It was a fact of Zara’s childhood that Monty Blake had an unmanageable temper and that he lashed out with his fists whenever he lost control. Usually Ingrid had paid the price of her husband’s need for violence to satisfy his rage or frustration. In fact as a terrified child of ten years old seeing her mother beaten up Zara had once called the police and the fallout from that unwelcome intervention had taught her an unforgettable lesson. Branded a wicked liar and winning even her twin’s censure for ‘letting down’ the family, she had been sent away to boarding school. That night she had learned that anything that happened behind the doors of the Blakes’ smart town house was strictly private and not for sharing, not even with Bee.
‘It’s between Mum and Dad—it’s nothing to do with us. He hardly ever lifts the hand to either of us,’ Tom used to point out when they were teenagers. ‘It’s only the odd slap or punch—I’m sure there’s a lot worse goes on in other families.’
But dread of their father’s sudden violent outbursts had created a horribly intimidating atmosphere in Zara’s home while she was growing up. All of them had worked very hard at trying to please or soothe Monty Blake. Tom, the apple of his father’s eye, had always been the most successful. The aggressive attacks on their mother, however, had continued in secret for occasionally Zara had noticed that her mother was moving slowly and stiffly as if she was in pain and had known that her father was usually too careful to plant a fist where a bruise might show.
By the time she reached her apartment stress had given Zara a nasty headache and her face was hurting her like mad. She was on the brink of taking painkillers before she remembered that she was pregnant and realised that without medical advice it would be safer to do without medication. She examined her swollen cheekbone in the mirror. It was hot and red and a livid scratch trailed across her skin while the darkening of her eye socket suggested that a bruise was forming. When the buzzer on her door sounded
she snatched up her sunglasses and put them on.
It was Vitale, long and lean in a black business suit and impatiently about to stab on the buzzer a second time when she opened the door. His hand fell back from the wood and he stared down at her.
‘Why are 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.