by Penny Jordan
‘Ouch,’ she protested out loud, as she inspected the swiftly lifting rash on the palm of her hand.
Like Dracco, it had caught her off guard and the result was pain. Well, this time at least she could retaliate, she decided grimly as she bent towards the offending weed and very determinedly removed it from the soil.
‘Now see how you like that!’ she told the nettle triumphantly.
‘Excuse me.’
The sound of a hesitant male voice behind her caused her to spin round, her face pink with confusion at being caught conversing with the vegetation.
‘It stung me,’ she said rather lamely to the young man who was standing several feet away from her.
‘My wife hates nettles,’ he responded easily. ‘Her brothers hid her doll in a nettle patch when she was a little girl.’
‘Oh, how unkind of them.’
‘Well, I suspect she might have deserved it,’ he told her, his voice ruefully candid. ‘She had buried all their toy soldiers in a pile of builders’ sand. The builder wasn’t too pleased when it ruined his concrete. Her excuse was that they had been overwhelmed by a sandstorm in the desert.
‘I was looking for Dracco,’ he went on. ‘I rang the bell but no one answered and then I saw you here in the garden. You must be his wife.’
‘Yes, yes, I am,’ Imogen responded. Who was this young man, and how did he know that Dracco was married?
As though he guessed what she was thinking, her unexpected visitor quickly explained, ’I’m Robert Bates—I work for Dracco. He left a message at the office, saying that…that he had got married, and asking me to bring him some papers he wanted.’
He was looking rather pleased with his deductive powers, and Imogen couldn’t resist gently teasing him.
‘And because of that you assumed that I must be Dracco’s wife?’
‘Not just because of that,’ she was told sturdily. ‘He has a photograph of you on his desk, and I recognised you from it straight away. Your father started the business, didn’t he? Dracco told me about him.’
Now Imogen was surprised. Dracco had a photograph of her? She remembered that her father had had one taken on her seventeenth birthday; presumably Dracco must have inherited it. However, before she could reply her visitor was saying something she found even more surprising.
‘I know that your father started the business, but Dracco is the one who made it the success it is today.’ As he spoke Imogen could hear the admiration and respect in the younger man’s voice. ‘I couldn’t believe my luck when he took me on. I didn’t have the qualifications or the background.’ He flushed a little whilst Imogen watched him in silence. ‘I certainly didn’t deserve the faith he’s shown in me. The night we met I was sitting in a bar, full of self-pity and drinking myself into oblivion. Natasha, my wife now but my girlfriend as she was then, had just told me that her parents had threatened her that if she married me they were going to stop her trust fund.
‘We met at university and I knew straight away that she was the one for me, and she said she felt the same, but what I didn’t know then was that Natasha’s family had money—and ambitions.’ His voice grew slightly bitter. ‘And those ambitions did not include a son-in-law with no family connections, no money and no prospects. Oh, Tasha said that it didn’t matter, but of course it did. I couldn’t give her the kind of life she’d grown up with, the kind of future she deserved; I couldn’t even get a job. And then I met Dracco.
‘He gave me a job, and time off so that I could get my Masters in business studies; he let me and Tasha live rent-free in a flat above the offices. He even went to see Tasha’s parents, and God knows what he said to them but…’ He broke off and gave Imogen an embarrassed look. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. After all, you already know exactly what kind of man Dracco is—you’re married to him.’
He paused and then added hesitantly, ‘Once when I asked him why he had helped me he said it was because I reminded him of what he himself had once been, and of everything that your father had done for him. He said that he wanted to pass on the good deed your father had done, to honour his memory and to show his gratitude for it. He said that your father had taught him the value of true generosity of spirit and the importance of self-respect.’
Imogen felt sharp tears sting her eyes in the small silence that followed. When she was sure she had full control of herself she offered, ’I’ll give Dracco the papers if you want to leave them with me. But first let’s go up to the house. I’m ready for a cup of tea; would you like one?’
‘No, I’d better not. I promised Tasha I’d be home early. It’s our wedding anniversary today, and her parents are taking us out to dinner!’
After her unexpected visitor had driven away Imogen couldn’t help thinking about what he had said to her.
She had come out into the garden after Dracco’s departure, ready to hate him all over again, but now she had been shown a compassionate side of him that made her feel uncertain.
Her hand felt acutely painful where the nettles had stung her. She had always been sensitive to their sting and an unpleasant tingling numbness now accompanied the raised rash, swelling the palm of her hand and her fingers.
She massaged it absently, thinking about her father. She had always known how much he had thought of Dracco, and he had been held in high esteem by his peers for his shrewd judgement. She wished that he were here now for her to turn to.
Dracco still hadn’t come back. And when he did… She quickly calculated how long it might be before she would know if she was pregnant.
And if she wasn’t? Her face burned with mortified colour as she recognised that the bumping of her heart against her ribs at the thought of a repetition of the previous night was quite definitely not caused by dread or revulsion. Far from it. But Dracco did not love her and, according to him, she could not love him.
Who had he been thinking of whilst he touched her body, whilst he aroused it, entered it, possessed and filled it with the gift of immortality?
Imogen willed the acid sting of the tears burning her eyes not to fall.
As a child she had cried over her loss of her father’s love to Lisa. As a woman there was no way she was going to cry over the loss of Dracco’s love to her stepmother. No way at all!
Imogen sighed as she heard someone pressing impatiently and repeatedly on the front doorbell. Today was quite obviously her day for visitors.
Running lightly downstairs, she pulled open the front door, to reveal the features of her uninvited guest.
‘Lisa!’ It was impossible for Imogen to keep the shock out of her voice.
Her stepmother was wearing a pair of white Capri pants, her face and body tanned from her Caribbean holiday. Glaring at Imogen, she stepped into the hallway without waiting for an invitation and demanded sharply, ’Where’s Dracco? I need to speak to him. Is he in the study?’ She was walking towards the door before Imogen could stop her.
‘No, he isn’t,’ Imogen told her as calmly as she could.
Seeing her stepmother here in the house which her presence had made so unhappy would have been bad enough, but knowing what Imogen now knew made that pain a thousand times worse.
‘Then where is he?’ Lisa was asking her angrily.
‘He’s out on business,’ Imogen told her reluctantly. She would have preferred not to have to answer her at all. She would have preferred, in fact, to have enough belief in Dracco’s support to insist that Lisa leave the house immediately.
‘You mean he’s sleeping at the apartment in London because he can’t bear to have to sleep here with you?’ Lisa taunted aggressively. ’It’s a pity you were always so pathetically antagonistic towards me, Imogen. Had you not been you might have learned one or two things of value. Such as the fact that there is nothing that a man abhors more than a woman who doesn’t have the pride to accept it when he makes it obvious he doesn’t want her. And Dracco doesn’t want you, Imogen. He never has wanted you. On the other hand, of course, he did wan
t the business. And who can blame him? I certainly don’t. Miranda warned me that you had come crawling back to him. Somehow I wasn’t totally surprised. But it won’t do you any good.’
Imogen had heard enough. She wasn’t a shy, grieving teenager any more, who instinctively believed she had to be polite to grown-ups no matter how offensive and rude they were to her. It was high time that Lisa had a taste of her own medicine and Imogen was in just the mood to hand it out to her! After all, what had she got to lose? Dracco had already told her that he didn’t love her. That they had only had sex!
If in punishing Lisa she punished Dracco as well, so much the better. He deserved it—they both did! Imogen couldn’t remember ever feeling so furiously, gloriously angry!
She was a woman betrayed, a woman scorned, and those who had done the betraying and the scorning had just better watch out. They were going to find out that she could give as good as she got!
‘As a matter of fact, it was Dracco who insisted on giving our marriage a second chance, not me,’ she told Lisa with pseudo-sweetness. If she hadn’t been enjoying herself so much she might almost have been shocked by the savage sense of satisfaction it gave her to say the words that were responsible for the brief look of fury she saw in Lisa’s eyes. ‘And it isn’t just my share of the business he wants, Lisa,’ she continued recklessly, only distantly aware of just how dangerous the surge of euphoria sweeping her up into its enticing embrace might be.
‘Well, it can’t possibly be your body!’ Lisa retaliated nastily. ‘If it was he’d be here with you now.’
‘Perhaps I should leave it to him to tell you just what he wants from our marriage,’ Imogen suggested serenely. She was almost enjoying the effect her words were having on her stepmother, who was staring at her as though she was seeing her properly for the first time. ‘Unless, of course, he has already told you?’
Lisa gave a dismissive shrug. ’Dracco and I don’t discuss you, Imogen, we have far more important things to talk about.’
Imogen could feel her self-control cracking as the euphoria left her as suddenly as it had swept her up, leaving in its wake a wash of anguished pain. ‘Yes,’ she agreed bitterly. ‘Such as the way the pair of you deceived my father.’
She could see from the smirk the other woman was giving that she had allowed her emotions to betray her.
‘You’re making assumptions, accusations that you simply can’t prove, Imogen.’
‘I don’t have to prove them,’ Imogen retorted. ‘Both you and Dracco have already shown me how true they are. Your affair—’
‘Dracco told you we had an affair?’ Lisa stopped her. For some reason she was frowning, as though she didn’t believe what Imogen was telling her. But then unexpectedly she smiled, as though she was actually pleased to be revealed as a woman who had broken her marriage vows.
‘He didn’t need to tell me. You did that…on my wedding day,’ Imogen reminded her grimly.
Lisa’s smile widened. ‘Yes, so I did. Poor little Imogen; you were so naïve, so stupid… Umm… Well, if Dracco is at the office I suppose I’d better go and see him there. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the privacy for our reunion,’ she purred tauntingly. ’It’s been almost a month since he last saw me, and a month for a man of Dracco’s sexual appetite is a very long time. Don’t expect him home too soon, will you, Mrs Barrington?’
She was walking through the door before Imogen could frame any kind of suitably cutting retort.
So it was true. Dracco was still seeing Lisa. He still loved her.
She wasn’t going to cry, Imogen told herself with fierce pride. She wasn’t!
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘IMO, are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Imogen responded, her voice as carefully devoid of any emotion as she could make it.
‘Then why aren’t you eating your dinner?’ Dracco demanded sharply.
They had been living together as man and wife for just over a month, and Imogen had used the vast oasis of time Dracco’s absences in London on business gave her. He had put his bank account at her disposal to set about restoring and refurbishing the house—it helped to keep her surface busy, during the day at least. At night, those long, lonely, aching nights when her thoughts and feelings couldn’t be kept at bay, she felt as though she had entered a painful form of purgatory.
Not once since she had called at the house demanding to see him had he mentioned Lisa, and Imogen was stubbornly, bitterly determined not to be the one to bring up her name. Because she was afraid that if she did she would not be able to conceal what she really felt?
Lisa’s cruel taunts had hit home. Had Dracco told Lisa just what he wanted from their marriage? There was no way Imogen could have borne to know that the man she loved was contemplating having a child with another woman, even a woman he did not love, but then Lisa had never been in the least bit maternal.
‘Because I’m not hungry.’ Imogen answered Dracco’s question coolly, lifting her gaze to meet his down the length of the pretty table she had seen in an antique shop and bought for a sum that had given her a vicious slam of guilt that was only slightly appeased by the pleasure it gave her to run her fingertips over the old satiny polished, wood.
A little to her own surprise, she had slipped back into life here in their small market town with unexpected ease. It was true that she had not made any close friends in Rio for her to miss. Her past had made it difficult for her to talk openly with her co-workers, and Dracco’s rejection of her had left painful scars that had damaged her self-confidence.
She still thought about Rio, of course, and the children. After all, it was because of her determination to help them that she was trapped in this unbearable nightmare situation. One day she would go back, but right now there were issues closer to hand that were absorbing her time and attention!
‘What is it, Dracco?’ she challenged him. ‘Were you hoping I was going to say I wasn’t eating it because I felt sick? Because I’m pregnant?’ She shook her head and gave him an unkind smile. ’I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid that I’m not. Poor you, you’re going to have to force yourself to have sex with me all over again.’ She gave a small, brittle laugh as fragile as the crystal in the wine glasses they were drinking out of.
She scarcely recognised herself in the embittered woman she felt she was becoming. Was this what sex did to you when it was denied to you? When you were given a taste of what it could be and then not allowed to taste it again?
Imogen had no way of knowing; after all, as Dracco had said himself, what did she know about sex? She had been a naïve virgin when he had taken her to bed, a fool who confused sex with love and who believed that love mattered.
‘Perhaps we should be more scientific and work out exactly when there is the optimum chance of me conceiving. After all, neither of us wants to have sex unnecessarily.’ Somehow she managed to produce a sweetly disdainful little smile as she made this suggestion.
‘You’re lying to me, Imo!’
For a moment she was so caught off guard that she looked at him in shock. He was only guessing. He couldn’t possibly know… She wasn’t even properly sure herself… That unfamiliar bout of dizziness and the fact that she could not bear her normal cup of strong coffee in the morning was all the evidence she had to go on as yet.
‘You want sex, and right now you want it so badly that I could take you right here, and, believe me, I’m sorely tempted to do just that, if only to prove it to you.’
Imogen went limp with relief. He didn’t know. He hadn’t meant what she had thought he meant at all. And then the reality of what he was saying pierced the blanket of her relief in tiny shocking darts of electric expectancy.
‘You’re wrong. I don’t want you.’
What on earth was she doing, pushing him to the point where he would have no choice but to…?
Imogen gave a small gasp as Dracco got up from his seat and started to walk purposefully towards her.
‘I’ve
warned you before about challenging me, Imo,’ he reminded her.
He had reached her now and pulled her easily to her feet and up against his body, holding her there as he looked down into her eyes, his mouth curling with insolence whilst his gaze lingered with deliberate intent on her mouth and then her throat, where her pulse was beating frantically fast, before dropping to her breasts.
It had been a hot day and she was wearing a thin top, against which her nipples had suddenly started to push with impatient eagerness.
Very carefully Dracco flattened the fabric against one of them, studying the openly erect outline in a way that made the heat flaming her face nothing to the heat burning inside her body.
‘But then, this is exactly what you wanted me to do, isn’t it?’ he asked her softly.
Her denial never got beyond her throat, because suddenly Dracco was covering her mouth with his, kissing her with a fierce, smothering passion that her own senses leapt to meet.
It was almost as though they were fighting a battle that each was determined to win, anger searing and sizzling through both of them.
As his mouth possessed hers Imogen made an attempt to bite at it, forestalled by the fierce thrust of his tongue between her parted lips. She could feel its smooth roughness against the edge of her teeth and then its hot, dominating slide against her own tongue.
Something inside her started to melt. She gave a keening moan, her fingers curling into the thin cotton shirt he was wearing. As though she had crushed a flower in her fingers, she could smell the hot scent of him her grip had released. It dizzied her, sending a wave of longing melting through her, a slow, sweet melt of butter-soft pleasure.
‘Dracco!’
She felt his mouth take his name from her as her lips formed it; knew he had absorbed and recognised the need that pierced her with such shocking sweetness.
Behind her closed eyelids she could see his naked body already, remember it in intimate and erotic detail, every bone, every muscle, every heart-wrenchingly perfect inch of him.