by Lynne Graham
'This role,' Carlo selected smoothly, letting cham
pagne froth down into another glass. 'It would entail
considerable intimacy '
'Intimacy?’ she whispered shakily.
Carlo slotted the glass into her nerveless fingers. He surveyed her with immense satisfaction. 'Intimacy,' he repeated lazily, making a sexual banquet of the word and the long-drawn-out syllables were like a set of taunting fingers on her spine.
'What... what exactly are you offering me?' Jessica framed jerkily.
'You would have to agree before I told you the details.’ Carlo dealt her a cool, steady glance, silky black lashes low over hooded, very dark eyes.
'That's ridiculous.'
'Unusual.1 Carlo shifted a broad shoulder in a slight shrug. 'But I don't trust you. Why should I? And it is not as though you have moral scruples, is it? And even if you had,' he pointed out, 'you do have your father
to consider.'
She tensed, forcing herself to concentrate. 'Are you
talking about some kind of job?'
Carlo's mouth curved wryly. 'You could call it that.' 'And would it entail breaking the law?' she prompted
flatly.
'What do you take me for, caraV
'Would it?' she persisted.
'No.'
Jessica cleared her throat. 'You mentioned intimacy. . .were you talking about sexual intimacy?' she pursued, tight-lipped and rigid. 'Or was that just your idea of a joke?'
His strong jawline hardened. "There would be nothing remotely humorous about the exercise, that I can assure you. And yes, I was referring to sexual intimacy. The part you would play would not be credible without it.'
Dear heaven, why was she actually standing here listening to this nonsense? Her oval face set with distaste and rejection as her imagination ran absolutely rampant. Was he suggesting that she become some sort of business spy, sleeping with some competitor to gain information? An insane idea, but why else the secrecy? A kind of job that would last no longer than three months which would entail sex. How utterly revolting! A hysterical laugh clogged up her throat though. Her level of sexual experience lifted such a proposition to the heights of a tragicomic black joke., .but then Carlo was not to know that.
Jessica threw back her shoulders. 'Clearly you need
a hooker '
'Madre di Dio... what are you saying to me?' Carlo shot her a black glance of naked hauteur. 'Are you crazy?
I need a woman who can at the very least behave like a
lady '
‘And you don't know any?' Jessica cut in. 'Now why doesn't that surprise me? And how many beds are you expecting this lady to climb into at your request?'
Dark golden eyes narrowed. 'What the hell are you talking about?’
Jessica reddened, suddenly uncertain.
"The only bed you would be expected to warm would be mine,’ Carlo spelt out very drily.
Jessica went white and looked back at him in disbelief. Setting down the untouched champagne, she reached for her coat with an unsteady hand. 'Quite out of the question,' she told him with bitter clarity. 'I have no intention of selling my body to keep my father out of prison! Why the cloak and dagger approach, Carlo? Couldn't you just have asked me to be your mistress? Well, the answer is no... no, no, nol I'd sooner take to the streets!'
Brilliant dark eyes raked over her impassively. 'Go, then... I have nothing more to say to you.'
‘But I'm not finished yet,’ Jessica asserted with venom. 'Six years ago, you came into my life like a dark shadow and you tried to destroy it. There is no human being alive whom I hate more than you! And why did you set out to wreck my life? Out of nothing more than overweening conceit, selfishness and lust. It didn't matter to you that I was engaged to another man or that I loved that man. It didn't matter that you might hurt him as much as you hurt me.'
'You hurt him, not I,' Carlo returned without emotion.
Jessica shuddered with the force of her own teeming
emotions. 'You set out to ruin our relationship '
'If you had truly loved him, I would have been without power. The power I had you gave me...'
Hot pink flushed her slanted cheekbones. 'I did not!1
'With every look, every breath you took in my radius. Your hunger drew me,' Carlo condemned without
conscience.
‘No!’ She stared back at him in stark distress and reproach, her father's plight forgotten as he plunged her back into the past, heaping her with more guilt and an even greater sense of responsibility for all that had gone
wrong.
'Did it give your ego a kick?' Carlo sent her a look of blazing contempt. 'You play with fire, you get burnt,
cara.'
Jessica's knees felt like cotton wool. She was shattered
by Carlo's view of what had happened between them.
He was accusing her of having encouraged him when she
had fought his ruthless pursuit every step of the way.
Only at the last when she was at the very end of her
strength had she failed. 'I came here and I shouldn't have come.' White and
drawn, she turned away. 'We hate each other, Carlo. I
don't think you realise the extent of the damage you did
six years ago and I expect that even if you did you
wouldn't care '
' You walked away from me...'
And it was still there, an intensity of disbelief and
banked-down fury. She couldn't understand the strength of his emotion after all this time. It wasn't as though Carlo Saracini had fallen in love with her. Right from the beginning, it had been a rawly sexual wanting on his side. The way he looked at her, the way he touched her, the way he talked to her. Predator and victim. Passion and pain. That was what he had offered her. And she hadn't walked away.. .she had run as if the hounds of hell were on her tail.
'I still don't think I deserve the offer you just made,' Jessica breathed not quite steadily. 'You sit there in your ivory tower, wrapped in all your money, and you have the sensitivity of a butcher where feelings are con-
cerned.' Tears stung her amethyst eyes but she held her head proudly high.
"That is a gross untruth,' Carlo slashed back at her rawly.
'You walk over people. You manipulate them. You push them around. My father really liked you six years ago. You see, he couldn't see through you as I could. Oh, yes, he thought you were a hell of a guy!' she proffered in a choked voice of distaste. 'But you don't give a snap of your fingers for what he's going through now, do you? All you can see is an opportunity to humiliate me further. And I will not give you that weapon, Carlo. You see, I have my pride too.'
He was pale beneath his naturally olive skintone but he wouldn't give an inch. And she hadn't expected him to. Censure rarely came his way. In receipt of it, he silently seethed, presumably thinking it beneath his dignity to defend himself against such charges.
Eyes as flaming gold as the heart of a fire burned her face. 'Were you happy with him?'
On her passage to the door, she froze and slowly turned. He hadn't absorbed a thing she had said. Pain dug lines of stress into her face. He was asking about Simon. She looked away. 'He was my best friend,' she said finally.
'And this... this being a best friend is your ideal of marriage?' Carlo demanded, his usually fluent English curiously letting him down.
No, but it was what she had ended up with, she reflected sadly. Her troubled eyes slid back to him and collided with questioning gold and something twisted tight deep down inside her stomach. The atmosphere fairly throbbed with undertones. She stopped breathing, was sentenced to sudden stillness, every bone in her body pulling taut. For a split-second, she experienced the most extraordinary physical pull in his direction and resisted
it with every last remaining drop of self-discipline. But that split-second shook her inside out,
'I would have been your lover, your soul, your survival,' Carlo grit
ted, and the anger was there, the anger she had feared, suddenly flaring up at her without warning in a blazing wall of antagonism that made her step back. Burnished golden eyes alive with derision and fury bit into her with a look as physical as a blow.
'Get out of here,' Carlo told her roughly. 'Get out of here before I lose my temper and show you just how sensitive I can be!'
Jessica required only that one invitation. On unsteady legs, she backed out in haste. Out in the corridor, she closed her eyes and breathed in slowly and deeply. She felt bereft, alone, wretched, and the sensations were intense. Carlo confused her, cast her into turmoil. He always had. They were opposites in every way but just for a moment... for a strange and highly disturbing moment she had recognised an utterly inexplicable pang of empathy. She had wanted to put her arms round him. Crazy, unbelievable, just one of those mad tricks of the mind when one's emotions were on a high, she translated inwardly. After all, would she pet a sabre-toothed tiger plotting to put her on his dinner menu? But she couid not escape the feeling that she had hurt him. And yet wasn't that what she had always wanted to do?
When she was with Carlo Saracini she didn't know herself. It had always been that way. With other people she was introverted and quiet, never bitchy or hot-tempered and certainly not violent. Dear heaven, she thought as she recalled the manner in which she had launched herself at him like a screaming shrew. He drew out everything that was bad in her character. He made her feel as though she could turn into a woman like her j mother.. .wasn't that what frightened her the most? '
She got into her car without remembering leaving the hotel. She didn't start the engine. She stared out the
windscreen unseeingly. The way she had felt when he touched her six years ago still haunted her. And every so often she made herself draw those memories out to reinforce her own disgust and shame. Not only did she look like her mother, she had found that she could behave like her too. That had been the most devastating discovery of all. That there was this weakness inside her, this ability to forget everything... loyalty, self-restraint, even love... and lose all control in a man's arms.
Sometimes, Jessica had even told herself that she ought to be grateful for that sordid incident with Carlo. She had been afraid then that if she didn't remain constantly on her guard, virtually policing even her thoughts, she too might easily turn into a slut. If it hadn't been for that noise next door, Carlo wouldn't have stopped, she knew that. Sex was a terrifyingly powerful force if you knew yourself to be as vulnerable as Jessica felt herself to be. One weak moment in the vicinity of a male like Carlo and that would be that. She had been incredibly lucky to escape unscathed.
Only somehow, she thought now on a tide of bitter pain, it had never occurred to her that she might be just as unscathed six years on, after five years of marriage. Untouched by human hand. A virgin, no less. And wouldn't Carlo just love to know that, she reflected painfully, shuddering at the very idea. He would find it hilarious.
Jessica drifted out of her thoughts to find herself sitting shivering inside a very cold car with all the windows fogged up. She drove off but somewhere down deep in her mind was an image of Carlo as she had last seen him in the hotel suite. Angry, contemptuous. ..bitter? What the heck did he have to be bitter about? Had he really imagined she would accept that grossly insulting offer? Three months in Carlo's bed, working out her penance for daring to marry another man. What a monumental ego he must have! And the
utterly peculiar way he had gone about making that offer... Her head was thumping again, tension twisting through her like a steel wire.
It was too late to go barging in on her father. Tomorrow morning first thing, she would be on his doorstep, and if he hadn't seen a lawyer yet she would see that he did. It was a crisis and she was good in a crisis. For years it seemed her life had lurched from one
crisis to another.
She was about to phone her father when the doorbell went. She peered through the peephole and recognised the broad, weathered features of the heavily built man on the other side of the door.
'Dr Guthrie... ?' Her brow furrowed. Henry Guthrie was one of her father's oldest friends. He and his wife ran a private nursing home.
'I tried to ring you earlier but you were out,’ he
proffered.
'What's wrong?' she demanded, anxiously scanning
his troubled face.
'Your father's going to stay with us for a day or two
until I can get him sorted out '
'But why.. .1 mean, I gather you know what's happened... but what's the matter with him?' Jessica
prompted sickly.
Henry Guthrie sighed. 'Gerald's been receiving
treatment for depression for some months now '
She paled. 'He didn't tell me...'
'He's been quietly going off the rails ever since your
mother died.'
She shut her eyes and groaned. Four months ago, they
had received news of her mother's death in a car crash, j
From the day she walked out until the day she died, ■
neither Jessica nor her father had had any contact with
Carole. Her mother hadn't wanted any contact. She had
wiped them both out of her life and had embarked on;
a new life abroad. f
'But he seemed to take it so well,' she protested shakily.
'Didn't it ever occur to you that he took it too well?'
the older man murmured. 'I think that he still hoped
that she would come back. But when she died, he had
to finally face that she was gone. That's when the de
pression came and the gambling started. Now I under
stand he's got himself in one hell of a mess '
'Yes,’ she whispered, tears stinging her eyes.
'He just can't cope with it, Jess,' Dr Guthrie sighed.
‘He took some sleeping tablets this afternoon '
Jessica gasped at him in horror. 'He did what?'
‘Not enough to kill him but then, he didn't have enough. His housekeeper found him lying in the hall and thought he'd had a heart attack...'
Jessica collapsed down on the sofa behind her, sick to her stomach, and bowed her head.
'She rang me. I saw the tablets and contacted his own doctor, worked out how many he must have taken and between us -.. well, we decided the nursing home would be a better choice than the local hospital.'
Tracks of moisture ran unchecked down her cheeks. She wanted to thank the older man for exercising that discretion but she couldn't find her voice.
'Now when he came to, he swore he hadn't been trying to harm himself. He said he was just desperate to stop his mind going round and round and get some sleep and when the first pills didn't do the trick, he took a few more...'
‘Do you b-believe him?'
'I'lll know better what to think in a few days when
we've talked some more,' he confessed wryly.
'Well...now I'm here to ask you how to get in touch
with this character, Saracini '
'Carlo?' she gasped.
'Do you think he'd see me? I want to tell him that Gerald seeds criminal charges right now like he needs a hole in the head!' he delivered grimly.
Jessica was barely thinking straight. But one awareness dominated the morass of emotions tearing her apart. Tonight she might have lost her father. And even if it hadn't been a suicide attempt, in his current condition, who was to say he mightn't make such an attempt this week or next week or the week after? If he wasn't coping now, how could she expect him to cope when the police were involved and the news of his disgrace leaked out? How could he handle all the horrors still to come?
She cleared her throat. 'There aren't going to be any
criminal charges. I... I saw Carlo tonight and he was
very understanding '
'He wasn't very understanding when he had Gerald
tossed out of the building!'
&n
bsp; ‘I explained how much strain Dad had been under. There won't be any court case,' she repeated unsteadily, her slender hands twisting together as she made her
decision. 'But what about the money? I gather that Gerald has
no hope of paying all of it back.. ,’
'Carlo is prepared to write it off '
'He must be a very decent sort of man,’ Dr Guthrie shook his head. 'I honestly thought he would want to nail your father's hide to the wall as an example to the rest of his employees.. .’
An inward quaking at that particular image assailed Jessica. She tasted cold fear but this time it was not only for her father, it was for herself as well.
The older man smothered a yawn and stood up. Til pass on the good news to Gerald.7 'I'll come and see him tomorrow,’ Dr Guthrie grimaced. 'Would you be terribly hurt if I advised you to give him a couple of days to get himself together again?' 'No,' she lied.
'He feels he's let you down and I don't think he wants you to see him until he has himself under control again.'
No problem, she said stiffly.
'He still has a lot to handle, Jess. He's lost his job and his self-respect.'
As soon as the older man had gone, Jessica dialled the Deangate Hotel with clumsy fingers. She asked for Carlo's suite. He answered the call with a growl of impatience in his voice.
'It's me...' she said tightly. 'I've changed my mind.'
Silence buzzed on the line for long seconds. It went on and on and on while she trembled at her end of the phone with a heady mix of fear and despair. Maybe Carlo had never expected her to accept... maybe Carlo had been playing some sort of game with her.
'I'll send a car over to collect you.' There was no emotion whatsoever in his response. She couldn't believe her ears.
'When?'
'Now.'
'Now?' she echoed incredulously.
‘Now,' he repeated, his accent more pronounced than she had ever heard it. 'I waited six years. I won't wait one hour or one day longer.'
‘I can't come over to your hotel at this time of night,' Jessica gasped.