Mediterranean Millionaires

A sob convulsed Gwenna’s throat and she gulped it back hurriedly. ‘I don’t cry…I don’t—’

‘I don’t hear you crying,’ Angelo breathed, wondering if he was a pervert for just wanting to kick out all his guests and drag her up to bed and keep her there for at least twenty-four hours.

She rested her brow against a broad shoulder. She felt totally bewildered by her own behaviour. How had she ended up so close to him? The angry pain that had taken her over had gone and she recognised a disconcerting change in her attitude to him. Arguing with Angelo had once made her feel stronger and more in control but this time around it had made her feel as if she were being torn in two.

‘I’m all right,’ she muttered awkwardly just as her mobile phone rang. ‘Excuse me…’

It was her stepsister, Penelope.

‘We need to talk to you urgently,’ Penelope declared in a sharp voice that made Gwenna’s heart sink like a stone and her anxiety level rise even faster. ‘It’s a family matter and I can’t discuss it on the phone. How quickly can you get down here?’

‘I’ll get on the first available train tomorrow.’

‘I have to go home for a couple of days,’ Gwenna told Angelo, anxiously wondering if the problem that her stepsister had refused to discuss related to the total breakdown of their respective parents’ marriage. ‘It’s a family crisis.’

His lean, strong face austere, Angelo frowned. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Gwenna was painfully conscious of Angelo’s attitude to her father, and could only think that Angelo’s presence would increase the strain and embarrassment for all concerned. ‘Thanks, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. This is private family stuff.’

Angelo thought that was doubtful. Most probably Donald Hamilton was in serious trouble again. When Angelo had exposed the older man’s thefts from Furnridge Leather, he had known that it would only be a matter of time until further crimes were laid at Hamilton’s door. Other people’s suspicions and worries would almost inevitably lead to an investigation of Donald Hamilton’s other financial dealings. He studied Gwenna’s pale, troubled profile and marvelled that she could still be so vulnerable and naïve. He thought it was past time that she appreciated that her parent was a greedy, lying con man without a conscience.

‘Do you think you could look after Piglet?’ Gwenna asked uncomfortably. ‘It’s just my stepmother doesn’t like dogs and I think he would be traumatised if he was put back into the pet hotel.’

Angelo felt oddly humbled by her trust in him as regards her pet, for there was no doubt that Piglet was her most precious possession. ‘Non c’è problema…no problem.’

He closed a strong, tanned hand over hers. A wave of unidentifiable emotion was washing about inside Gwenna. She wanted to lean on him but she wouldn’t let herself and could not explain why such a strange prompting should assail her.

‘When I take you home later we’ll make it a night to remember, bellezza mia,’ Angelo husked, turning her insides to a delicious jelly of shameless anticipation.

Early the following morning, she wakened and listened to Angelo moving about in the room next door. He never spent the whole night with her. He always slept alone. Yet he gave her the most unimaginable pleasure…

Angelo strode in. Fully dressed in a very snazzy designer business suit and looking devastatingly handsome, he came to a halt at the foot of the bed. Her torrent of warm honey-coloured hair was an exotic tangle that framed her heart-shaped face and accentuated her glorious blue eyes and luscious pink mouth.

‘Dio mio…I’m not sure I can let you go, cara mia,’ Angelo breathed and he was only half joking. ‘You were amazing last night.’

Although she reddened, Gwenna shifted between the sheets like a sinuous cat being stroked by silk. His purring intonation and the hot glow of his hungry gaze made her feel empowered, but she was shocked when she heard herself say, ‘You should’ve stayed…’

‘I have a meeting in an hour,’he intoned huskily. ‘It’s very important.’

The sexual buzz in the air tingled through Gwenna like a shot of adrenalin. She studied his stunning dark features from below her lashes, crystalline blue eyes limpid.

It was the first time Gwenna had given him a come-on and Angelo felt dizzy with sheer lust and triumph. He called Franco and murmured in slightly ragged Italian, ‘Inform the office that I’ve been unavoidably detained.’

He loosened the knot of his tie with an air of purpose and shed it along with his jacket. Not once did he remove his striking gaze from her perplexed face. He released the buttons on his shirt with taunting slowness.

Gwenna was paralysed by surprise and the dulled heavy sensation of warmth low in her belly. ‘What are you doing? Your meeting…’

Angelo came down on the bed beside her and reached for her with confident hands. ‘Make missing it worth my while,’he invited in erotic challenge, letting his tongue delve deep between her parted lips and ravish the sweetness from her soft mouth.

Around noon, he shook her awake. She blinked up at him like a rabbit caught in headlights, still so exhausted that her body literally felt weighted to the mattress. Angelo on the other hand looked re-energised. His black hair was still wet and spiky from the shower, his beautiful eyes brilliant as diamonds above his superb bronzed cheekbones. ‘You’ve missed your train. A driver is standing by to take you to the heliport. You can fly down to see your family. Don’t stay away too long.’

Gwenna never woke up quickly and she was as flustered by the wild passion that had exploded between them as by the prospect of being flown by helicopter to Somerset. ‘Okay…’

Angelo carried her fingers to his handsome mouth and kissed them in a mocking gesture that made her tense up even more. Straightening, he surveyed her with wolfish satisfaction. ‘Congratulations, bellezza mia.’

Gwenna gave him a bemused look. ‘For what?’

‘You finally feel like you belong to me.’

Gwenna went white.

‘That’s how I wanted it and how it has to be. There was never any way that I was going to settle for less,’ Angelo imparted silkily. ‘What price true love now? You’re more mine than you could ever be his.’

Angelo strolled out the door whistling quietly. Gwenna stared into space, a sick sense of humiliation coruscating through her. In the grip of a frantic surge of tempestuous emotion, she leapt out of bed, snatched up her dressing gown and hurtled to the door to bawl. ‘Angelo?’

Angelo came to a lazily graceful halt on the landing and swung round to regard her from below dense black lashes in mocking enquiry. ‘Yes…?’

‘Who do you think I’m thinking about whenever I’m with you?’ she hurled and even as she said it she cringed for herself. Such spite and such lying were unfamiliar to her, but every time Angelo hurt her she found herself reacting in unpredictable ways.

Angelo stared steadily back at her, eyes black as pitch, lean, strong face expressionless. She saw his loss of colour and knew her nasty retaliation had hit home. Yet she was more ashamed and troubled than pleased by her success. She felt the sudden dangerous drop in temperature and she shivered, afraid and full of regret.

Reeling back into the bedroom, she leant back against the door to close it and covered her clammy face with trembling hands. What was happening to her? What had he done to her? Since when had she been a vindictive witch who told horrible lies?

When had thoughts of Toby even entered her head in Angelo’s presence? Not once, not once had she thought of Toby. That belated realisation shocked and frightened her…

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_664b5232-a122-508c-8685-754d2f7a9d0e)

‘YOU travel in luxury: a private helicopter for your sole use and a limo and driver to deliver you right to our door?’ Donald Hamilton awarded Gwenna an admiring smile across the depth of his spacious book-lined study. ‘I’m impressed. Obviously, Angelo Riccardi thinks very highly of you.’

‘I don’t know about that. I just missed my train.’ Gwenna was already wondering if Penelope had exaggerated the family crisis because her father did not seem unduly concerned. Indeed he seemed quite relaxed. ‘Penelope made the situation here sound grave and she was very mysterious. I’ve been really worried.’

‘Then you’ll be relieved to learn that my current problem is only what you might call a footnote to that other business at Furnridge.’ The older man grimaced. ‘There I was in a hell of a bind and I did what most people in a financial crisis do—I borrowed just a little from Peter to pay Paul.’

Gwenna tensed again. ‘Meaning…er, sorry, I don’t quite understand.’

‘I’m afraid that certain irregularities in the garden committee’s accounts have been uncovered. Of course, given time I could make all good.’ Donald shrugged. ‘Unfortunately the stuffy old worrywarts on the committee are demanding instant repayment.’

‘You took money from the Massey Garden Fund…as well?’ Gwenna was appalled when she finally grasped the gravity of what she was being told. ‘What on earth were you thinking of?’

‘I don’t care for your tone, Gwenna,’ her father censured with a lofty look of reproof.

‘I just can’t believe that after all that fund-raising and all those speeches you actually helped yourself to the donations of the people who trusted you,’ she whispered painfully, shame weighing her down like a giant piece of concrete. ‘Why didn’t you mention this last month?’

‘Obviously because I hoped to be in a position to replace the money. But that’s since proved impossible. I’m unemployed, and Eva and I can barely afford to live in this house. Two members of the garden committee called yesterday. They’re threatening to call in the police.’

Her brow felt as though a tension band was tightening round it. ‘How much money are we talking about?’

Donald winced and mentioned a sum that shook her rigid.