Lynne GRAHAM

is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

The Veranchetti Marriage

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER ONE

NICKY CAME hurtling through the crowd ahead of his escort and threw himself into his mother’s arms like a miniature whirlwind. “Missed you,” he confided, burying his dark head under her chin where unmanly tears could be decently concealed.

Kerry’s arms encircled him tightly. He had been staying with his father for an entire month. Kerry had watched the calendar through every day of his absence, resenting the unusual silence echoing round the cottage and the emptiness of her weekends. As she slowly lowered her three-year-old son to the ground, she noticed the two dark-suited men lodged several feet away. Nicky’s escorts.

One of them stepped forward coolly to say, “It really wasn’t necessary for you to come to the airport, signora. We would have brought Nicky home as we usually do.”

There was a studied insolence to the roaming sexual appraisal of his dark eyes. Involuntarily, Kerry’s magnolia skin heated. She knew that she shouldn’t allow Alex’s security staff to browbeat her. But she did. She was nobody of importance on their scale. The discarded ex-wife, who didn’t even enjoy a semicivilised post-divorce relationship with their employer. They could afford to be as rude and superior as they liked. They knew better than anybody that Alex wouldn’t even take a phone call from her. The chances of her complaining were negligible.

With a rather valiant effort she lifted her chin. “I wanted to come to the airport.”

“Mr Veranchetti prefers us to see his son safely to the door of your home, signora.”

“I’m perfectly capable of driving my own child home,” she muttered curtly, and turned deliberately away, seeking a fast escape from a confrontation in the center of Heathrow.

“Until the little boy reaches home he’s our responsibility.” A restraining hand actually fell on her tense shoulder.

She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. That she was being bullied by a hired security man, who treated her child like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Nicky was her son. He might be Alex’s as well, but did she have to stand for such treatment? It was totally destroying Nicky’s homecoming. She was aware of her son’s brown lustrous gaze fixed anxiously to her strained face, and she strove to behave calmly.

“When I’m here, he’s my responsibility,” she stated with a forced smile. “Really, this is quite ridiculous. All this argument simply because I chose to meet him off the plane…”

The other man had stepped forward too. In one hand he carried Nicky’s case. A fast exchange of Italian took place over her slightly bowed head. Murderous feelings were struggling for utterance inside her. The past four years had been very tough for Kerry. What she could never accept was that they should continue getting tougher. Alex was zealously trying to wean Nicky from her for longer and longer periods, and she had an absolute wimp of a solicitor, who was always sympathetic but equally trenchant in his view that her ex-husband was not a man to antagonise.

“Mr Veranchetti wouldn’t be pleased.” It was the older man who spoke now for the first time.

He talked as if Alex was God. Or maybe the Devil, she conceded abstractedly. People always employed that impressed-to-death tone when they referred to her ex. It had got to the stage where Kerry’s blood chilled in her veins whenever he was mentioned. Alex had turned into a remote, untouchable figure of power and incalculable influence long before he had divorced her. It was humiliating to acknowledge that Alex’s treatment of her in recent years had left her frankly petrified of him.

But today she suddenly found herself deciding that enough was enough. Nicky was hers and they were—;believe it or not—;on British soil. She didn’t have to stand here being intimidated by Alex’s henchmen. There was an angry flash in her copper-lashed green eyes as she stared at both stalwart figures. “Unfortunately, Mr Veranchetti’s wishes don’t carry the same weight with me,” she murmured shortly, and stuck out her hand challengingly for her son’s case.

After a perceptible hesitation it was handed over. The weight of it almost dislocated her wrist. She was a small woman and slenderly built. But, distinctly uplifted by her minor victory, she released a determined smile.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Why are Enzio and Marco cross?” Nicky hissed up at her in a loud stage-whisper.

“Oh, I’m sure they’re not really cross,” she replied cheerfully. “Give them a wave.”

Nicky turned his curly dark head. “They’re coming after us.”

Well, if they wanted to waste time trailing in her wake out to the car park, that was their affair. She should have been firmer before now, she told herself bracingly. She shouldn’t let strangers’ opinions matter to her. But it was her conscience afoot, wasn’t it? The fear that they knew why her marriage had broken up. That creepy, crawling and lowering fear that her sordid secret might be common knowledge among the higher echelons of Alex’s security staff. It was that which invariably kept her silent: shame. Shame and guilt, even after four long years. She no longer felt she was worthy of respect, so she wasn’t likely to be granted it by others.

“They’re gone,” Nicky said in some disappointment during their long trek to the van.

Kerry’s tense shoulders eased a little. She lowered the case and changed it to her other hand. It was a cold, frosty morning, and her ankle-booted feet skidded on the whitened tarmac. She hunched deeper into her electric-blue cord duffle coat and quickened her pace to the blue van parked close to the fence. By the time she had got the case stowed in the rear and had settled in behind the wheel, she was beginning to notice how quiet Nicky was. Normally he was bubbling over with disjointed stories of where he had been, who he had been with and what a fantastic time he had had. For some reason his usual buoyancy was missing.

“Did you have a good time?”

“Oh, yes.” He shot her a rather apprehensive smile as she reversed out of the space.

“So what did you do?” she encouraged.

“We went fishing ’n’ swimming…and we went up in the jet plane. Nuffin’ special,” he muttered, turning his small, serious face away.

No, she guessed it really wasn’t anything special to Nicky. From no age at all he had been flying round the globe to rendezvous with his tycoon father. When he had been a baby, Alex had flown to London and a nanny had arrived in a chauffeur-driven car to collect Nicky and ferry him away for the day. But, as Nicky became less dependent on his mother and more familiar with his father, the day trips had gradually become weekends.

He was almost four now, an extremely bright and self-assured little boy. There was no nanny in attendance these days, and a phone call or a letter from Alex’s London lawyer heralded arrangements for Nicky’s sojourns abroad. Alex had unlimited access to Nicky. When Nicky had been a baby that hadn’t bothered her. It had soon become clear that Alex did not intend to encroach too much then. The situation had changed quite rapidly over the past year, as Nicky left the toddler stage behind.

In infuriating addition, Nicky openly adored Alex. She had never been able to fathom that astonishing fact. Alex, so cold, so remote, so capable of sustaining implacable hatred for his child’s mother…how could he inspire such trust and affection in Nicky? She could not imagine Alex bending to meet a three-year-old on his level. But it seemed that he did.

“Mummy, Daddy wants me to live with him.”

Kerry’s eyes were in the mirror, dazedly glued to the sight of the silver limousine nosing dexterously in behind the van. Her foot almost hit the brake as Nicky’s statement penetrated. “What did you say?” she whispered sickly. “Say that again.”

“He asked me if I’d like that,” Nicky volunteered less abruptly.

Kerry let oxygen into her lungs again. What a sneaky, manipulative swine Alex was to ask that of a child Nicky’s age! Just a conversation, though. Possibly the sort of conversation she might have had with Nicky had she been in Alex’s shoes—;the parent who got visits rather than round-the-clock privileges. It didn’t mean that she had anything to worry about. After all, Alex hadn’t put up a fight for custody when Nicky was born. Why should he now?

“What did you tell him?” she prompted carefully.

“Only if you come too. You see, I thought and thought and thought about it,” Nicky assured her with subdued Latin melodrama. “And that’s what I’d like the best of all, an’ then I wouldn’t have to miss you or Daddy.”

Nicky’s solution was touchingly innocent and hair-raisingly practical. He didn’t understand divorce. How could he? He didn’t even understand marriage. He had yet to see his parents in the same room together. Mummy and Daddy were entirely dissimilar people, who lived vastly divergent lives and with whom he did very different things. Her eyes stung with rueful tears, and she wished the limousine containing Enzio and Marco would stop crawling up her bumper. The van did not go at great speed up hills.

“And what did Daddy say?” she couldn’t help demanding.

“Nothing. He looked cross,” Nicky recalled unhappily.

Cross would have been an understatement, she envisaged with bitter humour. Was he trying to take Nicky away from her, or was she being paranoid?

“You still haven’t told me what you did in Rome,” she flipped the subject smoothly. “Did you go sailing?”

“Helena came too. She’s nice. She’s got lots of yellow hair.”

“Oh.” Kerry tried and failed to resist the bait. “Is she pretty?”

“Spectacular. Giuseppe says that. Does that mean pretty?”

She didn’t ask who Giuseppe was. Alex had an enormous family of sisters and brothers and nephews and nieces with whom Nicky played when he was abroad. Veranchettis dotted the world. Milan, Rome, Athens, New York. So Alex had another ladyfriend…so what?

Alex had had one affair after another since their divorce. Vicky was very good about keeping Kerry up to date. Her sister had once been an international model. Although she had now retired and opened her own modelling agency, she still had a passport into high society circles, and in Europe Alex was pretty hot news. Helena…the name didn’t ring a bell. She stifled the knifelike pain scything through her. It was bitterness and bile, not jealousy. Jealousy was what you suffered when you loved somebody, and Kerry had stopped loving Alex a long time ago.

She feared him and she hated him in equal parts. He had almost destroyed her. Alex didn’t have a forgiving bone in his body. She might as well have beseeched compassion from a granite monolith! Her love had been beaten out of her soul, crushed just as he had crushed her with his distaste and his contempt.

The only good thing to come out of their marriage was Nicky, but she had never doubted that Alex looked on Nicky’s conception in a very different light because she was his mother. The fairy-tale marriage had turned into an unmitigated disaster. The dreams had finally turned to ashes, however, in her own clumsy hands. She attempted to dredge herself from her despondent thoughts and listen to Nicky’s chatter. He had relaxed now that he had got Alex’s question off his chest. He liked his world just the way it was. But would it always be like that?

“Daddy took me to the office and showed me Nonno’s picture,” Nicky rattled off importantly.

Kerry grimaced. Dear God, JR had nothing on Alex. Start ’em off young. Show him the empire. Show him the desk. She was darned if she wanted Nicky to become an industrialist like Alex. A sort of superior loanshark with a calculator for a brain and a heart which only beat a little faster in the direction of a balance sheet.

“That was nice,” she said diplomatically.

“I’m going to be a fisherman when I grow up, like Guiseppe.”

Not with Alex around, darling. Alex was a lethal mix of Greek and Italian genes, but they all had pedigreed beginnings. His mother had been a Greek shipping heiress, his father the son of an Italian tycoon. It was an explosive mixture, but not on the surface. Outwardly, Alex was twenty-two-carat gold sleek sophistication. Calm, concise, superbly controlled. Sometimes she wondered how she had ever been dumb enough to see other things in Alex. But eighteen-year-olds thought with their hearts and their bodies, not with their heads. They saw what they wanted to see. In her case, that had been a perfect world whose axis centred solely upon Alex. She hadn’t seen to either side. She hadn’t seen a single flaw. An amount of love which had bordered on obsession had blinded her.

It was starting to snow and she was getting angry about the persistent limousine still purring effortlessly along in her wake. Such nonsense! They had their orders, and like programmed robots they would go to ridiculous lengths to follow Alex’s instructions to the last letter. Her shoulders ached with the tension of careful driving, and that monster rolling along on her trail was an added irritant.

It was a lengthy drive to the Hampshire village where she now lived. She owned a half-share in an antiques showroom there. Business had never exactly boomed, but she was within convenient distance of her parents’ home. Nicky was very attached to his grandparents. He had strong ties here in England. Alex wouldn’t find it that easy to sever those ties, she reflected tautly.

She rounded a twisting corner, still mentally enumerating all the advantages she had over Alex in the parent competition, and there it was. A big black and white cow stuck squarely stationary, dead centre of the road. A soundless scream of horror dammed up in her throat as she spun the wheel in what seemed a hopeless attempt to avoid collision with both the cow and the limousine behind her. On the icy road surface the van slewed into a skid. The hedge and the sky hurtled in a fast blur through the windscreen towards her. Something struck her head and the blackness folded in.

* * *

“NICKY!” Kerry surfaced with the scream still in her throat, the cry she had never got to make, except in her own mind. Firm hands pressed her back into the bed and her wild, unbound torrent of curly Titian hair flamed out across the pillow, highlighting the stark pallor of her features. “Nicky?” she croaked fearfully again.

“Your son is quite safe, Mrs Veranchetti.” The voice was quiet, attached to a calm face beneath a nurse’s cap.

The breath rattled in her clogged throat. She raised a hand to cover her aching head, and came in contact with the plaster on her temples. “He’s really all right…?”

The nurse deftly straightened the bed. “He has a few bruises and he did get a fright.”

“Oh, no!” Tears gritted her eyes in a shocked surge. “I must go to him. Where is he?”

“You must stay in bed, Mrs Veranchetti.”

“My name’s Taylor, not Veranchetti,” she countered shakily. “And I want to be with my son.”

The door opened. A tall, spare man in a white coat entered. “So, you’re back with us again, Mrs Veranchetti,” he pronounced with a jovial smile. “You’ve been unconscious for a few hours. You had a lucky escape.”

“Mrs Taylor,” the nurse stressed rather drily, making Kerry redden, “wishes to see her son.”

“Your son’s father is with him,” the doctor announced. “You have nothing to worry about. Everything’s under control.”

“F*****-father…Alex?” Kerry gasped incredulously. “He’s here?”

“He arrived two hours ago and your little boy is fine, Mrs…er…Mrs Taylor.” He quirked a brow at the nurse, as if he was humouring some feminist display, and lifted Kerry’s wrist.

Alex was here. Hell, where was here? She couldn’t be that far from home. How could Alex be here? What time of day was it? Spock would have had a problem beaming up this fast! She sighed. Alex would have been informed immediately of the accident, with his own staff on the scene.

“Calm down, Mrs Taylor. I’ve told you there’s nothing whatsoever to worry about. We intend to keep you in overnight purely for observation.”

“I can’t stay in…does that mean Nicky’s ready to go home?”

“His father said he would take responsibility.”

Something akin to panic assailed Kerry. Would Alex blame her for the accident? No, how could he do that? It wasn’t her fault that she had been faced with a straying cow. Or her fault his wretched henchmen had been crawling up her bumper! But Alex, here in the same building…her blood ran cold.

“I think a sedative would be a good idea,” the doctor murmured, as if she had suddenly gone deaf.

“I don’t want a sedative.” She started to sit up again. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ill.”

“You’re still in shock, Mrs Taylor.”

Ignoring him, she wrenched back the covers. Her head was swimming. She ought to be with Nicky. She stilled. Not if Alex was there, too. She wasn’t up to that. After four years, she would sooner face an oncoming train than Alex. Oddly enough, their last meeting had been in a hospital, too, staged hours after Nicky’s birth. Her temples pounded with driven tension. Absently, she righted the bedding again in cowardice.

“Please lie down.” The nurse’s tone was softly soothing, implying that she was some kind of trying hysteric.

“You won’t let him in?” She collapsed back heavily again, the fight drained from her.

“Who?”

“My ex-husband.” She shut her eyes. She was both embarrassed and wretched. It wasn’t adult. It wasn’t normal to be this afraid of a mere meeting. But, nevertheless, fear was a wild creature within her. Nebulous, instinctive, illogical.

“If that’s your wish.” The older man met the nurse’s eyes. Neither of them saw the point of telling the patient that her ex-husband had already been in for a considerable length of time while she still lay unconscious.

Kerry breathed again, although she was still trembling, wrenched by the knowledge of Nicky’s distress and her own absence from his side. A needle pricked her arm and she shuddered in reflex reaction before her lashes slowly dipped.

“She’s terrified of him,” the nurse said in an avid undertone. “Did you notice that? I wonder what…?”

“Ours not to reason why, nurse,” he parried drily. “And Mrs Veranchetti is obviously a very emotional woman.”

The blonde staff nurse continued to study Kerry with overt curiosity. Her narrow-boned and slight body barely made a decent impression on the bed. She looked too youthful to be a divorcee, but the masses of flamboyant and beautiful hair and the delicately pointed face were undeniably stunning. Though Alex Veranchetti was equally worthy of remark, the nurse allowed with a reflective smile.

She had never met a more staggeringly attractive man. Those eyes, she recalled, that delicious growling accent. But she hadn’t fancied him quite so much when he stood silently staring down at his ex-wife, not a muscle moving on his face, just staring in a set, uncommonly intent yet unemotional fashion, as if she was nothing whatsoever to do with him. Only when he had enquired if a specialist had been called had she noticed his pallor. But while he had consulted with the doctor he had studiously removed his eyes from the bed, and he had not looked back there again.

It was early evening when Kerry awoke. Light was fading beyond the uncurtained window high up in the wall. Memory came flooding back. Nicky. Alex. She glanced at her watch and found it missing, a patient’s plastic identity tag clasped to her wrist in its place. This time she registered that she was in a private room, and she wondered how she would settle the bill.

Steven would be worrying about her, too. Her partner in Antiques Fayre was a furniture restorer. He used the workshop at the rear of the showroom, and by now, although time frequently had no meaning for him, he would be wondering where she was. She had promised to call in on the way home. A drone of voices could be heard beyond the door. She resolved to ask for her clothes. She had to get home, find out about Nicky…oh, a dozen things!

As the door opened she sat up, wincing at the renewed throb behind her temples. A light came on, momentarily blinding her before she froze in astonishment, the colour draining from her cheeks.

“I see you are awake,” Alex commented, glossing over her incoherent gasp of shock at his appearance. He shut the door, and for several unbearably tense seconds he simply remained at the foot of the bed, studying her.

Dull-eyed and trembling, she dropped her head. He was etched in her mind’s eyes with the utmost clarity. He looked so damnably beautiful. It wasn’t the usual word to describe the male of the species, but it was particularly relevant to Alex. He had the dark, perfect features of a fallen angel, and the lean, honed-to-sleekness elegance of a graceful leopard. He was unchanged. He hadn’t dropped the remorseless, glittering stare which looked right through her, either.

She could not help but relive their last meeting. “I have made arrangements for you to return to England with our son,” he had delivered coldly then before leaving her again, impervious to the tears and the agony he must have seen in her face as he destroyed her last hopes of a reconciliation. Her hands clutched together convulsively. Pull yourself together, a little voice warned. He had pulled her apart. She was still a heap of jittery and torn pieces, unlikely ever to achieve wholeness again. To do that, you had to forgive yourself first. You had to like yourself. You had to put the past in its proper place. And Kerry hadn’t managed any of that.

The gleaming, amber-gold challenge of his gaze imparted one undeniable message. He hadn’t forgotten. She hadn’t forgotten, either. How could she forget that she had wrecked their marriage by doing something quite beyond the bounds of forgiveness?

“I am told that you didn’t want to see me.” The heavy silence buzzed back into her ears.

It was cat and mouse. Go on, snap me up, Alex. You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again. What’s holding you up now? She threaded a nervous hand through the wild tumble of her hair. Accidentally looking up, she caught his magnificent lion-gold eyes following the careless movement of her fingers.

“I hardly thought that you’d want to see me.” She chickened out of a direct attack. She didn’t really have the right to condemn. It was that sense of being in the wrong, that enforced acceptance of blame which had almost driven her to the brink of a nervous breakdown when she was pregnant with Nicky.

Alex strolled fluidly over to the window to stare out, presenting his hard-edged profile to her. “Naturally I wish to discuss the accident with you.”

She shut her eyes on an agonising surge of bitterness. Of course, what else. Four years ago he had refused even to see her to discuss their marriage. He had denied her calls, returned her letters and made it cruelly clear to her that he no longer considered her as his wife. But…naturally…he could pitch himself up to the contaminated air she breathed now to request an explanation of an accident.

“You find something amusing in this?” Alex shot her a grimly implacable glance.

She went even paler. “No, there’s nothing funny about any of it. It’s quite simple really. I went round a corner and there was a cow in the middle of the road. When I tried to avoid it, the van skidded and went sideways, making it virtually impossible for the…car behind us to avoid hitting us.”

“And this is all you have to say?” Alex prompted.

She had no doubt that he had heard a different story from his security men. A story which showed her in the worst of lights. Perhaps they had implied that she had been driving too fast on icy roads, recklessly endangering Nicky’s life.

“Yes, that’s all I have to say,” she agreed heavily, pleating the starched white sheet beneath her hand with restless fingers. “I don’t believe I could have avoided the collision.”

“My staff did not mention an animal…”

Her control snapped. “Well, I can assure you that there was one, but I know who you’re going to believe, don’t I? So it would be a waste of time pleading my own case!” she threw at him bitterly. “Now, if we can cut the kangaroo court, perhaps you’d tell me how Nicky is.”

Disconcerted by her abrupt loss of temper, his straight ebony brows drew together above his narrowed eyes. “I will not have you speak to me in such a tone,” he breathed icily.

She hadn’t intended to shout, but she found that she didn’t feel like apologising. They weren’t married now. The past could not permit them to be even distantly polite with each other. Alex had made it that way by shutting her out and communicating with her only through third parties. His unyielding hostility had killed the love she had once had for him. She had accepted the new order. He had no right to subject her to a face-to-face meeting now.

“There’s nothing very much that you can do about it, Alex,” she dared. “I don’t jump through hoops when you tell me to any more, I don’t…”

“Do continue. You’re becoming extremely interesting,” he derided softly, but his tone was misleading.

Kerry’s voice had trailed away to silence under the smouldering blaze of fury she had ignited in Alex’s eyes. Nobody talked to Alex like that. In all probability, nobody ever had. And certainly not the wife he had repudiated. Her fiery head lowered again. What had got into her? If her solicitor had been here, he would have been white to the gills over such reckless provocation.

“I’ve got nothing more to say,” she muttered through compressed lips.

His gaze rested on her rigidity, then sank to her unsteady hands, and an expression of bleak dissatisfaction tautened his hard bone structure. “Nicky is with your parents. There was no need for him to remain in hospital.”

“My parents?” Kerry echoed in dismay. “He’s with my parents?”

Alex elevated a brow. “Did I not say so?”

“But…but that means…” She swallowed hard, but her face was full of unconcealed horror. “You must have gone there as well.”

“Yes, and what a fascinating experience that was.” Alex savoured the admission visibly. “You never told them the truth, did you? They have no idea why we are divorced. They also appear to be under the illusion that you chose to divorce me.”

Her heartbeat was thudding in her ears. She had no defence against his condemnation, and could only imagine how her parents would have greeted Alex’s sudden descent. They would have been polite and they would have been very hospitable. Her father was a retired vicar. Neither of her parents approved of the divorce, or of the fashion in which Nicky was being raised by parents who never even spoke to each other. They had never left Kerry in any doubt that they still regarded Alex as her husband. For better or for worse. Vows taken for a lifetime and not to be discarded at the first hiccup in marital harmony. Stricken nausea churned in her stomach at the idea of Alex and her parents getting within talking distance of each other.

“I couldn’t tell them!” she burst out on the peak of a sob which quivered through her tense body. “It was bad enough when I first came home. The truth would have shattered them.”

“The truth shattered me as well,” he delivered harshly, and turned aside from her. “But to return to the present…had you given me an opportunity to speak earlier, you would have realised that I do not blame you for the accident.”

CHAPTER TWO

SUCH unexpected generosity upon Alex’s part shook her. Surprise showed in her strained features, and his hard mouth took on a sardonic curve. “Nicky gave me his version of the accident. It matched yours. The men concerned will be dismissed,” he revealed flatly.

“For…for what?” Kerry whispered, doubly shaken.

“You could both have been killed,” Alex retorted harshly. “But, apart from that, I will not tolerate lies or half-truths from anyone close to me.”

Or deception, or betrayal. There were no second chances with Alex; Kerry knew that to her cost. In the pool of silence, she was pained by his detachment, the almost chilling politeness which distinguished his attitude. She meant nothing to him, but Nicky did. Nicky was a Veranchetti, and Alex’s precious son and heir.

“Your van is, I believe, beyond repair,” he continued with the same devotion to practical matters. “I will have it replaced.”

She bit her lip. “That’s unnecessary.”

“Allow me to decide what is necessary,” Alex cut in ruthlessly. “Do you think I do not know how you live? Were it not for my awareness that Nicky goes without nothing that he needs, I would have objected to your independence.”

She said nothing. She was infuriated by his arrogant downgrading of the business she had worked hard to build up. He could keep his wretched money! She had never wanted it. It was a matter of pride to her that she was self-sufficient. And by being so she had won the cherished anonymity of reverting to her maiden name and finding somewhere to live where she was simply a woman living alone with her child. There were no headlines in Kerry’s life now.

“I want to go home tonight,” she told him.

“That would be most foolish.”

She thrust up her chin. “I have business which happens to be very important to take care of tomorrow.”

“You have a partner.” There was an icy whiplash effect to the reminder. She reminded herself that Alex did not like anyone to argue with him.

“He’ll be away tomorrow. In any case, I want to take Nicky home.”

Alex viewed her grimly. “Nicky is in bed, and perfectly happy to be with his grandparents. Leave him there until you are fit again,” he advised. “Even to me, it is obvious that you are still in a very emotional state.”

A humourless laugh leapt from her lips. “And you’re surprised?”

He lifted a broad shoulder in an unfeeling shrug. All of a sudden Kerry was on the brink of tears, and she wished that he would leave. So many times she had imagined what she might say to Alex if she ever received the opportunity. Not once had she dreamt that it might turn out to be so harrowing. A barrier the size of the Berlin Wall separated them now. Alex despised her. Alex, she sensed with an inner shudder, still believed that she had got off lightly, without the punishment he would have liked to have dealt her.

“You will be hearing from my lawyers in the near future,” Alex said, consulting the slim, gold watch on his wrist, and she had an insane vision of legal reps leaping out from beneath her bed. “It’s time that Nicky’s future is discussed. He will soon be of an age to start school.”

Dumbly she nodded, without noticing the intent appraisal he gave her. “Yes. I know.”

“I am afraid I have an appointment in London now.” He was looking at the door, and she had the peculiar suspicion that Alex, insensitive or otherwise, was suddenly very eager to be gone. “I have naturally taken care of the bill here. When you are home again, I will call on you there,” he completed almost abruptly.

Her lashes fluttered dazedly. “My home? But why?” she demanded apprehensively.

“I will phone before I call,” he responded drily, and then he was gone.

Had he suddenly accepted the need for consultation between them concerning Nicky? Dear God, she preferred his use of third parties now! Fearfully, she wondered what exchanges had taken place between Alex and her parents, and whether something they had said had brought about this surprising change of heart. She shrank from the threat of another distressing session with Alex. It was much too late now for her to be civilised. She didn’t want Alex visiting her humble home, invading her cherished privacy and doubtless bringing alive again all those horrible feelings she had become practised at suppressing.

“Well, hi…”

Kerry glanced up in astonishment to see her half-sister posing in the doorway, her tall, slender figure enveloped in an oversized fur coat. “Vickie?”

“No need to look so surprised,” she reproved, strolling in. “I came home for the weekend. I got the shock of my life when I walked in and found Alex sitting there. When I realised he was calling back here to actually see you, I reckoned you’d need back-up. I’ve been sitting out in the car park waiting for his car to leave. He didn’t stay long, did he?”

Kerry was very relieved to see Vickie. Her sister was the one person alive who could understand what she must be feeling now. Yet, paradoxically, they had never been particularly close. Kerry had barely been thirteen when Vickie left home, keen to escape her frequent clashes with strict parental authority. Since then fences had gradually been mended, but Vickie still remained something of a mystery to Kerry. Cool, offhand, not given to personal confidences and very much a party girl, Vickie had, nevertheless, become Kerry’s confidante. But the secrets they shared had still failed to break down Vickie’s essential reserve. After a brief phase of greater intimacy during her marriage, Vickie had once more become a rather patronising older sister with whom Kerry had little in common. They invariably met only in their parents’ home. But the watery smile curving Kerry’s mouth was warmly affectionate.

“No, he didn’t stay long. He only wanted to question me about the accident.”

Vickie tossed her pale golden hair, her bright blue eyes pinned piercingly to her younger sister’s face. “And that’s all?” she probed tautly. “He didn’t touch on anything else?”

Kerry didn’t pretend not to understand her meaning. “Why should he have? We are divorced,” she sighed. “But he still loathes me. I could see it in him. The condemnation, the disgust, the…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, give it a rest!” The interruption was harsh, exasperated, as Vickie flicked a lighter to the cigarette in her mouth and inhaled deeply. “Why wind yourself up about it? With Nicky in existence, you were bound to meet sooner or later,” she pointed out, and shrugged. “You know, I couldn’t sit about at home any longer listening to the parents pontificating on the possibility of you and Alex getting back together again. The two of them are so na;auive sometimes. Goodness knows what Dad was saying to Alex before I arrived. He’s been dying for years to preach at him.”

Guilty colour marked Kerry’s complexion as she watched her sister pace restlessly. It must have been very embarrassing for Vickie to walk into such a fraught scenario. After all, she knew the truth behind her sister’s broken marriage, and she had loyally kept that secret when she might genuinely have felt it her right to speak up. Kerry swallowed the constriction in her throat. She would never be free of her own conscience, as it was.

“Do you know what was said?” she pressed anxiously. Her father was a warm and kindly man, but her divorce had shocked him to the core. Her refusal to discuss her failed marriage had created a constraint between them which had not lessened over the years.

“Alex didn’t drop you in it, obviously.” Vickie made no bones about what Kerry feared. “They’d have been in need of resuscitation when I got there if he had! Stop fussing, Kerry. Their fond hopes aren’t likely to be realised. Do you know why they’re not here now? They knew Alex was coming so they decided to stay home. But he’ll hardly be visiting again, will he?”

So relieved was she by her sister’s assurance that Alex had not reviled her in any way that Kerry barely heard what followed. She slid her feet over the edge of the bed and breathed in. “Will you give me a lift home?”

“Sure. I brought your handbag and your clothes. They gave them to Alex. I’ll go out to the car and collect them. I wasn’t sure you would be fit enough to leave.” Vickie eyed her pallor consideringly. “You don’t look too hot.”

“I’ll be fine after a night’s sleep. Anyway, I’ve got that American buyer coming tomorrow. I can’t afford not to be there for him.”

Vickie made no comment. She had never shown much interest in her sister’s business. It was in no way as successful as her own modelling agency. But the dealer, Willard Evans, who regularly bought at Antiques Fayre, was a very important customer to Kerry. It might irritate Steven that Willard probably made a three hundred per cent profit on their finds back home in the States, but Kerry never looked a gift horse in the mouth. Since the building of the new bypass they had considerably less passing trade, and she was equally aware that, talented restorer or not, Steven was no businessman.

They were generally overstocked. Steven bought what he fancied at auctions, rather than what was likely to sell. Without the dealer’s visits she believed they would have run into trouble over the poorest months of trading, although she had to admit that their bank manager had always been very reasonable when they had exceeded their overdraft facility.

She thought longingly of home, and wished she could go there, instead of back to the empty cottage. Unfortunately there would be too many questions after Alex’s visit. She couldn’t face those at a moment when she was wretchedly conscious of the mess she had made of her life. Confession might be good for the soul, but it would create great unhappiness for her parents. She seriously doubted that they would find it possible to forgive her. How could they understand what she could not understand herself?

She had been brought up strictly. Her mother had met John Taylor when she was already well into her thirties. He had been a widower with a three-year-old daughter and a busy parish to maintain. Many had saluted his second marriage as one of extreme good sense. Kerry had never been in any doubt, however, that her parents were quietly devoted to each other. Within a year of their wedding Kerry had been born. Her childhood might reasonably have been described as having been idyllic. Unlike Vickie, she had had few stormy encounters with their parents during the teenage years.

Vickie had left home to become a model. In no time at all her true English rose beauty had ferried her up to the top of the ladder. By the time she was twenty-two, Vickie was a success story, renting a small apartment off Grosvenor Place. The summer that Kerry finished school, Vickie had suggested that Kerry use her apartment while she was abroad.

“It’s lying empty, and to tell the truth I’d prefer it occupied,” she had admitted. “You’ll look after my things. Isn’t it about time you cut loose from the nest? If you don’t watch out, they’ll stifle you.”

The Taylors had approved neither of Kerry’s delight nor Vickie’s generosity. But Kerry had been obstinate in her desire to spend some time in London. She had even managed to find herself a temporary job in a nearby travel agency.

“Just wait until you see the guy who uses the penthouse on the top floor,” Vickie had murmured before she left, giving Kerry the lowdown on her neighbours. “He’s devastating, but I’m never here long enough to make an impression. Anyhow,” she had laughed, “I guess he’s not really my type. He’s as conservative as hell. I stuck my neck out once and invited him to a party. He passed, giving me the hint that I shouldn’t have asked in the first place. Watch you don’t make a lot of noise. He also happens to own this building.”

Kerry had almost sent Alex flying on the day she moved in. She had come rushing full-tilt out of the lift as he was trying to enter it, and they had collided, sending the file in his hand skimming over the floor. With her usual sunny cheer she had scrabbled about picking up scattered papers and chattering about the amount of work he brought home with him. She had received the most glacial smile.

It had had no effect on her at all. She had taken her first proper look at him and her knees had gone wobbly. Devastating, Vickie had said rather scornfully. That combination of black hair and golden eyes had more than devastated Kerry. “Gosh, you’d make a marvellous portrait study,” she had said crassly, getting abstractedly back into the lift with him.

“I assumed you were going out,” he had drawled flatteningly. “Do you normally speak to strangers like this?”

“Oh, I’m Kerry Taylor, Vickie’s kid sister…you must know Vickie. Tall, blonde; she’s a model. She lives on the fourth floor.”

“I do not,” he had interposed drily.

She had reddened. “Well, I’m staying here this summer. I thought you might be wondering who I was. That’s why I explained.”

“Your floor,” Alex had slotted into the nervous flood, stopping the lift on the correct level and making it impossible for her to do anything but remove herself.

His unfriendliness had been an unpleasant surprise. Kerry had been born and brought up in a small community where she knew everybody. The anonymity of city life had been a shock to her system. But in her inimitable way she had made friends wherever she could. The security men in the foyer had quickly got on to first-name terms with her as she flashed in and out, generally late wherever she was going or rushing back for something she had forgotten.

Alex had only used his apartment when he was at his London office. She hadn’t known that then. Nor had she even begun to realise how wealthy he was. She had seen him regularly, stepping in and out of his chauffeur-driven car. And the women…Vickie had not warned her about the women.

She came in late one night from a party, and ended up sharing the lift with Alex and a svelte brunette. It had hit her that night that she was always looking out for Alex, and that the days she didn’t see him were distinctly empty ones. Meeting him with the sort of mature woman she naturally could not compete with had turned her stomach over sickly. She hadn’t been that na;auive. She had known very well that he wasn’t bringing a woman home in the early hours to play Scrabble. And it had hurt her. She could still remember standing in that lift, mutinously not speaking as she usually did, and feeling hatefully, agonisingly young.

“Goodnight, Kerry,” Alex had murmured silkily, almost as if he knew what was on her mind.

She hadn’t slept that night. She had paced the lounge, asking herself what kind of baby she was to let herself become obsessed by a male who didn’t know she was alive.

A week later she had accidentally locked herself out of the apartment. The caretaker had been out, the security guard sympathetic but unable to help beyond offering to force the door for her. In her innocence she had imagined that Alex might have keys and, screwing up her courage, she had gone upstairs. His manservant had only allowed her as far as the hall. Alex had frowned the instant he saw her. “To what do I owe the honour?” he had demanded drily.

But he had laughed when she muttered about her hope that he had a key. He had asked her if she would like to join him for supper. While she ate he had dredged out her life story and her ambition to study Fine Art at university. His manservant had intervened to announce that the caretaker was now available, and Alex had appraised her disappointed face and said, “Would you like to dine with me some evening?”

“When?” she had breathed, making no attempt to conceal her delight, and he had laughed again. That was how it had begun.

From the start she had feared that Alex thought she was too immature for him. At thirty, he was already head of the empire his late father had left him. As the eldest in his family he had assumed weighty responsibilities at an early age. In comparison, Kerry had been between school and university, and as carefree and unfailingly cheerful as Alex was serious. It was an attraction of opposites. Her dippy sense of humour and her penchant for disorganisation had fascinated Alex…but much against his will.

Their short courtship had been erratic. Alex had tried to keep their relationship cool. Kerry had been wildly and quite frantically in love with him, and probably the whole world including Alex had been painfully conscious of the fact. The one strong card she had had then, without even realising it, was Alex’s almost fanatical possessiveness. One afternoon her door had been answered by another man when Alex called unexpectedly.

Roy had been one of Vickie’s friends. He had only come to collect stuff that Vickie had let him store in her guest room. Kerry had merely offered him coffee. Alex had misunderstood. By the time that was cleared up, all pretence of playing it cool was over. Alex was laying down the law like Moses off the Mount. Somehow he had started to kiss her, and not as he had indulgently kissed her before. Things had got out of hand and perhaps, knowing Alex, they had done so more by design than accident. He had swept her off to bed in a passionate and stormy mood. Afterwards he had looked down at her and murmured, “Now you are mine, and damn your age, we’re going to get married.”

It had been a breathless, whirlwind romance. Alex had bowled her parents over with his well-bred drawl and cool self-assurance. Kerry had not had a similar effect upon his family. She had soon appreciated that, behind the polite, cosmopolitan smiles, they all thought Alex was marrying beneath him and, what was more, choosing a female totally untutored in the talents required of a Veranchetti wife.

But, possessed as she had believed herself to be of Alex’s love, Kerry had had no doubts. Their beautiful wedding had been followed by a fabulous honeymoon in the West Indies. Alex had then calmly dumped her in Rome with his mother. Athene had disliked Kerry on sight and nothing had given Athene more pleasure than when she was guilty of some social or fashionable gaffe. Within six months, even Kerry’s even temper was strained. Confined as she was to an existence of idle ease, it had seemed to her that Alex had only married her to imprison her. He jetted back from abroad, swept her arrogantly off to bed and brushed aside her justifiable complaints with a maddening air of masculine indulgence.

He thought she was too young to run a household of her own. He didn’t think she ought to travel with him. All the women in his family had always stayed very properly at home, awaiting their menfolk. The first cracks had come early in their marriage. Lonely, isolated by her poor Italian and family indifference, Kerry had been quietly clambering up the walls when Vickie took a job with a Venetian fashion house.

Against Alex’s wishes she had gone to Venice to spend a week with her sister. Alex had flown into Venice and dragged her out of Vickie’s apartment as if she was a misbehaving child. She had flatly refused to go home with him. She had not given way. As a result, Alex had labelled Vickie a bad influence.

Amazingly he had, however, agreed to buy them their own house shortly after that episode. They had moved to Florence, and while Alex had grudgingly said that Vickie was welcome to visit, he had not been prepared for Kerry to visit Vickie in Venice again. The crunch had come over Vickie’s birthday party. Alex had been in London when she phoned him to ask him to attend the party with her.

She had already been in Venice when she called, which had not precisely soothed Alex’s ruffled feathers. “You realise that if you remain there you are putting our marriage in serious jeopardy,” he had smouldered down the phone. “Per Dio I was wrong to marry a headstrong teenager, but do we have to advertise our differences to the world?”

He had also cast several unforgivable remarks on her sister’s moral principles. Kerry had come off the phone angry and upset.

“I warned you,” Vickie had drawled ruefully. “Foreigners are different. Alex would have given you a marvellous affair, but he’s no fun at all as a husband. My God, he’s locked you up and thrown away the key! He’s made you pregnant because he wants to tie you down even more. Don’t you see what he’s doing to you? He’s suffocating you!”

Sooner than cast a wet blanket over Vickie’s enjoyment that evening, she had done her best to put up a sparkling front. She remembered little about the later stages of that crowded party. She did recall dancing with an American photographer called Jeff, and he had made her laugh. She must have had too much to drink. The next morning, Vickie had frantically shaken her awake and Jeff had been lying in the bed beside her. A split second later Alex had appeared in the doorway, and if she hadn’t been pregnant, she honestly believed that Alex would have killed her there and then in the kind of crime of passion Latin countries understood. Without a single word he had turned on his heel and strode out of the apartment.

Jeff had beat an incredibly fast retreat. Kerry had simply been in shock, horrified that she had gone to bed with another man. Vickie had blamed herself for the whole scenario.

“I didn’t give a hoot what you did last night,” she had cried. “I thought it was time you got to let your hair down, but how could I have known that Alex was going to arrive at seven in the morning and practically force his way in?”

It hadn’t been Vickie’s fault. In a maudlin, depressed state of mind, Kerry had had to accept that she had fallen into bed with a virtual stranger. It was an unbelievable six months before she set eyes on Alex again. She had returned to their home in Florence to find that he had moved out. Within a week a lawyer arrived and served separation papers on her. It had seemed so important to her then to try and tell Alex that Jeff had not made love to her. A woman knew when she had made love, just as Kerry had known later that day when she calmed down enough to be sensible.

In response she had tried hard to trace Jeff before she left Venice, desperately grasping at the hope that he would tell her exactly what had taken place between them. Unpleasant as she would have found such an embarrassing confrontation, at least she would have had the proper facts. And at the back of her mind had lurked the rather na;auive prayer that Jeff might have some mitigating circumstance to proffer, or even some innocent explanation which would turn the entire episode into a storm in a teacup.

But she hadn’t even had a surname or an address to work on. Vickie had disclaimed all knowledge of him, confessing that she didn’t even know who had brought him to her party, and voicing the opinion that it was a matter best left alone. In her unsuccessful efforts to find him, Kerry had clutched at straws, stubbornly refusing to see the point. That she had been touched at all would be sufficient for Alex. A kiss, a caress, a shameful frolic in the dark…it made no difference. It was not the degree of the offence, but the betrayal of trust.

Those months of pregnancy in Florence had been a nightmare. She had stayed indoors all the time, torturing herself hour by hour with guilt, and praying that Alex would eventually relent enough to visit her. He hadn’t. His family had left her alone, too. Heaven knew what he had told them. She had finally had to face the fact that Alex had not been satisfied with his marriage before Vickie’s party. Why then should he even be prepared to listen to her when she had broken her marital vows?

“We’re here. Why are you so damned quiet?” Vickie complained.

Sprung back to the present, Kerry peered out at the gloom of her unlit cottage. Vickie dropped her bag on her lap. “Thanks,” Kerry sighed. “Are you going home again?”

“No, I’m driving back to town.” Vickie stared at her with disconcerting anger. “Honestly, you look practically suicidal. Alex isn’t worth any more grief. He was a lousy husband. He was the most selfish, tyrannical, narrow-minded bastard I ever came across. I thought he was about to strangle you that day!”

“Vickie,” she implored wearily.

“You can’t still be that sensitive. So you went to bed with another man! Do you think darling Alex spent all those business trips of his sleeping alone? You still have a lot to learn about rich European men,” she condemned cynically.

Sometimes she had wished he had killed her that day. Instead he had deprived her of the one thing she could not live without then. Him.

* * *

REFUSING EVEN A CUP of coffee, Vickie drove off. Disappointed by her quick departure, Kerry tiredly unlocked her own front door. Empty. She felt so achingly empty. The cottage was freezing cold. She didn’t bother putting on a light. Lifting the phone off the hook in the hall, she passed by into her room and stripped on the spot before sliding into the icy unwelcome of the bed. Ever since the divorce she had kept a strict control on her emotions, and it had worked. Nothing had ever hurt her since. It hadn’t worked with Alex today. It would have been a wondrous gift to be frozen and emotion-free with him.

She fell into a doze around dawn. The doorbell woke her up. Her drowsy eyes fixed on the alarm clock, but it had stopped. She crawled out of bed, shivering in the morning chill. Yanking on her robe, she hurried to answer the door.

“I did attempt to phone when I realised that you had left the hospital last night,” Alex drawled sardonically. “But your phone appears to be lying off the hook.”

“Alex…” Kerry curled back behind the door, much as if a black mamba had appeared on the step. Peering round the edge, she said, “Could…could you come back in an hour?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” His hand firmly thrust the door wider and he stepped in, flicking an unreadable glance over her. “I warned you that you should stay in hospital.”

Alex could always be depended on to say, I told you so. She reddened, miserably conscious of being caught on the hop. He looked sickeningly immaculate in an expensively tailored dove-grey suit. “I’ll go and get dressed,” she muttered, and pressed the door of the lounge open reluctantly. “You can wait in there.”

After a quick wash she pulled on jeans and a sweater. When she walked into the lounge he was standing almost on top of the electric fire with all three bars burning. She studied his dark, urbane face and clear, golden eyes from beneath the veil of her lashes. Tension hummed in the air in a tangible wave.

Abruptly she dragged her eyes from him. “Exactly why are you here, Alex?”

CHAPTER THREE

“I WANT to discuss Nicky with you.”

Kerry sank nervously down on to an overstuffed chesterfield and studied Alex’s hand-stitched shoes. Icy fingers of dread were clutching at her heart. “I don’t feel so great today,” she muttered apologetically. “Couldn’t we leave this to some other time?”

Alex expelled his breath harshly. “No, we cannot.”

“My throat’s sore.” She edged up shakily again on the limp lie. “I’m going to make coffee. Do you want one?”

“You’re…”

She walked out of the room and slid down heavily again on to a chair in the kitchen. Alex was here to tell her that he intended to take Nicky away from her. It would be very like Alex to deliver the death-blow personally. It still astonished her that he had not sought custody when Nicky was born. In an Italian court, as a foreigner with a charge of adultery hanging over her, she would not have had a prayer of retaining her son. Last night she had not let herself think about what he might mean. She had blocked the fear out. But was it likely that Alex would condescend to visit merely to discuss nursery education? Who was she trying to kid?

“I don’t want coffee,” Alex said icily from somewhere behind her.

“I don’t really care what you want or don’t want,” she admitted without even turning her head. “But you are not getting Nicky. I’ll fight you to the death before I’ll let you have him.”

“This is scarcely a discussion.”

“Look it up in a dictionary, Alex,” she advised tonelessly. “You’ll discover you have never had one.”

He pulled out a chair opposite and sat down. He looked alien against the backdrop of her homely kitchen. In the pin-drop silence she studied the scarred pine table surface. Alex twice in twenty-four hours was too much to be borne. He should not have come without the prior warning he had promised. Overly conscious of her sleepy, make-up-bare face and jeans, she was mortified. It annoyed her to think that he was probably looking at her now and reflecting that he had had a lucky escape.

“Have you finished?”

She wanted to smash something. The derisive tone bit like acid. “Just get on with what you came to say,” she prompted thinly. “I’ve got to be at the showroom for eleven.”

The dark-lashed brilliance of his eyes clashed with hers. She was too angry to try and veil the loathing in her own gaze. His proud bone structure hardened. “I believe you know what I am here to…talk about.”

She went back to scrutinising the table, her slight frame taut as a drawn bow.

“I’m no longer prepared to play so minor a part in my son’s life. Once he starts school, how often will I be able to see him?”

“Holidays…weekends,” she supplied woodenly.

“Apart from the fact that that is insufficient, I happen to live abroad. When he is at school he won’t be able to fly hundreds of miles just for a couple of days. It is time that changes were made,” he delivered in the same coolly measured tone. “Why should I suffer my son to become a stranger to me? It is not my fault that we are divorced. I remind you of that not out of any desire to be unpleasant. I merely state a fact.”

Kerry had gone very pale. Beneath her sweater a trickle of perspiration ran down between her breasts. He knew exactly how and when to insert the knife. Alex considered himself wronged. She was the sinner, but she was most unfairly the guardian of their son.

“What is this man Glenn to you?”

Her Titian head flew back in surprise. “Steven? What has Steven got to do with this?” she demanded blankly.

Alex lounged back in the chair, perfectly calm, one brown hand resting loosely on the table. He might have been sitting in on a board meeting. “I asked you a question.”

“Well, you can go sing for the answer!” she snapped lunging jerkily out of her chair. Suddenly she saw what Alex was getting at. If he took her to court, he would do whatever he had to do to put up the toughest fight. If that meant smearing her reputation to suggest that she was an unfit mother, he would not retreat from the challenge. When Alex went out to get anything, he put his whole heart in the venture.

Steven was a good friend and her partner. Occasionally he ate here. Sometimes he took her out for a meal when Nicky was away, but those social pairings took place with his girlfriend Barbara’s agreement. A nurse with the International Red Cross, Barbara spent very little time in England. They had been in love since they were teenagers, but it was an erratic relationship, spiced by long periods of silence because Steven was reluctant to embrace the responsibility of marriage. He was content as he was, and too lazy to stray when Barbara was unavailable. But why should Kerry explain Steven’s love life to Alex? It was none of Alex’s business.

A hard hand spun her round. His fingers exerted pressure upon her narrow shoulder-blade. Tawny-gold eyes glittered down at her in a mixture of barely leashed fury and disbelief. In a sense she could sympathise with his incredulity. Four years ago she would not have dared to speak to him like that. But when she looked at the situation as it was, she saw no reason to hide her antipathy and her resentment. Alex would do what he wanted to do, regardless of how she behaved. He had proved that when he had ended their marriage, he had proved it continually in the years since.

“Let go of me!” she ordered, losing confidence as she collided for a heartstopping moment with his hard appraisal. Out of nowhere an odd breathlessness afflicted her, as if his fingers were squeezing her throat instead of her shoulder. “Alex, if you don’t let go of me…I’ll slap an assault charge on you…I’ve got nothing to lose!”

Dark colour overlaid his bronzed cheekbones, and an unholy flash of naked, seething anger lit his piercing gaze. “Shall I tell you what I am going to do?” His roughened demand was thickly accented as he stared down at her, releasing his hold upon her with a carelessness which revealed his contempt for her unnecessary threat. “I am going to do what I should have done when my son was born. Take you back and make you regret the day that you ever dared to forget who you belonged to…”

Kerry backed off against the kitchen cupboard, nervously licking her dry lips. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Alex cast her a hard, contemptuous smile. With the venting of that aggressive declaration of intent, he appeared to have regained his equilibrium. “Do you doubt that I can do it? I can’t think of why I omitted to do it before. I can have my son in my home. He can even have what he wants. And Nicky wants his mother as well.”

Dazedly she surveyed him. “But we’re divorced.”

“I could marry you again. I’m prepared to do that to get my son. He’s still too young to be parted from you,” he murmured shortly.

A brittle, stifled laugh left her lips. “You’re crazy. I wouldn’t marry you again if the survival of the human race depended on it!”

A black brow lifted, a ruthless smile slanting his beautiful mouth. “But what about your survival, Kerry? How would you cope if I told your parents why I divorced you?”

Parchment-pale, her strained features reflected immediate horror. “Why should you do that? You never see them. It doesn’t matter to you what they think…”

“Yesterday it stuck in my throat to listen to your father talking about the sanctity of marriage,” he whipped back in silken derision. “Oh, I know very well what they think. That it was I who strayed into other beds. No doubt you came home and complained at length about the frequency of my trips abroad. They reached their own conclusions. Why did I sit and listen politely in silence to your parents protesting that it is very difficult for our son to be divided between two households? I didn’t owe you that silence. I owe you nothing.”

“Alex, I…”

He cut across her, “Last night I reached a decision. I will have my son and I will have you as well in the same house.”

She was trembling. Even hating him as she did, she could still appreciate that her father’s well-meant interference must have dealt a stinging blow to Alex’s pride. Alex had nothing to apologise for in terms of marital wrongdoing…at least nothing that could be proved and nothing major. His insensitivity towards her needs had not run to verbal or physical abuse. Dear heaven, she marvelled that he had remained silent about the real facts in the face of her father’s innocent provocation. What was happening now she didn’t really comprehend. It was too immense, too unexpected and too terrifying.

“I presume you understand me.” Alex sent her still figure a fulminating appraisal. “We will remarry or I will tell your parents what you are too ashamed to tell them. Perhaps it is time they were deprived of their na;auive illusions.”

Her lips parted. “You can’t threaten me like that. It’s blackmail…”

“Why not? If one may be blackmailed by the truth, let it be so.” Alex failed to flinch from her shocked condemnation. “Why should I be deprived of my son? If I take you to court. I am unlikely to win custody. It is very rare for a mother to lose her child. If I destroy your reputation to achieve my own ends, I not only embarrass my family, I sentence my son to the possession of a mother he can only be ashamed to own to in later years. Mud sticks,” he said succinctly, a fastidious flare to his nostrils. “I would be no cleaner than you if I began such a battle, and I have more pride in my family name. I will not dis[chhonour it with lurid publicity.”

She realised in stricken apprehension that Alex was not only coldly serious, he had mulled over the problem in depth. This was not an angry impulse to call her to heel. He wanted Nicky and he was not foolish enough to believe that he could separate his son from his mother without causing him a great deal of pain. In acceptance of the necessity he was prepared to take the two of them.

“Do you realise that my father has a heart condition?” she whispered shakily.

“I didn’t know, but that is irrelevant to me. Perhaps you should have thought of that four years ago,” he countered with chill emphasis. “I have more concern for my son, who is my family. To gain him I am prepared to use pressure, and let me assure you, cara, if you push me to it, I will carry through the threat. Why should I leave you to bask here in parental love and independence, raising my son as a foreigner in a…” Words appeared to fail Alex as he slashed a scornful glance round her kitchen. His mouth compressed. “My son should be in my home where he belongs, and he will be there soon if it is the last thing I do.”

Kerry was breathing fast and audibly. Alex had her symbolically up against a brick wall. No matter where she turned, she could see no hope of escape. Until now she had not known the depth of his bitterness. She had his son when she had no right to such a privilege. He had suffered by the loss of Nicky when she was the one in the wrong. She had never even begun to suspect that Alex felt as strongly about the situation. But how could she have? They hadn’t talked in all these years, and all this time Alex’s indignation had been damming up. Yesterday it had reached new heights in her parents’ home, and Kerry had foolishly given him the weapon. She had revealed how afraid she was of them learning the truth.

“You can’t do this,” she said weakly again.

Alex vented a humourless laugh. “Are you going to stop me? If you put your son’s needs first, you would not need to be forced. You would see that for him to have two parents and the background to which he was born would be indisputably preferable to what he has now. Shuttled between the two of us like a parcel, confused by two languages, two completely opposing life-styles!” he enumerated in savage repudiation. “How is he to know who he is?”

She did not need to have Alex throw the drawbacks of their divorce in her face. Did he regret the divorce now? Her soft mouth set cynically. He probably regretted the poor timing of her conception scant weeks before their break-up. Had she not been pregnant, he could have severed their ties for ever and remarried without a backward glance.

“So you have your choice,” he concluded drily.

She bit her lower lip painfully. “You haven’t given me a choice!” she argued furiously.

“You have until tomorrow to give me an answer.” Golden eyes held hers with cruel mockery.

“You ruthless bastard!” she burst out unsteadily.

Lean-fingered hands enclosed her wrists. He jerked her up against his hard, boldly masculine body as if she was a rag doll. “I’ll make you pay for every insult you give me now,” he swore roughly. “In my bed…whenever and however I want you.” Her darkened green eyes widened to their fullest extent. Alex’s fingers pushed up her chin, savage amusement burning in his gaze. “I shall enjoy that. Using you as you used me. I loved you. I loved you beyond the bounds of my own intelligence,” he confessed derisively. “I was so weak in the grip of that love that I was blind. But I don’t love you any more. I don’t need you, either. You have no hold on me now. You don’t even have my respect. If I were you, I wouldn’t incite my temper any further. You’ll only pay for it at a later date.”

The raw emphasis of the assurance left her boneless. His dark-timbred drawl had almost mesmerised her into complete paralysis. But, as his meaning sank in, her stomach somersaulted in violent rejection of his intent. A loud thump which she could hardly recognise as her own heartbeat was pounding in her eardrums.

“Capisci, cara?” With a cynical smile, he released her chin. “Tomorrow afternoon you can present yourself in my office in London. A car will call for you at two. You will leave Nicky with your parents and explain that you are attending a party with me tomorrow evening and staying overnight in London. I doubt if they will place any objection to the plan.”

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