Free Coercion to Love by Michelle Reid

violent flashed in his eyes, irritation at her stubbornness, Cass suspected, feeling her pulses quicken as she held on to that look, demanding acknowledgement of that one point if nothing else. She was not about to pull her punches with him. She knew his sins, and he knew she knew. The file or not, Carlo Valenti was the one who had sinned against her family, and not the other way around.
    His hard gaze shifted to the manila file, then he sighed almost defeatedly and said, 'I can, if you will allow me, to explain my own side of all of this.'
    Her bright head shook. 'Not if you're going to slander my sister again,' she said. 'Because I just refuse to listen.'
    He smiled at that, a grim half-cut of a thing which played at one corner of his attractive mouth. 'Damned if I do and damned if I don't, Miss Marlow?' he murmured.
    'You see, Mr Valenti,' Cass quite seriously explained, 'there really can be no excuse for what you did, no matter what the circumstances.'
    He got up, a touch of irritation in his movements as he spun to face the window behind him where his valley sat bathed in the warm orange glow of a slowly dying onset.
    A silence fell, the only sound in the room, the steady lick of the Venetian cased wall-clock hanging above the fireplace. Cass watched him clench and unclench his fist once or twice before he thrust it impatiently into his trouser pocket, and found herself chewing on her bottom lip half wishing there was some way he could come out of this smelling cleaner. She was beginning to acquire some respect for this man who was prepared to go to lengths to get his own way.

    He turned suddenly, honing directly on to her sea-green watchful eyes. 'You are quite right, of course,' he conceded at last, a grim parody of a smile touching his eyes with a sombreness he made no effort to hide. 'There are no excuses worth voicing.'
    He sat down again, shifting the file to one side in a way that said it now disgusted him as much as it did Cass. 'But I will say this,' he went on firmly, 'and without reserve. From the moment I discovered my daughter's existence, I have had only one aim in life, and that is to make up for the years she has been deprived of a father's love and support!'
    'By threatening to take her away from me, who has loved and cared for her since the day she was born?' Cass challenged. 'By putting us through hell over the last twelve months while you pursued us like some avenging devil?'
    He sighed in exasperation, then took a firm hold on his Latin temper. 'I concede that this whole thing between you and I began very badly and has proceeded to deteriorate ever since. Twelve months ago, when I made that phone call to you, I had only just learned that I had a daughter, and I was in a state of severe shock. I frightened you with my admittedly arrogant demands,' he acknowledged, 'and naturally you took flight before I had a chance to explain to you what my intentions were.'
    "To bring Terry back here to live with you",' she quoted his own words of twelve months ago right back at him.
    'No!' he denied. 'I wanted to bring you both here to live!' he corrected, bringing her green eyes flicking up to his to see the grim sincerity written on his face. 'For the last twelve months, Miss Marlow, you have been running, and I have been chasing after you to tell you just that.'
    A new silence fell, one where at last her resolve to fight him to the death began to waver.
    At no point over the last twelve months have I ever meant either you or Teresa any harm!' he insisted fiercely.
    'Except for that file.' Cass eyed the offending manila folder with distaste. "That took a great deal of time to compile, going by its thickness. That, Mr Valenti, was meant much at a desire to hurt, to me.'
    'Forget the file,' he growled, finding its return into the discussion irritating—then caught Cass's dry expression, and grimaced. 'OK-----' he sat back heavily in his seat '—so, desperate measures called for desperate mcans. I had come to the