One Night In Collection

by Various Authors

  Angelo had his own demons too, of course. Which was why he never slept with any of the women he bedded. As far as most people were concerned, sex would be the most intimate act two people could share, but to him, curling another person’s body into his own and slipping into the oblivion of sleep was far, far more intimate and required a degree of trust that he didn’t possess.

  He couldn’t leave himself so vulnerable in front of another human being. Lucia was the only person he had ever fallen asleep with—tiny, three-year-old Lucia, who’d been plagued by night terrors and asthma attacks. When she had first come to the orphanage she hadn’t spoken for months and the only time anyone ever heard her voice was when she’d screamed in the night. Gradually, it had been Angelo who had won her trust—probably because he had been the one who had tried the least. When she used to creep into his bed in the night he had at first taken her back to her own little cot with its single rough blanket. But eventually he had relented and kept her with him—wrapping his own blanket around her, sitting with her propped up against him to ease her breathing, hardly slipping into sleep at all so that he would be able to lift her back into her own bed before the nuns rang the morning bell.

  He realised he had been leafing through the sketches he had done last night without seeing them. Rubbing a hand over his stinging eyes, he looked again.

  They were of the château, but they weren’t businesslike architectural drawings showing proposed floor layouts and extension plans. They were impressions, memories of the building from when Anna had shown him round. Letting them come to rest on his chest, he lay back and sighed.

  He wanted this property. Badly.

  He’d wanted Anna too but, far from satisfying that need, possessing her had only made it stronger. Gesù, he thought bitterly, his first impression of her had been absolutely right. Whoever she was, she was toxic. She was fiery and surprising and addictive and contradictory—an eco-warrior who stayed on one of the Riviera’s most opulent hotels, a pole dancer who was also a virgin. All of this might make her as intriguing as hell, but as far as he was concerned it also meant she was one hundred per cent bad news.

  He needed her out of his life and out of his head so he could concentrate properly on this deal.

  Anna trailed slowly up the steps to the sun deck. She was beginning to get very happily accustomed to life at sea, having been introduced to the hallowed sanctuary of the below-deck gym. Paulo had taken her there, saying with a slight smile, ‘Signor Emiliani thought you might find this a more suitable place for a work-out, Signorina Field.’

  Once her initial indignation had subsided, she had enjoyed herself hugely. She was no regular gym-bunny on land, but this was different. Gleaming white, totally secluded, there was a purity about the place that appealed to her and, selecting a soothing new-age soundtrack, she had lost herself in the simple release of physical exercise, emerging later feeling purged.

  Her limbs felt as if they were filled with warm honey and her mind was pleasantly numb.

  Rounding the corner at the front of the boat, she stopped sharply and, swearing curtly beneath her breath, took a step backwards again. For there, stretched out on the wide cushioned area that surrounded the hot tub, was Angelo.

  She half turned, muttering, ‘Sorry.’ Then turned back.

  He was asleep.

  She hesitated, not wanting to approach him, not able to stop herself. Hardly breathing, she found herself stepping towards him on tiptoe, until she stood looking down on to his face.

  She felt her breath escape in a long, awestruck exhalation. His hair fell back from his golden forehead, showing the darker layer underneath where the sun had not bleached it to white-goldness. His nose was so perfectly straight, his cheekbones hard and high, his mouth utterly composed and still.

  But he looked different. With those startling, penetrating eyes closed, his face had lost its cold, amused air and looked simply young and heartbreakingly beautiful. Tilting her head to one side, she smiled, remembering her surprise at how young he was when she’d first met him at the château. He was surely barely older than the boys she knew in London who shared squalid bachelor flats with each other and got drunk and groped girls on Friday nights.

  She laughed softly.

  This man … this man … was in a different league.

  Her eyes travelled downwards slowly, as her throat constricted with desire. He was like a Renaissance sculpture cast in gold—perfectly proportioned, utterly flawless. Biting her lip, she let her gaze skim over the lean planes of his stomach, frustratingly obscured by the sheaf of papers he held against him. Gently she reached out, telling herself she was only acting in his best interests. He’d be furious if he woke up to find his tan was marred by a large A4-shaped paler patch … Carefully, so as not to wake him, she extracted them from his loose grip and looked round for somewhere to put them.

  She glanced down at them and felt a tiny frisson of shock as she recognized the familiar outline of Château Belle-Eden, sensitively brought to life in a few masterful strokes of black ink. Quickly she leafed though the sketches—the front elevation, with its familiar gables and turrets, the French windows from the salon which led down a flight of stone steps into the rose garden—all of it drawn with such skill and clarity that it brought tears to her eyes. She almost felt she could peer more closely into the picture and see her mother’s piano through the French windows, and beyond it the staircase with her ten-year-old self descending in that tattered white dress …

  Oh, Mama, if only …

  The next moment she was falling as an arm snaked around her waist and pulled her down on to the cushioned deck, scattering the papers. In one lithe movement Angelo rolled over and got up, towering above her as she lay, winded and shocked.

  ‘Bad luck, Anna,’ he said huskily. ‘They’re just sketches. No information. No plans. No details. You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to leave anything significant lying around while you’re here, do you?’

  ‘I could see what they were,’ she snapped, sitting up. ‘I wasn’t looking for anything. I was trying to—’ His coldness and lack of trust stung her, so she couldn’t think straight. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she muttered miserably, getting to her feet. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just thinking how lovely they were.’ She bent and picked up the picture of the French windows, looking down at it for a moment, before thrusting it at him. ‘But then it is an exceptionally lovely building, which is precisely why we intend to protect it from the same fate as that house you showed me yesterday.’

  ‘Protect it?’ Angelo walked away from her, speaking slowly, his voice dripping with scorn. He hadn’t slept for long, but during that brief spell of unconsciousness he had dreamed disjointedly of Lucia and his earlier frustration had hardened into a smouldering anger. He shook his head disbelievingly at Anna’s careless words. ‘And can you explain to me exactly why a building needs protection? Anna, the world is full of suffering and injustice and you choose to devote your time to protecting a building.’

  She looked at him, hurt and pride welling in her wide eyes.

  ‘Yes, well, at least I’m doing something worthwhile instead of just accumulating indecent sums of money by committing acts of hideous vandalism on national architectural treasures. Buildings need protecting for posterity, for future generations to enjoy.’

  He had turned away from her, but she could see the tension in his broad brown shoulders as he thrust a hand through his hair. Her heart lurched uncomfortably in her chest, but whether it was out of fear for what he was about to say or the persistent nagging undercurrent of sickening desire she felt when she looked at him she couldn’t tell.

  ‘Future generations? I see. That would be future generations of the wealthy, idle, privileged families who have already enjoyed them for hundreds of years, would it?’

  Families who put land, titles, a name, for pity’s sake, before the welfare of their own children.

  ‘Maybe. What does that matter if they’re being looked after by people
who care about them and the land that surrounds them? This isn’t just about bricks and mortar, it’s about land and how it’s managed and maintained in the same way as it’s been for centuries—without bulldozing woodland to make way for executives to land their Learjets!’

  He spun round slowly. His narrow eyes were penetratingly blue, his mouth eloquently communicating his utter scorn. ‘Land? You environmentalists are just as bad as the nuns in the convent where I grew up. You genuinely believe that you’re acting for some sort of higher authority, for the common good, but you’re so blinkered by your own piety, so blinded by your own virtue that you can’t see what’s really going on around you. You feel so passionately about this building, Anna, and about its land … You really think you and your scruffy, irresponsible friends are striking some huge blow for democracy and perpetuity, but you couldn’t be more pitifully misguided.’

  He had taken a step towards her and was standing very close. His tone was lazy, but that just made the venom of his words all the more powerful. Anna felt the blood drain from her face.

  ‘How … how dare you…?’

  ‘Because it’s the truth. You’d like everything to stay the same, would you? For posterity? Lovely idea, Marie-Antoinette, but may I suggest you wake up and take a long hard look at the real world. It’s not all picture-book castles and fairy-tale princesses, it’s poverty and disease and injustice. It’s about ruthless self-interest. About people sacrificing other, more vulnerable people for their own purposes. You can’t see past the romantic ideal that the château symbolizes, but the reality is that the history of buildings like that represents a whole lot of misery and exploitation. Of the lower orders. Of women and … and children, for God’s sake, of people forced into rigid roles and restricted and repressed. I free buildings from all that. I don’t protect them, I make them relevant. You’re just too immature to see that.’

  Ouch.

  She looked down. Anything to avoid the chilling contempt on his face, but he had already moved away and was putting the sketches back into their folder.

  Tears prickled dangerously at the back of her eyes, but she was determined not to let them fall. Desperately attempting to sound utterly unemotional, she said, ‘If you’ve quite finished, I’d like to go. I want you to take me back to shore.’

  ‘Of course. We’re headed back to Cannes now.’

  ‘Good. It was stupid of me to come. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

  That’s good. Make it all sound like nothing more than a tedious interlude. An unfortunate error of judgement. Nothing personal.

  ‘I don’t think you were thinking at all. But, if you were, I imagine it was about what you could gain from coming.’

  Her cool façade cracked. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Information about what I intend to do with the château,’ he said reasonably, coming back towards her. ‘But, more immediately, sex.’

  ‘You … you bastard. You wanted it as much as I did!’

  He looked at her thoughtfully and slid a finger down her midriff, circling the diamond bar. ‘I wanted it, that’s true. But you wanted it more.’

  There was a second’s silence. Then the sharp crack of her hand as it made stinging contact with his cheek.

  He hardly moved. Had it not been for the bright blossoming of colour that spread across his cheekbone, she would have thought she had barely touched him, but his eyes burned with icy rage. It seemed like an eternity that they held her. Anna’s breath came in ragged gasps as she looked defiantly back up at him, every vein pulsing with adrenalin and fury.

  And then he simply turned and walked away, without looking back. And Anna found that all her anger disappeared with him, leaving her feeling a miserable, churning desire and a sickening sense of self-loathing and shame.

  Going back to her cabin, she started shivering so hard her teeth chattered as the full impact of the encounter hit her like a series of hammer-blows to her heart and her pride. Underneath the awfulness of feeling his anger and contempt like that, the worst thing was that she knew he was right.

  She had wanted him more than she had ever wanted anyone before. Perhaps more than she had ever wanted anything too.

  Apart from the château, she told herself fiercely. Her priority when she had come aboard the yacht had been finding out anything that would help GreenPlanet oppose his plans. Hadn’t it?

  But, as she lay curled up on the bed, shaking with shock and misery, she relived that searing lust she had felt when she’d danced with him on the beach and knew that she wasn’t being honest with herself.

  Oh, God, he was right about everything.

  GreenPlanet was a way of life and when she’d met Gavin and the rest of the group she’d been desperately seeking an escape from a home in which she felt she no longer belonged, and revenge on a family who had tried to pretend she was someone she wasn’t.

  She’d lost her future when she’d had to give up dancing, and she’d lost her past when she’d found out about her birth, and GreenPlanet had offered a perfect escape—a complete lifestyle package, where all the thinking was done for her. It was like a religion. It told her who to believe and what to do—even what to eat and what to wear. She had been so grateful for its direction that she’d never bothered to question the legitimacy of its creed, until now. And it scared her.

  But Angelo’s words scared her more. He had put his elegant finger exactly on the place in her heart where the hurt still welled and throbbed.

  Hadn’t her family sacrificed her, in a way, for the title? The Delafield bloodline? They’d tried to keep the truth hidden to preserve her father’s pride and the purity of their oh-so-important heritage and family honour, but in doing so had left her with a deep, abiding sense of shame and self-loathing.

  She was supposed to suffer the pain in silence, keep her scars hidden, play her part with nobility and grace. Mix with the right people, marry the right man and fill Ifford Park with children to perpetuate the name and continue the miserable charade. History would forget her own accident of birth.

  Her own feelings were unimportant.

  No!

  Angelo was right. Her belief in the sanctity of the past was pathetically naïve, just as her wholehearted acceptance of the GreenPlanet ideology was spectacularly misguided. But what did that leave her with? Without a family identity, without dancing, without GreenPlanet, who was she?

  She had been so busy rejecting all her father’s values that she’d forgotten to get any of her own. So imprisoned in the past she’d forgotten to think about the future. So ashamed of who she wasn’t she’d forgotten to find out who she really was. She even tried to deny she had a birthday.

  From now on, she thought, pulling the duvet back and crawling beneath it like a wounded animal, this is my re-birthday. The day I learned enough about myself to realize I had to make a new start. For that, at least, she had Angelo to thank, and every birthday she would remember him.

  Yeah right. And the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year as well.

  Much later, when the room was filled with violet shadow, there was a discreet knock at the door and Paulo appeared.

  ‘Signor Emiliani asked me to tell you we’ll be mooring in about an hour. I’ll come and get you when he’s ready to go ashore, signorina. In the meantime, is there anything I can get you?’

  ‘No. No, thank you.’

  So this was it. Time to say goodbye.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TWENTY minutes later Anna stepped out of the bath and reached for one of the vast thick towels to wrap around herself.

  She had washed her hair and soaped every inch of herself thoroughly, partly to fill the time and partly in an attempt to be practical. If she was going to spend the next few days travelling she didn’t know when she would next get the chance of a hot bath.

  And a hot bath like this? Never.

  Bending to wrap her hair in another towel, she straightened up and looked around her. The oval bath was sunk in
to a raised marble platform and surrounded by dark polished wood that Anna was certain was neither reclaimed nor from a sustainable source. The room, like the rest of the yacht, gave an impression of devil-may-care luxury, as if its designer could have required the very last trees in the forest for some minor embellishment and wouldn’t have cared. Out of sheer habit, she found herself wondering what Gavin would make of it, and stopped herself.

  She was going to learn to form her own judgements.

  She loved it. And the contrast with the ancient clanking plumbing and draughty bathrooms at Ifford Park could hardly have been greater.

  Padding back into the bedroom, she dismally surveyed her wardrobe choices and sighed. She was beginning to hate the sight of the denim hotpants and that damned white bikini. If only she hadn’t been so quick to discard Fliss’s dress at the beach party …

  Memories rushed in and she smiled ruefully to herself. If she hadn’t, maybe she wouldn’t be here. She could have spared herself the heartache, but would also have missed out on the most significant thing to happen to her in years. The last two days had taught her so much. About sex for a start. But also about herself. Things she hadn’t even begun to know before.

  Her capacity for arousal, for enjoyment. And self-delusion.

  Giving herself a mental shake, she dragged her attention back to the matter in hand. Clothes. Maybe she should have taken up Angelo’s offer of something left behind by one of his previous visitors to the yacht. She imagined a closet full of gossamer wisps of designer fabric, scented with the perfume of other women, each one with its own memories and associations of which she would be oblivious but Angelo would be all too aware.

  No, she couldn’t have done that. Her time with him was all too brief as it was. At the very least she could know that he had been thinking of her while they had been together, not one of his many other women.