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Dark Angel
LYNNE GRAHAM


Knight in shining armour… or avenging angel?International businessman Luciano de Valenza saved the Linwood family's failing wine business and swept beautiful Kerry Linwood off her feet. Yet Kerry secretly feared Luciano didn't want her, but the wine empire she would inherit. When money was embezzled from the business Luciano was locked up along with Kerry’s heart.Five years later, Luciano is back and out to clear his name. He’s certain that he was framed by the Linwoods and he’s planning to take everything that’s theirs—beginning with Kerry. He might have loved her in the past, but now he’s more determined than ever to have her…for revenge!












is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!







LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon


reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.




Dark Angel

Lynne Graham





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CHAPTER ONE


CRUSH barriers held back the baying media horde brandishing cameras and microphones outside the Royal Courts of Justice.

As Luciano da Valenza emerged, surrounded by his triumphant legal team, his new security men rushed to block those climbing the barriers in an effort to reach him. Standing six feet four tall with the lithe, powerful build of an athlete, Luciano dwarved his companions. For a split-second he stilled, stunning golden eyes brilliant in his lean, bronzed face, the only outward sign of the strong emotions gripping him.

He was free: no handcuffs on his wrists, no guards by his side, no prison van waiting to return him to a cell eight feet wide by ten feet deep. For the first time in five hellish years, the right to liberty and dignity was his again. But the moment was soured by the reality that nothing could bring those years back, or alter the harsh fact that the English legal system might have set aside his conviction as unsafe but had stopped short of declaring him innocent.

‘What will you do now?’ an Italian journalist shouted above the general mêlée.

‘I will fight on.’ Responding by instinct to a fellow countryman, Luciano was none-the-less amazed at the naivety of that question, for it was unthinkable to him that he might rest before his name was cleared and his enemies had paid the price for what he had endured.

‘Your immediate plans?’ The same paparazzo was quick to press his advantage.

A dangerous smile slashed Luciano’s lean, darkly handsome features. ‘A glass of 1925 Brunello Riserva and a woman.’

That declaration was met by a burst of appreciative laughter from those who understood enough Italian to translate that audacious declaration of intent.

On the sidelines, Luciano’s lawyer, Felix Carrington, wondered which of the many women who appeared to find his dynamic client irresistible would qualify for that ultimate accolade. Costanza, the sleek Italian brunette, who was surely the most devoted and discreet personal assistant in existence? Rochelle, the sexy blonde beauty, who had withdrawn her evidence on the grounds that she had been drunk and distraught when she had made her original statement? Or even Lesley Jennings, the fiercely intelligent and attractive solicitor in Felix’s own legal firm, whose determination to win Luciano’s release had become a crusade? More probably, Felix decided, a fresh face would capture the younger man’s interest: one of the glossy media or society females who had taken up his cause with such vigour.

Yet five years earlier, when Luciano da Valenza had been tried, found guilty and imprisoned, only a few lines in a local newspaper had reported the event. A foreign troubleshooter headhunted from Rome by the Linwoods, he had been better known in Italy as the up-and-coming aggressive young business blood that he was. But by slow degrees, Luciano’s plight had assumed a much more colourful guise.

In the aftermath of the original trial, Count Roberto Tessari, an Italian nobleman of enormous wealth and unblemished integrity, had come out of nowhere to engage Carrington and Carrington to supply a top-flight defence team on Luciano’s behalf. The older man had also secured Luciano’s assets against the fines imposed by his conviction by paying them out of his own pocket before pledging his bottomless bank account to the long, tough battle of appealing Luciano’s conviction and gaining his release.

In spite of Tessari’s painfully embarrassing efforts to keep his involvement a matter of total blanket confidentiality, someone somewhere had talked. When the rumours had begun, a prominent newspaper had printed a double-page spread on Luciano da Valenza. Their investigation of his background had helpfully delivered those elements beloved of the popular Press: secrecy, illegitimacy, suffering and poverty. At that timely moment, Luciano had then proved that he was indeed an unusual criminal. While recovering from a savage beating by fellow inmates, who resented the attention he was receiving, he had risked his own life to rescue an officer from a fire in the prison hospital. A television documentary questioning his guilt had followed and, if it had lingered a little too lovingly and often on the lady producer’s clear admiration for Luciano’s dark-angel good looks and heroic stature, certainly the programme had generated an amount of interest in his cause which had done him no harm.

When, eighteen months ago, Tessari had died after finally acknowledging Luciano as his son and in an apparent expiation of his guilty conscience had left him everything he possessed, Luciano had become a extremely rich man. Yet not once during the years of Luciano’s imprisonment had the noble count visited his son or even attempted direct communication with him. In addition, Felix had been forced to utilise very persuasive arguments to convince his proud and independent client that he could not afford to refuse that golden inheritance if he wanted his freedom.

‘Thank you for all that you have done,’ Luciano breathed with quiet sincerity as he took his leave of Felix Carrington with a firm handshake. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

A glass of wine and a woman? A meaningless soundbite. Who had he been trying to impress? Luciano asked himself as he swung with lithe grace into the waiting limousine. He no longer needed to play to the gallery to secure support. A grim smile set his wide, sensual mouth, the anger he concealed at what he had withstood still as fierce as it had ever been. It seemed as though all his life he had been fighting other people’s low expectations of him.

‘What’s the point of you working so hard at school? It won’t get you any place…You’re Stephanella da Valenza’s bastard brat and nobody’s ever going to let you forget that! Don’t draw attention to yourself, just be like the other boys,’ his late mother had urged him with frowning anxiety, struggling to comprehend a twelve-year-old hungry for so many things that she herself had neither wanted nor valued.

Then, as now, Luciano had travelled his own path. To act alone was not new to him. He knew that he would not savour the Brunello Riserva, that superb vintage wine from the Tuscan hills of his childhood, until he had settled several outstanding scores to his own satisfaction. Primarily, those scores centred on the Linwood family and their supporting players. As the only outsider and expendable, he had been set up as a fall guy. In return, he would bring down the chain of wine stores on which the Linwood fortunes had been built. In fact that process had kicked off over a year earlier. Of the Linwood circle, only Rochelle would escape unscathed. In recognition of Rochelle’s belated efforts to redress the wrong she had done, he was prepared to stamp her account more or less paid.

Last but far from being least, however, came Rochelle’s little stepsister, Kerry Linwood. At the thought of his former fiancée, a hard smile set Luciano’s firm lips and his aggressive jawline clenched with formidable purpose. She had brought out his protective instincts and he had convinced himself that to offer her anything other than marriage would be an insult. Yet when the Linwoods had chosen him as the sacrifice to throw to the wolves, Kerry must have been in on that selection process.

Of course she had known he had been framed! Why else had she broken off their engagement without any adequate explanation only the day before his arrest? What he had believed he felt for her had been a rare flight of romantic fancy that had cost him dear, he acknowledged with brooding bitterness. Not a mistake he would ever make again with a woman. Kerry had betrayed him with quite outstanding completeness.

Revenge? No, it was simply payback time. Drama was not required. Luciano was prepared to allow that the volatile Italian and Sicilian genes that mingled in his family tree might dispose him more towards the darker forms of vengeful retribution. But at the same time, Luciano was very much a sophisticate. To secure the natural justice that he desired, every step he had already taken and would take in the near future had been and would continue to be both businesslike and ethical. His maternal grandfather might have fled Sicily when it became too hot to hold him but Luciano was better educated and infinitely cleverer. Even so, perhaps blood would out, Luciano conceded thoughtfully. The primal pleasure with which he looked forward to watching his victims sweat and suffer was a sensation which his brutal Sicilian grandfather would have entirely understood and approved.

‘You shouldn’t be thinking of the Linwoods,’ the slim, svelte brunette seated beside him lamented in liquid Italian, her dark eyes as soft as only a precious few could ever have seen them, for, much like himself, she was not given to revealing her emotions. ‘This is a very special day…live it, Luciano!’

As Luciano surveyed Costanza, a slow, shimmering smile illuminated his grave, dark features. He grasped the expressive hand which she had lifted in a wholly Latin gesture to accentuate her frustration. ‘We will live it together…I promise you,’ he soothed in his rich, dark drawl.

‘Then let’s go home to Italy,’ Costanza urged. ‘Right now, before one more hour passes!’

‘I’m not ready yet,’ Luciano confided equably. ‘Why don’t you allow me to treat you to a vacation instead? After working tirelessly on my behalf for more years than either of us care to count, you certainly deserve to spoil yourself for a change.’

At that suggestion, Costanza compressed her raspberry-tinted lips and said nothing. She recognised a warning when she heard one, knew exactly how far she could go with him and was always careful not to breach that boundary.

Suppressing a soundless sigh, Luciano lounged back in an elegant but deliberate sprawl in the corner of the limo. That amount of space was a luxury he had learned to live without. Piece by piece all that was soft and civilised in him had been stripped away by the prison regime while he fought the system. That unyielding system, the unspoken, unwritten and oft-denied rule that nevertheless decreed that a man who continued to plead innocence of his crime could not be seriously considered for early release by the parole board or even for the reward of a transfer to a less regimented open prison. Luciano had served his time and all of it had been hard time. Often, in prison parlance, he had been ‘banged up’ in his cell for as long as twenty-two mind-numbing hours a day, a particularly cruel torment for a male who had never lost his deep appreciation for the wide open spaces of the countryside.

Leaving that thought behind, for Luciano deemed looking back with regret to what could not be changed a weakness, he experienced a sudden fierce yearning to once again smell the delicate lemony aroma of the flowering vines flourishing on the steep slopes of the Villa Contarini estate. He had lived there until he was eight years old. He had played in the oak woods, raced around pretending to hunt wild boars, had dug without the smallest success for truffles and had brought home fresh fungi as an offering for his overworked mother, only to see his gifts continually claimed by his bone-idle grandfather instead.

But now in Luciano’s imagination, he saw himself standing high at the head of those lush green, close-planted rows of vines to look up at the bright blue cloudless sky and the endless hot sun and rejoice in what he had once taken entirely for granted. He left behind that vision with wry dark golden eyes and contemplated the astonishing fact that he now owned his childhood playground: the Villa Contarini, which stood high on the list of legendary Tuscan vineyards. Once too, he recalled without a shade of amusement, he had nourished a sentimental fantasy of bringing Kerry home as his bride to a very much smaller vineyard where he was paying a winemaker to live out what had once been the height of his own boyish dreams.

Fate gave with one hand and took with the other. Luciano had long accepted that unavoidable fact of life. To buy the vineyard and finance the hopeful creation of a wine to be reckoned with, he had had to concentrate his talents on forging a reputation in the business world and earning serious money. But nowhere was it written that he could not now rearrange his priorities. Ironically, the father whom he had despised from the instant of their first unforgettable meeting had finally forever ensured that he need never again earn his daily crust from humble toil.

‘I kept on a skeleton staff here…I thought you might like to have someone cook for you and answer the phone when I’m not around,’ Costanza told him as they vacated the limo outside a smart townhouse in one of London’s most impressive residential squares.

Accepting the key she handed him, Luciano strove not to wince at the underwritten threat of the possessive brunette welding herself to him like a second skin. Above all else, Luciano had always revelled in his freedom of choice and the loss of that privilege for so many years had made that liberty all the more precious a commodity.

‘Mr da Valenza…’ In the spacious hall beyond the front door, a nervous older woman in a plain dark dress hurried to acknowledge his arrival. ‘I’m Mrs Coulter, your housekeeper. You have some visitors waiting for you in the drawing room.’

An exasperated frownline divided Luciano’s winged ebony brows. In a helpful gesture, Mrs Coulter opened a panelled door on the other side of the hall, for, never having even visited the house that had once belonged to Roberto Tessari, he could have had no idea where to find his uninvited guests. Entering the gracious room, he fell still at the sight of the three women seated together in silence and almost groaned out loud in frustration.

Rochelle Bailey, Harold Linwood’s blonde, beautiful and bold stepdaughter by his second marriage, dressed to telegraph pure availability in a neckline low enough and a skirt short enough to bring on a heart attack in a sex-starved male.

Lesley Jennings, the very fanciable and clever lawyer from Carrington and Carrington, whose consultation visits to the prison and keen wit and humour had enlivened many a boring hour for him.

And, finally, Paola Massone, a distant cousin and daughter of the famous but currently struggling vintner, who had inherited Roberto Tessari’s title but none of his money. Self-assured, dark-haired and undeniably gorgeous, she gave him an expectant look that demanded that he acknowledge what she clearly saw as her superior claim to his attention. The equivalent of an Italian ‘It’ girl, born from a long and illustrious if impoverished line of ancestors, Paola wanted to marry her class to his cash and make wine and…other things with him.

A mocking smile on her pink lips, Rochelle stood up. ‘So, it’s make or break time, girls. Which one of us do you want to stay, Luciano?’ she demanded with typical bluntness.

Costanza entered the fray to widen scornful dark eyes. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that Luciano may not be in the mood for guests?’

‘Didn’t you hear what your boss said outside the court? We watched it on the lunchtime news and although getting a translation out of Paola here was like yanking out her little pearly teeth one by one, we’re all clued up now,’ Rochelle declared, tossing back her rumpled blonde mane in unashamed challenge of the PA’s contention. ‘He wants a woman…and here we are.’

Lesley Jennings simply laughed out loud in reluctant appreciation.

It was beneath Paola’s dignity to look anything other than supremely bored.

But not a single one of them showed any sign of making a move to leave and Luciano recognised that he had a problem…unhappily for his conscience-free libido, Rochelle, who had a seriously liberal attitude to loose living, was totally out of the question. Lesley? Not when he still had current dealings with her legal firm, for, even if she was willing to risk her reputation by consorting with a male still shadowed by criminal charges, he was not willing to help her to make that mistake. And Paola? As exquisite, perfect and downright practical a proposition as she was, it was far too soon for him to contemplate that level of commitment.

Every muscle straining at the effort required, Kerry heaved the log into the wheelbarrow.

When the barrow immediately tipped over beneath the weight and the log rolled out again, she could have sat down and howled like a baby. Snatching in a steadying breath, she blinked back tears of frustration, set the wheelbarrow straight and made herself start again. The spring days and nights were cold. She had two fires to keep going for her grandparents’ benefit and only the largest, heaviest logs burned for any appreciable length of time in the massive hearths at Ballybawn Castle.

Unfortunately, her sleepless night had drained her of energy. Was it any wonder that she was still in shock about Luciano’s successful appeal against his conviction? For hours she had tossed and turned while her mind ran round in tortured circles, continually throwing her back in time to Luciano’s arrest on charges of false accounting and theft, and her own initial disbelief. But brick by brick the evidence against Luciano had mounted. When a single fingerprint had been identified as his on a damning document, she had accepted that he was guilty. Then she had also believed that fingerprinting was an exact science and irrefutable proof. How could she ever have foreseen that, five years on, respected forensic experts would enter a court of law on Luciano’s behalf and discredit the reliability of the fingerprint which had played such a heavy part in the original prosecution case?

Yet that was what had happened only yesterday, Kerry acknowledged, shaking her head in lingering bewilderment as she finally got the log into the barrow and trudged back along the wooded lane to the castle. Luciano was free…and a tension headache was pounding behind her brow. Why could she think of nothing but Luciano? What did his freedom have to do with her? But was he innocent? That was what the newspapers were saying. Could she have misjudged him on that score at least?

Yet the male being deified by the Press was the same male whom she had loved more than she had ever dreamt she could love anyone and he had hurt her more than any soul alive. He had slept with Rochelle and in her heart of hearts had she really been surprised by that? After all, her stepsister was everything she herself was not: gorgeous, sexy and irresistible to men. Even her own father preferred Rochelle, Kerry reminded herself painfully. Possibly only a woman with the looks and personality of Helen of Troy could have kept Luciano faithful.

Just as she was comforting herself with that reflection, a car slowed up behind her, drew level and then stopped. It was Elphie Hewitt, whom Kerry had been friendly with since childhood. Now an artist, Elphie rented the Georgian wing of the castle as a trompe l’oeil showroom to display the decorative special paint effects at which she excelled.

‘What are you doing with that wheelbarrow?’ Elphie questioned with a frown. ‘Didn’t Dad offer to bring you over a load of logs?’

Although embarrassed by that reminder, Kerry was reluctant to accept a favour which she could not return and, even worse, the kind of favour that the older man might well have felt obliged to repeat. ‘Your father has enough to do on the farm—’

‘He would still be glad to help out. Only the other day he was saying how sorry he felt for you,’ Elphie confided. ‘You’ve such a battle to keep the estate going. And your grandparents…bless them, they’re lovely people…but they’re a big responsibility for a woman your age!’

Kerry was mortified when she pictured the Hewitts, both of whom were her grandfather’s tenants, discussing her in such pitying terms. Not for nothing was Elphie renowned for her excessive lack of tact.

‘How’s business?’ Kerry asked in the hope of changing the subject.

Elphie groaned. ‘All right…just. The interior designers are hiring my services but I need to be working for clients direct to make a decent profit. Heck, is that the time? I’ve got an appointment!’

As soon as Elphie had driven off Kerry forgot that the conversation had even taken place, for her own restive thoughts had zoomed straight back to centre on Luciano again. In fact, only twenty minutes later, having finally carted a fresh supply of firewood into her grandmother’s sitting room, Kerry could no longer keep the lid on her own emotional turmoil.

‘How do you feel about all this stuff about Luciano in the newspapers?’ Kerry asked the older woman tautly. ‘I don’t know what to think or how I’m supposed to feel about it but I can’t get it or him out of my mind.’

‘I do so worry that you don’t sew,’ Viola O’Brien remarked in startling disregard of the subject which Kerry had opened, her gaze resting on her granddaughter with vague concern. ‘A talent with a needle and thread is so essential these days. How else can you hope to repair the torn sheets in the linen cupboard and re-cover the dining-room chairs?’

‘Grandma…’ Kerry frowned and then said gently, ‘Didn’t you read the newspapers that I gave you this morning?’

‘Yes, darling. Luciano has been set free. Of course he’s innocent. I wasn’t surprised to hear that news,’ Viola O’Brien declared in the same even tone as if the events that had shattered Kerry over the previous twenty-four hours were no more worthy of surprise than a mild change in the weather.

As she received that discomfiting response, Kerry’s slender figure tensed even more. It was not a moment to easily bear the reminder that her grandmother had refused to contemplate the possibility that Luciano might be guilty as charged five years earlier. If Kerry had not been impressed by that partisanship at the time, it had been because she was well aware that the older woman had always been reluctant to deal with anything unpleasant in life. A burglar caught red-handed in the castle would also have received the benefit of the doubt. In much the same way, her grandmother preferred to ignore the reality that those dining chairs which she had just mentioned as requiring recovering had long since gone to the saleroom.

‘It would have been very romantic had you been waiting outside the court when Luciano emerged a free man,’ her grandmother contended in misty-eyed addition. ‘I do wish that you’d paid heed to my little hints. There are times when it would be quite improper for a young woman to be that forward but there are also special occasions when too much reticence might even appear ungracious.’

At that assurance, Kerry just closed her eyes in despair, gritted her teeth and flopped down into the worn armchair opposite. ‘I expect there are but that wasn’t one of them.’

When she opened her eyes again, Viola O’Brien was still sitting in perfect tranquillity, stitching at her embroidery. A slight woman of eighty years of age, she wore her hair in the same plaited coronet she had favoured since her girlhood and dressed in layers of fluttering draperies as though the clock had stopped ticking at some grand dinner party in the 1930s and never moved on again.

‘Well, there has to be some reason why I heard Florrie crying every night last week…Florrie usually only wails when there’s a wedding in the offing,’ Viola reminded her granddaughter of the O’Brien legend. ‘One would think that after four hundred and fifty years, Florrie could learn to be more cheerful. Still, I suppose there’s no such thing as a happy ghost.’

‘I wouldn’t know….’ Kerry sighed. ‘I’ve never heard her.’

‘I expect you tell yourself that the noise she makes is the wind in the trees.’

Breathing in deep and slow, Kerry parted her lips and said, ‘Grandma…it’s been five years since I decided not to marry Luciano.’

‘Yes, darling, I do appreciate that. Do recall too that at the time I was rather concerned that we didn’t hear Florrie when your wedding was only supposed to be a few weeks away.’

Kerry ground her teeth together so hard it hurt while also wishing that she had had the nerve to tell her grandparents the real reason why she had broken off her engagement instead of settling on the less humiliating pretext of a simple change of heart.

‘But I can’t believe that Luciano will hold your past misgivings against you. I expect he’ll make a great deal of silly noise about it in the way that men do,’ Viola opined in continuation. ‘But you remain the woman who rejected him and he will know no true happiness until he regains your love and trust—’

‘There is no question of any reconciliation between L-Luciano and me!’ Kerry broke in to protest in frustration, her voice sharp and laced with the stammer which she had overcome in her teens but which still returned to haunt her in moments of stress.

Viola O’Brien raised her fine brows in mild reproach but her clear surprise at even that slightly raised voice having been directed at her sank her granddaughter into discomfiture and won her an immediate apology.

‘I understand, darling,’ Viola murmured in instant forgiveness. ‘Having to wait for Luciano to make the first move is very tiresome and must be a considerable strain on your nerves. Unfortunately that is why putting in an appearance outside that court room yesterday would have been the easier path to follow.’

At that very trying repetition of an outrageous proposition, Kerry sprang in a restive motion out of her armchair again. She knew that the older woman could have no idea how much such fanciful suggestions and expectations could still wound and hurt. But then perhaps she herself was more at fault for being oversensitive, Kerry thought guiltily. She adored her grandparents for the unquestioning love which they had always given her. Her reluctant father, Harold Linwood, had never been prepared to offer his daughter a similiar level of affection.

‘Eventually Luciano will wend his own way over to Ireland,’ her grandmother forecast with an obvious wish to proffer that prospect as a comfort.

‘That is very unlikely.’

‘I think not, darling. After all, he does more or less own Ballybawn Castle,’ Viola countered abstractedly while she rustled for fresh embroidery thread in her hopelessly messy work basket.

Kerry studied her grandmother in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘Sorry…what did you say?’ she queried, convinced that she must have misheard that staggering statement.

‘Your grandfather will be annoyed with me…’ Viola O’ Brien’s soft brown eyes revealed dismay before she returned with almost frantic purpose to her search for thread. ‘He did ask me to keep that a secret.’

For several taut seconds Kerry hovered in sheer bewilderment, her mind refusing to handle that additional piece of supporting information.

‘It’s vulgar for a woman to discuss business,’ her grandmother declared in harassed and obvious retreat from the threat of further questioning. ‘I don’t believe I understood what your grandfather was trying to explain.’

In dismay and concern, Kerry noticed that Viola O’Brien’s thin hands were trembling and she paled at a sight she had never seen before. ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ she forced herself to say with artificial calm.

Her mind whirling, Kerry left the sitting room as soon as she could. In the dim corridor, she sucked in a slow, steadying breath. How could Luciano virtually own her grandparents’ ancestral home? Yet it was evident that her grandmother believed that he did. That her grandfather should have broken the habit of a lifetime to discuss a business matter with his lady wife was a very alarming factor that suggested that the impossible might be more possible than Kerry wanted to believe.

After all, Kerry was already uneasily aware that on the strength of their brief engagement five years earlier Luciano had insisted on giving her cash-strapped grandparents a very large loan. Soon afterwards a proportion of the roof had been mended though some of it remained in disrepair. Kerry had concentrated her own energies on cutting costs and striving to raise extra income on the estate in an effort to ensure that the older couple could at least live out their lives in their vast and dilapidated home. However, her grandfather had never allowed her to take charge of the accounts or, indeed, even examine them but she had naturally assumed that the loan repayments were being kept up to date.

Perspiration dampened Kerry’s short upper lip. The very idea that Luciano might have some kind of claim on Ballybawn Castle horrified her. Could her grandfather have been struggling to handle major financial problems which he had kept from her? Regardless of his granddaughter’s degree in business and her strenuous efforts to make Ballybawn Castle a paying proposition, Hunt O’Brien still cherished the gallant if impractical outlook of a bygone age when it came to his womenfolk. He believed that even Kerry was a poor, vulnerable little woman who had to be protected at all costs from the frightening stress of monetary woes. Therefore, Kerry conceded worriedly, that the older man should even have considered mentioning such an issue to her grandmother suggested that a very serious situation had developed…

Running Hunt O’Brien to earth within his own home was rarely a challenge. In his younger days, eager to follow in his own father’s footsteps, he had been a keen inventor of elaborate mechanical devices but, sadly for him, technology had repeatedly outstripped him in pace. Abandoning his workshop, her grandfather had turned to scholarship instead and, rain or shine, he was now to be found in the library happily surrounded by books. In fact, books were heaped on the bare floor, stacked on the threadbare chairs, and his enormous desk was so covered with them that her eighty-two-year-old grandparent preferred to squeeze himself into a corner of an old sofa and use a battered antique lap desk instead. There for the past half-century he had been weightily engaged in writing his definitive multi-volume work on the history of Ireland. Nobody at Ballybawn had ever been honoured with the opportunity to read a word of his life’s work and Kerry rather doubted that any publisher would ever be permitted the privilege either.

‘Is it time for lunch, my dear?’ Having finally registered her presence, Hunt O’Brien peered at her over the top of his round-rimmed spectacles in enquiry.

Luciano, Kerry recalled with a sharp unwelcome pang, had once remarked that her grandfather must be very much in demand to play Santa Claus. Small and portly with the still-bright blue eyes that were the O’Brien inheritance, he was given a rather merry aspect by his shock of silver hair and his beard. And, in truth, he was an exceptionally kind man but possibly not very well matched to the challenges that had unexpectedly become his when he, rather than his elder brother, had inherited Ballybawn.

‘No,’ Kerry replied. ‘I’ll see to lunch soon.’

‘What’s happened to Bridget…is she ill?’ Hunt enquired absently, his eyes already roaming back to the notebook he had been writing in seconds earlier.

It was well over a year since Bridget, the very last of the stalwart old-style retainers employed as indoor staff, had entered a retirement home at the age of seventy-eight. But her grandfather had never in his life had to live without a cook in the household and continually forgot that fact. Had he not been called to meals, he would have gone without food and indeed was as incapable of looking after himself as her grandmother was. Remorseless time had ground on outside the walls of Ballybawn Castle while the elderly owners within remained trapped in the habits of the previous century.

‘Grandpa…’ Kerry cleared her throat to regain the old man’s attention. ‘Grandma said that Luciano more or less owned the castle.’

At those words, Hunt O’Brien stopped writing and his silver head jerked up at rare speed as he directed an almost schoolboyish look of guilt at her. ‘I was—er—I was p-p-p-p-planning,’ he finally contrived to get the word out in the tense waiting silence, ‘to tell you soon.’

Gooseflesh prickled at the nape of Kerry’s neck and her knees developed a scary tendency to wobble. ‘Yet you discussed this with Grandma rather than with me?’ she prompted in near disbelief.

‘Had to…no choice,’ Hunt O’Brien confided tautly. ‘I have to start preparing your grandmother for what lies ahead. At our age, bad news is better broken little by little and, as it seems that we shall all be forced to move out of the castle now—’

‘Move out…?’ Kerry echoed in unconcealed horror.

‘I’m afraid that I’ve f-f-failed you both.’ The older man removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes and shook his head in weary self-reproach. ‘We’ve managed to live from day to day but, in spite of all your many wonderfully enterprising ventures to keep the estate out of debt, for the past four years and more there’s been nothing left over to cover that loan.’

Four years and more? Shattered by that admission, Kerry removed a towering pile of books from an old armchair and sat down in front of her grandfather. ‘Try to give me all the facts,’ she urged as gently as she could. ‘Loans can be restructured. I might still be able to sort this out for you.’

‘It’s far too late for that, my dear. I know I’ve been foolish.’ Replacing his spectacles, Hunt O’Brien loosed a heavy sigh. ‘I just stopped opening the letters that came from the legal firm handling Luciano’s affairs while he was in prison. After that most unf-f-fortunate business with my late brother’s will, I simply couldn’t afford to make the loan repayments.’

‘I wish you’d told me that long ago…’ Kerry was aghast that important letters had been ignored and, well aware of the debacle that had followed her great-uncle Ivor’s death, she finally asked a question which she had often longed to ask but never before dared to press.

‘How much did you have to pay Ivor’s ex-wife to drop her claim?’

Her grandfather grimaced and whispered an amount that left Kerry bereft of what remained of her breath. No longer did she need to wonder why it had become impossible for the older man to pay all dues and still make ends meet at Ballybawn.

‘I didn’t want to upset you or your grandmother by telling you what a complete mess I’ve made of things. If truth be told,’ her grandfather continued unhappily, ‘I only accepted that loan in the first place because I believed that you and Luciano were getting married.’

Kerry paled and lowered her discomfited eyes in acceptance of that latter point.

‘I didn’t worry too much then about how I would repay it because the castle would have passed down to you and your husband anyway on my death,’ he pointed out ruefully. ‘I saw that loan in terms of Luciano making an advance stake in your future together here. I also believe that he saw it in the same light then…but of course, only a few weeks later, you decided not to marry him and everything changed.’

‘Yes…everything certainly changed,’ Kerry conceded unsteadily, thinking back to the agonising aftermath of Luciano’s conviction. She had resigned from her job working for her father’s wine-store chain, packed her bags, moved out of the Linwood home and returned to Ireland to live with her grandparents again. But neither distance nor different surroundings had eased the terrible pain of having to walk away from the guy she loved, and making a fresh start had been an even bigger challenge when Luciano’s infidelity had destroyed her self-esteem.

‘At first, I hoped that matters would improve and that I would be able to catch up with the loan arrears. When that didn’t happen, I prayed that the bank would come to our rescue.’ Rising to his feet, Hunt O’Brien went over to his desk and with some difficulty tugged out a bottom drawer. ‘I’m afraid the bank turned my request down, and yesterday while I was walking in the demesne I was approached by a young man who asked me who I was and then virtually stuffed this document into my hand!’

From the cluttered desk top, the older man lifted a folded sheet. ‘I’m facing a court order for repossession of the castle.’

In the act of looking into the drawer, which was packed to bursting point with unopened envelopes, Kerry straightened to stare in appalled silence at the legal notice that her grandfather had already been officially served with.

‘I’ve spoken to the family solicitor,’ the old man confided wearily. ‘If I don’t comply with a voluntary arrangement to settle my debts, I’ll be declared bankrupt, which I believe would be worse.’

Homeless or bankrupt? What a choice! A surge of rage blistered through Kerry’s slight, taut frame. How dared Luciano threaten to evict two harmless, helpless, elderly gentlefolk from their only home at this stage of their lives? How dared he subject her grandfather’s weak heart to the stress of fear and intimidation? How dared he make her grandmother’s hands tremble with nerves? What sort of a merciless bully had prison made out of Luciano da Valenza?

Hadn’t he done enough harm yet? Wasn’t it bad enough that he had wrecked her life? She lived like a nun sooner than risk that amount of pain and disillusionment again. She no longer trusted men. The guy she adored had gone behind her back and slept with a woman who hated her. At the age of twenty-six she was so much ‘on the shelf’, as her grandmother liked to call it, that she might as well have been nailed to it!

‘I’ll look into this, Grandpa,’ Kerry murmured in a soothing undertone, eyes as bright as sparkling turquoises in her flushed and furious face.

‘If it makes you feel better, go ahead,’ he said wryly. ‘But I assure you that nothing short of a miracle could help us now.’

‘Just you go back to your book,’ Kerry advised.

‘I am hoping that we’ll be quite comfortably off once I sell my books to a publishing firm,’ Hunt O’Brien declared, startling his granddaughter with an ambition which he had never mentioned before. ‘I’ve almost finished the eighth volume. It’s my final one, you know.’

‘Congratulations,’ Kerry told him with as much enthusiastic and matching optimism as she could muster at that instant.

‘Of course, the other seven volumes could probably do with a little tweaking.’ He settled back onto his sofa and reached for his pen with a smile, the gravity of their plight clearly wiped from his mind again as he contemplated the comforting creative challenges that still lay ahead of him.

While the older man returned to his notebook, Kerry lifted out the entire drawer of unopened letters and carried it from the room. An hour later, after she had only got through about a third of what had been a one-sided effort at communication stretching back over more than four years, her heart was heavy. Interest and arrears had swollen the original debt to a colossal and terrifying size and her grandfather’s total lack of response to those warning letters had put him very much in the wrong. The loan had been secured against the castle, and the castle was her grandfather’s sole asset. There was no way that she could raise the kind of money that was now owed to Luciano. Nor were there any valuable family heirlooms left to sell: Great-Uncle Ivor’s grasping ex-wife had seen to that.

In the midst of those increasingly panic-stricken thoughts and in desperate need of fresh air to clear her buzzing head and restore her concentration, Kerry went outdoors and headed for the lake that lay below the castle. Her feet crunching on the lush green grass of late spring, she finally came to a halt beneath the spreading branches of the willow tree that overhung the water.

A low swirling mist was rising from the still surface of the lake to lend an eerie, dream-like quality to the reflection of the pale limestone battlemented walls and turrets of Ballybawn. For five years she had worked round the clock in an effort to make the great house pay for its own upkeep and she had honestly believed that she was on the brink of finally achieving that objective! Had it all been for nothing?

But Ballybawn meant so much more to her than a responsibility: it was the only real home she had ever had. Her mother, Carrie, had walked out of her life when she was only four years old. Prior to that, Kerry had dim memories of frightening adult scenes in which her father’s rage had made him seem, perhaps unfairly, a cruel and threatening man. When the marriage had finally ended, her mother had left England to return to Ireland and her childhood home. Although it had been more than ten years since Kerry’s mother had even spoken to her parents, the older couple had offered a warm welcome to their wayward daughter and her child. It was at the castle that Kerry had first learned what it was to be happy and, even when Carrie later went away and failed to return, the O’Briens had continued to make their granddaughter feel secure and loved.

But Luciano da Valenza had never managed to make her feel secure or loved, had he? Kerry swallowed the bitter lump in her throat. Abandoning caution and common sense, she had fallen in love with the first slick and sophisticated, handsome male who looked her way. She had refused to think about the fact that she was not beautiful or even especially sexy like Rochelle or the other women in Luciano’s past. She was five feet three inches tall and her build was what her acid-tongued stepmother had once described as ‘almost asexual’. Men did not do a double take when they saw Kerry on the street. Her infuriating ringlets ran every colour between copper, russet and orange, depending on the light or indeed the observer’s outlook on red hair.

Of course, Luciano had labelled that same colour ‘Titian’, which had been a surefire impressive winner with a girl who had gone through school tagged with less complimentary nicknames…a girl whose first boyfriend had been stolen by her stepsister, a girl who was a total dreamer for all her seeming practicality. At the age of twenty-one, however, Kerry had thought of herself as mature.

But, with hindsight, she knew that when she had first seen Luciano da Valenza springing out of his sleek sports-car her very lack of experience with men had been a handicap. Taking one stunned look at Luciano, she had been so mesmerised that she had walked backwards into a flowerbed and got soaked by the sprinkler system. He had thought that was very, very funny. She squeezed her burning eyes tight shut and told herself furiously to stop thinking about him.

Broken engagement, broken heart, broken dreams. Kerry shivered and lifted her hands to her tear-wet face in shame: she had always been too sensitive, too trusting and soft. Luciano’s infidelity had devastated her. But then, that Luciano should everhave shown an interest in her had been surprising and her own father had told her that too, hadn’t he?

‘You were never da Valenza’s type. I should’ve suspected that he had an ulterior motive. Now, if he’d gone after your stepsister, Rochelle, again, well…’ Harold Linwood had stressed meaningfully. ‘That would have been the normal thing to do.’

In frustration, Kerry breathed in deep and emptied her mind of the painful memories that still taunted her. The past was over and gone, she reminded herself squarely. Ballybawn was under threat again, but this time around the threat she had to overcome came from Luciano. Luciano, who had been outraged when she handed him back his ring and as incredulous as a predatory, prowling cat suddenly punched on the nose by a mouse. Luciano, who always played to win with ruthless, relentless purpose.

But exactly what would Luciano want with a cold, comfortless castle in the hilly wilds of Co Clare? The cosmopolitan delights of Dublin city were at a most inconvenient distance. And wasn’t it truly fortunate that Luciano had come into the reputed squillions of cash left to him by his natural father? She was relieved by the idea that Luciano had become so wealthy that flogging a tumbledown Irish castle would not enrich him to any appreciable extent.

Unhappily, those small positive elements aside, Kerry also knew that she had only one immediate option: she would have to fly over to London and see Luciano in person, for only he would have the power to stop that repossession order progressing as far as the High Court. But how could she face seeing him again? And on such demeaning terms? Coming cap in hand like a beggar to him?

Shivering at that degrading image, Kerry felt cold inside and out. Somehow she had to find the strength to do what had to be done, for, like so many other tasks around Ballybawn, there was nobody else but her available.




CHAPTER TWO


FOUR days later, pink in the face, out of breath and all too well aware that her delayed flight out of Shannon to London had made her almost fifteen minutes late for her two o’clock appointment with Luciano, Kerry sank down in the smart reception area on the top floor of his brand-new office building.

In an effort to get a grip on her own mounting stress level, Kerry made herself concentrate on the challenge ahead. She needed to tell Luciano why the loan was in arrears and ask for more time to make good on the payments. He was first, foremost and last a businessman. If she could convince him that he would make more money letting her grandparents stay on in the castle, surely she would have a chance of winning his agreement to a stay of execution on that repossession order? With an anxious hand she checked that the business plan she had drawn up was still safe in her bag.

Striving to steady herself, she then looked around herself, desperate for anything that would take her mind off the coming confrontation. Her opulent surroundings had that classic sharp-edge design flair that distinguished a successful business. It had been eighteen months since Roberto Tessari’s death and, regardless of Luciano’s imprisonment, his father’s companies had continued trading. In those circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Luciano should have decided to set up a London base of operation for da Valenza Technology. But how it must have galled him to have to work through and rely on intermediaries rather than have access to and sole control of what was his.

Luciano had never, ever been a team player. Or, crept in the anxious thought, very hot on the forgiveness and understanding front, Kerry reflected miserably. That she had arrived late for their meeting would have struck another bad note. Luciano had an inner clock that never let him down and he equated poor timekeeping with a lack of respect.

Kerry breathed in deep, struggling to keep herself calm, but minute by minute her nerves were winding up like coiled springs. For four days solid, she had fought not to think about what it would be like to see Luciano again. But now, even before she saw him, she was finding out. It was terrifying. Her brain felt like mush and her palms were sweating.

‘Luciano will see you now…you have fifteen minutes left!’

Startled by that snappy but familiar voice, Kerry rose hurriedly to her feet.

Costanza Guiseppi strolled forward. Clad in an enviable blue cropped jacket and shift dress, Luciano’s PA looked like a million dollars. It took only one scathing glance from Costanza for Kerry to be aware that her own dated grey skirt suit was the poorest of shabby comparisons.

‘How does it feel to be a leech?’ Costanza turned her head to enquire with venom as Kerry accompanied her down the corridor.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Kerry tilted her chin, telling herself that she ought to have been prepared for that attack, for the brunette was very loyal to Luciano and very fond of him. Their friendship was a close one, for Costanza had, after all, first met Luciano at school. As ambitious as Luciano was to succeed in the world, she had gone to work for him as soon as she left college.

‘I don’t suppose it even occurred to you five years ago that Luciano could have done with that loan being returned. If he’d had more funds, he could’ve afforded top-flight legal counsel and he might never have gone to prison.’ The Italian woman watched Kerry turn ashen pale in shock. ‘You cost him and you’re still costing him, and that makes you a leech on my terms!’

‘If Luciano had asked for the money back then my grandfather could still have given it back,’ Kerry protested sickly.

But Costanza wasn’t listening. ‘I’m so looking forward to viewing your Irish castle without you in it.’ The other woman savoured that assurance. ‘Your cheek in coming here today is your biggest mistake so far.’

As Costanza cast open the door ahead, Kerry walked in past her without even hearing that final taunt, for she was much too keyed-up about seeing Luciano again after so long.

‘Thank you, Costanza,’ Luciano murmured drily, knowing that the brunette’s satisfied expression meant that she had exercised her sharp tongue with barracuda-like efficiency.

As Luciano strolled forward, Kerry found herself just staring and staring. She was helpless in the grip of that overwhelming compulsion to take her visual fill. Even though she had already seen a half-dozen newspaper photos of him, the sight of him in the flesh and poised only feet from her reduced her mind to a literal wasteland.

‘Take a seat,’ Luciano suggested, his dark, deep drawl achingly familiar to her.

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!’

‘Is that your last word on the subject?’

Kerry pinned her soft lips together and jerked her chin in defiant affirmation.

‘Then I don’t have any more time to give you.’ Striding past her, Luciano crossed the room, threw the door wide and dealt her a cold, hard look of expectancy.

Her eyes flew wide in disbelief and her stomach clenched. ‘That’s not fair…you can’t do that!’

Chilling golden eyes assailed hers and his jawline squared. ‘I can do anything I want to do in my own office.’

Kerry stared fixedly into space, willing back the shaken surge of tears stinging behind her eyes. So he got his kicks out of intimidation now, she told herself, hating him with every fibre of her being for forcing her into a humiliating position where she had no choice but to climb back down off her high horse. Had she really once admired that sheer ruthless force of will of his?

Luciano was still as a statue, untouched by the shock that was emanating from her slender figure in waves. He had waited what felt like half a lifetime for what he was determined to hear from her own pink lips and he would let nothing get in the way of the best opportunity he would ever have.

Kerry forced her attention back to him and clashed with challenging dark golden eyes that carried not a shade of remorse or discomfiture. Her slight shoulders rigid, she screened her gaze and with a wooden lack of expression said, ‘All right…but first you let me explain about the loan and you listen this time.’

With a fluid shift of a lean brown hand, Luciano sent the door thudding shut again. The silence that fell throbbed. Her very muscles hurt with the strength of her tension. She sank back down in her chair, stiff as a coat hanger.

‘I’m waiting…’ Luciano lounged back against the edge of his fancy glass desk with infuriating self-assurance and cool.

For an instant Kerry searched those lean, darkly handsome features, saw the strength written in the hard angles of his fantastic bone structure and, before she even knew what was happening to her, hunger leapt inside her. It was a wanton physical craving that had a life all of its own and it shook her up even more. Her concentration destroyed and furious with herself, she battled to regain it. But she was remembering the many nights she had woken up hot and ashamed of her feverish dreams of what it might have been like if he had ever made love to her…only to always be forced to recall, both during their engagement and after his imprisonment, that Rochelle had already had that pleasure ahead of her and that nothing would ever change that demeaning reality.

Without even thinking about what he was doing, reacting by male instinct to the flash of awareness he had seen in her eyes, his own male hormones already on red alert, Luciano was picturing her stripped on his office carpet, dominated by him, begging him for it. Only something in him recoiled from that crude image even as raw arousal flared through his powerful frame with a white-hot, burning ferocity that reminded him just how long it had been since he had had any woman in his bed. Five years and four months. Four months wasted on her, four months putting her needs way ahead of his own, four months waiting on a wedding night that had never happened. His lean, bronzed face paled with anger. He had to be sex-starved to still be excited by her and certifiably insane to be wondering if she could still be a virgin.

Kerry was sick at heart from what she had relived, unable to look at him and agonised that she could still be that vulnerable to his potent sexual aura. That was all it was, she told herself feverishly. He was just a very good-looking, very masculine guy and lots of women reacted the same way around him. It certainly didn’t mean that she was carrying some stupid torch for him. It just meant that she was behaving like a total idiot and that it was time she got her act together.

‘Are you still a virgin?’ Luciano enquired, choosing to travel the certifiably insane route and doing so with a question that emerged smooth as silk.

Kerry’s head tipped back on her shoulders and she stared at him with aghast blue eyes, so disconcerted that she started stammering, ‘Wh-wh-wh-wh—?’

Luciano surveyed her with grim satisfaction. ‘So that’s a yes. No, don’t bother arguing with me. If you’d loosened the lock on your mental chastity belt, you wouldn’t still be blushing or embarrassed about it.’

In furious mortification, Kerry set her teeth together and snatched in sustaining oxygen but the silence lingered while she prepared herself to speak again without that revealing hesitation over every word. ‘How many twenty-six-year-old virgins do you know?’

‘You’re in a class of your own. The loan,’ Luciano prompted, content to let the previous issue drop while he let his attention be drawn by the restive way she crossed one slim knee over the other and then changed it back again.

Drawn up short by that reminder, Kerry swallowed hard and endeavoured to rise above her fury over that demeaning taunt and concentrate on her grandparents’ plight. She had to get across certain facts in the hope that he would understand and accept that nobody had ever had the slightest intention of defrauding him in any way. ‘Grandfather’s elder brother, my great-uncle Ivor, died soon after you went into prison—’

She still had fantastic legs, Luciano conceded. Slowly his appraisal climbed, memory filling out what he could not see as she sat there: the slim but highly feminine curve of her hips, her tiny waist, the surprising fullness of her small breasts. At the speed of a bullet, sexual heat exploded in him, sentencing him to an exquisite aching discomfort that made his even white teeth clench in outraged denial.

‘I don’t remember you ever mentioning him before,’ Luciano breathed curtly.

‘I used to forget Ivor was around. He lived like a hermit in his own wing of the castle.’ Aware of the terrible tension in the atmosphere and putting it down to his reluctance even to hear her explanation, Kerry talked even faster. ‘Grandpa only inherited Ballybawn because his father disinherited Ivor for running up so many debts when he was a young man. In the 1970s, Ivor was badly hurt in an accident and he was never the same afterwards. He became antisocial and difficult, he couldn’t hold down a job and his wife, who was a lot younger than he was, went off with another man. Then about twenty years ago Ivor finally came back to Ballybawn because he was broke and he had nowhere else to go, and Grandpa took him in—’

‘Where is this long story leading?’ Luciano cut in very drily.

‘Grandpa felt very guilty that his brother had suffered so much. He wanted Ivor to feel that he had as much right to live at Ballybawn as he himself had, so…’ Kerry grimaced ‘…Grandpa signed over half of the castle to Ivor—’

‘Why am I only hearing about this now?’ Luciano growled in wrathful interruption.

‘I didn’t know either until it all blew up in Grandpa’s face.’ Finally, Kerry lifted her head to clash with shimmering dark golden eyes. Her mouth ran dry and her spinal cord notched up another inch in rigidity.

‘But you are telling me that Hunt took a loan from me knowing that he didn’t have full title to the estate?’

‘At the time, Ivor made a will leaving his half to my grandparents and their descendants,’ Kerry hurried to explain. ‘Only unfortunately, after his death, that will turned out to be invalid because it hadn’t been properly witnessed and his old will, the one drawn up while he was still married, left all his worldly goods to his ex-wife and…and she claimed half of Ballybawn.’

Wretchedly conscious of Luciano’s brooding and incredulous scrutiny, Kerry muttered tautly, ‘Grandpa settled out of court with her and everything that could be sold was sold but it meant that he could not maintain the loan repayments.’

‘Even if I was to accept this highly improbable story,’ Luciano drawled with sardonic bite, ‘why didn’t Hunt himself come forward with it long before now?’

‘He couldn’t handle it and so he tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. He blamed himself terribly for what happened with Ivor’s will and it knocked the heart out of him. I could show you an entire drawer full of letters from your accountant and your solicitor that Grandpa didn’t even open…the minute they arrived, he must’ve put them in there. Luciano…I honestly did only find out about this a few days ago!’ she told him in helpless appeal.

As the phone buzzed Luciano turned away to answer it and Kerry pleated her restive hands together, striving to gauge his reaction from his chiselled bronze profile. She studied the arrogant jut of his nose, the proud angle of his cheekbone, the unyielding edge to his wide, sensual mouth. He had been so very kind to her grandparents when they had come over to London to meet him. He had liked the older couple, had not seemed to find them as eccentric as other people did. Surely there was something of that tolerant compassion still left in him?

Replacing the phone, Luciano swung back to her, and as she dredged her troubled gaze from him her cheeks warmed with self-conscious colour.

‘In business, it’s important that you stick to the issue,’ Luciano delivered with cool golden eyes, cold anger having checked his powerful libido. ‘However, it seems that you need me to clarify what that issue is and what it isn’t. It doesn’t relate to your great-uncle Ivor or your grandfather’s foolishness or even whether I believe in either claim. But by telling me that Hunt concealed the fact that he only owned part of the estate against which the loan was secured, you’ve done his cause no favours.’

Unnerved by that caustic speech, Kerry said vehemently, ‘I thought that when things had reached such a serious climax, honesty was the best policy—’

‘What are you? A little girl in Sunday school?’ Luciano shook his proud, dark head in wonderment at her naivety, for she had just given him more ammunition for the repossession order. ‘The bleeding-heart routine doesn’t have a place here. So before I lose patience or we run out of time, I suggest you keep your end of the bargain and confess why you ditched me…and, more importantly, you have to tell me who told you to do it.’

Even as Kerry coloured at that crack about bleeding hearts, her brows pleated. ‘Who told me to do it?’ she repeated in bewilderment. ‘What are you trying to suggest?’

Luciano settled shimmering golden eyes on her with incisive force. ‘That it’s cards-on-the-table time. I had only one reason for agreeing to see you today and it had nothing to do with how much money you owe me. That reason is that the Linwood half of your family tree set me up for five years in a prison cell!’

At that far-reaching condemnation, Kerry stared back at him with astonished incomprehension. ‘How is it my family’s fault that the police didn’t investigate your case properly? And why should you believe that anyone set you up?’

‘Right out of the blue you broke off our engagement and the next morning I was arrested. Now, only a fool would credit that those two events weren’t closely connected,’ Luciano continued in the same soft, sibilant undertone that from the outset of that disturbing speech had had the most terrifyingly chilling effect on her. ‘To save you and your family from embarrassment, one of your Linwood relatives warned you to dump me and I want to know which one of them it was. Why? Because whoever did that was involved up to their throat in framing me!’

‘I can’t believe that you’ve been thinking like this about my family and me all this time,’ Kerry admitted shakily half under her breathe, stark strain visible in the prominence of her fine facial bones. ‘But I had good reason to tell you that day that I didn’t want to marry you any more. I certainly didn’t need anyone else to tell me to end our relationship. Your behaviour did that for me all on its own.’

‘My behaviour? After what I’ve come through, I’m not prepared to swallow your insults.’ As she spoke, scorching anger had flamed in Luciano’s intent scrutiny and his lean, strong face was rigid. ‘So stop right there and think very hard about what you’re about to say to me. In fact I think you ought to sleep on it!’

Kerry gave him an even more perplexed look. ‘Sleep…on it?’

‘Your time’s up. I have a meeting to attend and I see no reason why other people should be kept waiting on your behalf,’ Luciano asserted with acerbic bite. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eleven.’

‘You can’t expect me to come back here again tomorrow!’ Kerry argued in disbelief.

‘You should’ve been on time this afternoon.’

Kerry jumped to her feet. ‘For goodness’ sake, I have a flight booked home this evening!’

‘Then you have a problem. And do think very carefully about what you plan to tell me tomorrow because you won’t get a second chance to spill the beans.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Hasn’t anything I’ve said today made the slightest impression on you?’ Kerry pressed in dismay.

‘Nothing,’ Luciano admitted.

At that uncompromising confirmation, her heart sank. Recognising that she had no choice whatsoever but to meet his demand that she return the next day, Kerry dug into her bag to remove the file and walked over to set it on his desk. ‘Then at least look at my business plan for Ballybawn before I come back…that is sticking to the issue and practical and should be much more your style.’

‘Kerry…one final word of advice.’ Luciano shot her a grim look of incredulity. ‘The very last thing I’m likely to be interested in is your business plan for a property that will soon be mine!’

A sense of desperation surged up so hard and fast in Kerry that it made her feel light-headed. She had got nowhere with him but then, she dimly recognised, she was not firing on all cylinders, was she?

‘I can’t quite believe that I’m here with you,’ she muttered out loud, belatedly recognising her own maddening sense of dislocation throughout their meeting. ‘It doesn’t feel real.’

Smouldering golden eyes rested on her delicate features. Not a single reference had she made to his imprisonment for a crime he had not committed. Not a single word of even insincere regret had she proffered. A story-book princess in a fairy-tale tower could not have been more detached from the hard realities of his recent past.

‘I can make it feel real,’ Luciano murmured silkily, snapping his hands over hers and drawing her close before she could even guess his intention.

‘What are you d-doing?’ Every skin cell in Kerry’s body leapt in shock as he used his strong hands to clamp her to his lean, muscular frame. Her heart felt as though it was about to burst right out of her chest.

‘Making it feel real, cara mia.’ A hard, slashing smile on his lean, dark face, Luciano looked down at her, the lush black screen of his lashes merely accentuating the fiery gold challenge of his gaze. ‘When was I ever in your radius this long without touching you?’

With those words he set free a dozen evocative memories that she never, ever allowed herself to consciously think about. In the act of bracing her hands against his sleeves to break his hold on her, Kerry met his eyes and intimate images bombarded her without mercy: sunlight on her skin, Luciano in her arms, the potent allurement of him, the wildness of her own longing and the soaring belief that she was the luckiest woman in the world.

He took her soft pink mouth in a hard, deep kiss. Faster than the speed of light, her own body reacted to the surge of heat that flared in her pelvis. Her head swam, her knees shook. She could no more have halted the chain reaction of her own desire than she could have pulled back from him. More primitive reactions had taken over, making her push herself into contact with the hard muscularity of his lithe, powerful frame. A startled whimper of burning excitement broke in her throat as his tongue ravished the tender interior of her mouth.

Luciano set her back from him. Adrenalin on full charge, he was on a complete high. At that moment, it didn’t matter that the fierce ache of his own sexual hunger was actual pain. He was getting too big a kick out of watching her stumble back from him like a blind woman to steady herself on the chair back and he was revelling in the shell-shocked look on her face. Had the entire range of his ancestors crowed in triumph with him from the heavens he would not have been surprised, for never had his Sicilian genes been more in the ascendant.

‘I see you haven’t lost your taste for me,’ Luciano murmured in husky provocation.

Kerry flinched as though he had doused her with a bucket of cold water. Paper-pale from the aftermath of her own degrading response to him, she hovered, stricken blue eyes locked to him. Bitterly aware as she was of the terrible pain that he had already caused her, her temper exploded. She slapped him hard enough to numb her hand and make her wrist ache.

‘You bastard!’ she condemned. ‘I h-hate you!’

Luciano did not even wince and, as Kerry watched the marks of her own fingers flare up red over his cheekbone, she went into deeper shock at her own behaviour. Nothing he had said excused her violence and never before had she lost control to the extent that she had struck someone else. Blinking in shaken turmoil, appalled that she had let herself down to that extent, she muttered a harried apology.

Luciano surveyed her with lethal golden eyes and an unnerving degree of impassive cool, for he was simply chalking up one more score to be settled. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow…and don’t be late this time.’

As the door closed on Kerry’s hurried departure, a sardonic smile of intense satisfaction lit Luciano’s lean, strong features. She had lost her head. She was breaking up. He would find out what he needed to know tomorrow. And then? He finally understood why no other woman had yet been able to excite his interest. He still wanted her. Why? Had five years shut away from a world that had moved on without him left him trapped in time? In one sense, he acknowledged the truth of that. But he also thought his own urges were a lot more basic. Desire and revenge made an intoxicating combination. He hated her but he still burned to have her under him, to have those long, perfect legs wrapped round him, hear her cry out his name, learn the pleasure that he could give her…before he took it away again.

Outside the impressive building that housed da Valenza Technology, Kerry came to a sudden halt on the acknowledgement that she did not even know where she was going.

Stepping back from the milling crowds on the pavement, she attempted to still her jangling nerves. It did not help her to appreciate that she had made a complete hash of her meeting with Luciano. That kiss followed by that slap. Stupid…stupid…stupid, she told herself angrily as she noticed a café on the other side of the street and headed for the crossing.

He had accused her of trying to ignore the ‘personal dimension’ but what else could he have expected from her? Compassion? Forgiveness? Understanding? The anguish and self-blame that his infidelity had inflicted would live with her until the day she died. Just when she had been within reach of finally believing that she was someone of value, he had dashed her down lower than ever before.

The seeds of her difficult relationship with her stepsister, Rochelle, had been sown right back in childhood, Kerry acknowledged heavily. Within months of divorcing Carrie, her mother, her father had remarried. His second wife, Pamela Bailey, had been a widow with two young children. However, Harold Linwood had made no attempt to remove his four-year-old daughter from the care of her Irish grandparents. In fact, it had been six years before he thought better of that arrangement and finally came to Ireland to take Kerry back to England and into his own home.

By then, Rochelle had been twelve and the spoilt darling of the household. While her fifteen-year-old brother, Miles, had accepted Kerry, neither his mother nor his sister had been as tolerant. Rochelle had been outraged by the belated revelation that the stepfather she adored already had a daughter from a previous marriage. Yet there had never been any risk of Kerry stealing Rochelle’s place in the family. Kerry’s father had been infinitely fonder of his pretty, playful stepdaughter than he had ever been of his own child. Kerry had reminded him far too much of the ex-wife he still hated and denigrated for having humiliated him with her lovers. In addition, her stepmother had truly resented having to raise her irresponsible predecessor’s child.

The following five years had been very unhappy ones for Kerry. At home, she had endured regular taunts about her mother’s promiscuity and at school she had been relentlessly bullied by Rochelle and her friends. Finally reaching breaking point, Kerry had run away from home. When her grandfather had phoned Harold Linwood to inform him that Kerry had shown up safe and sound at Ballybawn, her furious father had washed his hands of his daughter altogether and left her there.

In spite of that, however, six years later, fresh from university and with her business degree and, if anything, even more desperate than she had once been to win acceptance from the older man, Kerry had still applied for a job at Linwoods. She had hoped that as an adult she might achieve the closer relationship with her father that she had failed to establish while she was a child. Looking back, she could only wince at her own innocence, for the older man had only employed her out of a grudging sense of duty. Blood bond or not, she had always been an outsider in the Linwood family and growing up hadn’t changed that fact.

Nor, unfortunately, had it changed Rochelle. And even more than five years after the event, Kerry still felt sick when she recalled the day that she had learnt to her horror that the man she loved, the man whose engagement ring she wore, had in fact slept with Rochelle long before she herself had even met him. Eighteen months earlier, her stepsister had enjoyed a weekend fling with Luciano while she was modelling in Italy. It had been a ghastly coincidence that nobody could have foreseen or even guarded against. Naturally, Luciano had not associated Rochelle Bailey with Linwoods, and when he had been headhunted into the task of revitalising the flagging fortunes of the Linwood wine chain Rochelle had been living in New York.

‘It was just a casual thing,’ Luciano had explained after Rochelle had walked into the office one day and all hell had broken loose when the outspoken blonde realised that Kerry was engaged to one of her own former lovers.

When, regardless of all Luciano’s efforts to comfort and calm her, Kerry had continued to be extremely distressed, he had finally studied her with frowning perturbation. ‘It was no big deal to either of us,’ he had reasoned. ‘I’m not proud of it but I’m not ashamed of it either. At times, I’ve been forced to work such long hours that it was impossible for me to sustain a longer relationship. Don’t make so much of this. It’s very unfortunate that Rochelle is your stepsister, but we’re all adults and Rochelle and I parted as friends.’

Only Rochelle had wanted more than a friendly parting. And Luciano had either been unusually obtuse in refusing to concede that fact or far too clever to highlight it. That same afternoon all Kerry’s happiness in their engagement had died, only to be replaced by a helpless sense of threat and insecurity. She had needed no crystal ball to foresee that Rochelle’s competitive instincts would soon cause trouble.

Within forty-eight hours, Rochelle had drawn up the battle lines: her stepsister, whose loathing for daily employment was a standing joke, had signed up for a temporary office job at Linwoods and had sashayed into work in a clingy top and a very short skirt. Her stepsister had used every seductive weapon she possessed in her determination to tempt Luciano back into her bed. Kerry had stood on the sidelines like the spectre at the feast while Rochelle flirted shamelessly with Luciano, and when Kerry complained about that Luciano had groaned out loud and told her to stop being ‘paranoid’. Within the space of ten days, he had been telling her that jealousy and possessiveness were very unattractive traits.

Inevitably, Rochelle had won, Kerry reflected painfully as she sat over her untouched coffee in the café where she had taken refuge. Each memory that forced its way through the cracks in her self-discipline was more painful than the previous one…

Just a few short weeks later Kerry had returned from a brief trip back to Ballybawn, and Rochelle, having picked a very distinctive gold designer cuff-link up off her bedroom carpet, handed it to Kerry with a taunting smile of triumph.

‘Yes, Luciano slept with me last night. Why should I cover up for him?’ her stepsister asked, her amused gaze pinned to Kerry’s shattered face. ‘But don’t be too hard on him. He’s a very passionate guy. How could you think that you could hang on to a rampant stud like Luciano with that pitiful I-wanna-be-a-virgin-on-my-wedding-night routine?’

‘He told you…that?’ Kerry was sick with humiliation that something so very private should have been shared and equally aware that only Luciano could have provided that same information.

‘We had a laugh about it,’ Rochelle mocked. ‘You’re a right little goody-two-shoes. However, if it’s any consolation, the sex may have been tremendous but Luciano’s not planning to ditch you and replace you with little old me—’

‘Shut up!’ Kerry shouted, distraught, but there was no silencing Rochelle.

‘But then, I won’t come endowed with the greater part of Daddy Linwood’s chain of wine stores, will I?’ her stepsister continued spitefully. ‘Naturally Luciano has his eye on the main chance. How else do you think he clawed his way up out of the back streets to become what he is now? While you’ve got your wine-store dowry, you’ve got him. Maybe you should consider trading in your sensible underwear and unlocking the bedroom door to prevent him straying again…but then I doubt that a little prude like you could match his incredible stamina and inventiveness between the sheets!’

Choosing to conserve what little pride she had had left, Kerry had decided not to confront Luciano on the score of his infidelity and had simply returned his ring to him. Why had she done it that way? She had felt that while all three of them were still working together at Linwoods, she would suffer the greatest humiliation if Luciano’s behaviour was to become open knowledge. Had she shared that story with the rest of the family, Rochelle, brazen to the last, would have used that as an excuse to ensure that all their friends and employees also found out why Kerry’s engagement had been broken off. The next day, while she had still been steeling herself to go into work, Luciano had been arrested.

A tight, hard knot of pain over those recollections remained with Kerry as she sank back to the present and drank her cold coffee to ease her aching throat. She had loved him, she had loved him so much. She shook her head as though to clear it, angry that the past could still have such a powerful effect on her, and made herself concentrate on the practicalities of her position. Where, for instance, was she planning to spend the night? Of course, Miles would put her up. Relief travelling through her as she came up with that obvious solution, she took out her mobile phone and rang her stepbrother.

‘Of course you can stay. You don’t even have to ask. But what are you doing in London?’ her stepbrother asked in surprise. ‘And why didn’t you mention that you were coming?’

‘I had some business to take care of and I didn’t realise that I’d have to stay over until tomorrow.’ Comforted by the familiar warmth of Miles’s welcome, Kerry had to resist the urge to tell him then and there about the repossession order hanging over Ballybawn. He was at the office and she could hear voices in the background and he would not be able to speak freely.

‘I wish I’d known that you were going to be here because I’ve got a business dinner to attend with your father tonight,’ Miles complained.

In disappointment at that news, Kerry pulled a face. ‘So I’ll keep you up late when you get back.’

On the way to the train station, she shopped for a few necessities for her overnight stay. At the same time, finding that she was no longer able to block out the demeaning memory of her own wanton response in Luciano’s arms little more than an hour earlier, she cringed with shame. What on earth had come over her? He had taken her by surprise and she had been upset and on edge, she reasoned feverishly. But why had Luciano kissed her? He could only have done it out of sheer badness. It had been the mother of all put-downs, administered by a male who had raised the skill to the level of an art-form.

As Kerry boarded the train to Oxford she considered the ludicrous family-conspiracy theory which Luciano seemed to believe lay behind their broken engagement. Why had the most obvious explanation not occurred to him? Why had he not immediately grasped that she had found out about his stolen night of passion with her stepsister? And how could he possibly accuse the Linwoods of framing him?

But then, to be fair, she reflected, if Luciano had not been the thief, who had been? Having read the newspaper reports that covered his appeal in depth, she had been genuinely shocked by the number of irregularities that had undermined the original investigation of his case. It seemed that the police had targeted the man they saw as the most likely culprit and had failed to follow up conflicting evidence.

So, who else had had access to those doctored office accounts? A whole host of people, Kerry conceded, but none of them dubious characters. Her father did not even come into the equation, for he had no need to steal what he had every right to take. It would be just as crazy to consider Miles a possible suspect: she knew her stepbrother inside out and would have staked her life on his integrity. Equally, Rochelle had not worked at Linwoods long enough during that period to have been involved.

At the time, the firm’s chief accountant had been Kerry’s uncle, George Linwood, who had since retired. His deputy then had been his son, Steven. That branch of the family was most noted for church activity and charitable endeavours. Even the office manager and the sales director had been distant Linwood relations. At executive level, Linwoods had always been very much a family concern. Could she credit that one of them might have been embezzling from the business? Certainly someone had, but she had come full circle, considered every potential candidate and come up with precisely nothing!

Miles opened the door of his elegant apartment. Tall and slim, he had classic blond good-looks similar to Rochelle’s but his friendly hug immediately emphasised that that resemblance only ran skin-deep. ‘How’s my girl?’

‘I’ve been better,’ Kerry confided unevenly.

As her stepbrother took her into his spacious lounge and offered her a drink, she noticed that his eyes were red-rimmed with tiredness and that he was thinner than he had been when she had last seen him. But there was nothing new in that, Kerry acknowledged, for her stepbrother might work very hard but he also liked to party. A devoted follower of the belief that you were only young once, Miles had always enjoyed a frantic social life with a like-minded circle of mates and a succession of leggy girlfriends.

A soft drink clutched in her hand, Kerry plunged straight into telling her stepbrother about the arrears on Luciano’s loan and the repossession order.

‘What a bastard da Valenza is!’ Miles exclaimed with a supportive heat that warmed her. ‘But surely even he couldn’t be serious about evicting the old folk?’

‘He’s got the law on his side and that’s all he needs.’

‘In his pocket by the sound of it!’ Miles tossed back his whisky and immediately went to pour himself another. ‘He got out of prison on a forensic technicality. They should’ve left him locked up!’

Kerry frowned. ‘He did do five years. Considering that the missing money was replaced, that’s a long time to serve for a first offence and if it’s true that he’s innocent—’

‘Are you telling me that you actually believe the rubbish the papers have been printing?’ Miles demanded with sudden raw derision. ‘You’ll not be feeling so generous when do Valenza throws you all out of the castle!’

Disconcerted by that attack, Kerry studied her stepbrother in surprise and dismay.

‘Look, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to come down on you like that,’ Miles groaned in immediate apology. ‘I’m under a lot of pressure at the office right now.’

Kerry’s troubled gaze softened.

‘Let’s concentrate on your problems,’ he suggested. ‘Any hope of the bank—?’

‘No—’

‘I wish that I was in a position to help but I’ve never been the type to save up for a rainy day,’ her stepbrother told her with a grimace. ‘Were you thinking of approaching your father?’

Kerry winced. ‘He’s never had any time for my grandparents.’

‘And, between ourselves, Linwoods isn’t doing very well,’ Miles volunteered. ‘The Salut chain is hitting us right where it hurts—’

‘I think I saw one of their ads on TV the last time I was over—’

‘They’re selling wine like it’s the ultimate cool lifestyle choice…Their stores are fitted out like fancy continental bars. They’re taking our customers and undercutting our prices. How they can afford to do that on top of a rapid expansion and a nationwide marketing campaign I have no idea, but your father’s giving me a lot of grief over it.’

‘I know that working for Dad isn’t easy.’

‘I don’t think you’re following me…Salut is hammering us. We’re already facing the prospect of closing our smaller outlets and cutting back on staff.’ As Miles took account of the time, he frowned and got up. ‘I’d better get changed for this dinner do.’

Fifteen minutes later, Harold Linwood arrived to pick up his stepson. When Kerry answered the door to her father, a guarded expression tightened the older man’s features. A stockily built man with greying hair in his sixties, he spoke to her much as though she was a distant acquaintance. It was even more embarrassing when Miles tried to suggest that Kerry could join them that evening and her father stiffened with visible irritation.

‘I’m so tired, I couldn’t face going out again,’ Kerry cut in hastily.

When the two men had gone, Kerry compressed her tremulous lips hard. Why was it that she was still cut to the bone by her father’s total lack of interest in her? Why was it that memory would always plunge her right back to her ten-year-old self? Unhappily, she was unlikely ever to forget overhearing her father talking to her stepmother on the phone from Ballybawn.

‘How would I describe Kerry? Set beside Miles and Rochelle, she’ll definitely be the runt of the litter. Expect red hair, buck teeth and specs. Yes, I do accept that I’m asking a lot of you, Pamela,’ Harold Linwood had snapped, ‘but how can I leave her here? No, I’m not exaggerating…the O’Briens are as nutty as fruit-cakes…if I don’t intervene now, the kid will go the same way her slut of a mother went!’

Exhaustion sent Kerry to bed long before her stepbrother’s return. She knew she would need her wits about her when she met with Luciano again. Only she had no need to sleep on what she had to tell him! But wasn’t it pitiful that she should still feel gutted and humiliated by his infidelity? For her grandparents’ sake she had to fight Luciano with every weapon she had. If he truly had no suspicion that she had found out about his night in Rochelle’s bed, he was about to be caught at a severe disadvantage. Surely that fact could be made to work in her grandparents’ favour?

Luciano would not be able to deny that he had wronged her. Wouldn’t he feel guilty? Didn’t he deserve to feel guilty? All she needed was a few months’ grace on that repossession order and one good summer season of visitors to prove that the Ballybawn estate could bring in sufficient money to start eating into those loan arrears.

Tomorrow was another day, Kerry reminded herself bracingly…




CHAPTER THREE


ARRIVING at the office at eight the next morning, Luciano found Costanza sniggering over Kerry’s business plan.

‘Have you looked at this yet?’ the brunette demanded with positive glee.

‘No.’ Reaching for the file, Luciano set it back on the desk. ‘I didn’t ask you to look at it either.’

Today he would bring down the curtain on Kerry’s hope that a compromise could be reached where the castle was concerned. How could she still be that naive? But then she had no real idea who she was dealing with, had she? A brooding smile of acknowledgement formed on Luciano’s sculpted mouth. For her benefit, he had once subdued all that was tough, unsentimental and aggressive in his own nature. He had even once sunk to the level of seeking out a field filled with poppies to stage a romantic proposal. He still felt quite queasy at that recollection and he moved fast to suppress other equally disturbing images.

On the dot of eleven, Kerry approached Luciano’s office door for the second time. Adrenalin was pumping through her, for the prospect of confronting Luciano with his lowest moment had steadily gathered more punitive appeal. He wanted the personal dimension? He was about to get it in spades!

‘Let’s keep this brief,’ Luciano drawled before Kerry could even get the door shut behind her.

Unwarily, Kerry let herself look at him. A breathtakingly gorgeous guy in a charcoal-grey business suit. Once he had been her guy. That painful thought threatened to swallow every drop of her bravado. In an effort to banish that pain, she reminded herself of Luciano’s most essential flaw: he was too handsome for any woman’s good. Why should he confine himself to one woman when so many others were happy to share his bed without attaching strings? He got chased by her sex, he met with endless temptation, but that did not excuse what he had done to her. He had asked her to marry him, built up her hopes and then smashed her heart to smithereens.

Wounded blue eyes veiling in self-protection, Kerry straightened her taut shoulders. ‘I’m afraid that you’re not going to enjoy hearing what I have to say—’

‘Just get to the point,’ Luciano advised drily.

‘Yesterday you claimed that you had no idea why I dumped you five years ago.’ Kerry could not help savouring that word, ‘dumped’, and watching from below her lashes as he literally froze in receipt of it. ‘But I find that hard to credit. Why didn’t you just examine your own conscience?’

‘It was clean.’ At that hint that she was about to foist blame of some kind on him, Luciano’s temper leapt straight onto a razor edge.

‘The evening I returned your ring…I’m sure you remember…I’d just returned from spending the weekend at Ballybawn. You’d said you were far too busy to go with me—’

‘I was.’ His smoky drawl now had an audible roughened edge.

‘Yes, you were certainly busy that weekend.’ Kerry’s tense mouth tightened even more with distaste as she steeled herself to continue. ‘The day I got home, Rochelle picked one of your cuff-links up off her bedroom carpet and told me that you had slept with her the night before.’

Luciano closed his eyes on a soundless groan. ‘Are you trying to wind me up with this silly spiel?’

His complete lack of guilty reaction infuriated Kerry. ‘You think you can deny it, don’t you? I bet you also think that I don’t have any proof!’

Ebony lashes swept up on hard golden eyes. ‘At this moment, you are walking a tightrope with me.’

The silence stretched, thick and heavy.

‘Do we have to go through with this stupid pretence?’ In spite of Kerry’s valiant attempt to remain calm and unemotional, she heard her own voice taking on a sharp note of accusation that she could not control. ‘Why after all this time can’t you just own up to being an absolute rat and betraying my trust?’

‘Rochelle told you that I’d slept with her? If you were stupid enough to believe that, why would I argue the toss now when I don’t give a damn?’ Luciano angled that derisive question at her with cutting clarity.

Kerry flinched and coiled her taut hands together in front of her. ‘So…er…you’re more or less admitting it—’

‘Like hell I am!’ His steady golden gaze flamed with outrage.

‘But I even know what you’re going to say…that Rochelle was lying and that she could’ve taken that cufflink from the office!’

‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’ Luciano’s response was one of dangerous, menacing quietness.

‘Or maybe you’re about to suggest that I’m making this all up in an effort to cover up that crazy family conspiracy you mentioned yesterday!’ Kerry condemned with even more dismissive scorn, but she was trembling with the force of her own emotions and her voice was shaking. ‘But I know for a fact that you did sleep with my stepsister that night!’

‘Dio mio…I refuse to listen to another word of this!’

‘Only you could have told Rochelle that I was still a virgin and why!’ Kerry slammed back at him in agonised condemnation. ‘And if I’d needed any further confirmation, you lied to me—’

‘I have never lied to you.’ Lean, arrogant face clenched hard, Luciano made that emphatic statement with conviction.

‘—about where you were that night! I phoned your apartment and there was no answer. But when I called again the next morning, you insisted that you had been in all evening and that you must’ve been in the shower. But you did go out, you were at Heathlands, you were at my father’s home that night!’ Ashen pale as she had to force out those distressing facts, Kerry had to pause to draw breath.

By this time Luciano was so still that he could have rivalled a stone statue. But just as swiftly, he unfroze and his lean hands curled straight into powerful fists. Rage and frustration were eating him alive. He had driven over to Heathlands to see Harold Linwood that evening. He had lied about it. One of those harmless little untruths that only another guy could have understood, he rationalised in a fiercer fury than ever. And in the circumstances, who of an earthly ilk could have blamed him? What male in his right mind would have risked unleashing yet another painful three-act tragedy from Kerry with the news that he had quite accidentally found Rochelle…home alone?

Kerry’s hands were coiled into tight fists too. Her entire being was concentrated on Luciano. At last, it had come: his moment of truth when at the very least he should be unable to meet her eyes. In a head-on collision his sizzling dark golden gaze sought hers in defiance of that belief. Her mouth ran dry and confusion claimed her.

‘I know that you lied to me…’ Kerry found herself repeating in case he had yet to get that message.

Luciano shifted a broad shoulder in a fluid shrug but rage was smouldering like hot lava inside him. After all he had said and done, she had still let Rochelle come between them. Even now, she was so gullible that she could not see the bigger picture. He knew only one Linwood capable of winding Rochelle up to stage such a stunt. And it had worked and the timing had been perfect, he acknowledged with savage bitterness. He had been arrested and Kerry, who might have become a very useful ally in the enemy camp while he fought to prove his innocence, had walked away from him.

‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ Kerry muttered in growing bewilderment. ‘Does that mean that you’re ashamed of yourself?’

‘No…’ Luciano breathed with savage restraint. ‘I’m just thinking that you got what you deserved—’

‘What…I…deserved? Are you telling me that I deserved to have you go behind my back to carry on with my stepsister?’ Kerry gasped strickenly.

‘Don’t you understand anything yet?’ Luciano demanded with derisive force. ‘Nothing happened between Rochelle and me that night or on any other occasion while we were engaged.’

‘But you lied about being there that night!’ Kerry almost shouted back at him in her distress.

Luciano subjected her to a withering appraisal. ‘I was sick and tired of the way you reacted every time Rochelle came anywhere near me. I drove over to Heathlands to see your father. Rochelle said he was due home. I waited about fifteen minutes and then decided it would make more sense to see him at the office. I knew you’d go into a real mood if I told you that I’d seen her, so I took the easy way out and chose not to mention it.’

Kerry was trembling but her face was stiff with discomfiture. He was forcing her to remember how much friction her insecurity over Rochelle had caused between them and how her own constant need for reassurance had taxed his patience. ‘It couldn’t have happened like that—’

‘It did.’ The very indifference with which Luciano spoke shook her faith in her own conviction of his guilt. ‘But it hardly matters now.’

But to Kerry it still mattered a great deal, and his explanation plunged her into confusion. Was it possible that Rochelle had lied to her? That it could all have been lies? That Luciano had decided not to mention his visit to Heathlands simply because he knew that she would have made a fuss when she learned that he had seen Rochelle there? She refused to believe that, refused to credit that she was listening to anything more than a clever story.

‘You o-owe me the truth…’ Kerry stammered in turmoil.

‘I owe you nothing but I’m not about to admit to something I didn’t do just to make you feel better,’ Luciano countered with lethal cool.

‘It’s not a matter of making me f-feel better!’ Tears of frustration flooding her eyes without warning, Kerry spun away, fighting to regain control of the tempestuous emotions he had unleashed. But it was as if he had yanked the very ground from beneath her feet. She needed him to admit that he had been unfaithful. To make her feel better? A choking sob clogged up her throat but mercifully remained there. If she had to face the unimaginable and terrifying alternative; that she had ditched him when he had done nothing, how could she live with that? How could she ever learn to live with that?

‘What…about….that…cuff-link?’ she pressed in near desperation.

‘I was always losing them.’ His attention welded to her bent head and pinched profile, Luciano was rigid with angry tension. He did not want to hear her stammer or see her tears. He resented being made to feel like a bully when all he wanted to do was get on with business. ‘The fact that your stepsister knew that we weren’t lovers? I imagine that she knew you well enough to make an accurate guess. Now, let’s leave the subject there.’

‘I can’t…’ Kerry admitted jaggedly as she lifted her head, bright blue eyes full of anguished appeal.

‘You must,’ Luciano traded with icy cool. ‘We have more important issues to deal with.’

Kerry could not dredge her mind as fast as he could from the past. ‘Luciano—’

‘To save us both from extending this meeting, I’ll cut to the base line. The repossession order on the castle will proceed.’

Kerry stared at him in shock. ‘You’re not even giving me a chance to—?’

‘To what?’ Leaning back against the edge of his fancy desk, Luciano surveyed her with grim golden eyes and a cynical slant to his beautiful mouth. ‘To witter on about great-uncles and the like and try to make me feel guilty about sins I never committed? Let’s not pretend that you came here today with any intent other than to try and make me feel bad. Business is business, Kerry. Wake up and join the real world.’

As he spoke, Kerry had become so pale that the sunlight coming through the windows made her hair glitter like fire illuminating snow. For a minute, he thought she might be on the brink of passing out on him. His aggressive jawline clenched as he sensed his own readiness to move forward and catch her. No, he wasn’t about to back down. Kerry had the fragile build of a fairy in a child’s story book, and could not help looking pathetic when she got bad news. But he was no longer the stupid bastard who had once been possessed by a need to protect her from every hurt, was he? So why the hell did he feel sick to his stomach?

Utilising every atom of courage she possessed, Kerry flung her head back, copper and russet ringlets cascading back from her taut cheekbones. ‘I already live in the real world. I wouldn’t have come here to try and persuade you to change your mind if I didn’t. All I’m asking for is more time—’

‘Kerry…’ Luciano trailed his heated gaze from the fiery gleam of her hair just as the pink tip of her tongue snaked out to wet her full lower lip. Desire exploded like a burning flare in him and ricocheted through every hard angle of his big, powerful frame. He wanted her but only on his terms. What his terms would be he had no idea but he had no intention of allowing lust to interfere with business. ‘I won’t change my mind.’

‘Do you realise how many people are depending on the castle to give them a living?’ Kerry prompted sickly.

While Luciano shrugged, he took note of that point. It would be foolish to antagonise the locals before he had even decided what to do with the castle. In the short term, he would instruct that staff should be retained and that any business-related arrangements dependent on the estate continue without interference.




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