Sandra's Classics - The Bad Boys of Romance - Boxed Set (29 page)

The horror of it was beginning to seep through. James was responsible for the web that had ensnared her, not Townsend. It had been James all along.

She held up her hands. ‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

‘Damn you, Gabrielle!’ He reached out and caught her by the wrists, his fingers clamping hard on the fragile bones. ‘I was only doing my job. You were a name in a file, a snapshot clipped to a fact sheet.’ He moved towards her, his face drawn with anguish. ‘I didn’t plan on falling in love with you, but I did. It was why I came after you. I told myself it was because I was responsible, but it was more than that...’

James was saying things, she knew that, but she wasn’t really listening. All she could think of was how she’d hated Townsend and now...

‘You did this,’ she said, ‘not Townsend. It was you all the time.’

His arms closed around her. ‘Gabrielle.’ His voice was urgent. ‘We’ll put all of this behind us.’ She shook her head and he cursed softly. ‘Look at me, dammit!’

Her head rose slowly and she looked into his eyes. This was the man who had made her see the truth about her father, this was the man who’d destroyed her life— the man she’d fallen in love with.

‘Gabrielle. We can forget everything. You and Vitale. Me and Townsend...’

Forget. Could she? Face the past squarely, James had said, so you can put it behind you.

They’d done that tonight, but somehow it wasn’t behind them. It had only deepened the uncertainty that lay ahead.

‘I—I don’t know if I can,’ she whispered, her voice breaking.

Brakes squealed outside; flashing lights lit the house with an eerie glow, and suddenly there was a banging at the door.

‘Police!’

James cupped her face in his hands. ‘Gabrielle,’ he said in a fierce whisper, and then he kissed her. When he drew back, he looked deep into her eyes. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Do you understand?’

There was a heavy blow on the front door, the sound of splintering wood, and then the house was filled with policemen.

‘Gabrielle?’

James was still watching her, waiting for her to answer, and suddenly she knew he was right.

Her father had believed in some fierce, time-worn code she didn’t understand. Her love for him would never change, but that part of her life was over.

The future lay ahead, and it was the future that mattered. James loved her, and nothing else was important.

Tears of happiness rose in her eyes. ‘James,’ she whispered.

‘Are you people OK?’

James and Gabrielle fell apart. A man in plain clothes, a gold and enamel badge pinned to his jacket, stood beside them, and a sea of blue uniforms stretched away behind him.

James nodded. ‘We’re fine, Officer. I’m James Forrester. This is Gabrielle Chiari. And that man in the hall...’

The detective nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve been on the horn with Washington.’ He looked from Gabrielle to James. ‘You’re
gonna have to come to the station, Forrester. We’ll need a statement.’

James nodded. ‘Fine. But Miss
Chiari’

‘She stays here. Don’t worry, I already got the word from Washington. Two of my people will stay with her.’

James looked at Gabrielle. She gave him a smile meant for him, alone.What he wanted to hear, what she wanted to tell him, couldn’t be said in a room filled with strangers.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said softly.

He touched her cheek, and then he was gone.

She awoke groggily, every muscle stiff and aching. The phone was ringing; she groaned as she uncurled from the living-room couch and made her way through the still-dark house to the kitchen.

What time was it, anyway? she thought, pushing her hand through her hair. She must have dozed off while she was reading. James wasn’t back yet—she wouldn’t sleep soundly until she was safe in his arms.

Not that she was in any danger: there was a policeman outside the front door, another at the back.

But she had never, in all her life, felt as secure and as loved as she had with James beside her. And he would be beside her forever, she thought with a little smile; he loved her and she loved him. She would tell him that the moment she saw him. She would tell him that now.

‘James?’ she whispered, smiling into the phone as she put it to her ear.

‘Hello, Gabriella.’

She froze.
Gabriella.
No one had ever called her that except—except...

‘Gabriella.’ Tony Vitale’s voice wheezed softly. She closed her eyes, picturing him chewing on one of the black cigars he favored. ‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Uncle Tony?’

‘What—what do you?’ She stopped, drew a shaky breath, then began again. ‘Why are you calling me?’

He laughed. ‘Why shouldn’t an uncle say hello to his favorite niece, Gabriella?’

Bile rose in her throat. ‘You—you’re not my uncle,’ she said. ‘And you—you tried to—you sent someone to...’

‘You see,
cara mia
? You see what’s happened? Now you believe the terrible things you are told about me, hmm? That liar, Forrester...’

Gabrielle sank into a chair. ‘James isn’t a liar. You are. You—you’re everything they said you were.’

‘Gabriella.’ The husky voice was harsh. ‘I have a proposition to make you. Are you listening?’

‘A proposition?’

‘Yes. What your lawyer friend would call a
quid pro quo
.’

James. He kept referring to James. What did he know about him?

‘I regret what almost happened tonight, Gabriella.’ Vitale’s voice dropped to a wheezing whisper. ‘It was an unfortunate mistake.’

She sprang to her feet. ‘A mistake?' She gave a bitter laugh. 'It was a mistake, all right. I’m going to come back to New
York. And I’m going to testify.’

Vitale laughed. ‘Yes,
cara mia,
you will come back. But not to testify.’ He paused, and she could almost see the smile moving across his sallow face. ‘You will come back and marry me, Gabriella.’

Hysterical laughter burst from her throat. ‘I’ll what?

Marry you? I’d sooner be dead!’

‘What of your precious
Mr. Forrester, Gabriella? Would you sooner
he
be dead?’

Her heart stopped beating. ‘What?’

Vitale’s voice was cold. ‘You will return to New York. You will wear my furs, my jewels, you will face the world as my wife. And you will convince everyone that you do it proudly.’

‘You’re insane!'

‘The fool I sent bungled his job, Gabriella. Another incident would be far too obvious. The risk would be too great.’ His voice became a purr. ‘If your performance pleases me, I will let Forrester live. Otherwise...’

Gabrielle’s legs turned to jelly.
‘What have you done to him?’

Vitale laughed. The laughter became a wheeze, and he coughed heavily before he spoke again. ‘Nothing yet but the future ho
lds such promise. A mechanism under the hood of his car. An accident on his way to the office. A sudden encounter on a crowded street...’

‘No. You wouldn’t. I beg you...’

‘The policeman at your front door will be missing from his post for the next five minutes,’ Vitale said coldly. ‘A taxi will pull up outside. It will take you to the airport. There will be a ticket to New York waiting at the Northeast Airlines counter.’ He paused. ‘If you care for your Mr. Forrester, you will collect your ticket and get on that flight.’

The phone went dead in her hands. Gabrielle sat staring at it, then slowly hung up.

Surely, this was all a bad dream.

Except, it wasn't.

The chalk outline of the man who'd been sent to kill her was a stark reminder that it was reality…

And that she held her lover's life in her hands
.

Slowly, as if she had aged years in the past moments,
Gabrielle got to her feet and started towards the front door.

The Vitale house dated from the turn of the
20th century.

Large, graceless, with endless dark rooms opening on to even darker halls, the house was Victorian in concept but completely lacking in any of the period’s charm or grace. Everything about it was somber and oppressive, from the wainscoted walls to the oversized furniture.

Gabrielle had always hated the place.

As a child, she’d clung to her father’s hand whenever they stepped over the threshold. She remembered worrying that something terrible lurked in the shadowy corners of the entrance hall, something that would make the trolls and witches who lived in her book of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
pale in comparison. As she’d grown older, she’d realized that here was nothing supernatural to fear in the Vitale house.

There had been only ‘Uncle’ Tony.

And it had taken a lifetime, and what had happened on a hot night in New Orleans three months ago, to make her face the truth.

‘Uncle’ Tony was far more evil than any of the ghouls or goblins that lived in the pages of the old fairy-stories.

Now, on this sweet-smelling June day, as she sat in the window-seat of her room on the third floor of Vitale's home, she wondered how she' could have been so blind to the truth.

Tony Vitale was a vicious crook—there was no kinder way to phrase it.

And she was his prisoner.

She sighed as she watched the gardener weeding the roses.

She was too old to believe in fairy-tales any more, but she knew how Rapunzel must have felt, locked in the tower with no hope of rescue. No matter how luxurious the furnishings, there was nothing more terrible than to know you were someone’s captive, unless it was to know you would remain so for the rest of your life…

And to know you had lost the man you would always love, even if he hated you.

She hadn’t wanted to believe any of it, at first. After the phone had gone dead in her hands that night in New Orleans, she’d told herself the conversation with Vitale couldn’t have really taken place. Things like that didn’t happen in the real world.

Wrong.

She'd gone to the front door, carefully opened the wrought-iron grille, and peered out just in time to see the policeman left to guard her push back his sleeve and cast a furtive glance at his watch.

Seconds later, he’d stepped into the shadows, vanishing as neatly as a rabbit down a hole. And then a taxi had glided silently to the
curb, its headlights peering myopically into the wispy fog, and a terror greater than any she’d ever known had set her teeth chattering.

The truth, so long denied, had finally become irre
futable. Tony Vitale—‘Uncle’ Tony—had tried to have her killed tonight, but the attempt had failed.

James was his next target.

She’d spun on her heel towards the telephone. She’d call James at the police station, tell him...

Tell him what?

That Vitale had targeted him for death? She knew how James would react to that. The threat would enrage him. He'd rush to her side…

And Vitale would kill him.

Nobody would be able to stop him.

'Accidents' happened.

A speeding car, a bomb, a package in the mail— there were endless ways to do the job, and she probably didn’t even know half of them.

Wrapped in the trappings of respectability, Vitale was a powerful figure. His patronage gave him access into high places; he could do anything he wanted, and that included murdering her lover.

She had moved like a robot, stepping out into the night, slipping out of the gate and into the waiting taxi. Her ticket had been waiting at the airport, just as Vitale had promised, and she had boarded the plane without looking back, afraid that if she did she would somehow see James’s face and know she couldn’t leave him, no matter what.

Hours later, she'd stepped from the plane and into the heavy arms of Tony Vitale.

‘Don’t,’ she’d said, struggling to free herself, but Vitale had only drawn her closer to him. The mingled scents of cigar smoke and cologne had made her gag.

‘Smile for the birdie, Gabriella,’ Vitale had whis
pered, his cheek rasping against hers.

Flashbulbs had gone off in her eyes. Blinking, she’d stared into a dozen cameras and she’d realized they were surrounded by reporters and photographers.

‘My insurance policy,
cara mia
,’ Vitale had said with a laugh, curving his arm around her waist as he led her to his waiting limousine. ‘By tomorrow morning, your boyfriend won’t be able to pick up a newspaper without seeing a photograph of our tender reconciliation.’

Tears had streamed down her face as Vitale handed her into the car. ‘Why?’ she’d whispered, staring at the man she’d once felt such affection for as he climbed heavily in beside her. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Vitale’s thick brows had drawn together. ‘Are you such a fool, Gabriella? I can’t allow you to testify against me. Don’t you understand?’ An oily smile had crept over his face. ‘You will be my wife. No one can force you to testify against me—not when the stakes are so high, and your precious Mr. Forrester’s life hangs in the balance.’

Gabrielle had taken a deep
breath. ‘But I can't testify. I don’t know anything.’

‘You do,
cara.
You know enough to corroborate Frank Lorenzo’s testimony.’

She’d looked at him blankly. ‘Frank? The man who works for you?’

He’d nodded as he settled back in the car and pulled a long, black cigar from the breast pocket of his silk suit.

‘Yes.’ Vitale had chewed off the end of the cigar and spat it on to the carpeted floor. ‘That’s right.’

‘Is that the man you were on the phone with that time? But I told the prosecutor, I only heard a few meaningless words...’

Vitale had smiled, almost sadly. ‘Tell me what you heard, Gabriella.’

‘I heard you say—you said,
Riley refuses to come around, Frank. I want him taken care of tonight
.’

Her eyes had met his. Suddenly, the simple words seemed to take on a darker meaning than they ever had before. .

Vitale had put his hand over hers, clasping it tightly when she tried to pull free.