At the front desk Lana completed her registration details and handed them back to the smiling clerk together with her credit card.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll need the room, but I imagine it will be at least a week.” Surely after a week the press would be after their next nine-day wonder and be off hounding some other poor person.
“Certainly, madam.”
Lana tapped her foot restlessly. The first thing she’d do when she reached her room was run a hot bath to soothe the tension that held her in its vice.
“Excuse me, madam. There seems to be some problem with your card. Do you have another you can use?”
“Yes, of course.” Lana dug in her bag and tried to ignore the sickening wave of dread that undulated through her body. “Here, try this one.”
The clerk swiped the card. A frown puckered his forehead and he shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, madam. But this one has been denied also.”
“But I don’t understand. That’s ridiculous.” Lana took back the platinum card and slid it into her cardholder. “Can I use your phone to call my bank?”
“That won’t be necessary.” A velvet smooth male voice interrupted. “Perhaps I can help.”
Lana whirled, her heart hammering against her ribs like a frightened bird in a cage. “You?” Of all the people she least needed right now, Raffaele Rossellini topped the list.
“Why not?”
“A telephone, please.” Lana turned her back on him and baled the clerk with her most imperious stare.
He gestured to the bank of call phones against one wall in the lobby.
“Thank you.” Her voice was clipped. She spun on her heels and stalked back across the foyer, determined to increase the distance between herself and Raffaele Rossellini as swiftly as possible. But he wasn’t easily deterred.
“Mrs Whittaker. A moment, please.”
“I’m very busy, Mr Rossellini. Can’t this wait?”
“I was only thinking of your privacy. Perhaps you would prefer to use the telephone in my suite?”
Cristo!What was he thinking? It didn’t matter to him whether the whole world witnessed her vulnerability when she received the news he’d paid his sources dearly to find out. When she discovered she was destitute.
He watched, dispassionately, as indecision chased across her features, as understanding dawned in her haunted eyes. She inclined her slender neck in assent.
“Thank you, yes. That would probably be best. I won’t take too much of your time.”
“Please, take all the time you need.”
He gestured towards the bank of elevators across the lobby and followed close behind as she made towards them, trying to ignore her fragrance and the way it tantalised and teased his olfactory nerves. Did she wear her fragrance only behind her ears, or on pulse points all over her delectable body? It would be intriguing to find out. To discover first hand whether she was indeed as chillingly cold as her looks and demeanour suggested.
In fact, it would even serve his purpose—in more ways than one—to determine how best to undermine that inscrutable façade she wore, to destroy what little remained of her world of privilege.
He would be charm incarnate until her defences were breached. Then he would act with as much swift precision as a surgeon’s laser, to excise her from the cataclysm her selfishness had wrought upon his family.
As the elevator doors slid shut Lana remembered too late her solicitor’s words of warning to stay well away from Raffaele Rossellini. In the mirrored enclosure she found it impossible to keep her gaze from straying to his austere Romanesque features—the deep-set hooded eyes, the strong straight blade of his nose, the sensual fullness of his lower lip. She flinched slightly as he reached past her to press the button for the penthouse floor, refusing to acknowledge the rueful smile that chased fleetingly across his mobile mouth.
The penthouse. Of course. A man that exuded his wealth and control wouldn’t stay anywhere else. She’d met many men like him, internationally acknowledged for their skill at making money and keeping economies afloat. Before her marriage to Kyle she’d hostessed for many of her father’s diplomatic functions and had spent countless evenings shielding her boredom from men such as Raffaele Rossellini. But, a small insidious internal voice reminded her, there was nothing boring about him.
When the doors opened, with a barely audible swoosh, Lana stepped forward onto the thickly carpeted foyer and waited for him to swipe his key card to open the massive rimu double doors that guarded his suite.
“You’ll find the telephone over there,” he gestured with a sweep of his arm. “Unless you’d prefer the privacy of the bedroom.”
Was it her imagination or had his eyes ignited with that last remark—their coal-dark depths glowing with a heat that caught her by surprise. Unbidden, a flush of corresponding warmth suffused her body, flowing in a rush from her extremities before pooling low in her belly.
“Here would be fine, thank you.” Lana congratulated herself on injecting exactly the right amount of frost in her tone as the slumberous invitation in his gaze sharpened and cooled.
“As you wish.Mi scusi , I must change for another appointment. Please, help yourself to a drink from the bar.” Long fingers unknotted the splash of patterned silk at his neck and undid the top two buttons of his shirt, revealing the golden hollow at the base of his throat.
Lana swallowed. All the water in the Clyde Dam couldn’t dislodge the lump that had suddenly lodged in her throat. “No, thank you. I’ll only take a minute. I can let myself out when I’m finished.”
But she was talking to a closed door. A closed bedroom door. Hurriedly, she pushed the image of him undressing behind that door from the forefront of her mind. The bank. She needed to call the bank.
She quickly punched in the free calling number and selected the option to speak with customer services. By the time she laid the handset back in the cradle her hands were trembling. Her accounts were all frozen pending further investigation. No one could help her any further than to say that she currently had no funds available. No funds? But that couldn’t be right. Her own salary should have been on the account as of last night. How was she going to survive without any money? What had Kyle done?
She stood, quickly gathered up her bag and lurched towards the door. She had to get to the bank in person. Surely the manager could sort this out. A roaring sound in her ears drowned out the noise of the bedroom door opening. Black spots swam before her eyes and the sumptuous decor of the suite shifted sharply to one side.
A steadying arm hooked around her waist. As much as Lana craved the opportunity to lean on someone else’s strength she knew she had to break free.
“Let me go. I’m all right.” Damn, but her voice was weak. She was still fighting him as her legs buckled and the black spots converged into one overwhelming blanket of darkness. Vaguely she was aware of a muffled curse before she was swept into the strength of powerful arms.
Raffaele strode through his suite barely noticing the slight weight of the unconscious woman in his arms but painfully aware of the tempting bow of her parted lips and the shallow breaths that caused the faint rise and fall of her chest.
Eschewing the long sofa in the suite’s sitting room he made for the open bedroom door and laid her inert form on the plush comforter of the bed. A shank of honey-blonde hair had escaped the confines of her hairdo and swept across her pale cheek. His fingers itched to brush it aside but instead he reached for the carafe of mineral water on the bedside cabinet and splashed a liberal measure into a glass.
She wasn’t unconscious long. Her blue tinged eyelids flickered—once, twice—then snapped open, dawning realisation of her surroundings painting fear on her face.
“Here, drink this.” Raffaele slid one arm behind her to help her up and held the glass to her lips.
“I can manage, thank you.” She pulled her body away from the support of his arm, her voice stilted.
No wonder she’d driven her husband away. A m
an could only stand so much independence before he felt unnecessary—unwanted. Here she was observing formalities when only a moment ago she’d been lying in his arms. Vulnerable to his intent. A shaft of heat flared deep inside him as she lowered the glass from her lips and swept their soft fullness with the tip of her tongue.
“Better now?” The words scraped like gravel from his throat.
“Much. I don’t know what came over me. Thank you.” The fabric of her trousers twisted and clung at her hips and thighs as she swivelled her legs around so she could set her feet back to the floor and sit up fully.
She was still far too pale. Would she flush with colour when in the throes of passion, he wondered, or would she lie still as a marble statue and just as colourless?
“Let me help you.” He took one of her slender hands in his, giving her the necessary leverage to stand up. He tried not to dwell on how fragile her fingers felt, or how easily he could crush them inside his own.
“I must go.”
“Go? Go where? To your apartment? Let me arrange a car for you.”
“No!” Panic streaked across her features.
“Then where?” He asked as patiently as he could.
“Look, thanks for your help. I’ll be fine from here. Really.”
“You think so?” He swivelled her around to face the full-length mirror that adorned the wall opposite the bed. “You are as pale as a ghost, you tremble like the last leaf on a vine in an autumn breeze and you tell me you are fine? How long has it been since you ate?”
“That doesn’t matter. I have business I must attend to. Please, let me past.”
“No. What kind of host would I be if I let you go in this state? Kyle would have expected better manners of me than that. Before you go you must eat something. Then I will arrange for a car for you.” His eyes narrowed as he saw twin spots of colour burn in her cheeks in response to the name of her dead husband.
“Please don’t speak of my husband to me.” Amazingly, she withdrew physically from him even more.
“If I promise not to mention him, will you agree to stay and dine with me?”
“You’re trying to bargain with me so I’ll have a meal with you? Don’t be absurd.”
“No,Signora , I do not bargain. Common sense dictates you must eat. Why not with me?”
“I thought you had an appointment.”
“Easily changed. How long since you last had something to eat?”
Lara thought back. The last thing she’d had was lunch on the day that Kyle had been due home. They always dined out on his first night home. A homecoming date, he’d always called it. That was three days ago. Aside from the gallons of coffee she’d consumed, Lana had taken nothing else. But food was the last thing on her list of priorities. More pressing was her financial situation, and this man was one of her creditors. One of her major creditors if the sum of money he’d mentioned last night was anything to go by. Her throat clenched shut. She couldn’t have eaten now, and especially in his company, even if she’d wanted to.
“Thank you for your concern,” she managed. “I don’t need anything right now.”
“Anything right now? Or anything from me?”
Lana felt the flush of heated anger rise up her neck. Was she that obvious? “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she managed stiltedly.
He raised a finger to stroke a gentle line down her cheek. “Offend me? No. You don’t offend me.”
Icy cold flooded her veins, chasing any vestige of warmth from her skin. She clenched her hands tight at her side. Did she mistake his suggestion? Did he perhaps expect to negotiate their debt by an alternative form of currency?
Lana took a swift step backwards. “Well, that’s that then. Thank you for letting me use your phone. I’m sorry about—”
He swept a hand expressively in front of them. “Do not apologise. You are under undoubted stress.” He reached into the breast pocket of his suit and withdrew a gold edged black enamelled cardholder. Long tanned fingers extracted his business card. “Here, call my mobile if you need anything. Anything at all.”
“Really, I’m sure I won’t—”
“Take it. You never know when you might need a friend.”
Silently Lana took the card and slipped it into her handbag. A friend? She doubted it. Instinct told her she’d be more likely to make friends with a tank full of sharks than count Raffaele Rossellini amongst her friends.
Three
Retrieving her car from the parking valet forced Lana to reevaluate her position rather more carefully. With her accounts frozen—and the remaining funds in her purse being small bills only—she found herself forced, for the first time in her life, to worry about the size of a tip.
The drive to her bank was thankfully uneventful—she only wished she could’ve said the same for the frosty reception she received upon her arrival in the bank manager’s office.
“Mrs Whittaker, I am very sorry for your loss, but my hands are completely tied with respect to your funds. Your husband has defaulted on several payments. We’ve been corresponding with him for several months on this issue and were led to believe he was refinancing offshore.”
“But our term investments…?” Fear plucked at Lana’s mind. Where had all the money gone? What had Kyle done?
“I’m sorry, Mrs Whittaker, but there are no investments. You and your husband broke those funds some time ago. We have your signature on the documents.” He swivelled his computer screen around for her to view the scanned forms. There, sure enough, was her signature. Although she had no recollection of doing so there was no doubt that was her own scrawl on the page. A sickening wave of nausea gripped her. How many times had she authorised financial transactions without realising what she’d signed, trusting implicitly in Kyle’s direction without so much as a quibble.
God, she’d been such a fool. A stupid, gullible fool. How long had he been fleecing money from their joint accounts to line the love nest he’d provided for his mistress?
Summoning the last scrap of dignity she could dredge from the shattered remains of her life Lana rose from her seat and extended her hand to the bank manager. Even her last paycheque was frozen. The pity on his face was almost her undoing but somehow, from somewhere deep inside, she summoned the courage to smile.
“I wish there was more I could do Mrs Whittaker, but as I’m sure you’re aware my hands are tied with the investigation into Mr Whittaker’s affairs.”
Lana nodded, the action a strain on the tension that locked her neck and spine in a straight line. “I understand. Please, don’t worry.” Understand? She didn’t understand at all. Everything that was constant about her world—the very fabric of her life—had been decimated.
In a daze Lana walked out to the car park, reaching inside her handbag automatically for her car keys. A movement across the pavement caught her eye.
“No.” she moaned at the sight that met her frantic gaze. “No! Stop that. What are you doing with my car?”
The burly tow truck driver continued winching her car onto the flatbed of his rig—the silver Mercedes coupe incongruous against the garish red and yellow paint of the truck. Lana closed the distance between them, twisting her ankle on the uneven surface of the asphalt.
“Unhook my car right now,” she demanded.
“Sorry, missus. I got my orders from the car owners.”
“Owners? You must be joking.I am the car owner! ” Everything today had turned into some awful joke, except she didn’t feel like laughing and realised with awful clarity that it would be a long, long time before she ever would again.
“Here.” The driver thrust a clipboard in front of her. The words swam before her eyes—repossession order, defaulted payments. In impotent silence Lana watched as the driver finished attaching the hooks that secured her car to the flatbed and climbed up into the cab.
How long she stood there after he’d gone Lana didn’t know, but a fine filtering drizzle eventually stirred her into action. As the drizzle thickened into
rain, Lana picked her way carefully along the footpath until she found a sheltered area where she could use her cell phone. By the time she slid the phone back in her bag an hour later, she’d worked through her personal address book. Those who hadn’t simply hung up on her had taken approximately thirty seconds to voice their thoughts on Kyle and, by association, Lana. For the first time in her life she was truly alone.
Chewing on her lip, Lana considered placing a collect call to her father at the embassy in Berlin. But what would that do aside from draw his attention to her capacity to disappoint him yet again. No, somehow she had to get through this without crawling back to Daddy. His displeasure, when the news filtered through to him, would be bad enough. She could already hear him saying “I told you so.” And she couldn’t bring this burden onto Tom Munroe and his wife. Always a frail woman, Helen had only recently had by-pass surgery. Somehow, she had to get through this on her own.
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