Angel of Darkness

Kelda straightened with a fixed smile. ‘No. Maybe I’m just a little tired.’

Gina giggled. ‘Burning the candle at both ends?’ she teased. ‘New baby and a new marriage hardly out of the honeymoon phase. No wonder you’ve got shadows!’

Kelda forced a laugh. She wasn’t tempted to weep on a friendly shoulder. The truth was so hideously humiliating. Alice was seven weeks old and their marriage hadn’t even been consummated. Angelo had his bedroom; she had hers. No floorboards creaked in the middle of the night. Angelo clearly had his sights set on an annulment, rather than a divorce.

‘If I didn’t have Russ, I’d be green with envy!’ Gina sighed helplessly. ‘He’s gorgeous, super-rich and crazy about Alice.’

Alice was all they shared. Alice was all they talked about in any depth. If Kelda hadn’t adored her daughter with equal intensity, she would have been enduring agonies of jealousy. As it was, she felt disturbingly used. Angelo had wanted his child to carry his name. Angelo had wanted to ensure that he had maximum rights over that same child and those rights were only granted by the institution of marriage.

Angelo had persuaded her into marriage for very good reasons. But they all related to Alice. Kelda might have found it possible to forgive him for that to some extent had he not pretended that he wanted her equally. She felt sick inside when she recalled how much that belief had encouraged her to hope that they could have a real marriage. She had been so mortifyingly certain that Angelo found her ragingly desirable...until she married him. Now, she knew different.

And it was time she did something about it, she acknowledged unhappily. Time she took charge of her own future again. She had tried marriage to Angelo and she didn’t like it. That was all she had ever promised to do. She did not need Angelo to survive. Ella Donaldson had called last month and had intimated that Kelda could virtually dictate terms for a new contract should she wish to enter the modelling world again.

Angelo was very entertaining over dinner. Russ and Gina were most impressed. Kelda’s temper rose steadily throughout the meal. When she dined with Angelo alone, he was polite and distant. As soon as her friends had departed, Angelo strode off to the library which he used as an office. Five minutes later, Kelda decided to invade his privacy.

Angelo was not deep in work as she had expected. He was standing by the fireplace with a large whiskey in his hand, his darkly handsome features shadowed and taut.

‘We need to talk,’ Kelda said tightly, suppressing the sizzling leap of awareness which always consumed her near Angelo. In the past two months she had learnt to be ashamed of that sexual frisson.

He offered her a drink which she declined.

Kelda breathed in deeply. Pride demanded that she make the first move to the break. ‘I think we should go for an annulment as soon as possible.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Angelo said very quietly, narrowed dark eyes nailed to her with perceptible force.

Kelda wandered over to the window, her body tensing in response to the thickening atmosphere. ‘Look, this isn’t working for either of us,’ she pointed out in a driven rush. ‘I’ll move out—’

‘You take Alice from this house over my dead body,’ Angelo spelt out dangerously softly.

‘You can see as much of her as you like. I’ll be going back to work anyway,’ Kelda told him.

‘Really?’

She flushed. ‘Why the hell shouldn’t I if I want to?’

‘Country life too quiet for you?’

She was tempted to tell him that it was the nights. ‘We don’t have a real marriage,’ she muttered jerkily.

‘I can change that any time you care to ask.’

Kelda flinched from his sarcasm. ‘I want an annulment and you can’t stop me from getting one!’ she stated, and walked hurriedly back out of the room and upstairs.

There it was done. He hadn’t said much. Then Angelo liked to call his own shots. She had stolen his thunder. Doubtless he had planned for this farce to continue for a few more months. Dear lord, she conceded painfully, she had been so appallingly blind and trusting and stupid...and with Angelo of all people! Angelo was notorious for his calculating, brilliant moves on the international money market.

When he had first mentioned marriage, he had been honest. He had suggested a fake marriage to keep the family happy and give their child his name. A fake marriage and a convincing breakdown followed by separation and divorce. And how had she reacted? She had made it furiously clear that she would not even consider such a hypocritical deception. So Angelo had reinvented his case for marriage in terms calculated to win her acceptance.

She had fallen like a ton of bricks for that line because she loved him, and up until Alice’s birth Angelo had played along. But from that same day, he had changed. Damp-eyed, Kelda slid into the cool embrace of her bed. Her thoughts were in frantic turmoil. Had Angelo actually believed that eventually she would get bored with motherhood and walk away, leaving Alice behind with him? Was that his ultimate goal?

He would acquire Alice, go for an annulment and then remarry someone more suitable. It was Machiavellian...it was Angelo. Since Alice’s birth, he had been trying to freeze her out. All his emotional warmth was fully concentrated on their daughter. He had left Kelda out in the cold. As the door opened, she lifted her head and her emerald eyes opened to their fullest extent.

‘Whatever we end up with, it won’t be an annulment,’ Angelo drawled silkily, glittering dark eyes raking her startled face.

He was wearing a black silk robe and nothing else. In one hand he had an uncorked bottle of champagne, two glasses in the other. Blinking bemusedly, Kelda simply stared as he deftly filled the glasses. He had settled one into her hand before she found her tongue again.

‘What do you thin

k you’re doing in here?’