Veretti’s Dark Vengeance (5 page)

But she was thwarted by the sound of footsteps, and broke away from him just as the door opened. It was the maid.
‘Signor Raffano is on the telephone.’
Salvatore was pale, but his voice was calm. ‘I’m just coming.’ To Helena he said, ‘Will you excuse me a moment? I must just deal with this.’
‘Of course.’
In the next room Salvatore picked up the phone. ‘Pronto!’
‘I just had to find out how you were doing,’ came Raffano’s voice. ‘Have you set the price yet?’
‘No, this is going to take time.’
‘Difficult, is she?’
‘Let’s just say she’s not what I expected.’
‘What does that mean?’
Salvatore ground his teeth. ‘It means that she wrong-footed me.’
‘Heaven help her!’
‘It might be heaven help me,’ Salvatore admitted reluctantly. ‘This is one very clever lady. I made the mistake of underestimating her.’ In a reflective voice he added, ‘Which I won’t do again.’
Left alone, Helena began to explore the room, which, at one end, became a picture gallery, and she walked slowly along the portraits. Many were of the Cellini family, as the notes beneath them proclaimed. But the last ones were Valettis, stern-faced makers of money in the nineteenth century.
More recently the pictures weren’t paintings but large photographs, one of which made her pause and regard it fondly.
There was Antonio, years before she’d met him, probably in his late thirties, before his hair had turned from black to grey and started to fall out. She’d known him as a ruin, but once he’d been this fine young cavalier. Some of his wickedly handsome looks had remained to the end, and she could still see the Antonio she’d known.
Salvatore, coming to find her, found her standing before Antonio’s picture, so lost in it that she didn’t hear him. From this angle he could just make out the fond look on her face, the tenderness of her smile. As he watched she raised her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss. She might, or might not, have given a little sigh. He couldn’t be sure.
Helena seemed to become aware of him.
‘Look at his eyes,’ she said, indicating the picture. ‘He was a real devil, wasn’t he?’
‘He was in his youth. What about when you knew him?’
‘We-ell,’ she mused, remembering Antonio’s frailty, and thinking that a man didn’t have to be physically capable to be a devil. There were other ways, charming ways that ended in laughter. Remembering those times, she smiled, her eyes fixed on the distance.
Salvatore, watching intently, saw what he’d expected. She had seduced Antonio into action, driving him beyond his strength until he reached the inevitable end. Suddenly he was angry with himself for forgetting so easily that she was an experienced temptress. Her smile, with its hint of a secret history, told him everything he needed to know.
It was a useful reminder not to forget again.
She passed on and he stood for a moment, considering the soft seductiveness of her walk, the way one part of her body moved against another, which could drive a man to distraction.
Or to death, he thought.
He caught up with her as she paused before a wedding picture.
‘My parents,’ he said.
It was the bride who held Helena’s attention; young, beautiful, glowing with joy and love, she couldn’t tear her gaze from her groom. The man was clearly Salvatore’s father, yet there was something missing. His features were similar, but he lacked the driven intensity of his son, an intensity that would always make Salvatore stand out in the world.
Near-by was a picture that showed more of the family. There was Salvatore, seemingly in his early teens, surrounded by older people, presumably aunts and uncles.
‘And there’s Antonio,’ she said, peering. ‘Who’s the woman sitting beside him?’
‘That’s my mother.’
‘What? But she-?’
Astounded, Helena stared, trying to believe that this middle-aged woman was the same person as the glorious bride of the earlier picture. She was too thin, her whole aspect was tense and strained, and Helena had the feeling that she was putting on a brave, defiant face for the world. She stood just behind the young Salvatore, her glance turned slightly towards him, her hand possessively on his shoulder, as though he was all she had.
She looked back and forth between the two pictures, horrified.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked. ‘She’s so changed.’
‘People do change with the passing of time,’ he observed.
‘But it can’t have been many years after the wedding, and she looks as though some dreadful tragedy had happened to her.’
‘My mother took her duties very seriously, not only in the home but also in the many charities she supported.’
He spoke in a distant voice that made Helena feel he was warning her off the subject. She was dissatisfied. There was more here than simply passing years. Yet she supposed she had no right to ask further. She took one last look at the picture.
‘Poor woman,’ she sighed. ‘How sad she seems!’
Salvatore didn’t answer, and she guessed he was offended by her continued interest. But when she glanced at his face she saw it strangely softened.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘She was. Shall we go back?’
It was almost a surprise to discover that there was still food on the table from their abandoned meal. So much had happened since, not outwardly but inwardly. They had confronted each other from behind carefully erected barriers of mistrust and dislike, but neither had allowed for the random chance of physical attraction.
It defied belief. It was unexpected, unwanted, but undeniable. As malign and frisky as a jester, it danced between them, laughing at them both, caught in its trap.
Helena had no doubt that he was as trapped as herself. She knew it, not through vanity, but through her senses, fiercely alive as they hadn’t been for years, not since-She shut the thought off there.
Her mind swung obediently into action. Stay cool. Stay in charge.
She sat down, aiming a smile at him like a missile.
‘Now I must finish this cake. It’s delicious.’
‘Some coffee?’
‘How delightful!’
They were back behind their defences, looking out, keeping watch, big guns primed, ready for anything.
‘So,’ he said at last, ‘you’re going to make me wait for the factory?’
‘At the very least. At the most you won’t get it at all.’
‘You’re not seriously planning to keep it?’ he demanded in a tone of incredulity that riled her.
‘Isn’t that what I’ve been saying all this time? Or weren’t you listening?’
‘I didn’t take it seriously. You were annoyed with me, perhaps rightly so, but you’ve had your fun and now it’s time to get real.’
‘You’re right. So listen to me. I really don’t intend to sell. Why should I?’
‘Because you know nothing about it,’ he said, exasperated. ‘No woman genuinely understands business.’
‘I don’t believe I heard that. Come into the twenty-first century.’
‘If you’re planning to run that place, be my guest. You’ll be bankrupt in no time and fall into my hands.’
‘Of course I’m not going to run it personally. Antonio told me that the manager is excellent. Don’t count on forcing me to sell. You can’t.’
‘I think you’ll find I can. I have a number of aces up my sleeve.’
‘I’m sure of it, but I have a few myself.’
Unexpectedly he smiled, raising his glass in salute.
‘Here’s to our confrontation,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope we both enjoy it equally.’
‘Oh, I mean to,’ she said, toasting him.
He began to laugh, surprising her with a tone that sounded genuinely warm, even charming. But that was just another of his tricks, she reminded herself quickly.
‘We’ve travelled a long, winding journey tonight,’ he said. ‘Have two people ever learned so much about each other in such a short time, yet still known nothing at all?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she echoed. ‘Yes, we’d both be wise to remember that, wouldn’t we?’
‘If it’s possible, but the danger with illusions is that they seem so much like reality-at least, that’s true of the best of them, the most desirable.’
She nodded. ‘Then we enter a conspiracy against ourselves,’ she murmured, ‘believing what we wish to believe, persuading ourselves that illusion is reality and reality illusion. And how do we ever know?’
‘That’s easy,’ he said wryly. ‘We know when it’s too late.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘That’s true.’
Salvatore was about to reply but something he saw in her eyes held him silent. She was looking into the distance and he had the feeling that she no longer saw him, or even knew that he was there.
‘What is it?’ he said urgently. ‘Helena, speak to me.’
But she was silent, lost in a world he couldn’t enter.
CHAPTER FOUR
HELENA was in another place, one in which the air sang with a hundred new impressions. The most disconcerting was the way she and Salvatore were talking, as though there was an instinctive connection between their thoughts. It was surely impossible, yet he knew what she was thinking, in a way that had only ever been true with Antonio.
It wouldn’t last. They were still enemies, but for a shocking moment she could see ahead to another world where enemies clung together in uneasy alliance.
Then the mist cleared and the world settled back into its right place.
‘It’s time I was leaving,’ she said slowly. ‘Will you summon your gondolier?’
‘If you wish, but I should prefer to walk you back to the hotel.’
‘All right. Thank you.’
He fetched her wrap and laid it gently about her shoulders. She drew breath, bracing herself for the feel of his fingers on her skin, but it didn’t come. Accidentally or by design he’d contrived to drape the silk without touching her.
She shivered.
They left the building by a side door which led directly into a tiny alley that she knew was called a calle, so narrow that she could have touched both sides at once. The buildings rose up high, so that it was almost like being in a tunnel. She leaned back, gazing up into the narrow strip of sky, so fascinated that she began to walk on without seeing where she was going, and Salvatore had to grasp her quickly.
‘You nearly walked into a door,’ he said.
‘Where are we?’ she murmured. ‘I’m lost.’
‘It isn’t far back to the hotel. You came around the long curve in the canal, but we’ll cut across that. Didn’t Antonio tell you how deceptive distances can be in Venice?’
He still had one arm around her shoulder, guiding her, so that she could look up as she walked, and still feel safe.
‘He didn’t tell me everything,’ she said.
‘I’m glad of that. I’m so glad.’ After a moment he asked, ‘What did he tell you about me?’
She laughed, a soft sound deep in her throat, that briefly made his hand tighten.
‘He said I should beware,’ she said.
‘And will you?’
‘I always trusted Antonio’s advice, and it was always good.’
‘Probably wise. Did he tell you that you’re strong enough to challenge me, or did you discover that for yourself?’
‘I knew in the first moment.’
He turned her towards him, looking down into her face, illuminated by the moonlight. His own face was in shadow, but she could see his eyes and read their meaning.
‘Because you knew your weapons were the best,’ he murmured. ‘And just now, I’m ready to admit that. I’m not even trying to resist them because they overcome me, so that I don’t even want to resist.’
She felt his hands on the side of her face, saw his head block out the moon so that there was only darkness as his lips touched hers. And she was glad of the darkness because suddenly everything changed, the world was a different place and nothing was as it had been.
His mouth was gentle, moving with leisurely ease as though he had all the time in the world. Helena held her breath, transfixed by something that was happening deep inside her in an unknown region. She’d guessed this was coming, had thought herself ready, but nothing could have prepared her for the way she was coming alive.
It was as though no life had ever existed before. The world had begun that moment and it was a glorious place, full of light and fire. With all her being she wanted to explore further, to see how intense the heat might become, how blinding the light.
He’d spoken of being overcome by her, yet it was she who was being overcome, not by force but by temptation so strong that it destroyed her will. She put up her hands to his shoulders, perhaps meaning to push him away but actually holding on to him.
Years of abstinence had taught her to think of herself as a cold woman, whose fire had flamed briefly and then died forever. So many men had reached this point and she’d kissed them, hoping to fan the flame back to life, but it had never happened. Dead. Cold and dead.
Until now, with this one man who should have been the very last to attract her. They were combatants, hostile, determined to think the worst of each other because it was safer that way. But in his arms there was no safety, nor did she want any. Enmity, she discovered, could be thrilling.
So she drew him closer and moved her lips against his, seeking more of the pleasure that had come like a bolt from the blue. Feeling her response, he responded in turn, letting his hands explore her, but so lightly that at first she wasn’t sure it was happening. But then there was no doubt. His caresses had the skill of the devil, touching, inciting, then moving on, leaving a trail of excitement behind them.
Now she wanted him, wanted everything with him. She must take him to her bed, lie with him naked, offer herself to him and claim him inside her at the same moment. And when he entered her she would keep him there, for pleasure such as this could not be rushed.
Instinct told her that he could show her new worlds, carry her to the stars and satisfy something desperate inside her that had been denied too long. All her frustrated womanhood rose up, crying out for release, ready to do anything, offer him anything if he would only take her to that peak.
Offer him anything!
The words seemed to shriek, like demons howling with laughter at her naïvety. How easily he’d brought her to this moment, and she, who’d prided herself on being armed and ready, had succumbed without a protest. How he must be enjoying it!
It was over. The desire, so tormenting one minute, was extinguished the next, turning her body to ice. Part of her wanted to cry out as the beauty vanished, but another part knew that she was safer this way.
Safety. That was what mattered. Nothing else.
Vaguely she heard footsteps, felt his arms loosen about her, heard his sigh of resignation.
‘People are coming,’ he growled. ‘We don’t want to be stared at.’
He drew her away and in a few moments they had reached St. Mark’s Square. Not much further to the hotel, and as she walked she was planning what to say when they got there.
How sure of himself he must be. How easily she’d fallen for it. How he must be laughing in triumph, and how she was going to enjoy wiping the smile off his face!