by Lynne Graham
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Kerry exclaimed in dismay.
‘Wasn’t it?’ Luciano sent her a flaring golden look of disagreement that was like the lick of a whip scoring tender skin. ‘I was in prison and too busy fighting for my freedom to spare the time to instigate court action over that loan. Nice one, Kerry. I get banged up for a theft I didn’t commit while you virtually steal from me!’
At that condemnation, the last remnants of colour drained from Kerry’s shaken face. ‘That’s not how it was…for a start, you agreed that loan with my grandfather, not with me,’ she reminded him angrily, rising to her feet again in a driven movement. ‘I’ve never had access to Grandpa’s financial affairs either. Although I offered to help, he insisted on dealing with the accounts and the bills himself. In fact, it’s only four days since I found out that he’d fallen behind with the loan and only then because he couldn’t keep his difficulties a secret any longer!’
Luciano elevated a doubting winged ebony brow. ‘You want to go back outside and come up with a more convincing story?’
‘Whether you want to accept it or not, that’s the truth!’ Kerry squared her shoulders but she did not look directly at him, for every time she looked her concentration fell apart again.
‘But why would I believe anything you said? Why would I trust you?’ Luciano derided harshly.
Kerry shot him a helpless look of reproach and then hurriedly veiled her confused eyes in self-protection. For if she did not trust him, how could she expect him to trust her? When he had been convicted of stealing from the family firm, hadn’t she started to believe that she owned the moral high ground and that her every worst suspicion of him had been proven true? In fact, hadn’t it suited her to believe that? But where was it written that infidelity and financial dishonesty went hand in hand? With a mighty effort of will, Kerry closed her mind down on the torrent of dangerous thoughts rushing in on her one after another.
‘Let’s recap,’ Luciano continued levelly. ‘The loan repayments stopped dead after the first six months. That’s over four years ago. Yet you’re trying to convince me that you had no suspicion whatsoever of that reality? Sorry, I’m not impressed!’
Faced with that intimidating derision, Kerry stiffened with annoyance. With every word that Luciano spoke she was receiving a daunting insight into his attitude. It was obvious that he was in no mood to give her a fair hearing. ‘You’re not really listening, though, are you?’
‘Are you getting that déjà vu feeling?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is how you treated me the day you told me that you’d changed your mind about marrying me. I didn’t get an explanation either and you didn’t listen to a word I said.’
At that unwelcome reminder of that nightmare day, Kerry’s breath snarled up in her throat, her strained eyes darkening. She marvelled that he had the gall to refer to that occasion. ‘I thought I was here to discuss Grandpa’s loan—’
‘Which he only got in the first place because I couldn’t stand you worrying your little head off about how your grandparents were managing in their draughty castle. There’s a personal dimension here that you seem determined to ignore.’
‘What else can I do?’ Kerry demanded, her temper flaring.
Did he think she was a caged animal to be prodded through the bars to provide him with better entertainment? First he tossed one spoiler, then another, and every angle he took caught her by surprise. After the way he had treated her, only the cruellest of males would even have referred to their short-lived engagement. Smarting pride and pain over that reference to a personal dimension only increased her resentment.
‘Admit the truth. It’s possible that that might win you five more minutes of my time,’ Luciano delivered with crushing contempt.
‘What truth? Are you actually asking me why I broke off our engagement? You still haven’t worked that out for yourself?’ Kerry could feel her heart thumping inside her chest too fast, her outrage rising out of her control. ‘That amazes me but I’m still not going to lower myself to the level of telling you why now!’
‘Is that your last word on the subject?’
Kerry pinned her soft lips together and jerked her chin in defiant affirmation.
‘Then I don’t have any more time to give you.’ Striding past her, Luciano crossed the room, threw the door wide and dealt her a cold, hard look of expectancy.
Her eyes flew wide in disbelief and her stomach clenched. ‘That’s not fair…you can’t do that!’
Chilling golden eyes assailed hers and his jawline squared. ‘I can do anything I want to do in my own office.’
Kerry stared fixedly into space, willing back the shaken surge of tears stinging behind her eyes. So he got his kicks out of intimidation now, she told herself, hating him with every fibre of her being for forcing her into a humiliating position where she had no choice but to climb back down off her high horse. Had she really once admired that sheer ruthless force of will of his?
Luciano was still as a statue, untouched by the shock that was emanating from her slender figure in waves. He had waited what felt like half a lifetime for what he was determined to hear from her own pink lips and he would let nothing get in the way of the best opportunity he would ever have.
Kerry forced her attention back to him and clashed with challenging dark golden eyes that carried not a shade of remorse or discomfiture. Her slight shoulders rigid, she screened her gaze and with a wooden lack of expression said, ‘All right…but first you let me explain about the loan and you listen this time.’
With a fluid shift of a lean brown hand, Luciano sent the door thudding shut again. The silence that fell throbbed. Her very muscles hurt with the strength of her tension. She sank back down in her chair, stiff as a coat hanger.
‘I’m waiting…’ Luciano lounged back against the edge of his fancy glass desk with infuriating self-assurance and cool.
For an instant Kerry searched those lean, darkly handsome features, saw the strength written in the hard angles of his fantastic bone structure and, before she even knew what was happening to her, hunger leapt inside her. It was a wanton physical craving that had a life all of its own and it shook her up even more. Her concentration destroyed and furious with herself, she battled to regain it. But she was remembering the many nights she had woken up hot and ashamed of her feverish dreams of what it might have been like if he had ever made love to her…only to always be forced to recall, both during their engagement and after his imprisonment, that Rochelle had already had that pleasure ahead of her and that nothing would ever change that demeaning reality.
Without even thinking about what he was doing, reacting by male instinct to the flash of awareness he had seen in her eyes, his own male hormones already on red alert, Luciano was picturing her stripped on his office carpet, dominated by him, begging him for it. Only something in him recoiled from that crude image even as raw arousal flared through his powerful frame with a white-hot, burning ferocity that reminded him just how long it had been since he had had any woman in his bed. Five years and four months. Four months wasted on her, four months putting her needs way ahead of his own, four months waiting on a wedding night that had never happened. His lean, bronzed face paled with anger. He had to be sex-starved to still be excited by her and certifiably insane to be wondering if she could still be a virgin.
Kerry was sick at heart from what she had relived, unable to look at him and agonised that she could still be that vulnerable to his potent sexual aura. That was all it was, she told herself feverishly. He was just a very good-looking, very masculine guy and lots of women reacted the same way around him. It certainly didn’t mean that she was carrying some stupid torch for him. It just meant that she was behaving like a total idiot and that it was time she got her act together.
‘Are you still a virgin?’ Luciano enquired, choosing to travel the certifiably insane route and doing so with a question that emerged smooth as silk.
Kerry’s head t
ipped back on her shoulders and she stared at him with aghast blue eyes, so disconcerted that she started stammering, ‘Wh-wh-wh-wh—?’
Luciano surveyed her with grim satisfaction. ‘So that’s a yes. No, don’t bother arguing with me. If you’d loosened the lock on your mental chastity belt, you wouldn’t still be blushing or embarrassed about it.’
In furious mortification, Kerry set her teeth together and snatched in sustaining oxygen but the silence lingered while she prepared herself to speak again without that revealing hesitation over every word. ‘How many twenty-six-year-old virgins do you know?’
‘You’re in a class of your own. The loan,’ Luciano prompted, content to let the previous issue drop while he let his attention be drawn by the restive way she crossed one slim knee over the other and then changed it back again.
Drawn up short by that reminder, Kerry swallowed hard and endeavoured to rise above her fury over that demeaning taunt and concentrate on her grandparents’ plight. She had to get across certain facts in the hope that he would understand and accept that nobody had ever had the slightest intention of defrauding him in any way. ‘Grandfather’s elder brother, my great-uncle Ivor, died soon after you went into prison—’
She still had fantastic legs, Luciano conceded. Slowly his appraisal climbed, memory filling out what he could not see as she sat there: the slim but highly feminine curve of her hips, her tiny waist, the surprising fullness of her small breasts. At the speed of a bullet, sexual heat exploded in him, sentencing him to an exquisite aching discomfort that made his even white teeth clench in outraged denial.
‘I don’t remember you ever mentioning him before,’ Luciano breathed curtly.
‘I used to forget Ivor was around. He lived like a hermit in his own wing of the castle.’ Aware of the terrible tension in the atmosphere and putting it down to his reluctance even to hear her explanation, Kerry talked even faster. ‘Grandpa only inherited Ballybawn because his father disinherited Ivor for running up so many debts when he was a young man. In the 1970s, Ivor was badly hurt in an accident and he was never the same afterwards. He became antisocial and difficult, he couldn’t hold down a job and his wife, who was a lot younger than he was, went off with another man. Then about twenty years ago Ivor finally came back to Ballybawn because he was broke and he had nowhere else to go, and Grandpa took him in—’
‘Where is this long story leading?’ Luciano cut in very drily.
‘Grandpa felt very guilty that his brother had suffered so much. He wanted Ivor to feel that he had as much right to live at Ballybawn as he himself had, so…’ Kerry grimaced ‘…Grandpa signed over half of the castle to Ivor—’
‘Why am I only hearing about this now?’ Luciano growled in wrathful interruption.
‘I didn’t know either until it all blew up in Grandpa’s face.’ Finally, Kerry lifted her head to clash with shimmering dark golden eyes. Her mouth ran dry and her spinal cord notched up another inch in rigidity.
‘But you are telling me that Hunt took a loan from me knowing that he didn’t have full title to the estate?’
‘At the time, Ivor made a will leaving his half to my grandparents and their descendants,’ Kerry hurried to explain. ‘Only unfortunately, after his death, that will turned out to be invalid because it hadn’t been properly witnessed and his old will, the one drawn up while he was still married, left all his worldly goods to his ex-wife and…and she claimed half of Ballybawn.’
Wretchedly conscious of Luciano’s brooding and incredulous scrutiny, Kerry muttered tautly, ‘Grandpa settled out of court with her and everything that could be sold was sold but it meant that he could not maintain the loan repayments.’
‘Even if I was to accept this highly improbable story,’ Luciano drawled with sardonic bite, ‘why didn’t Hunt himself come forward with it long before now?’
‘He couldn’t handle it and so he tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. He blamed himself terribly for what happened with Ivor’s will and it knocked the heart out of him. I could show you an entire drawer full of letters from your accountant and your solicitor that Grandpa didn’t even open…the minute they arrived, he must’ve put them in there. Luciano…I honestly did only find out about this a few days ago!’ she told him in helpless appeal.
As the phone buzzed Luciano turned away to answer it and Kerry pleated her restive hands together, striving to gauge his reaction from his chiselled bronze profile. She studied the arrogant jut of his nose, the proud angle of his cheekbone, the unyielding edge to his wide, sensual mouth. He had been so very kind to her grandparents when they had come over to London to meet him. He had liked the older couple, had not seemed to find them as eccentric as other people did. Surely there was something of that tolerant compassion still left in him?
Replacing the phone, Luciano swung back to her, and as she dredged her troubled gaze from him her cheeks warmed with self-conscious colour.
‘In business, it’s important that you stick to the issue,’ Luciano delivered with cool golden eyes, cold anger having checked his powerful libido. ‘However, it seems that you need me to clarify what that issue is and what it isn’t. It doesn’t relate to your great-uncle Ivor or your grandfather’s foolishness or even whether I believe in either claim. But by telling me that Hunt concealed the fact that he only owned part of the estate against which the loan was secured, you’ve done his cause no favours.’
Unnerved by that caustic speech, Kerry said vehemently, ‘I thought that when things had reached such a serious climax, honesty was the best policy—’
‘What are you? A little girl in Sunday school?’ Luciano shook his proud, dark head in wonderment at her naivety, for she had just given him more ammunition for the repossession order. ‘The bleeding-heart routine doesn’t have a place here. So before I lose patience or we run out of time, I suggest you keep your end of the bargain and confess why you ditched me…and, more importantly, you have to tell me who told you to do it.’
Even as Kerry coloured at that crack about bleeding hearts, her brows pleated. ‘Who told me to do it?’ she repeated in bewilderment. ‘What are you trying to suggest?’
Luciano settled shimmering golden eyes on her with incisive force. ‘That it’s cards-on-the-table time. I had only one reason for agreeing to see you today and it had nothing to do with how much money you owe me. That reason is that the Linwood half of your family tree set me up for five years in a prison cell!’
At that far-reaching condemnation, Kerry stared back at him with astonished incomprehension. ‘How is it my family’s fault that the police didn’t investigate your case properly? And why should you believe that anyone set you up?’
‘Right out of the blue you broke off our engagement and the next morning I was arrested. Now, only a fool would credit that those two events weren’t closely connected,’ Luciano continued in the same soft, sibilant undertone that from the outset of that disturbing speech had had the most terrifyingly chilling effect on her. ‘To save you and your family from embarrassment, one of your Linwood relatives warned you to dump me and I want to know which one of them it was. Why? Because whoever did that was involved up to their throat in framing me!’
‘I can’t believe that you’ve been thinking like this about my family and me all this time,’ Kerry admitted shakily half under her breathe, stark strain visible in the prominence of her fine facial bones. ‘But I had good reason to tell you that day that I didn’t want to marry you any more. I certainly didn’t need anyone else to tell me to end our relationship. Your behaviour did that for me all on its own.’
‘My behaviour? After what I’ve come through, I’m not prepared to swallow your insults.’ As she spoke, scorching anger had flamed in Luciano’s intent scrutiny and his lean, strong face was rigid. ‘So stop right there and think very hard about what you’re about to say to me. In fact I think you ought to sleep on it!’
Kerry gave him an even more perplexed look. ‘Sleep…on it?’
‘Your time’s up. I h
ave a meeting to attend and I see no reason why other people should be kept waiting on your behalf,’ Luciano asserted with acerbic bite. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eleven.’
‘You can’t expect me to come back here again tomorrow!’ Kerry argued in disbelief.
‘You should’ve been on time this afternoon.’
Kerry jumped to her feet. ‘For goodness’ sake, I have a flight booked home this evening!’
‘Then you have a problem. And do think very carefully about what you plan to tell me tomorrow because you won’t get a second chance to spill the beans.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Hasn’t anything I’ve said today made the slightest impression on you?’ Kerry pressed in dismay.
‘Nothing,’ Luciano admitted.
At that uncompromising confirmation, her heart sank. Recognising that she had no choice whatsoever but to meet his demand that she return the next day, Kerry dug into her bag to remove the file and walked over to set it on his desk. ‘Then at least look at my business plan for Ballybawn before I come back…that is sticking to the issue and practical and should be much more your style.’
‘Kerry…one final word of advice.’ Luciano shot her a grim look of incredulity. ‘The very last thing I’m likely to be interested in is your business plan for a property that will soon be mine!’
A sense of desperation surged up so hard and fast in Kerry that it made her feel light-headed. She had got nowhere with him but then, she dimly recognised, she was not firing on all cylinders, was she?
‘I can’t quite believe that I’m here with you,’ she muttered out loud, belatedly recognising her own maddening sense of dislocation throughout their meeting. ‘It doesn’t feel real.’
Smouldering golden eyes rested on her delicate features. Not a single reference had she made to his imprisonment for a crime he had not committed. Not a single word of even insincere regret had she proffered. A story-book princess in a fairy-tale tower could not have been more detached from the hard realities of his recent past.
