She felt rather than heard him move, surefooted and electrically male as he came to stand beside the bed. She wished he had not come to stand beside her, it made her feel vulnerable; it made her remember ... She watched the hand he stretched out towards her in horrified revulsion, her bitter 'Don't touch me!' jerked past trembling lips. 'Don't touch me,' she breathed huskily. 'Don't come near me. I hate you!'
'Do you?' He dropped down on his haunches so that their eyes were on a level. Saffron tried to sit upright, but his arm across her shoulders kept her pinned to the bed.
'Is that why you're wearing my shirt; why you wanted to save my life, why you told your father you wished you had conceived my child?' he demanded emotively.
She tried to swallow and found she couldn't. 'Daddy can't have told you that,' she moaned. 'He would never…'
'He told me.' The flat words possessed an undeniable ring of truth. 'Are you going to tell me you lied to him?'
Saffron ignored the question. 'Who are you?'
'You know who I am,' he said tersely, 'Dominic Hunter, godson of your father's best friend. And you still haven't answered my question.'
'You haven't answered mine.'
'In this game as in all others, might gives right, so tell me, did you mean what you said to your father?'
'Yes.' The word was dragged painfully out of her. 'But I didn't mean it about you,' she threw at him, 'I meant it about a man who doesn't exist.'
'He exists all right.' Would you like me to prove it to you?'
'No!' She recoiled, and he laughed bitterly.
'Some love if it makes you react like that. Perhaps I ought to remind you of just how easily that hatred you're pushing at me right now can be turned into something very different.
'What are you doing here?' Saffron demanded. 'I don't understand ...'
'What's the matter?' he jeered unkindly. 'Has all the romance gone out of it now that you know the truth, now that you've discovered that I'm just a man like any other, and not some fictional hero? You don't know the first thing about love, little girl; you're still living in a fantasy world.'
He turned suddenly, getting to his feet and walking across to the window, his back to her, his hands thrust into the pockets of the expensive suit he was wearing.
'I came here today because your father asked me to. He's been worried about you; worried that you…'
'Were pining away for love of a man he knew didn't exist?' Saffron said bitterly, swinging her feet to the floor.
'It was something neither of us had bargained for. Look,' Dominic said quietly, 'either we sit down and I tell you the way it was, or I walk out of here and leave you nurturing all that hatred and bitterness you're so intent on clinging on to— which is it to be?'
'You're going to tell me the truth?'
He turned round to face her, and she saw what she had not seen before—that he looked older, tireder, that something had been stamped on to his features that had not been there before.
'Are you woman enough to hear it?'
Saffron only hesitated for a moment. No matter what pain it might bring her she owed it to herself to face facts.
'Yes,' she said firmly.
'It all started eighteen months ago. My parents died when I was in my teens and my godfather more or less brought me up. We were very close; he was exceptionally good to me, a deeply caring and understanding man. The intention was that I would take over his legal practice from him and that he would semi-retire—he was a keen fisherman and he was looking forward to having more time to spend on his favourite hobby. That was why he went to Italy in the first place. I was to have gone with him, but at the last minute there was a problem at work. I'd run a bit wild in my teens after I lost my parents—in fact I ran away from school and joined the Army—crazy thing to do, but it taught me things about life I would never have learned otherwise. My godfather stood by me and I wanted to repay him, to make him feel that he could trust the practice to me, so he went to Italy alone—and never came back.' His eyes were bitter and Saffron felt his pain, against her will.
'While he was over there he was kidnapped; I got the ransom demand, but the amount they wanted was more than I could raise quickly. I did my best—played it their way; eventually managed to raise the money with some help from your father, but it was all too late.'
'They killed him,' Saffron guessed.
'Yes. I tried to get the Italian authorities to do something, but they were worse than useless, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. When I was in the Army, I was with the ...'
'The S.A.S.?' Saffron supplied.
'Yes. So I decided to see if I could infiltrate the gang—the Italian authorities knew who they were, they just couldn't touch them—too clever for them—so I followed them and watched them, got to know as much about the organisation as I could. I was aided by the fact that each unit worked virtually independently of the main organisation. I knew it wouldn't be impossible to infiltrate—to pretend as I eventually did that I'd been sent by the organisation to work with them. All I needed was a tempting enough piece of bait.'