page12 (2/2)

'But all over again you have just proved what you are,' Vito conde to close in the anger and that freezing calm was all the o you moved out of my apartment within twenty-four hours of o?'

The oxygen she needed to breathe was being squeezed out of her lungs by a giant invisible hand He watched the last scrap of colour slide froy flat, did you? The roohout our entire relationship So, where did you go? You leapt straight into bed with another man-'

'No!' she gasped, and as heads turned at a nearby table she bit her tongue and closed her eyes, fighting for self-control

'He wasn't a h, was he? He was just a kid,' Vito continued in the same murderously quiet voice that now betrayed absolutely no emotion

'He was just a friend,' she whispered in anguish 'So you like to screw your friends as well,' Vito flicked back with chilling brutality 'You moved in with him From my bed to his bed within hours Noould you describe a woman who behaves like that?'

'You've got it wrong-' she began

'No,' Vito contradicted with succinct e, because the unlovely truth did nothing for o, but that sensation of entirely superficial hurtfar ful and far more powerful… '

He let the assurance hang there and she started to tre that she was engulfed by it, silently waiting for the axe to fall

'Yes,' Vito breathed flatly 'A month after you moved in with him you kept an appointment at an abortion clinic to take care of the little problem that had so inconveniently arisen And you didn't exactly kill that little proble in her throat like the wail of a trapped aniony She bowed her head, unable to speak If she had opened her raced herself She was in a state of such complete shock that she couldn't even think, and later she would not re the restaurant where Vito had chosen cruelly to rip away that last veil of privacy

CHAPTER FIVE

ASHLEY was traumatised She sat in the back of the limo like a zoainst which she felt she had no defence Indeed, she alh she deserved his revulsion How he knew didn't matter It was simply that he did know It seemed pointless to explain that she had o She had sublet her room shortly before she broke up with Vito in an effort to cut down her expenses

Steve had let her sleep on the sofa He had been a good friend, supporting her when she'd in to understand the cos when she realised that she was pregnant and she didn't want to be Ashley's first reaction had been sheer terror, and when she had learnt that Vito was getting engaged to Carina she had gone to pieces She had been petrified of what her father would do if he found out Steve had made the first appointone, that she was on her own, and furthermore that she had never wanted children A termination was the only practical solution, he had said She didn't have theto live? What sort of a life was she going to give the baby?

She had gone for counselling but it hadn't penetrated She had felt ill and weak and wretched and desperately alone in spite of Steve's efforts to the contrary And, when the day scheduled for the terh the door her pregnancy had suddenly and for the very first time become painfully real to her She had started to wonder whether the baby was a boy or a girl and whether it would have red hair or black hair or green eyes or dark eyes, and she had begun, slowly and agonisingly, to come apart at the seams as she finally faced up to the fact that practicality and pregnancy were two very uneasy partners

When she had finally adh with it, she had been in such an emotional state that the staff had insisted they let her contact soiven them Susan's telephone number because Steve had had an exam that day And that was how she had co that she would never have told her had she been more in control She had told Susan that, no matter how hard it was, she intended to have her baby and keep it And she had meant it, every word of it Indeed it was that announcement which had nearly driven her father to violence When she had h it was so her baby froence told her that was nonsense, but the feeling of iuilt had somehow survived

'Vito…' she muttered 'The subject is closed'

'Then why did you open it?' Ashley was distraught, wholly at the mercy of eht His hard profile was unyielding 'I don't like secrets

I should have faced you with it the first day'

'I didn't have an abortion… I ift used to be the ability to tell the truth no ence '

'I never slept with Steve inin the back of herher to shut up, she just had to defend herself

'Figuratively speaking, youbite 'You didn't sleep very much in my bed either'

He was inviolable, immovable, his beliefs set in stone Yet, deprived of her usual er by the sheer depth of her inner pain, she still persisted 'I ith Tiain 'And that bruise happened when I bent over a suitcase this ot a lover'

'You have sex with your partners Love would indeed be a euphemism'

He actually took her to the opera She couldn't believe that he could be that cruel but he was And Ashley, who had always loved the opera, heard nothing but a deafening cacophony of soaring voices co at her from all sides in their private box He hadn't listened He hadn't given her protestations even a fleeting hearing He didn't believe her, he was never going to believe her and she had no proof to offer in her own defence The tears coursed soundlessly down her drawn cheeks

He took her back to the apartment before the interlass wall and she was too drained to try and climb it She vanished into her bedroom without a word and tore off the finery he had chosen to frame her in before he smashed her down She had never been so hurt that she physically ached, but she did now as she crawled naked into the bed like a wounded ani sanctuary She heard the thud of the front door shutting on his departure and then the da up scars that had yet to heal

'Ashley, please…' She was startled into a screa the face she had buried in the pillow to muffle her sobs 'Go a-away!' she sobbed

The ht 'I was callous and sadistic I was a total bastard I admit it I wanted to hurt you-'

'You did,' she gasped 'Now go away and letin private'

'In all the tio, I never once saw you cry And noice in a week…' His roughened voice broke off 'You were always so tough-'

'I used to cry in the b-bathroo'

Vito loosed a laugh utterly devoid of humour 'I wish I'd known'

'You would have revelled in it,' shethe sheet defensively round her and concealing her swollen face below the veil of her tousled hair 'I thought you'd gone…'

'I couldn't leave you like this I came back' He slotted a brandy into her hand and she drank it down like a Cossack about to go into battle The alcohol eased the ache in her throat but she still refused to look at him

He laced long fingers into her hair and tipped up her face, preventing her retreat 'We're getting married in ten days' time and then I have a six-week vacation which ill spend in Sri Lanka' She trembled at the implacability sheto surface froiven vent to No wonder he had called her a whore that first day in his office Only a woman worthy of that nao and again today He had talked about abortion as though she were so without female sensitivity that such a choice would have ed in a hot, reviving rush through the cracks he had an to crackle in a series of little fires fed by bitter resentht to stand in judge a choice that uilt she had long borne burnt out forever in that e to clear her name that had weakened her response to his bitter prejudice earlier vanished entirely He hadn't even asked if the child was his Presuht she couldn't possibly knohether it had been or not So now she had it all The truth as Vito saw it, and the motivation behind his coercion