Dark Angel

Good, she might have said could she have found her voice at that point, but she could not.

‘Knowing that the police will charge me with that too, I tried to leave the country. But they found the coke in my hand luggage. I only got bail by handing over my passport.’

‘Luciano never got bail at all…’ Her voice emerged all choked and squeezed and shaky. ‘And Rochelle was telling the truth, wasn’t she? You did get her to lie to me about Luciano so that I would break off our engagement—’

‘Kerry…can’

t you see how I was trying to protect you from the fall-out of his being done for theft and false accounting?’ Miles demanded with a troubled frown. ‘It was the only thing I could do for you. It set you free from the whole ghastly business!’

His flawed arguments only made Kerry feel worse than ever. She saw how weak and self-serving he was, how he had a twisted view of his own actions that enabled him to kid himself that he wasn’t as bad as his offences might suggest. But what shook her most of all was his total lack of remorse. He wasn’t one bit sorry for anything that he had done. Not the theft, the blackmail, not even the long imprisonment of an innocent man for the crimes he had committed. No, Miles had no regrets other than that he was about to be caught. Yet he had ruined Luciano’s life, her life and Steven’s life. And this was the man she had regarded in the light of a best friend and a brother?

Miles was a thief, a liar, a blackmailer and also, it seemed, not averse to smuggling drugs. In a stumbling movement Kerry rose from the sofa and fled past her stepbrother out to the hall, where she just managed to identify the location of the bathroom before being horribly unwell. Freshening up in the aftermath of her sickness, Kerry had to breathe in deep and slow several times to ward off her dizziness.

All the time that Luciano had been telling her that her family had stitched him up, she had believed that he was being paranoid. Yet people whom she had thought of as family members had conspired against him. Why had she not listened to him? How on earth could she have allowed Miles to come between her and Luciano?

‘Are you all right?’ Miles prompted when she emerged from the bathroom.

She compressed her lips ‘No…I’m not feeling too good. I’ll be glad to head home again—’

‘Don’t be like that with me,’ her stepbrother said resentfully. ‘I need a friend right now. Rochelle has already taken fright because she’s scared of getting involved, but I expected more from you.’

‘Sorry…’ Leaving the apartment and Miles to certain re-arrest, Kerry could not even bring herself to look at him.

Back at the airport, she tried and failed to get an earlier flight back to Ballybawn. Having booked herself into a hotel for the night, she attempted to call Luciano on his mobile. When there was no answer, her heart sank.

He wasn’t answering her calls. He was very angry with her and he had every right to be, she told herself wretchedly. What had she been planning to say in any case? It would be easier to grovel face to face than it would be on the phone. She had got everything wrong but at least some good was about to come out of all the bad news: Steven Linwood had gone to the police to tell all and Luciano would at last be able to get his own name cleared. Wouldn’t that put any male into a better mood? A more forgiving frame of mind?

After a rather sleepless night, Kerry resisted the urge to try and phone Luciano again and attempted to cheer herself up by buying a pregnancy-testing kit instead. When the little blue line formed and confirmed that she was, indeed, carrying Luciano’s baby she was ecstatic, even more ecstatic than she would have been twenty-four hours earlier, for she was certain that that information would take the edge off his fury with her. And no, she wasn’t too proud to use any advantage she had to achieve that objective.

When she arrived back at Ballybawn, she could not initially credit that Luciano was no longer in residence. She walked through every room before she finally spoke to the housekeeper and tried not to take fright at the information that her husband had left the castle only an hour later than she had the day before. But Luciano was still not taking her calls or answering her messages. She decided that possibly she ought to give him a few more hours to cool down with her.

Only by that stage Kerry was beginning to fall victim to panic. Not once had she believed Luciano when he had said that he was finished with her if she went to Miles’ assistance. She adored Luciano. She was willing to make a big bet that Luciano also knew that she adored him. But Luciano had still walked out on her just as he had sworn he would. Presumably that also meant that he had returned to Italy.

At that point of grudging acceptance, Kerry went into shock. Had Luciano already got bored with her? Had he been looking for an excuse to dump her? Was her support of Miles so unforgivable? Slowly and painfully she came to the conclusion that it had been unforgivable on Luciano’s terms. She was married to a guy who was never, ever going to forget or fully forgive the fact that she had not been there for him when he had been imprisoned. She had gone out on a limb over the worst possible issue.

I need you to understand and believe in me, Luciano had told her. But she had still not had sufficient faith. When Luciano had demanded that she choose between him and her stepbrother, he must already have been suspicious of Miles. It seemed that she had stayed loyal to Miles at the cost of her marriage. Miles was, after all, the rat for whom Luciano had served five years in prison. Bearing that cruel fact in mind, how could she expect Luciano to forgive her?

On the third day after her return to Ballybawn, Kerry flew out to Tuscany. It was a very warm afternoon when her taxi dropped her off at the Villa Contarini. Her blue cotton dress sticking to her damp back, she walked into the cool, shaded interior. Nobody greeted her. Either everybody was out and had forgotten to lock the doors or Luciano had read her text message forewarning him of her arrival and had sent the staff home.

‘Why did you come here?’

The effect of Luciano’s dark, deep drawl coming out of nowhere at her almost made Kerry leap out of her skin. She jerked round. Luciano was watching her from the sunlit drawing-room. Proud dark head high, sheathed in a light grey business suit worn with a shadow-stripe shirt and a pale blue silk tie, he had the stunning impact of a very good-looking guy. As she walked towards him her mouth ran dry and her heart hammered.

‘Kerry…?’ he prompted drily.

‘You’re here, so I’ve come here…it’s pretty simple,’ she pointed out tautly.

‘Even if I don’t want you here?’

Her feverish colour ebbed. ‘I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. I’m going to sit on your doorstep and make a nuisance of myself until you listen to me.’

Brooding dark golden eyes rested on her without any perceptible emotion. ‘There is nothing left to say.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I think you need to think about that some more and I’m not going any place, so you’ll have plenty of time to do it in,’ Kerry told him doggedly. ‘Miles is the lowest of the low and I never once suspected he was. OK! So I wasn’t able to see through him…but I love you!’