Angel of Darkness

Yet without even realising it, she had come to terms with that renewed bond. Once again, Daisy had unfairly dropped the news on her without any prior warning of what was to come. It had been rather like a ghastly re-run of the bridal couple’s visit to her school all those years ago. And Kelda was uncomfortably aware that she had reacted with no more maturity this time than she had then.

But once the shock of Daisy’s announcement had worn off, Kelda had accepted that her response had been entirely selfish. She had upset her mother. She had focused, not on her mother’s potential happiness, but on her own determination not to be forced into contact with Angelo again. That admitted, however, Angelo had merely exacerbated the situation by launching straight into attack that night at her apartment. After all, she reflected bitterly, Angelo had had three months, not twenty-four hours to adjust to their parents’ reconciliation.

‘Is that understood?’ Angelo probed.

She bit her tongue and tasted blood. It tasted of defeat. ‘Yes!’ she slung the word at him. ‘But your interference was unnecessary.’

‘The car will be here to pick us up in half an hour.’

Her throat closing over, she took the dismissal with head held high, but she seethed with such a turmoil of emotion that she marvelled she didn’t just explode. Messily, loudly, stupidly. Perhaps, at last, she was learning. Impulse and temper, her two biggest failings, invariably got her into trouble around Angelo. Angelo rejoiced in being neither impulsive nor uncontrolled, and that, she registered painfully, was why Angelo was in the ascendant.

When would she start feeling better? When? Because right now...right now, she felt worse than she had last night and that was saying something! She had not slept. She had paced the floor. She had cried. Coming to philosophical terms with the fact that she had gone to bed with Angelo was proving far more difficult than she had hoped. His powerful sexuality had been her downfall. She wasn’t the only woman to make such a mistake in the heat of passion...and she wouldn’t be the last. But for how long was she to feel guilty, ashamed, miserable? And why should she feel soiled by the promiscuous pretence she had put on for his benefit?

Hadn’t she only given him what he expected? Angelo despised her. But that hadn’t prevented him from using her in the most vicious way of all. Her own wanton sensuality had been his weapon of destruction. She would not allow him to wield that weapon ever again. It was finished, over. One day of insanity. It had taught her a hard lesson. Surely there would be no further complications?

It wasn’t that easy to get pregnant...was it? She was not some silly teenager...but she had acted as recklessly as one. Angelo had clearly assumed that she was on the contraceptive pill. Angelo, she thought hysterically, had been more concerned at the threat of having caught some dread disease. From a virgin. And he hadn’t noticed. She had once read that men often couldn’t tell the difference.

She never spoke a word the whole way to the airport in the limousine. Like a stretcher case, she was in limbo. But she could literally feel Angelo’s presence. The atmosphere vibrated round Angelo. Always. Utterly different from his father, he had volcanic energy and equally volcanic moods. But here in Italy she had seen a side of Angelo that she had never known existed.

Angelo, flirtatious, teasing, infuriating. Angelo, passionate, irresistible, even sympathetic. As a teenager, she had not understood that, below the surface ice, Angelo absolutely seethed and burned with emotion. Then he had seemed merely grim, forbidding and sarcastic. Now, she was painfully conscious of the scorching atmospheric undertones.

‘I’ll pick you up at seven tonight,’ he drawled.

Climbing out, she simply ignored him.

‘Kelda...?’

As she waited for the chauffeur to extract her case, a hand like an iron vice suddenly hooked on to her shoulder. Before she could react, she was flattened up against the side of the limousine with Angelo’s hard, muscular body plastered to hes. He took her mouth in an unrestrained demonstration of sexual aggression. But she still caught fire and burned. Aware of every lithe line of his powerful body, she could feel the force of his own arousal, and that made her knees buckle.

She felt his fingers brush the back of her neck and she didn’t realise what he was doing until he stepped back with the necklace in his hand. She blinked in bemusement. She had actually forgotten that she was still wearing it. He dropped the glittering emeralds into her palm and closed her unsteady fingers round them.

‘Seven,’ he said again. ‘Or would you like me to come earlier?’

She scraped herself almost clumsily off the car, all the while helplessly hypnotised by the scorching hunger, blatantly burnishing his golden eyes. That hunger pulled hot strings inside her. Oxygen snarled up in her convulsed throat. It was the excitement that frightened her the most. The most incredible, explosive excitement that thrummed and throbbed between them in waves of heat.

‘Dio,’ Angelo sighed in a tigerish growl of dissatisfaction. ‘I have a meeting at four.’

‘I disgust you,’ Kelda reminded him shakily.

‘When I’m out of bed. In it, you drive me crazy,’ Angelo dropped in a sizzling purr and swinging on his heel, he walked away.

Unnoticed by either of them, a photographer, standing on the far side of the car park, lowered his camera with a satisfied smile.

On her commercial flight, she thought of his far more comfortable journey in his private jet. Like a married man with a mistress, he was covering their tracks. But she had no intention of becoming Angelo’s mistress and it was a shock to appreciate that her little performance the night before had not killed that ambition of his stone-dead. That utterly ridiculous ambition. If he hadn’t taken her so much by surprise in that car park, she would have pushed him away, she told herself.

There was a promising call on her answering machine from the estate agent when she got back. A cash offer for her apartment and more than she had expected to receive. When she went straight back out again to see the agent, she was even more pleased to hear that the buyer was interested in purchasing most of her furniture as well. She would be moving to a rented apartment and she didn’t want the cost of storage.

‘There shouldn’t be any problem,’ the agent extolled cheerfully. ‘He’s a Swiss executive, buying on behalf of his company, and fortunately for you he particularly liked the location of your apartment. They want possession by the end of the month. Get round to your solicitor and sign on the dotted line as soon as possible...before the guy realises that he could have got a better deal elsewhere.’

She went straight away and it cost her a pang or two of regret. Owning her own apartment had symbolised success. Selling it underlined how much Danny Philips’ lies had cost her. But she was sensible enough to acknowledge that she had aimed rather too high when she had bought, and that if ever she was in the same position again she would be much more modest in her requirements.

The bell went about six when she was in the shower. It was Russ Seadon, the photographer whose talents had first catapulted her to fame. He was engaged to Gina Delfont, another model, who was also Kelda’s closest friend. She often stayed with them when she was working in New York and was happy to return their hospitality whenever she could.

Russ dropped his bag in her guest-room and spent half an hour catching up on all the news before settling down with a pizza in front of the television. Kelda paced her bedroom floor, dreading the evening ahead. Angelo wasn’t going to leave her alone. He wasn’t going to make things that easy for her.

And she was out of her depth w

ith Angelo. When he touched her, intelligence went out of the window, and if anything more happened between them she would never forgive herself. He wanted to use her for sexual release alone. Her skin crawled at the awareness of how vulnerable she had become. Somehow Angelo had to be made to walk back out of her life again...but how? What would most anger Angelo?