WHEN SHE STEPPED OUT of the car at the vicarage, Nicky came running to her. “Can we go home now?” he demanded.
“Yes.” Again she manoeuvred out of any long chats with her parents. They accepted that she had a great deal to do, and Vickie’s revelations had made Kerry eager to be away from their unworldly contentment.
As Nicky chattered on the drive back to the cottage, a strange new lightness of heart began to lift her out of her introspection. The nightmare of her conscience had suddenly been banished. The shadows were gone. The guilt was gone. In a peculiar way, Vickie had set her free.
“Granny said that you and me and Daddy are all going to live together,” Nicky relayed excitedly.
She tautened, sucked back willy-nilly to the present. How could she turn in her tracks now? She had no proof. Would Alex even believe Vickie, or would he think that Kerry was rather pitifully trying to cover up too late? A surge of savage hostility encased her then. The tables had been turned. She could hate Alex now without feeling guilty about it. He had judged her without a hearing. Suddenly she was in so much conflict that she couldn’t think straight. She was sick and tired of being a victim. Vickie had made her one, Alex had followed suit with a cruelty foreign to Kerry’s softer nature.
If she married Alex she would still be paying for a crime she had not committed. She had already paid a hundred times over. Dammit, why should she be victimised again?
Her fingers hovered over the phone to contact the driver and tell him to return her to the vicarage. She saw herself walking in and laying the whole story before them. Simultaneously, she saw herself destroying her family. It would still come down to her word against Vickie’s. It would tear their parents apart to see their two daughters engaged in such bitter conflict. She couldn’t do that to them. She couldn’t risk her father’s health, either. Her hand fell heavily back on to her lap. Alex had won, after all. Alex always won.
* * *
THE WEDDING TOOK PLACE five days later. Vickie took sick last moment, and phoned the vicarage to say she was down with gastric ’flu. Steven had spent most of the intervening period begging Kerry to tell him what was wrong with her. On several occasions she nearly broke down and spilt it all out: her ever-mounting sense of injustice. Four years, she kept on thinking, four wretched, miserable years that had practically crippled her emotionally because she had been enslaved by her own guilt.
She was like a statue during the brief ceremony in a London register office. They came out to a barrage of photographers. The Veranchetti rematch, someone quipped. Alex was all smiles, the two-faced swine that he was. Antipathy raced through her in a stormy wave, and as he met her eyes, his narrowed perceptively.
“What’s wrong?” he enquired.
Kerry almost laughed. What’s wrong? she thought wildly. Oh, there’s nothing wrong, Alex. You forced me into this marriage, you’re forcing me to share my son, you’re forcing me back into a life-style I hated…really, Alex why should there be anything wrong?
“Are you feeling all right?” She guessed he could afford the solicitous look. He thought he had won. Well, he hadn’t won. All hell would break loose if he dared to try and exert his marital rights.
He carried her firmly off into the car, away from the loud voices asking quite incredibly impertinent questions. “I have a headache,” she lied.
“Stress.”
What the heck would he know about stress? She turned her flushed profile aside. There was still the meal with her parents to be got through with a civilised show.
“Why didn’t Glenn attend the wedding, if he was such a good friend?” Alex drawled softly.
“I try not to involve my friends in burlesque shows.”
“I’m sorry that you feel that way about our wedding.”
“What wedding?” Her green eyes flashed at him. Although she had promised herself that she would not start until her parents were safely off-scene, she could no longer control her ire. “You got me here at the point of a gun. Why the polite hypocrisy? I don’t need it.”
His lustrous dark eyes rested on her unreadably. “I don’t want to argue with you today.”
Why was there something special about today? Her contempt showed, and his aggressive jawline set. For the space of a heartbeat she thought Alex was about to lose his cool. But his thick, dark lashes screened his gaze. She admired his control. The limousine filtered to a halt in front of the hotel. She pinned a smile to her lips for her parents’ benefit. Another couple of hours and the need even to smile would be over.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY WERE flying straight to Rome. It seemed that Alex could not wait to parade his bride to the family again.
“It will be easier if it is done immediately,” he pronounced during the flight. He actually reached for Kerry’s clenched fingers. “Believe me, no one will say anything
to hurt your feelings.”
His family could not afford to offend him; Alex either employed them or supported them. They would have had to accept Frankenstein’s Bride with a smile had Alex made the demand! Her generous mouth thinned. Well, she wasn’t the trusting and na;auive teenager she had been on her last visit. Nobody would intimidate her this time.
“Is it the prospect of meeting my family again which is worrying you?”
She raised a brow. “Nothing’s worrying me.”
Nicky climbed up on her knee and planted himself bodily between them. “This is my mummy.” There was a miniature Veranchetti stress to the possessive tone employed. Ever since Nicky had adjusted to the sight of his parents together, he had been growing increasingly less certain about whether or not he liked the combination.
“And my wife,” Alex murmured.
“She’s not.” Nicky’s mouth came out in a pout. “I’m going to marry her when I get growed up. You’ve got Helena.”
Kerry forced a laugh. Alex surveyed her over the top of Nicky’s dark, curly head in cool question. “I don’t find that funny.”
“It makes pretty clear sense to him. He’s seen you with too many different women,” Kerry riposted drily.
“Helena happens to be an eleven-year-old,” he interposed. “And the women you talk about are at an end now.”
She shrugged as Nicky slid down restlessly and crossed the cabin to play with the jigsaw she had set out for him. “I wouldn’t speak too soon,” she replied. “After all, I’m not going to share a bedroom with you again. Touch me and I’ll disappear into thin air, Alex. I swear it. You can’t have me watched all the time.”
Long fingers tipped up her chin. “Don’t utter foolish threats.”
“It’s not a foolish threat. It’s what will happen,” she informed him steadily, her eyes icy-cold. “You’ve got your son, you’ve got a wife who will behave like a wife in public, but in private, as far as I am concerned, the act dies.”