Her heart fluttered at the thought that maybe he’d come back early to take her on another excursion. But when he turned around she had to stifle a gasp. He was pale, and she realised he was pale with fury, because his eyes were burning.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Ciro put the empty glass back on the tray with exaggerated care and then he looked back at Lara. She had only the faintest prickling sense of foreboding before he said, ‘So, when were you going to tell me that you and your uncle were behind the kidnap plot?’
Lara’s insides turned to ice. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘I’ve been investigating the kidnap since it happened. I kept hitting dead ends until now. Is it true?’
Lara felt sick. She nodded her head slowly.
Not exactly, but... ‘Yes. My uncle planned it. He didn’t want us to marry.’
Ciro’s lip curled. ‘And so he came up with a lurid plan to have us kidnapped? Or was that your contribution?’
Lara shook her head. She felt as if she was drowning, and moved sluggishly over to a chair where she sat down. ‘I didn’t know anything about it...not until after.’
Ciro looked at Lara. He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that after everything he’d been through with this woman she had done it again. The emotion he felt transcended anger. He was icy cold with it. Far worse than heat and rage.
He could feel the livid line of his scar. The phantom throbbing of his little finger. He wanted to go over and haul Lara up to stand. She looked pathetically, unbelievably shocked.
‘I want to know everything. Now.’
He saw her swallow. She was so pale he almost felt the sting of his conscience but he ruthlessly pushed it down. This woman was the worst kind of chameleon. And potentially a criminal.
‘I was forced to marry Henry Winterborne. By my uncle.’
Ciro shook his head. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I wish it was. My uncle was obsessed with status and lineage. There was no way he was going to allow me to marry you. But it went much further than that.’
Ciro said nothing. He saw Lara clasp her hands together and in that moment had a flashback to how her hands had felt on his buttocks only hours before, squeezing him, huskily begging him for more.
He gritted out, ‘Keep going.’
‘My uncle was in debt. Serious debt. Millions and millions of pounds. He’d run through his fortune—and my trust fund. I was his only hope of saving his reputation and clearing the debt. He’d had us followed from the moment I mentioned you to him. He knew we were serious.’
Ciro said nothing so Lara continued.
‘He knew that I was sheltered...not experienced. He was fairly certain we hadn’t...’
Remarkably, colour stained her cheeks, and it made Ciro feel so many conflicting things that he decided to focus on the anger.
‘Save your blushes, cara. This really is the most intriguing story.’
Lara’s mouth tightened for a moment, but then she said, ‘He sold me—like a slave girl at an auction. To Henry Winterborne, the highest bidder.’
Ciro struggled to take this in. It was such a far-fetched story. He decided to see how far Lara would go towards hanging herself and pretending she was an innocent player. ‘When are you claiming that you knew about this?’
‘I didn’t know until after the kidnapping. That’s when he told me. And that’s when he told me he would kill you if I pursued the relationship.’
‘So you came to the hospital to convince me you’d never wanted to marry me in order to save me? Cara, that is the most romantic thing I’ve heard in my whole life.’
Something occurred to Ciro then, and he went very still.
Then he said, ‘I told you that story in Sicily...about my great-grandmother. About how she couldn’t marry the man she wanted, how he was threatened. You appropriated it as your own... You didn’t even have the creativity to come up with something original. You make me—’
Lara shot up from the chair. ‘It’s true—I swear. That’s just a coincidence. It all happened exactly like I said.’