A Tainted Beauty

‘No, not in the house,’ said Suzy hastily. ‘I can’t see the new owner tolerating that! But I’ve had a word with Fiona Weston—’

‘You’ve spoken to my boss?’ asked Lily in confusion, because Fiona owned Crumpets!—the tearooms for which Lily had baked cakes and waitressed ever since she’d left school. Fiona was middle-aged and matronly and, to Lily’s certain knowledge, she and her stepmother had never exchanged two words more meaningful than ‘Happy Christmas’. ‘To say what, exactly?’

Suzy shrugged. ‘I explained the situation to her. I told her that I’ve been forced to sell the house and that it’s left you with an accommodation problem—’

‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose,’ said Lily, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice.

‘And she’s perfectly willing to let you and Jonny have the flat above the tearoom—so you won’t even have that far to go to work. It’s been empty for ages—it’s almost as if it’s been waiting for you! So how’s that for a solution?’

Lily stared at her stepmother, scarcely able to believe that she could come up with such an awful scenario and consider it a good idea. Yes, the flat had been empty for ages—but there was a good reason why. Nobody wanted to live right next door to the local pub—especially since it had undergone a refurbishment and acquired an all-day licence. The last royal wedding had inspired a feeling of ‘community spirit’—which basically meant that there was now round-the-clock drinking by the locals—and a deafening din of noise, which carried on late into the night.

Lily couldn’t think of anything worse than finishing one of her shifts and then making her way up the scruffy staircase to the two-roomed apartment above. Yet what choice did she have? She was hardly in a position to flounce off and make some kind of life for herself somewhere else. She had Jonny to think of. Jonny who relied on her to provide some kind of warm base. To give him the security he so desperately wanted and the home he really needed.

‘So what do you think?’ prompted Suzy.

Lily thought this was yet another example of how life could kick you in the teeth. But what was the point of saying words which would only fall on deaf ears? ‘I’ll go and see Fiona later,’ she said.

‘Good.’

Her head still spinning from the bombshell which had been dropped, Lily found herself wondering whether she would see much of Suzy after this—or whether her stepmother would want to cut ties completely. And wouldn’t that be best, in the circumstances? Her father had been the glue which had held the precarious relationship together and now that he wasn’t here any more… ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Suzy?’ she questioned suddenly.

Suzy’s manicured fingers nervously touched the diamond pendant once more. ‘Tell you what?’

‘That you’d decided to sell. If I’d known about it before, then maybe I could have mentally prepared myself. Worked out some different kind of fate for myself, rather than having it presented to me like this. Why spring it on me like this?’

Looking uncomfortable, Suzy wriggled her shoulders. ‘That wasn’t my doing. One of the conditions of sale was that I kept the identity of the buyer secret.’

‘How bizarre. But presumably I’m allowed to know who it is now?’

‘Well, not really.’ Suzy’s thumb moved rapidly over the glittering surface of the diamond. ‘It’s not for me to disclose anything.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Lily, her frayed nerves making her voice shake with unaccustomed anger. ‘Is there really any reason…?’ But her words tailed off as she heard the approaching throb of a powerful car and saw Suzy begin to swallow nervously. ‘What is it?’

‘He’s here,’ whispered her stepmother.

‘Who’s here?’

‘The new owner.’

Lily heard a car stop and a door slam and then the crunch, crunch, crunch of heavy steps on the drive—and as the peal of the doorbell echoed through the large house some gut-deep instinct began to unsettle her. An instinct which was only compounded by the way that Suzy was touching her dark red hair—the unconscious gesture of a woman who knew that an attractive man was about to enter the room.

‘Aren’t you going to open it, Suzy?’ she questioned, her voice miraculously steady even though her heart was racing so fast that she was surprised she didn’t keel over.

‘Yes, yes. Of course.’

Clattering away on her high heels, Suzy went into the hallway and, through a kind of daze, Lily heard the opening of the front door and the sound of low voices. And one of them was a deep and accented voice… She wanted to scream. To put her hands over her eyes—to block out the now seemingly inevitable sight of Ciro D’Angelo walking into the room, her stepmother shadowing him like a bodyguard.

Lily wanted to feel anger—nothing but the pure, white heat of rage—but the worst thing was that her body seemed to have other ideas. Something he’d awoken in her the other day was clearly not going back to sleep. She felt the shimmering of awareness—as if every nerve-ending had become raw and exposed to his dark-eyed scrutiny. And far more dangerous was the urgent prickling of her breasts and the pooling of heat deep in her belly.

‘Hello, Lily,’ he said softly.

At this, Suzy stepped out of his shadow, her lips opening in bewilderment as she looked at each of them in turn. ‘You mean you already know my step—, er—you’ve met Lily before?’

‘Yes, we’ve met,’ said Lily, forcing herself to speak. To wrest back some of the control she felt had been sucked from her by the dark and sexy Neapolitan. He might have purchased her home and her stepmother might have just announced that she was being offered a crummy flat above a tearoom as a poor consolation prize, but she was damned if she’d let Ciro D’Angelo see the distress which was chewing her up inside. And wasn’t some of the distress caused by more than fear of the future? Wasn’t it motivated by the desire she felt for him—which served as yet another illustration of her shocking lack of judgement when it came to men?

She pursed her lips together to stop them from trembling and it was a moment before she felt composed enough to speak. ‘Mr D’Angelo was lurking in the grounds the other day—in fact, he crept up on me and gave me quite a scare. But instead of doing the sensible thing and phoning the police to say that we had an intruder—I was stupid enough to let him in and listen to his ridiculous story. Something about being entranced by a beautiful twist in a path and wondering where it would lead.’

‘I’m flattered you remember my words so accurately,’ Ciro observed softly.

‘Well, please don’t be flattered, Mr D’Angelo—because that wasn’t my intention,’ Lily said, even though at the time she’d loved the poetry of his words. What an impressionable fool she had been. ‘You were sneaking around—’

‘Like a cat burglar?’ he interjected silkily.

Digging her nails into the palms of her hands, Lily met the gleam of his eyes, his words reminding her of that brief intimacy they’d shared. When she’d flirted with the idea of him wearing black Lycra and he had flirted right back. When she’d felt light-headed with the sensation of being with an attractive man and her body had felt like a flower in the full heat of the sun. ‘Like a thief,’ she said fervently.

‘Lily!’ Suzy had now taken up a central position, as if she were the referee in a boxing ring. ‘You really mustn’t be so rude to Mr D’Angelo. He has made me an extremely generous offer for the Grange… an offer I couldn’t possibly refuse.’

‘I can be anything I please!’ said Lily. ‘I haven’t been conducting secret deals with him!’

‘I’m so sorry about this.’ Suzy turned to Ciro, curving her shiny lips into an exasperated smile. ‘But I’m afraid that because we’re so close in age, I’ve always had difficulty disciplining her—even when my late husband was alive.’

‘Cl-close in age?’ Lily spluttered indignantly.

Ciro saw that Lily’s face was ashen and, overcome by a mixture of protectiveness and fury, he turned to the older woman. ‘Mrs Scott, I wonder if you’d mind providing some refreshment? I’ve flown straight from New York and—’

‘Of course. You must be exhausted—jet lag always completely lays me out, too!’ gushed Suzy. ‘Would you like coffee?’

‘Coffee would be perfect,’ he said coolly.

Suzy looked across the room at Lily and for a split second she thought her stepmother was about to ask her to make it, as she normally would have done if she’d had friends round. But something in her expression must have made her change her mind because she merely gave her a quizzical smile. ‘Lily?’

‘No, thanks. I think I need a real drink,’ said Lily, walking over to the drinks cabinet and yanking open the door, afraid that if she didn’t occupy herself with something then she might just crumple to the carpet. She was aware of Ciro’s eyes burning into her as she pulled out a crystal brandy glass the size of a small goldfish bowl and recklessly splashed in a large measure of the most expensive brandy she could find. Taking a large mouthful, she felt her eyes water and she almost choked as the fiery spirit burned her throat. But somehow she managed to swallow it down and quickly took another gulp to take the taste away.

‘Easy,’ warned Ciro.

She turned on him and the fear and insecurity she’d been suppressing now came bubbling out in a bitter stream. ‘Don’t you dare tell me to go “easy”,’ she breathed, because surely defiance and anger were preferable to the hot tears which were stinging at the backs of her eyes. ‘I can’t believe that you sat down in my kitchen—sorry, your kitchen—and gave me all that wistful stuff about soup, when all the time…’ She drew in a shuddering breath and felt the brandy fumes scorching through her nostrils. ‘All the time, you must have been laughing at me, knowing that you were now the owner of this house while I had no idea.’

‘I was not laughing at you,’ he ground out.

‘No? Then why didn’t you do the decent thing and tell me you were the new owner?’

‘I thought about it.’ He paused and he could feel the tension in his body. A tension which had been there every time he’d thought about her. ‘But it wasn’t really my place to do so.’

‘Why not?’ She met his eyes—the brandy now burning in her stomach, giving her the courage to level an accusation she might normally have bitten back. ‘Because you were too busy flirting with me?’

He shrugged. ‘There was an element of that,’ he conceded.

‘So, what? You thought you’d see how far you could get before you came out and told me?’