Angel of Darkness

‘But why?’ she whispered.

He expelled his breath and abruptly let his hands drop from her. ‘Because when you were sixteen I fell in love with you...and somehow I never quite managed to fall out of love again,’ he said harshly.

The confession froze her in her tracks. He was standing with his back to her by the window, the muscles in his broad shoulders clearly clenched with tension beneath the well-cut jacket.

‘Evidently I’m a one-woman man.’ Fierce satire edged the statement. ‘Six years ago I wanted to marry you because I loved you. Of course, you were far too young and you were not in love with me—’

Distantly she recalled him telling her in Tuscany how bitterly he had resented being forced into playing a father figure when Tomaso opted out. And finally she understood why. She also understood why he had gone over the edge that night when he’d found her in the library with that boy.

‘I spent the past six years haunted by you. I framed that Vogue cover. It hangs in the bedroom of my London apartment.’

‘Angelo...’ she muttered softly, shock receding, delight and the most humbling sense of gratitude taking her over.

‘Dio...do you think I want your pity?’ he slashed back at her, swinging round. ‘All those years reading about your other men! At times, I hated you more than I loved you. I brought you to Tuscany because I believed that you were really only a fantasy. If I actually made love to you, I believed, the fantasy would die. Only it didn’t. It simply got me in deeper!’

‘I thought you were a sexual infatuation,’ Kelda told him dry-mouthed.

‘I can live with that,’ Angelo shot at her grimly. ‘I can live with that better than losing you.’

‘You’re not going to lose me.’ She smiled almost shyly at him.

‘Then perhaps you can tell me why you have packed?’ he demanded not quite steadily, pallor visible beneath his dark skin.

‘I was being really stupid...I thought you’d be so angry and humiliated about the story in the paper—’

‘All I had time to worry about was what that story was doing to you. Why should I be angry? It was your feelings I was most concerned about.’

The truth of that had been so plain from the moment he’d stopped her impulsively burning her father’s letters that her throat closed over with tears. All the tenderness and caring she had ever sought had been there for her instantly. ‘If you love me, why have you been so aloof since Alice was born?’ she asked helplessly.

‘I wanted to be with you when she was born. It was so obvious that that would not have been your choice...I felt rejected,’ he breathed tautly. ‘I had tried so hard before that to make you relax with me and I thought I was getting somewhere...then I realised I wasn’t. Treating you like a sort of sister had been such a strain—’

‘A strain for me too. I thought you found my shape...revolting,’ she confided in a rush. ‘You never touched me.’

‘I didn’t think you would allow me to. I was trying to build a bond of trust between us. I had made such a mess of our relationship in Tuscany. I went overboard that night at Daisy’s cottage,’ he relived unsteadily, beautiful golden eyes clinging to her intent face. ‘I couldn’t trust myself near you. I was scared I would make an even bigger fool of myself.’

‘You didn’t make a fool of yourself that night. If only I hadn’t lied, if only we had talked...really talked,’ she said with bitter regret.

‘I wanted so badly to hear that your baby was mine,’ Angelo confessed roughly. ‘Couldn’t you see that?’

Kelda had paled. ‘Even though you thought I had slept with Russ?’

‘Yes,’ he admitted ruefully.

‘All I could think about was Fiona,’ she admitted. ‘My pride was hurt. I was bitter and hurt and jealous and I really did believe that the last thing you wanted to hear was that the baby was yours.’

‘You were wrong. And when I realised that you had lied, I think that was the worst rejection of all. I thought you had to really hate me to have lied. You didn’t even consider telling me the truth or approaching me for help all those months that you were pregnant,’ he pointed out. ‘That stood between us from the hour I married you...that even pregnant and alone you wanted nothing to do with me.’

The pain that conviction had given him was in his dark eyes.

Kelda shook her head. ‘That never even occurred to me. All I could think about was Adele and all the other women—’

‘I haven’t slept with anyone but you since Italy.’ Angelo absorbed her incredulity and a slanting smile tilted his handsome mouth. ‘Not even come near it. I couldn’t have used another woman just for sexual release when the only woman I really wanted was you.’

‘Not even Fiona?’

Angelo laughed heartily. ‘She dumped me the day after the wedding. She said she wouldn’t be used to make another woman jealous but that if I ever got over you she might give me a second chance.’ He hesitated. ‘Did you use the food in the hampers?’

‘Hampers?’ Kelda repeated, her brow creasing. ‘From Harrods? You sent them?’