by Penny Jordan
‘Your father knew how I felt about you,’ he told her. ‘I couldn’t have hidden it from him; it was hard enough hiding it from you, especially when…’ He paused, his eyes dark and bleak, as though he was looking into a secret place that haunted him. ‘He said that even though you had a teenage crush on me you were far too young to commit yourself to any kind of relationship with me, any kind of future. He said that such a relationship would be unfair to you, unbalanced, untenable, and that you needed time to grow up, to learn something of life and yourself.
‘He knew that my feelings wouldn’t change, but he was concerned that you should have the opportunity to change yours, and I agreed with him. Not that it was easy, not with you.’ He broke off and shook his head. ‘I ached for you so badly that sometimes…’ He stopped. ‘And then your father died.
‘I didn’t want to break my promise to him, but I had no choice. I talked to Henry about it, and he urged me to go ahead. He said that under the circumstances your father would have understood. You were only eighteen and so damned innocent; I knew that.’ He stopped again. ‘As it was, I hardly dared trust myself around you, but I had to honour at least part of my promise to your father. And so…’
‘And so you planned for our marriage to be in name only,’ Imogen supplied softly for him.
‘Yes. I told myself that somehow I would find a way of waiting until you were twenty-one. You wanted to go to university. But then when we came out of the church you told me that you knew how I felt about you, and then…’ he paused and looked directly at her ‘…then you ran away, leaving me in no doubt as to what you felt about being loved by me.’
‘I didn’t run away because you loved me, Dracco,’ Imogen told him shakily. ‘I ran away because I thought you loved someone else—Lisa. That was what she’d implied to me. She said there was someone in your life. She challenged me to ask you. If I had thought for one minute that you loved me then…’
‘Then what?’ Dracco asked her softly.
‘Then.’ Betrayingly Imogen’s hand strayed towards her stomach as she tried to draw air into her lungs. ‘Then right now this baby would probably be our third and not our first. Why didn’t you tell me?’ she demanded emotionally. ‘You must have known how I felt about you.’
She ached for the years they had lost, the love she had gone without, the pain she had endured.
‘You know why. I had promised your father, and I agreed with everything he had said. You were too young. I knew for your own sake I had to let you go. Not that I ever really did,’ he admitted. ‘I kept tabs on you the whole time you were in Rio, and when you came back—’
‘You rejected me when I tried to tell you I loved you,’ Imogen interrupted him sadly.
‘Imo, I hated myself for the way I’d forced you into my bed, and because I wanted so much more from you than just sex. Too much more,’ he groaned. ‘Everything, all of you, just as I wanted you to accept and love all of me.’
She trembled wildly as he reached for her, allowing him to draw her into his arms, against his body.
‘Kiss me, Dracco,’ she demanded, lifting her face towards him, ‘just to prove to me that this is really happening.’
Tenderly his lips brushed hers, but it wasn’t enough for Imogen. She placed her hand on his jaw, maintaining the kiss, prolonging it, running her tongue-tip along the firm outline of his lips, tormenting and teasing them until Dracco gave a raw groan and gathered her even closer, close enough for her to feel his arousal.
‘I felt so guilty about what I was doing,’ Dracco admitted. ‘I had forced you into a situation where you had no option other than to go to bed with me.’ He stopped as he saw that Imogen was shaking her head.
‘I could have refused if I’d really wanted to. Deep down inside it was what I wanted, you were what I wanted, even though initially I wouldn’t admit it even to myself. That first morning after we’d made love…’ she paused and shook her head in bemusement ‘…I felt as though finally my life was complete, Dracco, as though finally I was complete. But when I tried to tell you you rejected me, and then I remembered about Lisa.’
‘Lisa never meant anything to me. I detested her both for the way she treated you and the way she abused your father’s love.’
‘She wanted you, though,’ Imogen told him.
Dracco grimaced. ‘Yes.’
Imogen waited. She knew that if he had tried to deny Lisa’s desire for him she would have felt reluctant to trust him completely.
‘She came on to me both during her marriage to your father and afterwards, and I suspect that in implying to you that she and I…well, I suspect it was her way of hurting you and getting back at me. She knew how I felt about you. Although how on earth you could believe that I could ever be remotely interested in her…!’
One arm was holding her close to his side whilst his free hand lazily caressed her throat.
‘She came here to see you,’ Imogen pointed out.
‘She gets biannual payments from your father’s estate, and she wanted to try to persuade me to increase them. I told her that she was wasting her time. Just as we’re wasting time now,’ he whispered to her, adding, ‘You don’t know just how much I want to take you to bed.’
‘Don’t I?’ Imogen teased him, moving closer to him with a small, blissful sigh as his hand cupped her breast, slowly kneading it whilst he started to kiss the soft, vulnerable flesh of her throat.
Tiny, delicious darts of pleasure rushed over her skin, making her shiver visibly and moan his name into the thick darkness of his hair. She could feel him drawing her towards her bedroom door.
‘Right now, what I want more than anything I’ve ever wanted in the whole of my life is to lay you down on my bed, our bed, and…
‘There’s a bed in here,’ Imogen reminded him, gesturing towards the narrow bed of her girlhood.
Immediately his eyes darkened. Shaking his head, he told her steadily, ‘No…this room was yours as a child, Imo…a girl…and it isn’t that child or that girl that I want to make love with now, much as I loved them both. It’s you, the woman, my woman, I want to hold in my arms.’
As he very gently drew her through the bedroom door and closed it behind them Imogen felt her eyes smart slightly with tears.
Blinking them away, she touched his mouth with her fingertips. Soon now she would be kissing it, kissing him, touching him every way and being touched by him. As her breathing started to quicken with loving longing she suddenly remembered something.
‘Well, if you weren’t with Lisa last night, where exactly were you?’
The sombreness of his expression sent a tiny prickle of anxiety tingling down her spine.
Dracco took a deep breath. Now that David had brought the papers to him the future of the shelter was secure, and he could tell Imogen what had been happening without subjecting her to any anxiety. Very slowly he did so.
When he had finished she went quiet, and then Dracco saw the tears burning her eyes.
With a low groan he wrapped her in his arms, rocking her protectively.
‘I shouldn’t have told you. I’ve upset you and that’s the last thing I wanted to do.’
‘No, no, it isn’t that,’ Imogen reassured him shakily.
‘Then what is it?’ Dracco demanded.
‘It’s just knowing that you would do something like that for me, to make me happy. Me… You didn’t know then about the baby.’
‘Imo, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you,’ Dracco told her seriously, ‘any sacrifice I wouldn’t make.’
‘Well, was it as good as you were expecting?’ Dracco asked softly.
They had just woken up and Dracco was propped up on one elbow as he looked down at her.
Stretching luxuriously, revelling in the sensuality of his naked body next to her own, Imogen told him truthfully, ‘No. It was even better…but just to make sure…’
As she traced the line of his jaw and reached up to kiss him Dracco groaned against her mouth.
> ‘Come here, you wonderfully wanton woman,’ he demanded as he wrapped his arms around her, ‘my wonderfully wanton woman, my wife…my love…my life!’
EPILOGUE
‘SHUSH…’ Tenderly Imogen rocked her three-month-old son in her arms before turning proudly to listen to Dracco’s short speech.
They had flown out to Rio early in the week, especially for the ceremony. Several of the sisters were crying openly as Dracco presented them with his cheque, and Imogen felt rather emotional herself, remembering just what he had done.
Alexander John had been less than three hours old when Dracco had come into her room at the hospital—the room that he had only left an hour earlier, having stayed with her throughout her labour—holding out to her an envelope, plus a small jeweller’s box.
She had opened the box first, assuming that the envelope simply held a card, her eyes shining with shocked delight when she had seen the beautiful antique diamond ring Dracco had given her.
Whilst he’d slid it onto her finger he had told her, ‘Before you open the envelope, let me tell you that it is not a gift from me to you, or even on account of you, infinitely beloved and precious though you are to me.’
Bemused, Imogen had waited.
‘This is a gift on behalf of Alexander to those children who may not receive the love he is guaranteed.’
Imogen had been conscious of Dracco watching her as she opened the envelope and removed the cheque inside it.
It had been made out to the shelter in Rio, and when Imogen had seen the amount of it her hand had trembled.
‘Dracco…I know we made a bargain,’ she had begun, ‘but my feelings for you, our love…’
‘You weren’t listening properly to me,’ he chided her gently. ‘This has nothing to do with that, Imo. This is not so much payment of a debt but recognition of a gift. Your gift of love to me, mine to you, ours to our son, your father’s to both of us.’
She had cried then, tears of joy and love and gratitude for everything she had been given, but most of all for Dracco himself and for their child.
And now here she was, watching as Dracco formally handed over his cheque to Sister Maria.
She had been talking to one of her old colleagues, who had informed her that it was only thanks to Dracco’s timely intervention that the shelter had been saved. They all thought that he was wonderful and that she was very lucky to be married to him, and Imogen fully agreed! In her arms, Alexander gurgled and smiled up at her. Hugging him, she kissed him. He was the image of Dracco, apart from the fact that he had her father’s nose.
Dracco, his speech over, was walking towards her. Imogen smiled lovingly at him. Suddenly she couldn’t wait for them to be alone together.
As though he had guessed what she was thinking as he reached her, Dracco drew her into his side, bending his head to kiss her. The love in his eyes as he looked at her made her heart flood with joy. He was everything she had ever wanted and everything she would ever want.
‘I love you,’ she whispered emotionally to him as he released her mouth.
‘I love you too, Imo,’ he responded tenderly. ‘I always have and I always will.’
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1409-9
THE BLACKMAIL BABY
Copyright © 2002 by Penny Jordan
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