Stolen Bride. Sally Carr
reached over and tipped her chin. ‘Cara, that’s the first time you’ve tried to lie to me, and you’re not very good at it. We both know that we’ve gone too far to back down. If you went back now, your life wouldn’t be worth living.’
‘At least I would be alive,’ she replied bitterly. ‘You have to get away. You’ve risked enough.’
A slow smile spread over his face as he looked at her.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What are you smiling at?’
‘You,’ he replied, putting the car into gear and beginning towards the distant ribbon of lights that marked the autostrada. ‘You’re a very brave woman, Cara, but I think I’ll take a rain check on your offer.’
‘It’s no use arguing with you, is it?’ she asked softly.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not this time. And do me a favour, will you?’
‘What?’ she asked.
He flicked her a glance. ‘Do up your damn seat belt before I have a nervous breakdown.’
It was almost fully dark, and there was no moon. Cara pulled off her tights and pulled on Finn’s shorts. They were impossibly big on her, but with luck the shirt would hide the bagginess. She glanced at Finn, tensing as he slowed down.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘There are cars guarding the slip road,’ he said. ‘Your family is more thorough than I gave them credit for.’ He glanced at her and squeezed her hand. ‘But maybe we can still get through. Get in the back, on the floor.’
Without a word, she did as he said. Finn drove steadily towards Luca’s men. He wound down the window, and she held her breath. There were shouts and then Finn answered. ‘Would you believe it,’ he yelled in perfect Italian. ‘Three pairs of lovers on this stretch of Godforsaken road, and none of them were our birds. I’m going to take a turn on the autostrada, see if they’ve managed to escape the net.’
Cara lay on the floor behind his seat, her fists clenched, waiting for the angry shouts to come, the gunshots, willing Finn to accelerate, get the hell out of this crazy place. But he just kept going smoothly on.
‘It’s all right,’ he said at last, slipping into English as if it were the most natural way in the world to speak to her. ‘You can come out now.’
Warily she risked a quick look out the window. She could see nothing except the swift passing lights of cars. They were on the autostrada. Stiffly she got up and climbed into the front seat. ‘You have the luck of...’ She shrugged helplessly.
‘The Irish?’ he supplied, smiling into the darkness.
‘Of the devil!’ she retorted.
‘Why are you so cross?’ he asked mildly.
‘I am not cross!’ she snapped.
‘Of course not.’
There was silence, and she looked at the cars going by. For the moment, at least, she was free.
‘You could have got yourself killed back there,’ she said at last.
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But there are worse fates.’
She stared at him wonderingly. ‘Such as?’
He cocked a glance at her, then stared at the road. ‘Such as marrying Luca Finzi,’ he said quietly.
It had been dark for hours, but it was still hot and it had not taken Cara long to discover that Finn’s hire car had no air-conditioning.
The stale, warm fumes blowing in through her window from the traffic were giving her a headache. She had a cramp in her right foot, which no amount of rubbing would get rid of. And every few moments she had to look over her shoulder, as if somehow she could pick out Luca’s car from all the others.
‘Relax,’ soothed Finn. ‘It’s highly unlikely they know what kind of car we have, or the registration. They don’t even know for certain that we’re on the autostrada or what direction we’re going in.’
Cara bit her lip. ‘I may be naive, Finn, but I’m not stupid. They’re bound to have figured out by now that it was you on the slip road. And you know as well as I that they. can’t be far behind.’
She looked at his strong profile in alternate shade and light from the other cars. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said quietly. ‘What odds do you give for our success?’
He sighed. ‘I’d rather give odds on a dead horse winning the Kentucky Derby, if you want the truth,’ he said at last. ‘But we’re not done yet.’
They both looked in silence at the road ahead, then Finn glanced at her. ‘It’s not entirely hopeless, you know,’ he said. ‘At this precise moment, we’re free.’
‘You always were free,’ she replied softly. ‘You didn’t have to rescue me.’
He didn’t reply to that, and Cara wondered again if some ulterior motive had prompted him to come to her aid. There had to be one. He couldn’t have done it just for the sake of a book. Money, maybe? Had some other family decided the marriage would make Luca and her uncle a too-powerful combination and paid Finn to step in?
She thought of the look in Finn’s eyes when he had taken her hand in the church and sighed. Somehow she didn’t like to think he had accepted money to take her away. And besides, nobody, not even she, had known she would rebel like that at the last moment.
Maybe he was just crazy. After all, who in his right mind would bring out a book like that about Luca and then attend his wedding?
And why would a complete stranger help her for her own sake? And how did he know she spoke English?
Finn’s voice broke in on her thoughts. ‘You’re thinking so loudly it’s disturbing me,’ he remarked. ‘What’s bugging you now?
She swallowed. ‘I was wondering if you were safe to be with,’ she said frankly. ‘Because I am beginning to think you are certainly not right in the head.’
He shrugged. ‘Can you think of anybody in your family who is completely sane?’ he inquired. ‘Your uncle, for instance—’
‘Leave my uncle out of it!’ she broke in hotly.
‘All right,’ Finn went on. ‘Luca, then. Now there is a man who is definitely one plate short of a picnic basket. He is so macho your uncle probably keeps him on a leash and feeds him the remains of door-to-door salesmen.’
Cara stared at him. No one had ever spoken so casually about her family before. So insultingly. ‘How dare you!’ she fumed.
He turned to look at her briefly. ‘Okay, so I was exaggerating, but so what? The trouble with you, Cara, is that you’ve been brought up to accept unquestioningly everything your uncle and Luca tell you.’
Her mouth opened but she could think of nothing to say.
He went on. ‘I’ve studied the way your family does business for a long time. And I thought nothing could surprise me about them any more. But I have to admit I was as surprised as Luca when you turned at the altar and just said no. He looked like a guy whose pet rabbit had just pulled a gun on him.’
Cara’s jaw clenched. ‘So you think I’m just a pet rabbit?’
He held up his hand. ‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘When you arrived at the church I thought you were a sacrificial lamb. Now...’ He put his hand on the steering wheel. ‘Now, I don’t know what to make of you. Except that you’re probably as crazy as you think I am.’
She stared out the windscreen. Sacrificial lamb, indeed. Just who did this man think he was?
He glanced at her. ‘You must be tired,’