CHAPTER TWO
SALVATOREWASBACKin Rome, having taken in an extended trip to New York and Chicago after London. He’d been half glad, half reluctant to leave London, and it was because of the fabulous blonde—the one he’d wanted from the moment of seeing her, but who’d told him she didn’t have time for him.
Yes, well, he could see why...saddled with that crippling debt she was working all hours to service. He frowned a moment. Had she told him because she’d thought she could get him to pay it off for her? After all, he’d admitted to her he was a ‘money man’—
He dismissed the suspicion. If his wealth had been of interest to her in that respect she’d have snapped at his invitation to dinner—at the possibility of having an affair with him.
He was glad he didn’t have to think ill of her in that way. Even though it made it all the more frustrating that she had turned him down.
The phone rang on his desk and he snatched it up, glad of the distraction from thinking about a woman who didn’t have time for him...even though he, he knew, would have made a considerable amount of time for someone that stunning and desirable...
But the voice on the line was a distraction he did not welcome. It was Roberto—pressing him to come to lunch. Ostensibly it was to discuss the progress on a joint venture they had both invested heavily in, but when—warily—Salvatore joined him, Roberto was soon back to pushing Giavanna at him.
‘She needs an older man, my darling Giavanna...someone to guide her and protect her!’
‘But that man, Roberto, cannot be me,’ Salvatore retorted.
He could see a mulish expression forming on the other man’s face—Roberto liked getting his own way. Like father like daughter, he thought cynically.
‘Why?’
The challenge came bluntly. Demandingly.
Belligerently.
Salvatore’s irritation and annoyance turned to exasperation. He needed something that would stop Roberto in his tracks, yet not put his back up so much that he would make excessive trouble when Salvatore extricated himself financially from him. Something that would be impossible for Roberto to challenge. And only one thing occurred to him.
‘Because...’ he made his voice sound resolute ‘...I am involved with someone else right now. Someone,’ he went on, hearing the words fall from his lips—hearing them with a disbelief that was echoed in Roberto’s face as he spoke them. ‘I intend to marry.’
The words were there, pulled out of thin air—and they could not be unsaid.
Just where they had come from Salvatore had not the faintest idea. Only he had a bad, bad feeling that he had just burnt every boat in his possession. And then some—
Lana climbed wearily aboard the bus. She’d been working non-stop all day—three shoots—and was fully booked for tomorrow as well. The following day was lighter—just a single casting. She frowned slightly—it was in an odd place, somewhere in the City. There had been no mention of the client, or what the campaign was, nor any other details. She’d agreed to it because she never turned work down these days. However exhausted and dispirited she was.
I can’t go on like this—I’m burning myself out just keeping up with the sky-high interest payments.
Malcolm had not bothered to look for cheap borrowing. He’d simply applied for a mortgage on her behalf, using a fake email address he’d set up for her, brazenly forging her signature on the loan documents. He’d had the money paid into the joint bank account he’d persuaded her to open with him to make paying household bills easier—not that he’d ever paid any—then immediately transferred it to his own account and cleared out of her flat.
She’d come home from a foreign shoot to find him and all his stuff gone—and a letter from a completely unknown mortgage lender setting out just how much she owed them, and what the crippling rate of interest on the massive loan was.
As for Malcolm, probably living it up God knew where, on her money, he was untraceable. Her vociferous complaints to the mortgage company, her solicitor and the police had met with sympathy, but if there was no one to prosecute for apparent fraud—well, there was nothing that could be done except what she was doing—working herself to the bone, day after day.
She stared bleakly out of the bus window.
However hard I work, will I have to accept that the only way I can pay off this crippling mortgage is by selling up, taking a massive hit, and then finding some place outside London for half the price of what the flat is worth?
It was a galling prospect, and she felt familiar fury at Malcolm bite again. Her expression changed as she heard in her mind her own voice railing about him to that fabulous Italian who’d given her a lift home after the fashion show two weeks ago.
I just blurted it right out to that man—a complete stranger!
Yet there’d been something about him that had made her want to be upfront with him.
Maybe it’s because after what Malcolm did to me—the lies, the deceit, defrauding me—I just want honesty.
After all, the fabulous Italian had been upfront about his invitation to her. Dinner, she knew perfectly well, would have been the first step towards an affair. An affair she just didn’t have time for...and she’d been upfront about that straight off.
Her expression became rueful. The first man to have drawn her interest since Malcom had done the dirty on her, and she’d walked away...