Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride

‘No.’

‘I agree, Sorcha,’ said her mother wryly. ‘You’re actually a hopeless liar.’

‘Mum, I’m not in love with him. I’m…It’s…complicated.’ She sighed. ‘We’ve got history and, yes, we’re hugely attracted—but he wants the kind of woman who’s docile and will fit in with whatever he wants, while I’m…’

Her voice tailed off. Just what was she? And what did she want? The things which had once seemed so important to her now seemed to have lost their impact. As if she had been seeing the world in a certain way and it had suddenly blurred and changed its focus without her realising it.

‘I’m an independent woman,’ she finished, with a touch of defiance. Someone who neither wanted nor needed anyone else—yet look what had happened, no matter how much she tried to deny it. She both wanted and needed a man who did not reciprocate her feelings.

Her mother sliced through a ripe peach. ‘Has he been in touch?’

Sorcha shook her head. ‘He phoned Rupert after he told him about the small business award we’ve been nominated for.’

‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it, darling?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And even if things haven’t worked out with Cesare there are plenty of other men. I can’t tell you how many people have been coming up to me in the village and saying how it brightens their day when they pick up their sauce and shake you all over their omelette!’

Great, thought Sorcha. Nice way to be remembered.

Naturally, being nominated for a small business award was good publicity, and Sorcha was pleased for the company—and even more pleased to see how happy Rupert was.

‘Cesare gave me the confidence to believe in myself and the business,’ he had said quietly. ‘And now I do.’

Bully for Cesare, thought Sorcha sourly.

She went through the mechanics of living—presenting to the world a close approximation of what Sorcha Whittaker was like. But inside it was like having something gnawing away at her and leaving a great, gaping hole. Had she once wondered if it was possible to feel as deeply as she had done as a teenager? Now she knew the answer certainly to be yes—but what she had not banked on was the level of pain, the aching deep inside her that she couldn’t seem to fill with anything.

And then an invitation dropped through the letterbox—a stiff cream card, heavily embossed with gold, inviting Sorcha to a retrospective of Maceo di Ciccio’s work in a prestigious gallery situated on the Thames in London.

‘Are you going?’ asked Emma, who was almost unbearable to be with—her ‘loved-upness’ so tangible that it seemed to be emanating from her in waves, even all these weeks after her honeymoon.

‘I haven’t decided.’

‘Oh, do go, Sorcha—he might have included a photo of you, in your famous gingham apron!’

‘Very funny.’

‘And anyway,’ Emma added mischievously, ‘Cesare might be there.’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ said Sorcha crossly.

But he might be, mightn’t he?

Was that why Sorcha took such inordinate care about her appearance—even going to the rather devious lengths of wearing a floaty skirt.

Just so he can put his hand up it? mocked the voice of her conscience and she drew herself up short—because, yes, that was the truth of it. Cesare liked women wearing skirts and dresses—he had said so—and here she was, conforming to his idea of what a woman should be. Wasn’t that disgraceful?

But she didn’t change. Instead she drove into London with a fast-beating heart, and had to park miles away from her eventual destination.

It was a windy day, and the river was all silver as a pale, ineffectual sun struggled to make itself seen.

The gallery was beautiful—vast, with huge windows, and lit with the double dose of light which bounced off the restless water.

There were photos from every phase of Maceo’s development as a photographer. Moody black and white shots of the backstreets of a city she took to be Rome, and countless pictures of the world’s most beautiful women. He was good, thought Sorcha wryly.