A Secret Vengeance

A Secret Vengeance
Miranda Lee

It's been the most shocking moment of Luke Freeman's life. He's discovered that his late father had a mistress!The information Luke receives about the identity of this secret lover leads him to a beautiful young woman.Celia is not actually the woman Luke's been looking for. However, he is instantly smitten by a physical attraction to her so powerful that he decides he must have her - whatever the cost.But what a cost!As Luke is about to find out, the price of passion is revenge!

“Luke, I—I’m sorry. Truly. I was just trying to…”

“Protect your mother,” he finished bitterly. “Well, it’s a pity you didn’t think what results your charade might produce. Because no sooner had I started thinking of you as my father’s mistress, than I started wanting you as my own. I was well on the slippery slide to hell long before you started crying and I took you in my arms. I’m in hell now, still wanting you so badly it’s killing me. But it’s not love driving me. It’s lust. Pure animal lust. At least I know the difference. So what am I to do, Celia? You tell me. Walk away like I’ve been trying to do? Or take you to hell with me? You choose, darling. You choose.”

Miranda Lee

A Secret Vengeance

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

CELIA was still half asleep when the phone rang. Lifting one eyelid, she glanced at her bedside clock radio.

Ten past eight. Not all that early, she supposed, but it was Sunday. Celia liked to sleep in on a Sunday. Everyone who knew her well, knew she liked to sleep in on a Sunday.

Which meant whoever was ringing her at this ungodly hour must have a good reason for doing so.

“Probably Mum,” Celia muttered as she threw back her duvet and reached for the receiver.

“Hello,” she said.

“He’s dead,” came a woman’s voice, sounding spaced out.

Celia sucked in sharply and sat up. It was her mother. And Celia didn’t have to ask who he was.

There was only one he in her mother’s life. Lionel Freeman. Sydney’s most awarded architect. Fifty-four years old. Married, with one grown-up son, named Luke.

Celia’s mother had been Lionel Freeman’s mistress for more years than her daughter liked to think about.

“What…what happened?” Celia asked, her thoughts whirling.

“He’s dead,” her mother repeated like a stuck record.

Celia took a deep breath and tried not to panic. “Is Lionel there with you now?”

“What?”

“Did Lionel come to visit you at Pretty Point this weekend?” Celia was thinking heart attack or stroke. The idea that they might have been actually doing it at the time brought a degree of revulsion. But it had to be faced. That was why Lionel Freeman visited his mistress after all. To have sex. And plenty of it, no doubt.

“No. No, he was going to, but then he couldn’t make it.”

Celia was torn between relief and anger. Her mother had wasted nearly half of her life waiting for her married lover to show up.

Well, now her waiting for Lionel was over. For good. But at what price?

“It was on the radio.”

“What was on the radio, Mum?”

“They said it wasn’t his fault. The other driver was drunk.”

Celia nodded. Sounded like an accident of some kind. A car crash. And Lionel Freeman had been killed.

There was little pity in her heart for the man, only for her mother, her poor deluded mother who’d sacrificed everything for the illicit moments she’d spent with him. She’d loved Lionel Freeman more than life itself.

Now he was dead, and his distraught mistress was all alone in the secret love nest where the selfish Lionel had installed her a few years back.

Celia was terrified that, once the reality of her beloved’s death sank in, her mum might very well do something stupid. Celia wasn’t going to let that happen. Her mother had wasted twenty years of her life on Lionel Freeman. Celia wasn’t going to let him take her with him in death.

“Mum, go and make yourself a cup of tea,” she said firmly. “And put plenty of sugar in it. I’ll be with you very soon.”

Celia lived not all that far away, in Swansea. She also drove a zappy little hatchback which could move when she wanted it to.