Married For Revenge: Roccanti's Marriage Revenge / A Deal at the Altar / A Vow of Obligation
you wearing sunglasses indoors?’ he questioned, strolling past her although she had not invited him in.
Just as Zara frowned Vitale flipped the specs off her nose and stilled when he saw her battered face. ‘What the hell happened to you?’ he growled angrily.
‘I fell … tripped at the nursery,’ she lied.
‘Don’t lie to me. I can spot a lie at sixty paces,’ Vitale warned her, frowning as he traced the swelling with a gentle fingertip. ‘This looks more like someone punched you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Zara said in a wobbly voice, her eyes welling up with tears. ‘Why are you here?’
Vitale tossed down the newspaper he carried in a silent statement. It was the same edition that had implied that she might be pregnant.
‘Oh, that …’ she muttered abstractedly as he closed the door behind him. Although she had only read that gossip column this morning it already felt as if a hundred years had passed since then.
‘I don’t believe that you fell. I want to know who did that to your face. Who hit you?’ Vitale breathed soft and low, but there was a fire in his penetrating gaze. ‘I think you might have a black eye tomorrow.’
Nervousness made it difficult for Zara to swallow and her throat was tight. She was tired and upset and sore. ‘It’s not important.’
‘You’ve been assaulted. How can that not be important?’ Vitale demanded, cutting through her weary voice. ‘Who are you trying to protect?’
Zara paled at that accurate stab in the dark, but the habit of secrecy where her family was concerned was too deeply engrained in her to be easily broken. ‘I’m not protecting anyone.’
‘You’re pregnant. What sort of a person attacks a pregnant woman?’ he demanded rawly. ‘He could have hit your stomach rather than your face, causing you to miscarry—would you still be protecting him then?’
The hunted expression in Zara’s strained eyes deepened as she dropped her head to avoid his searing gaze. ‘I don’t want to talk about this, Vitale.’
He closed a hand round hers and drew her closer. ‘I’m not leaving until you tell me. When you were attacked our child was put at risk and I can’t walk away from that.’
Reminded of her responsibility towards the baby she carried, Zara was engulfed by a dreadful tide of guilt. Her opposing loyalties made her feel torn in two and suddenly her resistance washed away in the tide of her distress. ‘It was my father … okay?’ she cried defiantly as she wrenched her hand free of Vitale’s hold. ‘But he didn’t mean anything by it—he just loses his temper and lashes out—’
‘Your … father?’ His eyes flaring like golden fireworks, Vitale’s angry voice actually shook, his accent thickening around the syllables as he yanked open the door again.
‘Where are you going?’ In consternation, Zara followed him and grabbed his arm to force him to stop in his tracks. ‘What do you think you’re going to do?’
Eyes veiled, Vitale rested his livid gaze on her anxious face. ‘I’ll make sure that this never happens again.’
‘How can you do that? I don’t want you fighting with my father … I don’t want people to find out about this—it’s private!’ Zara gasped, clutching at the well-cut jacket of his business suit with frantic hands.
Vitale closed his fingers round her fragile wrists and gently detached her grip. His face was forbidding in its austerity, his eyes hard as iron. ‘I’m not about to fight with your father. I am not planning to tell anyone else about this either—that is your choice to make. But I am going to make sure that he never ever dares to lay a finger on you again,’ he spelt out in a wrathful undertone. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Left alone, Zara trembled from the force of all the emotions she was fighting to contain. She was shaking with stress. Her father would lose his head again when Vitale approached him and made his accusation. The older man would know that once again his daughter had talked. A headache hammered painfully behind her taut brow and she sank down on the edge of the bed and breathed in slow and deep in an attempt to calm down. She was appalled by Vitale’s interference but even more shocked that she had surrendered and told him the truth. For so many years she had kept that family shame a deep, dark secret. Now all hell was about to break loose because she had just given a man who already hated her father another reason to despise and attack him.
For an instant though Zara was mentally swept back to the elegant drawing room where she had been rocked back on her heels by her father’s blow. Whether she liked it or not she had to admit that Vitale had made a valid point. Had she fallen she might have injured her baby or even miscarried. There was no excuse for her father’s violence; there never had been an excuse for his behaviour. But while she accepted that truth, intellectually dealing with something that had become so much a part of her family life was altogether something else. It had been her mother’s refusal to condemn her husband’s violence that had set the agenda of acceptance in Zara’s home. Although it hurt to admit it, her brother Tom’s insistence on ignoring the problem had also given strength to the idea that such violence had to be endured and concealed. Of course, her father had never struck Tom. Monty Blake had always aimed his violence at his womenfolk.
Feeling too sick to eat, Zara lay down on the bed and eventually fell asleep. Vitale’s return wakened her and she answered the door barefoot, her hair a tousled silvery cloud round her face as she blinked up at him drowsily. She was startled to see her father standing by Vitale’s side. In the shadow of Vitale’s greater height and raw energy, Monty Blake looked pale, wretched and diminished.
‘Your father has something he wants to say to you,’ Vitale proclaimed harshly.
‘I’m sorry I hurt you—it will never happen again,’ her father muttered with all the life of a battery-operated robot.
‘I’m not having a termination,’ she reiterated in a feverish whisper, wanting her father to know that that was not a price she was prepared to pay for family forgiveness.
In response to that revealing statement a murderous light flamed in Vitale’s gaze. ‘We’re getting married as soon as it can be arranged,’ he delivered.
Taken aback by the announcement, Zara shot him a confused glance. After all, he was already well aware of her thoughts on that subject. Dark eyes gleaming with purpose, Vitale stared back at her in blatant challenge. She parted her lips to argue and then decided to wait until her father was no longer present. She felt she owed Vitale that much after he had brought her father to her door to apologise to her. For the first time ever a man had tried to protect Zara rather than take advantage of her and she could only be impressed by that reality.
‘You must do as you see fit,’ Monty Blake responded flatly, turning back to Vitale to add, ‘Are you satisfied?’
‘For the moment, but watch your step around me and your daughter.’
Zara watched her father hurry back into the lift, keen to make his escape, and she slowly breathed in and out, the worst of her tension evaporating with his departure. ‘How on earth did you persuade him to come here?’
‘I didn’t persuade him, I threatened him,’ Vitale admitted without an ounce of regret. ‘He’s terrified of being forced to face the legal and social consequences of his behaviour. I’m surprised that you’ve never used that fear against him.’
Zara lowered her lashes, thinking of how she had been branded a troublemaking liar at the age of ten when she had tried to report her father’s violence to the authorities. Nobody had backed up her story, not even her mother, and by the end of it all nobody had believed her either.
‘He’s hit you before, hasn’t he?’ Vitale prompted darkly.
‘This was the first time since I grew up,’ Zara admitted grudgingly. ‘I don’t think he can help himself. I think he needs professional help or anger-management classes