Dark Angel

‘You’ve stripped my grandparents of everything but the clothes on their backs. You’ve got a few sticks of furniture, books, some paintings…maybe I could accept that if you were broke, but when you’re filthy rich you’ve got no excuse to be that stingy and greedy!’ Kerry slammed back at him in seething accusation.

Beneath that hail of abuse, angry colour burnished Luciano’s proud cheekbones. Having taken no interest whatsoever in the finer points of how that debt was discharged, he had had no idea that his legal team had been quite that efficient, but he was damned if he was ab

out to apologise or show the smallest sign of regret.

‘I was fleeced by you and your family for four and a half years…did you or your grandparents ever lose any sleep over that fact?’ Luciano enquired grittily.

In frustration, Kerry moved forward. ‘I keep on telling you that I didn’t know the loan repayments weren’t being made—’

‘Did it once occur to you that when I gave you that loan I was surrendering my dream of buying a vineyard in my own country? Or that, back then, I lent what was a lot of money on my terms…and a considerable sacrifice?’ Luciano launched with raw force, hard, dark golden eyes scorching her with his contempt. ‘No, it didn’t, did it? In fact, you didn’t even care enough to ensure that a loan made purely for your benefit was utilised or even repaid in a businesslike manner!’

The blood had drained from Kerry’s fair complexion. Genuine dismay had seized her but resentment soon followed in its wake. He had had a dream of buying a vineyard in Italy? It was the first she’d heard of that ambition! Why had he not shared that with her while they were engaged? Even worse, why was she only now being told that the wretched money had constituted a far greater proportion of what he had had then than she could ever have appreciated? Indeed, why had he offered the loan in the first place? That grand and generous gesture had been typical of Luciano’s macho style but his silence on the true costs had been equally so.

‘If you’d been more frank with me at the time, I wouldn’t have allowed you to give Grandpa that money…I mean, it wasn’t like anyone asked you to do it,’ Kerry framed jaggedly. ‘I understand your anger but—’

Luciano sent her a burning look of outrage. ‘Accidenti…how could you understand my anger?’ he demanded, blazing dark fury flaring in his lean, strong face. ‘Especially when I realised that you weren’t worth the sacrifice!’

‘Luciano…’ Kerry forced out his name from bloodless lips, her throat convulsing and dry as a bone. ‘Don’t say that—’

‘You were useless in every way that mattered!’ Luciano derided with harsh emphasis. ‘You had no loyalty and even less faith in me. You weren’t even woman enough to share my bed—’

Kerry flinched. She was trembling, feeling sick, only standing her ground out of pride.

‘I made all the allowances, I did all the giving, and at the end of the day you still let me down. You let a woolly-headed old man play ducks and drakes with my money…the final insult for me has to be the sight of that bloody big tarpaulin on the roof!’

At that, even though his attack had ripped her apart inside herself, Kerry pushed her head up high again. ‘That woolly-headed old man is the same man that you chose to give your money to—’

‘I expected to be around while it was being spent!’

‘The roof on the tower and the roof over about half of the Georgian wing were replaced but there wasn’t enough cash to do more than running repairs on the rest. Re-roofing an historic building is horribly expensive, so before you accuse anyone of inappropriate use of that loan I suggest you check out the actual cost of the work that was done.’ Her narrow back ramrod straight, Kerry urged her wobbling legs to carry her out onto the landing. ‘I’m going downstairs to make dinner.’

‘Don’t bother…I’ll see to myself,’ Luciano groaned, striving not to let his brooding gaze linger on her pale, clenched profile. He did not feel quite so good about hurting her as he had believed he would.

Too raw not to suspect his true meaning, Kerry had to resist a childish need to assure him that she was now a very efficient cook capable of catering to quite large parties. With that appalling word, ‘useless’, still ringing a cruel and savage indictment in her ears, she went down to the kitchen. No loyalty, no faith in him. Such charges struck at the very heart of all that she respected.

What faith had Luciano expected her to demonstrate in him after she had discovered that he had lied to her about being at Heathlands with Rochelle that night? What loyalty had he sought to encourage when he had accepted the return of her engagement ring with anger but without a single word of argument? And not once had he contacted her after his arrest, not once had he made a single tiny move that might have suggested that he ever wanted to lay eyes on her again for any reason!

In every way, Kerry had interpreted his behaviour and his silence as that of a guilty man: a male who knew he’d been unfaithful and could not be bothered protesting otherwise, a male facing serious criminal charges for embezzling from her father’s business, who saw no point in trying to retain contact with Harold Linwood’s daughter.

But what if Luciano was telling her the truth? What if he had not betrayed her with Rochelle and was indeed the victim of a legal miscarriage of justice? Succumbing to the gathering force of her own turmoil, Kerry chopped fresh herbs to a consistency finer than dust. Yes, she finally conceded with raging, hurting bitterness, Luciano’s behaviour towards her after his arrest could be seen in a different light. He was arrogant, proud and as stubborn as a pig. When he believed he was in the right he did not compromise, he just dug his heels in harder. The challenge of owning up to actually needing someone whom he believed had wronged him could very easily have come between Luciano da Valenza and his wits. But in those circumstances that would not be her fault, would it be? A ballooning tightness clogged up her throat.

‘Not even woman enough to share my bed’? That had been the lowest of attacks, she thought with pained bitterness.

Between the ages of ten and fifteen, Kerry had been forced to listen to regular references to what a promiscuous tramp her own mother had been. Carrie had had at least three affairs during her stormy marriage to Harold Linwood and her father had never come to terms with the embarrassment his feckless first wife had inflicted on him. Nor had he ever been able to hide his fear that promiscuity might be hereditary and that Kerry would turn out to be man-mad too. Even her stepmother had enjoyed voicing stinging little barbs that emphasised her own superiority over her predecessor as both wife and parent, and Rochelle had reaped immense entertainment from telling all her schoolfriends that the mother who had deserted Kerry had been a nymphomaniac. Made to live with the degrading shame of Carrie’s mistakes as though they had been her own, Kerry had promised herself that she would never give anybody reason or excuse to talk about her in similiar terms.

As a teenager she had been very shy and she had only had a couple of boyfriends before she met Luciano. Saying no to sex had never been a challenge. Indeed, until Luciano came into her life temptation had not even touched her. But the instant she experienced that reckless, dangerous desire to just let him do whatever he wanted to do with her terrifyingly willing body, all those years of cautious preconditioning had exercised their effect. For the first time she had been afraid that maybe, after all, she might be over-sexed the way her mother appeared to have been and at serious risk of making a total mess of her life. Saying no to Luciano had then acquired all the true fervour of a defensive battle campaign.

But after he had asked her to marry him she had questioned her own belief that she ought to continue exercising the same restraint until that wedding ring was on her finger. However, the unhappy truth of Luciano’s prior fling with Rochelle in Italy had then come to light and put paid to all such self-doubt. Apart from anything else, Kerry had just wanted to kill him for having a past that had destroyed her present. Yet since then she had not once felt a hint of the same crazy, tormenting desire for any other man.

Miles truly did know her inside out, Kerry conceded heavily. Humiliating as it was to acknowledge, she did still have far too many powerful feelings for Luciano. Why else was she allowing his unjust accusations to upset her so much? No, she would not think about that bold sexual invitation of his, she would not surrender to the weak, stupid side of her own nature that longed to believe that she might still mean something to him. Even as she gave way to that latter thought, she recognised fearfully that deep down inside herself she had been hiding all along from the awareness that she wanted Luciano back.

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nbsp; She sucked in a steadying breath. Did that mean that she believed he was telling the truth about not having slept with Rochelle during their engagement? Or just that she was willing to believe anything he told her that might give her an excuse to be with him again? But was he seeing Rochelle again? Or was her stepsister up to her old tricks? Rochelle would have found out from Miles that Kerry was over in London seeing Luciano and her stepbrother. Rochelle’s claim that Luciano had asked her out might well have been a lie that she had hoped her brother might pass on in all innocence for her.

Angry at the amount of hope that surged through her at that suspicion, Kerry made herself sit down at the kitchen table to work through the remainder of the drawer of unanswered letters which she had abandoned on the dresser almost six weeks earlier. The last thing Luciano needed in his current mood was to come on the actual evidence of her grandfather’s indefensible refusal to deal with his own financial problems.

When she came on a larger than average envelope she frowned, for it was addressed to her and not to Hunt O’Brien. Why on earth had a letter for her been put away unopened? Possibly, her grandfather had only noticed the English postmark and had assumed it was yet another threatening communication from Luciano’s lawyer. Slitting it open, she found another envelope inside directed to ‘The Linwood Family’ at her father’s address in England and an accompanying brief note from her stepmother: