed her cheek. ‘You are a very beautiful woman, Cara,’ he said softly.
‘That’s not an answer,’ she accused, determined to hang on to the last shreds of her self-control, in spite of the fact that it felt so right, so comforting, to be held by him.
There were a few faint freckles on his high cheekbones. ‘What sort of answer would you like?’ he murmured, taking the pins from her carefully styled dark gold hair and watching it cascade thickly down her back.
‘A sensible answer,’ she said, trying hard and failing to look away.
‘Like this?’ he asked, as he bent his head and kissed her.
Her body tautened at the feel of his lips on hers, coaxing, flattering, not at all like Luca’s. She pulled away at that thought, but Finn’s hands were warm on her back and, astonished at herself, she relaxed.
His lips pressed harder, became more demanding, his fingers trailing down her spine, and Cara reached up to touch his hair, the palm of her hand sliding over his jaw, the faint roughness of his cheek. This was an experience she wanted to go on forever.
And then he stopped. His hands dropped to his sides and he looked at her and smiled grimly. ‘Some wedding this is turning out to be.’
It was as if he had broken a spell. Her face flaming, she pulled back, and he let her go. ‘I don’t know why I let you do that,’ she snapped, snatching away her hands.
His fingers imprisoned one of her wrists and he lifted it to his mouth, kissing the pulse point, holding her once more with his eyes.
‘Let me go,’ she demanded, knowing he could feel the blood thundering through her veins.
‘I wouldn’t move too fast if I were you, princess,’ he remarked. ‘That dress is staying up now by sheer willpower.’
‘I said, let me go,’ she snarled.
With a little smile he dropped her hand, and after a mock bow, he turned and walked to the edge of the trees.
Cara breathed out in one gusty sigh. Making sure he had his back to her, she let the dress drop to her feet. She ran to his suitcase, her high heels wobbling perilously in the soft earth. With a muttered oath, she kicked them off, knelt and flipped the catches on the case, then began rummaging desperately through his clothes.
‘There’s a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts at the bottom,’ said Finn.
She looked up to find him staring at her. ‘Go away!’ she screamed.
‘Cara,’ he said gently. ‘We’re not exactly in the fitting rooms of Saks Fifth Avenue. Get the damned clothes and get in the car.’ Blushing furiously, she did as he said, pulling on the shirt and running to the passenger seat as he stuffed the dress, the wreath and her shoes into his case.
‘Attagirl,’ he said, sliding into the driving seat and taking a good look around. ‘Just getting dusk now. It’ll be fully dark in a few minutes, and with luck no one will notice us at all on the autostrada.’
Cara stared at him, the memory of what they had done suddenly becoming horribly real. ‘Luca’s men will see us get on,’ she whispered. ‘They’ll be watching for us when we go through the toll booth.’
He glanced at her. ‘We’re not going through the toll booth,’ he said at last, starting the car and driving onto the road.
‘But there is no other way,’ she objected.
Finn shook his head. ‘This road leads to the con-struction site for the new section of the autostrada,’ he said equably. ‘I was looking at it yesterday, funnily enough, and it’s just about completed. We just get on it, drive along till we hit the main autostrada and then, voilà.’
‘Are you French?’ she asked after a short pause, thinking for the first time of that strange lilt to his otherwise perfect English. ‘Because you are certainly mad.’
‘Irish American, actually,’ he said mildly.
‘Even worse,’ she replied glumly, shrugging irritably as he glanced sidewise at her.
‘Have you any better ideas?’ he inquired.
She shook her head.
‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘At least this one has the advantage of surprise. No one will be expecting us to use this route, and when we get on the autostrada we just keep on it till we hit the French border.’
‘Uncle Pancrazio is a very powerful man,’ she told him. ‘And so is Luca. They have contacts everywhere, and they’re not going to stop until they find us.’
‘You think we should give up?’ Finn asked softly.
Cara clasped her hands together tightly. ‘I don’t know why you stepped in like that this afternoon,’ she began. ‘I don’t believe it was anything to do with your stupid book. But maybe you should just drop me off here and get away on your own. The risk is too great for you. I...I’ll go back to my family and apologise.’
‘And marry Luca,’ Finn added softly.
‘He probably won’t want me now,’ she said shakily. ‘Anyway, I can stand up for myself. Don’t bother about me.’
Finn screeched to a stop among the piled-up building materials on the road site. Cara put her hands out to stop herself from hitting the windscreen, then looked at him. ‘What did you do that for?’ she demanded.
Finn was glaring at her, and she sat up straight. ‘Well?’ she asked, trying hard and failing to stare him down.
‘If you think I went through all that this afternoon just so you could turn yourself into some sort of sacrificial virgin on my behalf,’ he snarled, ‘you better think again.’
‘It’s the only reasonable way out,’ she said furiously.
‘All this talk of escape to England is just so much hot air. There’s no way they’re not going to catch us.’
He stared hard at her. ‘Just tell me, once and for all,’ he said grimly. ‘Do you or do you not want to marry Luca?’
Cara moved her hands impatiently, pleadingly. ‘Of course I don’t want to marry him. I told you the truth. I just got led along by degrees until I found myself right on the edge of the chasm. But the price you’ll pay for pulling me back is too great.’
‘What do you think your family will do if they catch us?’ His voice was soft, almost conversational, as if he was discussing the outcome of a local election.
She looked at her lap. ‘I don’t know,’ she said dully.
He reached over and tipped her chin. ‘Cara, that’s the first time you’ve tried to lie to me, and you’re not very good at it. We both know that we’ve gone too far to back down. If you went back now, your life wouldn’t be worth living.’
‘At least I would be alive,’ she replied bitterly. ‘You have to get away. You’ve risked enough.’
A slow smile spread over his face as he looked at her.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What are you smiling at?’
‘You,’ he replied, putting the car into gear and beginning towards the distant ribbon of lights that marked the autostrada. ‘You’re a very brave woman, Cara, but I think I’ll take a rain check on your offer.’
‘It’s no use arguing with you, is it?’ she asked softly.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not this time. And do me a favour, will you?’
‘What?’ she asked.
He flicked her a glance. ‘Do up your damn seat belt before I have a nervous breakdown.’
It was almost fully dark, and there was no moon. Cara pulled off her tights and pulled on Finn’s shorts. They were impossibly big on her, but with luck the shirt would hide the bagginess. She glanced at Finn, tensing as he slowed down.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘There are cars guarding the slip road,’ he said. ‘Your family is more thorough than I gave them credit for.’ He glanced at her and squeezed her hand. ‘But maybe we can still get through. Get in the back, on the floor.’
Without a word, she did as he said. Finn drove steadily towards Luca’s men. He wound down the window, and she held her breath. There were shouts and then Finn answered. ‘Would you believe it,’ he yelled in perfect Italian. ‘Three pairs of lovers on this stretch of Godforsaken road, and none of them were our birds. I’m going to take a turn on the autostrada, see if they’ve managed to escape the net.’
Cara lay on the floor behind his seat, her fists clenched, waiting for the angry shouts to come, the gunshots, willing Finn to accelerate, get the hell out of this crazy place. But he just kept going smoothly on.
‘It’s all right,’ he said at last, slipping into English as if it were the most natural way in the world to speak to her. ‘You can come out now.’
Warily she risked a quick look out the window. She could see nothing except the swift passing lights of cars. They were on the autostrada. Stiffly she got up and climbed into the front seat. ‘You have the luck of...’ She shrugged helplessly.
‘The Irish?’ he supplied, smiling into the darkness.
‘Of the devil!’ she retorted.
‘Why are you so cross?’ he asked mildly.
‘I am not cross!’ she snapped.
‘Of course not.’
There was silence, and she looked at the cars going by. For the moment, at least, she was free.
‘You could have got yourself killed back there,’ she said at last.
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But there are worse fates.’
She stared at him wonderingly. ‘Such as?’
He cocked a glance at her, then stared at the road. ‘Such as marrying Luca Finzi,’ he said quietly.
It had been dark for hours, but it was still hot and it had not taken Cara long to discover that Finn’s hire car had no air-conditioning.
The stale, warm fumes blowing in through her window from the traffic were giving her a headache. She had a cramp in her right foot, which no amount of rubbing would get rid of. And every few moments she had to look over her shoulder, as if somehow she could pick out Luca’s car from all the others.
‘Relax,’ soothed Finn. ‘It’s highly unlikely they know what kind of car we have, or the registration. They don’t even know for certain that we’re on the autostrada or what direction we’re going in.’
Cara bit her lip. ‘I may be naive, Finn, but I’m not stupid. They’re bound to have figured out by now that it was you on the slip road. And you know as well as I that they. can’t be far behind.’
She looked at his strong profile in alternate shade and light from the other cars. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said quietly. ‘What odds do you give for our success?’
He sighed. ‘I’d rather give odds on a dead horse winning the Kentucky Derby, if you want the truth,’ he said at last. ‘But we’re not done yet.’
They both looked in silence at the road ahead, then Finn glanced at her. ‘It’s not entirely hopeless, you know,’ he said. ‘At this precise moment, we’re free.’
‘You always were free,’ she replied softly. ‘You didn’t have to rescue me.’
He didn’t reply to that, and Cara wondered again if some ulterior motive had prompted him to come to her aid. There had to be one. He couldn’t have done it just for the sake of a book. Money, maybe? Had some other family decided the marriage would make Luca and her uncle a too-powerful combination and paid Finn to step in?
She thought of the look in Finn’s eyes when he had taken her hand in the church and sighed. Somehow she didn’t like to think he had accepted money to take her away. And besides, nobody, not even she, had known she would rebel like that at the last moment.
Maybe he was just crazy. After all, who in his right mind would bring out a book like that about Luca and then attend his wedding?
And why would a complete stranger help her for her own sake? And how did he know she spoke English?
Finn’s voice broke in on her thoughts. ‘You’re thinking so loudly it’s disturbing me,’ he remarked. ‘What’s bugging you now?
She swallowed. ‘I was wondering if you were safe to be with,’ she said frankly. ‘Because I am beginning to think you are certainly not right in the head.’
He shrugged. ‘Can you think of anybody in your family who is completely sane?’ he inquired. ‘Your uncle, for instance—’
‘Leave my uncle out of it!’ she broke in hotly.
‘All right,’ Finn went on. ‘Luca, then. Now there is a man who is definitely one plate short of a picnic basket. He is so macho your uncle probably keeps him on a leash and feeds him the remains of door-to-door salesmen.’
Cara stared at him. No one had ever spoken so casually about her family before. So insultingly. ‘How dare you!’ she fumed.
He turned to look at her briefly. ‘Okay, so I was exaggerating, but so what? The trouble with you, Cara, is that you’ve been brought up to accept unquestioningly everything your uncle and Luca tell you.’
Her mouth opened but she could think of nothing to say.
He went on. ‘I’ve studied the way your family does business for a long time. And I thought nothing could surprise me about them any more. But I have to admit I was as surprised as Luca when you turned at the altar and just said no. He looked like a guy whose pet rabbit had just pulled a gun on him.’
Cara’s jaw clenched. ‘So you think I’m just a pet rabbit?’
He held up his hand. ‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘When you arrived at the church I thought you were a sacrificial lamb. Now...’ He put his hand on the steering wheel. ‘Now, I don’t know what to make of you. Except that you’re probably as crazy as you think I am.’
She stared out the windscreen. Sacrificial lamb, indeed. Just who did this man think he was?
He glanced at her. ‘You must be tired,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Try to sleep.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she snapped. And was immediately angry with herself for how childish she sounded. She rubbed her hands over her face and tried to stifle a yawn. ‘I can’t sleep. I still don’t even know if I can trust you or not.’
‘I’m the only hope you’ve got,’ he said drily. ‘And, in any case, what do you think I’m going to do—try to rape you with one foot on the accelerator? Interesting idea,’ he added meditatively. ‘Especially on the autostrada. But I have to admit I’m not that much of an acrobat.’
She leaned her head back. He really had the most beautiful voice, she thought sleepily. But the things he said with it! She had never, ever met a man like him.
Soon she fell into an uneasy doze, peopled with unsettling images. Finn glanced at her face, and with a wry smile kept on driving.
She woke with a start as he pulled into a service station. ‘Where are we?’ she asked muzzily.
‘Past Rome,’ he replied. ‘Nearly at Florence. ‘It’s about two o‘clock, and if we keep this up, we should be in France for lunch tomorrow.’
Lunch. Her brain seemed to wake up all of a sudden at the word, and she tried to remember when she had last eaten. She looked at him hopefully. ‘I don’t suppose we could have something to eat now?’ she ventured.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘Keep your head down.’
Cara looked at the parking area in front of the shop and restaurant. Even at this hour in the morning it was busy. And noisy. The people were mostly families and some young couples, all eating snacks and laughing in the velvet darkness. There was no danger here. Nobody looked like one of Luca’s men.
But it was still difficult not to feel scared. Not to wonder if even now Luca was pulling up behind them and getting out of his car... She shook herself crossly. She mustn’t think like that. She couldn’t afford to panic.
Sliding down in her seat, Cara noticed a briefcase on the floor. She must have knocked it off the back seat when Finn was smuggling her past Luca’s men. She grabbed the handle to heft it up, but the catch hadn’t been fastened, and a bundle of papers cascaded over the floor.
Muttering crossly under her breath she began to pick them up, and then stopped, amazed, as she read her name.
The papers were cuttings, from English newspapers, and she frowned in concentration as she began to read. Talking to Finn had brought everything she had forgotten flooding back.
Including some things, maybe, that were best left untouched in her memory, like Sarah and her uncle having that enormous row when she had been about eleven. Sarah had left shortly after that. All that had been left were a few classic novels with Sarah’s name written on the flyleaf. Occasionally Cara read them, but only occasionally. The clean, expensive smell of the thick cream pages was enough to bring back the memory of a woman she had once hoped would become her stepmother. And who instead had disappeared out of her life for ever.
‘Carenza Gambini.’ She stared in amazement at her printed name, her mind focusing once more on the present. What was she doing in a newspaper? ‘The beautiful but obviously gormless niece of one of the Mafia’s greatest mobsters is set to marry the equally ruthless Luca Finzi. She better get his breakfast eggs just right, or Lucky, as he is so imaginatively known, will probably be signing quite another contract for her. Until death do they part...’
Cara’s heart pounded as she read the piece over and over again. Is this what people all over England had read about her? There was a crunch of gravel by the car and she looked up, straight into Finn’s eyes.
‘And may I ask why you’re rummaging around in my briefcase?’ he demanded.
She held the cutting out to him with shaking fingers. ‘Did you have anything to do with this?’ she demanded.
He looked straight into her eyes. ‘I wrote it.’
‘You wrote it!’ she screeched. ‘It’s rubbish!’
He shrugged. ‘It pays.’
She pushed against the door. ‘Let me out of the car,’ she snapped.
‘What are you going to do?’ he drawled. ‘Stick me with a hairpin?’
‘Let me out!’ she repeated.
‘It’s all gravel out here,’ he said. ‘You’ll hurt your feet.’
She glared at him. ‘I want to hurt you!’
He shifted his weight and opened the door. She swung her legs out of the car. He was right, it was gravel. Determinedly she stood to face him, then grabbed at her shorts as they fell down.
‘You could use your tights as a belt,’ Finn offered.
‘Don’t give me advice,’ she snarled. ‘How many other lies have you written about me?’
He rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know. After meeting you I’m not sure what the truth is any more.’
Crossly she stamped her foot on the gravel and stifled a yelp of pain. ‘How dare you call me gormless!’
‘It was a logical assumption,’ he replied calmly. ‘Given that you had just agreed to marry Luca.’
She pulled out another cutting and waved it in his face. ‘And this!’ she yelled. ‘This one claims I spend all my time shopping!’
‘Don’t you?’ he asked, interested.
She drew in her breath sharply and glared at him. ‘I’m going to the ladies’,’ she snapped, and before he could do anything she had spun round and scuttled barefoot to the main building, the gravel like hot coals on her feet.
In the ladies’ her face looked like a ghost’s in the brightly lit wall of mirrors. She rubbed hastily at her cheeks with a dampened paper. towel. With almost savage satisfaction she wiped off the too-bright lipstick and the thick mascara the professional make-up girl had insisted on.
That had been for the wedding pictures, she had been told. She had hated it, but naturally enough, her opinion had not been taken into account. She ran her fingers through her disordered hair and rinsed her mouth.
Strange, really, that she should belong to such a thoroughly Italian family and yet look nothing like them. Thick gold hair, pale skin that, if she wasn’t careful, burnt before it tanned, and those wide hazel eyes.
Her father had been like that, too, her uncle had said. A throwback to Roman times, he had told her, laughing. But her parents had died when she was a baby, and the photographs she had of them were blurred and mostly out of focus.
Perhaps Finn could tell her more. She had never seen the book he had written about Luca. She had just accepted that it was a lie. Money-grubbing filth, as Luca had put it. Now she began to think she would very much like to read it.
Washing her face and hands in cool water was heaven after that long, hot drive. She soaked another paper towel and bathed the back of her neck, then, shrugging helplessly at her reflection, went outside.
The car was not where Finn had parked it. She registered the fact almost unconsciously, and then as she realised the implications her heart flopped sickeningly.
He had left her. Deserted her. She stared at the spot where the car had been, then looked wildly around. Had he really gone?
She almost screamed when a hand descended on her shoulder and spun her round. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Finn snapped.
She gazed at him in shock. ‘I... I told you, I went to the ladies’,’ she replied as calmly as she could.
‘On which planet?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know how long you’ve been? I could have filled up ten cars at that gas station in the time it’s taken you to mess about in there.’
She glared at him, anger replacing her fear. ‘What’s it to you?’ she retorted.
CHAPTER THREE
FINN grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him. ‘We are not on some Sunday jaunt,’ he said quietly, emphasising every word. ‘This is a dangerous game you’ve started, and it doesn’t pay to play around with your relatives. Didn’t it ever occur to you that I might think the worst when you didn’t immediately come back?’
She stared into his eyes. ‘I know more about my relatives than you do,’ she told him.
‘I doubt it,’ he drawled.
‘You are so arrogant,’ she said at last. ‘You always think you know best. Don’t you? I bet the only reason you were angry when I didn’t come back was because you thought the source for your latest book had just gone west.’
He stared, and she dropped her eyes. Then he sighed and released her.
She stood back, rubbing her wrist as though he had hurt her, and he shrugged irritably and pushed his fingers through his hair. A lock of it, like an untidy comma, fell over his forehead, and she stifled an entirely unreasonable instinct to reach up and brush it back.
‘You can leave right now, if you want to,’ he said softly.
She glared at him, reddening, knowing he was aware of the way she had been staring at him. ‘You know I can’t,’ she answered. ‘That’s a rotten thing to say to me.’
‘Maybe,’ he agreed, his eyes as hard as ice on a cold night. ‘But then I’m a rotten kind of person.’ He turned on his heel and Walked away, and after a few seething seconds Cara stalked after him, her teeth clenched as the gravel bit into her feet.
The car was parked in darkness near the exit, and she watched silently as Finn unlocked it. And then her eyes slid away from his angry eyes and taut face, seeing without registering at first a dark blue car coasting into the garage forecourt.
A very familiar dark blue car, empty except for one man. Luca.
‘Finn,’ she breathed, unable to say any more, the hairs lifting on the back of her neck.
Luca was easing his bulk out of the car. Then, halfway out, he saw her.
She stood stock-still, staring at him, as he slammed the door and came towards them with all the horrible inevitability of a runaway tank.
Finn spun round. ‘Get in the car,’ he ordered.
She put a shaking hand on his arm. ‘No,’ she pleaded. ‘Maybe he will listen to me.’
‘Cara.’ Finn bit the words out. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, that is a gun in his hand, and he doesn’t look too pleased to see you. Now, get in the car.’
She looked at Luca’s hand, the sodium lights of the service station glinting dully off the absurdly small object he was carrying, and stood up straighter. ‘I’d rather face him,’ she said, her voice sounding strangely high.
Finn reached for her arm and squeezed it. ‘Everything’s going to be all right, Cara,’ he said quietly. ‘Just get into the driving seat and start the engine.’
She looked at him, his eyes once more on Luca, then did as she was told.
Finn, too, got into the car and pulled the door closed just as Luca came to a stop about three feet from them. ‘I should kill you where you sit,’ the Italian said. ‘Both of you.’
‘Bit messy,’ Finn remarked, his hand inside a paper sack he picked from the floor. ‘And besides—’ he shrugged ‘—what’s to say I won’t shoot first?’
He lifted his hand out of the bag, and the Italian glanced in surprise at the pistol Finn was holding. ‘You wouldn’t dare shoot,’ he blustered. ‘I have men all around.’
‘Not true,’ said Finn conversationally. ‘On both counts.’ He waggled the gun at Luca and added, ‘If you shoot me, I’ll shoot you, and that won’t get either of us anywhere. I’d go away and get some reinforcements if I were you.’
Cara swallowed hard. She had never heard anyone talk to Luca like that before. And yet Finn seemed so relaxed about it. As if he really didn’t care whether he upset him or not.
She stared straight ahead, looking out of the corner of her eye at the people crowded around the restaurant. So far they seemed oblivious to what was going on, but she wondered if Luca would do anything in such a public place.
He was glaring at them as if he was thinking about what Finn had said. ‘You wouldn’t dare shoot me,’ he repeated at last.
‘Try me,’ replied Finn. He added in an undertone to Cara, ‘Get going, for God’s sake.’ With one terrified glance at Luca she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, and the car leapt away spitting gravel. There were two sharp noises, as if a car had backfired, then they were on the autostrada once more.
‘He shot at us,’ gasped Cara, changing gear and forgetting to put the clutch down. ‘He actually shot at us.’
‘Yes,’ replied Finn shortly. ‘Still think you can persuade him to see reason?’
‘You had a gun, too,’ she retorted. ‘That makes you just as bad as the rest of them.’
He looked at what he was carrying and smiled. ‘Not quite.’
There was a pause, then Cara glanced curiously at him. ‘Would you have shot him?’
There was an expression on his face she couldn’t read at all. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
He hefted the gun in his hand and gazed at her rather apologetically. ‘I don’t think this would hurt anyone,’ he said at last. ‘Although I suppose it could make their teeth fall out.’
She wondered if she was hearing correctly. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Shock can do funny things to people.’
‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’ replied Finn, and then her heart stopped as he put the gun in his mouth.
‘Mother of God!’ she shouted. ‘What the hell are you playing at now?’ With an enormous effort of will she kept driving. ‘Look,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘Don’t do this. Please. I beg you. I—I’m sorry I said all those things to you back at the service station. Your nerves obviously can’t take all the strain. Maybe we should get a doctor or something.’
He removed the gun from his mouth and grinned broadly at her. ‘You’re really sorry?’
She nodded hastily. ‘Absolutely.’
To her utter amazement his smile widened. ‘Such a shame the gun is only made of chocolate, isn’t it?’ he remarked. And then putting the fake gun once more in his mouth he bit off a piece and relaxed in his seat. ‘Want a bite?’
Her hands felt wet on the wheel. She rubbed them briskly on her shorts and took several deep breaths. ‘No, thank you,’ she said shortly.
‘I always think it’s a shame you can’t get chocolate bullets, as well,’ he mused, breaking off the trigger and offering it to her.
‘What about a chocolate cruise missile, full size, that I could drop on your head?’ she retorted, taking the piece without even noticing what she was doing.
‘Do you always drive like this?’ he inquired.
She glared at him, but before she could say anything be asked interestedly, ‘Did you have lessons? Or are you learning as you go along?’
She clenched her jaw. ‘One of my uncle’s bodyguards taught me.’
‘That makes me feel much better,’ he said drily. ‘I’ve already aged twenty years this afternoon. By the time you’re finished I’ll need a wheelchair and an oxygen mask.’
Cara’s fingers tightened on the wheel. ‘Yes, well, you’re not the only one,’ she said icily. ‘If Luca had known about that gun...’ Her voice trailed away, her mind almost refusing to accept what had just happened. ‘How could you do that?’ she whispered.
He shrugged. ‘We didn’t really have much choice, did we?’ he remarked. ‘It was either bluff him or give up.’
‘But the gun.’ Cara thought of what he had done.
Finn stared expressionlessly out the window. ‘You said you were hungry,’ he remarked. ‘And when I went to get you something, they only had sweets left. It was either the gun or a sherbet lollipop.’ He shrugged. ‘I bought both, actually, but somehow, when it came to the crunch, I didn’t think Luca would feel very threatened by a lollipop.’
Cara shook her head. ‘If only he knew,’ she said softly.
‘He’s hardly likely to, though, is he?’ said Finn, stretching out in his seat. ‘You’ve eaten practically all the evidence.’
‘I was hungry!’ she retorted earnestly, and then realising that he was winding her up once more, thumped the steering wheel. ‘Do you want to drive?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ he said innocently. ‘No. I like being driven at a hundred and twenty miles an hour on an Italian motorway by a beautiful woman eating a chocolate gun.’
She shot a furious glance at him. ‘Surely you mean a beautiful but gormless woman,’ she snapped.
He lifted his hands in mock appeal. ‘I didn’t know you then,’ he said.
She pressed her foot down harder. ‘Well, you’re not going to get the chance to know me any better now.’
‘Is that because you’re going to drive us into the middle of next week?’ His hand rested lightly on her arm, and she jumped at the contact. ‘Slow down, Cara. We don’t need to go this fast.’
She eased back jerkily on the accelerator. He nodded. ‘That’s better,’ he said.
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