The Heat Of Passion

whelming urge to close her arms round him. 'You must

have known that he might demand that you marry

me '

'Yes.' Carlo shrugged a shoulder with Latin casu-alness. 'It is a small thing if it contents him.'

'But it is not a small thing to me, Carlo.' They were strolling towards the yacht.

She stared down at the sea, deep blue and then blind-ingly silver where the sun's glare hit the water. One false marriage was enough in any woman's life. She refused to make a second. What Carlo wished to do to placate his father was his business, she told herself, staving off an unwilling stab of sympathy. He had no right to ask such a thing from her, especially when he coolly admitted that he had foreseen this situation arising and had not bothered to warn her.

'I will not hold you a day after his death.'

The assurance hit her like a cruel blow and she despised herself for reeling from that reality as though it were a surprise. She loved him, hopelessly, helplessly, but that did not mean making a sacrificial lamb of herself. Some day not too far in the future, Lukas would die and it would all be over. The deception would end, and with it the affair. She did not want a fake wedding-ring to add to her bitterness.

But didn't she owe Carlo something for the immense kindness and tact he had employed with her own father? O

K, they had made a deal but Carlo could have fulfilled the terms far less generously. A deal... dear God, she reflected painfully, had the giving of her body last night merely been part of the deal as well? Her stomach heaved at the suspicion.

Carlo planted his hands to her waist, taking her by surprise, and swung her with ease on to the gleaming wooden deck of the yacht. Two crewmen emerged. The men talked and Jessica planted her unsteady hands on the shining brass guard rail. Drawn by a need she could not suppress, her troubled gaze clung to Carlo's strong, masculine profile. He was such a mixture of opposites. Kind and cruel. Understanding and judgemental. Tender and rough. Quick-tempered, calculating, secretive but capable of far more true emotions than she had ever believed. And he hated her.

He hated her for marrying another man. She had cast a slur on his manhood, injured his precious pride and he was still seething with a sense of injustice. But how many women would have thrown themselves gratefully into his arms six years ago after the treatment she had received? And by what God given right did Carlo imagine that she should have swallowed such arrogance when on every other level they had been mortal enemies? Yet she could not imagine Carlo behaving now as he had behaved then.

'Do you like sailing?' Linking his arms round her, Carlo drew her back into disturbing connection with every vibrant line of his long, muscular length.

'I haven't done much,’ Feeling manipulated, Jessica stiffened, fighting the flood of heat threatening to consume her. 'Don't change the subject.'

"There is nothing more to say,' he breathed, pressing

her closer still, the palm of one lean hand splaying across

her taut stomach as he bent over her. 'There is also little

that I would not do to assuage my father's fear '

Tear?' She frowned.

Perceptibly, he tensed. 'His fear that I might not

marry '

'But why should he fear that?' She wanted him to tell her what his sister had already told her.

'As a man who married for the first time as a teenager, he cannot comprehend my single state.'

Disappointment assailed her. He was lying to her...or at the very least mounting a cover-up. He did not confide in her. It shook her that they could have shared something so intimate last night and yet he could still hold her at a distance. Her own emotions were not similarly disciplined. She had lost all ability to stand back and be rational. She was too involved now.

'He doesn't seem particularly happy in his own marriage,’ she said drily.

'Sunny is forty years his junior. Would you expect a match made in heaven? He's content enough. He only ever looked for two things from your sex. An ability to decorate the bedroom, and to reproduce.'

Jessica was chilled. Presumably Sunny had married for money and position but she reckoned that the redhead paid for her pleasures. Now she asked herself if Carlo wanted any more from a woman than his father ever had. Right now, Carlo was using her, and last night he had used her body as well. Why didn't she face that harsh reality head-on?

He had brought her here to pretend to be his fiancee but she was being forced into deeper deception with every hour that passed. And he had yet to explain why to her satisfaction. How did she know whether or not his principal motivation was connected with the terms of his inheritance? He wasn't going to admit it, was he?

And suddenly, she wondered if that might be why Sunny had attempted to the best of her limited influence over Lukas to hold off the wedding... why Sunny might have been so keen to prove that their engagement was a fake. Were Carlo and Sunny competing in the same competition? How was Lukas's immense wealth tied up?

The blood chilled in Jessica's veins. She didn't know what to think, swerved from one moment to the next, but now she recognised how much making love with Carlo had increased her sense of insecurity. She could live with the deception if it was just a matter of pleasing a dying man... she could not live with it or herself on any other terms. It would be too unbearably, cruelly humiliating.