by Penny Jordan
What was happening to her? It had been years since she had fantasised about touching Dracco like that. She had been a mere girl then, sleeping in this very same bedroom. Was that it? Was it because she was sleeping in the room that had been hers as a girl that she had dreamed so inappropriately of the kind of intimacy with Dracco she most certainly no longer wanted? She was just beginning to relax into the security of finding a logical explanation for what had happened when she suddenly remembered how in her dream she had seen sunlight shining on her wedding ring.
A second shudder, even more apparent than her first, galvanised her body, bringing Dracco to the side of her bed, where he frowned down at her.
‘Perhaps we should get Dr Armstrong to take a look at you,’ he told her. ‘You felt sick earlier on; now you’re shivering.’
Imogen could feel her self-control starting to slip.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me. Apart from the fact that I’m being blackmailed into having sex with a man I don’t want so that he can have the son he does want. But,’ she added with angry sarcasm, ‘I’m sure you aren’t going to tell Dr Armstrong that. You’re very good at not telling people things they ought to know, aren’t you, Dracco?’
‘And just what the hell do you mean?’ he demanded.
‘Work it out for yourself,’ Imogen challenged him. When he continued to frown at her she flung at him bitterly, ‘Somehow I don’t imagine you’ve told Lisa about your plans for me. For the child you want me—us—to have,’ she emphasised savagely. ‘And...’
She took a deep breath, intending to remind him that he had also neglected to tell her, when he had originally proposed marriage to her, that he was already in love with her stepmother, but before she could do so he was interrupting her, exclaiming, ‘No, I haven’t. Why should I?’
How could he stand there and say that? Furiously Imogen confronted him.
‘Why?’ Imogen repeated in disbelief. Shaking her head, she changed tack slightly, unable to trust herself to say what she was really feeling and settling instead for a quietly contemptuous, ‘She’s bound to find out, you know. Miranda will tell her.’
To her own shock she discovered that she was holding her breath, waiting, almost as though she was hoping that he would tell her Lisa was nothing to him now, that it was over between them. Was she really so frighteningly stupid, so crazily vulnerable?
‘Our marriage, our relationship and the plans we make within it have nothing whatsoever to do with Lisa.’
‘And you don’t care what she thinks or feels about the situation?’ Imogen challenged.
‘My desire to have a child with your father’s genes doesn’t impact in any way at all on Lisa’s life.’
‘Nor on your relationship with her?’ Imogen couldn’t stop herself from persisting. There was a brief pause before Dracco answered.
‘I know how you feel about Lisa, Imo, but you’re an adult now. My relationship with her, as you term it, is what it is and cannot be changed. My feelings towards her haven’t changed either, you know,’ he told her as gently as he could.
Dracco frowned as he watched the look of anguished disbelief darkening Imogen’s eyes. He knew how bitterly unhappy her stepmother had made her, and, as he had just told her, he liked Lisa as little now as he had done when John had first married her. In Dracco’s eyes she was a shallow, selfish, greedy woman, but that did not alter the fact that, just as he had a responsibility towards Imogen, he also had a responsibility as one of the executors of Imogen’s late father’s will to ensure that Lisa received the biannual allowance she was entitled to. It was obvious, though, that Imogen was in no mood to listen to such logic.
Imogen felt as though someone was squeezing her lungs in a frighteningly painful grasp, making it almost impossible for her to breathe, but not impossible for her to feel. Oh, no, she could still do that! But why could she, when for the last four years she had believed that she no longer cared, that Dracco no longer had the power to hurt her, that her love for him had died along with her trust and respect?
‘I think I hate you, Dracco,’ she whispered savagely, correcting herself to tell him, ‘No, I know I hate you.’
He was turning away from her and going to stand in front of her bedroom window, looking out into the darkness beyond it.
‘Fine, you can hate me all you like,’ he told her coolly, ‘but you will still give me my son, Imo.’
Without giving her the opportunity to retaliate, he strode through her still open bedroom door, pulling it shut behind him.
As she glared at it, Imogen was not surprised to discover that she was shaking from head to foot—with burning hot rage. How could he; how dared he stand there and tell her he expected her to bear his child when he had just admitted that there was another woman in his life? And not just any ‘other’ woman, but her stepmother Lisa!
* * *
Of course, it was impossible for her to go back to sleep. A glance at her watch told her that it was only just gone midnight and she realised that Dracco must have heard her cry out on his own way to bed. How could she have allowed herself to dream about him like that? What part of her subconscious had produced those treacherous images? And why was the discovery that Dracco still loved Lisa making her feel not just that she wanted to hurl her furious contempt at him for his betrayal of her own youthful adoration, but also so filled with pain and despair?
Anyone would think that she still loved him, she derided herself warningly. And of course she did not!
If only she were back in Rio. There she had been safe; there she had been far too busy to think about Dracco. She made a small restless movement in her bed as her conscience prodded her for the lie she was telling herself. ‘All right, then,’ she muttered beneath her breath, ‘so I did think about him occasionally.’
You thought about him and you dreamed about him, that same voice reminded her relentlessly. You know you did.
‘Yes, yes, all right,’ she conceded, ‘but those were not dreams, they were nightmares, and I had quite definitely stopped loving him. Quite definitely!
* * *
‘You’ve got half an hour to have breakfast and then we’re leaving for London.’
As she heard what Dracco was saying to her for a moment Imogen’s hopes rose. Had he changed his mind after what she had said to him last night? Was he taking her back to London in order to put her on a plane to Rio?
Oh, please...please! she begged fate fervently as she told Dracco automatically, ‘I don’t eat breakfast. I’ll go up and pack.’
‘Pack?’ Dracco’s eyebrows lifted as he drawled the single word laconically, shaking his head as he did so. ‘We’re going to see our solicitor, Imo, and it won’t involve an overnight stay, although I dare say you might want to wear something a little more formal,’ he added as he flicked a disparaging glance at her well-worn outfit.
Immediately Imogen was on the defensive. ‘If you don’t like my clothes, Dracco—’ she began, and then was forced to stop, as without allowing her to finish Dracco cut in smoothly,
‘I can buy you some new ones? My feelings exactly, Imo, and that’s what I intend to do, once our business with David is concluded. I don’t doubt that you trust me, just as I do you, but I thought it might give you some degree of reassurance if I committed myself legally to our...agreement. I intend to take your adherence to your part on trust. What do you mean, you don’t eat breakfast?’ he suddenly questioned her with a frown.
The lightning speed with which he changed subjects threw Imogen into total confusion. And distracted her from the shock of discovering that he intended to put the proposal he had made to her on a legal footing.
The proposal he had made to her? The blackmail he was forcing on her, she corrected herself fiercely as she heard him saying, ‘No wonder you’re so slender. Have some of these.’
Imogen’s eyes w
idened as he reached out and picked up a packet of cereal from the table, shaking some into the bowl in front of her.
‘Fruit Munchies with chocolate chips,’ he told her humorously. ‘You used to love them.’
‘That was when I was thirteen,’ Imogen reminded him, but Dracco wasn’t paying any attention.
Instead he poured milk onto her cereal, before warning her, ‘We don’t leave this house until you have eaten, Imo.’
‘Why? Are you afraid that people will think you’re starving me as well as blackmailing me?’ she demanded acerbically.
‘Blackmailing you?’ He gave her a sharply incisive look, but before he could continue the telephone started to ring. ‘Excuse me,’ he told her. ‘This is probably a business call I was expecting. I’ll take it in the study. I shan’t be long.’
After he had gone Imogen stared at the bowl in front of her. She wasn’t going to eat the cereal, of course she wasn’t, but somehow she was dipping her spoon into it. In Rio she had eaten sparingly, knowing how little food the children they were dealing with had to eat.
She was over halfway through by the time Dracco returned, and, although she pushed the bowl away from her without finishing its contents, she had to admit that she had rather enjoyed the cereal.
* * *
Dracco’s solicitor had an office in the same block that housed the offices which had originally been her father’s and which were now, of course, exclusively Dracco’s.
A sharp pang gripped Imogen as she remembered how often she had visited the office with her father. She still missed him, not with the savage intensity she had suffered immediately after his death any longer, but with a sadness that had become a small, familiar shadow in her life.
As he guided her towards the lift Dracco said quietly to her, ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thought about moving. I still expect to see your father here, coming out of the lift, opening the office door. I still miss him and I dare say I always will.’
His words were so in tune with her thoughts that Imogen couldn’t speak without betraying her emotions. Instead she turned her face away from Dracco so that he couldn’t see it. How could he speak so about her father and yet at the same time have betrayed him by falling in love with his wife?
Imogen continued to ignore Dracco as the lift bore them upwards. When it stopped and the door opened he touched her arm, and immediately Imogen flinched.
Despairingly she wondered how on earth she would be able to keep her part of the bargain and provide him with a child when she couldn’t even bear him to touch her!
You managed to bear it very well when he kissed you last night, a small inner voice told her, adding, And what about that dream? Then you weren’t just bearing it.
‘No,’ Imogen protested out loud, covering her ears with her hands.
‘What is it?’ Dracco demanded sharply. ‘Are you feeling ill again? I really do think you need to be checked out by Dr Armstrong. You could have picked up something on the flight.’
‘I’m fine,’ Imogen choked. She could see an office door ahead of them.
There was still time for her to change her mind. Still time for her to decide that she was not strong enough to make such a sacrifice and to fly straight back to Rio. All it would take was one sentence, but even whilst she longed to speak it, to tell Dracco that she had changed her mind, Imogen’s pride refused to allow her to do so. Her pride and the deep inner knowledge that she would never forgive herself for her selfishness if she did.
Dracco pushed open the office door, ushering her inside ahead of him. A smiling receptionist greeted them. It was obvious that she knew Dracco well and was more than a touch in awe of him.
‘David shouldn’t be long,’ she told Dracco, glancing at her watch. ‘He was called out to a meeting with a client. He didn’t want to go, really, knowing that you were coming in, but it was an urgent case.’
She seemed almost to be apologising, Imogen recognised as the other woman turned to smile a little uncertainly at her. She was about her own age, Imogen guessed, brunette with hazel eyes and very obviously pregnant.
Shakily Imogen averted her gaze from the other woman’s body. She was still saying something to Dracco, but then she stopped as the office door opened and a slightly thick-set young man with an open, honest face came in.
‘Oh, there you are, darling,’ she said with obvious relief. ‘I was just explaining to Dracco that you’d had to go out.’
As she reached up to kiss him briefly Imogen noticed the wedding ring she was wearing and guessed that they were husband and wife even before Dracco had introduced them to her as David and Charlotte Bryant.
‘Mrs Barrington.’ David Bryant smiled as he shook Imogen’s hand. ’I’ve heard an awful lot about you. My uncle Henry was a great fan of yours and of course he and your father were very close friends. He often used to talk to my mother about you. She was his sister. I know how much it would have meant to him to learn that you and Dracco are...have decided... That you are reconciled.’ He stopped, colouring up and looking slightly uncomfortable, whilst Imogen automatically asked him to call her by her Christian name. It irked her that Dracco had been so sure of her reaction that he had already told David Bryant that they were ‘reconciled’.
She must not allow herself to forget that Dracco was a master manipulator, she warned herself as she thanked Charlotte Bryant for the cup of coffee she had just made her.
‘Yes,’ the other woman was confirming quietly, ‘David’s mother often talks about her brother to us. I know she is particularly grateful to you, Dracco, for everything you did when he had his fatal heart attack, going with him to the hospital, staying with him.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ Imogen heard Dracco saying curtly, almost as though he didn’t want the subject to be discussed.
Imogen shivered. If Henry had not had his heart attack, would Dracco have come after her and stopped her from leaving? She had believed he had let her go out of indifference and relief, but now it seemed that she might have been wrong. Had she been wrong about anything else?
David and Charlotte Bryant obviously thought a lot of Dracco, but then they didn’t know him the way she did!
* * *
‘So what now? A celebratory glass of champagne? We aren’t too far from one of the city’s new hotels, and, since it’s time for lunch...’
Imogen stared at Dracco in disbelief as they stepped out of the office block and into the sunshine.
‘You might feel you have something to celebrate,’ she told him wildly, ‘but I most certainly don’t.’
‘No? I’ve just signed a legally binding document agreeing to give your charity over one million pounds. I should have thought that was sufficient cause for celebration,’ Dracco was telling her with deceptive mildness as he caught hold of her arm and drew her against his side.
Immediately Imogen tried to pull away, but Dracco refused to let go of her.
‘That might be—under different circumstances,’ Imogen retaliated, ‘but, since I’ve just sold the use of my body to you in return for it...’
She could see Dracco’s mouth thinning and see too the warning glint in his rapidly darkening eyes.
‘You loved your father, didn’t you, Imo?’ he asked her grimly.
‘You know I did,’ Imogen responded immediately.
‘How do you think he would have reacted to being a grandfather, to knowing that his genes, your mother’s and your own were being passed on to a new generation?’
For a moment Imogen was too shaken by his question to answer, but when she did her voice trembled with the intensity of her feelings.
‘How dare you do this to me, Dracco?’ she demanded. ‘How dare you use my father to blackmail me?’
‘You keep throwing that accusation in my face. Be very careful that I don’
t throw it back at you.’
‘By doing what?’ she challenged him recklessly.
But instead of answering her he said calmly, ‘Since you don’t want any lunch, we might as well head straight for Knightsbridge and get you kitted out with some new clothes.’
‘I don’t want any new clothes,’ Imogen started to say, but Dracco wasn’t listening to her, his attention concentrated on the taxi he was hailing.
He was still holding onto Imogen’s arm, his fingers curling firmly around it, and as a group of passers-by jostled against her she automatically moved closer to him. The cool wool of his suit jacket brushed against her bare arm. As she looked up she could see the faint shadow on his jaw where he had shaved earlier. There was a maleness about Dracco, she acknowledged with a faint inner tremor, a strong, dangerous sense of power that was like an unseen aura. Unseen but not unfelt. She could feel it now as he urged her into the stationary taxi. She could feel it and she was afraid of it—and of herself.
‘And just remember,’ Dracco was warning her as the taxi lurched into motion, ‘from tonight you and I will be sharing a bedroom. And a bed.’
Ignoring him, Imogen stared out of the taxi window, praying that she would get pregnant quickly—no, not just quickly but immediately, she amended hurriedly.
Straight away, the first time, so that it would be the only time. Would Dracco wait to see if...? Or would he...? Her mind shied away from the questions bubbling inside her head. She certainly had no fear of sex as such. These were not, after all, Victorian times, when a virgin bride was simply not told anything about what lay ahead of her. In Rio children well below the age of puberty sold themselves on the streets in order to eat and were shockingly graphic about what could be demanded of them. If providing Dracco with a child saved only one of those children...
Dracco’s child. Her child. Unable to stop herself, Imogen turned to look at him. Just as she had been, he was gazing out of the taxi window, his face averted from her. Imogen cleared her throat to speak but did not get the chance. The taxi was drawing up outside a department store.