Angry Desire

‘That’s just why you ought to try!’

‘Anyway, nothing really happened. I’m not the victim of some horrible crime.’

‘Crimes of the heart can be as disastrous.’

Another sigh shook her. ‘Yes. Don’t let’s talk about it.’

He grimaced. ‘OK. Tell me how you met this guy Stephen Durrant, then—tell me about him. He didn’t make a great impression on me on the phone.’

She turned and walked further along the lake, under a line of magnolia trees in bloom, their flowers perched like great white birds on the glossy green leaves.

‘Stephen heads a big property company…DLKC Properties. I don’t expect you’ll have heard of them.’

‘I have,’ Paolo said, shooting a narrowed glance at her. ‘So he’s behind them, is he? I thought they were an international consortium.’

‘They are, but Stephen is the main shareholder.’

‘He must be very rich, then. They weathered the storm when property took a nosedive a few years back. A lot of other companies were wiped out but DLKC survived intact.

‘A friend of mine bought a flat in a block they built in Tenerife—it was brilliantly designed, and a nice place to live, I thought. The landscaping was excellent—well laid out gardens, a nice-sized pool…’ He stopped and grinned down at her. ‘Sorry; you know how obsessed I am with design.’

‘I remember,’ she said, smiling back. ‘And you know I love my work too. I’m always sorry for people who don’t enjoy their job.’

‘Does Stephen Durrant enjoy his?’

She couldn’t put Paolo off the scent. She looked at him wryly.

‘Stephen lives for his work; he rarely has time for anything else.’

‘Including you?’

She looked away, across the lake. ‘He made time for me. When he remembered.’

‘Ah,’ Paolo said again. ‘Did that make you angry?’

‘Angry?’ She was taken aback by the question. ‘Why should it?’

But hadn’t she resented the fact that Stephen had so little time and saw her so rarely? At the same time, though, she had been relieved, because she was afraid of him getting too close, becoming too important to her. Afraid of him, of herself.

Why are you such a coward? she thought wildly. Why are you so scared of everything?

‘He has a reputation as a bit of a hard man, doesn’t he?’ murmured Paolo, watching her troubled face.

She turned away, picked a leaf from a bush and crumpled it in her cold hands, inhaling the aromatic scent of the oils released.

‘Well, he’s very successful. I suppose most successful people are pretty tough.’

Paolo nodded thoughtfully. ‘Is he a self-made man? He sounds like one.’

‘He built his business up himself, but he inherited a small building firm from an uncle when he was twenty.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘Thirty-six.’

‘Did the age-gap bother you?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve never been interested in anyone my own age; I prefer older men.’ She stopped dead, catching Paolo’s eyes, and flushed scarlet, then went dead white. Hurriedly she walked on and he caught up with her.

After a moment or two he said, ‘But you’re scared of Stephen, aren’t you?’

‘If you knew him, you’d be scared of him.’

‘Then why in God’s name did you agree to marry him?’

‘I don’t know,’ she wailed, her face working in anguish.

‘Surely to God you knew how you felt about him, Gabriella?’ Paolo sounded impatient, angry with her, and that made her feel worse. She was terrified of angry scenes, of someone looking at her accusingly, blaming her. Tears stung her eyes.

‘I felt…safe…with him…’ she whispered, and Paolo was silent for a moment.

‘What changed?’

She didn’t answer, looking away.

Paolo said, ‘I take it that he is in love with you?’

Her long black hair blew across her face again, in blinding strands, and she didn’t push it away this time. Her eyes hidden, she whispered, ‘I don’t know.’

Paolo’s voice hardened. ‘Oh, come on, mia cara, you must know how he feels about you!’

She knew Stephen wanted her physically—that fact had been blazingly obvious when he had lost control and started making love to her with that terrifying heat. She shivered. He had never been like that before. Why that night?

But she knew why; she had known at the time although in her sheer blind panic she hadn’t allowed herself to think about her own guilt. Now she did, and Paolo frowned as he watched her changing, disturbed face.

‘Don’t look like that. It can’t be that bad!’

Can’t it? she thought, staring across at the sunlit, white-capped mountains and remembering her mood that last evening. She had been edgy, shy, uneasy, but she had tried to hide it because she and Stephen had been the guests of honour at a pre-wedding party given for them by Stephen’s elder sister, Beatrice, in her beautiful Regent’s Park home. In her late forties, she was the wife of a senior civil servant in the Foreign Office. Gabriella had only met her half a dozen times but she liked her, in spite of her formidable manner, which Beatrice had in common with her brother.

Beatrice didn’t resemble Stephen physically—she was small and fair and blue-eyed. Stephen said that she took after their mother. His younger sister, Anne, had married a Spaniard and lived in Barcelona—she had been at the party too, but Gabriella hadn’t seen much of her. There had been so many people there and she had known only a handful of them—mostly friends of Stephen’s whom she had met before.

She had never met his nephew Hugo before; she wished to God that she hadn’t met him that night.

‘Talk to me,’ Paolo said and she started, looking round at him, her face chalky white and her eyes lost and childlike. He drew a sharp breath. ‘For heaven’s sake! What on earth happened to put that look in your eyes?’

She swayed and he put an arm round her, glancing behind them. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said, leading her towards a wooden bench at the edge of the hotel gardens. Her legs were trembling so much that she was glad to sit down. She leaned back, closing her eyes.

After a minute she said huskily, ‘I realise it sounds stupid, but then I have been stupid with Stephen. I don’t really know him. I should never have got engaged, and honestly, Paolo, I don’t know how he really feels about me; I can’t remember him ever saying he was in love with me.’