by Lynne Graham
The phone buzzed and she leapt at it.
‘Hello? Hello?’ Peggy was saying.
‘It’s Catherine. Is Daniel there?’
‘He’s out bringing in the hay. I cried off to make refreshments,’ Peggy chattered. ‘Our phone was out for a couple of days and we didn’t realise. Have you been frantic, trying to get through?’
‘Well—’
‘I thought you would’ve been,’ Peggy interrupted with her usual impatience. ‘I tried to ring you a few times from the call-box in the village but I always struck out. I suppose you’ve been out scouring the pavements in search of a job if you’ve decided against working for Mrs Anstey.’
‘I—’
‘Daniel’s having a fabulous time. The weather’s been terrific. We were planning to camp out tonight but, of course, if you want to speak to him…’
‘No, that’s OK.’ I’ve been kidnapped. I’m in Italy. I’m getting married tomorrow. The revelations went unspoken. Peggy would think she was a candidate for the funny farm. In any case, she would be home before they were back in London. Nobody need ever know, she thought in that first frantic flush of desperation.
‘Catherine, somebody’s just driven into the yard. Wow, fancy car. Can I ring you back?’
‘No…no, I’m out…I mean, I’m ringing from somewhere else. Give my love to Daniel.’ She dropped the phone as though it burnt, and tottered backwards on to the lounger.
The hideous, absolutely inexcusable events of the past week were suddenly all crowding in on her. She flinched and she shrank and she cringed over the replay. Humiliation scored letters of fire into her soul. From rock-bottom there was only one way to go, and that was up, as she relived what Luc had done to her.
And really, there wasn’t anything that Luc hadn’t done. While she was in no condition to know what was happening to her, he had moved in for the kill. Plotting and intrigue were a breath of fresh air to that Borgia temperament of his. It had been as easy as stealing candy from a baby. Baby. Baby! She blenched and recoiled from that terrifying train of thought, completely unable to deal with it on top of everything else.
For a week she had been unaware that she was living four years in the past. He had left nothing within her possession that might jog her memory. Not a newspaper or a television set or a calendar had been allowed anywhere within a mile of her.
Every detail had been bloodlessly, inhumanly precise. It had Luc stamped all over it. He hadn’t made a single error. She had been baited, hooked and landed like a fish. Only even a fish would have had more sense of self-preservation. A fish wouldn’t have scrambled up the line, thrown itself masochistically on to the gutting knife and looked forward to the heat of the grill…but she had.
What Luc wanted, he took. Scruples didn’t come into it. Costs didn’t come into it. The end result was all that interested him. He had believed that she had planned to marry Drew and, with Drew’s freedom so close, time had been a luxury Luc hadn’t had. No doubt if she had thrown herself gratefully at his feet that night marriage would never have been mentioned. But in resisting Luc, she had challenged Luc. And he could not resist a challenge.
Her teeth ground together and her stomach heaved. That degrading fish image wouldn’t leave her alone. Her small hands clenched into fists. Rage shuddered through her; rage that knew no boundaries; rage so powerful that it boiled up in a violent physicality she had not known she could experience.
At that precise moment, Luc appeared, striding down the steps set into the slope, and she remembered the episode in the back of the limousine and death would have been too quick a release for him to satisfy her. Springing upright, she grabbed up a glass and threw it at him. As it smashed several feet to the left of him, he stilled.
‘You filthy, rotten, cheating, conniving swine!’ she railed at him, snatching up the second glass and hurling it with all her might. ‘You rat!’ she ranted, and the phone went in the same direction. ‘You louse!’ she launched, bending in a frenzy to take off a shoe, her rage only getting more out of control at her failure to hit a fixed target. ‘Bastard!’ She broke through her loathing for that particular word and punctuated it with her other shoe. ‘I want to kill you!’
‘Poison would be a better bet than a gun.’ Luc spread a speaking glance over the far-flung positions of the missiles, entire and smashed. ‘Marksmanship wouldn’t appear to be one of your hidden talents.’
Her rage reached explosive, screaming proportions. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘It seems fairly safe to assume that you’ve retrieved your memory,’ he drawled. ‘I’m not sure it would be safe to assume anything else.’
‘No, it wouldn’t be!’ His complete cool was maddening her even more. ‘If you were dying of thirst, I wouldn’t give you a drink! If you were starving, I wouldn’t feed you! If you were the only man left alive on this earth and I was the only woman, the human race would grind to a halt! You deserve to be horsewhipped and keelhauled and hung, and if I was a man I’d do it!’
‘And if you were a man, you wouldn’t be in this situation,’ Luc input helpfully as she paused to catch her breath.
‘I’m going to report you to the police!’ Catherine blazed at him, satisfied to have at last found a realistic threat.
Luc angled his dark head back, piercing golden eyes resting on her. ‘What for?’
‘W-what for?’ she stammered an octave higher. ‘What for? You kidnapped me!’
‘Did I drug you? Physically abuse you? Have you witnesses to these events?’
‘I’ll make it up; I’ll lie!’ she slashed back at him.
‘But why did you stand so willingly at my side at the airport when I announced our marriage plans?’ Luc enquired with the same immovable, incredibly outrageous cool.
‘You’ve kept me a prisoner here all week!’ In desperation, she set off on another tack, determined to nail him down to a crime on the statute books.
An ebony brow quirked. ‘With locked doors? I don’t recall refusing to let you go anywhere.’
‘Physical abuse, then!’ Catherine slung through gnashing teeth. ‘I’ll get you on that!’
Luc actually smiled. ‘What physical abuse?’
Catherine drew herself up to her full five feet and one quarter inch and shrieked. ‘You know very well what I’m talking about! While I…while I was not in my right mind, you took disgusting advantage of me!’
‘Did I?’ he murmured. ‘Catherine, it is my considered opinion that over the past week you’ve been more in your right mind than you’ve been for almost five years.’
‘How dare you?’ she screamed at him, fit to be tied. ‘How dare you say that to me?’
A broad shoulder shifted in an elegantly understated shrug. ‘I say it because it is the truth.’
‘The truth according to who?’ she shouted ferociously. ‘You take that back right now!’
‘I have not the slightest intention of withdrawing that statement,’ he informed her with careless provocation. ‘When you calm down, you will realise that it is the truth.’
‘When I calm down?’ she yelled. ‘Do I look like I’m about to calm down?’
Luc ran a reflective appraisal over her. ‘If you could swim a little better, I would drop you in the pool.’
‘You’re not even sorry, are you?’ That was one reality that was sinking in. It did nothing to reduce her fury.
He sighed. ‘Why would I be sorry?’
‘Why? Why?’ She could hardly get the repetition out. ‘Because I’m going to make you sorry! I should have known you wouldn’t have a twinge of conscience about bringing me here!’
‘You’re quite right. I haven’t.’
‘You act as though I’m some sort of a thing, an object you can lift and lay at will!’ As his wide mouth curled with amusement, she understood why people committed murder.
His lashes screened his expressive eyes. ‘If you are an object to me, then I am an object to you in the same way.’
For a sec
ond she glared at him uncomprehendingly and then caught his meaning. ‘I’m not talking about sex!’ she raged.
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I had noticed that once the charge of physical abuse was withdrawn—’
‘I didn’t withdraw it!’ she interrupted.
‘You were careful to change the subject,’ he countered. ‘You want me every bit as much as I want you.’
‘You conceited jerk! I was sick! I hate you!’
‘You’ll get over that,’ he assured her.
‘I’m not going to get over it! I’m leaving, walking out, departing…’ she spelt out tempestuously.
‘A fairly typical response of yours when the going threatens to get rough, but you’re not doing a vanishing act this time.’
‘I’m leaving you!’ she shouted wildly.
‘Watch the glass!’ Luc raked at her rawly.
But it was too late. A sharp pain bit into her foot and she vented a gasp. Striding forward, Luc wrenched her off her feet, moved over to the nearest seat and literally tipped her up, a lean hand retaining a hold on one slender ankle. ‘Stay still!’ he roared at her. ‘Or you’ll push the glass in deeper.’
Sobbing with thwarted temper and pain, she let him withdraw the sliver and then she cursed him.
‘I knew you would do that.’
‘Let go of me!’ she screeched.
‘With all this broken glass around? You just have to be kidding,’ he gibed, wrapping an immaculate hanky round her squirming foot. ‘When did you last have a tetanus jab?’
‘Six months ago!’ she spat, infuriated beyond all bearing by the ignominy of her position. ‘Did you hear what I said? I’m leaving!’
‘Like hell you are.’ Jerking up the sarong that had fallen on the ground, he proceeded to her utter disbelief to wrap it round her much as if she were a doll to be dressed.
She thrust his hands away. ‘Don’t you dare touch me! What do you mean—“Like hell you are”? You can’t keep me here!’
Casting the sarong aside, he took her by surprise by lifting her and, when she fought tooth and nail with every limb flailing, he flung her over his shoulder.
‘Let me go!’ she shrieked, hammering at his back with her fists. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Putting you under restraint for your own good. You’re hysterical,’ he bit out. ‘And I’ve had enough.’
‘You’ve had enough?’ Her voice broke incredulously. ‘Put me down!’
‘Sta’ zitta. Be quiet,’ he ground out.
Gravity was threatening the bra of her bikini. She became more occupied with holding it in place than thumping any part of him she could reach. He was heading for the stone staircase that led up to the french doors on the first-floor gallery. ‘I hate you!’ she sobbed, tears of mortification, unvented fury and frustration flooding her eyes without warning.
A minute later Luc dumped her on her bed with about the same level of care as a sack of potatoes might have required. ‘And hating me isn’t making you happy, is it?’ he breathed derisively. ‘Per dio, doesn’t that tell you something?’
‘That you’re the most unscrupulous primitive I’ve ever come across!’ she spat through her tears. ‘And I’m leaving!’
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘You can’t stop me!’ And you certainly can’t make me marry you!’ she asserted with returning confidence, wriggling off the bed and hobbling over to a chair to pull on the flimsy n;aaeglig;aae lying there, suddenly feeling very exposed in what little there was of the bikini. ‘And, now that Drew’s got his precious contract, you can’t hold that over me any more!’
‘He signs for it one hour after the wedding.’
Catherine was paralysed in her tracks. Jerkily she turned round. Shimmering golden eyes clashed with hers in an almost physical assault. ‘I had foreseen the possibility that this might occur.’
‘He…he hasn’t got it yet?’ She could hardly get the stricken question past her lips.
‘I’m such a conniving bastard, I’m afraid,’ Luc purred like a tiger on the prowl.
‘You can’t want me when I don’t want you!’ she gasped.
‘I’ve already disproved that fallacy,’ he said drily. ‘And, when we reach our destination in England tomorrow, I have no doubt that you will be in a more receptive frame of mind.’
All Catherine caught was that one magical word. ‘England?’ she repeated. ‘You’re taking me back to England after the wedding?’
‘A change of scene is usual.’
Evidently he believed that, once that ring was on her finger, it would have the same effect as a chain holding a skeleton to a dungeon wall. But, once she was back in England, he couldn’t hold her. While she was here, he had her passport and she wouldn’t have liked to bet on her chances of escape from a walled estate patrolled by security staff, aided in their task by an impressive range of electronic devices.
If she didn’t go through with the wedding, Drew would suffer. She shuddered with inner fury at that unavoidable conclusion. The seductive fantasy of leaving Luc without a bride on his much-publicised wedding-day faded. She should have known better than to think it could be that easy. All the same, the prospect of being back in England tomorrow was immensely soothing. He could hardly force her to stay with him.
‘Catherine,’ Luc drawled. ‘Don’t even think it.’
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she muttered tightly. ‘I’ve already said it all.’
‘We have to talk.’ A knock sounded on the door. He ignored it. ‘I won’t allow you to spoil the wedding.’
A gagged and bound bride might raise an eyebrow or two, she reflected fiercely as the knock on the door was repeated.
‘Avanti!’ Luc called in exasperation.
Bernardo appeared, a secretary just visible behind him. ‘Signorina Peruzzi.’ He gestured with the cordless phone apologetically. ‘She says it is a matter of great urgency that she speak with you, signor.’
‘I will not take a call from her,’ Luc dismissed. ‘Leave us, Bernardo.’
The door shut again.
‘He speaks English,’ Catherine realised. ‘Only you must’ve told him not to around me.’
‘The staff are under the illusion that the request was made because you are keen to improve your Italian.’
She covered her face with shaking hands, what composure she had retained threatening all of a sudden to crumble. ‘I loathe you!’
‘You are angry with me,’ he contradicted steadily. ‘And I suppose you have some reason for that.’
‘You suppose?’ Wild-eyed, she surveyed him over the top of her white-boned fingers. Reaction was setting in.
‘You belong with me, Catherine. Use the brain God gave you at birth.’ The advice was abrasive. ‘You have been happy, happier than I have ever known you to be, here.’
‘I was living in the past!’
‘But why did you choose to return to that particular part of the past?’ His sensual mouth twisted. ‘Ask yourself that.’
‘I didn’t choose anything!’ she protested. ‘And what I ended up with isn’t real!’
‘It can be as real as you want it to be.’
The sense of betrayal was increasing in her. He had betrayed her. But, worst of all, she had betrayed herself. She had betrayed everything she believed in, everything that she was, everything that she had become after leaving him. In one week she had smashed four years of self-respect. In one week she had destroyed every barrier that might have protected her.
‘Can you turn water into wine as well?’ she demanded wildly, choking on her own humiliation. ‘You must have been laughing yourself sick all week at just how easy it was to make a fool of me!’
A muscle pulled tight at his hard jawline. ‘That is not how it has been between us.’
‘That’s how it’s always been between us!’ she attacked shakily. ‘You plot and you plan and you manipulate and you make things happen just as you want them to happen.’
‘I d
idn’t plan for you to lose your memory.’
‘But you didn’t miss a trick in making use of it!’ she condemned. ‘And I’ve been through all this before with you. When we came back from Switzerland, my employers had mysteriously vacated their flat and shut down the art gallery, leaving me out of a job! Coincidence?’ she prompted. ‘I don’t think so. You made that happen as well, didn’t you?’
A faint darkening of colour flared over his cheekbones, accentuating the brilliance of his dark eyes. ‘I bought the building,’ he conceded in a driven tone.
‘And it made it so much easier for you to persuade me to come to New York.’ Her breath caught like a sob in her throat.
‘I wanted you very much. And I was impatient.’ He looked at her in unashamed appeal. ‘I am what I am, bella mia, and I’m afraid I don’t have the power to change the past.’
‘But I had. Don’t you understand that?’ Moisture was hitting her eyes in a blinding, burning surge and she could not bear to let him see her cry. ‘I had!’ she repeated in bitter despair.
‘Catherine…what do you want me to say in answer?’ he demanded. ‘If you want me to be honest, I will be. All that I regret in the past is that I lost you.’
‘You didn’t lose me…you drove me away!’ she sobbed.
He spread eloquent, beautifully shaped hands. ‘All right, if semantics are that important, I drove you away. But you might try to see it from my point of view for a change. You shoot a crazy question at me out of the blue one morning over breakfast—’
‘Yes, it was crazy, wasn’t it?’ she cut in tremulously. ‘Absolutely crazy of me to think that you might actually condescend to marry me!’
‘I didn’t know there was going to be no court of appeal!’ he slashed back at her fiercely. ‘So I said the wrong thing. It was cruel, what I said. I admit that. If you want an apology, you should have stayed around to get it because I don’t feel like apologising for it now! I came back to the apartment an hour and a half after I left it that morning. I didn’t go to Milan. And where were you?’
She was shattered by the news that he had returned that morning. It shook her right out of her incipient hysteria.