His Wedding Ring Of Revenge

“So tell me, cara mia, what is to stop me persuading you to return what belongs to me?”

The glitter in Vito’s eyes had intensified. Rachel’s breathing had quickened and adrenaline was coursing through her bloodstream.

But she knew she was deceiving herself.

She could feel her body responding to his presence; feel every nerve leap to quivering life.

It mortified her. She had to damp it down hard, because she knew, with a terrible, sickening sense of doom, that she would feel this way about Vito Farneste for the rest of her life. She could never stop the tide of desire, of longing, of wanting, pulsing through her whenever she was near him. She was in thrall to him, and it was a captivity she could never escape….

Harlequin Presents^®

Introducing a brand new miniseries

This is romance on the red carpet…

FOR LOVE OR MONEY is the ultimate reading experience for the reader who loves Harlequin Presents, and who also has a taste for tales of wealth and celebrity and the accompanying gossip and scandal!

Look out for special covers

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these upcoming titles:

In the Rich Man’s World

by Carol Marinelli #2482

Exposed: The Sheikh’s Mistress

by Sharon Kendrick #2488

His One-Night Mistress

by Sandra Field #2494

Sale or Return Bride

by Sarah Morgan #2500

Available only from Harlequin Presents^®!

His Wedding Ring of Revenge
Julia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

COOL tranquil fountains jetted softly over the rounded stones, the water pooling, crystal clear, over polished granite. A tiny spout of wind gusted off the tall building and one of the gentle plumes of water wavered slightly, a minute spray of invisible droplets misting over Rachel as she walked past.

It felt cool to her skin.

And that was what she had to be. Cool, calm and composed. Not a trace of emotion. She was here to conduct a business deal. That was all.

Because if she thought about what she was about to do in any other light then—

No! Don’t think. Don’t feel. That way you can get through this.

And, above all, don’t remember…

A switch was thrown in her brain, cutting off the line of thought.

Another mist of water flickered over her skin.

She took in the serene tranquillity of the cunningly engineered water feature that graced the entrance to the gleaming new office block. As befitted the UK headquarters of one of Europe’s largest and most successful industrial conglomerates, Farneste Industriale, it was the most prestigious of all the blocks on this swanky new business park—situated on the edge of one of London’s oldest villages, Chiswick, conveniently placed for the M4 motorway and Heathrow Airport.

She kept on walking, her high heels lifting her hips and making her sway elegantly in her expensively tailored suit. She had sat very carefully in the taxi on her way here, making sure she did not crush the lavender skirt or snag her expensive sheer stockings.

She wanted to look—immaculate.

It had taken her over two hours to get ready. Two hours of washing and styling her hair, delicately applying perfect make-up and nail varnish, carefully donning silky underwear, sheerest stockings, soft cream camisole, and then finally gliding the narrow pencil skirt over her slender hips and slipping her arms into the satin-lined, scoop-necked waisted jacket that subtly accentuated the swell of her breasts and the flatness of her stomach.

She had slid her feet into soft Italian leather shoes, in exactly the same shade as the suit, as was the matching leather clutch handbag she carried, and her outfit was complete.

It had taken her over two weeks to find it. After combing every upmarket department store and boutique from Chelsea to Knightsbridge, Bond Street to Kensington. It had to be exactly right.

After all, the person she had to impress had demanding standards. Exceptionally demanding.

She should know.

She had once failed them. Dismally. Abjectly. Humiliatingly.

She must not fail this time.

And now, as she walked up to the huge double doors that opened automatically at her approach, she promised that she would not. This time, she knew, she could hold her head high against any female she was compared with.

True, some might prefer petite brunettes or voluptuous, flashy redheads to her lean, chic blondeness, but of her style—if you liked that style—she was perfect.

Soignée. That was what her mother would have called it, approvingly.

Emotion clutched at Rachel’s heart. She subdued it instantly. Feelings of any kind would be fatal in this encounter. If she had any hope of succeeding she must be calm, confident and totally composed.

She was here to do business. Nothing more.

Absently, as she started to walk across the huge, echoing entrance lobby, she heard the automatic doors hiss softly shut behind her.

As if she were a prisoner.

A tiny prickle of apprehension snaked down her spine. She subdued it.

She was not a prisoner. She was not even a hostage.

She was here to propose a transaction, nothing more, which would have a favourable outcome for both parties.

Perfectly straightforward. So much so that no emotion whatsoever would be required of either of the participating parties.

She went on walking across the vast marbled floor, up to the huge semicircular reception floor in the middle, behind which towered another cleverly designed water feature: a wall of water so smooth it hardly seemed to be flowing at all.

Cool air wafted from the wall of water, freshening the artifice of air-conditioning that eased around the whole building.

She halted in front of the smartly dressed receptionist, who looked at her with polite enquiry.

‘I am here to see Mr Farneste,’ said Rachel.

She spoke in a composed voice, placing her clutch handbag on the wide reception desk surface that acted like a barricade around the woman she had just spoken to.

‘Your name, please?’ replied the receptionist, reaching for an appointment book.

‘Rachel Vaile,’ she answered, her voice unwavering.

The receptionist frowned.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Vaile, there doesn’t seem to be an entry for you.’

Rachel was undismayed. ‘If you phone his office and give my name, you will find he will see me,’ she said, with calm assurance.

The receptionist looked at her uncertainly. Rachel knew why, and gave an inward, caustic smile.

You think I’m one of his mistresses, don’t you? And you don’t know what to do if I am. Am I on his current list? Or will he have given his PA orders not to put me through if I phone or, even worse, show up in person?

The caustic smile turned bitter. She knew the routine. Oh, yes, she certainly knew the routine.

‘One moment, please,’ said the receptionist, and picked up the phone.

Rachel’s lips pressed together. She would be checking with his PA, as a good Farneste employee would always do.

‘Mrs Walters? I have a Ms Rachel Vaile in Reception. I’m afraid I can’t see an appointment in the book.’

There was a moment’s silence.

Then, ‘Very well. Thank you, Mrs Walters.’ From the expression on her face Rachel could tell what she had been instructed to do—dispose of her.

She was about to put the phone down. Calmly, Rachel intercepted the movement and took the receiver from her. The receptionist made a startled objection, but Rachel paid her no attention.

‘Mrs Walters? This is Rachel Vaile. Please inform Mr Farneste that I am in Reception. Tell him…’ she paused only for a hair’s breadth of time ‘…that I am in a position to offer him something that he considers very precious to him. Thank you so much. Oh, and Mrs Walters? You should tell him straight away. In three minutes’ time I will be out of the building, and the offer will be withdrawn. Good day.’

She handed the receiver back to the receptionist, who was looking at her speechlessly.

‘I’ll wait over there,’ she told the woman coolly. She glanced at her watch, picked up her clutch handbag, and went across to the island of white leather sofas surrounding a huge circular table on which the day’s papers were arranged with punishing neatness.

She picked up a copy of The Times and started to read the front page.

Precisely two minutes and fifty seconds after she had handed the phone back to the receptionist, a phone at the desk rang. Rachel turned the page of the newspaper and continued to read.

Thirty seconds later the receptionist was standing beside her.

‘Mrs Walters will meet you on the Executive Floor, Ms Vaile,’ she told Rachel.

There was a note in her voice that Rachel would have been deaf not to recognise.

Astonishment.

The lift glided her upwards. Bronzed walls reflected her in infinite regression, increasingly shadowy. As the doors opened a neatly dressed middle-aged woman stepped forward. Her face was bland.

‘Ms Vaile?’

Rachel nodded, face expressionless.

‘If you would come this way please…’

She led the way forward along a wide expanse of space, carpeted in cream and interspersed with pieces of large, abstract statuary. It was imposing, impressive. Designed to be intimidating. Intimidating to impudent interlopers such as herself, who had no business being here.

But Rachel was here to do business.

Nothing more.

And nothing less.

As they gained the far side of the atrial space she could see another reception desk, with two young women working there, both exceptionally beautiful. Rachel’s mouth tightened, but her expression did not alter. She was led past the two receptionists, aware of them looking at her as she walked by, and then past the office that was clearly Mrs Walters’s own. She was taken straight up to a large pair of chestnut wood double doors.

Mrs Walters knocked discreetly, and opened one of them.

‘Ms Vaile, Mr Farneste,’ she announced.

Rachel walked in.

Not a trace of emotion was in her face.

He was exactly the same. Seven years had not altered him. He was, as he would remain all his days, the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

Beauty, she thought absently. Such a strange word to apply to a man. Yet it was the only one that fitted Vito Farneste.

The sable hair, the superbly chiselled face, the high, sculpted cheekbones, the fine line of his nose, the edged plane of his jaw.

And his mouth. Perfect, like an angel’s. But not an angel of light.

An angel of sin.

Temptation made visible.

He leant back in his black leather chair, perfectly still. One hand rested on the surface of the ebony desk. Against that blackness it seemed pale, yet its olive hue was dark against the pristine white of his cuff, the golden gleam of his watch.

The other hand rested on the leather arm of his chair, elbow crooked slightly, long fingers splayed, motionless.

He did not get to his feet.

Rachel heard the soft click of the door and realised that Mrs Walters had performed her duty to a T.

Eyes surveyed her, dark and expressionless, with lashes so long that they lay on his cheek. Impassive. Dispassionate.

He did not speak.

But in that silence she heard in her head, as if time had dissolved, the very first words he had ever spoken to her.

Eleven years ago. She had been fourteen. Just fourteen.

Tall. Gawky. Plain.

Like a half-grown colt.

It had been the school summer holidays. The first week. She had been supposed to go and stay for a fortnight with a schoolfriend, but on the last day of term Jenny had come down with a belated childhood infection and her parents had rescinded the invitation. The school had informed Rachel’s mother, and at the last moment a ticket had been sent, flying her out to Italy.

Rachel hadn’t wanted to go. She’d known her mother didn’t want her around. Hadn’t wanted her around ever since she’d been taken up by Enrico Farneste and had moved to Italy to be as close to him as she could. Now her mother only ever saw her for a week or so every school holiday, in a London hotel paid for by Enrico. Rachel knew Arlene was always glad when the visit was over and she could get back to Enrico.

But this holiday, with nowhere else to go, Rachel had ended up in Italy all the same.

The villa Enrico had installed her mother in was beautiful, nestled into the cliffside above a fashionable seaside village on the Ligurian coast, within easy reach of Turin, where the Farneste factories were. Never having seen the Mediterranean before, Rachel had found herself enchanted despite her reluctance to be there, and on that first afternoon, upon being deposited at the villa by the chauffeured car that had met her at the airport, she had wasted no time in running down to the azure-tinted swimming pool on the lower terrace.

Apart from a housekeeper who spoke only Italian the villa had seemed deserted, despite the presence of a sleek red monster of a car in the driveway. Her mother and Enrico, Rachel had assumed, as she glided blissfully through the warm clear water beneath the Mediterranean summer sun, must be out.

But as she’d reached the shallow end of the pool, after a dozen lengths or so, and halted momentarily, one arm hooked over the stone edge of the pool, hair slicked back in a soggy pony-tail over one shoulder, to catch her breath before preparing to turn and head for the deep end again, she had realised the villa was not deserted after all.

Someone had been standing at the top of a short flight of stone steps that led from the upper terrace down to the pool area. Male, late teenage, maybe even twenty, obviously Italian. Very slim. Tall.

For a moment he had gone on standing where he was, unmoving.

Then, slowly, he had begun to walk down the steps.

He’d been wearing cream-coloured chinos, immaculately cut and styled. One hand had been thrust into a pocket, tautening the material across a washboard stomach. A tan leather belt had snaked around his lean hips. An open-necked, cream-coloured shirt had been rolled back slightly at the cuffs, and around his shoulders an oatmeal jumper.

He had descended the steps with an indolent, lethal grace that had stopped the breath in Rachel’s lungs.

Her eyes had been dragged from the column of his throat, revealed by the open-necked shirt, and as they’d reached his face she had felt every muscle in her body tense unbearably.

It was the most beautiful face she had ever seen.

Sable hair, feathering slightly over a tanned brow, sculpted cheekbones, planed jaw and nose, and a mouth…a mouth that made jellyfish squirm inside her stomach.

He’d worn dark glasses, and he’d looked just so cool, so glamorous, as if he’d just stepped out of a scene from a film, or off a poster.

Her stomach had tensed with nervous awareness, making her feel stupid and dazed.

He had stopped at the bottom of the stone steps, about two metres from the edge of the pool. He had looked at her. His dark glasses had veiled his eyes, but she’d suddenly—despite the sporty cut of her swimsuit—felt incredibly exposed.

Had he known she was supposed to be here?

She hadn’t had the faintest idea who he was, but she had known instinctively that he was the sort of person who knew who he was—and that was someone who could go anywhere he pleased. It wasn’t just his breathtaking looks, there’d been a natural, arrogant grace about him that would have elicited instant accommodation to any wish he might have.

Especially by females. He was the sort of male girls would just drool over, fight over, play totally, bitchily dirty to get his attention.

With a horrible sort of dawning embarrassment Rachel had realised that, right then, it was she who was getting his attention.

And she hadn’t liked it.

It hadn’t been just that her housemistress’s parting warning about the predilections of Italian males towards young females was ringing in her ears. She’d felt self-conscious, horribly so. Because, whoever he was, he’d obviously known he had every right to be there, but, given the unexpectedness of her arrival, he might not have known that she had too. It had also been due to the way he’d looked down at her, his face, what she’d been able to see of it, given that his eyes were veiled, expressionless.

Her costume might have been the world’s least glamorous swimwear, but for all that it had moulded her body and exposed her legs and arms, shaping her figure.

She didn’t have a very good one; she had known that. Compared with some of her age group she’d been pretty underdeveloped, especially in the bust department, and all the sport she’d played had made her arms muscular. As for her face—well, it was OK-ish, she supposed, but it was pretty ordinary.

For a male like the one who had been staring down at her, ‘ordinary’ might as well not exist.

She had known exactly what kind of girls he would date. The A-list girls, the ones oozing sex appeal, who looked fabulous every moment of the day. The ones who totally outclassed all the other girls and who knew exactly just how hot they were.

Any other girls could just forget it. Give in. They wouldn’t even register on his radar.

All this had gone through her mind in a few scant moments, and she had realised that, since she was not an A-list female—even one far too young for him—she wouldn’t even exist for him as a member of the female species. So what would it matter if he thought her swimsuit unalluring and her face and figure likewise?

What had mattered, though, was that he might think she was trespassing—or gatecrashing, or something—some tourist chancing it at a deserted posh villa.

He had continued looking down at her, one hand still thrust into his trouser pocket, the other hanging loose, his expression blank and unreadable. Had he been waiting for her to say something? Explain her presence?

Embarrassment had flushed through her. She’d raised a hesitant hand in a sort of wave, or some sign of visual communication. The moment she’d done it she felt a fool. But it had been too late to back off.

‘Hi,’ she said awkwardly. ‘You’re probably wondering who I am, but—’

The moment she started speaking she realised she was an even bigger fool. She was speaking English, and it was totally obvious that he was Italian. No English male could ever look that svelte, that beautiful…

He cut her short.

‘I know exactly who you are,’ he said. He spoke in English, completely fluent, his Italian accent doing nothing to soften the flat harshness of his words. ‘You’re the bastard daughter of my father’s whore.’

CHAPTER TWO

ELEVEN years later his voice was just as harsh, just as flat, the Italian accent just as unsoftened.

‘So, you’ve finally decided to cash in your last asset.’

His eyes went on surveying her, completely without expression.

Yet as his unblinking, impassive gaze rested on her she could see, very deep at the back of his eyes, a flash of gold.

Emotion pinpointed her, like a sniper’s bullet. And just as deadly.

That flash of gold came only at two moments.

The first was when, as she knew he must be now, he was keeping a leash on that tight, white rage that could lash out with such lethal devastation.

He had done that with the very first words he had ever said to her.

If she’d had any instinct whatsoever for survival then, she knew, with bitter accusation, she would have made sure they were the last words he’d ever spoken to her.

But that stupid, gormless fourteen-year-old had had no such instinct. Only one for encompassing with sure, deadly accuracy her own total ruin.

She felt her nails curve with a minute jerk into the soft leather of her handbag. And that was why she knew about the other moment when that flash of gold in his eyes came.

Out of nowhere, after the last seven years of ruthless, relentless suppression of any feeling to do with the man who was now sitting there, not three metres away from her, came a bolt of memory that she would have given her right hand not to be remembering now, here.

No! No!

She forced the memory aside.

You are here for one thing only. One purpose. One aim.

A single business transaction.

She sharpened the focus of her gaze on him.

Feel nothing. Remember nothing.

He sat there, waiting for her to pitch. He knew she would pitch. It was what he had let her in to do. It was the sole justification for her continued existence as a data field in his mind. She didn’t exist otherwise.

Did I ever exist?

The question came, treacherous, pointless.

No, she had never existed for him. Not her, not Rachel Vaile.

Not the person she was—her soul, her mind, her personality, her likes and dislikes—nothing, about the person she was existed for him.

Not even my body existed for him.

I thought it did, in my naïve stupidity. I thought that at least my body existed.

But it hadn’t. Only one thing had mattered to him about her.

Over the wastes of eleven long years his words echoed in her mind.

‘I know exactly who you are—you’re the bastard daughter of my father’s whore…’

That was who she was to Vito Farneste. It was all she ever had been. All she ever would be.

And then, into the welling seepage of old, old bitterness, a new thought came. One that made her vicious with sudden satisfaction.

She would be more to Vito Farneste.

If he wanted to do business with her.

Her shoulders pulled back with a minute, almost invisible straightening. Her gaze rested on his blank, impassive face, no trace of emotion, none whatsoever, in her eyes.

And she pitched.

‘There are conditions,’ she began.

Vito held himself still. Every fibre, every muscle in his body was under total control.

It was essential.

If he had not imposed such ruthless control over his body it would have hurled itself from his chair, thrust past his desk and his hands would have curved around the shoulders of the woman who dared, dared to stand there offering him conditions, and he would have shaken her, and shaken her and shaken—

His mind slammed down. Even allowing himself the image was lethal. It might take over and become reality.

Instead, he merely continued sitting there, quite motionless.

Surveying her.

Rachel Vaile.

Crawling out of the woodwork after seven years.

Although in an outfit like that she wouldn’t be soiling her knees or laddering her stockings by crawling anywhere.

His eyes took in every detail.

The hair, the suit, the nails, the accessories.

He ran up a price tag for the total look.

Five hundred pounds? Easily—another few hundred if you added the shoes and the handbag.

Where was she getting the money from?

The answer knifed through his head, making the question obsolete.

Other men.

Well… He eased the sudden, inexplicable tensing of his shoulders as the answer formed in his mind. She certainly had the right genes for it.

A family profession…

He went on surveying her.

Not that she needed the family link to trade on. Her looks had matured at last. She was, he thought dispassionately, at the very peak of her physical appeal now. And she certainly knew how to package herself.

The knifeblade went through him again, but he ignored it. It was as incomprehensible as it was irrelevant.

He went back to studying her physical appeal.

She didn’t flaunt that racehorse leanness, that ash-blonde fall of hair, those wide, haunting eyes and the tender mouth…

No!

A blade sliced down over his mind.

Fine. She looked superb. Resplendent. Fantastic.

So what? Now move on. Her looks had nothing to do with him.

Nothing about Rachel Vaile had anything to do with him.

They never had and they never would.

Only one thing about Rachel Vaile was of any concern to him.

The price she was intending to exact.

Sitting back calmly in his chair, he merely allowed the sweep of his lashes to lower minutely over his eyes.

‘And your price is—?’

There was contempt in his voice. He didn’t even bother to hide it.

Did something move in her face? He couldn’t tell. But she answered in the same voice as she had first spoken. ‘I didn’t say “price”. I said “conditions”.’

That spurt of rage iced through him again. She had the insolence to come here, forcing his hand like this—

Because she was forcing it, all right! For three years—three years—he had tried by every means he could to get back what was his—his! His lawyers had been useless. Imbeciles! A gift, they had told him, was a gift. It conferred legal title on the recipient. And his father had, after all, given his mistress many gifts. Valuable ones. Expensive ones. Including jewellery…

Vito had cut off their prating with an oath.

‘Dio mio, do you seriously mean to compare the trashy baubles he gave his whore with the piece she stole from him?’

His lawyers had looked even more spineless and useless.

‘It would be difficult to assert that she did so in a court of law, Signor Farneste,’ one of them had ventured uneasily.

Vito had rounded on him mercilessly. ‘Cretino! Of course she stole it! My father was no fool! He didn’t even give her the villa! Why the hell would he have given her something worth even more?’

‘Perhaps as a token of…ah…appreciation…er…instead of the…ah…villa?’

Vito had stilled. A closed, deadly look had come over his face. In a soft, lethal voice that had made the lawyer step back automatically, he had said. ‘You think so, do you? Tell me, what man gives his mistress his wife’s wedding present? What man gives his whore the Farneste emeralds?’

The Farneste emeralds.

Rachel could still see them now. It had been nine months ago. Her mother had insisted on Rachel accompanying her to the bank. Demanded she go into a little room, set aside, where a bank official had brought a sealed parcel to them and placed it on a table, together with a form. They had been left alone, and her mother had pulled off the restraining string around the boxlike parcel, unwrapping the brown paper to reveal a jewel box. Not a very grand one, just one that opened up, revealing a shallow upper layer and a deeper one beneath. Her mother had only glanced at the top layer, lifting it up out of the way to expose the lower one.

And Rachel had gasped. She hadn’t been able to help it.

A river of green fire had flashed in the light. Her mother had lifted it out and sat back. A look had settled on her face. An expression of extreme satisfaction. She’d let the jewels flow through her hands and given a deep, contented sigh.

‘It’s incredible!’ Rachel breathed.

Her mother smiled.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And it’s mine.’

There was a strange note in her voice. Not just pleasure at owning such a treasure. More than that. And Rachel recognised what it was.

Triumph.

A sense of foreboding started to sound in her.

‘The Farneste emeralds,’ said her mother. ‘And they’re mine.’

Then a strange, haunted expression came into her eyes.

She looked at Rachel.

‘They’ll be yours. Your inheritance.’

Vito leant back in his chair behind the vast desk that befitted the chairman and chief executive of Farneste Industriale. The company was only three generations old, but the Farneste family went back a lot further than that. The Farnestes had been merchant princes at the time of the Renaissance, and though the family’s fortunes had fluctuated wildly over the intervening centuries, now, thanks to Enrico’s shrewd, hard and brilliant brain—a throwback to his Quattrocento ancestor—the Farneste fortune was riding high again. Vito’s task was merely to steer Farneste Industriale into the expanding global economy of the twenty-first century.

But though the Farnestes looked forward, Vito had not forgotten the past. The ancient past—which had brought the Farneste emeralds into existence in the eighteenth century—and the recent past—which had scarred his youth.

Thanks to Arlene Graham’s poisonous presence in his father’s life.

A poison he had not yet quite drawn. The very last drop of that vicious venom had yet to be extracted.

And Arlene’s daughter was here, offering him the chance to draw it.

‘Conditions?’ he said expressionlessly. ‘By this you mean exemption from prosecution for theft.’

Vito’s voice was flat. Unarguable.

Rachel shifted her weight slightly. The tension in her spine was making her back ache.

But when she replied her voice was as flat as his.

‘Had there been justification for prosecution you would have gone ahead years ago,’ she replied. ‘The conditions I require to be met are quite different.’

She watched Vito’s face for his reaction. There was none. Not even anger at being reminded of how completely impotent he was to use the force of the law to return what he considered his. He would have done so if he could. She knew that. Without the slightest hesitation Vito Farneste would have used the full force of the law to regain his possessions.

After all—her eyes shadowed—he had done it once already.

What Vito Farneste wanted, Vito Farneste got.

He made sure of it.

Whatever it was and whoever it was.

For whatever reason.

She stared at him. Stared at the man who sat there, who had nearly—so very, very nearly—destroyed her.

I was young. I was stupid. I was gullible.

She was none of those things now.

And Vito Farneste meant nothing to her. Just as she meant nothing to him. Had always meant nothing to him.