by Penny Jordan
His hair was still as dark as she remembered, but cut shorter, giving him a somewhat harder edge. His eyes were harder than she remembered too. Harder and scrutinising her with a coldness that made her shiver.
‘You didn’t travel first class.’
‘You knew that I was coming?’ Try as she might, Imogen couldn’t keep her appalled shock to herself.
‘Of course. I’m your trustee, remember, and since the purpose of your visit is to discuss your inheritance…’
Her trustee! Well, of course she knew that, but somehow she had assumed, believed, that it would be David Bryant she would be talking to and that he would act as a negotiator between herself and Dracco. The last thing she wanted or needed was to be confronted by him like this when she was already feeling nervous and on edge. Not to mention jet-lagged.
Determined to grab back at least some small measure of control, she threw at him acidly, ’I’m surprised that Lisa isn’t with you.’
‘Lisa?’
She could see from his sharply incisive tone and the look he was giving her that he didn’t like her pointed comment.
‘This was nothing to do with Lisa,’ he told her coldly.
Of course, he would want to protect his lover, Imogen acknowledged angrily.
The shocking realisation of how much she wanted to hurl at him all the accusations she had thought safely disarmed and vanquished years ago hit her nerve-endings like the kick of a mule. The old Imogen might well have given in and done so, but there had been something in the way he had looked at her when he had reminded her that he was her trustee that was warning her to tread very carefully.
Surely it was only a matter of formality for her to be able to reclaim the income she had previously rejected? It was, after all, legally hers, wasn’t it?
Surely David Bryant would have told her, warned her, if this wasn’t the case or if he had foreseen problems, rather than encouraging her to come all this way?
When it came to disposing of her share of the business, Imogen felt that she was on firmer ground. Since Dracco had been willing to marry her to secure it, surely it made sense that he would be delighted to be given legal control of her share of it in return for guaranteeing its income would be given to the charity?
After all, if she wished she could always sell it on the open market! Knowing that she held that power, that threat over him, helped to rally her courage.
Dracco had reached her now, and Imogen discovered that one thing hadn’t changed. She still had to tilt her head right back to look up into his eyes when he stood next to her.
Too late to regret now the comfortable low-heeled pumps she was wearing.
‘Come on.’ As he spoke Dracco was propelling her forward, the fear of experiencing the sensation of that powerful long-fingered hand of his, placed firmly in the small of her back, causing her to hurry in the direction he was indicating.
What was the matter with her? Why on earth should she fear Dracco touching her now? Once she had feared it because then she had known that even the briefest and most non-sexual contact with him was enough to make her aching body feel as though it might explode with longing, but those days were over! All around her on the streets of Rio she had seen the living, suffering evidence of what happened when two human beings indulged in their sexual desires. She would never abandon her child—never in a million years—but then, she was not a girl, a child herself, penniless and without any means of support. No, that wasn’t the point. The point was…the point was…
Dizzily, dangerously Imogen realised that she was having a hard time focusing on anything logical or sensible; that she was, in fact, finding it virtually impossible to concentrate on anything other than Dracco himself.
‘It’s this way.’
Automatically she followed him towards the glass-walled lift, numbly aware of the brief nod of the hovering uniformed commissionaire as he greeted Dracco with a respectful, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Barrington.’
‘Afternoon, Bates,’ Dracco responded calmly. ‘Family OK?’
‘Yes, they’re fine, and young Robert’s over the moon about that job you got for him.’
The smile Dracco gave the doorman suddenly made him look far less formidable and reminded Imogen of the smiles he once used to give her. An almost unbearably tight pain filled her chest, which she firmly put down to the speed with which the lift was surging upwards.
‘Still scared of heights? Don’t look down,’ Dracco told her coolly. ‘Heaven knows why, but for some reason every architect in the city seems to have decided that glass-walled lifts are the in thing.’
Where once he would have made such a comment in a voice that was ruefully amused, now he sounded terse and cold. Well, there was no reason why he should show her any warmth, was there?
But why shouldn’t he? She had, after all, spared him the trouble of having to pretend that he had wanted to marry her or that he cared about her, and she had given him what he really wanted at the same time. In the letter she had sent to Henry renouncing her inheritance she had given Dracco complete and total authority to use the power that came with her share of the business as he saw fit.
In doing so, she had known beyond any kind of doubt that Dracco would uphold her father’s business ideals and aims. In that regard at least she had known she could trust him totally.
She had closed her eyes when the lift started to move, but unexpectedly the images, the memories suddenly tormenting her were even worse in their own way than the heights she feared. She would, she knew, never forgive Dracco for what he had tried to do; for the way he had tried to manipulate her; for the way he had abused the trust her father had placed in him.
The lift shivered to a silent stop.
‘You can open your eyes now,’ she heard Dracco telling her wryly.
As she edged out of the lift Imogen saw that they had stopped at the floor marked ‘Penthouse Suite’.
Penthouse suite. Her solicitor had roomed her in a penthouse suite? Discomfort flickered down her spine. She just knew that this was going to be expensive.
It had taken her a long time to get used to the shared dormitory she had slept in when she had first arrived in Rio, but when she finally found her own small apartment for the first few weeks she had actually missed the presence of the other girls. Now, though, she had to admit to relishing the privacy and the luxury of having her own bathroom.
‘I asked David Bryant to find me somewhere cheap and convenient for his office,’ she murmured as Dracco produced a key and unlocked the apartment’s door.
Imogen could see his eyebrows rise as he listened to her.
‘Well, he’s complied with both those instructions,’ he informed her. ‘His office isn’t that far away, and you’re staying here as my guest.’
‘Your guest?’
Imogen froze on the spot, staring at him with wide eyes, whilst Dracco pushed the door to, enclosing them both in the intimacy of the empty hallway.
‘Your guest?’ Imogen repeated starkly. ‘This is your apartment?’
‘Yes,’ Dracco confirmed. ‘When David told me that you’d specified you wanted to stay somewhere close to his office I told him that you might as well stay here with me. After all, there’s a great deal we need to discuss…and not just about your inheritance.’
He was, Imogen recognised, looking pointedly at her left hand, the hand from which she had removed the wedding ring he had placed on it, throwing it as far as she could through the open taxi window on her way to Heathrow, too blinded by tears to see where it landed, and too sick at heart to care.
‘You mean…’ She paused and flicked her tongue tip over her suddenly dry lips, nervously aware of Dracco’s iron gaze following her every movement.
‘You mean our marriage?’ she guessed shakily.
‘I mean our marriage,’ Dracco confirmed.
‘You know,’ he told her conversationally as he bent to pick up her lightweight case, ‘for a woman who is still a virgin, you look…decidedly unvirginal.�
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Imogen tried to convince herself that the rushing sensation of faintness engulfing her was caused by the airlessness of the hallway rather than by what Dracco had said, but still she heard herself demanding huskily, ‘How…how do you know?’
‘That you are still a virgin?’ Dracco completed for her. ‘I know everything there is to know about you, Imo… After all, you are my wife…’
His wife!
Imogen felt sick; filled with a cold, shaky disbelief and an even colder fear. This was not what she had expected; what she had steeled herself to deal with.
During the long flight from Rio she had forced herself to confront the fear that had raised its threatening head in her nightmares in the days leading up to her journey. She had been terrified that somehow, totally against her will and all logic, if she were to see Dracco again she might discover a dangerous residue of her teenage love for him had somehow survived; that it was waiting, ready to explode like a time bomb, to destroy her new life and the peace of mind she had fought so hard for. But now! Now it wasn’t love that Dracco was arousing inside her but a furious mixture of anger and hostility.
So she was still a virgin—was that a crime?
‘You have no right to pry into my life, to spy on me,’ she began furiously, but Dracco refused to allow her to continue.
‘We are still married. I am still your husband; you are still my wife,’ he pointed out coldly.
Imogen turned away to conceal her expression from him. Married in the eyes of the church, perhaps, but surely not in the eyes of the law, since their marriage had never been consummated. And that certainly didn’t give Dracco the right to claim her as his wife in a voice that suggested… Wearily Imogen shook her head. Now she was letting her imagination run away with her. Thinking she had heard possessiveness in Dracco’s voice.
His words had given her a shock. Why on earth hadn’t Dracco had the marriage set aside? He, after all, loved another woman—her stepmother!
Even after all these years it still filled her with acute nausea and disgust to think of Dracco with Lisa. Her father’s wife and the man her father had loved and valued so very much. Had Dracco slept with Lisa whilst her father was still alive? Had they…? Had he…? Unstoppably all the questions she had fiercely forbidden herself to even think before suddenly stormed through her. The images they were conjuring up sickened her, causing a red-hot boiling pain in her middle.
All those years ago, Dracco had implied to her that he was marrying her to protect her, when all he had really wanted to protect had been his own interests!
Tiredly Imogen closed her eyes. She had come to England for one purpose and one purpose only and that was to claim whatever money might be owing to her. And to persuade Dracco to transfer her interest in the business into the name of the charity so that in future it could benefit direct from her inheritance. Anything else…
‘I haven’t come back to discuss our marriage, Dracco.’ Firmly Imogen took a deep breath, determined to take control of the situation. ’I’ve already written to David Bryant, explaining what I want, and that is—’
‘To give away your inheritance to some charity,’ Dracco interrupted her grimly. ‘No, Imo,’ he told her curtly. ‘As your trustee, there’s no way I would be fulfilling my moral obligation towards you if I agreed, and as your husband…’
She ached to be able to challenge him, to throw caution to the wind and demand furiously to know just when moral obligations had become important to him. But some inner instinct warned her against going too far. This wasn’t how their interview was supposed to go. She was an adult now, on an equal footing with Dracco, and not a child whom he could dictate to.
‘Legally the money is mine,’ she reminded him, having mentally counted to ten and calmed herself down a little.
‘Was yours,’ Dracco corrected her harshly. ‘You insisted that you wanted nothing to do with your inheritance—and you put that insistence in writing—remember.’
Imogen took another deep breath. The situation was proving even more fraught with difficulties than she had expected.
‘I did write to Uncle Henry saying that,’ she agreed, pausing to ask him quietly, ‘When did he die? I had no idea.’
Dracco had turned away from her, and for a moment Imogen thought that he had either not heard her question or that he did not intend to answer it, but then without turning back to her he said coldly, ‘He had a heart attack shortly after…on the day of our wedding.’
Horrified, Imogen could only make a soft, anguished sound of distress.
‘Apparently he hadn’t been feeling well before the ceremony,’ Dracco continued as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘When he collapsed outside the church…’ He stopped whilst Imogen battled against her shock. ‘I went with him to the hospital. They hoped then… But he had a second attack whilst he was in Intensive Care which proved fatal.’
‘Was it…?’ Too shocked to guard her thoughts, Imogen blurted out shakily, ‘Was it because of me? Because I…?’
‘He had been under a tremendous amount of pressure,’ Dracco told her without answering her anguished plea for reassurance. ‘Your father’s death had caused him an immense amount of work, and it seems that there had been certain warning signs of a heart problem which he had ignored. He wasn’t a young man—he was ten years older than your father.’ He paused and then said abruptly, ‘He asked me to tell you how proud he had been to give you away.’
Tears blurred Imogen’s eyes. She had a mental image of her father’s solicitor on the morning of her wedding, dressed in his morning suit, his silver-grey hair immaculately groomed. In the car on the way to the church he had taken hold of her hand and patted it a little awkwardly. He had been a widower, like her father, with no children of his own, and Imogen had always sensed a certain shyness in his manner towards her. Her father had been a very loving man and she had desperately missed the father-daughter warmth of their relationship. She had known from the look in his eyes that, like her, Henry Fairburn had been thinking about her father on that day.
She had been sad to learn of his death from his nephew, but she had never imagined…
‘If you’re going to throw yourself into a self-indulgent bout of emotional guilt, I shouldn’t bother,’ Dracco was warning her hardly. ‘His heart attack was a situation waiting to happen and would have happened whether or not you had been there.’
Somehow, instead of comforting and reassuring her, Dracco’s blunt words were only making her feel worse, Imogen acknowledged.
‘I don’t want to argue with you, Dracco,’ she said quietly. ‘You are a wealthy man in your own right. If you could just see the plight of these children…’
‘It is a good cause, yes, involvement with the shelter. My sources inform me that—’
‘Your sources?’ Imogen checked him angrily. ‘You have no right—’
‘Surely you didn’t think I would allow you to simply disappear without any trace, Imo? For your father’s sake, if nothing else; I owed it to him to—’
‘I can’t believe that even someone like you could stoop so low. To have me watched, spied on,’ Imogen breathed bitterly.
‘You’re overreacting,’ Dracco told her laconically. ‘Yes, I made enquiries to ascertain where you were and what you were doing and with whom,’ he agreed. ‘Anyone would have done the same in the circumstances. You were a young, naïve girl of eighteen. Anything could have happened to you.’
He was frowning broodingly and Imogen had to shake herself free of the foolish feeling that he had been genuinely concerned about her.
‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Dracco, I’m not going to give up,’ she warned him determinedly. ‘The shelter needs money so desperately, and I warn you now that I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure it gets mine.’
The silence that followed her passionate outburst caused a tiny sliver of apprehension to needle its way into Imogen’s nervous system. Dracco was looking at her as though…as though…
&nbs
p; Why had she never realised as a girl how very hawkish and predatory he could look, almost demonically so? She shivered and instantly blamed her reaction on the change of continent.
‘Well, you’re a woman now, Imo, and not a girl and, as you must have surely come to realise, nothing in this life comes without a price. You handed your inheritance over to me of your own accord. Now you wish me to hand it back to you, and not only the income which your share of the business has earned these last four years, but the future income of that share as well.’
‘It belongs to me,’ Imogen insisted. ‘The terms of my father’s will stated that it would become mine either on my thirtieth birthday or when I married, whichever happened first.’
‘Mmm…’ Dracco gave her a look she could not identify.
‘You have told me what it is you want me to give you, Imo, but what are you prepared to give me in exchange for my agreement—supposing, of course, that I am prepared to give it?’
Imogen started to frown. What could she give him?
‘We are still married,’ Dracco was reminding her yet again. ‘Our marriage was never annulled.’
Imogen’s face cleared. ‘You want an annulment,’ she guessed, ignoring the sharp, unwanted stab of pain biting into her heart and concentrating instead on clinging determinedly to the relief she wanted to feel. ‘Well, of course I will agree, and—’
‘No, I do not want an annulment,’ Dracco cut across her hurried assent. ‘Far from it.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU don’t want an annulment?’ Imogen stared at Dracco as though she couldn’t believe what she had heard. ‘What…what do you mean?’ she demanded.
She could hear the nervous stammer in her voice and despised herself for it. Dracco couldn’t mean that he wanted to remain married to her. That was impossible. And just as impossible to accept was that sharp, shocking thrill of excitement his words had given her.
Dracco watched her carefully. As Imogen’s trustee, it was his moral duty to safeguard her inheritance for her, to be worthy of the trust her father had placed in him, and that was something he fully intended to do. And if in helping her he was able to progress his own personal agenda, then so much the better! And as for him telling her just why…but, no…that was totally out of the question. Fate had generously dealt some very powerful cards into his hand, and now it was up to him to play them successfully. And he intended to play them and to win!