by Lynne Graham
‘I had to become a little more mature before I could accept that the sinner was not your mother,’ Angelo imparted quietly. ‘And that, when you love somebody, you accept everything about that person, not just the facets that you like.’
‘You knew...’ She was still fumbling with that discovery. ‘And yet you never threw it at me...not even when I accused your father of having a mistress and you probably knew then that the other woman was in fact my own mother—’
‘Yes,’ he sighed.
Why was he being kind and understanding? Kelda trembled, her emotions still raw and bleeding from her traumatic morning. ‘Well, why didn’t you throw it in my face?’
‘When you were a child, I wouldn’t have hurt you, and when you were almost an adult I still wouldn’t have hurt you.’ Angelo brushed a caressing hand gently over her wobbling lower lip. ‘And when you became an adult I found that I couldn’t hurt you.’
‘But why?’ she whispered.
He expelled his breath and abruptly let his hands drop from her. ‘Because when you were sixteen I fell in love with you...and somehow I never quite managed to fall out of love again,’ he said harshly.
The confession froze her in her tracks. He was standing with his back to her by the window, the muscles in his broad shoulders clearly clenched with tension beneath the well-cut jacket.
‘Evidently I’m a one-woman man.’ Fierce satire edged the statement. ‘Six years ago I wanted to marry you because I loved you. Of course, you were far too young and you were not in love with me—’
Distantly she recalled him telling her in Tuscany how bitterly he had resented being forced into playing a father figure when Tomaso opted out. And finally she understood why. She also understood why he had gone over the edge that night when he’d found her in the library with that boy.
‘I spent the past six years haunted by you. I framed that Vogue cover. It hangs in the bedroom of my London apartment.’
‘Angelo...’ she muttered softly, shock receding, delight and the most humbling sense of gratitude taking her over.
‘Dio...do you think I want your pity?’ he slashed back at her, swinging round. ‘All those years reading about your other men! At times, I hated you more than I loved you. I brought you to Tuscany because I believed that you were really only a fantasy. If I actually made love to you, I believed, the fantasy would die. Only it didn’t. It simply got me in deeper!’
‘I thought you were a sexual infatuation,’ Kelda told him dry-mouthed.
‘I can live with that,’ Angelo shot at her grimly. ‘I can live with that better than losing you.’
‘You’re not going to lose me.’ She smiled almost shyly at him.
‘Then perhaps you can tell me why you have packed?’ he demanded not quite steadily, pallor visible beneath his dark skin.
‘I was being really stupid...I thought you’d be so angry and humiliated about the story in the paper—’
‘All I had time to worry about was what that story was doing to you. Why should I be angry? It was your feelings I was most concerned about.’
The truth of that had been so plain from the moment he’d stopped her impulsively burning her father’s letters that her throat closed over with tears. All the tenderness and caring she had ever sought had been there for her instantly. ‘If you love me, why have you been so aloof since Alice was born?’ she asked helplessly.
‘I wanted to be with you when she was born. It was so obvious that that would not have been your choice...I felt rejected,’ he breathed tautly. ‘I had tried so hard before that to make you relax with me and I thought I was getting somewhere...then I realised I wasn’t. Treating you like a sort of sister had been such a strain—’
‘A strain for me too. I thought you found my shape...revolting,’ she confided in a rush. ‘You never touched me.’
‘I didn’t think you would allow me to. I was trying to build a bond of trust between us. I had made such a mess of our relationship in Tuscany. I went overboard that night at Daisy’s cottage,’ he relived unsteadily, beautiful golden eyes clinging to her intent face. ‘I couldn’t trust myself near you. I was scared I would make an even bigger fool of myself.’
‘You didn’t make a fool of yourself that night. If only I hadn’t lied, if only we had talked...really talked,’ she said with bitter regret.
‘I wanted so badly to hear that your baby was mine,’ Angelo confessed roughly. ‘Couldn’t you see that?’
Kelda had paled. ‘Even though you thought I had slept with Russ?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted ruefully.
‘All I could think about was Fiona,’ she admitted. ‘My pride was hurt. I was bitter and hurt and jealous and I really did believe that the last thing you wanted to hear was that the baby was yours.’
‘You were wrong. And when I realised that you had lied, I think that was the worst rejection of all. I thought you had to really hate me to have lied. You didn’t even consider telling me the truth or approaching me for help all those months that you were pregnant,’ he pointed out. ‘That stood between us from the hour I married you...that even pregnant and alone you wanted nothing to do with me.’
The pain that conviction had given him was in his dark eyes.
Kelda shook her head. ‘That never even occurred to me. All I could think about was Adele and all the other women—’
‘I haven’t slept with anyone but you since Italy.’ Angelo absorbed her incredulity and a slanting smile tilted his handsome mouth. ‘Not even come near it. I couldn’t have used another woman just for sexual release when the only woman I really wanted was you.’
‘Not even Fiona?’
Angelo laughed heartily. ‘She dumped me the day after the wedding. She said she wouldn’t be used to make another woman jealous but that if I ever got over you she might give me a second chance.’ He hesitated. ‘Did you use the food in the hampers?’
‘Hampers?’ Kelda repeated, her brow creasing. ‘From Harrods? You sent them?’
‘Didn’t you even suspect?’
‘I thought your father was behind them!’ Kelda groaned. ‘I never would have dreamt that they were from you...not after the way we parted at the cottage.’
‘You were so thin.’ One of his hands clenched and he shrugged jerkily. ‘I wanted to be sure you ate properly...’
She was unbearably touched that he had been concerned about her even when he’d believed that her child was not his. Her whole face glowed. ‘I love you, Angelo.’ It was extraordinary how much courage it took to say it.
His brilliant eyes narrowed, his hard, dark features tightening, and then suddenly he reached for her, his lean hands bruising. ‘You don’t need to say that!’
‘I fell in love in Tuscany. Maybe it was the emeralds that did it,’ she teased, pressing her lips against his throat, breathing in the gloriously familiar scent of him with sensual pleasure. ‘Or being flung in jail. Or maybe it had been brewing for six years and it was just waiting for an opportunity to blaze. But the fact is, Angelo, I am absolutely crazy about you too!’
‘I thought the only thing you wanted was my body—’
‘I hope it’s included in the package.’ She ran a flagrantly possessive hand over the breadth of his chest. ‘And by the way,’ she added, in a uniquely generous mood, letting her whole body rest against him, ‘I haven’t had any other lovers...’
He tensed, collided with her amused gaze and suddenly crushed her mouth hotly beneath his. It was a couple of hours before a sensible word was spoken again. Curved round Angelo’s sprawling length, Kelda suddenly jerked and gasped, ‘Alice! I forgot about her!’
‘Inga will be with her.’ Angelo trapped her with a powerful arm before she could move.
‘Inga?’
‘I brought her back from Geneva. I dined with friends last night. Inga had been with their children for several years. They don’t need her any more and she was working out her last week, so after I’d heard a glowing testimonial and talked to her, I engaged h
er on the spot and brought her home with me.’
‘Inga. Swedish?’
‘Her English is excellent.’
‘Danny Philips ran off with his children’s nanny,’ Kelda couldn’t help remarking. ‘I suppose she’s blonde.’
‘Jealous little cat,’ Angelo breathed in her ear. ‘She’s fifty and built like a tank.’
‘Oh.’ Kelda relaxed.
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ he murmured. ‘But he wasn’t the hardened criminal the newspaper made out. He was never involved in any form of violence—’
‘But the bank robbery—’
‘He was the driver and he was unarmed. He put a stocking mask over his face, double parked in the wrong street just round the corner of a police station and blew the whole show for his partners in crime. A bit inept, your father.’
Kelda found that she was trying not to laugh. It still hurt, but reality was better than a fairy story. If Angelo could live with it, she could still hold her head high. ‘I love you,’ she told him fiercely, staring down at him.
‘Enough to stay forever and ever?’ Angelo enquired silkily, running a lean hand possessively over one slanted cheekbone.
‘Are you likely to be a good investment?’
‘Highly profitable,’ he promised, sensually capturing her parted lips with his. ‘As well as loyal, loving and constantly in a state of arousal round you,’ he virtually completed on a groan.
‘And the next time I have a baby you’ll—’
‘Be there, share everything.’
‘You learn fast.’ Kelda slid a provocative hand over his flat hard stomach and smiled at his instantaneous response.
‘Move fast too.’ With a husky laugh, he pinned her flat. ‘How does the idea of six weeks in Tuscany appeal to you?’
‘The peach and cherry orchard.’ She sighed luxuriously.
‘Si...’ And for a long time the rest of the world was forgotten as they lost themselves and yet found each other in loving.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8434-0
Angel of Darkness
Copyright © 1994 by Lynne Graham
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