The Sicilian's Mistress

‘You hate me…’ she framed sickly, shaking her head back and forth on the pillow in urgent negative, soundless tears beginning to track down her cheeks. ‘You touched me, hating me!’

Gianni was stunned.

‘And how do I know that?’ Milly gulped strickenly. ‘I know that because I can remember everything—but I don’t want to…I don’t want to remember!’ she lashed at him in passionate pain.

Gianni laid Milly down on the great canopied bed in the master suite of his country house—which he had yet to spend a single night in. Back at the hotel, the doctor had given her a sedative, and had then told Gianni in no uncertain terms exactly what he thought of him.

There had been no hiding the fact that that hotel bed had harboured more than one body. With a humility that would have astounded all who knew him, Gianni had withstood being called a selfish swine. At that instant, hovering while Milly shivered and shook with those horrible silent tears, Gianni would have welcomed far stronger censure if it had in any way lessened his own appalling sense of guilt.

He had traumatised her. Him. Nobody else. The Jenningses had loved her, and would have protected her while she tried to come to terms with what was happening to her. But he had deliberately severed every tie she had and then quite ruthlessly seduced her back into sexual intimacy. She hadn’t been ready for that. She might never have been ready for that again. He had hit on her like a stud when she was weak and confused and scared. She had trustingly turned to him for comfort and he had let his driving need to re-establish a hold on her triumph. He had never sunk so low in his life…

And it was no consolation to know why he had done it. Jealousy, bitter and angry, seething up inside him like hot, destructive lava. The thought of Milly loving Benson, wanting him, sleeping with him. Thinking about her with Stefano had been bad enough, but he had learned to block that out. Iron self-discipline had worked for three years. Only it had come apart at the seams the instant he’d tried to make love to her again, suddenly terrified for the first time in his life that he might not be able to do it and then acting like an animal in rut. Great footnote, Gianni. The one and only thing that was ever perfect, you blew!

‘Not sleeping?’ Connor asked, his little face full of hope.

‘Not sleeping,’ Milly confirmed gruffly as she set aside her breakfast tray and dragged her son down into her arms to tickle him, listening to his delighted chortles with a sudden lightening of her heart. She kissed his soft cheek and ran a fingertip lovingly down over his small nose. ‘I gather I’ve been sleeping too long.’

Connor scrambled down off the bed at speed. Retrieving something from the floor, he clambered back up to show it to her. It was a child’s board book. He pointed to the golden-haired princess sleeping on the front cover and said with tremendous pride, ‘My mummy!’

As she noted the title, Milly breathed in very deep. The Sleeping Beauty. Gianni was very creative in tight corners, and explaining Mummy’s sudden need to sleep the clock round and more had evidently not over-taxed his agile brain. Gianni, she reflected tautly, for so long never more than a heartbeat away from her next thought.

Why, oh, why hadn’t he just let her stay lost? Connor. But not only Connor. Revenge, she decided with a helpless shiver. Revenge as only a Sicilian could enact it. In a reckless drunken attack of lust, Stefano had destroyed them. On his deathbed Gianni wouldn’t forgive her for what he believed she’d done to him. And at his coldest Gianni was at his most dangerous. If only she had been armoured with the knowledge that she was dealing with a male who hated and despised her when they’d first met again…

But then how many ‘if onlys’ already littered her history with Gianni? So she had ended up in bed with him again. So she had had a fantastic time. That was the painful crux of the matter, wasn’t it? That she had sobbed with ecstasy and clung to a guy who had invaded her eager body with all the rampaging finesse of a stud on a one-night stand!

Gianni, who had taught her that making love could be an art form, Gianni, who was endlessly creative in the bedroom but never, ever rough. Quite deliberately he had set out to use and humiliate her. But it had been the shatteringly sudden return of her memory which had torn her apart. And Gianni was in for a very big surprise if he fondly imagined she was about to greet him with shamed eyes and streaming tears at their next meeting!

But life went on no matter what, Milly told herself with feverish urgency. Gianni was Connor’s father now. Nothing more. Her problem was that she needed to learn a whole new way of thinking. Time hadn’t passed for her in quite the same way as it had passed for Gianni. Three years ago she had still been hopelessly in love with him. At the instant her memories came alive again she had been engulfed in a devastatingly intense storm of emotion, the most bitter sense of betrayal, loss and anguished pain. Because the man she loved had turned his back on her and walked away. It was those feelings she had to deal with now, and then she had to put them all away again, back where they really belonged—in the past.

From her magnificent bed, she surveyed her imposing new surroundings with grudging curiosity, and then, pushing back the fine linen sheet, she got up.

When she’d arrived, she had used the bathroom, which had been left helpfully lit with the door ajar. Now that she registered that there were three other doors to choose between she knew why.

Wandering over to one of the tall windows to glance out, she almost tripped over Connor in surprise. Beautiful gardens gave way to rolling fields and distant woodland. She had dimly assumed that she was in a townhouse, hadn’t thought to question the lack of traffic noise. Gianni now owned a country home? Gianni, who had once regarded the countryside as the long, boring bit between cities? But then what did she know about Gianni’s life these days?

Tensing, she instantly reminded herself that she didn’t want to know anything! With Connor tagging in her wake she went for a shower, and was drying her hair when a brisk knock sounded on the bedroom door. A youthful brunette peered in, and then flushed when she saw Milly in her bathrobe. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Henner. I didn’t realise you were up and about. My name’s Barbara Withers—’

Connor interrupted her with an exuberant cry of recognition. ‘Barb!’

‘I’m Connor’s temporary nanny. Mr D’Angelo did stress that a permanent appointment would be subject to your approval,’ she advanced anxiously.

‘Yes…’ Conscious of the younger woman’s discomfiture, Milly concealed her own disconcertion.

‘I was about to offer to take Connor outside to play. Since Mr D’Angelo left him with you after breakfast, I thought you might be tired now,’ Barbara explained.

So Connor hadn’t wandered into her bedroom under his own steam. Milly had been concerned that no adult appeared to be in charge of him. But it seemed that Gianni had sneakily fed their son in through the door without making a personal appearance. But then with Connor around perhaps that had been a wise decision, and she didn’t want him present when she saw Gianni again.

‘I’m sure Connor would enjoy that.’ Milly’s smile was strained by the thought of what lay ahead of her. And that was facing up to the male who, after that dreadful night three years ago, had refused to meet her again, accept her phone calls or answer her letters. Closure had not been a problem for Gianni. He had judged her, dumped her, and replaced her at spectacular speed.

Suddenly cold inside herself, Milly leafed through the garments she had found unpacked in the adjoining dressing room. She had a curious aversion to wearing the clothes she had worn as Faith Jennings, but she had nothing else available. With regret she recalled the wonderful wardrobe she had loftily chosen to leave behind when she had left Paris three years earlier.

In the end she pulled on a pair of faded jeans she had used for gardening and a long-sleeved black polo shirt. Leaving her tumbling mass of golden hair loose round her shoulders, she set off in search of Gianni.

She emerged onto a huge galleried landing dominated by superb oil paintings. For ‘country house’ she now substituted ‘stately home’. The stamp of Gianni’s ownership was everywhere. The most magnificent furniture, the most exquisite artwork. He surrounded himself with beautiful possessions and he had fabulous taste and considerable knowledge, all acquired as an adult.

An extraordinary man, she conceded reluctantly. Always a target for the paparazzi, rarely out of the newspapers, inevitably a focus of fascination for others. Precious few men rose to Gianni’s level from a deprived and brutalised childhood. A drunken, abusive father, a prostitute mother who had abandoned him, followed by a stepmother who had fed him alongside the dog and chucked him out on the streets of Palermo to fend for himself at the age of ten. Why was she remembering all that? she asked herself angrily.

But all of a sudden it was as if a dam had broken its banks inside Milly’s subconscious: memories gushed out against her volition, demanding her attention, refusing to go away…