Angel of Darkness

Angelo ignored the invitation. ‘And because I rejoice in being equally obstinate, I persisted in holding on to my original opinion of your character even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.’

‘Have you finished?’

Angelo took a deep breath and then swore. ‘I am trying to say sorry, but you don’t make that easy.’

Sorry was even less welcome than the most base of insults from his corner. Kelda ground her teeth together. ‘Sorry for what?’

‘For all this.’ Angelo spread lean brown hands wide with in-bred elegance of movement. ‘It’s all my fault. I started it—’

‘Finished it—’ Kelda heard herself remind him.

‘It didn’t finish for me,’ Angelo surveyed her with unreadable hooded eyes, his attention sliding almost compulsively to the visible swell of her abdomen beneath the bedclothes. ‘And it isn’t finished for you either.’

Kelda dealt him an outraged stare. ‘Stop looking at me like that!’

‘I like looking at you now...now that I know the baby is mine,’ Angelo proffered without a shade of embarrassment. ‘Five months ago that baby seemed like an unbridgeable barrier between us. But now it is a link that nothing can break. I wish you could have told me the truth then. If you had, I would have been with you. I never thought of having a child before but, since yesterday, I haven’t been able to think of anything else.’

The truth of that confession was blatant. Kelda, hectically flushed, raised her knees slightly and rearranged the bedding to conceal the evidence of her fertility as best she could. A link that nothing could break, he said. She had refused to appreciate that fact before.

‘Don’t you think that for the sake of the baby we could live together?’ Angelo demanded with sudden unconcealed impatience.

‘Certainly not. I couldn’t stand it!’ she slung back at him, hot moisture scalding her eyelids.

‘I offered the divorce as what you might term a sweetener to the deal,’ Angelo admitted.

‘Some sweetener!’ Kelda muttered, pleating the sheet with restive fingers.

‘You wouldn’t need to feel trap

ped. I would give you a divorce at any time if you asked for one—’

‘Angelo, when I want a discreetly unfaithful rich husband in place of my peaceful independence and freedom, I’ll advertise! The idea of marrying you,’ Kelda framed, fighting the tremor in her thickened voice, ‘well, it appeals to me about as much as twenty years of hard labour in a swamp with no time off for good behaviour.’

Angelo had moved forward. The atmosphere vibrated with tension. Refusing to be inhibited by his proximity, Kelda surveyed him with a provocatively curled lip.

‘With you in my bed, I would not be unfaithful.’

Kelda sent him a winging glance of forced amusement although her spinal cord had tightened up another notch. ‘But I’m not going to be in your bed ever again, Angelo.’

‘You want to lay a bet on that?’ Angelo sank down on the edge of her bed, shimmering golden eyes ruthlessly pinned her. ‘I look at you and you burn. I touch you and you go up in flames. You carry my child inside you. If I branded you with my name, you couldn’t be more mine!’

‘You arrogant sw—’ Kelda began to spit.

Angelo reached for her in one powerful movement. Deftly angling his body to one side so that he would not hurt her, he took her mouth in a devouring kiss that she felt right down to her toes and back up again. She reacted like a woman possessed. With one hand she hit out at him in blind rage, but the other hand inexplicably dived into the springy depths of his hair, holding him to her.

He kissed her breathless. Great rolling waves of excitement overwhelmed her. The hand that had balled into a fist uncurled and slid under his sweater instead and exulted in the satin-smooth skin of his back before sliding across his taut flat stomach to rake into the furrow of silky hair that disappeared beneath his belt.

Angelo jerked violently against her and grabbed her hand, pushing her fingers in an unrestrained expression of need down to the thrust of his hard thighs. He groaned, swore against her mouth, momentarily stiffened as though he was striving to will himself into a withdrawal, and then gathered her fully into his arms with a stifled sound of all male satisfaction.

A loud knock sounded on the door. Angelo sprang off the bed, drove an unsteady hand through his wildly tousled black hair and shot Kelda a glittering glance of mingled frustration and grudging amusement.

Kelda was stricken when Daisy and Tomaso strolled in.

Her stepfather dealt both of them a satiric smile. ‘I assume that congratulations are in order.’

‘I should think so too,’ Daisy teased.

Kelda could feel a painful flush engulfing her skin. Evidently the knock that had been heard had not been the first interruption. She remembered her stepfather saying that he wouldn’t trust either of them in the same room for an hour. She remembered the last time they had been surprised on a bed. She burned hotter than ever.