by Lynne Graham
‘I can’t stay to chat. I have dinner guests,’ Luciano sighed.
A minute later, Kerry asked herself why the news that Luciano was entertaining should make her feel like Cinderella after the stroke of midnight. When she had finally gone to see why Miles was taking so long to rejoin her, she discovered him lying face down snoring on top of his bed and understood very well why she felt like Cinderella. Bored but not ready for bed, she finally succumbed to the lure of the magazine which Rochelle had left on the coffee-table.
Paola Massone, Kerry learned from the pages of the relevant interview, was a tiny, very attractive brunette. The photograph of Paola emerging from an exclusive restaurant with Luciano some weeks earlier gave Kerry an unexpected and unpleasant jolt. Smooth and sleek in a well-cut dinner jacket, with a smiling Paola’s possessive little hand pinned to his sleeve, Luciano looked utterly devastating. And when Kerry read the accompanying interview, her teeth ground together.
‘We expect to be married within the next year but we’re not in a rush,’ Paola had declared to the world in print. ‘Luciano and I enjoy a perfect understanding of our shared future and I am content to wait until he decides that the time is right.’
No, she was not about to throw a jealous, suspicious fit over that article, Kerry told herself wryly. Lots of women talked nonsense about rich, handsome men in magazine interviews and it was hardly Luciano’s fault that the brunette had decided to earn herself some publicity by making attention-grabbing statements. Furthermore, she trusted Luciano…didn’t she?
The following morning, Miles greeted Kerry with profuse apologies for his behaviour and insisted on making her breakfast. His lively mood astonished her, for she had been certain that he would be suffering from too severe a hangover to even rise from his bed to see her off.
‘Since I can hardly pretend not to know why my sister was breathing fire yesterday, what’s the latest on you and Luciano?’ Miles enquired chattily.
Kerry coloured. ‘I’m going out to Italy with him.’
‘I’m happy with that if it makes you happy.’ Miles gave her a rueful scrutiny. ‘Of recent, I have been having second thoughts about who else might have taken that cash from Linwoods.’
Kerry studied him in surprise and then smiled. ‘I’m glad.’
‘It was easier to believe that Luciano had committed the fraud because he wasn’t one of us. But I’m starting to think that it might have been Steven—’
‘Steven Linwood…our cousin?’ Kerry frowned but, although she was taken aback by the direction his suspicions had taken him in, she was pleased that he had moved beyond his prejudice to doubt his former conviction in Luciano’s guilt.
‘He’s your cousin, not mine,’ Miles reminded her.
‘But you and Steven practically grew up together. How can you suspect him of stealing?’
‘Do you think I want to? And, if you ask me, that was Luciano’s biggest handicap when that theft was uncovered. Steven is such a likeable guy that nobody was willing to suspect him. But as it looks less and less likely that Luciano was responsible, we have to ask ourselves nasty questions. As deputy accountant at the time, Steven had the most opportunity to cook the books.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Don’t forget that with his father ill, Steven was pretty much in full charge,’ Miles added.
Kerry thought about her cousin, Steven. He was older then she was and she thought of him as a kind, unassuming man, but he was not someone whom she could feel she had ever known well because he was naturally quiet and reserved. ‘It was Steven who noticed the money had gone missing,’ she objected. ‘He’d hardly have blown the whistle on himself!’
‘Why not? Can you think of a better way to throw suspicion on to others? After all, with an audit in the offing, Steven would’ve known he couldn’t hide the discrepancies in the accounts for much longer!’ Miles grimaced. ‘But I just feel sick at the idea that he might have stolen from the firm.’
The limousine that picked Kerry up from her stepbrother’s apartment that morning was empty. Luciano rang her on a car phone. ‘Kerry—?’
‘Where are you? Are you meeting me at the airport instead?’
When he expelled his breath in an audible hiss, she knew that she was about to be disappointed. ‘No. An important meeting had to be rescheduled for this afternoon. I’ll join you in Tuscany tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? I wanted you to meet my grandparents again—’
‘I know…but let’s face it, they won’t notice I’m missing,’ Luciano murmured gently.
Kerry flew to Dublin on a commercial flight and when she landed a car was waiting to whisk her out to the shabby but spacious house in Howth that her grandfather’s cousin, Tommy, inhabited.
Hunt O’Brien greeted Kerry with unusual animation. ‘I’m lunching with a literary agent this week,’ he announced with pride. ‘He’s Tommy’s great-nephew. I hope to recoup the family fortunes with my lifetime’s work.’
‘That should be very interesting…but you really don’t need to worry about having your books published.’ Kerry was quick to pour cold water on that idea, for she dreaded the prospect of her grandfather’s touching faith in his own work being destroyed by a blunt rejection. After all, a series of history volumes written over a period as long as half a century could not possibly be contemporary enough in outlook to win praise.
She bent down for her grandmother to kiss her cheek and murmured a compliment about the elaborately worked but faded embroidery stretched across the wooden sewing frame. It was one of several pieces that the old lady often simply pretended to stitch since arthritis had affected her hands.
Kerry asked her grandparents to listen carefully to the important news she had to tell them. She avoided stating outright that their only child, Carrie, was dead and concentrated instead on explaining that her late mother had given birth to three other daughters some years before her own birth.
‘My goodness…only Carrie could have kept that a secret,’ Viola O’Brien commented with a wondering shake of her white head.
‘I do think that your mother ought to have considered mentioning that we had more than one grandchild,’ her husband remarked. ‘Perhaps she meant to tell us on her last visit and forgot.’
‘Most unfortunate. Those poor girls have not had a single birthday card from us,’ her grandmother lamented.
Even while residing with her grandparents Kerry had received only one or two cards herself, but she saw no need to point that out. To the best of her ability, she described Misty, Freddy and Ione. Her grandmother displayed enthusiasm at the mention of great-grandchildren and said she would look forward to inviting them all to stay at Ballybawn.
Kerry was surprised by that assurance, for she had not yet told the older couple that they would be able to live at the castle again.
‘Luciano telephoned me last week,’ Hunt O’Brien whispered to his granddaughter in a careful aside. ‘He’s desperate to find someone to look after the old place—’
‘We shall have to instruct the housekeeper to air all the beds.’ Viola smiled at that prospect before giving Kerry an anxious look. ‘You did say that we would have a housekeeper, didn’t you?’
Thinking of Misty’s claim of how very, very rich all her sisters were, Kerry nodded. She was surprised that Luciano had already told her grandfather that he and his wife could go home to Ballybawn and very pleased that he had made that soothing promise in advance of her own trip to London. Her grandmother mentioned that she was looking forward to attending the Leopardstown races the following week and her grandfather confirmed that they would be ready to come home only after the National Book Fair had taken place in early July.
‘I’m…I’m going to Italy with Luciano for a few weeks,’ Kerry admitted tautly then.
‘Now I understand why Florrie has been crying so much in recent years,’ her grandmother pronounced with satisfaction. ‘Our granddaughters were getting married and we didn’t know it. I think an Italian honeymoon trip
is a charming idea, darling.’
Kerry tensed and flushed brick-red. While she endeavoured to come up with the words that would disabuse the older woman of the belief that she and Luciano were in the midst of planning a wedding, her grandfather began to describe his own boyhood trip to Rome. His host took up the topic of foreign travel with enthusiasm. Recognising how clumsy any bald announcement of continuing singledom would be at that point, particularly with her grandfather’s cousin present, Kerry fell silent in mortified discomfiture.
Luciano phoned her when she was travelling back to the airport. ‘My jet awaits you on the tarmac, cara,’ he quipped. ‘Check out the sleeping compartment during the flight. There’s a surprise for you.’
Flying out to Tuscany in style and treated like royalty by the cabin staff, Kerry discovered that the compartment was piled high with designer garments in her size. She opened boxes, unzipped garment bags, came upon a whole embarrassing collection of whisper-thin lingerie. Biting her lip, she held up a white stretchy shirt-dress against her slim body and stared in the mirror. She had only packed an overnight bag for her visit to London yet it had not even occurred to her to wonder what she would wear in Italy. She was alarmed by her own uncharacteristic lack of practical forethought.
Yet Luciano had given no promises in terms of timing or exclusivity. He had made no commitment to her either. His gift of expensive clothes, however, truly shook her. A rich male bought fancy togs for his mistress, didn’t he? Did he rush out and spend a small fortune on an entire wardrobe for his latest girlfriend? No, he did not, she answered for herself. A new lover might be offended or even seriously embarrassed by such generosity. But a mistress, or a woman whom Luciano was determined to treat as his mistress, just had to accept what might be considered payment for her sexual services.
On that cheering thought, Kerry skimmed off her unexciting navy trousers and jacket and used the compact shower adjoining the cabin to freshen up. The lacy lingerie felt wicked against her naked skin. The white shirt-dress clung as close to her slender curves as a caress and she knew just how much he would appreciate that effect.
Was Luciano worth more to her than the sisters whom she would never get to know while he was around? Her guilty eyes shadowed with regret. But choice had been torn from her the same moment that she accepted that she still loved him and indeed loved him a great deal more than she had five years earlier. She had had to lose him to appreciate him. She had had to live five years without him to realise just how boring, lonely and empty life could be.
She had not required Ione to tell her that Luciano was a very clever and dangerous male. She had always known that. He was absolutely ruthless and he had worked very hard at trying to conceal that trait from her, only he had never succeeded. The dark, stormy, shadowy side of his hot-blooded nature had always secretly excited her, for he was so very different from her. Nor had Ione needed to warn Kerry that Luciano was already hurting her family by coming between her and her newfound sisters. The way her siblings felt about Luciano, that separation had been inevitable. After all, no woman painfully conscious that she had once had insufficient faith in the guy she loved would hesitate to range herself squarely by his side when she got a second chance.
And it was a second chance, Kerry reminded herself. She did not require bribery, persuasion or payment in any shape or form to share Luciano’s bed. The very idea was laughable when in spite of her every attempt to convince herself otherwise, she still burned to lie under and over him again and behave like a shameless hussy. In fact being a mistress promised to be a lot of fun. If anything, she would be taking advantage of him…endless, wonderful, enjoyable advantage…and she could hardly wait.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS THE limousine climbed the steep road Luciano never once removed his steady gaze from the Villa Contarini, which dominated the lush valley.
The magnificent seventeenth-century palazzo built by the first Roberto Tessari sat high on a hillside thick with oak woods and clumps of black cypress. It was not a building that proffered a warm welcome, it was a living stone monument to Tessari power and money. At the foot of the long, sweeping driveway, Luciano told his chauffeur to stop. Just beyond the walls he had scaled as a boy he alighted from his limousine, determined to savour his right to walk up through the superb gardens which had been his father’s pride and joy. In the drowsing heat of early evening, the aroma of the flowering oleanders lay heavy on the still air.
Impatient to find Kerry, he crossed the immaculate marble terrace that bounded the imposing front entrance. He felt good. Everything had fallen smoothly into place, everything was just as he wanted it to be, for he had never pictured being at the villa without Kerry. He snapped off a single white rose that had been allowed to curl round a pillar carrying the weathered bust of some mythical sea creature and went inside. The interior was silent, for he had given the staff the evening off. The arrival of Luciano da Valenza, the bastard son of Stephanella, in the grand villa of his titled forebears was a special occasion to which he wanted no witnesses. His steps echoed round the big porch.
In the vast hall that stretched before him, huge portraits hung in serried ranks on the walls. Although he had never set foot in the Villa Contarini before, he could name virtually every face depicted on those canvases. As a teenager, he had devoured all the books that documented the history of the Tessari family and depicted their treasure house of a home. In one portrait he now recognised the lineaments of his own hard bone structure reflected in the stern visage of his paternal grandfather. But the resemblance meant nothing to him, for it was many years since he had experienced a need to belong to any family tree and he averted his attention with cool disdain from the painting of his own father.
Yet the claustrophobic silence still began to make him feel oddly uncomfortable. His own reflection in a giant mirror startled him and he frowned. In rebellion, he jerked loose his tie, cast it on a marble side-table and unbuttoned his shirt collar. This was now his home: he should make himself at home. But it did not feel like home. But then for longer than he cared to recall nowhere had ever felt like home to him. When he had left the Contarini estate as a child he had never again allowed himself to become attached to a place.
A slight sound alerted him to the awareness that he was no longer alone and he swung round, light as a dancer on his feet for all his commanding height and powerful build. Kerry was poised at the foot of the imposing staircase, an uncertain smile wavering on her soft mouth. Her sweet familiarity twisted something inside him. The dying brilliance of the sunlight cascaded down through the tall landing window above and turned her hair to a fiery, curly halo and illuminated her skin to a pale gold that glowed against the perfect white of her dress. His hunger to possess her again was immediate, ferocious, primal…
In the suffocating silence Kerry stared back at Luciano, her heart going bang-bang-bang, her mouth running dry as a bone. His charcoal-grey pinstripe suit was conventional in colour but the sharp cut was all Italian designer style and gave him the suave, sardonic aspect of a sexy gangster. He had strolled down the hall with a lithe grace of movement that would have made a lion on the prowl look clumsy. She had watched him peel off his tie and throw it aside, luxuriant black hair gleaming as a slice of light fell on his bold, bronzed profile. Simultaneously, her bones had turned to water. He just took her breath away.
The stunning golden eyes Luciano levelled on her released a flock of butterflies inside her tense tummy. Her legs were so rigid that her knees began to wobble. He had an effect on her very similar to a chain reaction, she acknowledged in dismay. Embarrassment claimed her when she registered that her nipples had tightened into stiff little points pushing forward within her bra and possibly even visible to him through the fine, clinging material of her dress.
His brilliant gaze arrowed over her, lingered around chest level, his dense black lashes lowering and then skimming up with all male enjoyment to watch the wave of slow, hot colour climb her face.
With a fl
ourish, he presented her with the rose. ‘Did the staff look after you?’
The petals felt like soft, smooth silk beneath her appreciative fingers. ‘Yes…I was shown to my room—’
‘My room too,’ he slotted in lazily.
At that reminder, Kerry ran even more out of breath. Some timbre in that throaty drawl of his teased at her spinal cord like a honeyed caress. ‘Then I was served with afternoon tea in a very opulent drawing room. It’s a very large building and rather intimidating…’
‘Do you realise that you’re whispering? We’re alone here. Feel free to shout…even scream,’ Luciano suggested huskily while he settled his hands to her slim hips and lifted her up onto the second last step of the stairs. ‘Don’t let the Villa Contarini inhibit your natural instincts—’
‘Doesn’t it inhibit you?’
‘You must be joking, cara mia.’ Lifting a seemingly casual hand, Luciano let his fingertips trace the fine line of her throat and watched her automatically tip her head back to invite his touch.
With the same measured cool, he tugged free the first button on her dress and watched her snatch in a sudden driven breath. ‘I want to look at you here before the sunlight goes…the way I often used to imagine you…’
‘Imagine me…?’ Kerry could barely get breath into her constricted lungs.
‘While I was in prison I pictured you in many ways in many places. You’re not ready for the details, which makes it more exciting for me because you have no idea what I plan to do at any given moment,’ Luciano pointed out with a roughened edge to his dark, rich drawl.
‘F-fantasies?’ Only the one word escaped Kerry, for as soon as the stammer emerged she clamped her lips closed.
‘What do you think?’ The second button came loose, the parted edges springing back to expose the upper slopes of her breasts and the pronounced rise and fall of those pouting swells as her breathing grew more quick and shallow.
‘Shouldn’t we g-go upstairs?’ she heard herself gasp.