Part 1 (1/2)

A Vengeful Pa.s.sion.

Lynne Graham.

CHAPTER ONE.

ASHLEY couldn't sit still. She got up to pace her sister's kitchen again. Dear lord, how much longer would they be at the police station? Surely by now they realised that they had the wrong person? Her brother wasn't a car thief or a joy rider. He had respect for other people's property ... hadn't he?

Tim was no angel-what teenager was? But he was intelligent. He had a promising academic future ahead of him. He would soon be sitting his final exams. Why would he go off the rails and attempt to steal a car? He had a car of his own, for goodness sake! Tim had been living here with her sister for the past two months. While their parents were in New Zealand, enjoying a long-antic.i.p.ated reunion with relatives, there had been nowhere else for him to go. Unfortunately, Tim hadn't wanted to stay with Susan and Arnold. And Ashley had understood his reluctance. She wouldn't have wanted to live with Susan's rules and regulations either.

The white s.p.a.ce-age kitchen reminded her of an operating theatre. It was sterile. There was no clutter, Susan would not allow clutter. Her home was obsessively clean and tidy. Just like Susan herself. On the phone, though, she'd been hysterical, or as close to hysterical as someone as repressed as Susan could get. Tim's arrest in full view of the neighbours had smashed her composure. Break beyond the guidelines of Susan's rigid moral code and you were out in no man's land all on your own. A pariah. n.o.body knew that better than Ashley. On the day Susan had discovered that her unmarried teenage sister was pregnant, Susan had turned her back without hesitation. When you threatened to become a social embarra.s.sment, Susan would literally cross the street to avoid you.

Ashley took sudden ironic strength from that awareness. If Susan had had the slightest suspicion that Tim might be guilty, she would have let Arnold go to the police station alone.

'Can I get you a cup of tea, Miss Forrester?'

Ashley spun round with a nervous jerk. Her sister's housekeeper, Mrs Adams, stood in the doorway, rotund in her sensible dressing-gown, her discomfort palpable. 'No, thanks. I couldn't,' Ashley muttered.

'Any word-?' 'Nothing yet.'

'He's such a ... spirited young man,' the older woman remarked.

Ashley paled at the reminder. Tim had his father's temper. When he was roused, Tim was hot-headed and aggressive. Hunt Forrester rejoiced in Tim's ability to stand up to him. A boy was supposed to have grit and guts. A girl wasn't. Just as baby girls were the mistakes you had to accept on the road to fathering an all important son, the second chapter in her father's book of s.e.xist 'do's' and 'don'ts' said that girls were supposed to be sugar and spice, rarely seen and never heard. Ashley had never fitted the rulebook. In one way or another she had always transgressed.

Ashley had rebelled but Susan had always conformed. Arnold had come along when Susan was eighteen. Although he was nearly twenty years older, he had been her sister's first and last boyfriend. Susan had never spread her wings in the outside world, never fought for a taste of the freedom which other young women took for granted. Ashley had often wondered if her sister had rushed into marriage to escape their domineering bully of a father and a home atmosphere riven with tension and frequent angry scenes.

'That's the car .. .' Mrs Adams tensed. 'I'll go back to my room, Miss Forrester.' Ashley pushed a nervous hand through her dishevelled mane of red-gold curling hair and took a deep, steadying breath. Susan didn't know she was here waiting and her sister would probably see her presence as an act of unwelcome interference. As she heard the key in the front door, she walked out to the hall, praying that Tim would walk in, angry and shaken but unafraid ... in other words, an innocent accused. Dear G.o.d, she couldn't even bring herself to consider the alternative!

The lanky youth who lunged through the door at full tilt didn't even see her standing there. Tim raced upstairs and the loud slam of a door ricocheted through the house. Arnold appeared next. In the act of shedding his raincoat, the older man froze. 'Ashley?'

Susan thrust past him. Her oval face was a waxen mask, stamped by bruised eyes and two burning spots of enraged red. 'Ashley?' she exclaimed shrilly. 'Susan-' Arnold planted a restraining hand on his wife's sleeve. 'Stay out of this!' Susan rounded on her husband furiously. 'She's here and I'm glad she is. I want her to know what she's done!'

'What I've done?' Ashley echoed after an incredulous pause.

'This is all your fault!' Susan hissed at her. 'What am I supposed to tell Mum and Dad when they come home? They put Tim in our care. He was our responsibility. When Dad finds out about this, he'll blame me for ever letting you near Tim. You don't need to worry! Dad won't come calling on you for his pound of fles.h.!.+'

Susan in a rage was a stranger to Ashley. She had the weird feeling that she had stepped into a crazy mirror-world where familiar people become unrecognisable. As a rule her sister was frigidly unemotional, but tonight she was a woman possessed, alien in her spitting belligerence.

Ashley moved a pleading hand. 'Susan, please. I don't know what you're talking about. How can I be involved in this?'

'Aren't you involved in everything that drags our family down? Do you know whose car he wrecked?' Susan ranted. 'Do you know why he wrecked it?' Ashley was in a daze, devastated by the obvious admission that Tim was apparently guilty as charged.

'Our stupid little brother went out to get his revenge on the man who left you in the lurch four years ago!' Susan's enraged face suddenly crumpled and she half covered her wobbling mouth with her splayed fingers, denying the tears that were threatening. 'So what does he do? He takes his car and goes berserk with it in the grounds of his home! He's caused thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of damage. That car cost more than this house did! And it's a write-off!' Her shaking voice was rising steeply. 'He's demolished their b-bl-blasted stupid fountain and ripped up their bowling-green lawn! And for that, he's likely to go to prison!'

'But that's impossible,' Ashley whispered through bone-dry lips. As Arnold attempted to comfort his wife, he was elbowed rudely away. Her sister fled upstairs as Tim had done minutes earlier. In the earth-shattering silence that she left behind, another door slammed. 'She can't bear to have anyone see her cry,' Arnold sighed, steering Ashley into the lounge. 'Best leave her to herself until she calms down.'

A wave of dizziness was a.s.sailing Ashley. White as a sheet, she swayed and braced herself with both hands on the back of the sofa. It was impossible. It couldn't be true. Tim didn't even know who she had been involved with while she was at university. Somehow Susan had got hold of the wrong end of the stick, lost her head and made quite insane accusations.

Over by the drinks cabinet, Arnold was talking to himself. 'None of us is to blame. The boy's out of control, but he was out of control long before he came to us.'

'Tim couldn't possibly have taken ... Vito's car,' Ashley said unsteadily.

Arnold sipped at his whisky. He had forgotten to offer her a drink. That oversight spoke volumes for his state of mind. 'I'm sorry, my dear. You're still in the dark, aren't you? Take it from me, you'd be wiser staying there,' he completed heavily.

'Arnold!' Ashley wanted to scream and shake him out of his lethargy. 'I need to know what's going on!' Her brother-in-law took a deep breath. 'Tim goes to school with-er. .. Cavalieri's nephew, Pietro.'

'He never told me that!' Ashley burst out.

'Until recently, Tim had no idea that there had ever been any previous connection between our family and the Cavalieri clan.' Lines of strain were grooved into Arnold's thin features. 'At one stage, believe it or not, the two boys were actually firm friends. Pietro moved with a fast crowd and Tim was popular with them. It was Pietro who started up that trouble at that nightclub, but since his family have more influence than we have, poor Tim carried the can alone-'

'What trouble?' Ashley interrupted blankly.

Arnold groaned. 'He was up before the magistrates in the spring for disorderly conduct and criminal damage after getting into a fight.'

Ashley closed her stricken eyes. 'Does n.o.body tell me anything?'

'To be fair, he got in with the wrong crowd.' Arnold sighed. 'And after that nightclub business he did realise that he'd been handpicked as the fall guy. The club had no intention of pursuing a Cavalieri to court.'

'So this wasn't Tim's first offence,' Ashley registered in horror.

'The friends.h.i.+p with Pietro cooled after that, but last month Tim attended a party at Pietro's home,' Arnold continued with visible reluctance. 'Someone there identified him as your brother. The two boys had already been involved in some silly rivalry over a girl. Pietro jumped on the bandwagon, made certain offensive remarks concerning-er-your past-er-relations.h.i.+p with his uncle, and there was a fight.'

Ashley's knees gave. She felt her pa.s.sage down into the nearest seat, her stomach knotting up with nauseous cramps. Arnold managed to avoid her anguished stare.

'Tim thumped h.e.l.l out of the little swine and he was thrown out,' he said grimly. 'But unfortunately, Pietro wasn't prepared to take his come-uppance lying down. He and his friends, having found Tim's weak spot, continued to bait him at school. And last month, four of them cornered him and beat him up.'

An inarticulate gasp of distress escaped her bloodless lips. She remembered how uncommunicative Tim had been about that episode. She had got nowhere when she tried to find out what had lain behind that attack. Tim had stared at the wall. He had almost stormed out when she'd persisted. In the end, she had minded her own business. She had been the black sheep of her family for over four years and her only recently renewed link with Tim had been too tenuous and too precious to risk.

She bent her head sickly. 'Go on.'

'Susan and I were extremely disturbed when he refused to tell us what had provoked that attack. We did think about approaching the school but I felt that Tim would find that humiliating. I expected it all to blow over. Believe me, I regret that decision now.'

'But why didn't he tell us what was happening? Ashley moved her head in a numb motion, too shaken to think straight. .

'You have to view this situation and the players involved without rose-tinted specs,' Arnold said flatly. 'I'm afraid I've never had much time for your father's determination to exclude you from the family circle. It has caused enormous stress to everyone concerned, particularly to your mother and Tim .. .' , . .

The carpet blurred beneath Ashley s swimming eyes. 'Tim's very attached to you and very loyal. He didn't trust us enough to tell us what was happening.' He hesitated. 'And, much as I love my wife, I find it incredulous that after twelve years of marriage Susan is still so desperate to win her father' s approval that she is willing to cut her only sister out of her life just because he demands that she do so.'

It was coals of fire on Ashley's head. Susan had scars from their childhood as well. She simply dealt with them differently. Ashley tasted blood in her mouth. Involuntarily she had bitten her tongue. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered.

'You have nothing to apologise for. Tim went out to level a personal score,' Arnold a.s.serted. 'He broke into the grounds of the Cavalieri home, started the car, couldn't control it and left a trail of destruction behind him. He ran off before he could be caught but he had been seen.'

Ashley was feeling physically ill. Her past had obtruded painfully into Tim's present. In her name, he had been provoked, humiliated and driven into an attempt to strike back. 'Has he been charged?'

'Of course. The Cavalieri's own one of the biggest banking concerns in Europe. Tim won't talk his way out of this little lot. But he's brought it on himself.' 'How can you say that?' Shaking briefly free of her shock, Ashley leapt upright. 'He defended me and now he's paying for it!' Tears streaked her cheeks. 'Vandalising someone else's property is hardly in line with a gallant defence of one's sister.'