Desire's Captive

by Penny Jordan

  DESIRE'S CAPTIVE

  Penny Jordan

  Her worst fears had come true

  Being kidnapped by political terrorists was the realization of Saffron Wykeham's worst nightmares. And to be taken to an isolated primitive farmhouse and subjected to the volatile dangerous temperaments of her captors was worse than she ever could have imagined

  For Nico Doranti, the man she loved, the one man to whom her whole being responded, had manipulated her descent into hell.

  Though calculating and callous, he was her only hope for escape--and for future happiness.

  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 arid 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 i
n 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.