by Penny Jordan
So far as she knew, Lisa had not visited the house since their confrontation.
Instinctively Imogen stepped back out of sight as Lisa rang the front-doorbell. She heard the study door open and held her breath as she listened to Dracco’s strong masculine footsteps and felt the small surge of early-evening air waft into the hallway as he opened the door.
‘Lisa.’ His voice was expressionless, but in a way that dragged sharp, poisoned nails of anguish across Imogen’s heart.
Since Lisa’s previous visit to the house Imogen had not confronted the role she knew her stepmother had played and she suspected continued to play in Dracco’s life. But her awareness of it shadowed every aspect of their life together. Lying awake on her own in their bed at night she had tormented herself with the knowledge that Dracco was staying away from her because he really wanted to be with Lisa.
She had known exactly why Dracco had not wanted her love, and why he had been so insistent that all they had done together was to have sex, a physical coupling devoid of emotion. He kept his love only for Lisa. And yet, knowing that, she had still wanted him, responded to him, stupidly allowed herself to believe in the impossible fantasy that she, Imogen, had to mean something to him, that he couldn’t possibly be with her if she didn’t. She had even been so desperate for his love that she had allowed him to mock her for her own helpless desire for him.
Every time he taunted her about it she sensed some deep, hidden, ambivalent feeling behind his words. Because he resented her for taking what should only be given to the woman he loved?
Imogen could feel herself starting to shiver and then to shudder, deep, racking manifestations of her traumatic emotional pain. She could hear Lisa saying with soft seductiveness, ‘I knew you’d be expecting me.’
And then the study door was closing, shutting her out, enclosing both of them in their own private world.
If she closed her eyes Imogen could see them in it...could see the way the late-afternoon sun would illuminate dust motes of gold through the long sash windows either side of the traditional fireplace her father had insisted on keeping. The desk, an antique partners’ desk at which she could vividly remember both her father and Dracco sitting, working amicably together, was in one corner of the room. Behind it were floor-to-ceiling bookcases. To one side of the fireplace was a large leather chair, and in front of it a narrow sofa, long enough for her to lie down on at full stretch, something which she had done often in the early days after her mother’s death.
Was Dracco laying Lisa down on that sofa now, slowly, lovingly, longingly undressing her whilst she...?
Imogen gave a low, tortured moan of pure anguish.
She wanted to scream, to cry, to claw at her very flesh for so foolishly and wantonly betraying her, to tear her treacherous heart out of her body, to sear and seal her emotions so she would never feel again, but most of all she wanted to run as far and as fast away from Dracco as she could. Just as she had done once before.
But she wasn’t a mere girl any more and answerable only to herself. She was a woman now, with responsibilities. Briefly, her hand brushed her stomach. A single tear rolled down her cheek. Imogen lifted her head.
She was Dracco’s wife. He had married her of his own free will. She was carrying his child, their child. This house held so many precious happy memories for her of her life with her own parents. Her mother and her father. She fully intended that her child would enjoy the security of being loved by both its parents. No matter what the personal cost to herself.
And if that meant outfacing Lisa, standing her ground and claiming her rights as Dracco’s wife, then that was exactly what she was going to do.
Lisa might have his love, but she was the one who would have his child!
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘YOU’RE VERY QUIET; is something wrong?’
‘I was just thinking about the past and my father—and Lisa,’ Imogen responded with deliberate emphasis, shaking her head as Dracco indicated the bottle of wine he had just opened.
She had visited her doctor earlier in the day and had had her pregnancy confirmed.
Whilst she suspected that the odd glass of red wine would not do her baby any harm, she was not prepared to take any risks. Already he or she was infinitely precious to her, and part of the reason she had been thinking about her father. He would have so loved being a grandfather, especially when Dracco, whom he had valued so much, was that baby’s father.
But then, unlike her, her father had not known the truth about the man he had treated as a son. He had not known how Dracco had betrayed him with his own wife.
‘Lisa never really loved my father. She only married him for his money.’
It must be the confirmation of her pregnancy that was making her feel so emotional, Imogen decided, that and the fact that her baby’s father didn’t love her. There had been another woman in the surgery at the same time as Imogen, very heavily pregnant and accompanied by her partner, who had watched her with such a look of tenderness and adoration that Imogen had felt her eyes sting. When the woman’s hand had rested against her stomach he had lifted it to his lips, kissing it before replacing it on her belly and then covering it with his own.
‘Lisa was a lot younger than your father, Imo.’
‘Oh, of course you would take her side, wouldn’t you?’ Imogen stormed.
Dracco had been about to raise the glass of wine he had just poured himself to his lips, but now he put it down, frowning as he did so.
‘I have no idea what all this is about, Imo,’ he began austerely. ‘You know—’
‘I know that I saw Lisa here in this house and that you haven’t said one word about her visit to me,’ Imogen told him trenchantly.
‘You saw her?’ Dracco’s frown deepened, his voice sharpening.
‘Yes. What did you do, Dracco? Ring her up and tell her that it was safe to come over? That I was asleep? That you were tired of making love—oh, I’m sorry, having sex—with a woman you didn’t really want and certainly didn’t love? A woman who wasn’t her? Well, this is my home, Dracco, and just so long as it is there is no way I intend to tolerate you entertaining your...your mistress in it...’
Imogen broke off and took a deep breath to steady her voice, but before she could continue Dracco was demanding tersely, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Imogen couldn’t believe his gall. It left her breathless, mute with a fury that visibly shook her body.
‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about,’ she threw at him when she could finally speak. ‘I’m talking about the affair you are having with Lisa, the affair you were having with her when she was married to my father and which you have continued to have with her even though both of you have married elsewhere.’
She could see the muscles clenching in Dracco’s jaw. He didn’t like what she was saying—well, tough! How did he think she felt? How did he think her father would have felt?
‘You think I’m having an affair with Lisa?’
He had to be working very hard to project such a convincing air of stunned disbelief, Imogen acknowledged, which just showed how important it was for him to keep his relationship with Lisa a secret.
‘No, Dracco,’ she told him calmly, ‘I don’t think you are having an affair with my stepmother; I know you are. Lisa told me so herself, on the morning of our wedding.’
There was a long, tense pause before Dracco asked grimly, ‘Is that why you ran away?’
‘What do you think?’ Imogen responded bitterly, shaking her head before he could say anything else and telling him, ‘That’s it, Dracco. I’m not prepared to discuss it any further.’ She felt amazed and awed by her own unexpected self-control—and the way she had taken charge of the whole situation. ‘What’s past is past, and it’s the future that concerns me now. A future which you have forced o
n us both. I want to make it clear that I will not tolerate Lisa’s presence here in this house. Not whilst I am expected to live here!’
Now she was going to tell him about the baby, their baby. And she was going to beg him, no, demand that he think about the effect his continued relationship with Lisa would have on the child he claimed he wanted so much! But before she could begin to speak the telephone suddenly rang.
Dracco turned away from her as he picked up the receiver, quite patently not wanting Imogen to overhear anything of the call. Because it was from Lisa? Suppressing her instinctive urge to wrench the phone from him and break the connection between them, Imogen turned instead and hurried into the hallway.
Where was her bravery now? she derided herself as she battled against her own emotions. Why wasn’t she challenging Dracco? Was it because she was desperately afraid that she would lose, that he would choose Lisa above their baby?
There was no way she could allow herself to become the pathetic, unwanted, cheated-on wife of a man who found his pleasure with and gave his love to another woman, she reminded herself determinedly.
And if Dracco chose to ignore the demands she intended to make, the battle lines she intended to draw? Imogen could feel herself start to tremble. Her earlier buoyant surge of exhilaration had drained away, leaving her feeling afraid and vulnerable, not for herself but for her baby, who deserved surely to be loved by both its parents.
‘Imo.’
She froze as Dracco came out into the hall and called her name.
‘I’ve got to go to London, but when I come back there are things that you and I need to discuss, certain misconceptions you appear to have that need to be addressed and corrected.’
‘I see. When will you be back?’ She held her breath, even though she suspected she already knew the answer.
‘I’m not sure.’ Dracco’s tone was cautious. ‘I may have to stay overnight.’
May? Imogen only just managed to stop herself from laughing bitterly out loud. Even if the formality of his language hadn’t been enough to tell her how furiously angry he was, the look on his face did, but Imogen had far more to concern her than Dracco’s anger. Like, for instance, the source of that telephone call he had been so anxious for her not to overhear. It had to have been from Lisa! And now he was going to London to see her and no doubt spend the night with her!
She hated herself for not having the courage to challenge him. Was this what love did to you? Made you vulnerable? Afraid? Being unable to put her suspicions into words made her feel humiliated and ashamed.
Now, more than at any other time, surely, she ought to be able to turn to Dracco for his support and protection.
But she didn’t seem to matter to him!
* * *
The sight of his own grim-faced expression as he glanced in his driving mirror only reinforced what Dracco already felt. It had stunned him to hear Imogen accusing him of having an affair with Lisa. Lisa might consider herself to be beautiful and desirable, but so far as Dracco was concerned she was ugly, ugly inside with malice, greed and selfishness. He had always suspected that Imogen’s father had regretted marrying her, although he had been far too loyal to say so. His mouth tightened on the memory of the accusation Imogen had flung at him that he had been having an affair with Lisa whilst she was married to her father. Did Imogen really believe he was capable of that kind of disloyalty?
On the morning of their marriage when Imo had demanded to know if there was a woman in his life whom he loved he had assumed that she had been talking about herself. The horror and rejection in her voice and her eyes when he’d told her of his feelings had made him curse himself under his breath for what he had done to her.
The youthful infatuation she had had for him had quite plainly been destroyed by the unwanted reality of his love for her, a love which he had already been guiltily conscious she was really too young to be burdened with.
When she had run away from him that belief had been compounded. Dracco’s eyes darkened with remembered pain. He had been on the verge of running after her when Henry had collapsed, and in the panic which had ensued everyone had automatically looked to him to take charge.
By the time he had been free to go after Imo it had been too late. She had already left the country.
He had tracked her down, of course, his concern for her as great as his searing anguish at losing her.
He had kept track of her ever since—for her sake and for what he owed her father. And it was for Imogen’s sake that he was driving to London now, when he would far rather have been at home with her, explaining to her, reassuring her that Lisa was the last woman he would ever be interested in. Because there was and could only ever be one woman he loved and that woman was Imo herself.
However, his telephone call had been from the same agency he had used to keep track of Imogen during her absence, and they had rung to inform him as a matter of urgency that it looked as though the shelter was going to be closed down.
It seemed that the man who owned the building and the land on which the shelter stood wanted to sell the land on, and he was using strong-arms tactics to try to frighten the sisters into giving up their lease on the property.
Dracco knew just how much the shelter meant to Imogen, and he wanted to do everything he could to help save it, even if that meant helping to find and finance new premises for it.
He was driving to London so that he could, without Imogen discovering what was happening, negotiate some way of keeping the shelter open. No matter what it cost him.
* * *
Despairingly Imogen stood in the empty silence of the hallway. Dracco had left her to go to Lisa. What was she going to do?
She felt weak, defeated, frightened and alone. Her earlier confidence and bravado had completely left her. She desperately wanted to be with people who cared about her, people she felt secure with. Suddenly she missed Rio, and the sisters, the people she had known there—desperately.
What was going to happen to her and, more important, what was going to happen to her baby?
He or she needed to be loved. To be with people who cared—and for the right reasons!
Imogen knew exactly what she had to do!
This time there was no urgency, no sense of flight or desperation, just a chilling, calm acceptance of what had to be.
She packed carefully, and even managed to be controlled enough to ring ahead to Heathrow to book her seat on the first available flight to Rio.
It was leaving just before midnight, and she had plenty of time to get there.
Midnight. No doubt by then Dracco would be with Lisa in London at his apartment. In bed with her, no doubt, swearing eternal love to her.
Clutching her body, Imogen raced to the bathroom, her stomach churning with nausea.
‘She has that effect on me too,’ she comforted her still flat stomach sadly. ‘He doesn’t deserve you, my darling, no matter how much he wants you. I’m going to take us both somewhere we can be happy together without him.’
Even as she whispered the words to the new life growing inside her Imogen was aware of a small inner voice she couldn’t quite silence that was objecting to what she was saying. It reminded her that although Dracco might not love her, that did not mean that he would not love his child, and that she had no real right to make decisions that would separate that child from Dracco forever.
She did not want to listen to that kind of criticism and she wasn’t going to.
The taxi she had ordered arrived. She was travelling light—everything Dracco had bought for her, except this time her rings, she was leaving behind.
One small tear glittered in her eye as she closed the front door behind her. Refusing to look back, she got in the taxi.
* * *
Dracco grimaced, rubbing his hand over his tired eyes as he replaced the tele
phone receiver and switched on the computer on his desk.
He had managed, he hoped, to avert the crisis with the shelter—Dracco had managed to persuade the landowner to sell the shelter and the land to him, at a vastly inflated price, of course, but he didn’t regret having to pay for it, not knowing how happy it would make Imogen. However, there were still certain ends he had to tie up, e-mails he had to send, people he had to contact—lawyers, accountants, bankers—but first...
He checked his watch; Imogen should still be up, and suddenly he desperately needed to hear her voice. He had hated having to leave her without talking through the whole ridiculous misunderstanding about Lisa, but he had felt that he needed time to explain everything properly to her. However, right now his need to speak to her was overwhelming everything else. He could at least tell her how much he loved her.
Dracco frowned. He had made three attempts to telephone Imogen without success. She could, of course, be asleep, or simply refusing to answer the telephone, but instinctively he knew that there was a more serious reason for her silence.
Without wasting time analysing his feelings, he reached for his car keys and headed for the door.
* * *
Heathrow was busy. Imogen had plenty of time before she needed to check in.
To distract herself from the pain of what she was having to do, she tried to make mental plans for the practicalities she would need to address once she arrived in Rio. Initially she would have to book into a hotel. Someone had now taken over her old apartment but even if they hadn’t with a baby to consider she would have had to find somewhere more suitable to live, preferably a small house with its own garden.