by Penny Jordan
Imogen felt a nervous tremor run through her body as she waited for Dracco’s response. His expression was hard and unreadable, his eyes cold and distant.
‘I hope that you don’t need me to remind you of just how much your father meant to me,’ he began abruptly.
‘I know that you married me because of his will,’ Imogen responded ambiguously. She had wanted to give Dracco a subtle warning that she was not the naïve girl who had trusted him so implicitly any longer, but even she was shocked by the swiftness with which he decoded her message. Shocked and, if she was honest, just a little bit apprehensive when she saw the immediate and fearsome blaze of anger in the look he gave her.
‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’ Dracco challenged her softly.
Imogen took a deep breath. There was no way she was going to allow him to face her down! There was too much at stake. She had a responsibility to those who were dependent on her for her help.
‘I was very young when I married you, Dracco,’ she told him as calmly as she could. ‘My father’s will, as we both know, stipulated that I should have control of my share of the business upon my marriage. Naturally, since I was so young, I would have deferred to you where matters of business were concerned, so that in effect you would have had full control of the business—and the income it generated. Of course, had you chosen to sell the business and utilise the profits from that sale on your own behalf…’
‘What?’
For a moment Dracco looked almost as though she had shocked him.
‘If you are trying to imply that I married you for financial gain then let me tell you you’re way off the mark. In fact, I am wealthier now than your father ever was—thanks, I have to admit, to everything he taught me.’
He was speaking to her as though he were admonishing a child, Imogen decided angrily.
‘So why exactly did you marry me, then?’ she asked him sharply.
‘You know why.’ He started to turn away from her so that she couldn’t see his face, his voice becoming curt.
Imogen could sense that her question had made him uneasy in some way. Because he felt guilty? Well he might!
‘Yes, I do, don’t I?’ Imogen agreed acerbically. ‘My father—’
‘Your father was a man I admired more than any other man I have ever met.’ Dracco cut across what she had been about to say, his tone warning her against questioning the truth of his words. ‘In fact, in the early years of our friendship, I often wished that he had been my father. I have never met a man I have respected or loved as much as I did John Atkins, Imogen. I felt proud to have his friendship and his trust. He was everything I myself most wanted to be. He was everything that my own father was not.’
He paused, whilst Imogen silently swallowed the huge lump of emotion in her throat.
Dracco’s father had left his mother whilst Dracco had still been a baby; a gambler and a womaniser, he had been killed in a drunken brawl when Dracco had been in his early teens.
‘I have never lost either my admiration or my love for your father, Imo, nor the wish that he and I might share a closer, more personal tie.’ He paused meaningfully whilst Imogen fidgeted with anxiety. Whatever conditions Dracco imposed on his agreement to hand over her inheritance, Imogen knew that somehow she would have to meet them. There was no way she wanted to disappoint the nuns now, nor did she intend to do anything that would prevent her being able to improve the lot of those who were dependent on the shelter.
‘Your father could never be my father, Imo, but he could be the grandfather of my son—our son,’ Dracco told her meaningfully.
His son…their son. Stupefied, Imogen gaped at him. She couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly.
‘No!’ she protested frantically. ‘You can’t mean it.’ But she could see from his expression that he did, and her heart somersaulted inside her ribcage and then banged dizzyingly against her ribs themselves.
‘No,’ she whispered painfully. ‘I can’t. I won’t! This is blackmail, Dracco,’ she accused him. ‘If you want a child so much—’
‘I don’t want “a” child, Imo,’ he cut across her coolly. ’Haven’t you been listening to what I said? What I want is your father’s grandchild. My blood linked to his, and only you can provide me with that.’
‘You’re mad,’ Imogen gasped. ‘This is like something out of the Dark Ages…it’s…I won’t do it!’ she told him fiercely.
‘Then I won’t give you your money,’ Dracco informed her in a voice that was dangerously soft.
‘You’ll have to… I’ll take you to court. I’ll…’ Imogen began wildly, but once again Dracco stopped her, shaking his head as he told her unkindly,
‘Somehow I don’t think a court would agree to you giving away your birthright. Especially if it was to be implied that part of the reason your father set up his will as he did was because he feared that you were not financially astute enough to protect your own interests.’
Imogen glared furiously at him. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she began, but Dracco was smiling at her, a mocking smile that didn’t touch his eyes as he told her softly, ‘Try me!’
Imogen shook her head in angry disbelief. This was emotional manipulation at its worst. How on earth could she ever have loved Dracco? Right now she positively hated him.
‘You can’t do this,’ she protested, her face raw with emotion as she told him shakily, ‘If you could see these children—they have nothing, Dracco. Less than nothing. They need help so badly!’
‘And they can have it, Imo,’ Dracco told her calmly, ‘but not from your inheritance. As your trustee, I cannot allow that, but—’ he paused and looked at her, his penetrating gaze holding her own and refusing to let her look away ‘—but,’ he repeated coolly, ‘as your husband,’ Dracco continued with a pseudo-gentleness that made her tense her stomach muscles against whatever it was he was going to say, ‘as your husband,’ he stressed with deliberate emphasis, ‘I would be quite prepared to promise to pay one million pounds to the shelter now, and another one million when you give birth to our child.’
If Imogen hadn’t already decided she hated Dracco she knew she would have done so now. How could he be so cynical, so cruel, so corrupt? Two million pounds! He must be rich indeed if he could afford to part with so much money so easily and just so that… He had loved and revered her father, she knew that, and she could even see too why he might want to have a child who carried her father’s blood. But to go about it in such a way, when he knew that he would be forcing her to have sex with him and when he knew too that he didn’t love her… Imogen couldn’t stop herself from shuddering with angry loathing.
‘I…I need time to think,’ she told him defiantly.
‘To think, or to run away again? I thought this charity was all-important to you, Imo, but it seems…’
‘Stop it.’ Covering her ears with her hands, Imogen turned away from him.
His cruelty appalled her but she couldn’t stop herself from acknowledging the truth of what he was saying. When she thought about the difference his money would make to Rio’s homeless street children Imogen knew that she could not possibly put her own needs before theirs.
‘So do we have a deal—two million for your charity, a wife and, hopefully, your father’s grandchild for me?’
Somehow Imogen managed not to show how desperately tempted she was to refuse. Summoning all her courage, she took a deep breath and agreed huskily, ‘Yes.’
Bleakly Imogen stared out of the window of Dracco’s car—a sleek silver BMW now and not the Daimler she remembered him driving—as they sped through the uniquely green English countryside. She had not asked Dracco where they were going, had not addressed any questions or conversation to him at all, in fact, since she had woken up in his city apartment earlier on in the day. His apartment but thankfully not his bed; no, she had been spared that at least for now, having slept alone in his guest room.
She had no idea where they were going and had no intention of aski
ng. All Dracco had told her once he had ascertained that she was prepared to accede to the terms he had proposed to her—an agreement she had thrown at him with flashing eyes and an angrily set mouth as she tried to remind herself that his proposition surely demeaned him far more than it demeaned her—was that he was taking her to the house that was going to be her home.
‘Stop behaving like a tragedy queen, Imo,’ she heard him saying drily to her. ‘It doesn’t suit you and, besides, there’s no need.’
‘No need? After what you’ve done,’ Imogen exploded.
‘After what I’ve done?’ Dracco checked her. ‘I haven’t done anything other than offer you a deal.’
‘A deal!’ Indignation flashed from Imogen’s eyes. ’You’re blackmailing me into having a child with you.’ Quickly she turned away from him before he could sense the emotions she was struggling to overcome. ’What’s going to happen once you have your child, Dracco?’
‘What do you think is going to happen?’ he challenged her sharply. ‘No child of mine is going to be abandoned by either of its parents, Imogen.’
‘You expect me to stay married to you?’
Surely that wasn’t actually relief she could feel spreading through her tensed muscles?
‘What I expect is that you and I will stay married to one another for just as long as our child needs us to be. What were you expecting?’ he demanded as he skilfully negotiated a tight bend.
Imogen shook her head, not wanting him to see how relieved she was that he wasn’t going to try to separate her from her child, to send her away whilst he brought it up alone. Because she knew that, no matter what she might think about Dracco himself, no matter how much she might loathe and hate him for what he was doing, she would never be able to walk away from her baby.
She frowned as she suddenly recognised the countryside they were driving through, her heart starting to beat increasingly heavily as the road dropped down into the village where she had grown up. At the end of the village street Dracco turned left. The lane started to climb steeply and, even though it had been four years since she had last travelled down it, Imogen remembered every inch of it. It had been down this road that Dracco had driven her to school; down this road that he had driven her when he had come to fetch her the day her father had died; down this road she had travelled on her way to her wedding.
‘You’ve bought our old house.’ She said it as a statement rather than a question, her voice flat as she fought to control her emotions.
‘I was already negotiating for it before our wedding,’ Dracco answered her unemotionally. ‘It was supposed to be a surprise wedding present for you. I knew how much you hated the idea of Lisa selling it. By the time it became obvious that you weren’t going to be around to collect any wedding presents from me or anyone else, it was too late to pull out of the deal.’ He gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘I suppose I could have put it back on the market, but…’
Dracco had turned into the house’s familiar drive and for a moment, as the car crunched over the gravel and came to a halt outside the front door, Imogen almost felt that if she closed her eyes and then opened them again she would see her father come hurrying towards her.
But her father was dead, and something inside her had died now as well.
‘It still looks just the same,’ she told Dracco distantly as they both got out of the car. He was a stranger to her, a man she loathed, and yet tonight he would…
Whilst she fought to control the shudders of fear that rocked her Dracco was unlocking the front door.
‘Well, you’ll find there have been some changes,’ he warned her casually. ‘I left your father’s room as it was, but…’ He paused and turned away from her, his voice suddenly shadowed and edged with an emotion she couldn’t analyse. ‘I haven’t really used the house much myself. However, I have made some changes to some of the other rooms.’
When she looked questioningly at him he turned to face her fully and told her bluntly, ‘I didn’t think that either of us would want to use the rooms that had been your parents’, so I had a new master-bedroom suite built on—and the conservatory your father once told me your mother had always wanted. He didn’t have the heart to add it after her death, but I thought…’ He stopped, his mouth compressing, pushing open the front door without enlightening her as to what his thoughts had been.
Imogen discovered that she was shaking as she followed him inside. It had been down these stairs that she had semi-stumbled on the way to her wedding, her whole world destroyed by Lisa’s cruelty, and down them too that she had run in her haste to escape from Dracco and her marriage to him.
Her tastes had changed and matured in the last few years, and she recognised with a sharp pang of pain just how old-fashioned and, yes, shabby the dark red stair carpet her mother had chosen looked. She could almost feel how unloved and desolate the whole house was. Dust motes danced in the sunshine and she could see a film of it lying on the table beneath the ornate Venetian wall mirror that her parents had bought on their honeymoon.
Her mother had been a wonderful homemaker before her illness had struck her down and suddenly Imogen discovered that her own inner eye was itching to bring the house back to life, to turn it back to the love-filled home she could remember. Irritated by her own vulnerability, she demanded sharply of Dracco, ‘Why exactly have you brought me here? Apart from the obvious reason, of course.’ She added acerbically, ‘I have to admit that I’m surprised you don’t actually want to conceive this child in my father’s bed.’
She stopped in mid-sentence, shocked into silence by the look in his eyes. It was far more dangerous than any verbal warning could have been.
‘I have brought you here because this will be your home from now on,’ Dracco told her levelly, once he had forced her to drop her gaze from his.
‘But you don’t live here?’ Imogen guessed, thinking about the dust she had seen.
‘I haven’t been doing,’ Dracco agreed. ‘There wasn’t any point. But now… A city apartment isn’t, in my opinion, the right place to bring up a child.’
‘But you will still be spending some time in the city?’ Imogen pressed him. Please God, let him say that he would; let him say too that his visits here to the house, to her, and to the bed he was forcing her to share with him, would be infrequent and of short duration.
But instead of answering her directly he surprised her by asking softly, ‘What exactly is it about sex that you find so threatening, Imo?’
‘Nothing! I don’t,’ she denied quickly, knowing that her face was burning hotly with a self-consciousness that he had to have seen before she turned defensively away from him. ‘It isn’t the sex,’ she denied doggedly, ’it’s you…and the way…’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Dracco told her. ‘For a woman of your age still to be a virgin suggests…’
‘Suggests what?’ Imogen immediately challenged him. ‘That I’m choosy about who I give my…’My love, she had been about to say, but she quickly corrected herself and said instead, ‘Myself to.’
‘Suggests that you’re afraid of something,’ Dracco continued smoothly, as though she hadn’t interrupted him. ‘Are you, Imo? Are you afraid?’
‘No,’ she denied vehemently. But she knew that she was lying. She was afraid. She was very afraid. To her the physical act of sex was inextricably linked with the emotion of love, and she was desperately, mortally afraid that…
That what? That being forced to have sex with Dracco to produce the child he wanted would somehow force her to love him again? How could it?
Last night, lying awake in Dracco’s guest room, she had told herself that what she was sacrificing was nothing weighed against what the charity would be gaining and that she was too old to have any right to start feeling sorry for herself. But no amount of trying to be logical about what had happened had helped to ease the sharp, stark pain in her heart—or the fear that accompanied it.
As she moved away from Dracco and walked down the hallway, insti
nctively heading for her father’s study, she could hear him saying wryly, ‘A team of cleaners from the village comes in once a month to go over the whole place and I asked them to stock up the fridge and freezer. If their shopping is of the same calibre as their cleaning it might be as well to check the fridge. I have booked a table for dinner at Emporio’s for tonight. I trust you do still like Italian food?’
‘You’re taking me out for dinner?’ Imogen couldn’t keep the cynicism out of her voice. ‘Why not just take me straight to bed? Why waste time—and money? After all, you’ve already committed yourself to paying two million for it.’
‘Stop that at once.’
Imogen gasped as Dracco crossed the distance that separated them with startling speed, taking hold of her forearms, his lean fingers biting hard into her vulnerable flesh as he gave her a small shake.
‘You’re my wife, Imogen, not some paid harlot. And if I choose to woo you—’
‘Woo me!’ Imogen could feel the hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’ she challenged him acidly. ‘All you really want is a child, my father’s grandchild! You can achieve that without going to the expense of buying me dinner. After all, you don’t care whether I’m willing or not!’
Dracco released her so quickly that Imogen felt the unwanted shock of his withdrawal from her right through her body. The shaming knowledge that a tiny part of her was actually daring to miss the warm male touch of Dracco’s hands on her arms infuriated and frightened her. She told herself that it was just her memory playing tricks, reminding her of a time when she had welcomed and wanted his touch. Welcomed and wanted it! Craved it, ached for it, hungered for it and for him—that was a far more accurate description. Abruptly Imogen dragged her mind back to the present, wincing a little as she saw the furious look Dracco was giving her.