by Lynne Graham
She shut her eyes, her heartbeat like a hammer pounding in her eardrums, and nothing existed but Angelo and what he was doing to her. She had never imagined...had never dreamt that she would let anyone...but she couldn’t have stopped him, couldn’t possibly have regained control of her shudderingly responsive body. He had devastated her with a depth of intimacy far beyond her limited experience and she was utterly overpowered by the incredible waves of pleasure.
She heard her own voice rising, heard herself moan his name over and over again and then her back arched and her teeth clenched and her wild cry of release was literally torn from her as he sent her plunging into a climax that blocked the whole world out for timeless minutes.
‘Maybe you’ll deign to smile at me over dinner tomorrow night,’ Angelo said roughly, sliding up over her and taking her mouth with explosive passion.
He ground his hips into her pelvis, letting her know just how aroused he was while his tongue possessed her mouth in a raw imitation of a far more basic sexual union. Hard hands tugged her thighs apart and he lifted his head, golden eyes stabbing into glazed green as he thrust slowly into the quivering depths of her body.
He thrust deeper; she melted. He moved; she moaned.
‘Bored?’ Angelo demanded thickly.
The sole response he received was a panted attempt to breathe at the peak of the most unimaginable pleasure.
‘Tell me you want me.’ He rolled over, carrying her with him, and let his mouth enclose the engorged tip of one sensitive breast.
‘All the time...oh, God, don’t stop...!’ she almost sobbed as he mercilessly stilled.
‘No divorce.’ A lean hand wound with painful thoroughness into the cascading tangle of her red hair.
‘Angelo...’ she pleaded.
‘No divorce.’
‘No divorce.’ She would have done anything, said anything, sold herself into white slavery for the next half-century just for him to continue. Tuscany all those months ago could not have prepared her for the savage seduction of what he was now making her feel.
He made love to her with smouldering sensuality and wild passion. He drove her over the edge of ecstasy more than once, and when he finally took his own pleasure she buried her tear-stained face into the sweat-slicked muscularity of one powerful shoulder and clung, still shivering with tiny after-shocks.
‘I hate to tell you this, but your mother was right,’ Angelo murmured in a black velvet purr as she abstractedly pressed tiny kisses against whatever part of him was within reach as he shifted languorously against her. ‘You can’t keep your hands off me. Think of how humiliated you would feel as an ex-wife, still falling into my bed at every opportunity...’
Kelda froze, dragged from her sensual languor by sheer shock.
She collided with incandescent golden eyes as fierce as knives. ‘And don’t think I wouldn’t take advantage,’ Angelo drawled softly, savagely. ‘I would. I’d be the wolf at your door, and every time I got you flat on your back I’d make you pay a hundred times over for the divorce. Does that prospect appeal to you?’
Shattered, she stared up at him, her blood chilling in her veins, pallor driving away her natural colour.
‘I think we understand each other perfectly, cara.’ Angelo scored a mocking forefinger along the reddened fullness of her lower lip. ‘And since regular sex appears to be the key to that locked-tight, unforgiving little heart of yours, I don’t think you’ll have any complaints in the future.’
‘Get out of here!’ she launched, relocating her ready tongue.
Angelo reached out, switched off the lamp and reached for her with arms that brooked no argument. ‘Any bed you occupy will also be occupied by me from now on.’
‘I won’t stand—’
‘You’d be surprised what I can make you stand,’ he whispered mockingly.
She was feeding Alice at six in the morning when he strolled into the nursery.
She felt ridiculously shy of him. He crouched down in front of her and ran a caressing thumb along the downy line of Alice’s cheek. Her lustrous dark eyes swivelled and she gave an angry squawk round the bottle. Their daughter did not like to be disturbed when she was feeding.
Kelda was in turmoil. Yesterday she had been convinced that a separation was the only answer. Yesterday, she had believed that Angelo no longer wanted her. And then last night...well, last night had completely wiped out her every assumption. Angelo had destroyed any prospect of either of them seeking an annulment and had then gone on to ruthlessly delineate what would happen if she sought a divorce.
He had talked as though all she needed from him was sex. She reddened, wondered dismally if he found her abandonment and eagerness abnormal. He touched her and, frankly, everything else went out of the window. She felt enslaved by what he could make her feel both physically and emotionally. When he made love to her, it made her feel so close to him. She needed that closeness to survive.
‘I’m going to Geneva. I’ll be away until tomorrow evening,’ he divulged. ‘Start looking for a good nanny. If Alice has you all day, I expect to have you all night.’
She jerked as he sent a possessive hand skimming over a slender thigh, exposed by her carelessly parted robe.
‘And at dawn,’ Angelo added huskily.
‘I thought you didn’t think a nanny was—’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
It was the following morning that the sound of constantly ringing phones woke Kelda up from a sound sleep. She always went back to bed for a couple of hours after feeding Alice. After a quick shower, she went down for breakfast, dressed in a figure-hugging apple-green dress that made her feel like a million dollars. Green was also Angelo’s favourite colour... dear lord, was she turning into a doormat?
The newspaper she normally read over breakfast was missing from the pile. As Mrs Moss came in with her coffee, she asked for it, and the instant she saw the older woman’s strained face she knew that something was badly wrong.
‘You want that one, Mrs Rossetti?’ the older woman prompted unnecessarily.
‘Yes.’ Kelda frowned. ‘Is something up, Mrs Moss?’
The housekeeper cleared her throat. ‘Your mother phoned to say she was coming over straight away.’
A cold hand clutched at Kelda’s heart. ‘Why were the phones ringing?’
‘Newspaper reporters, Mrs Rossetti...would you like me to disconnect them?’
‘No...’ Slowly Kelda stood up, her face as white as a sheet. Why was her mother coming over? Why hadn’t her mother asked to speak directly to her? Her stomach churned with sick horror. Her mind rushed to burning visions of plane crashes and explosions and car accidents and Angelo starred in every disaster. ‘Angelo...’ she whispered. ‘Has something happened to Angelo?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ Mrs Moss hurried to reassure her. ‘It’s just that dreadful newspaper, that’s all!’
‘Newspaper...what newspaper?’ The one missing from the pile, she gasped, absolutely sick and weak-kneed with relief that whatever was wrong did not involve injury of any kind to Angelo. ‘Could I see it, please?’
Something upsetting—hardly a new experience, she thought, watching the housekeeper’s reluctant reappearance with the item. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
Mrs Moss looked even more tense. ‘Your mother didn’t want you to see it until she arrived...’
The front page was practically all headline. ‘The Banker and the Bank-robber’s daughter.’ What a mouthful, she thought, until she focused incredulously on the photo beneath. It was a picture of Angelo and her on their wedding-day.
She began reading, her heart hammering sickly behind her breastbone. It hurt to breathe. She had to read every melodramatic sentence at least twice over to understand it. Shock was starting to take over. But it was complete and utter rubbish and she would sue, she told herself. Even Angelo would back her on that! How dared these vultures print such monstrous lies about her father! Her father had never been in prison in his life! Clearly they
had got him mixed up with somebody else. Outrage began to take over from shock.
‘K-Kelda?’ She lifted her head from her taut stance by the table.
Her mother stood several feet away, her face a mask of distress. ‘You’ve seen it?’ She hesitated, her hands tightly clasped together. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Kelda echoed in disbelief. ‘What have you got to be sorry about? We’ll sue! They’re the ones who’ll be sorry!’
‘But it’s true,’ Daisy practically whispered. ‘Every word of it is true.’
Kelda stared back at her mother, willing her to take that unbelievable statement back. ‘Dad worked abroad on an oil-field,’ she said drily.
Daisy flinched and tearfully shook her head. ‘Tomaso was right. I should have told you the truth years ago. I should never have lied. Steve was in and out of prison practically from when you were born. He stole cars. He burgled houses. Of c-course,’ she stammered painfully, ‘he wasn’t very good at it. He always got caught.’
Kelda couldn’t stay upright any longer. It was like a nightmare. Her whole childhood was suddenly caving in beneath her feet. She collapsed down in a chair, trembling like a leaf and sick to her stomach.
‘When you were a baby, I used to take you to visit him,’ her mother told her. ‘That was when I still thought he would go straight and I tried to be loyal and supportive. I was crazy about him at the beginning. He was so much fun, so handsome, so exciting. But every time he let us down again, a little bit of the love died—’
‘Oh, God, no...’ Kelda mumbled, totally devastated.
‘You see, he didn’t really mind prison with his mates. The sentences were always short. I used to plead with him. He used to make all these promises...but he always broke them. We moved all around the country. One new start after another. I was so ashamed. And then, when you were seven, Steve took part in a bank robbery,’ Daisy told her shakily. ‘A security guard was hurt. That was serious crime. He was put away for years...’
‘But the letters!’ Kelda suddenly shouted at her mother in a tempest of anger and humiliation. She refused to believe that what she was hearing could possibly be true.
‘I didn’t want you to know. You loved him so much.’ Her mother shot her a pleading look. ‘He loved telling you those stories. He had a terrific imagination. Don’t you understand, Kelda?’ Daisy sobbed. ‘Steve was only nineteen when you were born and he never really grew up. He wanted so badly to keep on being your hero and that was the only way he could...’
Kelda covered her contorted face with both hands.
‘I might as well tell you all of it,’ her mother muttered grudgingly. ‘I met Tomaso three years before your father died!’
Kelda bent her head and looked away in an agony of pain and rejection.
‘For both of us, it was love at first sight. Tomaso wanted me to divorce Steve but I couldn’t do that, not when he was locked away with nothing but us on the outside to live for. So I kept on visiting, kept on pretending that everything was all right,’ Daisy shared wretchedly. ‘But I couldn’t stop seeing Tomaso. I tried to several times—’
‘You were his mistress,’ Kelda framed sickly, thinking of the time she had been told about the blonde Tomaso had been taking away to discreet country pubs for years. That blonde had been Daisy.
‘No! I never ever took a penny of financial help from Tomaso!’ Daisy protested vehemently. ‘I loved him, Kelda, the way I think you love Angelo. And he was prepared to wait for me to be free, no matter how long it took, and he would have waited. Your father’s heart attack was a total shock. He was a very young man when he died—’
‘Conveniently,’ Kelda could not resist saying, and then covered her face again, suddenly ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. You must have had so much unhappiness with Dad—’
‘My marriage to Tomaso broke up the first time because of guilt,’ Daisy whispered unsteadily. ‘I couldn’t live with my conscience. I couldn’t allow myself to be happy because I had been disloyal to your father and in the end I simply couldn’t cope. It was only when I was away from Tomaso that I was able to sort my feelings out. Your father made his choices, Kelda. I wasn’t responsible for them. He put himself in prison. He didn’t much care what that did to us as a family. He was too irresponsible to think of anybody but himself...’
Silence greeted that final speech. Kelda was rocking soundlessly back and forth on her chair, fathoms deep in shock as her mind skipped agilely over her childhood and saw all the inconsistencies she had innocently accepted. She was shattered.
‘Tim has known for a couple of years.’
Kelda choked back angry words of desperate hurt. She should have been told the truth a long, long time ago.
‘I wish Angelo had known!’ Her mother suddenly burst into tears.
Kelda was dragged from her stupor with a vengeance.
‘How do you think Angelo will react to this?’ Daisy sobbed. ‘Worse, finding out about it in a newspaper!’
Tomaso came in, looking grim and strained. He comforted her mother while Kelda simply stood there in the grip of a horror that put everything she had previously experienced into the nursery stakes. Yes, how would Angelo react to the humiliation of the discovery that he was married to the daughter of a criminal? A criminal who had robbed a bank, of all things!
‘I don’t blame you, Mum.’ Abruptly unfreezing, Kelda rushed to put her arms round her sobbing parent. ‘You did the best you could.’
‘But if this damages your marriage, I’ll never forgive myself!’
‘Angelo is on his way back from Geneva,’ Tomaso sighed. ‘We’ll stay, deal with this as a family should.’
‘No...’ Kelda was appalled by the suggestion. She didn’t want an inhibiting audience when Angelo came home. That wouldn’t be fair to him.
It took persuasion but finally Tomaso and Daisy left. It would be hours before Angelo got back. Kelda darted upstairs and dug out the worn and faded stationery box in which she kept her father’s letters. Anguish had returned, only now it was strengthened by fear.
What chance did their marriage have now? Angelo had unwittingly married the bank-robber’s daughter. A lot of people were going to find that hilariously funny. And what about the rumour that he was soon to be offered the position of chief executive in the Rossetti Industrial Bank? Wasn’t there a possibility that that too could be affected by his unfortunate marriage?
With scorching tears in her eyes, Kelda went in search of her suitcases. An hour later, she had packed. She was totally choked up by then. Her swollen eyes fell on the box of her father’s letters and with sudden explosive bitterness, she sped downstairs to ask Mrs Moss for matches. Crouching down in front of the fireplace in her bedroom, she shook out the first letter, tears streaming down her face. The paper was worn thin by repeated readings, the ink faded.
She struck the first match and a split-second later there was a sudden step behind her and a hand snatched the match from her before she could ignite the letters piled in the grate. Still on her knees, she spun. ‘What the heck do you...Angelo!’ she gasped. ‘But...but you’re not due back until—’
‘I cancelled my meetings and flew back immediately.’
Wordlessly she stared up at him. He reached down and raised her up but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She was drowning in angry humiliation. He already knew. Someone had told him. Why else would he arrive back early?
‘Why were you about to burn your father’s letters?’
‘That’s a very s-stupid question,’ Kelda stammered.
‘Once they’re gone, they’re gone, and those letters are all that you have of him,’ Angelo pointed out almost gently.
The confrontation was not going in any expected direction. Her brow furrowed. ‘Those letters are full of nothing but lies!’
‘Does that really matter so much?’ Angelo smoothed a straying curl from her damp temples. ‘Your father loved you. He must have spent hours writing them and they made you happy when you we
re a child. Those letters made you feel secure and loved—’
‘But they were lies!’ Unable to comprehend why he was behaving this way, Kelda almost screamed at him and attempted to pull free.
‘And don’t you think your mother had something to do with that? Whose idea do you think it was that he should pretend to be working abroad rather than admit the truth?’
Kelda’s breath escaped shakily.
‘It was probably your mother’s, and her motives were very much based on protecting you. She wanted you to have a father you could admire, a father you could talk about freely with your friends...it was an utterly insane charade but it kept you happy. You were safe in Liverpool. But you would have found out the truth if he had lived,’ Angelo murmured intently, holding her fast by her shoulders. ‘Sooner or later, you might have discovered that there is no oil in Jordan...’
‘No oil?’ she echoed dazedly.
‘No oil. He couldn’t have been working on an oil-field there.’
She frowned up at him. ‘In Italy,’ she whispered. ‘You knew! But you said nothing...’
Lustrous dark eyes arrowed over her distressed face. ‘I was curious to find out exactly how much you did know. You see, cara...I’ve known for almost ten years—’
‘But you couldn’t have—’ she broke in, her eyes clinging to his.
‘When my father married Daisy, I already knew they had been having a very discreet affair. The sudden marriage shook me as much as you,’ he confided wryly. ‘I ran a security check on your mother and the report was very thorough. I’m afraid to say that I didn’t interpret the facts with much generosity. A late husband, who had been a regular prison inmate, two children stashed conveniently in another city. Haven’t you ever wondered why I misjudged your mother so badly then?’
Kelda was shaken. Angelo had always known. Angelo had known from the beginning.
‘I was only twenty-two and rather arrogant. I couldn’t understand why my father had married her...’
She was remembering Angelo’s cold antagonism towards her mother and suddenly she could understand why he had been so prejudiced from the outset.