Her mouth running dry, her heartbeat speeded up in the taut silence but still she was looking at him. His sleek, dark business suit had the smooth, perfect fit of expensive tailoring over his wide shoulders, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. But even in that first moment she immediately recognised the changes in him: the shorter, more aggressive cut of his black hair, the cleaner, tougher angle of his proud cheekbones, the bleak, uncompromising line of his beautiful sculpted mouth. He was still extravagantly gorgeous, she thought painfully, but there was a quality of indifference stamped to his lean, dark features that was new to her.
Unwarily, Kerry tilted her head back and finally collided with narrowed dark golden eyes that stilled her in her tracks. Beautiful, bold, brilliant eyes, framed by a dense black fringe of lashes. As a tiny sliver of snaking heat curled low in her belly, she went rigid and dragged her gaze from his. Indeed a whole array of secret sensations that she had almost managed to forget she could feel assailed her in punishing reminder: the sudden melting weakness deep down inside, the stirring swell of her breasts within her bra, the feel of her skin tightening over her bones in excitement. Embarrassed colour washed her face, stark shame engulfing her. One look was all that it had taken to strip away her defences and make her cringe at her own failure to remain untouched by his powerful magnetism.
‘It’s been a long time…’ she mumbled, sitting down in haste and trying not to wince at the inanity of her own greeting.
A long time, a very long time, yet her own grief at losing what she had once felt they had still felt as fresh as yesterday to Kerry. She had been crazily, wildly happy with him and that was impossible to forget. She had believed that he was sincere and honourable and that had proved to be a cruelly empty illusion. The day after he had been sampling the gold satin sheets in her stepsister’s bed, he had lied without hesitation about his movements. And he was one very smooth liar, she recalled painfully, for not once during that phone conversation had she sensed anything amiss. What a pathetic judge of character she had been!
Just then Luciano was recalling how long it had taken for him to stop lusting after her skinny, undersized little carcass. That same self-applied verbal-aversion therapy hastened to inform him that he could not be attracted in any way to a skinny, vertically challenged woman with child-sized feet and hands. Not even one with translucent skin as smooth as silk, eyes the clear, glorious colour of a mountain lake and a mouth as tempting and luscious as a ripe fruit. He watched her lower her head. Straying curls from the riot of Titian hair that swung clear of her slight shoulders glinted like fiery question marks against the pale, delicate curve of her cheek. He saw the faint purple shadows etched by too little sleep below her eyes. Without the smallest warning, the dark, bitter anger that he had believed he had under full control seethed up in him with formidable effect.
‘I suggest that you start talking fast,’ Luciano advised flatly.
Her brain a sea of conflicting promptings, Kerry went for what mattered most to her at that moment and broke straight into speech. ‘Costanza said that if we’d offered to return the loan after you were arrested, you could’ve hired a better lawyer to defend yourself!’
His wide, sensual mouth took on a cynical slant. ‘Untrue. Back then, I had touching faith in the British legal system. I didn’t realise that I needed a hotshot defence team. I assumed that such outrageous charges could never be made to stick.’
His rebuttal of Costanza’s contention only eased Kerry’s sick sense of guilt a little. Her conscience had always been easily stirred but she was also uncomfortably aware that the first six months after his arrest were still just a blur of unimaginable pain in her own memory. It had been a very long time before she had regained the ability to think with any clarity.
‘Even so,’ Kerry said tautly, ‘I wish that my grandfather or indeed I had thought of that angle for ourselves.’
Ironically, Luciano was inflamed by the apparent sincerity with which she expressed that regret. Why didn’t it occur to her that that oversight had been the very least of her sins of omission? Even had her decision not to marry him had no relation to his subsequent arrest, what about the faith that she should have had in him and the support she could still have offered him? Instead she had turned her back on him as totally as if he had never existed.
‘You’re not here to catch up on my life,’ Luciano derided with a roughened edge to his accented drawl. ‘It has been five years since I last saw or heard from you. But then, I imagine you felt quite secure sitting over in Ireland and ripping me off—’
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Kerry exclaimed in dismay.
‘Wasn’t it?’ Luciano sent her a flaring golden look of disagreement that was like the lick of a whip scoring tender skin. ‘I was in prison and too busy fighting for my freedom to spare the time to instigate court action over that loan. Nice one, Kerry. I get banged up for a theft I didn’t commit while you virtually steal from me!’
At that condemnation, the last remnants of colour drained from Kerry’s shaken face. ‘That’s not how it was…for a start, you agreed that loan with my grandfather, not with me,’ she reminded him angrily, rising to her feet again in a driven movement. ‘I’ve never had access to Grandpa’s financial affairs either. Although I offered to help, he insisted on dealing with the accounts and the bills himself. In fact, it’s only four days since I found out that he’d fallen behind with the loan and only then because he couldn’t keep his difficulties a secret any longer!’
Luciano elevated a doubting winged ebony brow. ‘You want to go back outside and come up with a more convincing story?’
‘Whether you want to accept it or not, that’s the truth!’ Kerry squared her shoulders but she did not look directly at him, for every time she looked her concentration fell apart again.
‘But why would I believe anything you said? Why would I trust you?’ Luciano derided harshly.
Kerry shot him a helpless look of reproach and then hurriedly veiled her confused eyes in self-protection. For if she did not trust him, how could she expect him to trust her? When he had been convicted of stealing from the family firm, hadn’t she started to believe that she owned the moral high ground and that her every worst suspicion of him had been proven true? In fact, hadn’t it suited her to believe that? But where was it written that infidelity and financial dishonesty went hand in hand? With a mighty effort of will, Kerry closed her mind down on the torrent of dangerous thoughts rushing in on her one after another.
‘Let’s recap,’ Luciano continued levelly. ‘The loan repayments stopped dead after the first six months. That’s over four years ago. Yet you’re trying to convince me that you had no suspicion whatsoever of that reality? Sorry, I’m not impressed!’
Faced with that intimidating derision, Kerry stiffened with annoyance. With every word that Luciano spoke she was receiving a daunting insight into his attitude. It was obvious that he was in no mood to give her a fair hearing. ‘You’re not really listening, though, are you?’
‘Are you getting that déjà vu feeling?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is how you treated me the day you told me that you’d changed your mind about marrying me. I didn’t get an explanation either and you didn’t listen to a word I said.’
At that unwelcome reminder of that nightmare day, Kerry’s breath snarled up in her throat, her strained eyes darkening. She marvelled that he had the gall to refer to that occasion. ‘I thought I was here to discuss Grandpa’s loan—’
‘Which he only got in the first place because I couldn’t stand you worrying your little head off about how your grandparents were managing in their draughty castle. There’s a personal dimension here that you seem determined to ignore.’
‘What else can I do?’ Kerry demanded, her temper flaring.
Did he think she was a caged animal to be prodded through the bars to provide him with better entertainment? First he tossed one spoiler, then another, and every angle he took caught her by surprise. After the way he had treated her, only the cruellest of males would even have referred to their short-lived engagement. Smarting pride and pain over that reference to a personal dimension only increased her resentment.
‘Admit the truth. It’s possible that that might win you five more minutes of my time,’ Luciano delivered with crushing contempt.
‘What truth? Are you actually asking me why I broke off our engagement? You still haven’t worked that out for yourself?’ Kerry could feel her heart thumping inside her chest too fast, her outrage rising out of her control. ‘That amazes me but I’m still not going to lower myself to the level of telling you why now!’