Stolen Bride. Sally Carr
stifle a yawn. ‘I can’t sleep. I still don’t even know if I can trust you or not.’
‘I’m the only hope you’ve got,’ he said drily. ‘And, in any case, what do you think I’m going to do—try to rape you with one foot on the accelerator? Interesting idea,’ he added meditatively. ‘Especially on the autostrada. But I have to admit I’m not that much of an acrobat.’
She leaned her head back. He really had the most beautiful voice, she thought sleepily. But the things he said with it! She had never, ever met a man like him.
Soon she fell into an uneasy doze, peopled with unsettling images. Finn glanced at her face, and with a wry smile kept on driving.
She woke with a start as he pulled into a service station. ‘Where are we?’ she asked muzzily.
‘Past Rome,’ he replied. ‘Nearly at Florence. ‘It’s about two o‘clock, and if we keep this up, we should be in France for lunch tomorrow.’
Lunch. Her brain seemed to wake up all of a sudden at the word, and she tried to remember when she had last eaten. She looked at him hopefully. ‘I don’t suppose we could have something to eat now?’ she ventured.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘Keep your head down.’
Cara looked at the parking area in front of the shop and restaurant. Even at this hour in the morning it was busy. And noisy. The people were mostly families and some young couples, all eating snacks and laughing in the velvet darkness. There was no danger here. Nobody looked like one of Luca’s men.
But it was still difficult not to feel scared. Not to wonder if even now Luca was pulling up behind them and getting out of his car... She shook herself crossly. She mustn’t think like that. She couldn’t afford to panic.
Sliding down in her seat, Cara noticed a briefcase on the floor. She must have knocked it off the back seat when Finn was smuggling her past Luca’s men. She grabbed the handle to heft it up, but the catch hadn’t been fastened, and a bundle of papers cascaded over the floor.
Muttering crossly under her breath she began to pick them up, and then stopped, amazed, as she read her name.
The papers were cuttings, from English newspapers, and she frowned in concentration as she began to read. Talking to Finn had brought everything she had forgotten flooding back.
Including some things, maybe, that were best left untouched in her memory, like Sarah and her uncle having that enormous row when she had been about eleven. Sarah had left shortly after that. All that had been left were a few classic novels with Sarah’s name written on the flyleaf. Occasionally Cara read them, but only occasionally. The clean, expensive smell of the thick cream pages was enough to bring back the memory of a woman she had once hoped would become her stepmother. And who instead had disappeared out of her life for ever.
‘Carenza Gambini.’ She stared in amazement at her printed name, her mind focusing once more on the present. What was she doing in a newspaper? ‘The beautiful but obviously gormless niece of one of the Mafia’s greatest mobsters is set to marry the equally ruthless Luca Finzi. She better get his breakfast eggs just right, or Lucky, as he is so imaginatively known, will probably be signing quite another contract for her. Until death do they part...’
Cara’s heart pounded as she read the piece over and over again. Is this what people all over England had read about her? There was a crunch of gravel by the car and she looked up, straight into Finn’s eyes.
‘And may I ask why you’re rummaging around in my briefcase?’ he demanded.
She held the cutting out to him with shaking fingers. ‘Did you have anything to do with this?’ she demanded.
He looked straight into her eyes. ‘I wrote it.’
‘You wrote it!’ she screeched. ‘It’s rubbish!’
He shrugged. ‘It pays.’
She pushed against the door. ‘Let me out of the car,’ she snapped.
‘What are you going to do?’ he drawled. ‘Stick me with a hairpin?’
‘Let me out!’ she repeated.
‘It’s all gravel out here,’ he said. ‘You’ll hurt your feet.’
She glared at him. ‘I want to hurt you!’
He shifted his weight and opened the door. She swung her legs out of the car. He was right, it was gravel. Determinedly she stood to face him, then grabbed at her shorts as they fell down.
‘You could use your tights as a belt,’ Finn offered.
‘Don’t give me advice,’ she snarled. ‘How many other lies have you written about me?’
He rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know. After meeting you I’m not sure what the truth is any more.’
Crossly she stamped her foot on the gravel and stifled a yelp of pain. ‘How dare you call me gormless!’
‘It was a logical assumption,’ he replied calmly. ‘Given that you had just agreed to marry Luca.’
She pulled out another cutting and waved it in his face. ‘And this!’ she yelled. ‘This one claims I spend all my time shopping!’
‘Don’t you?’ he asked, interested.
She drew in her breath sharply and glared at him. ‘I’m going to the ladies’,’ she snapped, and before he could do anything she had spun round and scuttled barefoot to the main building, the gravel like hot coals on her feet.
In the ladies’ her face looked like a ghost’s in the brightly lit wall of mirrors. She rubbed hastily at her cheeks with a dampened paper. towel. With almost savage satisfaction she wiped off the too-bright lipstick and the thick mascara the professional make-up girl had insisted on.
That had been for the wedding pictures, she had been told. She had hated it, but naturally enough, her opinion had not been taken into account. She ran her fingers through her disordered hair and rinsed her mouth.
Strange, really, that she should belong to such a thoroughly Italian family and yet look nothing like them. Thick gold hair, pale skin that, if she wasn’t careful, burnt before it tanned, and those wide hazel eyes.
Her father had been like that, too, her uncle had said. A throwback to Roman times, he had told her, laughing. But her parents had died when she was a baby, and the photographs she had of them were blurred and mostly out of focus.
Perhaps Finn could tell her more. She had never seen the book he had written about Luca. She had just accepted that it was a lie. Money-grubbing filth, as Luca had put it. Now she began to think she would very much like to read it.
Washing her face and hands in cool water was heaven after that long, hot drive. She soaked another paper towel and bathed the back of her neck, then, shrugging helplessly at her reflection, went outside.
The car was not where Finn had parked it. She registered the fact almost unconsciously, and then as she realised the implications her heart flopped sickeningly.
He had left her. Deserted her. She stared at the spot where the car had been, then looked wildly around. Had he really gone?
She almost screamed when a hand descended on her shoulder and spun her round. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Finn snapped.
She gazed at him in shock. ‘I... I told you, I went to the ladies’,’ she replied as calmly as she could.
‘On which planet?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know how long you’ve been? I could have filled up ten cars at that gas station in the time it’s taken you to mess about in there.’
She glared at him, anger replacing her fear. ‘What’s it to you?’ she retorted.
CHAPTER