

DARK eyes flashing hot gold, Valente caught Caroline in his arms within minutes of the jet taking off. 'I missed you, bella mia.'
Her heart raced while she tossed her head in apparent surprise and her grey eyes sparkled with challenge. 'You never mentioned it when you phoned. Not once.'
Valente threw his handsome dark head back, laughed in appreciation and shrugged a broad shoulder with magnificent disregard for such frills. 'So, I'm not one of those guys who will say all the right things to feed your ego!'
Pained regret stirred inside her. 'But you used to be much more...emotional, open and affectionate.'
His amusement evaporated. 'Women like you toughened me up. Don't complain about your own handiwork,' he breathed harshly, bending his proud dark head to nuzzle the tender skin of her pale slender throat with his lips and the edge of his strong white teeth in an unexpectedly erotic salutation that made her nerve-endings execute a somersault.
'You're not being fair.' Caroline was annoyed, tired of being censured for what had happened five years earlier. He had also made choices with far-reaching consequences, when he had left the country and made it impossible for her to contact him other than by letter.
'Since when was life fair?' In an effort to conclude the conversation, Valente kissed her with all the seething passion that had built up during her absence. He had not slept a night through since her departure.
Caroline's hostility took a back seat while she trembled in convulsive response against his lean, powerful frame. His hands splayed to her small bottom to lift her and gather her closer, making her awesomely aware of the virile heat of his erection. 'I want you so much I ache,' Valente groaned.
And there would be no real conversation until after that stage, she recognised ruefully, and then just as quickly scolded herself for that thought. Only weeks ago he would not have dared to show her that passion, and she would have cringed away from him, still too damaged by her experiences with Matthew to have any prospect of rediscovering or enjoying her own sexuality.
Headily conscious of the power Valente had given back to her, and convinced that no man who had been 'playing away' behind her back could possibly be so hot for her, Caroline found herself gurgling with appreciative laughter when he virtually dragged her into the sleeping compartment. Never had she felt so desirable, and yet at that moment, as they sought out the only privacy available to them, she felt more like a teenager than a grown-up. She was a willing partner when they shed their clothes in a heap and somehow synchronised into a heated, twisting, yearning tumble of bodies on the bed in urgent pursuit of the same elemental satisfaction. The excitement he generated with his first driving thrust never dropped for so much as a second of their fevered lovemaking. When her release came it was explosive, and Valente stifled her noisy cries with his mouth and a deep sense of sweetness possessed her heart.
Drifting back from that ecstatic reunion of the senses, Caroline never wanted to move again, and marvelled that she had contrived to live without Valente for two weeks. She was finding an extraordinary peace in lying within the circle of his arms, for he was so rarely still and quiet. She could rejoice covertly in the wonderful smell of his damp bronzed skin and the glorious intimacy of being with him again when, five years ago, she had truly believed that hope and joy were gone for ever. And if it was different now, because he didn't want her love, was anything perfect? Was she planning to give up what they had for a life in which she would be bereft without him? In that moment, she thought not.
'We'll be landing in less than an hour, belezza mia. We need to move.' Valente shifted away from her with a sigh that she wanted to believe signified disappointment at that restricted time-frame.
Before he could leave her side, however, Caroline was determined to satisfy her curiosity on certain issues. 'There are a couple of things I want to ask you about.'
'Agnese?' Valente guessed with alarming accuracy, turning his tousled curly dark head to shoot her an infuriatingly knowing glance. 'Yes, we were lovers---and now it's over because I have you.'
'So why was she coming to see you?'
'She was hoping that a month of marriage would have changed my mind and that I would be ready to take her back. Agnese doesn't lack self-belief.'
'Oh...' His candour surprised her, for put under pressure Matthew had lied and lied and lied again, so that it had become hard for her to accept anything at face value. 'Were you in love with her?'
'It was more a convenient arrangement than a love affair.'
'You're saying that she was your mistress?'
'Yes, I paid her bills, and she... Surely you don't need me to explain any more?'
Involuntarily, Carole was shocked. 'But it sounds so cold-blooded!'
'It suited us both. Not everyone wants emotional ties and promises, Caroline,' he imparted with sardonic cool.
'I have just one more question,' Caroline continued, half under her breath, studiously ignoring that wounding gibe. 'What's your involvement with Bomark Logistics back home?'
Valente went as still as a man who had been told a ticking time bomb was attached to him. 'We'll talk about that in depth when we get home,' he responded with measured cool.
Caroline was bewildered by that response. In depth? What was he suggesting? Of the two issues, she had ironically considered the topic of Agnese Brunetti the more controversial and the least likely to lead to a satisfactory conclusion. She had even thought he might refuse to satisfy her inquisitiveness. After all, his relationship with Agnese before their marriage was really none of her business. The question about Bomark Logistics had only been asked out of casual curiosity. Why was he holding back on giving her an immediate explanation?
As they completed their trip back to the Palazzo Barbieri, Caroline became increasingly disturbed by Valente's preoccupation. The tight lines of his bold profile and the grim set of his mouth made her tense, and uneasy as well. It was an anti-climax when Koko darted out of the shadows in the entrance hall and leapt at Caroline in welcome, only to struggle to be set down again so that she could enact the same welcome for Valente as well.
'How on earth did you manage to persuade her into liking you?' Caroline exclaimed, astounded to see her formerly hostile pet now winding round Valente's trouser legs with a purr as loud as a steam engine.
'You were gone. I had no competition. She was lonely,' Valente pointed out, lifting the little Siamese and stroking her in reward for her enthusiastic greeting.
In the glorious drawing room, with the crimson light of the dying sun filtering in through the balcony doors across the muted antique colours of the beautiful Persian rug, he finally faced her. 'How did you find out that I had a connection with Bomark Logistics?'
Caroline explained, and it transpired that Valente had not even noticed the tiny incident in which she had picked up the revealing document when the wind dropped it at her feet.
'So, you don't know anything,' Valente pronounced, his ebony brows drawing together, the angles of his lean hard features saturnine in the dusk light. 'I could lie. And I am tempted to lie, because I know you won't like the truth. But in terms of business I did nothing wrong. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.'
'What on earth are you talking about?' Caroline pressed in growing bewilderment. 'Have you bought out Bomark Logistics, or something? Did you think I would be annoyed at that because the firm put Hales out of business? I'm not that foolish...'
Valente surveyed her levelly. 'I set up Bomark from scratch three years ago. I own it, and I am responsible for every move the firm has made since then.'
The blankness of shock had wiped all expression from Caroline's face. 'But that's not possible. You own it? Have always owned it? I mean why...three years ago?'
'I opened another haulage business in order to compete with Hales and had your manager, Sweetman, head-hunted into a London position,' Valente clarified with reluctance.
'But why?' Caroline demanded again. 'You actually wanted to put my family out of business?'
Valente nodded confirmation in silence. He had not expected her to be quite so shocked. A devious woman would have recognised the strings he had pulled and understood why without asking. Caroline, however, clearly did not comprehend what he was trying to explain.
'I don't understand. I know you must have been very angry and bitter when I didn't turn up to marry you five years ago,' she murmured tightly. 'But why would you go to such appalling lengths to target a small family business?'
'I blamed your family for what happened as much as I blamed you.'
A stricken look crossed Caroline's visage. 'But you knew there was no way I could have made it to the church. You knew how sorry I was that my message didn't reach you in time,' she reasoned feverishly. 'I know my parents behaved badly, and that you were treated unfairly, but I don't believe that we did anything that could excuse you for deliberately setting out to destroy our business.'
Valente was wondering why she was saying that there had been no way she could have made it to the church. He was exasperated by his ignorance of the excuses she had no doubt employed in that letter, but determined not to expose it. As for this message she was now mentioning for the first time: he did not believe there had ever been one. Her family had wanted rid of him by any means, and ensuring that he was left standing like a fool at the altar had been a very effective method of deterring him from seeking any further contact.
'I wanted you all to pay for what you did,' Valente confessed.
A humourless laugh was wrenched from her soft pink mouth. 'You don't think three and a half years of marriage to Matthew Bailey was penance enough for me?'
Valente wore a guarded look that gave nothing away. 'As far as I knew at the time you were enjoying a happy marriage with your childhood sweetheart. It was only after Bailey's death that I learned that it hadn't been quite that perfect.'
'But Matthew and I were never childhood sweethearts!' Caroline argued with spirit. 'Where did you get that idea? We were friends---casual friends. I thought a lot of him, and I respected his opinion. I admit that I was entirely taken in by him until I became his wife. But there was never any romance between us---either before or after we married. I married him on the rebound.'
'The phrase "childhood sweethearts" came from your own father's lips. Joe came to see me the week before our wedding and accused me of having come between you and Matthew and ruining your life. He said it was Matthew whom you really loved and he tried to buy me off.'
Caroline was aghast. 'Why didn't you tell me that Dad had done that? I had no idea.'
'There had already been enough bad feeling, and you were living on your nerves. I didn't want to put you under any more pressure and I was confident that you loved me,' Valente admitted, with a bitter twist to his handsome mouth.
'I did love you...I did!' Caroline proclaimed in a shaken tone. 'But you never responded to my letters. You never phoned. You don't do emotion or forgiveness, do you? The very fact it's taken almost two months for us even to discuss the past says it all. You just scrubbed me out of your life like I didn't matter to you!'
His lean strong face was darkening with indignation. 'What did you expect after leaving me standing at the church? It would be a rare man who could forgive an offence of that magnitude.'
'You just didn't love me enough, Valente,' Caroline condemned vehemently. 'When you tell me now that you'll never feel like that for me again, it's not really that great a loss, is it? A man who really loved me would have overcome his injured pride and talked to me again---but not you. So much for love! You just deserted me.'
Lean, olive-skinned features hard with anger, Valente spread wide his arms and threw up both hands in a bold physical demonstration of his wrathful rejection of that scenario. 'I...deserted...you?'
'I was crushed. I thought I had nothing left to live for---and there was Matthew, being a very sympathetic and staunch friend in my hour of need,' Caroline recalled, stinging tears filling her eyes as she looked back at that fateful period of her life. 'Before very long my parents were pointing out how happy they would be if I married Matthew. He proposed. You weren't there. I gave in to the pressure---a marriage of friends, Matt called it, but even our friendship didn't last. Yes, I was an idiot, and I let myself fell into a stupid trap, but if I hadn't been so unhappy I would never have been that silly!'
Her explanation bore not the smallest resemblance to Valente's assumptions at the time. 'I thought you had only used me to make Matthew jealous. I also believed that you had realised you loved him more than me.'
With an unsteady hand, Caroline dashed away her tears. 'Well, maybe if you'd had enough interest you would have found out the truth for yourself.' Her grey eyes darkened and her soft mouth compressed. 'But why are we even having this conversation now?'
'We're having it because it's a conversation we should have had a long time ago,' Valente conceded between gritted white teeth, violently wound up by her accusations and full of rage, but refusing to parade the emotions storming through him.
'All that doesn't matter any more. I'm more interested in your ownership of Bomark Logistics,' Caroline admitted, bringing the dialogue full circle back to what she saw as the most important question. 'That you chose, three years after we broke up, to pursue a goal of revenge at any cost truly horrifies me. It proves all over again to me that I must be a rotten judge of character.'
'I'm not like you, bella mia,' Valente breathed. 'When someone injures me I don't turn the other cheek, and I never will.'
A belligerent glint in her usually soft gaze, Caroline drew herself up straight to her full height. She was so tense that her muscles ached in protest at her stance. 'But to have set up another haulage firm solely to destroy my family's livelihood is beyond forgiveness.'
'I wanted you. All along, my only goal was to gain access to you.'
'But you started this three years ago, when Matthew was still alive and I was his wife!'
Valente veiled his black-lashed unrepentant gaze. He had pinned his colours to the mast and he wasn't the man to retreat. 'Whether you were married or otherwise made no difference to me.'
Caroline rested shaken eyes on him and then turned away, wandering over to the windows to stare sightlessly out at the superbly evocative Venetian skyline. He was so aggressive, so destructive, so unashamed of the methods he had employed. In a word? Ruthless. Yet once he had shielded her from that side of his character, persuading her that he was a much more humane and understanding character. This was the man she loved?
'No cost was too high to pay, was it?' Caroline accused in a sudden surge of disgust as she totted up the consequences of his behaviour. 'What do you think the slow decline of Hales and the loss of those contracts did to my father's health? It broke his heart. It was his father's firm, and he was horribly ashamed that he couldn't keep it in business. You didn't care that you were hurting my family because you still thought I had let you down.'
His jawline took on an even more stubborn angle. He stood there with the macho air of a male urging her to throw whatever she liked at him and see how well he would withstand the barrage. 'You did let me down.'
'How did I let you down? By falling ill? By being in hospital the night before our wedding? How was that my fault?' Caroline launched at him shakily. 'That was fate. The second thoughts and the doubts and fears that tormented me the next morning while you were at the church were my fault. I admit that, but I still wasn't well enough to get out of that bed and do anything for myself.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Valente was forced to growl, the reference to hospital having cut through his reserve and ignited his frustration. 'I told you that I didn't read your letters.'
'Any...of them?' she prompted unsteadily, before turning away, her hand crammed to her wobbly mouth. Further speech seemed pointless. She had poured out her heart in those letters and all to no avail---for he had not even taken the time to read what she had written.
Pulling herself back together again, Caroline focused on Valente with stark denunciation in her eyes. 'You're not the man I thought you were even five years ago. You're more damaged than I could ever have realised. Although you set out to destroy my family, you forgave the family of the man who raped your mother... I don't understand. Why couldn't you forgive my parents or me?'
Rigid with self-discipline, Valente bit back the hot words brimming on his lips and watched her turn on her heel and walk to the door. 'Where are you going?'
'I'm going to lie down...I'm scared I've got another migraine coming on,' she admitted grudgingly, rubbing her fingers across the tightness beginning to band round her temples. 'And then I'm flying back to England as soon as it can be arranged---because you scare me.'
'How do I scare you?' Valente demanded angrily, outraged by that indictment.
'You tell me you've been plotting against me and my family for years and you don't understand why I'm scared of you?' Her voice broke at the height of that incredulous question. 'Do you think that's normal behaviour?'
Caroline lay on their bed in a stupor of distress and shock. How could he have been so cruel as to deliberately destroy her family's livelihood? All right, her parents were not his parents, but they were at a vulnerable age. Had he no conscience at all? Of course, how many people had shown Valente love? No doubt his mother had loved him, but she had died when he was only a teenager, and only after gifting him the bitter knowledge that he was a child born of rape. Valente had only ever known the rougher, more painful faces of lust and love. He still believed Caroline had let him down deliberately five years earlier. How could any man be so stubborn in holding on to his convictions? Yet now, ironically, she understood him so much better, for his image was now clear in her mind. He had scorned her love in the present because he had no faith in her past claims of love. The love of women like Agnese Brunetti had been for his money, and his lean, powerful body, not for the essential male behind the fine feathers.
And no feathers came more fine, Caroline conceded, studying the opulent grandeur of her surroundings with pained eyes. The child of rape had triumphed in worldly terms, but not before suffering many vicissitudes and rejections. It hurt to appreciate that she only figured as one more rejection in his chequered life, yet she had loved him so much. And whatever he had felt for her had been strong enough, enduring enough, to bring him back to her five years on. In fact, over a long period of time he had put in an enormous amount of effort to ensure that when he did re-enter her life he was in an unbeatable position of power and influence. It would be a bit of a come-down for him if he was ever to realise that all he had really had to do was make himself available, and one or way or another she would have come back to him of her own free will.
Valente leafed impatiently through the contents of his safe in the library. He was in a blind rage, and the feeling of being almost out of control unnerved him. At last he extracted a letter, no longer white and fresh, in a fat, battered envelope. Why had he kept it when he refused to lower himself to the level of reading it? He had dumped all those that came afterwards unread. Well, now he would find out what Caroline had been talking about...doubtless some stupid tangle of lying excuses designed to make him think better of her.
He sat down with a glass of the Villa Barbieri's finest wine and ripped open the envelope with something less than his usual cool. There were eight pages of Caroline's handwriting to be assimilated. He flattened the first sheet to read, and the breathless over-the-top opening made him acknowledge for the first time how young Caroline had still been in those days, 'My dearest, darling, beloved Valente...' it began.
Something twisted inside him, and he began to read with more appetite than he had had when he first lifted the letter. She claimed to have been rushed into hospital with a burst appendix the night before their wedding. Valente went cold, for he was recalling the small seam of scar tissue on her lower abdomen which he had noticed and intended to ask her about---until the pull of her proximity had driven the seemingly minor matter from his mind. Adrenalin pumping through him, he read on at speed. She had been on the operating table fighting for her life while he had been waiting for her at the church. She had asked her father to ensure that Valente was informed and brought to see her, but Joe Hales had passed on that responsibility to Matthew instead. Matthew had, in turn, refused to leave the hospital until Caroline was out of danger.
Reeling in shock from what he had learned, Valente plunged upright and strode off to find Caroline straight away. He did not know what he was going to say to her. He only knew that it was of the utmost importance that he talked to her, as he had never talked to her in the entirety of their relationship, and that was a challenge he was not even sure he could meet.
He glanced into her workshop before he went upstairs. The glass cats still sparkled in the light coming through the window. He was touched that she had kept them all these years.
A floorboard creaked in the master bedroom and Caroline's lashes swept up: Valente was stationed at the foot of the bed, rather like the Grim Reaper in a designer suit. 'Have you got a migraine?' he asked.
'No, I think it was just the tension getting to me.'
'I never read that letter you sent me five years ago,' Valente admitted harshly.
'There were at least six of them.'
'I dumped them without reading them---but I kept the first one you sent.'
Her smooth brow indented. 'Why would you keep it and not read it?'
'I was like an addict resisting temptation,' Valente confided, squaring his chin. 'Even as recently as two months ago I was proud of my ability to resist opening that letter. I didn't want to read your excuses for fear that I would mellow towards you, and my pride wouldn't allow me to run that risk.'
Conscious that Valente had to be in a very strange mood to be talking about such promptings, Caroline slowly levered herself up from her prone position. 'You resisted my letter as if it was a dangerous drug?' she rephrased, wondering if she could possibly have heard him right---because she had never dreamt that he might suffer from such quixotic thoughts and reactions.
'I didn't read it until tonight. It was a...a devastating experience,' he confessed in a jerky undertone, his strain pronounced. 'You were sick. I wasn't there when you needed me.'
'Nobody told you I needed you or that I was ill.'
'But I should have considered the possibility.'
'I tried to phone you that evening---'
Valente rested tormented dark eyes full of regret on her. 'I chucked my mobile phone off the bridge into the river beside the church because I didn't want to be tempted into phoning you. I wanted to be strong.'
'Well, you were certainly that,' Caroline conceded. 'Why didn't it occur to you that something had to be badly wrong?'
Dark colour had flushed his stunning cheekbones. 'I believed that you loved me, but I also knew that you had doubts and insecurities. Perhaps I expected too much from you.'
Sadness filled her. 'It was a big challenge to face leaving my family and everything I knew to live in a foreign country, but I would have done it to be with you. In hospital that morning I wondered if my illness was fate intervening, and I waited too long to ask Dad to give you a message. But if you'd come back, tried to see me or speak to me even...'
Valente grimaced. 'I'm obstinate. I'm very proud. At many times when my life has been difficult those were the strengths that carried me through,' he explained. 'But I should have had more faith in you. That is what finished us---my lack of faith. I was convinced you had wronged me, that your family had persuaded you to just leave me at the church. I blamed you for it all.'
Caroline wanted to cry. She wondered how she could have expected him to have faith in such circumstances, when so many people in his life had hurt him. 'I believed you had received my message before you went to the church. Matthew lied about that. He threw the truth at me after we were married, when he was annoyed with me, and admitted that he had made no attempt to get in touch with you.'
'As you learned too late, Matthew had a mean side,' Valente quipped.
'But you didn't?'
'No, I always had a ruthless streak,' Valente contradicted. 'I wouldn't have survived or prospered in my world without it. The only person I ever allowed to see me without that armour was you.'
The tears overflowed from Caroline's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Valente came down on the side of the bed and reached for her. She slapped away his hand in rejection. 'No, don't you dare touch me! How could you not read even one of my letters? How could you be dumb enough to see that as a test of how tough you could be?' she wailed at him furiously.
Valente gazed back at her with dark, strained eyes. 'It was that macho streak you don't like. You made me vulnerable and I didn't like it. This time around I wanted everything to be different.'
'And it certainly was that,' Caroline agreed, sliding off the far side of the bed and smoothing down her crumpled linen dress. 'You blackmailed me into bed with you.'
'And you blackmailed me into marriage,' Valente traded with amusement. 'Having worked out that I wanted you at any price, you then came up with the highest price you could think of. The biter was bitten.'
Caroline shifted uncomfortably. 'That wasn't how I saw it. I knew that once you found out I was frigid you'd ditch me and forget all your promises.'
Valente lifted a sardonic brow. 'Isn't it strange that I stuck by you instead of going for an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation?' he prompted. 'Why do you think that was?'
Caroline wore an uncertain look. 'Because you would have found that an embarrassing way to end our marriage?'
'My reputation is such that it would not have caused me embarrassment. I wanted more than your body, even if I wasn't prepared to admit that to myself at the time.'
'Well, you did a very good job of convincing me that all you wanted was sex,' Caroline told him, unimpressed.
Valente stood up. Lean, darkly handsome face intent, dark eyes brilliant, he strolled towards her. 'Don't you get the slightest vibe when a man loves you? You know I spent years plotting to get you back. You know I married you even though that wasn't part of my plan. You know I stayed with you even though it didn't immediately work out in the bedroom. Can't you see what all that has to add up to?'
'Are you trying to say that you love me---even though you rejected my love?' Caroline shot at him in disbelief.
'I was doing that macho thing. But I've taken off the armour again. Tonight I finally appreciated that I love you more than anything in my life...even business,' Valente confided. 'And I know that's not a romantic comparison, but business is very important to me.'
'And I'm even more important?' Caroline felt out of breath, as though she had just run up a hill too fast.
'The very centre of my world, cara mia. Without you, my life would have no true meaning.'
Valente closed his arms round her slight figure with caution, for she was tense and wide-eyed, everything about her stance suggesting indecision. 'I held on to my memories of you long after I should have done, and unfortunately I held on to my bitterness as well. I love you very, very much,' he breathed softly. 'I was never able to forget you or replace you.'
Sheer excitement made her heart feel as if it was jumping for joy inside her chest. 'And you already know how I feel about you.'
'I didn't believe you when you said you loved me. I didn't believe you for a second,' Valente hastened to explain. 'I thought you were just using words to try and soften me up.'
As his beautiful, sensual mouth drifted downward in the direction of hers, Caroline took a hasty step back from him. 'I may love you, but that doesn't mean I can forgive you for setting up Bomark Logistics and blackmailing me into your bed.'
'Even though I promise that I will never do anything like that again?'
'Easy to say, when you know you don't need blackmail any more in the bedroom,' Caroline replied squarely.
'As proof of my good intentions, we could be celibate for a while,' Valente suggested silkily.
Caroline stiffened at that deeply unattractive prospect and, catching the raw gleam of mockery in his wicked gaze, was very nearly provoked into slapping him for his sense of humour. 'I think you know very well that you're in too much demand now to be required to make that sacrifice,' she said in a starchy tone.
'It would be a huge sacrifice,' Valente confessed, impelling her to him and then hoisting her slight body up against him with strong, impatient hands.
'Forget it, then.' She revelled in the driving urgency of his kiss as though she had been waiting for it all her life. Her body came alive in his arms and hunger stirred in a hollow ache inside her pelvis. 'But how could you have dared to demand that I give you a child as well?'
'It gave me the best prospect of holding on to you long-term, tesoro mia,' Valente explained. 'I realised that if you were even half as fond of our baby as you are of your cat I would soon have you on a permanent basis, and that struck me as a very attractive option.'
Caroline studied him in dismay. 'You can be so calculating.'
Valente nodded confirmation, while easing her down on the bed and unzipping her dress in the process.
'It's shocking how much I love you...' Caroline whispered, feeling guilty at her lack of resistance.
His lean, darkly handsome features settled into a wolfish smile. 'Shock me all you like, tesoro mia. I will never stop loving you.'
'Nor I you.' And that was the most wonderful moment for Caroline, for she saw in the adoration in his gaze that he truly was as deeply attached to her as she was to him. For the first time in years she felt safe and secure and exactly where she belonged. Melting into his arms, she idly wondered if their baby---for she was convinced there would be one---would be dark or fair...
When he was born, eighteen months later, Pietro Lorenzatto took after his father in terms of build and features, and inherited his mother's pale blonde hair.
Isabel Hales peered down into the cot of her first grandson with admiring eyes, for Pietro was a very handsome baby. 'Women will go mad for him. Your son has got it all---the looks, the money, the background---'
'And a good healthy helping of his father's and his great-grandfather's lorry-driving genes!' Joe Hales teased, ambling cheerfully into the nursery to give his daughter a quiet hug. He touched the sparkling diamond pendant round her throat with a considering finger. 'You're looking well, Caro. I see Valente has been to the jewellers again. He must spend money as fast as he makes it.'
'Nonsense, Joe. He has an endless supply to spend.' Isabel moved closer, with the help of her walking frame, and studied her daughter with decided satisfaction. 'Valente knows how to treat Caroline. You've got a wonderful husband,' she pronounced, thoroughly impressed by her son-in-law's generosity. 'He loves buying you things.'
Caroline, svelte in the burgundy-coloured dress she had chosen to wear for the party about to be held in honour of her parents' fortieth wedding anniversary, simply smiled. She wondered what her mother would say if she was to learn that her daughter's most precious possession was not from her overflowing jewel box. It was a tiny Murano glass lucky black cat, given to her by Valente on the occasion of their son's birth. He had also given her a beautiful eternity ring, but the little glass cat, rousing memories as it did of that all-embracing first love which they had so magically contrived to recapture, held a much deeper significance for them both.
The party was being held that evening at Winterwood. Entertaining her friends there promised to give Isabel Hales her finest hour, for the old house was now an extremely impressive luxury home after its head-to toe makeover at her son-in-law's expense. Where once Caroline had winced at her mother's pronouncements, she now tended to look first at Valente, to check that he was managing to restrain his laughter---for, mercifully, Valente found her mother's airs and graces very funny.
Over the two years that had passed since their wedding, much had mellowed. Caroline still saw a lot of her parents---she flew over to England regularly for weekend visits, and flew her parents over to Tuscany for longer stays. Her father had made an excellent recovery and was a good deal fitter than he had been. Isabel Hales's mobility was still poor, but the addition of a lift to the main house and household help in their apartment had made a real improvement to the older woman's life and had enabled her to entertain her friends more often.
Koko had acquired a Siamese mate called Whisky, and now there were two cats in the workshop---two cats trying to sneak into the offices, and two cats to keep out of the bedroom. In an attempt to limit the invasion, Valente had said that under no circumstances was there to be any kittens, and Caroline, having won homeless Whisky his new home by telling Valente the most gigantic sob story on his behalf, had agreed. Koko, however, had begun to look a little chubby, and Caroline was now wondering how best to break the news to Valente that some very small kittens were on the way.
Hales and Bomark Logistics had merged on the Hales site, and there had been no job losses. Joe liked to drop in on Hales-Bomark Haulage, to take an unbiased look at the business operation there and report his findings back to Valente. Her husband had become part of the family in a way she had never dreamt he might, and that meant a great deal to her.
As her parents went down in the lift, to await the arrival of their first guests, Caroline dealt her a sleeping son a last loving smile. She had had an easy pregnancy and birth, and Pietro had slotted into their lives as though he had always been there. Their child had greatly added to their happiness. Shortly before her son was born Caroline's jewellery had won a design award, and she had garnered so many new customers from that publicity that she had had to expand her business. Now she did more designing than making, and found it easier to take time off.
She returned to the master bedroom to see if Valente, who had flown in late to attend the party, was changed yet.
Raking a comb through his luxuriant hair, and cursing the curls trying to spring up, Valente, supremely elegant in his dinner jacket, swung round from the mirror to look at her. An appreciative glow lightened his dark eyes to gold.
'You look amazing in that colour, but my favourite is still your wedding dress,' he admitted reflectively. 'I can't believe that we'll have been married two years next month, tesoro mio.'
Caroline folded into his extended arms like a homing pigeon coming back to roost. 'Mmm,' she sighed, loving the feel of him against her. 'I'm looking forward to the masked ball.'
'I hate fancy dress,' Valente groaned.
'You're going to look terrifically sexy, dressed up like one of your ancestors,' Caroline forecast---for the design of their outfits had been based on a couple of the Barbieri family portraits which she had chosen.
Valente stared down at her heart-shaped face, his gaze roving over its delicate loveliness with warm appreciation. He knew he would wreck her make-up if he succumbed to temptation and kissed her. He knew he was going to do it anyway.
Drawn by the same unbearably strong desire to feel his mouth on hers, Caroline gripped the lapels of his jacket and stretched up, and he took that encouragement with alacrity. He kissed her with passionate intensity. 'Three days without you can feel like a month, tesora mia,' Valente confessed.
'I missed you too...' Caroline locked her arms round him, their bodies straining together and taut with longing.
A faint shudder racked his lean, powerful length as she squirmed against him. 'Enough to be late for the party?'
'No, we couldn't,' she gasped, fighting the excitement rippling through her as he trailed his fingers up her thigh, lifting her skirt out of his path.
But Valente had heard that before, and he was not easily sidetracked. Persistence ensured that temptation triumphed, and when, some time later, the loving couple scrambled back into their discarded clothes, neither was quite as immaculate in appearance as before.
It was as Valente and a dreamy-eyed Caroline were descending the stairs to the party that Caroline took a deep breath and said, 'I've been meaning to tell you for a while... Koko's pregnant---there are kittens on the way. I thought when they grow up they could live at the villa...'
Valente sent his wife a highly amused appraisal. 'You picked the optimum moment to tell me. You have perfect timing, tesora mia.'
Caroline smiled and squeezed his hand, her heart so full of happiness she could hardly speak...


