The Sicilian's Mistress (4 page)

‘Your hotel…?' she repeated belatedly, her brain functioning only in tiny, cripplingly slow bursts of activity. ‘I can't go to your
hotel
!'

Gianni ducked her head down as carefully as an officer of the law tucking a suspect into a police car and settled her onto the rich leather-backed seat. He swung in beside her, forcing her to move deeper into the opulent car, and a split second later the door slammed on them both.

‘I'm not going anywhere with you!' Faith protested frantically. ‘I've got to get back to the shop—'

‘I'm sure your partner will manage without you for a couple of hours.'

‘I have to pick up Connor from the nursery…no, I don't…I
forgot
,' she lied jerkily. ‘The kids are out on a trip today and they won't be back until—'

Gianni subjected her to a derisive appraisal. ‘Wise up,' he
breathed in cool interruption. ‘You can't hide Connor or keep him from me. When I want to meet my son, I will, but I'm unlikely to stage that meeting when you're on the edge of hysteria.'

He had seen right through her, and that terrified her. ‘I'm not on the edge of hysteria…my car…the house…it wasn't locked up—'

Gianni held up the keys. ‘I pulled the door shut behind us. If you give me your car keys, your car will be picked up and driven over to the hotel. You're in no condition to drive.'

Faith surveyed him with huge haunted eyes. She passed over her car keys. He was like a tank, rolling over her to crush her deeper and deeper into the dust. And so cold, so very, very cold, she sensed with a shiver. He had tried to calm her, gripped her hands, made an effort to show that he understood why she was so distressed. But none of that had worked. Why? There was no human warmth in him. His brilliant, beautiful dark eyes now chilled her to ice.

Connor's eyes were lighter in shade, but his skin always had that same golden tint even in winter, she reflected numbly. Maybe he was lying about Connor being his child! Even as her head pounded unmercifully into what felt like the onset of a migraine attack she discarded that faint hope. Gianni D'Angelo wouldn't be wasting his time tracking down a child he didn't know to be his.

Stray, unconnected thoughts kept on hitting her from all directions. She had shared his bed. She shifted on the seat, totally unable to look at him any more. She had bathed in his bath. It had to have been
his
bath. Nothing would convince her that she had ever been in the bracket of owning so luxurious a bath. But he had avoided the usual word ‘relationship' to describe their former intimacy. ‘A certain bond'. That was the phrase he had used. Such an odd choice to describe their…their what?

Not an affair, not a relationship? Oh, dear heaven, had she been a one-night stand? Or worse? And she knew what
was worse. No, no. She discarded that melodramatic suspicion. If she'd been a hooker, he would hardly be so sure her son was his. Dear heaven, what was she thinking? It was as if her brain had just been unhinged, torn open to let all her most deep-seated anxieties flood out.

In silence, Gianni reached into the built-in bar and withdrew a glass. He poured another brandy and settled it meaningfully into her trembling fingers.

Had she drunk a lot when he knew her? Been a real boozer with a strong head? She raised the glass to her lips, the rim rattling against her teeth. The nightmare just went on and on. What did he want from her? She was too terrified to ask, was in a state of complete panic, incapable of rational dialogue.

She didn't even notice where the limo had been going until he helped her out of the car. It was a big country house hotel about three miles out of town. Faith had dined there on her twenty-sixth birthday. Even her father, who liked to make a show of sophistication, had winced at the cost of that meal.

‘I don't want to go in here…just take me home,' she mumbled. ‘I'm not feeling very well.'

‘You can lie down for a while,' Gianni assured her. ‘Get your head together.'

‘You're not listening to me—'

‘You're not saying anything I want to hear.'

‘Did I ever?' she heard herself whisper as he pressed her into the lift and the doors slid shut on them.

His superb bone structure tautened. ‘I don't remember,' he said flatly.

Her tummy twisted. Was he making fun of her?

Gianni stared down at her from his imposing height. His mouth curled. ‘I guess you could say I don't
want
to remember. It's irrelevant now.'

Her head felt woozy, her legs weak and wobbly. As the lift disgorged them into a smoothly carpeted reception area
containing only one door, he settled a bracing hand on her spine. ‘I don't want to be here,' she told him afresh.

‘I know, but I have a habit of getting what I want.' He made her precede him into an incredibly spacious and luxurious suite. Closing the door, he bent, and without the slightest hesitation scooped her off her feet.

‘What are you doing?' she gasped.

‘You should've said no to that second drink. But possibly I did you a favour. The alcohol has acted on you like a tranquilliser.' Thrusting open another door, he crossed the room beyond and laid her down on a big bed. ‘The doctor will check you out in a few minutes. I brought him down from London with me.'

‘I don't need a doctor.'

Gianni studied her without any expression at all and strode back out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

A doctor did come. He was middle-aged and suave. If he gave her his name, she didn't catch it. She was finding it impossible to concentrate, and she was so tired, so unbelievably tired, it took almost incalculable effort to respond to his questions…

 

Gianni watched Milly sleep. Grudging pity stirred in him. She looked so fragile, and it wasn't an illusion. Right now, Milly was like a delicate porcelain cup with a hair-fine crack. If he wasn't very careful, she would break in half, and he might never get her glued back together again. Connor needed his mother. Connor did not need a mother having a nervous breakdown over the identity crisis that was soon to engulf her.

Porca miseria
, Gianni swore inwardly. He wanted to wipe Robin and Davina Jennings from the face of the earth for screwing Milly up. She wasn't the same person any more. She was a shadow imprint. Anxious, nervous as a cat, apologetic, scared. She didn't know him from Adam and yet she had just let him bring her back to his hotel suite. In her
current condition she was as foolishly trusting as a very young child.

But there was nothing immature about Gianni's response to her. He wanted to rip her out of that buttoned-up white blouse and gathered floral skirt she wore and free her glorious hair from that ugly plait. And then he wanted to jump her like an animal and keep her in bed for at least twenty-four hours, he acknowledged, with grim acceptance of his own predictability.

He had really hoped she would leave him cold. But she didn't. Sooner or later she would. She was a woman, like other women, and eventually all women bored him. Only she never had in the past, he conceded reluctantly. And if he hadn't caught her with Stefano he would have married her. His dirt-poor Sicilian background of traditional values had surfaced when he'd got her pregnant. He had been ready to buy into the whole dream. The wife, the child, the family hearth. And this tiny, fragile woman, who would only reach his heart now if she stood on literal tiptoes, had exploded the dream and destroyed his relationship with his brother.

He had wanted revenge so badly he could still taste it even now. He had come down to Oxfordshire intending to let revenge simply take its natural course. He emitted a humourless laugh. He hated her, but he craved the oblivion of her sweet body like a drug addict craved a fix. He hated her, but he couldn't bring himself to hurt her. He hated the Jenningses for making him the weapon that had to hurt. He had no choice but to blow Milly's cosy little fake world away. She had to take her own life back, and she couldn't do that without him…

A slight, slanting smile eased the ferocious tension stamped on Gianni's features. She was
his
. He cursed the rampant stirring in his loins. He had been in a state of near constant arousal ever since the airport. Only rigid self-discipline and cold intellect restrained him. For the foreseeable future, she was untouchable. He had waited three years; he could wait a little longer. The fiancé had to be seen off.
How
was
Mr Square and Upwardly Mobile likely to react to the news that Milly wasn't really the boss's daughter?

Milly shifted in her sleep and turned over. The plait lay temptingly exposed on the pillow. Gianni moved forward, and before he even knew what he was doing he was unclasping the stiff black bow, loosening the strands, running his long fingers through her beautiful silky hair. His hands weren't quite steady. Instantly he withdrew them, studied them broodingly, clenched them into defensive fists.

When she had her memory back and he had enjoyed her for a while, he would dump her again. But he would retain a lot of visiting privileges. Purely for his son's benefit, of course. The cascade of half-unravelled wavy golden hair hung over the side of the bed like a lethal lure. It might be quite a while until he dumped her. So what? He asked himself. You couldn't put a price on pleasure.

But how did he tell her the truth about herself in a way that didn't make her hate him? How did you wrap up the fact that at heart she was a gold-digging, cheating tramp who had fooled him right to the bitter end? And if she got her memory back she was going to remember that she had run rings round him right from the minute she'd jumped out of that birthday cake. She was his one weakness, but he could afford to indulge himself just one more time. As long as he never let himself forget for a second what she was
really
like…

 

‘Angel…?'

Somebody was shaking her awake. Faith began to sit up, opening her eyes, only to freeze into immobility.

Gianni D'Angelo stood over her. So very tall, so exotically dark.

‘What did you call me?' she mumbled, remembering everything, attempting to block it back out again until she felt better equipped to deal with it.

Faint colour scored his hard cheekbones. ‘Milly…I called you Milly.'

‘My name's Faith,' she told him flatly, refusing to consider his assurance that he had known her by that other name because such an astonishing claim raised questions about her past she could not yet bring herself to ask. ‘Why on earth did you bring me here?'

‘You needed time out.'

With a sudden start of dismay, Faith checked her watch. It was almost one. She began to scramble off the bed with alacrity. ‘I need to pick up Connor—'

‘Call Mrs Jennings. You should eat before you get back behind a steering wheel.'

Mrs Jennings? What an odd way to refer to her mother! Struggling to regain her equilibrium, Faith was even more disconcerted by the untidy cascade of hair now falling round her face. The clasp must have fallen off while she slept. Thrusting the waving mass back behind one small ear, she frowned in Gianni's general direction. ‘Eat? I have to pick up Connor—'

He extended a mobile phone to her. ‘Ask Mrs Jennings to do it today. We need to talk.'

‘No, I—'

‘You can't run away from this.'

You can't run away from this.
That blunt statement unnerved her. Her lower lip trembled, and then firmed. She twisted her golden head away and snatched in a shuddering breath. Once again Gianni D'Angelo had seen right through her. Her parents and Edward had always been content to accept what they saw on the surface.

And how
was
her fiancé likely to react to the sudden appearance of Connor's natural father? Badly—probably very badly, Faith acknowledged dully. Edward was a very conservative man. And he had once admitted that the very fact he was the only man involved in Connor's life had made it easier for him to accept her son.

The mobile phone was pressed into her tense fingers.

‘You think you can just tell me what to do—' she began accusingly.

‘Right now, you'd seize on any excuse to walk out of here again!'

Reddening at the accuracy of that stab, Faith turned back reluctantly to look at Gianni D'Angelo.

And, like a slap in the face, she saw all the cool control she craved etched into the arrogant angle of his dark head and the steadiness of his burnished dark gaze. He had complete dominion over himself.

‘When you've made your call, we'll have lunch.'

Her teeth ground together. She couldn't hold back her hostility any longer. ‘I really don't like you.'

Gianni stilled with one brown hand on the door. ‘I know… The Sleeping Beauty woke up to a kiss—'

‘She also woke up to a prince!' Faith heard herself interrupt, and then she stiffened, disturbed by the speed of her own retaliation. She never argued with anybody. She was far better known as a peacemaker.

‘If I'd kissed you, you might have screamed assault…although possibly that's only what you'd prefer me to believe.' Gianni surveyed her, a sardonic slant to his expressive mouth. ‘I think your body remembers me better than your brain does.'

Faith was aghast at that suggestion. ‘How
dare
you?'

Gianni gave an exaggerated wince. ‘Tell me, how do you square the outraged prudish virgin act with the reality that you're a single mother?'

Beneath his coolly enquiring gaze, Faith's soft mouth opened and closed again. Colour flooded her complexion.

‘When something irritates the hell out of me, I usually mention it,' Gianni shared, before he turned on his heel and left her alone.

In his wake, a combustible mix of anger and chagrin engulfed Faith. She punched out her home phone number with a stabbing finger. Her mother answered.