The Sicilian's Mistress

by Lynne Graham

  “I want to talk about my child because I’ve waited three years to find him.”

  “You’re not meeting Connor until you tell me what I need to know! What was I to you? A one-night stand? A hooker?” she slung furiously. “Or a girlfriend?”

  With pronounced cool, Gianni came upright to face her. “No to all of the above. Leave this for another day, cara,” he advised quietly, incisive dark-as-night eyes resting on the revealing clenching and unclenching of her hands. “When the time’s right, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “I’ll ask you one more time before I walk out of here…what was I to you?”

  Gianni expelled his breath in a slow hiss. “You were my mistress.”

  What the memory has lost,

  the body never forgets

  An electric chemistry with

  a disturbingly familiar stranger…

  A reawakening of passions long forgotten…

  And a compulsive desire to get to know this

  stranger all over again!

  A compelling miniseries from Harlequin

  Presents®, featuring our top-selling authors.

  Look out for more AMNESIA stories in 2001!

  Lynne Graham

  THE SICILIAN’S MISTRESS

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  STUDIOUSLY ignoring Faith’s troubled expression, Edward smiled. ‘I never dreamt that Mother would make us such a generous offer—’

  Faith sucked in a deep, steadying breath. ‘I know, but—’

  ‘It makes perfect sense. Why go to the expense of buying another property when there’s ample space for us all at Firfield?’

  At that precise moment Edward’s flight was called. Immediately he rose to his feet and lifted his briefcase. ‘We’ll talk it over when I get back.’

  Faith stood up. A slim, beautiful blonde of diminutive height, she had sapphire-blue eyes, flawless skin and wore her hair in a restrained French plait. ‘I’ll see you to the gate.’

  Her fiancé shook his well-groomed fair head. ‘Not much point. I don’t know why you bothered coming to see me off anyway,’ he remarked rather drily. ‘I’m only going to be away for three days.’

  Edward strode off and was soon lost from view in the crowds. Faith left the café at a slower pace, genuinely appalled at the announcement Edward had just made. They were getting married in four months and they had been house-hunting for the past three. Now Faith sensed that as far as Edward was concerned the hunt was over: his mother had offered to share her spacious home with them.

  It was a really ghastly idea, Faith acknowledged in guilty dismay. Edward’s mother didn’t like her, but she carefully concealed her hostility. Mrs Benson was no more fond of Faith’s two-year-old son, Connor. But then the fact that Faith was an unmarried mother had first fuelled the older woman’s dislike, Faith conceded ruefully as she walked back through the airport.

  Her troubled eyes skimmed through the hurrying crowds. Suddenly she stiffened, her gaze narrowing, her head twisting back of its own volition to retrace that visual sweep. She found herself focusing on a strikingly noticeable man standing on the far side of the concourse in conversation with another. As her heartbeat thumped deafeningly in her ears, she faltered into complete stillness.

  The compulsion to stare was as overwhelming as it was inexplicable. The man was very tall and very dark. His hard, bronzed features were grave, but not so grave that one glance was not sufficient to make her aware that he was stunningly handsome. Her tummy somersaulted. A fevered pound of tension began to build up pressure behind her temples.

  A smooth dark overcoat hung negligently from his wide shoulders. He looked rich, super-sophisticated, that cool aura of razor-edged elegance cloaking immense power. Perspiration dampened her skin. Sudden fear and confusion tore at her as she questioned what she was doing. A wave of dizziness ran over her.

  Simultaneously, the stranger turned his arrogant dark head and looked directly at her, only to freeze. The fierce intensity with which those brilliant dark eyes zeroed in on her stilled figure disconcerted her even more. But at that point the nausea churning in her stomach forced a muffled moan from her parted lips. Dragging her attention from him, Faith rushed off in search of the nearest cloakroom.

  She wasn’t actually sick, as she had feared. But as she crept back out of the cubicle she had locked herself in and approached the line of sinks she was still trembling. Most of all, she was bewildered and shaken by her own peculiar behaviour. What on earth had possessed her to behave like that? What on earth had prompted her to stop dead and gape like some infatuated schoolgirl at a complete stranger?

  Infatuated? She questioned the selection of that particular word and frowned with unease, the way she always did when a thought that didn’t seem quite her came into her mind. But she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe she was feverish, coming down with one of those viruses that could strike with such rapidity.

  There had to be some good reason why a total stranger should inspire her with fear…unless he reminded her of somebody she had once known. She tensed. That was highly unlikely, she decided just as quickly, and began to scold herself for her overreaction to a fleeting incident.

  But she knew what was the matter with her. She understood all too well the source of her basic insecurity. But that was something she had learnt to put behind her and never ever dwell on these days. With conscious care, Faith suppressed the scary stirrings at the back of her mind and blanked them out again.

  But what if she had once known that man? The worrying apprehension leapt out of Faith’s subconscious before she could block it again. Aghast, she stared blindly into space, suddenly plunged into a world of her own, a blank, nebulous world of terrifying uncertainty which she had believed left far behind her. The lost years…what about them?

  A crowd of noisy teenagers jostled her at the sinks, springing her back into awareness again. She blinked rapidly, once, twice, snatched in a shuddering breath to steady herself. Discomfited by her uncomfortably emotional frame of mind, she averted her head and shook it slightly. You saw some really interesting people at airports, she told herself squarely. Her attention had been momentarily distracted and she wasn’t feeling too good. That was all it had been.

  But when Faith vacated the cloakroom and turned back into the main concourse, she found her path unexpectedly blocked.

  ‘Milly…?’ A dark, accented voice breathed with noticeable stress.

  Faith glanced up, and it was a very long way up, and met flashing dark eyes so cold and deep her heart leapt straight into her throat. It was the same guy she had been staring at ten minutes earlier! Her feet froze to the floor in shock.

  ‘Madre di Dio…’ The stranger stared fixedly down at her, his deep, accented drawl like an icy hand dancing down her taut spine. ‘It is you!’

  Faith gazed up at him in frank surprise and sudden powerful embarrassment. She took a backward step. ‘Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong person.’

  ‘Maybe you wish I had.’ The intimidating stranger gazed down at her from his incredibly imposing height, slumbrous dark eyes roving so intently over her face that colour flooded her drawn cheeks. ‘Dio…you still blush. How do you do that?’ he drawled very, very softly.

  ‘Look, I don’t know you, and I’m in a hurry,’ Faith responded in an evasive, mortified mutter, because she couldn’t help wondering if her own foolish behaviour earlier had encouraged him to believe that
she was willing to be picked up.

  Eyes the colour of rich, dark golden honey steadily widened and her heartbeat started to thump at what felt like the base of her throat, making it difficult for her to breathe. ‘You don’t know me?’ he repeated very drily. ‘Milly, this is Gianni D’Angelo you’re dealing with, and running scared with a really stupid story won’t dig you out of the big deep hole you’re in!’

  ‘You don’t know me. You’ve made a mistake,’ Faith told him sharply.

  ‘No mistake, Milly. I could pick you out of a thousand women in the dark,’ Gianni D’Angelo murmured even more drily, his wide, sensual mouth curling with growing derision. ‘So, if the nose job was supposed to make you unrecognisable, it’s failed. And what sad soap opera did you pick this crazy pretence out of? You’re in enough trouble without this childish nonsense!’

  Her dark blue eyes huge in receipt of such an incomprehensible address, Faith spluttered, ‘A nose job? For goodness’ sake—’

  ‘You have a lot of explaining to do, and I intend to conduct this long-overdue conversation somewhere considerably more private than the middle of an airport,’ he asserted grittily. ‘So let’s get out of here before some paparazzo recognises me!’

  As Faith attempted to sidestep him he spontaneously matched her move and blocked her path again. She studied him in disbelief. ‘P-please get out of my way…’ she stammered, fear and confusion now rising like a surging dark tide inside her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re mad…if you don’t get out of my way, I’ll scream!’

  He reeled back a full step, a deep frown-line of impressive incredulity hardening his lean, strong features. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ he demanded with savage abruptness.

  Faith broke through the gap he had left by the wall and surged past him at frantic speed.

  A hand as strong and sure as an iron vice captured her wrist before she got more than two feet away. ‘Accidenti…where do you think you’re going?’ he questioned in angry disbelief, curving his infinitely larger hand right round her clenched fingers.

  ‘I’ll report you to the police for harassing me!’ Faith gasped. ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous…’ He gazed unfathomably down into her frightened and yet strangely blank eyes and suddenly demanded with raw, driven urgency, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Faith spun a frantic glance around herself. Only her instinctive horror at the idea of creating a seriously embarrassing public scene restrained her from a noisy outburst. ‘Please let go of me!’ she urged fiercely.

  The ring on her engagement finger scored his palm as she tried to pull free. Without warning he flipped her hand around in the firm hold of his and studied the small diamond solitaire she wore. A muscle jerked tight at the corner of his bloodlessly compressed lips, shimmering flaring eyes flying up again to her taut face.

  ‘Now I understand why you’re acting like a madwoman!’ he grated, with barely suppressed savagery.

  And Faith’s self-discipline just snapped, right then and there. She flung back her head and tried to call out for assistance, but her vocal cords were knotted so tight with stress only a suffocated little squawk emerged. But surprisingly that was sufficient. Gianni D’Angelo, as he had called himself, dropped her hand as if she had burnt him and surveyed her in almost comical astonishment.

  Shaking like a leaf, Faith backed away. ‘I’m not this Milly you’re looking for…never seen you before in my life, never want to see you again…’

  And she rushed away her tummy tied up in sick knots again, her head pounding, a kind of nameless terror controlling her. She raced across the endless car park as if she had wings, and then fell, exhausted, to a slower pace, breathless and winded, heartbeat thundering. Crazy, crazy man, frightening her like that all because she resembled some poor woman who had clearly got out while the going was good. Gianni D’Angelo. She didn’t recognise that name. And why should she?

  But wasn’t it strange that he should have attracted her attention first? And only then had he approached her. Almost as if he genuinely had recognised her…

  As her apprehensions rose to suffocating proportions release from fear came in the guise of an obvious fact. Of course he couldn’t have recognised her! She couldn’t believe that she had ever been the kind of person to run around using a false name! And she was Faith Jennings, the only child of Robin and Davina Jennings. True, she might have been a difficult teenager, but then that wasn’t that uncommon, and her parents had long since forgiven her for the awful anxiety she had once caused them.

  Half an hour later, sitting in her little hatchback car in heavy morning rush-hour traffic, Faith took herself to task for the overwrought state she was in. Here she was, supposedly a mature adult of twenty-six, reacting like a frightened teenager desperate to rush home to her parents for support. And yet what had happened? Virtually nothing. A case of mistaken identity with a stubborn foreigner unwilling to accept his error! That was all it had been. A nose job, for heaven’s sake!

  And yet as she gazed through the windscreen she no longer saw the traffic lights; she saw Gianni D’Angelo, his lean, bronzed features imposed on a mind that for some reason could focus on nothing else. As furiously honking car horns erupted behind her Faith flinched back to the present and belatedly drove on, strain and bemusement stamping her troubled face.

  Gianni D’Angelo stared fixedly out of the giant corner window of his London office. An impressive view of the City’s lights stretched before him but he couldn’t see it.

  His sane mind was telling him that even twelve hours on he was still in the grip of shock, and that self-control was everything, but he wanted to violently punch walls with the frustrated anger of disbelief. He had searched for Milly for so long. He had almost given up hope. He certainly hadn’t expected her to do something as dumb and childish as try and pretend she didn’t know him, and then compound her past offences by attempting to run away again. And why hadn’t it occurred to her that he would have her followed before she got ten feet away from him?

  Milly, whom he’d always called Angel. And instantly Gianni was beset by a thousand memories that twisted his guts even after three years of rigorous rooting out of such images. He saw Milly jumping out of a birthday cake dressed as an angel, tripping over her celestial robes and dropping her harp. Milly, impossibly beautiful but horrendously clumsy when she was nervous. Milly, who had given him his first and only taste of what he had dimly imagined must be a home life…

  And you loved it, you stupid bastard! Gianni’s lean hands suddenly clenched into powerful fists. Punishing himself for recalling only pleasant things, Gianni made himself relive the moment he had found his precious pregnant Angel in bed with his kid brother, Stefano. That had put a whole new slant on the joys of home and family life. Until that moment of savage truth he hadn’t appreciated just how much he had trusted her. And instead of proposing marriage, as he had planned, he had ended up taking off with another woman. What else could he have done in the circumstances?

  He had wanted to kill them both. For the first time he had understood the concept of a crime of passion. The only two people he had ever allowed close had deceived and betrayed him. A boy of nineteen and a girl/woman only a couple of years older. The generation gap had been there, even though he had been too blind to acknowledge it, he reflected with smouldering bitterness. And naturally Stefano had adored her. Everybody had adored Milly.

  Milly, who had called him on the slightest pretext every day and never once failed to tell him how much she loved him. So she had spent a lot of time alone. But business had always come first, and he had never promised more than he had delivered. He had been straight. He had even been faithful. And how many single men in his position were wholly faithful to a mistress?

  As a knock sounded on the door Gianni wheeled round and fixed his attention with charged expectancy on his London security chief, Dawson Carter. His child, he thought with ferocious satisfaction. Milly had to have
had his child. And, whatever happened, he would use that child as leverage. Whether she liked it or not, Milly was coming back to him…

  ‘Well?’ he prodded with unconcealed impatience.

  Dawson surveyed his incredibly rich and ruthless employer and started to sweat blood. Gianni D’Angelo ran one of the most powerful electronic empires in the world. He was thirty-two. He had come up from nothing. He was tough, streetwise, and brilliant in business. He didn’t like or expect disappointments. He had even less tolerance for mysteries.

  ‘If this woman is Milly Henner—’ Dawson began with wary quietness.

  Gianni stilled. ‘What do you mean if?’ he countered with raw incredulity.

  Dawson grimaced. ‘Gianni…if it is her, she’s living under another name, and she’s been doing it successfully for a very long time.’

  ‘That’s insane, and utterly impossible!’ Gianni asserted in instant dismissal.

  ‘Three years ago, Faith Jennings was found by the side of a country road in Cornwall. She had been seriously injured and she had no identification. She was the victim of a hit and run. The police think she was robbed after the accident—’

  ‘Dio!’ Gianni exclaimed in shaken interruption.

  ‘But she was pregnant at the time of the accident,’ Dawson confirmed. ‘And she does have a child.’

  Gianni drew in a stark breath, incisive dark eyes flaming to bright gold in anticipation. ‘So the child must be two and a half…right? A girl or a boy?’ he prompted with fierce impatience.

  ‘A little boy. She calls him Connor. He’ll be three in May. He was born before his mother came out of the coma she was in.’

  Gianni screened his unusually revealing eyes as he mulled over those bald facts. ‘So…’ he murmured then, without any expression at all. ‘Explain to me how Milly Henner could possibly be living under another woman’s name.’