The Heat Of Passion

'Look, all this...' She had indicated the fancy room

with embarrassment. 'It's not necessary. I fell into the

road. Your car didn't touch me. It's not as if I'm going

to sue you or anything, and all this fuss -'

'Is my wish,' he had inserted silkily, scanning her slender shape beneath the bedclothes with blatant appreciation, making her cheeks ignite into sudden colour and sweeping up to her face with yet another smile. 'I can't take my eyes off you. You may have noticed that. Then, you must be accustomed to a great deal of male attention.'

'Not since I got engaged,' she had muttered stiffly, infuriated by the fashion in which he was openly looking her over as if she were an object on a supermarket shelf there for the taking.

He had stilled, golden eyes narrowing and flaring. ‘You belong to another man?'

'I belong to no man, Mr Saracini!' Jessica had snapped.

'You will belong to me,1 he had murmured with utter conviction.

She had honestly thought he was nuts. Nobody had ever talked to her like that before. Mind you, she had been to Greece once on holiday and had noted that radical feminism had yet to find a foothold there. But that a male dressed with such apparent sophistication in a superbly tailored mohair and silk blend suit, a male who spoke with an air of culture and education, should make such primitive statements had astonished her.

'I'm getting married in six weeks,' she had informed him flatly, involuntarily studying his strikingly male fea-

tures before she realised what she was doing and hurriedly looked away again.

‘ We'll see...' And Carlo had laughed indulgently, the way you laughed when a child said something innocently amusing.

Jessica sank back to the present and discovered that she was shivering. Her first thought was for her father. No matter what he said, he shouldn't be alone. Grabbing up a coat, she let herself out of the tiny cottage she rented and climbed into her car to drive over to his house.

'But your father's at work, Mrs Turner. What would he be doing home at this time of the day?' Her father's housekeeper studied her with a questioning frown.

Jessica swallowed hard, fighting to keep her face unconcerned. 'I thought he was finishing early.'

'Well, he didn't mention it to me.'

Til catch him later.' Jessica climbed back into her car.

Dear God, where had her father gone? She must have been out of her mind to let him wander off like that in the state he was in! Another little voice asked her what she was doing. Her father had said he needed time on his own. She was not his keeper. Shouldn't she respect his wishes? But the nagging sense of urgency nibbling at her nerve-endings wouldn't leave her alone.

Reluctantly she went home again. Carlo...she couldn't get Carlo out of her mind. Would she go to the Deangate Hall Hotel to crawl and beg and plead as once her father had done with her mother? Her stomach gave a sensitive heave. What would be the point? She knew Carlo Saracini. There was no way he would let her father off the hook. Carlo wanted revenge. He couldn't touch Jessica but he knew just how deep the bond was between father and daughter. It would be a sweeter revenge than any that dark Machiavellian intellect might have calculated.

'Some day you will come to me on your knees and beg me to take you... and I will break you.' As she remembered, perspiration dampened her short

upper lip.

Carlo Saracini had destroyed her life. He had hacked to pieces everything she held dear. Her love for Simon, her happiness, her tranquillity... and in the end her self-respect. She had fought him to the very last shred of her endurance and then had learnt the secret of her own frailty in a shattering hour of self-discovery. Shuddering with disgust, she shut out the memories but the humiliation and the shame lived on as strongly as ever.

Carlo was one hundred per cent predator. Ruthless, unforgiving, utterly intolerant of those weaker than himself. She would never ever forget the way he had looked at her on her wedding-day. With smouldering incredulous fury and naked hatred. The Alpha male, fabulously rich, indecently successful and stunningly handsome.. .rejected. Right up until the very last moment Carlo had expected her to change her mind and fling herself at his feet.

'I will never forgive you.'

Carlo Saracini's parting assurance outside the church door. She had been shaking so badly by that stage, Simon had practically been holding her upright. She looked like a ghost in the wedding photographs. Simon had assured her that he had forgiven her but as she lived day in, day out with the farce of her marriage, she had never been able to forgive herself.

Jessica raised an unsteady hand to her pounding temples, struggling with the greatest of difficulty to regain her concentration. Why on earth hadn't she realised before now that her father was in trouble? She had been too involved in her own problems, she acknowledged wretchedly.

Simon had been ill for a long time before his death. His business had crashed in the recession, leaving nothing but debts. Her father had urged her to come home but she had refused. She hadn't wanted to turn into the Daddy's little girl she had been before her marriage. She hadn't even had a job in those days. All she had ever thought about as a teenager was marrying Simon and having children. She shoved that particular recollection away with helpless bitterness.

Carlo had invited her to the Deangate to gloat over her father's downfall. A sadist to the backbone, he wanted to experience her pain personally. Why should she give him the satisfaction when she knew that he would not allow her father to go unpunished? No way was she going to keep that appointment at the Deangate Hotel!

Jessica climbed out of her car. It was dark and cold and wet, just like that other day long ago, that day she couldn't bear to remember. She straightened slight shoulders, tightened the sash on her serviceable beige raincoat and lifted her head high as she crossed the car park. This was for her father. This was her duty. So what if she felt physically sick at the prospect of seeing Carlo Saracini again? She owed this meeting to her father.