Lynne Graham: Virgin On Her Wedding Night

‘That Italian boy…’ Isabel Hales wore an expression of furious distaste. ‘I imagine he’s finally found out that you’re a widow. It’s typical of him-why can’t he leave you decently alone?’

‘I have no idea.’ Caroline could not even be amused by her mother referring to a six-foot-three-inch male of thirty-one years of age as a boy. Valente had never been a boy, she reckoned painfully. He had always had a maturity way beyond his years. She was no more entertained by her mother’s ludicrous suggestion that Valente might still cherish a romantic interest in her.

A look of astonishment on his face, her father replaced the phone. ‘Everything that was once ours has been bought up by a very large Italian-based collection of companies known as the Zatto Group,’ he proffered dully.

Valente had turned the tables on them, reversing the natural order of things in her mother’s opinion. Of all of them, Caroline was the least surprised.

FORthe meeting, Caroline had chosen to wear her only suit-a tailored black skirt and jacket teamed with a cream silk shirt. She had bought it to wear for her first sales pitch to the high-end London jewellery store which had been successfully selling her designs for the past year. Since then she had lost weight, and the fit was now more than a little loose on her. With her hair swept up, and a modest smattering of make-up to give her the natural colour she lacked after a stressed-out sleepless night, she looked harried when she climbed out of her hatchback car at Hales Transport the next morning.

‘Hello, Mrs Bailey,’ Jill, one of the receptionists, greeted her, with surprising good cheer for a member of a workforce that had been suffering from mass anxiety over the firm’s uncertain future for many weeks. ‘Isn’t this an exciting day?’

Caroline blinked uncertainly and brushed a straying strand of pale hair back from her too-warm brow. ‘Is it?’

‘The new boss is flying in. We’re becoming part of a big business group that’s worth billions. It can only be good news for us,’ Jill opined chirpily.

‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ remarked Laura, the senior receptionist, looking up from her computer screen to cast a rueful glance at Caroline. ‘Have you never heard of that expression “a new broom”? There’s no guarantee that we’ll all keep our jobs, or even that this business will still exist six months from now.’

A cold trickle of apprehension rolled down Caroline’s taut spine. She was really worried about what might happen to their former employees at Hales Transport. And that concern ran even deeper as she was guiltily conscious that her late husband had taken financial risks but had neglected the day-to-day running of the firm during the last year of his life.

Breathing in deep, she took a seat in the waiting area. ‘Let’s all hope for the best,’ she urged Laura.

‘I’m sure you could just go up and wait in the office,’ Jill told her innocently. ‘It’s not as if you don’t know your way around.’

Her colleague frowned at that advice. ‘I think Mrs Bailey will be more comfortable waiting down here.’

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Caroline hastened to declare, her face warming in response to the curious glances she received from a group of employees passing by to mount the stairs. The low-pitched buzz of conversation that broke out among them made her skin heat even more as an anguished surge of self-consciousness gripped her.

Caroline had avoided coming to Hales Transport during the last months of Matthew’s life, and in the time since his sudden death in a car crash. The fear that people were talking about her, even laughing at her, had kept her at a distance. Her in-laws and parents had censured her for not attending work-related events with them, but Caroline had no desire to pose as Matthew’s martyred widow.

After all, there had to be others who were aware of or had at least suspected her late husband’s extra-marital interests. As the effects of his lifestyle had taken a firmer hold Matthew had become considerably less discreet about the double life he’d been leading. All the moments of cringing embarrassment and hurt that Caroline had endured had left their mark on her. She had been a fool-a stupid, blind fool-and a dupe. It was almost impossible for her to recall that Matthew had once been her closest friend, since their marriage had soon put paid to that bond. She suppressed her thoughts, rejecting her deeply unhappy memories

‘He’s here!’ the younger receptionist hissed in excitement when a long dark limousine pulled up outside. Two Mercedes cars arrived simultaneously, and their passengers were disgorged first. A phalanx of men in business suits collected on the steps and parted like the Red Sea for the passage of a tall, powerful figure sporting a heavy cashmere overcoat in spite of the spring sunshine.

‘He’s even more handsome than in his photos,’ Jill sighed dreamily.

The breath caught in Caroline’s throat as she focused on the lean, strong face below the swept back, cropped, but defiantly curly hair. Hair that she knew Valente only kept in order with frequent haircuts-hair that had been longer when she’d first known him. And how she had once loved to run her fingers through those black curls. Frozen in her seat, she had literally stopped breathing. Seeing Valente when she had believed that she would never, ever see him again was a surreal experience.

He was an astonishingly handsome man, she conceded in a daze. He had dark, deep eyes that could turn as hotly golden as the heart of the sun, level brows, stunning cheekbones, and an arrogant blade of a nose that would have looked at home on the marble face of a classic Roman statue. He was all her past sins come back to haunt her at once, reminding her of the heartbreak and the fear and the craving that had once torn her apart. In a designer business suit he emanated a sleek elegance and assurance that was totally Italian. Even in jeans and a sweater, she recalled, Valente had had the art of looking as if he had just stepped off a fashion catwalk.

‘Caroline,’ he murmured, pausing at the foot of the stairs to note her presence in that dark, unforgettable drawl that was inherently sexy. ‘Come up to the office. I’ll see you straight away.’

Painfully aware of suddenly being the centre of attention as curious heads turned in her direction, Caroline avoided the perceptible chill of his hooded dark gaze and rose upright. His informality had just made it obvious that they had a prior history-one which she hoped nobody else could remember. It was a history which Valente could only hate her for, she acknowledged unhappily. Crippling guilt twisted inside her stomach and threatened to overpower her. She had known he would never forgive her for what she had done. Nor would he ever recognise the pressure she had buckled under, squeezed between everybody she loved, trying to please everyone and ending up by pleasing no one. He would only despise such weakness.

A skimming appraisal of Caroline’s drab, loose-fitting suit, and of her hair twisted up into a dreary girlish plait at the back of her head, gave Valente’s handsome mouth a sardonic curl. He wanted to see her white-gold hair flowing loose over an outfit that complemented her slender figure and delicate colouring. Black gave her all the appeal of a wraith. He wanted to eradicate every hint of Matthew Bailey’s good-living little widow, who fixed the flowers in the local church and made jewellery in her spare time. He wanted so much-and, at that first moment, even twenty-four hours felt like too long a wait for fulfilment.

One of his PAs raced ahead of them to throw open the door of the main office. The room was familiar to Caroline-a first-class display of Matthew’s love of ultra-modern furniture and design-though it was out of keeping with the style of the building and had been created at ruinous expense.