by Lynne Graham
In a daze, Kerry walked out of her husband’s office building. She was all shaken up and the irony was that she very badly wanted to call her sisters and confide in them. Only, now Luciano’s derision had formed a giant wall between her and that comforting prospect. It was at that point that the final comprehension sank in on Kerry and she fell still in the middle of the street. My goodness, where had her wits been? Her sisters were already aware that Luciano owned the Salut chain and had targeted Linwoods!
In that moment, Kerry went from feeling disappointed that she could not lean on her sisters to feeling utterly betrayed by them and foolish. How could she have forgotten that strange conversation between her sisters which she had overheard at her own wedding? All that about feeling guilty about not telling ‘her’ and not interfering in other people’s marriages? Of course that exchange had related to her!
Furthermore, didn’t she have good reason to suspect that her sisters’ knowledge of events went back even further than her wedding? Hadn’t Misty admitted to having had Kerry checked out by an investigator prior to their first meeting? Presumably, Luciano, the male guilty of repossessing Ballybawn, had been checked out with even greater precision. What had Ione said? ‘Luciano is a very dangerous man who is already hurting your family.’ Kerry had assumed that Ione meant that Luciano’s existence was already causing grief between Kerry and her siblings. That was what she had believed Ione meant by ‘family’. Instead, Ione had been referring to the Linwoods.
A family who had never really been her family, Kerry conceded with pained honesty. Only Miles had ever made her feel as though she belonged to the Linwood clan and, ironically, Miles was a Bailey, not a Linwood. Yet he, like his sister, Rochelle, had still been much more a part of the Linwood family than Kerry had ever contrived to be. Now Luciano had wrecked even the tiniest chance of her ever getting closer to her father. Her husband had deliberately destroyed her father’s livelihood. She was twenty-six years old. Was it pathetic of her to have still cherished hopes that some day she would break through her father’s detachment and win his affection?
No doubt Luciano would deem such hopes another example of her unrealistic idealism! But suddenly Kerry had not a doubt about what she ought to be doing next, for her path seemed clear. She wanted to see her father. Harold Linwood was not a young man and he had just suffered a grievous blow. Was her father even aware that Luciano was responsible for the downfall of Linwoods? She paled and then squared her shoulders with determination. Her father was in need of all the support he could get and the least she could do as his daughter was express her regret and offer to help in any way that she could.
By the time that Kerry had established that her father was not at the office but at home and she had caught the train out to Surrey, the afternoon was well advanced. A taxi dropped her at Heathlands, a big, imposing dwelling surrounded by extensive gardens. Harold Linwood was in his study.
‘Have you come to express your sympathy?’ Her father was slumped in the imposing leather chair behind his desk, his pale blue eyes cold behind his spectacles and his intonation withering.
Kerry flushed, her tension increasing. ‘I know how much Linwoods means to you and how hard you’ve worked to build it up—’
‘Only for your husband to knock it down again like a pile of toy bricks!’
Squirming guilt and dismay assailed Kerry when she realised that he knew that Luciano had masterminded his downfall. ‘I didn’t know that Luciano was behind the Salut chain!’ she heard herself protest in her own defence. ‘I only found out today—’
‘He treated me to a personal visit.’ The older man pursed his lips and awarded her a bitter look of hostility. ‘I can’t stomach having his wife in my home!’
Kerry flinched. ‘I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have come and I’ll leave.’
‘Why did you come?’
‘I wanted to…I wanted to show you that I c-cared.’ Kerry closed her hands very tightly round the bag she was holding.
Harold Linwood loosed a contemptuous laugh. ‘I can soon cure you of that notion. Why would I want you to care? I’m not your father…’
For several timeless moments, Kerry could only stare at the older man with straining blue eyes and a frown lodged between her brows. ‘Sorry…what did you say?’
‘I should have told you years ago,’ Harold Linwood continued unpleasantly, ‘but I didn’t really suspect the truth until you were fifteen and by then I’d accepted you as mine and it would have been bloody embarrassing to say otherwise!’
Her legs were starting to shake and with an effort she forced them still again. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘I don’t see why I should pretend any more. Your stepmother and I once hoped to have children together. That was when I found out I was sterile and unlikely ever to father a child,’ he admitted flatly. ‘When you went into hospital to have your tonsils out, a blood sample was taken—’
‘Was it?’ Kerry frowned, unable to think straight but then recalling that a sample had been taken prior to surgery in case she later required a blood transfusion.
‘Well, I had testing done on that sample. It confirmed that your slut of a mother was sleeping around even in the first year of our marriage and that there was no way that you could be my daughter!’
Kerry still could not absorb what she was being told, for she was in a stupor of disbelief. ‘But if you’re not my father, who is?’
‘Carrie went with any man who took her fancy,’ Harold Linwood sneered. ‘It might have been a barman at the golf club, some tradesman who worked here, even one of our neighbours…anybody; she wasn’t fussy!’
At that point, Kerry spun round and walked out of the room. Crossing the hall, she opened the front door for herself and kept on walking, down the drive, along the road, back in the direction of the train station. It was a long walk but she didn’t care. Her mobile phone kept on ringing and she ignored it. Eventually she took it out of her bag and switched it off.
So, she wasn’t a Linwood. It was not the end of the world, she tried to tell herself, but just then she felt as though the ground had fallen away beneath her feet. She reminded herself that Misty and Ione had also had to come to terms with having been fathered by one of Carrie’s lovers. But then at least her sisters knew who that lover had been, whereas there was very little likelihood of Kerry ever finding out that same information. Would she even want to know?
It had been a day which more than any other day had made Kerry feel very alone and very foolish. First she had learned that Luciano had spent months cold-bloodedly planning and executing a devastating revenge on the Linwoods wine-store chain. Next she had been forced to accept that the sisters she trusted had kept their knowledge of Luciano’s unscrupulous activities to themselves rather than interfere. And finally, she had discovered that the man she had believed to be her father was not her father. Indeed, she had had that painful revelation thrown in her face!
No doubt Luciano would believe that she had received her just deserts for rushing to offer Harold Linwood her sympathy! Indeed, he would probably see it as yet another instance of disloyalty on her part. But then, Luciano had never understood why she had persisted in trying to build a family relationship with a man who made little attempt to conceal his uninterest in her. But, having been deserted by her mother as a young child, Kerry had found it almost impossible to accept that her father should reject her as well and she had made endless excuses for the older man. Now there were no more excuses to be made, she conceded.
Too upset to face returning to the townhouse, she resolved to stay out until she had come to terms with what she had learned. Certainly, she had no intention of confiding in Luciano. At least she could conserve a little pride by staying silent about her visit to Heathlands that afternoon and her subsequent humiliation at Harold Linwood’s hands…
Luciano’s day had been no more satisfying than Kerry’s.
An hour after Kerry had left the building, he had decided to go home b
ut Kerry had not been there. Irate at that discovery, he had returned to the office, only to find it impossible to settle back into work. Prolonged self-examination of the type he most disliked had eventually led to the grudging acknowledgement that he had been unreasonable, possibly even very unreasonable. Once he had become seriously involved with Kerry again, he should have reconsidered his goal of putting Linwoods out of business.
Harold Linwood was an unpleasant man but he was Kerry’s father and Luciano saw that he should have demonstrated some sensitivity on that score. Instead he had been guilty of wanting to have his cake and eat it too. It ought to have dawned on him that he could hardly bankrupt his father-in-law without causing his wife some distress. That that very elementary fact had not once occurred to Luciano shocked him in retrospect. He finally recognised that he had always been challenged to think of Kerry as a Linwood and had speedily consigned all recollection of her unfortunate connection to the family to the back of his mind, rather than allow that blood tie to interfere with his objectives.
Soon after he had reached those conclusions, Luciano tried to call Kerry on her mobile and he left a message. By five that afternoon, he had left four messages and he was becoming concerned. By six, he was back at the townhouse and he succumbed to the temptation of calling Misty to casually enquire if Kerry was with her.
‘She must be stuck in the traffic somewhere,’ he said dismissively when her sister gave him a negative answer and sounded audibly concerned.
By seven, Luciano had phoned Ballybawn to check that Kerry had not flown back to Ireland, called Ione and contacted Freddy in Quamar. Although he had told Kerry that he did not want her confiding in her siblings, by nine that evening he would have been happy if she had. He just wanted some proof that nothing had happened to her. In fact he was fighting off panic when he finally heard the front door open.
‘I hope you didn’t wait dinner for me,’ Kerry muttered evasively, ducking past his tall, stilled figure to head straight for the stairs.
He wanted to know where she had been for so many hours. He wanted to shout because she hadn’t returned one of his calls. But she looked so fragile, her face pinched with strain, her eyes dull, that he said nothing. After making a couple of necessary discreet phone calls to soothe the worries that his concern had roused he found her in the bedroom, and he plunged straight into speech, for he was suffering from an overriding compulsion to make things right between them again.
‘I want you to try and understand that I planned my revenge against Linwoods a long time ago and nothing short of a loaded gun could have turned me from that goal,’ Luciano breathed fiercely. ‘I didn’t think about hurting you. I didn’t even consider you as being involved! It may sound crazy but it’s been a lot of weeks since I’ve been able to think of you as a Linwood.’
An odd little laugh escaped Kerry before she twisted her head away again and kicked off her shoes. She had walked miles round the shops, seeing nothing, buying nothing, and her feet were very sore.
‘I didn’t want to hurt you…I never meant to hurt you,’ Luciano vowed with roughened emphasis. ‘I kept Salut and Linwoods in one compartment and you in another. But it’s over and done with now.’
‘Yes…’ Kerry supposed it was and he had triumphed. Whether she approved or otherwise, he had brought down Linwoods by legitimate business methods. He had been right too: on some level she had hoped that as time went on hostilities would fade and everyone would shake hands and be civil with each other.
Needing some time alone, she went into the luxurious bathroom and filled the jacuzzi bath. Lying back being buffeted by the jets, she could feel the stress seeping out of her again. She was the same person she had been when she’d woken up that morning, she reminded herself. Shouldn’t she be celebrating the fact that a man who had never shown the smallest warmth towards her was not her real father? But a painful hole had still been torn in the fabric of her life. When the wound felt a little less raw, she would tell Luciano that he need never again offend his own sensibilities by regarding her as a Linwood.
Not that that would make much difference to him. She knew that he didn’t love her. Had he ever loved her? Weeks ago, Luciano had assured her that he had been crazy about her when they had been engaged but it might have been very naive of her to interpret ‘crazy’ as being what she understood as love. ‘Do you love me?’ she had once asked before she broke off their engagement.
He had flinched as though she had said something horribly embarrassing and then he had shrugged, grimaced, studied the ground and said uneasily, ‘What do you think?’ Well, she hadn’t had the nerve to tell him what she thought. If he had loved her, he presumably would have said so. Unable to comprehend what attracted him to her, she had asked no more awkward questions.
But after living with Luciano, Kerry was no longer as innocent as she had once been. Ignorance had made her blind but she now finally understood the power of sex, the sheer, terrifying power of sex over a male as passionate and physical as Luciano. A male who thought nothing of making love five times or more in a day had to rate sexual desire and satisfaction as being of overwhelming importance in a relationship. When he had quipped that she was ‘the one who had got away’ he had come closest to hitting on the secret of her enduring attraction for him.
But it was no big secret to her any more, Kerry reflected apprehensively. Against all the odds, Luciano had come back to her and she knew why. While he had been in prison, he had focused his fantasies on her. Endless, wild, obsessional fantasies about her. That he could have put her in such an insanely inappropriate role even in his imagination still amazed Kerry but she knew that, unlikely as she herself found it, it was true. She had not been a love object but a lust object.
Even the fact that she had once dumped him had made her seem more desirable in Luciano’s eyes. Still viewing her as his reward and his prize, he had lost no time in reclaiming her when he had won his release. But lust would not last forever, nor would the illusion that she was fantasy or even trophy-wife material. Eventually Luciano would appreciate that what he had wanted five years back and what he wanted in the present might well be different things. Possibly about that same time, he might begin to notice that his wife was kind of on the plain and ordinary side for a guy with his looks and wealth.
Annoyed at the confidence-zapping tenor of her own reflections, Kerry wrapped herself in a large, fleecy towel. For an instant she felt horribly light-headed and she pulled a face, for it wasn’t the first time that she had felt dizzy. But then in recent days she had been rather off her food as well. Perhaps she had picked up some virus, and if she didn’t regain her usually healthy appetite she would have to go to the doctor.
Easing a comb through her tangled curls while she stood at the vanity basin, she found herself worrying about how the end of the Linwood wine-store chain would affect her stepbrother. Miles had worked so hard to keep Linwoods afloat. He demanded a lot from himself and he would be devastated that all his efforts had come to nothing. She wasn’t surprised that he had not been able to face phoning her to tell her that the receiver had been called in at the firm. She just hoped that he wasn’t trying to drown his sorrows again.
‘Kerry…’
Startled out of her troubled thoughts, Kerry saw Luciano standing in the doorway.
‘I was worried when you didn’t come home,’ he confided tautly. ‘I thought you might have had an accident, so I rang your sister.’
‘Which one?’
The silence stretched.
Luciano frowned, shrugged, finally surrendered. ‘All of them…’
‘All…of them?’ she gasped. ‘Even Freddy?’
‘Yeah.’ Luciano balled his hands into fists and dug them into the pockets of his well-cut trousers. There was nothing cool about having called all three of her sisters and he knew that.
Kerry studied his reflection in the mirror and she was trying very, very hard not to laugh, but the longer she studied him the less she could recall why she had
wanted to laugh. A faint blue-black shadow of stubble already emphasising his hard jawline and the mobile perfection of his wide, sensual mouth, his golden eyes gleaming below the dark fringe of his lashes, he looked gorgeous. Breathtakingly, devastatingly gorgeous. And hers, still hers, she reminded herself with relief.
‘Next time you’re planning to stay out for hours, phone me, mia carina,’ he urged, stepping up behind her, closing his arms round her to ease her back into contact with his lean, powerfully aroused length. ‘Where have you been?’
She rested her head back against his shoulder, suddenly boneless, suddenly weak with hunger for him. ‘Nowhere important…’
He loosened the towel. As it fell, baring the jutting fullness of her breasts, he vented a husky groan of appreciation and let his hands sweep up to mould her tender flesh. When his fingers massaged the engorged tips, a river of liquid heat pooled between her thighs and she moaned out loud. Just then she wanted him quite desperately and nothing else mattered. She closed her eyes and pushed back against him in wanton encouragement.
He spun her round, clamped her to him and let his tongue probe the moist sweetness of her lush mouth. While he penetrated her mouth with erotic thoroughness he lifted her against him and carried her through to the bed. She was wild for him, tugging at his belt, wrenching at his waistband, all fingers and thumbs and maddening clumsiness.