The Cost of her Innocence. Jacqueline Baird

we have made and you will be fine.’

      ‘Are you sure I can’t visit, Helen? I will miss seeing you terribly.’

      ‘Yes, I am sure. My daughter lost her life at eighteen, and a lousy lawyer and so-called friends almost ruined yours. Remember what I told you: the world isn’t fair, so never dwell on the injustice of the past—that will only consume you with bitterness. Think only of your future. Now, go—and never look back. Clive Hampton, my lawyer, will be waiting for you and you can trust him. Listen to him, and be careful, confident and proud of the successful woman I know you will become….’ She gave her a hug. ‘Good luck.’

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘GOODNIGHT, MARY,’ Beth Lazenby called to the receptionist as she walked out of the offices of Steel and White, the accountancy firm in the centre of London where she was a junior partner. She paused for a moment on the pavement and took a deep breath, glad to be out in the fresh air—or not-so-fresh air she thought ruefully. She enjoyed her work, but just lately, and especially when she spent time at the cottage, she questioned whether she really wanted to spend the rest of her life in the city.

      Beth watched the people hurrying past her, their day’s work finished. It was rush hour, and when she saw the length of the queue at her usual bus stop she decided to walk to the next one. The exercise would do her good, and apart from Binkie she had nothing to hurry home for. Her friend Helen had died three years ago from cancer—four months after she had been released from prison on parole.

      Dismissing the sad memory, Beth looped her bag over one shoulder and walked on. A tall, striking woman, with red hair that gleamed like fire in the evening sun, her slenderly curved body moved sinuously beneath the grey linen dress she wore as she strolled along. But Beth was oblivious to the appreciative glances of every passing male. Men did not figure large in her life. She had a successful career and was proud of what she had achieved. She was content.

      Suddenly she saw a man a head taller than most of the crowd walking towards her and she almost stumbled. Her heart started to race and she swiftly averted her gaze from the black-haired man she hated with a vengeance. A man whose dark satanic image was engraved on her mind for all time—the lawyer Cannavaro, the devil himself as far as she was concerned, and he was a mere ten feet away.

      She heard Helen’s voice in her head. Be careful, confident and proud of the successful woman I know you will become.

      Beth tilted her chin at a determined angle and carried on walking. At least Helen had lived long enough to see her success, and she would not let her down now. Cannavaro would never recognise her. The naive Jane Mason was gone for ever, and Beth Lazenby was nobody’s fool. But the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she passed him, and out of the corner of her eye she caught the look he gave her. Did he hesitate? She didn’t know and didn’t care. She simply kept on walking. But her sense of well-being faded as memories of the past flooded her mind. Her full lips tightened bitterly as she wondered how many more innocent victims the vile Cannavaro had sent to prison in the past eight years.

      She recalled the naive teenager she had been, standing in the dock, frightened out of her wits. Cannavaro had smiled at her, and the deep, sympathetic tone of his voice when he’d told her not to be nervous or afraid had given her hope. He’d said he and everyone else present only wanted to discover the real truth of the case…. Stupidly, she had believed him. He had been her knight in shining armour, her saviour. But then Timothy Bewick and his friend James Hudson had both lied on the stand, and by the time she’d realised her mistake it was too late—she’d been found guilty. Her last view of Cannavaro as she’d been led from the court had been of him and her lawyer talking and laughing together as if she didn’t exist.

      Dante Cannavaro was feeling good. He had just won a deal for his client—a multinational company—for substantially more money than they had expected. Dismissing his waiting driver, he’d decided to walk to his apartment, where the customised Ferrari he had ordered was due to be delivered in an hour. A satisfied smile curved his lips.

      Striding along the pavement he found his dark eyes caught by the flaming red hair of a beautiful woman walking towards him and he lingered, the car suddenly forgotten. She was tall—about five-nine, he guessed—and wearing a conservative grey dress that ended an inch or so above her knees. The dress would have looked bland on most females, but on her it looked stunning, and his captivated gaze roamed over her slender but shapely body and long legs in primitive male appreciation.

      He paused, his head automatically turning as she passed him. The gentle sway of her hips was enough to give a weaker man a coronary. In Dante’s case it was not a hardening of the arteries in the heart that troubled him, but the hardening of a different part, much lower down. It wasn’t surprising he had such a reaction to her, he thought. She was beautiful and sexy and he had been celibate for a month, he reasoned. Before reminding himself that he was engaged to Ellen.

      As an international lawyer, Dante had offices in London, New York and Rome. He kept an apartment in all three cities, but considered his real home to be the estate in Tuscany where he’d been born, which had been in his family for generations.

      Dante’s Uncle Aldo—his father’s younger brother and head of Cannavaro Associates in Rome—had died last March, and it had been pointed out to him at the funeral that he was now the last remaining male Cannavaro. It was time he stopped indulging his preference for international law, concentrated on the long-established family firm and settled down and had a son or two—before the Cannavaro name died out completely.

      Dante had assumed he would marry and have children some day, but now, at the age of thirty-seven, he had suddenly been made to face his duty. He wanted children, hopefully a male heir, while he was still fit enough to be an active father. And so he had chosen Ellen, because he had known and respected her in a professional capacity for a couple of years and she ticked all the boxes. She was intelligent, attractive, and she liked children—plus, as a lawyer, she understood the demands of his work. And the sex between them was fine. It was a perfect partnership, and once Dante made a decision he never changed his mind. Other women were off the agenda for good.

      But the redhead was a stunner, and it was in the male psyche to look … he consoled himself.

      An hour later Beth smiled as she walked down the Edwardian-style terraced street. Unlocking the door of her one-bedroom ground-floor apartment, she entered the hall and kicked off her shoes, slipping her feet into a pair of slippers. She grinned as the only male in her life strolled over and rubbed against her ankle.

      ‘Hi, Binkie.’ She bent down and picked up the ginger cat and nuzzled his neck. She walked down the hall, past her bedroom, the living room and the bathroom, to the rear of the building, and entered the largest room—the kitchen-diner.

      She put Binkie down, switched on the kettle and opened the cupboard, taking out a can of cat food.

      ‘You must be starving,’ she said, filling his bowl with the tuna flavour he loved before placing it on the floor. In seconds his head was in it. With a wry smile at the foolishness of talking to her cat, she made a cup of coffee and, taking a sip, crossed to the back door that was set in the side wall of the kitchen. Opening it, she stepped out onto the patio.

      The garden was Beth’s pride and joy, and the flowers she had planted in a few tubs on the patio were a blaze of colour. Strolling past them, she admired her handiwork with a sense of satisfaction, and then walked on to the lawn that was framed by a four-feet-high brick wall, with a gate opening into the garden of the two-bedroom apartment above her.

      On the other side of her garden a high trellis had been fixed to the wall, and was completely covered by scented jasmine intertwined with clematis. She took another sip of coffee and looked around her with pleasure, dismissing the sighting of Cannavaro from her mind. He wasn’t worth a second thought. She walked back to the patio and sat down on one of the wooden chairs that circled the matching table to drink her coffee and admire her handiwork in peace.

      But just as she began to relax Beth’s neighbour, Tony, appeared, leaning on the gate. Tony was sturdily built, with short fair hair and a