Bartering Her Innocence Read online

  She dragged in air, shaking her head to escape the thoughts. There was no point in thinking what-ifs. Nothing to be gained but pain layered on pain.

  Through different garden rooms they walked, and around them the closely packed lines of graves went on.

  ‘It’s quite beautiful,’ she said softly, so as not to interrupt the pervasive sense of calm. ‘So peaceful and well maintained. More like a garden than a cemetery.’

  ‘Their families look after the graves,’ he said, turning down a side path. ‘They are all recently deceased. Space is limited, they can only stay here a few years before they are moved on.’

  She remembered reading something of the sort. Probably around the time Eduardo had died. It seemed strange in one way, to disturb the dead and move their remains, but then again, who wouldn’t want a chance to rest, at least a while, in such a beautiful setting, with the view of Venice just over the sea through the large iron gates?

  ‘Matteo’s mother died recently then?’

  ‘Yes, two years ago, although space is not an issue for my family,’ he continued, leading her towards a collection of small neoclassical buildings. ‘The Barbarigo family has had a crypt here since Napoleonic times when the cemetery was created.’

  Of marble the colour of pristine white sheep’s wool, the crypt stood amongst others, but apart, more the size of a tiny chapel, she felt, no doubt demonstrating the power and wealth of his family through the centuries. Two praying angels, serene and unblinking, overlooked the gated entry, as if watching over those in their care, guarding who went in and who came out. Tiny pencil pines grew either side of the door, softening the look of the solid stone.

  She took the flowers for him while he found the key and turned the lock. The door creaked open and cool air rushed out to meet them. He lit a candle either side of the door that flickered and spun golden light into the dark interior and took the flowers from her. And then he bowed his head for a moment before stepping inside.

  She waited outside while he said some words in Italian, low and fast, she heard Matteo’s name and she knew he was talking to his mother, passing on his cousin’s message.

  So true to his word.

  So honourable.

  So...unexpected.

  She didn’t want to hear any more. She breathed in deep and moved away, faintly disturbed that it should bother her.

  It was peaceful and quiet in the gardens, dappled sunlight filtering through the trees, leaves whispering on the light breeze—so serene and unpopulated when compared to the crowded Centro, and she thought what an amazing place Venice was, to have so many unexpected facets, so many hidden treasures in such a tiny area.

  She found another treasure amongst the trees—a gravestone she’d happened upon with a sculpture of a child climbing a stairway to heaven, fresh flowers tied onto his hand, an offering to the angel smiling down on him, waiting patiently for him at the top. She knelt down and touched the cool stone, feeling tears welling in her eyes for yet another lost child.

  ‘Would you like to pay your respects now?’

  She blinked and turned, wiping a stray tear from her cheek, avoiding the questions in his eyes. ‘Of course.’

  She followed him into the tiny room, the walls filled with plaques and prayers to those buried here over the years.

  ‘So many,’ she said, struck by the number of name plates. Flowers adorned a stone on one side—Matteo’s mother, she reasoned.

  ‘Eduardo is here,’ he said, pointing to a stone on the other wall. ‘His first wife, Agnetha, alongside.’

  She moved closer in the tiny space, Luca using up so much of it, and wishing she had stopped to buy a posy of flowers to leave in the holder attached to the stone.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said, and moved to go past her. She stepped closer to the wall to let him, and it was then she noticed the names on the wall alongside. ‘Your grandparents?’ she asked and he stopped.

  ‘My parents,’ he said, stony-faced, pointing to a spot lower down on the wall. ‘My grandparents are in the row below.’

  He turned and left her standing there watching his retreating back. His parents? She looked again at the plaques, saw the dates and realised they’d died on the same day as each other nearly thirty years before.

  Luca must have been no more than a few years old...

  He was cold and distant when she emerged a few minutes later, his sunglasses firmly on, hiding his eyes. ‘Ready to go?’ he said, already shutting the door behind her, key to the lock.

  ‘Luca,’ she said, putting a hand to his arm, feeling his corded strength beneath the fine fabric of his shirt. ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea that you’d lost both your parents.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he snapped.

  ‘But you must have been so young. I feel your grief.’

  He pulled his arm away. ‘You feel my what? What do you know of my grief?’

  The pain of loss sliced through her, sharp and deep as he walked away. ‘I know loss. I know how it feels to lose someone you love.’

  More than you will ever know.

  ‘Good for you,’ he said, and headed back towards the boat.

  * * *

  She found a box waiting for her on their return, on the table next to the bed. ‘What’s this?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t order anything.’

  ‘Open it up and find out,’ he snapped, before disappearing into the bathroom, the first words he’d spoken since the cemetery. His silence hadn’t bothered her during the journey home. Instead she’d welcomed it. It restored him to the role of villain. It balanced any glimpse of tenderness he might have shown—the reverent way he’d carried the flowers for his aunt—the quiet respect he’d shown when he’d entered the crypt.

  It helped her forget how good he could make her feel in those moments where she could put aside thoughts that this was all a pretence, all a hoax.

  And she didn’t need to find things to like about him. She liked him being cold and hard and unapproachable and totally unforgivable.

  It was better that way, she reasoned, as she tackled the box, looking for a way in.

  Easier.

  Necessary.

  She found the end of one tape, ripping it from the seam of the box. Found another and swiped it off, opening a flap and then another layer of packing.

  No!

  Luca returned, his tie removed, his shirt half unbuttoned, exposing a glimpse of perfect chest. She tried not to look and failed miserably as he kicked off his shoes. And then she remembered the box.

  ‘Where did this come from?’

  He shrugged, and pulled his shirt off over his shoulders. ‘You needed a new computer.’

  ‘My computer is fine!’

  ‘Your computer is a dinosaur.’

  ‘You’re a dinosaur!’

  He paused, halfway to tugging off his trousers, and in spite of herself, she couldn’t help but feel a primitive surge of lust sweep through her as she considered all the reasons he might be undressing, her mind lingering longingly on one particular reason... ‘And there was me thinking you considered me a caveman.’

  ‘Dinosaur. Caveman,’ she said, trying not to notice the bulge in his underwear, trying to hide the faltering sound of her voice, ‘It’s all the same to me. All prehistoric.’

  ‘Surely not the same,’ he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders that showed off the skin over the toned muscle of his chest to perfection as he turned towards her. ‘I would have thought a dinosaur would be lumbering and slow, and awkward of movement. Whereas a caveman could have more fun, don’t you think, clubbing women over the head to drag them back to his cave to have his wicked way with them.’

  She swallowed as he reached out a hand and stroked back the hair from her brow, winding a tendril of it around his finger. It was hard to t
hink with a naked man standing in front of her, his proud erection almost reaching out to touch her. The caveman taunting her with his club. Making her hungry for him. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘You do the caveman thing particularly well.’

  He smiled, and tugged on the curl of hair he had wound around his finger and drew her mouth closer to his. ‘Surely not the only reason you’re here, Valentina? Don’t you enjoy being with me?’

  ‘No,’ she said, as he tugged on her hair and drew her still closer to his mouth. She held her breath. ‘I’m counting down the days until I will be free.’

  He smiled as if he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘I’d better make the most of the days that are left.’

  He pulled her face to his, his lips meshing with hers, insistent but still coaxing, inviting. And when he finally took his mouth away and she breathed in again it was to have her whole body infused with his scent and his taste.

  He sighed. ‘I’m sensing a problem here.’

  It was impossible to make sense of his statement through the thick fog of desire clouding her brain. She licked her lips, tasting him on her tongue. ‘What problem?’

  He put a hand to her breast, cupped the aching weight of her through her dress. ‘You’re wearing far too many clothes.’

  And she almost sighed with relief as she gave herself up into his kiss. Of all the problems in her life right now, an excess of clothes was one problem she could fix.

  * * *

  She’d imagined he wanted quick sex, fast and hot and furious. What he did was make love to her as if she were as fragile as that tiny glass horse.

  His hands were slow and hot, his mouth scorchingly tender, his tongue an instrument of exquisite torture, and with all these things he spun a web of silken arousal around her, so that when she came, it wasn’t wrenched from her or like being caught in the maelstrom of a storm, but almost like an admission. A confession. A giving up of herself to him.

  She lay there panting, eyes open and afraid, staring at the ceiling.

  Because sex was one thing. She could handle sex. Rationalise it. Treat it as a currency if she must. And she could stick it in that imaginary box under the bed in the cold light of day and shove the lid on and divorce herself from what was happening.

  But giving herself up to him, losing herself in him when she knew she was going to walk away empty-handed in a few short weeks, that scared her.

  It wasn’t just the sex that was making her feel this way, she knew. It was Luca himself who was changing. Showing concern when she felt shell-shocked on the boat—buying her a new computer because her old one was decrepit and inefficient. She knew he could afford it a million times over—she knew a few hundred euro would mean nothing to him—but it was the fact he’d even bothered that cut her deepest. For he didn’t have to do those things. He didn’t even need to find Lily an apartment when she already owed him so much.

  Why did he have to appear half human when she wanted him to stay one hundred per cent monster? Why did he make it so hard to keep hating him?

  She wanted to hate him.

  She had to hate him.

  She closed her eyes and sent up a silent entreaty to the gods. Because if she was ever to walk away from here with her head held high and her ego intact, she needed a reason to hate him.

  Now, more than ever.

  * * *

  He should take more days off. He lay in bed listening to the rumble of his stomach—he would have to get up and have lunch soon, he supposed, before it turned on him and ate him alive—but there was something so utterly decadent about spending the middle of the day in bed. Especially when you had a good reason not to get out of it.

  Like Valentina.

  Idly he stroked her hair, listening to her soft breathing as she lay alongside him. He liked that she didn’t feel the need to chat incessantly or ask him if it was good for him. What he liked even better was watching her eyes when she tipped over the edge. He shifted one leg, making room. God, but just thinking about it made him hard all over again.

  He should do this more often.

  Then again he could, at least for the next month. Or what was left of it. Plenty of time yet. Maybe even tomorrow. Thinking of which...

  ‘I’m seeing your mother for lunch tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘Would you like to come with me?’

  He felt her body tense. Wary. ‘Why are you seeing my mother?’

  ‘There are some papers to be signed, to finalise the transfer of the properties, the palazzo to me, the apartment to your mother.’

  ‘And you want me there why exactly?’ She sat up clutching the sheets to her chest, her golden eyes bright with argument and accusation. ‘So you can gloat about how clever you are in front of us both?’

  He blinked. Where had that come from? He’d thought her half asleep and she’d come out fighting.

  ‘I thought you might like to see your mother.’

  ‘Like hell, you did.’ She clambered from the bed, dragging the bedding with her, uncaring that she was pulling the sheets from him at the same time. He grabbed hold and pulled back and the sheets snapped tight between them, caught in the crossfire, stopping her in her tracks.

  She spun around, trapped in the tangle of sheets. ‘You’ve got what you wanted. You’ve tricked my mother out of her house and why—’ she waved her hand around the room ‘—when you obviously need another house like a hole in the head? You’ve got a playmate in your bed for a month because it’s what you wanted and bugger what anyone else wants. What kind of sick person are you that you need to see us together like some kind of weird trophies?’

  ‘I thought you’d like to see your mother,’ he said through a jaw so stiff it could have been made with the same Istrian stone that formed the foundations of Venice itself. ‘I know I’d give the world to be able to visit mine somewhere other than in a cemetery.’

  She seemed to cave in before his eyes, the fight evaporating from her in a heartbeat. ‘Luca,’ she said softly, making a tiny move closer to the bed.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said, throwing off the sheet. ‘It was a lousy idea anyway.’

  He stormed off to the bathroom. So much for enjoying a lazy day in bed.

  * * *

  She didn’t see Luca after that and she suspected he’d taken himself back to the office. She couldn’t blame him. She’d jumped down his throat at the suggestion of visiting her mother as if it was for his spurious pleasure to have them in one room at the same time. But then, after such tender love-making, after his impromptu gift, the foundations under her seemed to be shifting and she’d needed to see him as the villain. She needed to reclaim the anger she’d felt when she’d marched into his study and practically demanded he make love to her.

  Instead she almost felt sorry for the way she’d snapped at him.

  She felt as if she’d let him down.

  She felt as if she’d let herself down and failed some kind of test.

  Crazy.

  It wasn’t as if she even cared what he thought of her. Her relationship with her mother was her business. He wouldn’t know about the way they’d last parted, the argument that had sent her foaming mad to his door to almost dare him to take her. He wouldn’t know the fractured history that lay festering like the worst of Venice’s rotting piles between them.

  But his gut-wrenching admission that he’d adore the opportunity to see his mother if only she were alive...

  And regardless of what she thought of Luca, regardless of her justification for acting this way, it shamed her that her relationship with her own mother was so appalling.

  Maybe there was just cause given the events of the last few days. But equally maybe, now that the dust had settled on the deal that had been made, perhaps while she was in Venice she should try to heal that rift, even just a little.

>   She heard her father’s words come back to her, the rationale he’d used when she’d tried to wiggle out of coming to Venice in the first place.

  ‘She’s still your mum, love...you can’t walk away from that.’

  She’s still your mum.

  Maybe her dad was right. Maybe Luca was right. Maybe she should make an effort after all.

  While she was still in Venice.

  While she was lucky enough to still have a mother.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘YOU’RE sleeping with him, then?’

  Carmela had her back to Lily as she poured Tina a cup of coffee and threw her a sympathetic smile. Tina smiled back, appreciating the shared moment, regretting just a little that it had to be with the housekeeper rather than her mother, but then again, so far the visit had been surprisingly pleasant, given all the places it could have gone. They’d talked about the weather, and all about the new apartment Lily had visited just this morning. The biggest surprise had been finding the boxes and tissue paper scattered around the floor and learning that Lily was already sorting through her trinkets and thinking about which pieces to keep and which to sell through consignment with a local gallery owner. Tina’s unexpected visit and coffee had come, she’d said, as a welcome respite.

  So yes, it was progress of sorts, that Lily was accepting the inevitability of her move, even if there was remarkably little so far in the ‘sell’ box.

  Of course, she was still railing on about the injustice of the whole thing and how could she possibly fit into a ‘tiny’ six-room apartment? But Tina was still glad she’d come, although she’d always figured she was never going to dodge the bullets for ever.

  ‘It’s true, Lily,’ she admitted, wondering how many other daughters were interrogated so openly on who they might be having sex with. But then, what was the point of avoiding the truth? It wasn’t as if it was a secret. Everybody in Venice who wanted to know must know. ‘I’m sleeping with Luca.’