Angela Bissell – Surrendering To The Vengeful Italian (страница 7)

‘Perhaps in a few months,’ Leo intervened. ‘When I get a break in my schedule.’

‘How is Marietta?’ Sabine said. ‘We haven’t seen her since her last surgery.’

His fingers tightened on his glass. ‘She’s fine,’ he said, keeping his answer intentionally brief. He had no wish to discuss his sister in front of Helena. Proffering a smile, he gestured at the dwindling number of people around them. ‘It appears the waiting staff would like us to be seated. Shall we...?’

With a promise to catch them later in the evening, Hans and Sabine joined the trail of diners drifting through to the ballroom. Leo turned to follow, but Helena hung back.

He stopped, raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you coming?’

After a pause, she jammed her evening purse beneath her arm and shot him a baleful look. ‘Do I have a choice?’

He gave her a silky smile—one designed to leave her in no doubt as to his answer. But just to ensure she couldn’t mistake his meaning he leaned in and said softly, ‘You don’t.’

* * *

Gorgeous. Devastating. Lethal.

Those were three of a dozen words Helena could think of to describe Leonardo Vincenti in a tuxedo. And, judging by the lascivious looks he was pulling from every corner of the ballroom, she wasn’t the only female whose hormones had clocked into overdrive at the mere sight of all that dark, brooding masculinity.

He spoke from beside her. ‘The fish is not to your taste?’

She cast him a look from under her lashes. ‘It’s fine. I’m not very hungry.’

The treacle-cured smoked salmon served as a starter was, in fact, superb, but the knots twisting her stomach made the food impossible to enjoy. Which really was a shame, some part of her brain registered, because she rarely had the opportunity these days to sample such exquisite cuisine.

She laid her fork alongside her abandoned knife and leaned back in her chair. So much for a quiet dinner à deux and the chance for a serious talk. She almost rubbed her forehead to see if the word gullible was carved there.

Surreptitiously she watched Leo speak with an older woman seated on his left. His tux jacket, removed prior to appetisers being served, hung from his chair, leaving his wide shoulders and lean torso sheathed in a white wing tip shirt that contrasted with his olive skin and black hair. He bowed his head, murmuring something that elicited a bright tinkle of laughter from the woman, and the sound scraped across Helena’s nerves.

Age, evidently, was no barrier to his charms.

She averted her gaze, smothered the impulse to get up and flee. Like it or not, she’d agreed to be here and she would not scarper like a coward. If she was smart, bided her time, she might still persuade Leo to hold his plans for her father’s company. A few weeks...that was all she needed. Time to make her mother see sense before—

‘Bored?’

Leo’s deep voice sliced across her thoughts.

She drummed up a smile. ‘Of course not.’

‘Good.’ His long fingers toyed with the stem of his wineglass. ‘I would hate to bore you for a second time in your life.’

Helena’s smile faltered. His casually delivered words carried a meaning she couldn’t fail to comprehend. Not when her own words—words she’d bet every hard-earned penny in her bank account had hurt her more than they’d hurt him—were embedded like thorns in her memory. I’m bored, Leo. Really. This relationship just isn’t working for me.

She shifted in her seat, her face heating. ‘That’s unfair.’ She glanced around the table, pitching her voice for his ears alone. ‘I tried once to explain why I said those things.’

After he’d left that awful message on her phone—telling her what her father had done, accusing her of betrayal and complicity—she’d gone to his hotel room and banged on his door until her hand throbbed and a man from a neighbouring room stepped out and shot her a filthy look.

‘You didn’t want to listen.’

He shrugged. ‘I was angry,’ he stated, as if he need offer no further excuse.

‘You still are.’

‘Perhaps. But now I’m listening.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Try me.’

She arched an eyebrow. He wanted to do this now? Here? She cast another furtive glance around the table. Fine.

‘I needed you to let me go without a fight,’ she said, her voice a decibel above a whisper. ‘And we both know you wouldn’t have. Not without questions. Not unless I—’ She stopped, a hot lump of regret lodging in her throat.

‘Stamped on my pride?’ he finished for her.

Her face flamed hotter. Must he make her sound so cruel? So heartless? She’d been nineteen, for pity’s sake, staring down the barrel of her father’s ultimatum. Get rid of the damned foreigner, girl—or I will. Naive. That was what she’d been. And unforgivably stupid, thinking she could live beyond the reach of her father’s iron control.

She smoothed her napkin over her knees. ‘I did what I thought was best at the time.’

‘For you or for me?’

‘For us both.’

‘Ah. So you were being...how do you English like to say it...cruel to be kind?’

His eyes drilled into hers, but she refused to flinch from his cutting glare. She didn’t need his bitter accusations. She, too, had paid a price, and however much she longed to turn back the clock, undo the damage, she could not relieve the pain of her past. Not when she’d worked so hard, sacrificed so much, to leave it behind.

She mustered another smile, this one urbane and slightly aloof—the kind her mother often wore in public. ‘Hans and Sabine seem like a nice couple. Have you known them long?’

The change of subject earned her a piercing stare. She held her breath. Would he roll with it?

Then, ‘Nine years.’

He spoke curtly, but still she breathed again, relaxed a little. Perhaps a normal conversation wasn’t impossible? ‘You never talked much about your sister,’ she ventured. ‘Sabine mentioned surgery. Is Marietta unwell?’

Long, silent seconds passed and Helena’s stomach plunged as the dots she should have connected earlier—Leo’s choice of fundraiser, Hans’s reputation as a leading spinal surgeon, talk of the Berlin research unit followed by the mention of Marietta and surgery—belatedly joined in her head to create a complete picture.

A muscle jumped in Leo’s cheek. ‘My sister is a paraplegic.’

The blood that had heated Helena’s cheeks minutes earlier rapidly fled. ‘Oh, Leo. I’m... I’m so sorry.’ She reached out—an impulsive gesture of comfort—but he shifted his arm before her hand could make contact. She withdrew, pretending his rebuff hadn’t stung. ‘I had no idea. How...how long?’

‘Eleven years.’

Her throat constricted with sympathy and, though she knew it was silly, a tiny stab of hurt. Seven years ago they’d spent five intense, heady weeks together, and though he’d mentioned a sister, talked briefly about their difficult childhood, he’d omitted that significant piece of information.

Still, was that cause to feel miffed? She, too, had been selective in what she’d shared about her family.

‘Did she have an...an accident?’

‘Yes.’ His tone was clipped.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. I can see you don’t want to talk about this.’

She lifted a pitcher of iced water in an effort to do something—anything—to dispel the growing tension. She’d half filled her glass when he spoke again.

‘It was a car accident.’

Startled, she put the pitcher down and looked at him, but his head was angled down, his gaze fastened on the wineglass in his hand.

‘She was seventeen and angry because we’d argued about her going to a party.’ His black brows tugged into a deep frown. ‘I didn’t like the neighbourhood or the crowd, but she was stubborn. Headstrong. So she went anyway. Later, instead of calling me for a ride home, she climbed into a car with a drunk driver.’ He drained his wine, dropped the glass on the table. ‘The doctors said she was lucky to survive—if you can call a broken back “lucky”. The driver and two other passengers weren’t so fortunate.’

Helena tried to imagine the horror. Teenagers made bad decisions all the time, but few suffered such devastating, life-altering consequences. Few paid such an unimaginable price.

She struggled to keep her expression neutral, devoid of the wrenching pity it was impossible not to feel. ‘Sabine mentioned surgery. Is there a chance...?’

Leo’s gaze connected with hers, something harsh, almost hostile, flashing at the centre of those near-black irises. ‘Let’s drop it.’

Slightly taken aback, Helena opened her mouth to point out she had tried to drop the subject, but his dark expression killed that pert response. ‘Fine,’ she said, and for the next hour ignored him—which wasn’t difficult because over the rest of their dinner another guest drew him into a lengthy debate on European politics, while the American couple to Helena’s right quizzed her about the best places to visit during their six-month sabbatical in England.

When desserts began to arrive at the tables the compѐre tapped his microphone, waited for eyes to focus and chatter to cease, then invited one of the organisation’s patrons, Leonardo Vincenti, to present the grand auction prize. After a brief hesitation Helena joined in the applause. In light of his sister’s condition Leo’s patronage came as no real surprise.