The Price of Scandal (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

I
T TOOK
Sevro an hour to reach the address on the paper.

He drew up beside the pavement in the High Street of the smallish market town, and consulted the scrap of paper.

According to this he would find her at number five. Number five was a small shop that called itself Vintage Inspiration and had a monochrome display of sixties-style dresses in the window.

Had he written down the wrong number? Severo got out of his car. It was possible that the people inside knew where she was.

The old-fashioned bell attached to the door rang loudly when he walked in, his footsteps loud on the polished boards, but despite this nobody appeared.

Severo called out, looked around the deserted shop, with its polished boards, pastel-ice-cream-coloured walls and shelving. The space was not large, but it was attractively and imaginatively laid out to maximise the limited space. He walked towards the desk between the racks of clothes that had, according to the signs on them, been divided into decades, and in some cases eras.

He walked around a mannequin dressed in a pale Victorian slip, delicate and in far from perfect condition, and called out, raising his voice above the soft sound of the Dusty Springfield number playing in the background. His impatience growing when no one appeared, he called out again.

‘Hello?’

This time he heard a muffled response, and the echo of hurrying footsteps—hurrying slightly too late if his intentions had been dishonest. The owners, he decided disapprovingly, should review the security or maybe their staff. Anyone could have walked in off the street and cleared out the place.

‘Can I help you? I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I was just—’ Neve froze, the smile slipping from her face to be replaced by one of almost comical dismay as she identified her neglected customer.

The stack of vintage handbags she was holding slipped from her fingers just as the colour slipped from her face.

She lifted a hand to her literally spinning head, and thought, This isn’t happening.

But it was. Impossible as it seemed, Severo was standing in the middle of her little shop looking—her chest lifted in a deep shuddering sigh as a wave of intense longing washed over her—looking more handsome, more virile and actually more everything than any man had the right to look, and also almost as shocked as she felt.

Shocked? But he couldn’t be. Fate had not brought him to her door; coincidences didn’t come in the shape of six-feet-five lying cheat Italians. He must have known she was here.

And he came looking. Was that a good thing, a bad thing…both?

‘Why?’

He ignored her bewildered question and carried on staring at her with an angry fixed intensity that made her want to crawl out of her skin.

‘What is this place?’

‘A shop.’

A policy of ‘say as little as possible’ seemed a wise move under the circumstances, and useful—words of more than two syllables were proving taxing for her shell-shocked brain just now.

She saw the spasm of irritation twitch at the sensual line of his lips. The angle of his clean-shaven jaw tightened as he looked around, tipping his head and delivering a silky sarcastic retort in a voice that made the hair on her nape stand on end.

‘So this is a shop. I have heard of them.’

Standing there in his beautifully tailored designer suit, he looked elegant and formal and dauntingly in control, nothing like the man she had shared the night and her body with during the blizzard.

He’s still the same lying, cheating rat inside, she reminded herself.

‘I was just closing.’

His brow knitted into an irritated frown. Then he leaned back against the counter top and smiled. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

If he was trying to intimidate her, he was succeeding.

‘What are you doing here, Severo?’ In her place, her sanctuary. Bad enough he invaded her every waking thought and most of her sleeping ones too—now he was here as well.

There was no escape from the damned man.

She stared at his face hungrily, her eyes running over the arrogant angles and sensual curves and autocratic strong lines. He was a rat but he was still the most beautiful man on the planet!

‘What are
you
doing here?’ he countered.

The harsh accusation in his voice made her blink. ‘Well, Shirley usually does today but she had a dental appointment.’ She stopped, the colour climbing to her cheeks. ‘You didn’t mean that, did you?’

He directed a look of withering disdain at her flustered face. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ he asked in a dangerous voice. ‘Or merely blurting out the first thing that comes into your head?’

Her thoughts were in such a jumble that she had to think about it. ‘The last one.’

‘I meant,’ he said, adopting the sort of slow voice that some people reserved for children and the hard of hearing, ‘what are you doing in this place?’

‘Working.’ For a clever man he was acting pretty dense. She lifted her chin, pride in her voice as she added, ‘It is
my
place.’

Not much by his standards but hers nonetheless, a place that had seemed an impossible dream when she was a teenager.

She had confided her dream to James one day and he had pointed out all dreams were impossible until you went for them.

Conscious of her lack of experience and hoping her boundless enthusiasm would compensate, she had followed his advice. Starting small to test the market, she started up a website selling vintage clothing and accessories. It turned out the demand was huge and the response to her small firm very positive, so positive that six months later she had been able to move and extend the business into this small premises.

‘Per amor di Dio!’
Severo muttered between clenched teeth. ‘I am in no mood for jokes.’

‘I’m not joking,’ she protested, struggling to think past the knot of longing low in her belly. Looking at him made her insides dissolve. She despised the weakness or flaw or whatever it was in her that made her feel this way.

He was married; she
couldn’t
feel this way.

His brows lifted to an incredulous angle. ‘
You
own this place?’

‘Yes.’

He gave a Latin shrug and maintained a mystified expression as he looked around. ‘And you make money?’

Neve sketched a smile that left her eyes unfriendly. ‘I had totally forgotten the model of tact you are, Severo.’ But not forgotten how sensual the curve of his lips was and how looking at it made her insides dissolve.

Then stop looking, Neve!

‘Style is not about money, but actually we do pretty well—not by your standards, possibly, but we get by.’

‘I was not trying to insult you.’ He had intended to establish some sort of rapport before he asked the question, but things were not going as he’d planned.

For starters, finding her in this shop. She had money so why this place…a hobby?

‘Not trying,’ she echoed, thinking, The same way you didn’t
try
and make me fall in love with you, but it happened.

Neve’s eyes widened. I’ve finally admitted it! Talk about denial—I love him!

Oh, God, how obvious was that?

A fractured sigh left her lips. Where was the sense of release facing the truth was meant to bring? The only thing Neve felt was an overwhelming sense of despair and guilt.

She had never believed that you
just
fell in love; there had to be an element of
choice
. Of course you could be attracted to someone, but that wasn’t the same.

Falling in love was such an important thing it couldn’t, she had thought, be decided on something as arbitrary as sexual attraction.

She had never had much sympathy for people who used falling in love as an excuse for riding roughshod over other people’s feelings. Love didn’t make a wrong a right.

Well, it didn’t, but it made it an awfully attractive wrong.

You couldn’t get more wrong than Severo.

Or more attractive.

Watching the colour recede dramatically from her already pale face, Severo took an apprehensive step towards her.

She looked as though she was going to faint.

Pregnant women fainted.

His eyes slid to her belly. She didn’t
look
pregnant, though his idea of what twelve weeks pregnant looked like was hazy.

‘You should sit down?’

‘Are you asking me?’

‘It is a suggestion. You look…unwell?’

Her eyes fell from his. The question in his manner was making her uneasy; if she hadn’t known it was impossible she might have suspected he already knew. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Is this really your shop?’

‘Why do you have a problem with believing it?’ Suddenly she hated him coming here looking down his nose at her shop, judging it, judging her…and most of all she hated him for being the man she loved!

‘I don’t know why I’m surprised that you’re a snob.’

His brows lifted as an expression of astonishment crossed his lean face. ‘I am not a snob.’

‘Oh, no, you’re perfect!’ she drawled nastily.

He shook his head and wondered where this burst of aggression had come from—of course, it was well known hormones made pregnant women irrational.

Why not come right out and ask her?

Tuning out the impatient voice in his head, he reminded himself that timing was everything.

‘I was merely surprised,’ he said, the question waiting to be asked pounding in his skull like a hammer. ‘You don’t need to work.’

Neve’s chin went up. ‘I
want
to work.’

His blazing eyes moved across the soft contours of her face.
‘I want—’

The silence that grew was not comfortable; it crackled with tension that made it hard for Neve to breathe. Her heart had slowed to a thud as the blood rushed to her head. She struggled to take her eyes off his face but couldn’t; she couldn’t stop staring greedily at him. ‘What—what do you want?’ she whispered hoarsely.

He arched a sardonic brow and said coolly, ‘Information.’

The tension evaporated; it had probably not existed outside her fevered imagination.

She folded her arms across her chest, and unfolded them slightly more carefully as the action made her painfully aware of her ultra-sensitive nipples.

‘People generally come here for dresses.’

His gaze fell from her mouth, sliding down her slim body still concealed behind the counter; he sucked in air through flared nostrils and gave a sardonic smile.

‘I thought I had been sent to the wrong place.’

Neve shook her head in bewilderment, her brow furrowing as she tried to make sense of his cryptic words. ‘Sent? Who sent you here? No!’ She gave a weary negative shake of her head. ‘Forget it, I don’t want to know. Just go away, Severo.’

‘Is that any way to treat a customer?’

‘You’re not a customer.’

He walked over to a rail and wheeled it towards her. ‘I’ll take these,’ he said, pulling a wallet from his pocket, then extracting a wad of notes and laying it on the counter.

‘I think that will cover it. Now, as a customer will you grant me a little courtesy?’

‘Am I meant to be impressed by that childish display?’ she asked, producing a childish gesture of her own as she picked up the notes and, tearing them in half, threw them at him. ‘I’m choosy about my customers!’

Severo had watched her actions with an expression of total incredulity. ‘
Per amor di Dio
, woman!’ he gritted as he stood there, several hundreds of pounds worth of paper, now useless, scattered on the floor around his feet.

As her breathing slowed she began to share his shock. My God, what had got into her? She didn’t do things like that; she didn’t snap.

‘I’ll tape them together,’ she said with a shamefaced grimace. She dropped into a crouch and began to pick up the torn notes. ‘You made me angry,’ she muttered.

With a muttered imprecation he strode over to where she was crouched and, grabbing her arm, pulled her to her feet.

‘
Accidenti
, what are you doing?’

Neve smoothed down her skirt, avoiding his astonished stare. ‘The money I—’

He dismissed the money with a regal wave of his hand. ‘The money is of no importance, though,’ he admitted, ‘I have never had my generosity flung so literally in my face before.’

Then he completely threw her by throwing back his head and laughing.

His expression sobered as his eyes stilled on her face. ‘Are you going to tell me what that was all about?’

‘You think you can buy me,’ she said, on the defensive; it was pretty hard to defend such childish behaviour.

He released a hissing breath of irritation. ‘Why would I seek to buy what I have already enjoyed for free?’ He was ashamed of the taunt almost before it left his lips, and would have retracted it had she not reacted quicker.

She reacted to the calculated insult without thinking.

The sound of her hand making contact with the side of his face was shocking.

Staring at the mark on his face, she lifted both hands to her mouth. ‘That’s terrible. I am so…so sorry.’

He lifted a hand to his cheek and shrugged. ‘Let us say that we are quits,
sì
…?’

She couldn’t believe that he was taking it so casually.

Heat flickered in the pit of her stomach as she met his eyes.

At that moment someone walked through the door, breaking the spell. Neve turned, recognising a woman who had visited the previous week and gone home with several purchases.

She struggled to gather her shredded composure. A repeat customer was always good news, especially one whose arrival was so opportune.

Neve gave a manically cheerful smile. ‘Hello again. If there’s anything I can help you with, just sing out.’

The woman said, ‘Well, actually, my daughter is going to a twenties party next month and I was wondering if—’

‘I’ve had this marvellous flapper dress in the back, not perfect condition, but—’

Severo’s snarled oath swung both women’s attention in his direction.

‘Just one sec.’ Neve smiled apologetically at the customer before turning back to Severo, directing her gaze at a safe point over his left shoulder before she said with frigid formality. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, sir.’