by Lynne Graham
He had wanted revenge so badly he could still taste it even now. He had come down to Oxfordshire intending to let revenge simply take its natural course. He emitted a humourless laugh. He hated her, but he craved the oblivion of her sweet body like a drug addict craved a fix. He hated her, but he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her. He hated the Jenningses for making him the weapon that had to hurt. He had no choice but to blow Milly’s cosy little fake world away. She had to take her own life back, and she couldn’t do that without him…
A slight, slanting smile eased the ferocious tension stamped on Gianni’s features. She was his. He cursed the rampant stirring in his loins. He had been in a state of near constant arousal ever since the airport. Only rigid self-discipline and cold intellect restrained him. For the foreseeable future, she was untouchable. He had waited three years; he could wait a little longer. The fiancé had to be seen off. How was Mr Square and Upwardly Mobile likely to react to the news that Milly wasn’t really the boss’s daughter?
Milly shifted in her sleep and turned over. The plait lay temptingly exposed on the pillow. Gianni moved forward, and before he even knew what he was doing he was unclasping the stiff black bow, loosening the strands, running his long fingers through her beautiful silky hair. His hands weren’t quite steady. Instantly he withdrew them, studied them broodingly, clenched them into defensive fists.
When she had her memory back and he had enjoyed her for a while, he would dump her again. But he would retain a lot of visiting privileges. Purely for his son’s benefit, of course. The cascade of half-unravelled wavy golden hair hung over the side of the bed like a lethal lure. It might be quite a while until he dumped her. So what? He asked himself. You couldn’t put a price on pleasure.
But how did he tell her the truth about herself in a way that didn’t make her hate him? How did you wrap up the fact that at heart she was a gold-digging, cheating tramp who had fooled him right to the bitter end? And if she got her memory back she was going to remember that she had run rings round him right from the minute she’d jumped out of that birthday cake. She was his one weakness, but he could afford to indulge himself just one more time. As long as he never let himself forget for a second what she was really like…
‘Angel…?’
Somebody was shaking her awake. Faith began to sit up, opening her eyes, only to freeze into immobility.
Gianni D’Angelo stood over her. So very tall, so exotically dark.
‘What did you call me?’ she mumbled, remembering everything, attempting to block it back out again until she felt better equipped to deal with it.
Faint colour scored his hard cheekbones. ‘Milly…I called you Milly.’
‘My name’s Faith,’ she told him flatly, refusing to consider his assurance that he had known her by that other name because such an astonishing claim raised questions about her past she could not yet bring herself to ask. ‘Why on earth did you bring me here?’
‘You needed time out.’
With a sudden start of dismay, Faith checked her watch. It was almost one. She began to scramble off the bed with alacrity. ‘I need to pick up Connor—’
‘Call Mrs Jennings. You should eat before you get back behind a steering wheel.’
Mrs Jennings? What an odd way to refer to her mother! Struggling to regain her equilibrium, Faith was even more disconcerted by the untidy cascade of hair now falling round her face. The clasp must have fallen off while she slept. Thrusting the waving mass back behind one small ear, she frowned in Gianni’s general direction. ‘Eat? I have to pick up Connor—’
He extended a mobile phone to her. ‘Ask Mrs Jennings to do it today. We need to talk.’
‘No, I—’
‘You can’t run away from this.’
You can’t run away from this. That blunt statement unnerved her. Her lower lip trembled, and then firmed. She twisted her golden head away and snatched in a shuddering breath. Once again Gianni D’Angelo had seen right through her. Her parents and Edward had always been content to accept what they saw on the surface.
And how was her fiancé likely to react to the sudden appearance of Connor’s natural father? Badly—probably very badly, Faith acknowledged dully. Edward was a very conservative man. And he had once admitted that the very fact he was the only man involved in Connor’s life had made it easier for him to accept her son.
The mobile phone was pressed into her tense fingers.
‘You think you can just tell me what to do—’ she began accusingly.
‘Right now, you’d seize on any excuse to walk out of here again!’
Reddening at the accuracy of that stab, Faith turned back reluctantly to look at Gianni D’Angelo.
And, like a slap in the face, she saw all the cool control she craved etched into the arrogant angle of his dark head and the steadiness of his burnished dark gaze. He had complete dominion over himself.
‘When you’ve made your call, we’ll have lunch.’
Her teeth ground together. She couldn’t hold back her hostility any longer. ‘I really don’t like you.’
Gianni stilled with one brown hand on the door. ‘I know… The Sleeping Beauty woke up to a kiss—’
‘She also woke up to a prince!’ Faith heard herself interrupt, and then she stiffened, disturbed by the speed of her own retaliation. She never argued with anybody. She was far better known as a peacemaker.
‘If I’d kissed you, you might have screamed assault…although possibly that’s only what you’d prefer me to believe.’ Gianni surveyed her, a sardonic slant to his expressive mouth. ‘I think your body remembers me better than your brain does.’
Faith was aghast at that suggestion. ‘How dare you?’
Gianni gave an exaggerated wince. ‘Tell me, how do you square the outraged prudish virgin act with the reality that you’re a single mother?’
Beneath his coolly enquiring gaze, Faith’s soft mouth opened and closed again. Colour flooded her complexion.
‘When something irritates the hell out of me, I usually mention it,’ Gianni shared, before he turned on his heel and left her alone.
In his wake, a combustible mix of anger and chagrin engulfed Faith. She punched out her home phone number with a stabbing finger. Her mother answered.
‘It’s Faith. I’m sorry, but I won’t be home for lunch…and I hate to ask you at such short notice but could you pick up Connor from nursery for me?’ Faith asked tautly.
‘Of course I can, darling,’ Davina Jennings responded instantly. ‘You sound flustered. Is the shop very busy or is Louise away? Never mind. I’d better get a move on if I’m to collect my grandson and still have lunch ready for your father!’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
Faith laid down the mobile. As she did so she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. Outraged virgin? Her cheeks burned afresh. Was that really how she came across?
During her convalescence her mother had warned her that she had a reputation to rebuild, that folk would be quick to pass final judgement on an unmarried mother. Already the target of considerable local curiosity, Faith had been painfully aware of her parents’ concern about how she might behave. Her parents were very private people, but they were pillars of both church and community. So Faith had followed her mother’s guidance when it came to her wardrobe and had worked hard at cultivating an acceptably low profile.
Distractedly, Faith lifted one of the silver brushes on the dresser to try and tidy her hair as she couldn’t find her clasp anywhere. There had been nothing prudish about that blonde in the bath…and, whether she liked it or not, that blonde had been her! Yet she still found that so hugely hard to accept. It was like the sudden discovery of an identical twin, who was her exact opposite in personality and behaviour.
After all, in three long years Faith had never had the slightest urge to go to bed with anybody! Quite a few men had asked her out. Unfortunately most had had definite expectations of how the evening should end. Repulsed by those pushy advances, Faith had come to b
elieve that she had a pretty low sex drive, and had occasionally marvelled at Connor’s very existence.
Edward had been a family friend long before they had started seeing each other, and she had been grateful that he seemed so ideally suited to her. Her fiancé was neither physically demonstrative nor sexually demanding. He had informed her that he preferred to save intimacy for marriage. He had even told her that he would respect her more on those terms, particularly when she had made what he called ‘a youthful mistake’. When it had dawned on her that the ‘mistake’ Edward was referring to was Connor, she had been mortified and hurt.
When Faith walked back into the beautifully furnished reception room next door, she saw a waiter standing by a trolley in the elegant dining area. Gianni was poised by the window. He watched her approach with unfathomable eyes. Her tummy flipped and her breathing quickened.
‘Let’s eat,’ he suggested smoothly.
She was surprised to discover how hungry she was, and was grateful for the restraining presence of the waiter. Gianni embarked on an impersonal conversation. He questioned her about local businesses and the recent bankruptcies on the industrial estate. His razor-sharp intellect swiftly outran the depths of her economic knowledge. Where another man might have centred his interest on local history, or the sights to be seen, Gianni functioned on an entirely different level.
Involuntarily, Faith was fascinated. In the midst of her nightmare, Gianni D’Angelo could behave as if nothing remotely abnormal was happening. It was intimidating proof of a very resourceful and clever male in absolute control of a difficult situation.
When the waiter departed after serving them, Faith tensed up again. Gianni surveyed her with slumbrous dark golden eyes and her throat tightened, her heartbeat speeding up.
‘Now it’s time to talk about Connor,’ he told her with immovable cool.
‘Connor? How can we?’ Faith protested without hesitation. ‘As it is, I can hardly get my mind around the idea that you could be his father!’
‘Not could be, am,’ Gianni countered with level emphasis. ‘You had a test shortly before your disappearance for the child’s DNA. I am, without a single shadow of a doubt, Connor’s father.’
Faith’s knife and fork fell from her loosening hold to rattle jarringly down on her plate. She stared back at him, appalled by that revealing admission. ‘You weren’t sure that…well, that… You mean you didn’t trust me…you suspected there might’ve been room for doubt?’ She struggled valiantly to frame that horribly humiliating question, and her strained voice shook.
Gianni’s lean, dark devastating face was now as still as a woodland pool. He cursed his error in referring to the DNA tests to convince her that Connor was his son and murmured evenly, ‘I’m a very rich man. The DNA testing was a necessary precaution.’
‘A n-necessary precaution…?’ Faith stammered.
‘A legal safeguard,’ Gianni extended with a slight shift of one broad shoulder. ‘Once Connor was proven to be my child I could be sure that if anything happened to me his inheritance rights would not be easily contested.’
Faith nodded uncertainly, thoroughly taken aback by the obvious fact that Gianni D’Angelo had already thought to make provision for her son in his will. She also registered that she herself had already moved on in terms of acceptance and expectation. Only three hours ago she had wanted Gianni to vanish, had denied any need to know what ties they might once have had. But now she badly needed to be reassured that they had had a stable relationship which would not have entailed DNA testing simply to confirm the paternity of her child.
‘You said I was trying to run away from all this,’ she reminded him tautly, her clear blue eyes pinned anxiously to his hard bronzed features. ‘At first, yes, I was. I was so shocked. But now I have a whole lot of questions I need to ask.’
‘About us,’ Gianni slotted in softly. ‘Unfortunately it would be a bad idea for me to unload too many facts on you right now.’
Faith frowned in complete confusion. ‘Why?’
His stunning eyes veiling, Gianni pushed away his plate and lounged back fluidly in his chair to study her. ‘I talked to a psychologist before I came down here.’
‘A psychologist?’ Disconcerted pink surged up beneath her skin at that admission. The embarrassed distaste with which her parents had regarded all such personnel had left its mark on her.
‘It was his view that wherever possible you should only be expected to deal with one thing at a time. That’s why we’re concentrating on Connor,’ Gianni explained, with the slow quiet diction of someone dealing with a child on the brink of a tantrum. ‘At this moment, that’s enough for you to handle.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Faith muttered unevenly. ‘You are telling me that you are not prepared to—’
‘Muddy the water and confuse you with what is currently extraneous information,’ Gianni confirmed, watching her eyes darken and flare with incredulous anger.
Abruptly thrusting back her chair, Faith rose to her feet. ‘Who the heck do you think you are to tell me that?’
‘Sit down and finish your meal,’ Gianni drawled.
Faith trembled. ‘I have the right to know what role I played in your life. That is not extraneous information!’
‘I think it is. I want to talk about my son because I’ve waited three years to find him and now I would very much like to meet him.’ Gianni’s measured gaze challenged her.
‘You’re not meeting Connor until you tell me what I need to know!’ Faith’s head was starting to pound, not least because a temper she had never known she had was tightening its grip on her, no matter how hard she strove to contain it. ‘What was I to you? A one-night stand? A hooker?’ she slung furiously. ‘Or a girlfriend?’
With pronounced cool, Gianni came upright to face her. Even in the overwrought state she was in, his striking grace of movement caught her eye as he stepped out from behind the table. ‘No to all of the above. Leave this for another day, cara,’ he advised very quietly, incisive dark-as-night eyes resting on the revealing clenching and unclenching of her hands. ‘When the time’s right, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’
‘Stop treating me like I’m mentally unfit to deal with my own life!’ Faith launched back at him in furious condemnation. ‘I’ll ask you one more time before I walk out of here…what was I to you?’
Gianni expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘You were my mistress.’
Faith stared back at him, eyes widening and widening, soft mouth rounding but no sound emerging. The angry tension evaporated from her. Sheer shock stilled her, leaving her looking vulnerable and lost. Then she sealed her lips, forced her feet to turn her around and walked to the door. There she hesitated, wheeled back, and hurried across the room again to retrieve her handbag. Not once did she allow her attention to roam back in Gianni’s direction.
‘Are my car keys in here?’ she asked woodenly.
‘Yes. This is ridiculous,’ Gianni murmured drily.
‘How long was I…your mistress?’ Faith squeezed out that designation as if her mouth was a clothes-wringer.
‘Two years…’
Faith flinched as though he had struck her a second body blow. Then, pushing up her chin and straightening her slight shoulders, she moved back to the door and paused there. ‘I hope you paid me well to prostitute myself,’ she breathed through painfully compressed lips.
In the thunderous silence that greeted that stinging retaliation Faith turned her head. Gianni gazed back at her, not a muscle moving on his darkly handsome features. But for once she could read him like an open book. His golden eyes blazed his fury. Oddly soothed by that reaction, Faith stalked rigid-backed out of the suite and headed for the lift.
CHAPTER THREE
FAITH’S tenuous control crumpled and fell apart the instant she reached the sanctuary of her car.
Snatching in a gasping breath in an effort to calm herself, Faith stared blindly through the windscreen. His mistress! It made a ho
rrible kind of sense. He was filthy rich. She wasn’t from the same world. So of course she hadn’t been his girlfriend, his equal, she reflected bitterly. Now she knew why he had been challenged to quantify their relationship. The commercial element had figured. For two years. Two years, an agonised inner voice screeched in condemnation. It had taken her an inexcusably long time to wake up and see the error of her ways.
For two years, two of her missing years, she had been a kept woman. In exchange for sex he had probably paid for the roof over her head, her clothing, all her bills. Faith shuddered, mortified by the self she had clearly been before she’d lost her memory. What kind of woman could she have been? This woman who had called herself Milly? What further humiliating discoveries still awaited her?
Striving hard to get a grip on her wildly seesawing emotions, Faith started the car and drove away from the hotel. Gianni had said she had disappeared. OK, she told herself, it might have taken her a long time but at least she had finally decided to leave him. She must have planned to make a fresh start. And a fresh start was exactly what she had made, she reminded herself doggedly.
Then, just as she came off the roundabout on the outskirts of town, her searing headache became suddenly so much worse that her vision began to blur. Immediately she pulled off the road and parked. Perspiration beaded her short upper lip.
And then it happened. As if somebody was staging a sudden slideshow inside her head. A picture slotted into her mind. She saw herself clutching a phone like a lifeline, and then her awareness shifted and she was suddenly inside that self.
‘Gianni…I haven’t seen you in three weeks,’ she was saying, and tears were stinging her eyes, but she was working really hard at keeping her voice light and teasing because like any workaholic Gianni hated it when she nagged.