by Lynne Graham
‘You can come with us, Kelda.’ Angelo’s husky voice was like a knife between her ribs.
Slowly she turned round. Angelo smoothly introduced Fiona. Fiona gave her a muted smile, her bright eyes sharply assessing. ‘I’ve heard so much about you that I feel I know you already.’
‘Bad news does tend to travel fast.’
‘Kelda,’ Angelo breathed with icy emphasis.
Treating him to the first look she had dared, she clashed with impassive dark eyes and felt the ice there like a chilly hand squeezing her heart.
‘She’s what?’ she heard Tomaso roar very loudly several feet away.
‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ Fiona was saying drily. ‘But I’m sorry if I did.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ Kelda breathed in deeply, struggling to maintain her mask of composure. ‘I’m a bit touchy today.’
‘Do you want a lift?’ Angelo enquired uninvitingly.
A hand came down on her shoulder. ‘Kelda will drive back to the house with us,’ Tomaso announced grim-mouthed. ‘We have something very personal to discuss, Angelo.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHITE and strained, Kelda couldn’t resist throwing a reproachful glance at her mother. ‘You didn’t waste any time, did you?’
‘Naturally your mother confided in me,’ Tomaso responded thinly. ‘I am her husband and your stepfather. Is it true? Are you expecting a child?’
‘Mum, how could you do this to me?’ Kelda muttered in deep embarrassment.
‘We’re going off on our honeymoon and I don’t like leaving you alone,’ Daisy told her ruefully. ‘I needed Tomaso’s advice.’
‘You always were...volatile,’ Tomaso muttered half under his breath.
‘It’s none of your business!’ Kelda burst out helplessly. She wasn’t a child.
‘But is it Angelo’s business?’ Tomaso’s sharp dark eyes rested astutely on her startled face.
‘What’s this got to do with Angelo?’ Daisy demanded blankly.
Tomaso had removed his wallet from an inside pocket. Opening it, he extracted a piece of folded newspaper. ‘Don’t you think Angelo would be preferable to some stranger at a party?’ he said drily, and handed the cutting to his new bride.
‘What’s that?’ Kelda demanded in a high, thin voice that was shredding fast into near hysteria.
‘Where and when was this photo taken?’ Daisy had paled in shock. She looked at her daughter with appalled eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I’m your mother.’
‘It was taken at Pisa almost six weeks ago. That’s the airport in the background. It was published in a minor gossip mag in Italy and someone sent it to me. I’ve had it for weeks,’ her stepfather admitted with a small tight smile. ‘I didn’t want to upset you, cara.’
Kelda snatched at the cutting and turned a deep guilty-as-charged pink. It was a photo of them kissing at the airport and Angelo was very recognisable even if only a tutored eye might have guessed her identity.
‘They were in Italy together,’ Tomaso breathed harshly.
‘You mean that they both pretended...they lied?’ her mother gathered in horror. ‘But why?’
‘Since your daughter appears to have lost her voice, I’m depending on my son to fill in the blanks—’
‘No, please!’ Kelda broke in. ‘It isn’t Angelo’s...I mean, definitely not...I just can’t imagine Angelo and I together that way—’ Literally stupefied by the horror of Tomaso’s discovery that she had been in Italy with Angelo, Kelda was having a very hard time finding convincing words of denial.
Her stepfather dealt her an intuitive look. ‘Can’t you?’ he fielded even more drily. ‘You were alone with Angelo for what...three days? I wouldn’t trust the two of you to be alone together for an hour—’
‘Tomaso!’ Daisy gasped in reproof.
‘My son has wanted your daughter practically from the first moment he laid eyes on her, and judging by a certain episode six years ago Kelda was not—’
‘It is not Angelo’s child!’ Kelda suddenly sobbed, covering her face.
‘Then you have nothing to worry about when I tell him,’ Tomaso told her speciously.
Kelda reeled out of the limousine outside the mansion she had spent five years of her life in. She surged through the wide open front door, deaf and blind to the housekeeper’s greeting and dived into the downstairs cloakroom at the back of the huge hall. She lost her breakfast there.
When she made a strained reappearance, everyone was being seated in the ballroom which had been set out with tables for the reception. It was milling with guests and caterers and she had never been so grateful to see crowds. She was less grateful when she found herself at the top table, only several seats down from Angelo and Fiona.
The meal and the speeches were ever afterwards a blur. Tomaso had shattered her. Never before had she been made so aware of the likeness between father and son. Her stepfather had not previously shown that side of his temperament to her. There was dancing after the meal. She wanted to go home, but knew that she had to sit it out. Several men asked her to dance and grimly, for the sake of appearances, she obliged. She averted her eyes every time she caught a glimpse of Angelo and Fiona on the floor, didn’t even question why she had to protect herself that way.
When Angelo smoothly cut in on her partner as the music changed, she was quite unprepared for the confrontation. Instinctively, she stilled and the lean hand at her spine pulled her closer. ‘Smile,’ he suggested silkily, raking dark eyes absorbing the sudden tense pallor freezing her beautiful face. ‘Or I might suspect that you’re pining for me.’
Her nostrils flared on the disturbingly familiar scent of him. Her fluid body was poker straight in the circle of his arms. ‘I don’t smile for you, Angelo,’ she said.
‘Except in my bed,’ he murmured with black velvet satire.
Involuntarily, Kelda flinched and missed a step.
‘Yes...you are rather sensitive today,’ he mused softly into the veiling torrent of her hair and her skin tightened painfully over her bones as his breath warmed her throat. ‘And you lack your usual glow—’
‘Still stuck with my apartment?’ Kelda interjected tautly. ‘I hope you make a loss on it.’
‘Sold at profit to an impatient Arab,’ Angelo drawled. ‘Though a loss wouldn’t have bothered me. I had what I wanted, after all...and should I ever want it again, I’m convinced I wouldn’t be disappointed. You don’t play hard to get by any stretch of the imagination—’
White as death, Kelda pulled free just as the music stopped. ‘You bastard,’ she whispered tightly and headed back to her seat, savaged by his cruelty.
Her mother dropped down into the empty chair beside her and said, ‘Tomaso has calmed down.’
‘Good...I’m sorry,’ Kelda sighed. ‘I’ve wrecked your day.’
‘That’s nonsense. I’ve never been so happy,’ Daisy carolled a little tipsily. ‘And if it’s Angelo’s baby, that makes it OK, doesn’t it? Tomaso says, he’ll have to marry you and so he should, seducing my little girl—’
‘I am not a little girl, Mother!’ Kelda hissed, aghast.
‘You are measured up against Angelo. Tomaso says it serves him right...’
‘It isn’t Angelo’s ba—’
Daisy frowned at her. ‘Don’t lie to me any more, Kelda. I deserve better than that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I forgive you. It’s your hormones. They make you moody.’ With a dizzy smile, her mother drifted off again.
Suddenly suffocated by the crush, Kelda went for a walk. She would be able to leave soon. Tomaso and Daisy weren’t going away until tomorrow. She wandered into the drawing-room past several elderly ladies tucking into champagne and talking Italian in staccato bursts of energy. She headed for the conservatory, certain of finding privacy there.
But the conservatory was already very much occupied. Angelo and Fiona were entwined in a passionate embrace beneath the palm trees. Kelda stood on the threshold for sev
eral taut, stricken seconds, watching Fiona pushing her fingers through his hair, her lithe body arched into his with the sensual intimacy of lovers who thought they were alone. It was X-certificate stuff and clumsily, slowly, Kelda backed away, her heartbeat pounding unnaturally loudly in her eardrums.
Utterly devastated. That was how she felt. For an insane moment she had wanted to tear their straining bodies apart and impose herself between them. Now wouldn’t that have been a novel end to the day? She staggered dizzily into a chair in an alcove off the hall and sat down, hugging herself as though to ward off the intense pain.
Tomaso strode past, paused. ‘Have you seen Angelo?’
She jerked a hand wordlessly in the direction of the conservatory, would have liked to say something smart like. ‘I think you’ll find he’s busy,’ but could not summon up the poise. She was hurting so much, she didn’t think she could bear it without coming apart. She twisted her hands together, battling for control but the pain simply kept on biting at her from new directions.
Inside her head, she saw them together in a far more intimate setting. She squeezed her eyes tight shut in anguish but the image wouldn’t leave her alone. She saw them intertwined in passion in tumbled sheets, lying together in the blissful aftermath that once she had known and about there she just wanted to press a button and die.
Someone pulled apart her shaking hands and gripped them tightly in his.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tomaso said heavily. ‘I am very sorry you had to see that.’
The sympathy almost sent her over the edge. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Kelda...what do you want me to do?’
Her lashes lifted. Her stepfather was hunkered down in front of her, fiercely holding her hands. ‘Nothing,’ she gasped pleadingly.
‘Angelo has the right to know—’
‘No, not now!’ she forced out painfully. ‘I couldn’t stand it!’
‘You love him.’ Tomaso released his breath in a long pent-up hiss, kindly removing his perceptive gaze from her distraught face.
‘No...’ But even to her own ears it sounded false, empty, a foolish denial of the anguish she was enduring.
Tomaso sighed. ‘He would marry you—’
She was appalled by the idea and it showed.
‘I would get a car to take you home but you should stay here tonight. I don’t like the idea of you being on your own,’ her stepfather said quietly.
‘I’ll be fine.’ From somewhere, she got the strength to give him a watery smile. ‘I think I need to be on my own.’
Afterwards she couldn’t recall a single moment of the drive. She found herself back inside the cottage without quite knowing how she had got there. And then she collapsed, but not into tears. Her eyes burned and ached but not with moisture. She couldn’t cry. Tomaso’s understanding kindness had almost been her undoing, but now that she was alone all she could do was stare emptily into space.
She did love Angelo. Why had she only found that out now, when it was too late to make any difference? But what difference could it ever have made? she asked herself. Six years of bitter misunderstanding lay between her and Angelo, and her own behaviour had only confirmed his opinion of her. Why, oh, why had she set up that scene at her apartment with Russ?
Of course, she hadn’t even suspected then that she might be pregnant. But by staging that scene she had finally and most thoroughly confirmed Angelo’s low opinion of her morals. There was no way now that she would ever tell Angelo that the baby she carried was his. He despised her but he had found her sexually attractive. That was all it had ever been on his side. Sex. The very last thing on Angelo’s mind had been fathering a child.
How could you love and hate someone at the same time? Today she had hated him, but she had loved, wanted and needed him as well with a mindless craving that had shaken her to the very roots of her being. Jealousy had not touched her until now, but Angelo had plunged her into instant agony. She could not have borne Tomaso’s interference in the situation. That, at least, she reminded herself, was no longer likely.
It was after two when she heard a car raking into her driveway. She sat up in bed, listened to the slam of a door, crunching steps on the gravel. The bell went in three sharp, successive bursts.
‘Who is it?’ she called from the stairs.
‘Who the hell do you think?’
Angelo. Weakly she sank down on the second last step. ‘Go away!’
‘If I have to break in, I’ll do it!’
Her breath shortened in her throat. Tying the sash of her robe, she unbolted the door. ‘Do you realise what time it is?’ she demanded.
‘Are you alone?’ Angelo sent a slashing glance of suspicion up the stairs.
‘What do you want?’ Tension held her fast, a nasty flicker of foreboding skimming down her spine. Playing for time to compose herself, she walked into the lounge and switched on a lamp before taking up a stance by the fireplace.
Angelo looked uncharacteristically tousled. His hard jawline was blue-shadowed, his ebony hair ruffled. Although he was still wearing his grey suit, he had discarded his tie and his silk shirt was half unbuttoned. His brilliant dark eyes glittered with a cold menace, accentuated by the rigid tension etched into his striking bone-structure.
‘I hear you’re pregnant,’ he delivered with a soft hiss.
Involuntarily, Kelda recoiled but she made a swift recovery. ‘And where did you hear that piece of nonsense?’ she managed to toss back boldly.
‘Your brother—’
She lost colour. ‘T-Tim?’
‘He was rather drunk. I gave him a lift back to town,’ Angelo divulged with slow, measured emphasis as though he was exercising immense self-control. ‘After I’d dropped Fiona off, he began to laugh and crack some rather odd jokes. Your mother asked him to keep an eye on you while she was away and he told me why—’
Not a muscle moved on Kelda’s face. ‘That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here at two in the morning—’
‘Are you pregnant?’ Angelo demanded with ferocious anger.
‘I owe you no explanations,’ Kelda flung back. ‘I don’t have to defend myself against Tim’s drunken ramblings.’
‘In Italy, you said that somehow, some day you would get your own back on me for bringing you there.’ The reminder lanced into the smouldering silence. ‘If this is it, I’ll fight you and I’ll break you!’ he swore with brutal clarity. ‘You’ve told your mother that you’re pregnant. I want to know if you’re lying...and if you’re not, I want to know now whose child it is!’
Hysteria was fluttering like a wild bird captured in her throat. Her stomach was churning. ‘Relax, Angelo...it isn’t yours,’ she asserted through bloodless lips, holding herself proudly erect only by rigorous discipline.
The silence throbbed. He didn’t relax in receipt of her assurance. He went rigid.
‘Then why does your brother think it is?’ he lashed back at her finally with splintering savagery, every powerful line of his lean body emanating his bitter anger.
‘They know about Italy, and before you blame me for that, let me disclaim all responsibility. We were photographed at the airport. Someone sent your father a cutting,’ she shared with a tiny tremor in the voice she was fighting to keep level.
Angelo said something raw in Italian and strode over to the window, his back squarely turned to her, scorching tension in the angle of his broad shoulders.
‘I assured them that you weren’t the culprit,’ she muttered tightly, and that at least was true.
‘Then who is?’
She made no response. Her wide green eyes were dark with exhaustion and stress.
‘Russ Seadon...si,’ Angelo decided, flicking her a glance of incandescent golden rage and bitterness. ‘I did recognise him,’ he ground out.
‘Good for you,’ she mumbled shakily because she didn’t have the strength to fight Angelo after the traumas of the past thirty-six hours.
‘Is it his child?’ he demande
d, coming back to her in one long, threatening stride. ‘I demand to know!’
‘You have no right to ask me that,’ Kelda snapped, taking a step back from him.
‘I want the truth!’ Angelo grabbed her wrists with two strong hands and yanked her up against him. ‘If it isn’t mine, whose is it?’
‘Go to hell!’ she gasped, struggling to release herself from his fierce grip.
‘Tell me!’ he blazed down at her insistently, his striking bone-structure clenched with dark fury.
From somewhere deep inside her where outrage could pull on final reserves of energy, she found the courage to hurl, ‘You see, I didn’t pine for you, Angelo! Not for a day or even an hour...’
‘You make me understand why men kill.’ As Angelo stared down into her flushed and exquisitely delicate face, white hot rage flamed in his piercing gaze. ‘I would rather see you buried than swollen with another man’s seed,’ he admitted through clenched teeth.
Losing every scrap of colour, Kelda momentarily sagged in his fierce grip. She looked at him in horror. ‘Are you c-crazy?’
‘Obsessed. Does that please you?’ Angelo drawled with razor-edged softness. ‘I doubt if it does. You want me to stay away, because you’re obsessed, too—’
‘No!’
‘You don’t like seeing me with another woman. That hurt,’ Angelo savoured with primitive relish. ‘You couldn’t hide that from me. Like a knife twisting inside you. It made you sick. It terrified you—’
Perspiration beaded her brow. ‘Don’t...I hate you!’
Angelo hauled her even closer, wound a lean hand possessively into the tangled fall of her hair to hold her prisoner. ‘A couple of centuries ago you’d have been burnt at the stake for witchcraft, but you can burn in my bed instead—’
‘Let g-go of me!’ In disbelief, she could feel her breasts lifting and swelling in hard collision with his muscular chest. He brought his other hand down to her hips and crushed her suggestively into the hard cradle of his thighs. The thrust of his erection sent excitement spiralling through her in waves and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut in wild rejection. ‘No...no!’