Innocent of His Claim (4 page)

She huffed out a breath, his curiosity annoying. Insulting even. It no longer mattered to her what he thought. She certainly didn’t owe him an explanation.

His gaze narrowed, hardened. “Answer me.”

Again with the demands. But avoiding the issue was more troubling that it was worth. Nothing could be gained by ignoring him.

“A lot can remain exactly the same as well,” she said. “But to satisfy your curiosity, I stayed to ensure that my mother wasn’t abused. It was the only promise that my father never broke to me.”

Marco clenched his teeth against her bare-faced lie. He knew she was lying. Had known ten years ago. But if she was so insistent on pursuing her lies, then he would see how far she would go with them.

“What kept you there after her death?”

“You still don’t get it, do you? My father did to me what he did to you. He gained control of my business and the only way I could get it back was to abide by his agreement. I was two months away from getting my company back from him when you launched your takeover.”

She glared at the rich, powerful man who held all the cards and tried to forget there had been a time when she’d loved him with each breath she took. When she’d wanted to believe his every word. Wanted to trust him fully. A time when she wrestled between fear and desire.

“Now I’m doing your bidding to gain title to what is mine,” she said.

His gaze remained remote. “You’ll be amply compensated.”

“I’ll hold you to the letter of the contract,” she said.

He smiled, the gesture brief and calculating. “As will I, Miss Tate. Which is why we will stop at the villa first so you can meet Bella and complete your survey.”

Without another word he rose and walked to the rear of the plan, the soft snick of a door the only indication this inquisition was over. That he’d finally left her alone.

She crumbled in the chair and rubbed her forehead, emotionally spent. Despite his resentment of her, or perhaps because of it, he’d given her a golden opportunity to reclaim Elite Affair.

He was following her contract so far, so she couldn’t very well complain on that quarter either. Still she wasn’t about to let down her guard around him.

This was business. Nothing more. For that reason alone she had to keep her guard up. Had to see this event through to the end. Had to watch that he didn’t double-cross her—that once the job was completed, Elite Affair reverted solely to her one hundred percent.

Only then would she be able to start over. To make a life for herself. To be independent for once in her life.

All she had to do was get through the next two weeks.

Moments after the plane smoothly landed at the San Francesco d’Assisi airport on the less hilly outskirts of Perugia, Marco escorted Delanie to a waiting sedan and they were off. He rarely used a driver unless he was entertaining a fellow businessman, preferring to handle the wheel himself down the
autostrada
as well as on the roads that bypassed walled towns and sliced through the patchwork of medieval fields of produce.

But the combination of too little sleep and the emotional upheaval of being near Delanie again curtailed that urge. He tapped a fist on his thigh, still vexed by the latter.

He should not find her attractive. He sure as hell shouldn’t
begin to believe her lies about her troubled childhood, not when he’d learned the truth. If David Tate had been the beast Delanie swore him to be, her mother would have broken free when she’d had the chance.

He needed his thoughts on the present. His relationship with Delanie was just business, pure and simple. That fact alone called for space between them. Though once they were in the backseat of the car she took that to the extreme and scrunched against the door as if waiting for the chance to jump free.

“I repeat, I am not going to pounce on you,” he said.

Her gaze swung to him, a bit wild and overly wide. “I know it’s just … You’re so intense. So angry still.”

He scowled, disliking that he was letting his emotions reign. She was so nervous he literally felt every quick breath she sucked in until his own equilibrium was spinning.

“My apologies then,” he said. “It has been a very long day without sleep.”

“For both of us.” She heaved a sigh and directed her attention beyond the auto again. “It’s beautiful here.”

“
Il cuore verde d’Italia
. The green heart of Italy.” He loved it. Respected it. Nurtured the land to the best of his ability and it rewarded him with kingly yields.

“You’ve always lived here?”

“For some time now,” he said, not inclined to share more of the details of his life with her.

There was no point in it.

She faced him, her perfectly shaped head lifted, pale brows pulled over the proud tilt of her nose. “Your vineyards. Are they near here?”

“The vineyards I inherited or the land your father destroyed?” he asked when he knew damned good and well that the latter was what she meant.

Two swaths of red streaked across her cheekbones. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”

“It is not something one forgets.”

“Or forgives,” she said, frowning. “I’m so sorry Father did that—”

“Save it,” he snapped. “I’m in no mood to hear your apology or excuses.”

She shut her mouth, hurt he had jumped to conclusions when what she’d been about to say was “to us.” Yes, it was horrific that her father had spitefully ruined the business that had been in Marco’s family for generations. That he’d added another emotional scar to the ones Marco already suffered.

But the greatest tragedy of all was that Marco saw her as the enemy too, that he had refused to believe her then, that he couldn’t find it in him to trust her now.

You don’t trust him anymore either
.

How funny he’d accused her of lying, of betraying him, when he too had broken his promise. He’d shattered her trust in him.

She heaved a sigh, sick at heart that nothing had changed. They were still two wounded souls, hurting each other because that was easier.

“I’m curious about the vineyard my father destroyed,” she said, making herself clear.

He stared straight ahead, annoyed she was continuing her questions, vexed that the ripple of pain reflected in her clear blue eyes got to him, made him believe her innocence if only for a moment.

All an act. It had to be. And if he was wrong? If she was truly ignorant of her father’s schemes? If she’d been blackmailed to comply with Tate’s dictates?

What did it matter now? Too much had happened between them. He was more jaded than ever before and she was as well or she wouldn’t be this cautious, this remote.

“Fine,” she huffed out, crossing her arms and staring militantly out the window. “Forget I asked.”

He caught himself smiling at her show of temper, admiring
that steel that ran down her spine. A gentleman would comply with her request. But he was no gentleman.

“It is roughly twenty kilometers south of the villa. Half an hour by car.” He stared at her profile, willing her to face him. “Less if I’m driving.”

She continued her vigil out the window but he thought some of the tension eased from her narrow shoulders, that the slightest hint of a smile teased her soft lips. “How long before we reach the villa?”

“It should not take more than twenty minutes,” he said, answering as calmly as she’d asked, keeping his tone low, intimate, as she’d done.

It didn’t require a response and she didn’t offer one. That was for the best. More than ever he needed to get back to the reason she was here.

Theirs was simply a working relationship. Anything beyond that was too great a risk.

Yet instead of relaxing, his heart accelerated even more during the drive to the Cabriotini villa. The easy explanation was his own unease at returning here, far easier than admitting his thoughts were on Delanie.

The simple truth was this mansion wasn’t home to him and never would be. The moment he was away from it, he put the man who’d lived and wasted his life and fortune here completely out of his thoughts.

If he could just do the same regarding the enticing woman beside him. She’d plagued his sleep too often over the years. He’d convinced himself he’d hated her.

A damned lie.

He distrusted her but he didn’t hate her. He wanted her with the same fire that had burned in him ten years ago.

The conundrum for him was how to put that fire out?

His gaze flicked to hers and his body stirred more than it had in ages. What the hell was it about this woman? Dare
he hope he could get her out of his system? That he could move on?

Overindulgence. Too much of a good thing could sour a man. Perhaps that was what was needed now.

D
ELANIE
had caught glimpses of elegant mansions nestled among the hills throughout the drive and had expected Cabriotini Villa to be along the same order. But the moment the auto pulled into an iron-gated drive that swung open automatically, she knew this estate was far grander than any she’d seen so far. Perhaps more so than any she’d visited in England.

For one thing, the villa claimed a commanding view of the valley, perched on a knoll overlooking perfectly aligned fields of grapevines laden with plump purple and blush fruits. On the surrounding fields, groves of olives lined up in precise rows, their leaves shimmering silver in the sun, their black and deep green fruit glistening like jewels.

“Welcome to Cabriotini,” Marco said as the driver sped up a long drive flanked by poplars standing like sentinels.

The sun popping through their dense tops created a dappled effect, as if they were waving Marco home. Only instead of a smile he wore a pensive expression as if he dreaded coming here.

“You don’t care for your ancestral home, do you?” she asked at last.

“I am only here temporarily—this isn’t my home. It’s the estate bequeathed to me and Bella by the man who sired us, and it’s where we’ve lived since discovering our paternity.”

She blinked, stunned by his vehement tone. “That’s a rather impersonal way to refer to your father and your sister.”

He cut her a look that made her shiver. “Antonio Cabriotini wasn’t my father. His seed gave me life. I never spoke with the man. Never met him though I saw him once from a distance long before I was told I had any connection to him.”

An uneasy silence rippled between then. “He must have known who you were.”

He shrugged. “I doubt it. Cabriotini didn’t attempt to look for his bastards until he was dying. That’s when he decided to find an heir.”

She offered a thin smile. “He wanted you then.”

Marco laughed, the bitter sound mirroring his dislike of his paternity. “Don’t paint this into something homey. He detested the thought of leaving his wealth to a distant cousin in Majorca. So he hired investigators to discover if he’d sired any bastards in Italy.” He gave a gruff snort. “Cabriotini’s attorney hit the jackpot, finding my young sister and then me some months after the investigation was launched.”

She winced, her burning cheeks surely as pink as the roses clustered against an ivory wall. “He must have been a very miserable man.”

“Cabriotini lived hard and played hard and enjoyed a procession of mistresses. According to them, he made it clear to every women he bedded that he would deny any ‘mistakes’ that might evolve from a liaison.” His mouth pulled into that pained smile again and she shifted away from the car door without realizing she’d done so.

Not that Marco noticed. His gaze was riveted out the window again, his broad shoulders so stiff she imagined them lashed to a steel girder.

She worried her lower lip, wanting to avoid a scene. God knew she’d endured enough of them in her life.

“You haven’t been a family for very long then,” she ventured, thinking by diverting the conversation to his sister again it could qualify a bit as her doing her job.

“We’ve never been a family,” he said flatly.

“When did you become so cold, so unfeeling?”

“Ten years ago,” he said, not even deigning to look at her.

She bit her lower lip and stared at her clasped hands, surprised they were trembling. Of course he would blame everything on that awful night when he’d cornered her and her father in the posh Zwuavé Gardens in Mayfair, accusing David Tate of stealing his family business, accusing Delanie of betraying him.

She’d never been able to forget that ugly scene. Each second of that confrontation was embedded in her memory, each hurtful word tattooed on her heart.

“How could you believe I betrayed you?” she asked as the car cruised down the poplar-lined driveway, taking her deeper into his lair.

Marco snorted, pressing a knuckled fist into the leather seat, accusing gaze drilling into her. “You were the only person I confided in about my grandmother’s mental state. You knew I intended to remove her from her role in her own business before she was taken advantage of. You told your father this and he swooped down on her.”

As she’d done that night, with her heart threatening to pound out of her chest, she shook her head in denial. “I never told Father anything.”

Marco leaned closer and loomed over her. “Then how did he know something that I told only you?”

She shook her head, having no answer. Never in a million years would she have divulged what they’d spoken of in whispers, arms and legs entangled, bare bodies curled perfectly together in a delicious skin-on-skin rub. Their intimacy had been a precious gift to her. She wouldn’t have jeopardized that.

But her father would, she admitted, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, the same question plaguing her mind as well.

She’d been so wrong about this man, certain he loved her, certain he believed her innocence. Certain that he would return for her. But he’d disappeared.

When she’d needed him most, he’d proven to be no better than her father.

That night at the restaurant with Marco and David Tate she’d hardened, realizing with a sinking heart that her father had used her to get to Marco and he’d succeeded. He’d used the one good thing in her life against her—used his daughter.

“What did you do, Father?” she had demanded, ice crystallizing in her veins as she’d confronted her father, his light eyes devoid of any emotion.

“What did I do?” he parroted then laughed, a nasty cackle that taunted—haunted her still. “You know exactly what I did. As you well know, one learns so much through pillow talk.”

The insinuation she’d intentionally betrayed the man she loved had her face flaming—not with shame but with anger. She’d known her father was the ultimate manipulator, but she’d never dreamed he would go to such lengths to best Marco.

A huge error on her part. Any man who beat his wife wasn’t above using his daughter to his benefit.

“I didn’t give you any information,” she’d hissed, but her father only gave her that smug smile.

She’d only mentioned her worry over Marco’s grandmother to one person: her own mother. But her mother wouldn’t have divulged something Delanie told her in private. She wouldn’t have betrayed her. Would she?

She’d turned to Marco ten years ago, standing at their table tall and proud and so very angry. “He’s lying, Marco. I would never hurt you. Never betray you.”

He’d stared at her a long time before he stepped closer, dragging one finger down her cheek that was slick with tears she hadn’t realized she’d shed, his palm strong yet gentle as he cupped her chin. She leaned into that hand, her gaze on his, begging him to believe her.

“Then how could your father possibly know things that I shared only with you?” he asked, pulling his hand back, denying her his touch, his trust.

She shook her head, having no solid answer. “He spied on us. He must have.”

The anger in his beautiful brown eyes cooled to a brittle glaze that chilled her to the bone. And she knew that the torrid love they’d shared was freezing over.

Marco had backed away from the table, the epitome of arrogant pride. And she held her breath, praying for him to see the truth, waiting for him to extend his hand to her.

Instead, he turned and walked away with brisk determined steps, spine straight, broad shoulders girded in an impossibly stiff line.

She’d pressed trembling fingers to her lips, stilling the cry that tried to escape. Rejection bludgeoned her and she shrank in her chair, humiliated. Stunned. Hurt beyond words.

“That was unpleasant,” her father said, returning his attention to his beef Wellington and topped-off glass of port, dismissing her heartache as if it were nothing.

Because to her father, she was nothing. It had never been more clear to her than at that moment.

She pushed to her feet on shaky legs, the scrape of chair legs blaring over the din of happy customers.

“I hate you,” she hissed, batting tears from her eyes.

Her father had lifted one sardonic brow then laughed, a dark sound edged with sarcasm. “Of course you do. Perhaps you should hurry after Mr. Vincienta. Beg him to take you back,” he said. “I don’t need you and neither does your mother.”

But her mother did need her.

Delanie could see the retribution gathering in his light eyes and her stomach twisted into a tighter knot. She knew his pattern. He would need to release his tension over being confronted publicly by Marco and now her.

Her mother would pay the ultimate price. Again.

Even so she wove through the restaurant on shaky legs, mumbling excuses as she went, heart thundering in her chest. She had to speak with Marco one more time. She had to make
him believe she’d had no part in her father’s latest scheme. That she was as much a victim as anyone else.

“Marco!” she cried out as she pushed past the doorman and stumbled onto the sidewalk, her teary gaze frantically searching for him.

He stopped in the arc of light but didn’t face her.

Heart in her throat, she gulped a sob and raced to him. Her trembling fingers banded his arm and he stiffened even more.

“I don’t know how he found out about your grandmother but I was ignorant of his plan. I played no part in his corporate schemes,” she said. “You have to believe me.”

He looked at her then with an expression so cold she shivered. “No, I do not have to believe you.”

She batted at a tear that leaked from her gritty eyes only to do the same with another. And another. She gave up the effort to stay them and looked at him through a veil of tears.

“I’ve never told a soul since primary school, but you have to know the truth. Father is abusive,” she said.

His brows snapped together. “To you?”

She shook her head and gulped in great drafts of air. “To Mother. He’s always abused her, though he was careful her bruises didn’t show.” Until that last time …

Her fingers inched up his rigid forearm. “I can’t leave her. He’ll—” She shook her head again, fingers digging into his muscled arm. “I don’t know what depths he will sink to this time if I defy him again.”

“You’re telling the truth?” he asked, his frown fierce.

“Yes,” she whispered past dry lips.

“You need to escape his grasp. Come with me to Italy.”

When he’d asked her before, in the heat of passion, she’d refused because, while he’d told her he wanted her, he’d never professed his love. He always held back something she couldn’t define, she’d just sensed the wall going up. That kept her from totally trusting him as she longed to do.

But now he was giving her a real chance to escape her
hellish life. To be with the man she loved, the man with the wounded heart that she still believed her love could heal. She wanted to go but wouldn’t unless specific conditions were met.

“Yes, I’ll go with you but not without my mother. I can’t leave her to suffer.” The guilt of doing so once still plagued her. “Please. I love you, Marco. I need your help. I need you.”

Marco jerked his head aside, his rigid posture concealing anything he was feeling. And she’d prayed he believed her. Prayed that he would help her and her mother.

“Go back to your father but say nothing about telling me this,” he said. “I’ll go to your house now and speak with your mother. Trust me to arrange everything. It will be all right.”

She’d swallowed hard. Trust was asking so much, especially with so much at stake. Especially when she was leery of putting her heart and soul into his hands. But she loved him. She wanted to believe he would never hurt her but she needed time—time she simply didn’t have.

“Okay,” she said. “When will I see you?”

“Soon.”

He stood there a moment longer, staring into her eyes before his gaze fixed on her mouth.
Kiss me
, she thought.
Hold me. Convince me everything will be fine. Perfect. Make the fear go away
.

But he did none of that.

In a blink he disappeared into the darkness, leaving her with the unpleasant task of trudging back into the restaurant and facing her father.

“Did you change your mind about leaving with the Italian or did he reject you?” her father asked the moment she eased onto the chair across from him.

She damned the heat flooding her cheeks and averted her eyes so he wouldn’t read the truth in them. “He was already gone by the time I got outside.”

“Hmm,” her father said, cradling his port in one pale hand,
the long slender fingers looking too effeminate to be capable of inflicting pain.

But she knew differently.

As Marco had asked of her, she suffered the evening in her father’s company. Her nerves jumped like live wires by the time they returned home but she held onto the belief he would make everything right. That she and her mother would soon be free.

She hurried to her mother’s room, hoping Marco had talked over a plan with her. That they would be leaving here soon. That they would finally be free of David Tate’s control.

“Well? What did Marco say? When do we leave?” Delanie asked in hushed tones.

Small furrows raced across her mother’s pale forehead, the skin so thin and white it was nearly translucent. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

And so Delanie explained it in a rush, her fragile faith in Marco withering when her mother gave her a pitying smile. “He never came, dear. He never called.”

“But he said—”

“Men are the kings of false promises,” her mother interrupted, her fragile blue-veined hand patting Delanie’s in a conciliatory gesture that failed to comfort. “You should know that by now.”

Yes, she should know it. Did know it. But she’d begun to trust Marco.

“Mother, did you ever mention what I told you about Marco’s grandmother?” she asked.

“No, not a word,” her mother said, but looked everywhere but at her. “Why do you ask?”

Delanie waved a dismissive hand. “Just curious. It’s just that I told nobody but you and yet Father has learned of it.”

Her mother had smiled. “You should know by now that the walls here have ears.”