by Lynne Graham
Kelda tugged with shaking fingers at the clasp of the necklace. Suddenly it felt like it was strangling her. ‘Take this bloody thing off me now!’ she demanded.
‘It has a trick fastening for security.’
‘I’ll break it!’
‘You value beauty too much to destroy it.’ Angelo lifted a careless hand and stroked an amused forefinger along the tremulous line of her generous mouth. ‘And so do I,’ he murmured in a wine dark undertone of intimacy. ‘You really must stop underestimating me, cara. It’s such a waste of your energies.’
Kelda jerked violently away from the taunting caress and left the table.
CHAPTER FOUR
STANDING on the stone balcony, Kelda drained her cup of cappuccino and moodily surveyed the incredibly beautiful countryside spread out like a picturesque map. When Angelo had said ‘totally private’, he had not been joking. A patchwork of wheat and barley fields, grape and olive groves and copses of trees was interrupted by the sienna walls and terracotta roofs of occasional farmhouses. There was no town anywhere that she could see within walking distance.
And what would she do even if there was a town? Offer herself up to the local policeman? Refusing to give up her passport had to be a crime, but did she really want to try to prove such a claim against a native Italian like Angelo, who was undoubtedly a major landowner in the locality and probably held in considerable respect? She would end up with egg on her face.
She could not risk being sued for defaulting on her contract. Her relations with Ella Donaldson were poor right now. If she was sued, she would get the name of being unreliable as well as being notorious, she reflected grimly, and she might never work again. Photographic modelling was a tough business and behind her, ready to walk over her and take her place, were countless beautiful, ambitious teenage girls eager for their chance of success. Tim had called her famous but she was not in the super-model bracket, although her career had been heading that way before Danny Philips had tripped her up.
Like it or not, Angelo had her trapped. She could hitch her passage to the nearest embassy and say she had lost her passport but she would be in breach of contract if she walked out. Ella wouldn’t be a sympathetic listener to some far-fetched story about Max St Saviour and Angelo Rossetti.
She was here for only two days...what could happen in two days? Angelo was enjoying wielding power over her. Well, let him, she urged herself. Up to a point, anyway. Angelo wanted revenge for that night six years ago. This was it. Now that she was prepared, she could take Angelo in her stride, couldn’t she? Beyond keeping her here as an unwilling guest, he couldn’t force her to do anything that she didn’t want to do.
He had had breakfast sent up to her on a tray. It had been delivered by not one but two giggling maids, intent on getting a good look at Angelo’s latest bit of fluff. Her chin came up. Why should she care about what the staff thought? Nobody else was ever likely to know that she had even been here.
She strolled downstairs and paused in the doorway of the room Angelo evidently used as an office. It was so painfully well-organised and tidy, it screamed Angelo, and unexpectedly she found herself smiling, imagining him seated behind that exquisitely polished desk. Angelo wanted her. Imagine that...Angelo, sitting back to wait for her to stumble and fall into his ruthless hands. Angelo, who had probably never had to wait for any woman and who would, sadly for him, still be waiting for her on Judgement Day!
‘You look very pleased with yourself.’
Kelda spun and very nearly tripped on the corner of a rug. Angelo raised his hands to steady her, long brown fingers curving round her forearms. Without warning, he was much too close for comfort. ‘You can let me go now,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’m not liable to fall at your feet—’
‘Ever?’ Lustrous eyes of gold challenged her with assurance. ‘Don’t be so sure, cara.’
‘Of that I am very sure.’ But her breath shortened in her throat as his scrutiny wandered at an outrageously leisurely pace over her, lingering unashamedly on the proud swell of her breasts. In shocking betrayal, her nipples tightened and thrust forward against the fine lace fabric, heat pooling between her thighs.
Kelda pulled back, crossing her arms protectively over herself. She couldn’t believe that he could make her react like that without even touching her. Her body trembled, taut and sensitive, on the brink of arousal. And it had happened so fast. She was shattered by the discovery that her body had a life of its own in Angelo’s vicinity.
A slow, sensual smile tilted his beautiful mouth but surprisingly he said nothing. He hadn’t noticed, she told herself in relief.
‘Would you like to go out to lunch?’
‘I’m allowed out?’ she prompted in astonishment.
‘You’re not in a prison cell...or a cage,’ he added with something less than his usual cool, and she noticed the strangest thing. Dark colour had overlaid his tautened cheekbones when he made that crack about a cell.
A slight pleat formed between her brows, for she had no idea why he had suddenly tensed. ‘I’d love to go out,’ she murmured truthfully.
‘So tell me about Jeff Maitland,’ Angelo invited as he raked the Porsche down the dusty hillside. ‘I hear that he wants to marry you.’
‘Surprised?’ Kelda tossed back, eyeing him from behind her sunglasses.
‘Not at all, cara. But I suspect his father might have something to say about it...’ Angelo drawled and then continued speciously, ‘Of course, perhaps you’ve already met Maitland Senior?’
Kelda compressed her lips, stayed silent.
‘He’s a narrow-minded prig,’ Angelo proffered smoothly. ‘And he’s been telling anyone willing to listen recently that he wants you out of his son’s life.’
Hot pink flamed in her cheeks.
‘Now, I am not a narrow-minded prig,’ Angelo divulged softly. ‘I can live with absolutely anything that you might choose to tell me about your past.’
Her teeth clenched but she turned her head and cast him a glimmering smile. ‘I don’t kiss and tell, caro.’
‘But your lovers do,’ Angelo inputted flatly.
Kelda stiffened. ‘I bet you devoured every word!’ she condemned.
‘Yes but I don’t say that I believed every word of it,’ he pointed out drily. ‘Of course, if you want me to tie you up and cover you with whipped cream, I’m more than willing...but on a first date?’
‘I love strawberries and cream,’ Kelda asserted, aggressively determined not to plead her innocence on any count.
‘Cream is so messy...I prefer champagne,’ Angelo countered huskily, rather taking the wind out of her sails. ‘Now, the black leather and the riding crop. I didn’t credit that. That made me laugh, most inconveniently in the middle of a very boring meeting. You are not a sadist—’
‘But I feel very sadistic around you, Angelo,’ Kelda told him, her eyes glittering furiously at him.
‘You’ll purr like a cat in my bed,’ Angelo murmured silkily. ‘And you won’t need black leather, zebra skins or jacuzzis to enliven the experience.’
‘Dream on,’ Kelda spelt out shakily. ‘I will never get into your bed!’
‘You are more likely not to want to get out of it again.’
‘You don’t suffer much in the way of humility, do you, Angelo?’
‘Not in the bedroom, no,’ he conceded silkily.
Kelda took a deep breath. ‘And the idea that I have had dozens of lovers doesn’t even bother you?’
‘It might if I believed that...but I don’t.’
Kelda was sharply disconcerted. ‘You don’t?’
‘A woman who has had dozens of sexual partners wouldn’t get all hot and bothered talking about sex. She wouldn’t blush when I looked at her breasts, either,’ Angelo delineated with immense calm, and then shot her a nakedly amused glance that sent her pulse racing. ‘In the space of a couple of hours, I’ve learnt more about you by observation than you could begin to imagine.’
‘Really?’
she endeavoured to sound bored but deep down inside she was churning up with dismay.
‘Really,’ Angelo confirmed lazily.
He took her to a tiny sleepy village on a hill. It was entirely enclosed by pale thirteenth-century walls and half a dozen lookout towers. The restaurant was in a former monastery and they chose to dine outside below the spreading shade of a giant chestnut tree. Kelda accepted a glass of wine and stood at the wall, taking in the spectacular view of the wooded valley far below. It was a truly glorious day and the world seemed to be drowsing in the noon day heat. Behind her, Angelo was choosing their meal with the sort of serious selectivity that made her smile.
‘You know,’ she heard herself saying without really thinking about it, ‘I wasn’t going to interfere between my mother and your father.’
‘But you already have,’ Angelo countered drily.
‘I was asked for my opinion and I gave it.’ Kelda shrugged. ‘What was wrong with that?’
‘Apart from the fact that Daisy is highly suggestible and very much afraid of damaging her relationship with you, what makes you think that your opinion was worth hearing?’ Angelo murmured very quietly. ‘You have all the sensitivity of a steel butterfly in your own relationships with men—’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Kelda demanded hotly.
‘And you’ve never been with any man longer than about six weeks. I would say you were uniquely unqualified to offer advice on affairs of the heart—’
‘A steel butterfly?’ she queried acidly.
‘I both heard and saw you in action with young Maitland.’
‘He was being difficult,’ she parried uncomfortably.
‘So you went home alone and left him drowning his sorrows. Your heart really bleeds, cara,’ Angelo mocked.
‘He wants to marry me and I don’t want to marry him. A bleeding heart would have been out of place.’ Kelda held his lustrous dark gold eyes in angry challenge. ‘How do you dump your women when you’re finished with them, Angelo?’
‘Not in a public place,’ he parried quietly. ‘And they invariably see the writing on the wall in advance and extract themselves with dignity.’
Kelda flushed, uneasily aware that she had been clumsy with Jeff. Her mouth tightened. Just like old times. Angelo criticising her, implying that she did not have a great deal of class. It was a relief to see the waiter approaching them across the cobbles.
The meal began with a salad of young turkey and grapefruit and was followed by rosettes of veal with artichoke sauce. She refused the saffron rice with quail and drank glass after glass of wine in a vain attempt to cool down in the heat before falling victim to the spongata, a very rich pastry filled with walnuts, almonds, pine nuts and raisins mixed with cognac and honey.
‘I do believe I have found food I would kill for,’ she sighed, blissfully stuffed as she rested back in her chair.
‘I didn’t think you would eat most of it,’ Angelo confided.
‘I lost so much weight last month, I can afford to indulge a little.’ Pleasantly relaxed, Kelda asked him a question that had been bothering her for several days. ‘Tell me, when did you change your mind about my mother? What makes you so keen for her to marry your father again?’
‘He hasn’t been happy since the divorce. He was working too hard...in spite of medical advice. Hence the heart attack,’ Angelo divulged unemotionally. ‘He still loves your mother. To be brutally honest, even if she was the money-grabbing blonde I once thought she was, I’d still encourage the marriage. He needs her. I accidentally walked in on them the first time she came to the hospital and there she was, fluffing up his pillows, hanging on his every word, generally looking at him as if he was a god come down from Olympus—’
Kelda could not avoid wincing at the description of her mother’s behaviour around Tomaso. ‘I bet he loved it—’
‘Fifteen minutes of Daisy and he was itching to get out of that bed,’ Angelo said wryly. ‘She made him feel like a man again. She did more for him than all the specialists I had flown in to try and cheer him up about his future prospects.’
Kelda chewed at her lower lip. ‘Mum can’t help being like that round a man,’ she muttered defensively. ‘She’s the nurturing, cherishing type.’
‘I have to admit that when I first saw her in action years ago, I thought it was all an act.’ Angelo topped up her empty glass and sent her a shimmering smile that made her feel oddly dizzy. ‘Of course, it wasn’t. It was just Daisy. I know that now. She’s one of that rare breed, loving and giving...no greed, no calculation. Eleven years ago, I should have had greater faith in my father’s judgement. He’s no fool.’
Kelda’s entire attention was intently pinned to him. A glorious smile spontaneously curved her full mouth. The free admission that he had entirely misjudged her mother, followed by such generous praise of Daisy’s nature, soothed once raw loyalties and delighted her no end. In response to her smile, Angelo’s intense charm blazed forth, catching her unawares.
Feeling scorched, her heart leaping behind her breastbone in a sudden onrush of excitement, she lowered her lashes and struggled to think of something to say but Angelo got in first.
‘What was your father like?’
Bemusedly, she repeated, ‘My father?’ She was so unused to anyone mentioning her father and then once more, she smiled. ‘He was really wonderful,’ she said softly.
Dense ebony lashes dropped low on Angelo’s intent gaze. ‘Tell me about him,’ he encouraged very quietly.
‘I get my height and my colouring from him,’ Kelda shared with unhidden pride. ‘He was hot-tempered but he had a terrific sense of humour and he was marvellous with kids. I remember the way he used to play with us when we were very young. He was like a child himself sometimes.’ She laughed. ‘We moved house a lot. He was very restless, or maybe it was Mum who was restless. He started working abroad when I was five...it really broke my heart—’
Angelo seemed strangely preoccupied with the contents of his glass. ‘Where abroad?’ he cut in.
‘He was an oil worker with a big company in Jordan.’
‘Jordan?’ Angelo repeated softly. ‘Did he come home very often after he started working in... Jordan?’
She frowned. ‘It cost so much, you see. He came back a couple of times but we really kept in touch by letter. I have every letter that he ever wrote to me. He used to tell me terrific stories about the desert. Savage Arabs and crazy camels. He had a great imagination...I dare say he made up half of it to amuse me—’
‘Possibly,’ Angelo murmured in a curiously flat tone.
Kelda didn’t notice. ‘It’s silly, but I always used to wish that he would write direct to me instead of just enclosing his letter to me in with one to Mum. She used to bring them to Liverpool when she came, and she never brought the envelopes with the foreign stamps and I always wanted those to show off to my friends!’
Silence had fallen. A bee buzzed languorously over to the acacia blossoms by the side of the wall. Kelda was feeling wonderfully relaxed. ‘What hurt most,’ she sighed, ‘was only finding out that he had died after the funeral! Mum thought we were too young to handle it but I was thirteen and I still remember her coming up to Liverpool to tell us. I was so angry with her for not telling me immediately.’
‘She was trying to protect you.’ Angelo rose with that lethal elegance of movement that was so characteristic of him. ‘I think it’s time to go.’
Kelda reddened. ‘You should have said that you were bored.’ She was furious with herself for rabbiting on as she had. Why had she done that? She had never discussed her father with anybody before.
‘You never bore me, cara.’
As she clashed with his brilliant dark eyes, she felt oddly naked, horribly vulnerable all of a sudden. Abruptly, she stood up and their surroundings swam dizzily around them. She had had far too much wine. Alcohol loosened the tongue, she reflected ruefully. Angelo closed a large hand over her smaller one and silently guided her down the steep steps to t
he car.
Her stupid fingers were clumsy with the seatbelt. Brushing them away, Angelo did it up for her. ‘Do you still think of me as a slum chid?’ she heard herself ask without forethought.
Lean fingers curved to her delicate jawbone, inexorably forcing her to turn her head towards him. ‘Shut up,’ he said softly, not unkindly.
‘I did grow up on a council estate—’ she began sharply.
‘I told you to shut up.’ His brown fingers moved caressingly over her taut cheekbone and then he leant down, deftly winding his other hand into her hair and let the tip of his tongue slowly and smoothly trace the tremulous line of her lower lip.
Her breath escaped with a tiny gasp and her heart thudded like that of a wild bird in a cage. She wanted his mouth so badly she burned, every sense pitched to an unbearable high as he toyed expertly with the sensitive fullness he had discovered. Her eyes slid shut, her long throat arching as she bent back her head instinctively.
Angelo set her back from him and fired the engine of the car. Her lashes swept up on glazed green eyes, her whole body throbbing with an intensity that was pure pain.
A blunt forefinger raked down the slender length of her thigh. ‘I know,’ Angelo breathed thickly.
Kelda looked out of the side window, fighting for composure. She saw two elderly women, dressed in black, crossing the empty square towards the tiny church. But they didn’t seem real. The only reality she could currently register was the seething sexual vibrations in the atmosphere.
And she couldn’t handle the silence that lay between them. Deliberately she rested her head back on the restraint and pretended to doze. The second the Porsche raked to a halt in the courtyard, she leapt out of it. She couldn’t get away from him quickly enough.
‘Kelda.’
Involuntarily, she found herself glancing back. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘Fine.’ Angelo held her strained scrutiny with unnerving ease and tenacity. He was in control. The raw masculine power of him sprang out at her. Angelo, a predator and a sensualist combined. She had let her guard down over lunch and it had not only been the wine. Angelo had drawn her out with subtle skill and she had fallen for it, talking her foolish head off about her father. A man, who had been little more than an unskilled labourer on an oil site, a man in whom Angelo could not have the slightest genuine interest, though he had admirably concealed the fact, she conceded bitterly.