He shook his blond head. “You can’t leave me in the lurch. I can’t manage without you. Who’s going to run the showroom?”
“You’ll have to bring someone in. On the other hand,” she suggested gently, “Barbara once intimated an interest in the business if she could find a niche…”
“A niche?” he echoed in dismay, flushing, so that she knew that Barbara had dropped the same hints to him.
“Why not here, when I’m gone? She’s a great organiser. I’m sure she could learn the ropes in no time. I did,” Kerry pointed out, ignoring his total absence of enthusiasm.
“We get on better as we are,” he muttered, looking hunted. “It’s more stimulating this way.”
When she finally reached home, she was exhausted. Steven had moaned and groaned until he had outrun her patience. He would have to learn to depend on himself again. Indeed, Kerry’s removal from the scene might work to the long-suffering Barbara’s advantage. Steven was likely to be very lonely.
She made a sandwich which she nibbled at without great appetite. She tried to phone her sister, but Vickie was out. She kept on trying to picture herself walking cold into Veranchetti Industries tomorrow. Her skin came up goose-flesh at the prospect, and her pride revolted at the humiliation underwritten in surrender.
CHAPTER FOUR
KERRY wished the receptionist would stop staring avidly at her. From the instant she had entered the building she had been aware of the ripple of curious eyes following in her wake. She wondered how many recognised her as Alex’s ex-wife. The presence of a security man by her side had raised comment, by granting her a highly misleading air of importance.
“Mrs Veranchetti?” the top-floor receptionist had carolled in surprise. She had looked Kerry up and down, pricing her winter coat and boots, her attention lingering on the luxuriant fall of her hair. She could undoubtedly have accurately enumerated Kerry’s freckles by the time Alex got round to seeing her.
His secretary came to show her the way. Alex’s office was as she remembered. It was all sunlight and modernity, at glaring odds with the untamed darkness of its inhabitant. He rose from behind his desk, flashing her a brilliant smile. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting,” he murmured, presumably for his departing secretary’s benefit.
Kerry studied him nervously, her colour high. “Now what?”
He held out an assured brown hand. “Come here…” he urged softly.
She stayed where she was, glued to the carpet. A treacherous, relentless awareness of him was quivering through her in response to the burning brush of his lion-gold eyes. Desire and satisfaction mingled there in heady combination. Trembling, she tilted her chin. “You can force me to come here and you can force me to marry you, but that’s all you can force.”
“Is it?” Alex strolled forward fluidly. Long fingers began smoothly to unbutton her coat, then he pushed it down slowly from her shoulders and let the garment drop to the floor.
“Stop it…for God’s sake, stop it!” she pleaded, for the tension in the air sizzled over her raw nerves.
“Don’t challenge me, then.” His hand touched her hair and brushed against her cheek. “And stop behaving as if you are afraid of me. I don’t like it. I’ve never hurt you.”
Sometimes a physical blow could almost be kinder. She nearly told him that. As he had stripped that coat from her she had had the ridiculous suspicion that he planned to continue with the dress underneath. Now he drew her inexorably closer into the shelter and heat of his tall, powerful body.
“Alex…don’t,” she implored.
Her slight figure was alternately rigid and shrinking from the torment of his proximity. Something raw and blazing illuminated his narrowed gaze. His dark head bent and he brought his mouth down fiercely upon hers, forcing her soft lips to part for the thrusting invasion of his tongue. It was no gentle or patient reintroduction to his lovemaking. It was shockingly, shatteringly sexual.
His hand settled at the base of her spine, pressing her against his hard, muscled thighs. Heat coursed through her in a debilitating wave. The potency of his masculine arousal was no less overwhelming than the angry hunger of his kiss. A muffled whimper escaped low in her throat. An unbearable, completely unexpected tide of need was wreaking havoc with her sensation starved body. Excitement tore through her in a stormy passage, her mouth opening instinctively for his, her head falling back as his fingers wound into the tangle of her hair. His other hand was wandering at will over her tautening curves, cupping her breast, roaming over the firm swell of her hips in confident reacquaintance. The onslaught seduced her utterly. It had been too long since she had known Alex’s touch—indeed, any man’s touch. All the heat of desire which had once made her writhe against him in helpless need was controlling her now.
He suddenly loosed her swollen mouth and lifted his dark head. “I could take you now…here, if I wanted.” His fingers slid in derisive retreat from her. “You have the soul of a wanton, cara. It betrays you when you least desire it to. Even with me, whom you profess to hate, you are eager.”
Kerry fell back from him, shaking like a leaf. Her nipples were tight, aching buds beneath her clothes. An ache was spreading within her, an ache she wretchedly acknowledged as a bodily cry for fulfilment. She had never hated herself as she did at that moment for surrendering to Alex when his sole intent had been to demonstrate his contempt. But she’d been woefully unprepared to discover that Alex’s lovemaking still drove her crazy, regardless of all common sense. Once Alex had treated her as if she was a precious, fragile creature who might break if roughly handled. What she had lost, what she had destroyed returned to haunt her.
“I have made arrangements.” Thickly lashed golden eyes rested inscrutably on her hot cheeks and evasive gaze. “We will be married within the week. When you appear in my company tonight we will be announcing to the curious that we are together again. I ordered a selection of clothes to be delivered to the apartment. You will wear the blue evening gown tonight. I won’t be back for dinner, so you’ll be dining alone.”
She should have guessed that he would take care of the clothing problem. Her wardrobe no longer contained couture garments. Bitterness assailed her that she should
be as helpless in his hands as a child’s toy.
“Sit down.” He indicated the chair and lounged back against his tidy desk. “I have taken a precaution against any future desire you might have to conclude this marriage, too. You will sign a legal, binding contract, agreeing that you give Nicky into my custody if we should part again in the future.”
“You can’t ask that of me!” she exclaimed in horror.
“I am not asking, I am demanding,” Alex contradicted with sibilant softness. “If you conduct yourself as a normal married woman and mother you will have nothing to fear from that contract.”
She searched his harshly set features suspiciously. “You’re planning to do this to take Nicky from me altogether,” she accused. “You want to make my life so miserable that I’ll want to leave.”
His jawline hardened. “I would not do that to my son. It is natural that there should be storms between us now. But in time those will disappear. If you behave yourself, I have not the smallest intention of making your life a misery,” he parried with a curled lip, as if the very suggestion of such behaviour upon his part was an insult.
“I’ll be wretched anyway,” she mumbled, on the brink of angry, cornered tears.
“Why should you be?” Alex demanded in a tone reminiscent of a whiplash. “You will have a beautiful home, your son, plenty of money, and all for what price? It is I who sacrifice pride in taking you back!”
“How the mighty have fallen…”
“Dio, don’t taunt me!” Alex slashed back savagely but quietly. “You will sign that contract. You will sell out of your partnership with Glenn. We will make a fresh beginning.”
Had she not had the memory of his loathing for her yesterday, she might have been taken in by this more civilised picture of a reconciliation for Nicky’s sake. “I can’t sell out and I won’t.”
“We’ll talk about that some other time,” he dismissed impatiently.
She took a deep breath. “Where are you planning for us to live?”
“I have not yet decided.”