Page 27 of Cipriani's Innocent Captive
‘He’s played up your innocence to the hilt.’
‘He knew...’ Katy swallowed painfully. ‘He knew that I was inexperienced. I never thought that he would use the information against me. I trusted him when I confided in him.’
In the midst of an unfolding nightmare, Lucas discovered that the deal which should have been uppermost in his mind was overshadowed by a gut-wrenching sympathy for her vulnerability, which Powell had thoroughly taken advantage of.
Lucas dragged over a chair to join hers and sat heavily, closing his eyes for a few seconds while he sifted through the possibilities for damage limitation. Then he looked at her.
‘The man has an axe to grind,’ Lucas stated flatly. ‘Tell me why.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘In this instance, everything matters. If I need to use leverage, then I need to know where to apply it. I don’t play dirty but I’m willing to make an exception in this case.’
‘It ended really badly between me and Duncan.’ She shot him a guilty, sidelong look before lowering her eyes. ‘As you may have gathered. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d found out about his wife and childrenafterI’d slept with him, but I think he was doubly enraged that, not only did I find out that he was married, but he hadn’t even succeeded in getting me into bedbeforeI’d had a chance to find out.’
‘Some men are bastards,’ Lucas told her in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘It has to be said that some women leave a lot to be desired as well. It’s life.’
‘You mean those women your father married,’ Katy murmured, distracted, thinking that on some level their approaches to life had been similarly tarnished by unfortunate experiences with the opposite sex. It was easy to think that, because you came from a wildly different background from someone, the things that affected the decisions you made had to be different, but that wasn’t always the case. Money and privilege had been no more guarantee of a smooth ride in his case than a stable family background had been in hers.
Lucas shrugged. ‘I have no more time for the gold-diggers,’ he gritted. ‘At least a guy with his head screwed on has a fighting chance of recognising them for what they are and can take the necessary precautions. You, I’m guessing, had no chance against a skilled predator. Continue.’
‘I’d confided in my best friend,’ Katy said, with a grimace. ‘I felt such a fool. Claire was far more experienced than me, and she was livid when I told her about the messages I’d accidentally seen on his phone from his wife. He’d made a mistake in leaving it on the table while he vanished off to the toilet when we’d been having a meal out. Up popped a reminder to phone the kids to say good night and to remember some party they were going to on the weekend. He’d told me he was going to be away on business. Weekends, he’d always said, were tricky for him because he was trying to kick-start a photography business and they were the only times he could do whatever he had to do—networking and the like—because he was at the bank during the week.’
‘A skilled excuse,’ Lucas said drily. ‘The man obviously came with form.’
‘That was what Claire said. She told me that I was probably not the first, which needless to say didn’t make me feel at all better.’
It was as though she was looking at a very young, very naïve stranger from the advantageous position of someone who was much older and wiser. And she had Lucas to thank for that.
‘Anyway, she started doing a little digging around. The world’s a small place these days.’ Katy grimaced. ‘She found that he was a serial womaniser and she went to see his wife.’
‘Ah.’
‘I had no idea at the time that that was her plan, and afterwards she confessed that she didn’t quite know what had prompted her to take such drastic action. But she was upset on my behalf and, in a weird way, upset on behalf of all the other girls he had conned into sleeping with him. His marriage fell apart on the back of that, so...’
‘I’m getting the picture loud and clear. The ex who hates you and holds you responsible for the breakdown of his marriage now has the perfect vehicle for revenge put into his hands.’
‘If I had told you the whole story in the first place, you would have realised that there was no chance I could have been any kind of mole. Then we wouldn’t have ended up here and none of this would be happening now.’
Lucas smiled wryly. ‘Really think that would have been how it would have worked?’
‘No,’ Katy answered honestly. ‘You wouldn’t have believed me. I would have been guilty until proven innocent.’ At that point in time, he’d been a one-dimensional autocrat—ruthless, suspicious, arrogant. At this point in time...
She didn’t know what he was and she didn’t want to think too hard about it. They had a situation and she began to see all the nooks and crannies of it. If Duncan decided to take his revenge by publicising a tale of some sordid love tryst between Lucas and herself, not only would Lucas’s deal be ruined but he would have to face the horror of the world gossiping about him behind his back. His reputation would be in tatters because, however much a lie could be disproved, mud inevitably stuck. He was the sort of guy who would claim to shrug off the opinions of other people, but that would be a heck of a lot to shrug off.
And it would all have beenherfault.
Could she allow that to happen?
And then, aside from Lucas, there was the matter of her and her parents. They would never live it down. She felt sick thinking about their disappointment and the whispers that would circulate around the village like a raging forest fire blazing out of control. When she returned to see them, people would stare at her. Her parents would shy away from discussing it but she would see the sadness in their eyes.
She would be at the heart of a tabloid scandal: ‘desperate virgin in sordid tryst with billionaire happy to use her for a few days before discarding her’. ‘Sad and gullible innocent lured to a villa for sex, too stupid to appreciate her own idiocy’.
‘Marry me!’ she blurted out and then looked at him with wide-eyed dismay.
She jumped to her feet and began pacing the veranda, before curling onto the three-seater wicker sofa and drawing her knees up.
‘Forget I said that.’
