Desires Captive
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘SAFFRON, my dear, you look wonderful—so like your mother!’

Behind the pride in her father’s voice, Saffron caught the note of pain and understood the reasons for it.

For so long they had been estranged from one another—almost from the day of her mother’s death when she was a schoolgirl of twelve and her father a busy, grief-stricken man of forty. Now that was over, miraculously they had found the way back to one another, and both of them treasured their new-found relationship.

‘You approve then?’ Saffron pirouetted in front of her father, the gauzy skirts of her dress fluttering round her body. The dress had been hideously expensive! She had bought it in London, especially for this occasion, which had been meant to herald the beginning of their long-awaited holiday together, but as he was the head of Wykeham Industries, Sir Richard’s time was not entirely his own, and on the eve of their departure for Rome he had had to tell Saffron that it would be several days before he could join her at their villa in southern Italy.

‘Most definitely,’ Sir Richard assured her. ‘And that’s after being presented with the bill.’ He marvelled at the change in her, from rebellious teenager to poised young woman; and it had happened almost overnight. He was so proud of this daughter, the child he had so nearly lost completely through his own bitterness following his wife’s death. He had forgotten that Saffron had lost a mother too, and his guilt showed a little in the concern with which he regarded her.

‘I am sorry about our holiday,’ he added, ‘but with luck I shouldn’t need to be in San Francisco for long. You’ll enjoy yourself tonight at least. Signor Veldini appears to have invited most of Rome society to this party.’

‘To impress you so that you’ll agree to invest in his business,’ Saffron commented shrewdly. The warm gold skin and dark red hair she had inherited from her mother, coupled with a bone structure a model would have envied, had resulted in looks that had made her a photographer’s favourite almost all her teenage life. Add to the sculptured perfection of her face, a perfect pocket Venus-shaped body, and it was no wonder that his daughter never lacked male escorts, Richard Wykeham thought as he watched her.

The dress she had chosen for tonight’s party made her look as fragile and ethereal as a water-nymph. A frown creased his forehead momentarily, and seeing it Saffron smiled encouragingly.

‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered as she took his arm and he opened the door of her hotel room. ‘I won’t let you down by sulking all evening because you can’t come with me—those days are gone.’

‘They should never have been. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my business…’

‘We made a pact not to dwell on the past,’ Saffron reminded him, the green depths of her eyes momentarily shadowed as she remembered the arid years of her adolescence and the pain of losing her mother.

A limousine was waiting to ferry them to the Veldinis’ impressive villa in one of Rome’s most exclusive suburbs. Saffron had spoken no less than the truth when she had stated that Signor Veldini was hoping to persuade her father to invest in his company, but Richard Wykeham had a formidable reputation as an astute businessman and Saffron knew that it would take far more than a society party to convince him.

As they sped through the city she glanced at her father’s face. She had been so looking forward to their holiday—their first together since the death of her mother. Her father had done his best. There had been a constant stream of mother-substitutes in the form of boarding schoolmistresses and housekeepers, but it hadn’t been enough, and in an effort to make her father take notice of her she had involved herself in scrape after scrape. It was only within the last twelve months—since her twentieth birthday—that she had abandoned the wild set she had taken up with after leaving school—young adults like herself; the first generation offspring of self-made men, whose fathers had more money than time to spend on them and who themselves had been set apart from their parents by virtue of the public school education their parents had so proudly bought for them.

When would parents learn that children needed love, not money? Saffron wondered to herself. The greater part of her own rebellion had sprung not from any desire to share the wilder exploits of her set, but simply to draw her father’s attention to her. It had taken the death of one of that set from drug abuse to shock her into the realisation of where her life was going, forcing her to attempt to reach out for her father one last time, and miraculously he had responded.

In the last twelve months there had been far fewer aimless shopping sprees and hectic weekends of partying, and instead Saffron had discovered that she was becoming more and more involved in the welfare side of her father’s business. His companies were known for their caring attitude towards their employees and, encouraged by her father, Saffron had become involved in a newly organised department designed to take this one step further, particularly to help the single-parent families amongst the employees, and Saffron had found this so absorbing that she had gradually let her old life slip away.

She knew her father was glad. If she did go out nowadays, it was normally for dinner, or to dance in a far more sedate nightclub than those she had previously frequented. Many of her old friends scoffed. Some of the boys in her crowd had been particularly mocking, reminding her of how she had always been the life and soul of the party, ready for any enterprise, always the first to agree to some impractical scheme.

But that was before she had realised the fine tightrope they were all walking. It was considered smart in her set to indulge in drinks and soft drugs, although something in Saffron had always made her hold back from experimenting herself—not from any moral objection but simply because she had seen the effect it had on others, and was reluctant to lose control of herself and her life in the same way—something she had a morbid fear of happening, which was probably why she had never become seriously involved with any of her dates. None of them knew, for instance, that she was still a virgin. Each thought that he was the only one not to enjoy a more intimate relationship with her. This was a belief she had fostered knowing that there was more safety for her in their fear of scorn at being the single failure than there ever would be in making public her innocence. Not even her father knew that the stories and rumours circulated about her in the gossip columns were just that, and somehow she found herself shy of broaching the subject with him. However, she was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t started to suspect the truth. There had been a particularly amused glint in his eyes the previous weekend, for instance, when she had emerged from a taxi outside their London home, dexterously extricating herself from the expert and amorous embrace of the younger son of one of the French Ambassadorial staff. Jean-Paul was considered something of a catch in the circles in which she moved, but Sir Richard had been rather scathing about the young Frenchman’s morals and abilities. ‘Dilettante,’ he had snorted, ‘and not even particularly good at that!’ And contrary to her previous practice, Saffron had found herself listening to and agreeing with her father’s summing up.

Tonight, because he was going away and she wouldn’t see him for some days, she wanted him to carry a good image of her. She had dressed carefully for the party; her beautiful Belinda Bellville dress, all shimmering white silk, and a froth of underskirts, the low-cut neckline trimmed with pink silk roses—and she was young enough to wear it—the diamonds which had been her mother’s; tiny studs for her ears and a matching necklace and bracelet, both delicate and dainty. For the occasion” she was wearing her hair up, in a soft chignon, tiny wisps of dark red hair caressing her neck. The silk rustled as her father helped her out of the car. The Veldinis’ villa was ablaze with lights, and a liveried footman threw open the doors as they arrived.

‘Very fin-de-siècle,’ Sir Richard murmured in Saffron’s ear as they climbed a shallow flight of marble stairs which led to an impressive marble-columned ballroom.

Signor Veldini had obviously been on the lookout for them. He reached the door at the same moment as they did, greeting Saffron’s father with profuse and voluble exclamations of pleasure, before turning to admire Saffron.

‘And this ravishing creature is your daughter? You are a very lucky man!’

His appreciation was entirely male and all Italian, and Saffron responded with a calm smile. A small movement several yards away caught her eye, and as she lifted her head she found herself looking straight up into the eyes of a tall, dark-haired man, standing alone. The dark hair and tanned skin proclaimed his Italian origins, but he was far taller than any other man in the room; topping even her father’s six feet by a couple of inches, and even at this distance Saffron could see that his eyes were grey. She caught her breath as she saw the twinkle in them; as though he had read her mind when she had smiled to coolly and so reprovingly at Signor Veldini, and all at once her mood lightened. She had been feeling very depressed because her father could not travel on to southern Italy with her as they had planned. He would join her at the villa later when his business in San Francisco had been concluded, he had promised, but still she was disappointed.

‘Paolo, will you not introduce us?’

She had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn’t realised the stranger had joined them; his words addressed to Signor Veldini but his eyes fixed firmly on Saffron’s face.

At her side, she glimpsed her father’s amused smile, and knew that she was blushing faintly.

‘If the Signorina permits?’ Signor Veldini begged formally, and when Saffron inclined her head, he placed his hand on the younger man’s arm, drawing him forward slightly, so that Saffron’s bare skin brushed the fabric of his evening jacket, evoking a trembling uncertainty that bemused her a little.

Even so she noticed that Signor Veldini had to glance up quite a long way to look into his companion’s face, and that the grey eyes were slightly crinkled in amusement, as though he too saw through the Signor and his machinations to impress her father.

‘Nico, you will be the envy of all our friends— they are all longing to be introduced to Miss Wykeham.’

‘Saffron,’ her father amended. ‘And I am sure Signor.…’ He paused and Signor Veldini filled in helpfully, ‘Signor Doranti—Nico—has an English grandmother, which is why he speaks your language so well,’ he explained to Saffron, while her father continued blandly, ‘Signor Doranti will forgive me if I leave him with my daughter while you and I discuss this all important business you told me about, signore.’

‘Only if you are absent long enough for me to dance with her,’ Saffron heard Nico Doranti respond with a smile in his voice as well as his eyes. ‘Unfortunately, Signor Veldini is in error,’ he added as Sir Richard was eagerly escorted away by their host. ‘I no longer have an English grandmother—regrettably she died several years ago, but if I didn’t cherish her memory before, I do so now, because it is my knowledge of her language and yours that enables me to steal a march on my fellow countrymen. Look at them,’ he invited. ‘They hate me.’

Saffron couldn’t stop herself laughing. It was all so very absurd. And yet she liked him, felt drawn to him, despite his appalling flattery.

‘Ah, that’s better,’ he said softly. ‘When you walked in just now there were shadows in your eyes—such lovely eyes—the colour of malachite should never be clouded.’

He was astute, Saffron acknowledged; and very intensely male. She glanced at him. His profile possessed a sensual hardness that struck a chord within her; he was different—and dangerous, and something inside her thrilled to the knowledge; a purely feminine response to the fact that out of all the women in the room he had sought her out. Thick dark hair curled down over the collar of his dinner jacket. His hands while lean and tanned possessed none of the soft flaccidity she had grown used to among her London acquaintances. They were not the hands of a man used to idling.

‘You have been in Rome long?’ he ventured, adding softly, ‘But no, you couldn’t have been, or I would have heard of it. You are far too beautiful to come to Rome and remain unnoticed.’

‘We arrived this morning,’ Saffron replied demurely, ‘and are leaving tomorrow. My father flies to San Francisco.’

‘And you?’

Just for a moment desolation touched her. There was a lump in her throat and tears stung her eyes. She was being silly, she reminded herself, but she had set such store by this holiday, had been so looking forward to it.

‘Come.’ His fingers on her arm were warm and protective. ‘There is a door over there which leads to the garden. We will walk through it, and you will be able to recover your equilibrium.

‘Am I forgiven for upsetting you?’ he murmured softly when they were outside.

Saffron nodded. He was so completely attuned to her mood and thoughts that she felt none of the hesitation or reserve she normally experienced, even with men she had known years.

The dark velvet richness of the Italian night with its scents and sighs embraced them. The gardens were formal—topiary walks and rose beds where Saffron could imagine fountains playing during the day.

The silly weakness she had experienced inside seemed to be exacerbated both by the night and Nico’s sympathy, but even so she was surprised when he suddenly stopped, turning her towards him and tilting her chin.

‘Tears?’ A handkerchief was produced and used to dry the damp stains on her cheeks. ‘May I ask why?’

‘No real reason.’ Her voice sounded shaky, but instead of feeling embarrassed she only felt an impulse to confide in him. ‘It’s just that my father and I were planning to holiday together—at our villa in southern Italy—and now he has to fly to San Francisco in the morning. It sounds silly, I know, but you see…’

‘Yes?’

She had stumbled to a halt, embarrassed, but the soft persuasion of his voice encouraged her to go on.

‘We’ve been on bad terms for some time,’ she explained simply, ‘and now we’ve found one another again, and…’

Her head drooped, long lashes fluttering down over her eyes to conceal her pain and doubt, astonished at her own confidence.

‘And you fear perhaps that he does not wish after all to be with you?’ Nico finished for her with quiet understanding.

His perspicacity shocked her. It seemed unreal that a stranger should know so much about her—see so much. It made her feel frighteningly vulnerable and yet overwhelmed with the relief of knowing that there was another human being who so perfectly understood her thoughts and feelings. The sensation was a strange one.

‘It shocks you,’ he guessed accurately, ‘that I should so easily perceive that which you keep hidden from others, but there is a special chemistry between us; surely you feel it as I do?’

Did she? Her heart started to thump painfully against her breastbone. Was that the explanation for the strange awareness and sense of familiarity almost she had felt the moment she saw Nico? Or was she simply allowing herself to be carried away by her own mood and the undoubted magic of the evening? What did she know about him, after all?

What more did she need to know? an inner voice demanded; she knew how she felt when he looked at her, how her heart turned over at the sight of his ruggedly hewn masculine features, how her body had responded to his merest touch.

‘Saffron.’ Her name left his lips on a whisper, and tension coiled nervously through her muscles. She touched her lips with the tip of her tongue, unconsciously provocative. Sensuous appreciation flared in the smoky depths of Nico’s eyes, and excitement spiralled dangerously through her. She closed her eyes instinctively, shocked by the sudden imagery of herself in Nico’s arms, his mouth moving erotically over her own, the sensuality of the pictures flooding her brain shocking her breathless.

She swayed slightly, and felt the powerful bite of his fingers on her arms.

His lips brushed lightly across one damp cheek and then the other, and then he was putting her firmly from him, despite the parted invitation of her own lips. In the moonlight, Saffron could see the deep grooves on either side of his mouth. Against her will she experienced the faint stirrings of respect and even greater liking. How easy it would have been to dismiss him if he had reacted as so many of her escorts; subconsciously she had set him a test, and she was forced to admit he had passed it. Any other man would have taken advantage of her vulnerability, both emotional and physical, but Nico had known that the moment was not right for desire to flare to life between them. It was not desire she needed from him at this moment, but compassion and tenderness, and somehow he had known it. He frightened her a little, she recognised, with the ease with which he read her. Her physical response to him alone was enough to terrify her—something she had never experienced with any other man—without the added shock of the mental rapport which seemed to have sprung up between them and which did not need to rely on words.

‘Come.’ He spoke the word gratingly as though under duress, causing her nerve endings to shiver in response. ‘We had best return before your papa sends out a search party.

‘Where is this villa you go to?’ he asked as they retraced their steps, and Saffron felt her heart soar with a joy she could never remember experiencing before.

She told him, briefly describing the area and the villa, and deliberately keeping her voice light, not forcing any invitation on him—somehow she felt they had gone beyond the need for that. She had lowered the barriers completely to him and there was no need to adopt the tricks or false pride normally expected in an exchange such as theirs.

When Nico eventually left her at her father’s side, she felt bereft, and it showed in her expression. Richard Wykeham observed her with concern.

‘It’s all right,’ she assured him, but her voice shook, and her eyes clung betrayingly to Nico’s departing back.

She didn’t see Nico again until she and her father were on the point of leaving, and then it was only the merest glimpse. He was standing at the side of an expensively fast Lancia, elbow resting on the open driver’s door as he stared into the darkness. Just for a second in the powerful beam of their own car headlights Saffron saw his expression, and the shock was like a volt of electricity—stingingly painful. His face was drawn in lines of bleak anger, bitterness grooving his mouth; he was a stranger, and although he seemed to be looking straight at her, there was no recognition in that look.

It brought home to her the fact that they were strangers and that she knew nothing about his life; nothing about whatever had brought that look of inward and bitter brooding to his face.

Saffron had been at the villa for three days. The villa and surrounding countryside were beautiful but lonely, but strangely enough it wasn’t her father who occupied most of her thoughts. It was Nico Doranti.

The couple who looked after the villa for her father were pleasant but in the main silent; neither of them was inclined to converse with her, and Saffron had decided to put her time in waiting for her father to the best use she could by topping up the tan she had got in Greece earlier in the year. She had given in to one of her friends’ pleas to join them on a yachting holiday, cruising round the Greek islands; an idyllic-sounding holiday which, unfortunately, had turned out to be something of a nightmare. It was only when she joined the cruise at Athens that Saffron had discovered that everyone was paired off in couples and that she was expected to partner Jean-Paul. Events had gone from bad to worse, culminating in an appalling scene between herself and Jean-Paul one afternoon when the yacht was lying off the island of Corfu.

All the others had gone ashore and she had been sunbathing alone—or so she thought, until Jean-Paul crept up behind her and untied the strings of her bikini top. Since she had realised she wasn’t alone her initial shocked reaction had been to whirl round, and it had been at that precise moment that a hovering photographer had seen his opportunity and snatched a picture of her from the quayside. Saffron had writhed in mortification to see it splashed all over the gossip columns days later. The grainy photograph had not shown clearly her shocked expression, but what it did show were the unmistakable curves of her breasts minus her bikini top. The usual innuendo-riddled caption had accompanied the photograph; she was holidaying with friends, including international playboy Jean-Paul Chalours, etc., etc.

Her father had pointed out that the photographer was only doing his job, but Saffron had felt besmirched by the incident, and it had proved the final straw in helping her to make a complete break with her old crowd. She had been surprised how little she had missed them; how content she had been in her father’s company. She moved drowsily in the sunshine, her skin tanned a warm golden brown, contrasting with the minute emerald scraps that comprised her brief bikini. There was a matching jacket and wrap-round skirt on the sand beside her, and she sat up, swiftly fastening the skirt, as she stared out to sea. She would have hated Nico to have met her as the girl she had been. The other girls in her set would have drooled openly over him as they were wont; no doubt laughing shrilly in their attempts to focus his attention on them, the sharp, supposed to be witty, suggestive comments that were second nature falling from their glossed lips.

How would he have reacted to that photograph? Something told her that had she been spotted in such a compromising situation with him those photographs would never have reached the newspapers. But then Nico Doranti was hardly likely to steal up behind a girl and behave as childishly as Jean-Paul had done. For one thing he wouldn’t need to, and for another, when Nico chose to make love to a woman it wouldn’t be with one eye on the publicity he might gain. Saffron’s face felt hot—nothing to do with the sun; a strange languor was creeping over her as she contemplated how it would feel to be made love to by Nico.

Long shadows were starting to creep across the beach—a sign that the afternoon was dying. Soon she would have to leave the beach and trudge up the flight of stone steps cut in the cliff which led to the villa perched at the top. She started to gather up her belongings, glancing towards the cliffs and freezing as she saw the lone male figure sauntering towards her.

He was wearing ragged denim shorts, and a gold medallion on a fine chain glinted in the sun before disappearing into the dark tangle of body hair.

‘Nico!’

His name left her lips on a startled whisper, her eyes widening in unconscious appreciation of the male litheness of his body. The shorts were well worn and faded. They looked as though they had once been jeans and had been cut down—the genuine article, not some expensively fashioned beachwear, and the frayed cuffs drew her eyes to the solid muscle of his thighs. The sight of his near-naked body had a powerful effect upon her senses, heightened by the fact that he had been in her thoughts almost constantly since their meeting.

‘They told me up at the villa that I’d find you down here,’ he told her with a smile.

‘You came to see me?’ She hardly dared believe it.

His eyes were mocking. ‘Of course not! I can think of at least a dozen other reasons why I should drive hell for leather down here during the middle of a particularly hectic working week. But they’d all be lies,’ he added softly, devastating her by the way he looked at her, his glance encompassing the feminine curves of her body.

‘You surprise me,’ he said at last, shifting his inspection to her flushed face and tremulously parted mouth. ‘On a secluded beach like this I’d hardly have thought that—–’ he nodded towards her bikini and the skirt she had tied loosely round her waist, ‘charming though it is—necessary.’

It was several seconds before the full implication of his words sank in, and when they did Saffron reached nervously for her sunglasses and slid them quickly on to her nose to conceal her expression. Had he genuinely expected to find her sunbathing in the nude when he made his way down those steps?

Suddenly awkward, she stepped away from him, appalled to discover how difficult she found it to think logically while he was there.

‘Have you… will you be staying long?’ The question was disjointed, and she regretted the gaucheness of it the moment it was asked, but Nico seemed unconcerned.

‘One day, perhaps two; I have booked into a hotel—if you can call it that in San Lorenzo, just down the coast. You know it?’

‘Yes… but you could have stayed here, at the villa.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Would your father approve of such intimacy?’

Again Saffron was shocked by her body’s response to the picture he was painting; the two of them alone in the villa when Maria and her husband had returned to their own home in the evening. They could dine on the terrace that overlooked the sea, only the brilliance of the stars illuminating the scene, and afterwards…

Her mouth had gone dry, her whole body responding with a sensuality that rocked the ground beneath her feet. She had never felt like this before. She glanced downwards distractedly, absently noticing her towel and suntan lotion still lying on the sand, acutely aware of the aroused firming of her nipples beneath the emerald cotton. And Nico was aware of it too. She could see his glance focusing briefly on the hollow between her breasts where the cotton twisted in a provocative bow, and for one delirious moment she almost willed him to untie the green fabric and replace it with the hard warmth of his hands. She shuddered deeply, perspiration breaking out on her upper lip. What Was happening to her? Had Nico seen what she was thinking?

‘Come, your Maria asked me to tell you that she is preparing dinner early tonight because she wishes to leave early. She mentioned that tomorrow is her day off and she intends to spend it with her daughter. I would suggest that we dine together, but,’ his smile deepened the cleft in his chin, ‘but it has been a long drive from Rome, and I am very much afraid I might disgrace myself and fall asleep. However, if I might be permitted to have breakfast with you, and then later, perhaps, we could go for a drive?’

Swallowing her disappointment, Saffron clung to the fact that he had driven all this way to see her, that he wanted to see her tomorrow, and managed an answering smile, bending to collect the rest of her belongings; a sharp exclamation leaving her lips as she stepped back on the jagged edge of a shell.

Pain lanced through her tender skin. She overbalanced, falling awkwardly, and was deftly caught by Nico.

His hands seemed to burn through the flesh of her back, spread palm to fingertip against her skin as he steadied her.

‘What happened?’ He frowned and she shook her head.

‘I stood on a shell—nothing much.’

‘Let me see.’

He dropped on his haunches beside her, lifting her injured foot, so that she was forced to balance herself by gripping his shoulders. His skin had the taut sensuality of raw silk; the muscles it cloaked were supple. Saffron had to quell her desire to run her fingers over his shoulders and back. It would be like stroking the pelt of a jungle cat, she thought hazily, and just as dangerous. She glanced down, observing the dark head, and the deftness of the fingers exploring her injured foot.

‘It looks okay,’ Nico pronounced. ‘It’s bleeding quite freely, and as long as you wash and cleanse it thoroughly when you get back to the villa there shouldn’t be any complications. I can’t see any pieces of shell in it. Still, best to be sure.’

Before she realised what was happening Saffron felt the warmth of his mouth against her foot. Lean fingers curled round her ankle, and the feeling uncoiling inside her as Nico used his tongue to cleanse the small cut was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Who would have thought that the steady brush of his tongue against her skin could be so erotic?

‘Saffron?’

Nico raised his head, his hand stroking upwards from her ankle, an expression in his eyes that sent her pulses hammering with answering desire. And then he was on his feet and she was in his arms, her lips parting eagerly for the hot possession of his kiss. His hand found the curve of her spine and caressed it, tracing its length, his mouth making hungry demands on her own. She was weightless, pure plastic to be moulded and re-formed as he wished, conscious of the fierce body heat he was generating, the need to press closer to the male hardness of his thighs.

When he released her it was like losing part of herself, and incredibly Saffron knew that if he had suggested there and then that they make love she wouldn’t have made the slightest protest. She wanted him to make love to her, had wanted it, she now acknowledged, from the first moment she saw him. Nico wasn’t like a stranger. In some compulsive way it was as though she had known him before; as though she had been searching through a millenium of time to find him; her senses recognised and welcomed him in a way her mind couldn’t come to terms with. She wanted to tell him about it to ask him if he felt the same, but she was too shy.

He released her, steadying her and gravely handing her her things.

‘Ciao,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t forget, breakfast tomorrow. Something tells me you always look extremely attractive dispensing orange juice and coffee.’

There was a hint of mockery in his voice and Saffron wondered if he thought she was in the habit of breakfasting with men—with lovers, but surely if that was the case he would not have demurred about staying at the villa. Saffron knew he wanted her; and she also knew Italian men—very male, aggressively macho, and yet Nico was treating her with all the delicacy he might afford a piece of exquisite china; and she was enjoying it. She loved his reticence almost as much as she loved the sleek masculinity of him; the passion she suspected slumbered beneath the outward control. She obviously meant more to him than a mere one-night stand.

She longed to be able to communicate to him her joy that this should be so; the dizzying pleasure of knowing that he saw her as a person, not simply her father’s daughter. But then he already knew how she felt, she thought on a soft sigh; how could he fail to do so? She had seen it in the quizzical smile he had given her, had felt it in the pressure of his mouth against hers.

Her heart full of dreams, she turned towards the villa, already looking forward to the morning.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN she woke up, for the first time since her arrival at the villa Saffron felt a brief tingle of excitement; of anticipation for the coming day.

She showered swiftly, donning a white tee-shirt and a pair of khaki jeans, finding a clean bikini and matching towelling cover-up which she rolled into a towel and placed in the canvas rollbag that matched her jeans.

She had no idea what Nico’s plans for the day might include, but she was not going to be caught out if he suggested stopping somewhere for a swim. She was aware that a less inhibited girl would probably not have worried about a bikini—certainly she couldn’t think of anyone among her old crowd who would have been anything other than delighted to display their bodies in front of Nico Doranti.

With impeccable timing he arrived just as Maria was carrying breakfast out on to the terrace. Saffron heard the car and walked through the villa to the front door. As she opened it Nico was emerging from the driver’s seat of a scarlet Mercedes convertible. In those moments before he saw her he looked almost withdrawn, the black knit shirt he was wearing stretching to mould his body as he bent to retrieve the car keys. Black jeans moulded the contours of his thighs—a casual outfit, not specifically designed to attract, and yet she was intensely aware of him; of the bronzed vee of flesh in the opening of his shirt, the gold medallion nestling against his chest, the rugged power of the indolently lean male body as he came towards her, checking suddenly as he became aware of her presence. His expression was immediately transformed, the grimness banished and purely male appreciation taking its place.

‘If I’d known you look so good in the morning, nothing would have persuaded me to return to my hotel last night,’ he drawled as he caught up with her, curving an arm round her shoulders and bending his head to obliterate the morning sun as he kissed her lightly. Saffron wondered if he was as intensely aware of the scent of her perfume as she was of his cologne. He smelled clean and masculine, and she had an overwhelming desire to place her lips against the tanned column of his throat.

‘Breakfast is ready,’ she told him huskily, her lips still tingling from the brief contact with his. ‘You timed it just right.’

‘That depends.’ He gave her a stunningly comprehensive oblique glance that sent her pulses racing. ‘Personally, I wouldn’t have minded at all arriving a little too early, and discovering you like Sleeping Beauty still slumbering, awaiting the Prince’s kiss.’

It was ridiculous to be so affected by his verbal lovemaking. She had experienced it often enough in the past without response, why should Nico be so different? She didn’t know. All she did know was that the thought of him in her bedroom was creating the most erotic pictures in her mind, and she hurriedly tried to dispel them as she led him through the villa and out on to the terrace.

She was glad she had taken such trouble with the breakfast table when she saw him glance at it. The newly warmed rolls lay in a golden heap in the basket; the small dish of apricot jam in the pretty green dish she had bought to match the pale green cabbage rose pottery they used in the villa making an attractive splash of colour against the buttercup yellow tablecloth.

They might almost have been a placidly married couple of longstanding, Saffron reflected half an hour later as she poured Nico a second cup of coffee. He was leaning back, relaxing in his chair as he studied the view from the terrace.

‘What exactly are your plans for the day?’ Saffron questioned, colouring faintly as she saw the way he studied her. ‘I mean, should I make up some lunch for us or…’

‘By all means, if it isn’t too much trouble, although I must confess that right now, food is the last thing on my mind.’

Excusing herself to clear away their breakfast things and stack them in the dishwasher, Saffron left him alone in the main sala.

‘Saffron.’

She hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen and she nearly dropped the knife she was using to slice through rolls before she buttered them.

When she glanced up the expression in his eyes puzzled her. He looked preoccupied, as though he had far more on his mind than a day out.

‘Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea.’

He had his back to her, for which she was grateful, because it meant that he couldn’t see the humiliated pain in her eyes. What did he mean? Was he having second thoughts about wanting to spend the day with her? Had he discovered that she wasn’t after all the girl he had thought her in Rome?

‘If you say so.’ She managed to make her voice sound calm and indifferent. ‘Although somehow I wouldn’t have thought last-minute doubts were your style.’

Suddenly they were strangers and her last few words were designed to taunt and hurt. She saw his face change and knew with a shock that they were on the verge of a quarrel; a sudden black cloud in a hitherto blue sky.

‘Obviously they aren’t yours.’ There was a hardness about the words that chilled her. ‘Do you always make up your mind so impulsively about people—or is it only men?’

He had hit to hurt and had succeeded. How could she tell him now that she had never responded to anyone as instinctively as she had to him?

He walked back into the sala and Saffron followed him, knowing that the day was spoiled.

‘I think we’d better call today off,’ Nico began, suddenly pausing in front of a framed photograph on one of the tables. It depicted Saffron with her father, and one of her father’s oldest friends. Nico was staring at it with a fixity that puzzled her, his eyes and mouth tautly bleak.

‘An old friend of my father’s,’ Saffron told him. ‘He… he died last year.’ Her voice faltered and she bit hard on her lip. She hadn’t known John Hunter all that well, although he and her father had been friends for many years, but she still found it painful to talk about his death. He had been a kidnap victim, and his subsequent death at the hands of his kidnappers had made headline news. Even now Saffron found it hard to shake off the sick horror that crawled through her veins as she dwelt on his ordeal. She had never even told her father about her own almost pathological fear of being kidnapped. Some people were terrified by spiders, she told herself flippantly; her phobia was kidnappers.

She suspected it stemmed from her mother’s death. She had been at boarding school when it had happened and had known nothing. The arrival of two strangers, who she later discovered were her father’s secretary and personal assistant, who whisked her away from school without explanation and then proceeded to tell her of her mother’s death, had left a scar that had never completely healed.

‘He was kidnapped by terrorists,’ she forced herself to say, as though by speaking the dread word she could overcome her fear.

‘Tragic.’ Nico sounded as though he meant it, and for a split second Saffron found herself reliving her father’s grief and the sharp resurrection of her own phobia, but she quelled it swiftly with a flippant, ‘Oh, I don’t know—isn’t it everyone’s private sexual fantasy?’

It was the sort of flip statement expected among her crowd and Saffron had often used them defensively in the past, not caring about the conclusions her companions would draw, but now she did care, and she bitterly wished the seemingly callous statement unuttered when she saw the look in Nico’s eyes.

‘Nico?’ Her voice and eyes pleaded with her to understand, begged for the forgiveness her pride would not allow her to ask for, and miraculously his expression changed, a smile soothing away the frown and with it the harsh bitterness that had seemed so alien to his character.

‘I think I must have got out of my bed on the wrong side this morning.’ His mouth twisted wryly. ‘Or perhaps the problem is that it wasn’t the right bed.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘How long will it take you to finish getting ready?’

No reference to the fact that ten minutes ago he had been on the point of cancelling their outing, but Saffron was too delirious with joy to mention it.

‘Ten minutes,’ she promised, and was as good as her word, watching with steadily escalating excitement as Nico stowed the picnic basket away in the boot of the Mercedes, and opened the passenger door for her to climb in.

They had the road almost entirely to themselves. Saffron relaxed back into her seat, enjoying the teasing caress of the breeze as it tangled her curls, breathing the hot, sensual scent of the countryside drowsing in the midsummer heat. They passed olive groves with trees so gnarled and ancient it wasn’t hard to believe that they had probably been old when the Roman legions tramped these roads.

They were high up in the hills behind the villa. Below them the sea shone deep azure blue, merging into the distant skyline in misty lilac. Saffron sat with her knees hunched under her chin, aware of the heat of the sun as it beat down on to her shoulders. Half an hour ago Nico had pulled off the road in this beautiful, strangely desolate spot. Now he was lying at her side on the thin grass watching the sky. A pleasant breeze stirred the heated air. She ought to have been feeling pleasurably relaxed after the meal they had just shared, but she wasn’t. Tension coiled her stomach like an over-wound spring, her body so intensely aware of the man beside her that she could sense his every movement without even looking at him. He had removed the jeans and shirt he had worn for driving and lay on his back, and Saffron berated herself for not having followed his example and donned her swimwear beneath her tee-shirt and jeans. But Nico’s brief trunks did little to conceal his masculinity, and she forced herself not to give in to the impulse to let her glance wander at will over his body. She could always go and change. There was no one to see except Nico. As though he read her thoughts he suggested lazily,

‘Why don’t you go and change?’

She wanted to, so why was she holding back? What was this strange selfconsciousness that made her reluctant to expose herself to Nico in the brief triangles of her bikini?

‘You are looking as though you were a Christian maiden who preferred being thrown to the lions to exchanging her virtue for the embrace of her Roman captor. It is a novel experience,’ he continued lightly, levering himself up on one elbow to study her. Dark eyelashes swept protectively across her eyes, anxious to conceal her expression from his probing glance, fearful that he would read in her eyes the secret of her virginity. Why, when she had never felt burdened by it before, did she suddenly long for the experience and expediency of her peers? If only she had some practical sexual knowledge to fall back on, to tell her how to react.

‘Why is innocence always such a lure to the men who witness it? When I look at you now, I find it hard to imagine any man other than myself has so much as touched your lips.’ Nico’s expression changed, hardening, his muttered, ‘God, I must be losing my grip!’ lost as he leaned over her imprisoning her with his body, his voice thick and unsteady as he said against her lips, ‘Something tells me I’m going to regret this, but right now I can’t think past the aching in my gut, that reminds me I’m a male animal first, and a thinking human being a very poor second. What is it those soft eyes are begging for when they look at me so? Reprieve? Or this?’

Saffron had known the first time she saw him that he was a man who knew all there was to know about the female sex, but he seemed to have misjudged her badly, because the ferocious pressure of his mouth, the desire he made no attempt to temper, frightened rather than aroused her. Deep down inside him she sensed a bitter anger, an inner rage that drowned out seduction and sensitivity and left only a raw need that even she, inexperienced though she was, knew he had not meant to betray. Why? she asked herself numbly, frozen beneath his body, terrified by the emotions she sensed churning through him. She struggled to break free, panic tensing her muscles, her mind and body crying out to her that she had been a fool to allow herself to be alone with him. What did she know of him after all? What if she had merely imagined that rapport which had seemed to make conventional preliminaries between them unnecessary?

As though he sensed the direction of her thoughts the harsh pressure of Nico’s mouth suddenly relaxed. He murmured an apology against her ear, stilling her frantic movements with the sensual caress of his hand stroking over her body.

‘Forgive me, cara. I was too impulsive, my desire for you too intense…’

Despite his words and the look in his eyes, Saffron had the momentary impression that he was playing a part, mouthing words he did not feel, but it died almost the instant it was born as his hand pushed aside the thin barrier of her tee-shirt, cupping the rounded softness of her breast, his lips brushing tantalising over hers, with none of the angry pressure of before.

Perhaps she had imagined his anger, she thought hazily, perhaps it had just been fostered by desire. She knew so little of the emotions which drove men, and he was obviously not a man used to denying his sexuality.

Her body’s responsiveness to him frightened her, and she tried to wriggle away. ‘We ought to be going,’ she murmured shakily. ‘I…’

Nico glanced at his watch and then seemed to search the scenery; the deserted sky and equally deserted road.

‘Not yet,’ he said softly. And when Saffron continued to protest he ignored her, simply bending his head and touching his lips to the warm valley he had exposed between her breasts, his touch making her toes curl in mute protest, her breath catching on a wave of shocked pleasure.

His fingers pushed aside the flimsy lace cups of her bra, savouring breasts which Saffron knew were surprisingly voluptuous in view of the slenderness of her body, and now they seemed more voluptuous than ever, her nipples hardening against his palms as pleasure shuddered through her.

‘Nico…’ His name left her lips on a tortured breath.

‘I know,’ he agreed huskily. ‘Not here… but you make it very hard for me—very hard,’ he reiterated throatily as his lips moved provocatively against the aroused peak of her breast, stroking it lightly and then stopping as he felt the shudder she was powerless to control. Her face had gone paper-white with the strength of her emotions; the shock of experiencing such a stomach clenching intensity of pleasure. She wanted to tangle her fingers in his hair and hold him captive against her body, but shyness and inexperience held her aloof, and then Nico was on his feet, pulling her with him, straightening her tee-shirt and motioning her towards the car.

She hadn’t time to protest, and then, as she waited for him in the Mercedes, she realised that his hearing, more acute than hers, must have caught the approach of the battered Land Rover that came lumbering down the hill towards them.

It rolled to a halt and three people jumped out; two men and a girl, all dressed casually in a uniform of grubby jeans and sweat-shirts, and all of them carrying shoulder-hung machine-guns which were pointed in her direction.

Feeling as though she had suddenly strayed into a nightmare, Saffron watched helplessly as they advanced towards her. Behind her she heard Nico move, and a wave of relief swamped her to know that she wasn’t alone. She turned towards him, sobbing his name.

‘Get out of the car!’

It was the female member of the gang who issued the curt instructions, the heavily accented words just about penetrating the fog of terror engulfing Saffron.

‘Nico…’ She murmured his name as though it were an incantation against evil, helplessly appealing to him, her eyes widening in stunned disbelief as she saw his stony expression, and heard him say bleakly, ‘Do as she says, Saffron.’

‘But…’ Couldn’t he see that if she left the protection of the car she would be that much more vulnerable? The unkind laughter of the girl with the gun as she looked from Saffron’s pale, distressed face to Nico’s blank, frozen mask of rejection hurt as it grazed over Saffron’s jarred nerves.

‘Look at her!’ the girl taunted. ‘Even now she can’t believe it. You must have done an excellent job of persuading her to accept you, Nico. Even now she cannot see the truth. Little fool!’ she mocked Saffron, smiling evilly. ‘Nico is one of us. He will not help you.’

Saffron looked at the taut aloof mask of Nico’s face and knew sickeningly that it was true. He turned his head, cold grey eyes sweeping every vulnerable feature, and she knew with dreadful clarity that it had all been planned—every tiny last detail; every word; every caress, and she, like the fool she was, had fallen for it. And not just fallen for it, but woven stupidly sentimental dreams around him; deluded herself into believing that something rare and precious existed between them. Her head swam as she remembered how close she had come to giving herself to him. Thank God she had been spared that final humiliation! She pictured him and this bitter, olive-skinned girl with the hard brown eyes laughing over her lost virginity, her misplaced trust and adoration, and she reached blindly for the door handle, stumbling from the car in a daze. She stumbled on a sharp flinty stone, and would have fallen if Nico hadn’t grasped her arm, but she shook him away with a gesture of bitter loathing, masking the pain aching through her, using the agony of his deception to transmute pain into anger.

Her low, husky, ‘Don’t touch me,’ vibrated with horror and despair, and again the girl laughed mockingly. ‘Ah, Nico,’ she said contemptuously, ‘you have spoiled all her pretty dreams. She thought you wanted her for herself, but in reality all you wanted was her father’s money. How quickly do you think he will pay the ransom?’ she continued. ‘He had better not take too long, Rome badly need funds if we are to buy the equipment we need to…’

She broke off, gasping with mingled anger and pain as Nico left Saffron’s side to grasp her wrist, swinging her round to face him as he said in a cold, even voice, ‘Guard you tongue, Olivia!’ His warning glance encompassed both her and Saffron, and Saffron felt her blood turn to ice water in her veins as Olivia tossed her head and remarked callously, ‘What for? There are ways of making sure your little friend never gets to repeat anything she overhears, or have you lost your dedication to our cause, my friend? This is the second day we have made a rendezvous here.’

Nico’s shrugged, ‘I was delayed,’ obviously didn’t please her, and her thick dark eyebrows snapped together in a frown, her voice dangerous as she looked at Saffron. ‘By that?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Nico…’

‘I was delayed in Rome,’ Nico elaborated, his face tightening as he rounded on her, saying softly, ‘Try to remember that I am in charge here, Olivia, and that it is not for you to question my actions. Now, get the girl into the Land Rover, we have already spent too long here.’

‘Come.’ The muzzle of the machine-gun rested in the vee of Saffron’s tee-shirt. ‘Pretty but soft,’ Olivia commented, lips drawn back over sharp small teeth. ‘Look how she shakes! This gun is very sensitive,’ she told Saffron. ‘The trembling of your body is enough to…’

‘She is no use to us dead, Olivia,’ Nico pointed out with deadly calm. He had changed so much Saffron barely recognised him. Gone was the indolence, the warm smile and easy charm, and in its place was a forbidding menace that struck a chill right through her bones. His features might have been cast in bronze, every movement weighed, every thought calculated.

‘Not dead, perhaps,’ Olivia agreed, gloating over Saffron’s pale face, ‘but her papa will still pay well for his daughter, even if we mutilate her a little. You did well to choose her, Nico, let us just hope for her sake that her father cares as much for her as you say. We have read about you in the papers, Saffron Wykeham,’ she told Saffron, ‘of your affairs and your father’s money. We heard you were coming to Italy and laid our plans carefully. Nico told us it would not be hard for him to gain your trust; you have a weakness for handsome men.’

‘Stop wasting time, Olivia,’ Nico instructed. ‘Get her back to the farm. I have to take the Mercedes back, and send the telex off to her father. We should see results pretty quickly. Now remember, when you get up to the farm everything should appear normal. It’s bound to be checked out.’

‘When will you be back?’

Saffron saw his eyebrows rise at the aggression in Olivia’s possessive question.

‘I don’t know. It all depends how long it takes.’

‘And her?’ Olivia demanded, jerking her gun in Saffron’s direction.

‘Just stick to the plan,’ Nico told her. ‘No rough stuff, there’s no point…’

‘Because you don’t want anything to spoil her soft skin?’

Suddenly Saffron realised that Olivia was jealous of her. What was the other girl’s relationship with Nico? Were they lovers? The twisting pain in her stomach stunned her. Surely the knowledge of his deceit should have killed for ever whatever she had felt for Nico. It had done so, she assured herself fiercely; the pain she felt was the result of her shock.

‘Her skin is of no interest to me apart from the price we can put on it,’ Nico said carelessly. ‘You should know that. You should also know that we’re going to have to supply proof to her father that she’s still alive, which is why I don’t want a hair on her head harmed—at least not for now. I’ll take the shots of her when I get back.’ He glanced at the heavy gold watch he was wearing, and Saffron felt physically sick, realising how he had come by the money to afford such luxuries. She had ceased to exist for him as a person, if indeed she had ever done so; she was simply a marketable commodity.

His last words for Saffron as he turned away leaving her with her three armed guards were, ‘Don’t be tempted into doing anything rash. Olivia has orders to shoot if you do.’

‘And not to kill,’ Olivia warned her, grinning viciously. ‘You’ll look one hell of a lot less attractive with shattered knee-caps.’

It was impossible for Saffron to hold back her shudder of horror. Olivia’s cruel laughter was drowned out by the Mercedes’ engine firing, the paintwork flashing briefly in the sun before it disappeared in the direction she had driven with Nico such a short time ago.

It was the realisation of all her worst nightmares; a descent to hell itself, with every nerve in her body screaming in mindless panic as she fought against her desire to turn and run, knowing that to do so would be to invite Olivia’s gleeful retaliation.

As she stood there in the hot sun, all her tentative awakening emotions were gripped with the frost of reality. Desire and burgeoning love had been crushed by bitterness and a burning desire for revenge; not so much because she had been kidnapped, Saffron realised, but because of the way it had been accomplished; the ease with which Nico had insinuated himself into her life, her vulnerability towards him. He had used her, coldly, calculatingly and callously, and she would make him pay for that if she spent the last drop of her life’s blood in doing so. A raging thirst for revenge filled her, blotting out fear and panic, and making her strong enough to face the barrage of those three cold faces and three machine-guns with pride and calm.

Her anger burned with the death touch of unyielding ice, enabling her to clarify her thoughts, and use the adrenalin pumping through her veins to think swiftly and clearly. Her father was a millionaire and that fact was well publicised, which, presumably, was why they had made her their prey, but most of his wealth was tied up in his business, and even if he could raise whatever ransom was demanded, Saffron had severe doubts that she would ever be set free. She had already read her fate in the implacable eyes of her kidnappers; how many victims suffering exactly her situation had ever been released? Look at her father’s close friend. He had been kidnapped and then murdered. She was faced with two choices; either she could give in to the panic she had battened down inside herself and become a grovelling, pleading object; or she could devote her last ounce of stamina, all her mental and physical reserves in trying to outwit her captors. The same instincts which had raised her father from relative obscurity to the position he held today surfaced in Saffron; the age-old need for survival pumped urgently through her bloodstream, and without conscious volition her decision was made. As she numbly followed the direction Olivia indicated with her gun the words of an old saw floated into her mind, ‘Living well is the best revenge,’ but in her case simply living would be her revenge, and she would cling to that thought with every breath she drew. Somehow, she didn’t know how yet, she was going to live and she was going to bring to justice those who had perpetuated this crime against her; and Nico… Revenge was a heady wine and she had drunk deeply of it; deeply enough to overcome her fear, and her mind worked feverishly as she sought some avenue of escape, striving to ignore the dangerous silence and the two guns at her back as Olivia led the way to the dusty Land Rover.

CHAPTER THREE

‘IN,’ she ordered Saffron curtly. The muzzle of the machine-gun pressed coldly against her spine, but Saffron refused to give way to the terror threatening to surge over her, sesnsing that this was exactly what Olivia was waiting for.

Of the two men, the taller watched her impassively as she struggled into the Land Rover, but it was the smaller, swarthier of the two who made Saffron shudder as she saw the way his eyes roamed hotly over her body.

‘Remember what Nico said,’ Olivia instructed as she swung herself into the Land Rover. ‘When we get back to the farm everything must appear as normal.’

‘Nico!’ The swarthier of the two men spat noisesomely. ‘Dio, who is Nico to give us orders? Always before we have worked on our own.’

The complaint had an air of repetition, confirmed when Saffron heard Olivia respond curtly, ‘That was before. We have orders now from Rome. Nico is in charge. Wasn’t he the one to suggest this?’ she added defensively. ‘It will make us more money than…’

‘Money—ah yes, we are always in need of that,’ the taller of the men agreed. ‘Our cause is not noted for its wealthy supporters.’

They all laughed, then Saffron gasped in pain as Olivia grasped her wrist and ordered, ‘Piero, you take the wheel. Guido, help me get the handcuffs on her.’

Guido was the smaller of the two men, the one Saffron disliked the most, and she flinched away from the sourness of his body as he bent towards her. Although not tall, he was well muscled, his fingers easily gripping both her wrists, and she was forced to submit to the final indignity of having her wrists constrained in the handcuffs attached to the side of the Land Rover.

‘Just in case you try to do something foolish like jumping out,’ Olivia warned her. ‘Not that you would. You are not exactly the stuff of martyrs, are you? Does it never worry you that while you live off champagne and caviare, dressed in fine silks and satins, there are people in the world living from hand to mouth, forced always into giving a tithe of their pitiful income to support their oppressors? But soon all that will end. The curse that has held our people in bondage for so long will be removed.’

Her fanaticism terrified Saffron. She didn’t begin to understand what the other girl was talking about, but an inner instinct urged her to show interest, as though by listening to her captors she might discover the key to her own freedom.

‘You believe in Communism?’ she hazarded.

‘You are right.’ Olivia’s dark eyes glittered. ‘Each man and woman has the right to be equal, but they are denied that basic human right; wealth which should be evenly spread among them is held by far too few, the Church especially, but soon all that will end.’

Saffron couldn’t believe her ears. ‘But Italy is a Catholic country,’ she protested. ‘The people would never abandon their religion.’

‘Then we shall have to use force,’ Guido cut in. ‘In the end they will see the wisdom of what we are doing. The Church is rotten and corrupt; a money-making machine feeding off the people. We will take that wealth and share it among them.’

Surely they couldn’t believe such a thing could be accomplished, Saffron thought, appalled, but she saw that they did. Each of them was wearing a rapt, fixed expression, zeal written clearly on their features. Did Nico share their fanatical views?

‘The organisation has strong supporters in the universities,’ Olivia told her. ‘Our young people see how false the Christian religion is. “Blessed are the meek,"’ she quoted scornfully. ‘That is what they say, but saying and doing are two different things, and in this world the meek get trodden underfoot.’

‘And you intend to change that?’

‘It is what many people think we intend to do,’ Piero told her mirthlessly. ‘But there will always be those who hold power and those who yield before it, but before we can rebuild first we have to destroy, and for that we need money—money we raise by ransoming rich prizes such as you.’

‘Of all the so-called terrorist organisations in the world, we are the most feared,’ Olivia boasted. ‘More so than the P.L.O. or the Red Brigade. Already we have been responsible for the deaths of over a thousand people.’

‘But you’re killing innocent people,’ Saffron expostulated. ‘Surely you would gain more support for your cause by using reasoned argument, not mindless terrorism?’

‘The way rich dictators do?’ Piero scoffed. ‘We have discovered that one machine-gun speaks more potently that a million useless words, although the day will come when the world will listen to our words, even if we have to destroy everyone who tries to stand in our way.’

The venom in his voice terrified Saffron. To her their words were those of political extremists, the enormity of what they were suggesting almost impossible for her to grasp.

‘Out!’

She had been so engrossed in her thoughts that she hadn’t realised the Land Rover had stopped.

‘Hurry!’ Olivia ordered, almost pushing her out of the Land Rover as she unlocked the handcuffs. ‘Don’t keep Guido waiting,’ she warned Saffron. ‘He gets impatient, and when he gets impatient…’

She didn’t finish the threat, but she didn’t need to. Saffron could see the man grinning at her coarsely, as he lolled against the side of the Land Rover, picking his teeth.

‘Why don’t I just give her a sample of what’s in store?’ he suggested, moving towards her. His fingers had grasped her shirt front and Saffron had stiffened rigidly into her seat, before Olivia responded with an obvious ring of regret,

‘Nico said not to touch her.’

Guido grimaced. ‘Because he wants her for himself?’ he suggested. ‘And besides, how would he know? He won’t be the first man she’s had, by all accounts, and she’s a hot little piece.’

‘Nico doesn’t want her,’ Olivia denied heatedly, her eyes flashing venomously over Saffron’s slender body. ‘He despises her and all she stands for, you’ve heard him…

‘Get out!’ she ordered Saffron again, and Saffron did so shakily, the thought of Guido touching her making her almost physically sick, blotting out her mental anguish. Thank God they didn’t know the truth, she thought half hysterically. If they did… She shuddered violently, realising that the destruction of her innocence would be merely amusing to a man like Guido.

The farmhouse was set among a few acres of scrubby olives and neglected vines, half a dozen painfully thin cows in a small paddock attached to the main building.

‘Another idea of Nico’s,’ Olivia told her, watching her. ‘If anyone comes up here poking around we’re just another poor family trying to get a living out of a run-down smallholding. Guido and Piero are my brothers.’

‘And Nico?’ Saffron asked unwisely, wishing she hadn’t when she saw the triumph glittering in the other girl’s eyes, knew that she had wanted her to ask.

‘Oh, Nico plays the same role as he does in real life,’ she told Saffron softly. ‘He is my man, my lover.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘You stupid, little rich fool! Did you honestly think a man such as Nico would want a woman like you? A woman who has no conception of anything apart from her clothes and her jewellery?’ Her mouth twisted mockingly, and Saffron felt a sudden upsurge of reciprocal anger.

‘At least that’s better than those half-baked ideas you call your “cause”,’ she taunted, flinching as Olivia grasped a handful of her hair, twisting it until pain lanced through her scalp, her fingers leaving a scarlet imprint on Saffron’s face when she hit her.

Saffron wanted to retch with nausea, caused more by the sudden display of violence than pain. Physical violence had always been something she had abhorred, and this was the woman Nico preferred to her; had they laughed about her together, planning her capture, planning how Nico would make love to her?

‘It was his duty,’ Olivia told her, reading her mind. ‘Do not think he desired you—he hates you and your sort. If it wasn’t for the money your father will pay to get you back he would kill you with no more regret that he would stamp on a snake.’

It was just beginning to dawn on Saffron that she was actually held prisoner by these political fanatics, whose respect for human life was nil, and Nico was one of them. Just for a moment she verged on the humiliation of completely breaking down, and then with almost superhuman effort managed to restrain herself. She must fix her thoughts of escaping and revenge; she must give herself something to work for.

All too soon she was inside the farmhouse. Downstairs there was merely one large, primitive room with a mud floor, baked hard over the years, and the most basic of kitchen arrangements in one corner, with a large woodburning range and a single tap. They had walked past a small building set on its own, and Saffron shuddered to think of the primitive sanitary arrangements. Would her captors try to indoctrinate her with their beliefs? If they tried she would strongly resist their attempts, but she suspected that their organisation did not make converts of its victims and that they saw her merely in terms of the money she would bring in, just as Nico had seen her. Nico! Why did she still have to feel this senseless pain whenever she thought of him? The man she had thought he was simply hadn’t existed. He had been a daydream, a figure of romance and fiction conjured up by her own need.

‘Come!’

The curt word and the painful tug on her arm which accompanied it jerked Saffron back to reality. Olivia indicated that she was to walk up the rickety wooden stairs leading to the upper storey. Four doors opened off the small landing and one of them bore a new, shiny padlock. Olivia opened it and pushed back the door, disturbing clouds of dust as she thrust Saffron inside. The room was small with a small window, the air stale. A narrow camp bed occupied one corner, a sleeping bag flung down beside it.

‘Your room,’ Olivia told her in a parody of politeness. ‘I trust the signorina finds everything to her liking?’

The door was closed and locked before Saffron could make any comment.

Left to her own devices, she ran to the window, but she could see nothing other than the barren countryside and the narrow river meandering through one of the meadows. They were professionals, she acknowledged, mentally reviewing her situation; by the time her father learned that she was missing it would be far too late for anyone to find her. She had read about these politically motivated organisations; ruthless fanatics whose vicious treatment of their victims was not something she dared allow herself to dwell on, and yet unbidden, all the horror stories she had ever read came crowding into her mind. There had been the Getty heir; he had lost an ear, hadn’t he; and then Patty Hearst, forced to join the ‘gang’ who had kidnapped her, and there were dozens of others. All at once the self-control which had sustained her from the beginning of her ordeal deserted her. Her whole body started to tremble, and she had to force back a desire to scream and scream until she was hoarse. Panic, once allowed to force its way through her guard, flooded her mind. She flung herself face down on the camp bed, muffling the sound of her crying with the sleeping bag as tears overwhelmed her. And then to compound her misery, hunger pangs gnawed insistently at her stomach. Were they planning to starve her in addition to everything else? Her tears stopped flowing, and as she straightened up she acknowledged that she had probably needed that brief release. Gradually her body stopped trembling. Footsteps on the stair alerted her. Frantically scrubbing at her face, she prayed that in the dimness of the badly lit room no one would be able to tell that she had been crying. Stiff with tension, she listened.

‘Guido, come back!’ she heard Olivia call. ‘Nico’s here!’

The footsteps faded away and Saffron breathed a sigh of relief. Something about Guido’s small reptilian eyes made her skin crawl with revulsion. Dear God, if she ever managed to escape she would make them pay—all of them; but most of all Nico. Nico, who had tricked her into believing that he cared about her, when in reality all he cared about was her money!

‘So, you understand the position?’ They were standing in the downstairs room, Nico and Olivia ranged on one side of the bare, scrubbed table, Saffron on the other, while Guido and Piero stood guard.