Michelle Reid - The Man Who Risked It All

‘Look at me, then—up here where my eyes are.’ He indicated with the movement of one of his hands. ‘Just one brief eye-to-eye contact, cara , and I promise I will step back.’

Thinking it was a bit like asking her to strip naked, because making eye contact with Franco had much the same effect on her already edgy senses, Lexi pushed out a short sigh, then lifted up her chin.

He dared to smile, with his lips and his eyes—a tender kind of gentle humour that struck like a flaming arrow directly at her heart. ‘I wish you weren’t so handsome,’ she told him wistfully. ‘Why couldn’t you have a bigger nose, or something? Or a fat, ugly mouth?’

‘You know …’ reaching out to run his hands around her slender waist, he carefully drew her closer ‘… your open honesty will shame the devil one day.’

‘Are you the devil in question?’ She didn’t even try to stop her progress towards him.

Franco grimaced. ‘Probably … I suppose—yes …’ he admitted. ‘Because I am about to break my promise to you and …’ He did not bother to finish that. He just closed the gap between their mouths.

MICHELLE REIDgrew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. Now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet, and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without, and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE KANELLIS SCANDAL

AFTER THEIR VOWS

MIA’S SCANDAL ( The Balfour Legacy )

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Man Who Risked It All

Michelle Reid

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A FEVER of hopeful expectancy had spread through the crowds waiting to see if the race would begin. Suited up and ready to go, Franco Tolle stood inside the White Streak team marquee with his safety helmet held in the crook of his arm and his eyes fixed on the monitor, watching for the race organisers’ decision to show up on the screen. The wind had picked up, whipping the glass-smooth surface of the Mediterranean into a turbulent boil—not ideal conditions in which to race notoriously temperamental powerboats at sixty metres per second.

‘What do you think?’ Marco Clemente, his co-driver, came up beside him.

Franco offered a shrug in response. The truth was he wasn’t worried so much by the racing conditions as he was by Marco’s determination to race with him today.

‘Are you sure you are up for this?’ he questioned, keeping his voice level and his eyes fixed on the monitor screen.

Marco hissed out an impatient breath. ‘If you don’t want me in the boat with you, Franco, then just damn well say so.’

And there was the reason why Franco had asked the question in the first place. Marco was on edge, uptight, volatile. He’d spent the last hour pacing the marquee, snapping at anyone who spoke to him, and now he was snapping at Franco. It was not the best frame of mind for him to be in control of the boat’s powerful throttle.

‘In case you have forgotten, Franco, half of White Streak belongs to me—even if you are the one with the design and build genius.’

The petulance in his tone made Franco set his teeth together to stop him saying something he might regret. So they co-owned White Streak . So they’d raced both her and her sister boat across Europe under the co-owned White Streak company name for the last five years. But this would be the first time in three of those years that they would be climbing into the same boat together. This was the first time that Franco had given into the pressure and agreed to let Marco take the seat next to him.

And why had he done that? Because the championship hung in the balance with this one last race of the season and his usual co-driver had gone down with the flu yesterday. Marco was, without question, the best man to have sitting in Angelo’s place when the stakes were this high, so he’d convinced himself that despite the rift in their friendship the two of them could be professional about this. What he had not known until he’d turned up here today was that Marco was not behaving like the laid-back guy everyone was used to seeing around the place.

‘We used to be good friends,’ Marco husked with low-voiced intensity. ‘For almost all our lives we were the closest of friends. Then I made one small mistake and you—’

‘Sleeping with my wife was not a small mistake.’

As if the wind outside had found its way into the tent, the chill of Franco’s voice struck through his own protective clothing to his skin.

Marco seemed to breathe that chill in deep. ‘Lexi was not your wife back then.’

‘No.’ Franco turned his head to look at Marco for the first time since the conversation had begun. They stood the same height, shared the same lean athletic build, the same age and the same nationality—but there the similarities ended. For where Marco was fair-haired, with blue eyes, Franco was dark: dark hair, dark eyes, a darker demeanour altogether. ‘You, however, were my closest friend.’

Marco tried to hold his gaze. Remorse and frustration vied inside him for a couple of seconds before he sighed and looked away.

‘What if I told you it never happened?’ he posed abruptly. ‘What if I said I made up the whole thing to break the two of you up?’

‘Why would you want to?’

‘Why would you want to throw your life away on a teenager?’ Marco hit back, and revealed that frustration had won out over remorse. ‘You still married her anyway, and left me feeling like the worse bastard alive. And Lexi did not even know I’d said anything to you, did she? You didn’t tell her.’

As grim and silent as a corpse, Franco looked back at the monitor screen, the naturally sensual shape to his mouth clamping into a hard straight line.

‘She can’t have known,’ Marco muttered, as if he was talking to himself. ‘She was too nice to me.’

‘Is there a purpose in this conversation?’ Franco asked with a sudden flash of irritation. ‘We have a race to attend to, and it must be obvious that I have no wish to discuss the past with you.’

‘OK, signori , we have the go!’ As if on cue, the shout from their team manager across the tent broke through the tension eddying around the two men.

Franco began to walk away, but Marco grabbed his arm to hold him still.

‘For God’s sake, Franco,’ he murmured urgently. ‘I’m sorry if I messed things up between you and Lexi, but she has been out of your life for over three years now! Can’t we put the whole stupid incident behind us and go back to how we—?’

‘Shall I tell you why you’ve decided to drag all of this up?’ Franco swung back to him, icy contempt contorting his face now. ‘You are in debt to White Streak to the tune of millions. You are scared because you know you need my goodwill to keep that ugly truth under wraps. You have heard the rumours that I am thinking of pulling the plug on powerboat racing and it is scaring you to death—because you know the whole financial mess you’ve placed us in is likely to blow up in your face. And just for the record,’ he concluded icily, ‘your lousy attempt at an apology for what you did has come three and a half years too damn late.’

Tugging his arm free, Franco turned away from Marco’s frozen expression. In truth, he hadn’t expected Marco to drag this up—and it didn’t help the way he was feeling to know that back in his apartment divorce papers from Lexi sat waiting for him to find the stomach to read them.

He strode out of the marquee into the hot sunlight, cold anger fizzing like iced nitrogen in his blood. This was Livorno; his home crowd was out there. But he barely heard their rousing cheer. A red mist had risen across his eyes, in the centre of that his once closest friend lay entwined in the heaving throes of passion with the only woman he had ever loved. He had lived with that image ever since Marco had planted it in his head almost four years ago. He had taken it with him into his brief marriage to Lexi. It had coloured the way he had treated her and even made him suspect that the child she had carried was not his. It had changed the pattern of his life. It had embittered him until there was nothing left of the man he’d used to be, and when Lexi had miscarried the baby that image had shadowed the way he had reacted to the loss.

And the hell of it was that Marco was right: Lexi had never known why he’d behaved that way. The one small salve to his own wounded pride was that she’d never known how her betrayal of him with his best friend had broken his damn stupid, gullible heart.

Like a nemesis he could not shake off, Marco appeared at his shoulder again. ‘Franco, amico , I need you to listen—’

‘Don’t speak to me about the past,’ Franco cut in harshly, before Marco could say any more. ‘Focus instead on the job in hand, or I will take the decision to fold up the White Streak company. And the financial mess you’ve placed it in will come out.’

‘But you will ruin me,’ Marco breathed hoarsely. ‘My family’s reputation will be—’

‘Precisely.’

He watched Marco go pale, aware of the reason behind his terror. The famous Clemente name was synonymous with fine wines, honesty and charity. It headed some of the biggest charitable organisations in Italy alongside the Tolle name. Their two families had been close for as far back as he could remember—which was the reason he’d kept his rift with Marco so low-key. They still shared a business relationship. They met often at charitable and social events. He’d allowed Marco to laugh off rumours about the cooling of their friendship, and he knew he’d let him get away with it because it was less cutting to his ego than to let anyone learn the real truth.

‘Hey you guys, wave to the crowd,’ their team manager prompted from behind them.

Like an obedient puppet Franco raised his arm and waved while beside him Marco did the same thing, switching on his famously brilliant smile and charming everyone as he always did. Franco put on his helmet to give his hands something else to do. The moment he did so he lost his own smile. The two of them climbed into the boat’s open cockpit. They strapped themselves in. Their race advisor was droning the usual information into his earpiece about wind speeds, the predicted height and length of the ocean swell. They did their pre-start checks, working with the unison of two people used to knowing what the other was thinking all the time. They had been childhood friends, through adolescence and into adulthood together. He would have staked his life on Marco always being there as a deeply loyal friend through to his dotage. Growing old together, kids, grandkids … Warm summer evenings spent watching the sun go down while drinking the best wine the Clemente cellars had to offer and reminiscing about the good old times.

The twin engines fired, their throaty roar a sweet song to Franco’s marine engineer’s ears. They took her out towards the start line—a streak of bright white amongst the dozen other powerboats splashing the glistening ocean with bright primary colours and bold sponsor logos, all of them holding back on the throttle like crouching dragons, ready to roar into action the split second they were given the go.