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DERVLA’S apprehension increased as the limo pulled into the underground parking space of the London house. She swallowed past the nervous constriction in her throat as the car came to a halt and Eduardo switched off the engine.

Beside her Alberto clicked free his seat belt, nothing in his manner suggesting he shared her apprehension. Dervla couldn’t believe he was really that relaxed, but if he wasn’t, she thought, studying his stress-free, handsome young face, he was the world’s best actor.

Her brow furrowed; his attitude totally baffled her. Gianfranco might be an indulgent parent, but when Alberto overstepped the mark he came down hard. And by anyone’s definition he had overstepped the mark this time!

His father was going to go ballistic and Alberto had to know it.

She waited until Eduardo was out of hearing distance before she voiced the question that was uppermost in her mind.

‘Why did you do it?’

He had fed her a steady stream of information concerning the highlights of his journey, including the complicated romantic life of the lorry driver who had given him a lift to Calais—she might suggest he didn’t share that little anecdote with his father—but so far he hadn’t even hinted at any reason for the escapade.

Alberto looked at her and shrugged.

She sucked in a sharp breath. The similarity between father and son had never been more pronounced as the teenager slung her a look from under well-defined sable brows. ‘An impulse, I guess.’

Dervla rolled her eyes and begged with a groan, ‘Please don’t say that to your father, Alberto.’

‘Don’t worry about Dad, Dervla. I can handle him.’

Dervla’s mouth fell open. ‘You can handle …’ She began to laugh. The person had not been born who could handle Gianfranco.

The boy was not offended by her amusement. ‘It’s all right, really, Dervla. I’ve got it all under control.’

‘Have you suffered a head injury?’ Concussion would go some way to explaining his ill-judged confidence. ‘Sometimes, Alberto, there is a fine line between confidence and stupidity—in this instance there is a dirty great chasm!’

Alberto laughed.

‘Alberto!’ she protested. ‘This isn’t a joke. You can’t just run away.’

‘Why not, Dervla? You did.’

The gentle reminder made her flush to the roots of her hair. ‘That,’ she retorted, her eyes sliding from his, ‘is not the same at all. I’m an adult …’

‘And you’re married and I’m not.’

Dervla was starting to wonder who was meant to be defending reckless behaviour here. ‘Your father must have been beside himself.’

‘When you left he spent the night walking the floor. I could hear him all night.’

‘Really?’ She stopped and bit her lip. Suddenly I’m the adolescent. Alberto really was his father’s son, she reflected, and not just in looks. ‘That’s between me and your father,’ she said repressively.

‘Of course. Adult stuff.’

Dervla looked at him suspiciously, unable to rid herself of the idea he was humouring her. The boy looked innocently back at her through eyes that were so like his father’s that it was like being pierced by a dull blade.

‘You’re thirteen. What you did was incredibly dangerous. Anything could have happened,’ she said, struggling to impress on him the seriousness of the situation without coming over as the heavy step-parent.

‘But it didn’t,’ he pointed out with another flash of unarguable logic. ‘So there’s not much point worrying about it, is there?’

‘I know your dad can seem a bit unapproachable at times, but if there’s a problem you should tell him, Alberto. I think you’d be surprised at how understanding he can be.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Dervla, I know I can tell Dad anything and, let’s face it, he’s the sort of person that you want around in a crisis.’

This piece of worldly wisdom robbed Dervla momentarily of speech. ‘Yes, he is,’ she admitted finally.

‘You look a bit misty, Dervla. Are you all right?’ her stepson asked, watching her dab the suspicion of moisture from under her eyes.

‘Fine, just a bit of hay fever.’ She caught his arm. ‘It’s just when your father does get here don’t whatever you do act as if this is a joke.’

‘I won’t.’

With that she had to be content as the teenager put on a spurt of speed and shot ahead.

She called his name, breaking into a jog to catch him up.

But she didn’t; the teenager with the advantage of longer legs and youth reached the porticoed entrance to the tall Georgian building before she caught up with him.

Dervla stopped at the bottom of the elegant sweep of shallow steps and watched him exchange a few words with the man standing at the open door before disappearing inside.

Run, her inner voice screamed as the man began to walk down the steps towards her. She might even have responded to the voice had her feet not been nailed to the spot.

‘Hello, Gianfranco.’ He looked devastatingly handsome in a pale linen shirt open at the neck to reveal smooth golden skin and jeans that clung to his narrow hips and emphasised the length and power of his muscular legs.

The longing rolled over her like a tidal wave as she stared at him.

It did not even occur to her to question his presence here. A year sharing his life had taught her that ingenuity, determination and seemingly limitless financial resources meant that very few things were impossible for Gianfranco.

Compared to some of the things she had witnessed, reaching the London house before them could not have presented much of a challenge to him.

He stopped on the step above her, making the disparity in their heights even more noticeable, but he didn’t respond to her polite greeting.

His eyes, dark and intense, remained on her face.

‘Alberto’s very sorry.’

Dervla saw a flicker of something that looked like amusement in his dark eyes. ‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Not in so many words, but—’

Gianfranco cut her off with a sharp movement of his hand. ‘Dio mio, I have no wish to discuss my son just now.’

‘Not with me, you mean.’

Gianfranco’s mouth tightened with frustration.

‘It’s stupid, really,’ Dervla observed, her voice high and shaky. ‘But when we got married I was actually nervous about being a step-parent.’ She saw the flash of something that might have been shock move in his eyes and laughed again. ‘That didn’t occur to you? It didn’t cross your mind that I was worried I’d mess up and disappoint you.’

‘Well, you didn’t.’

‘Of course I didn’t, how could I? You’ve got the parenting covered. Actually, when you think about it, for someone who refused to be your mistress my present job description is not so very different.

‘I’ve tried hard to fit into your world, Gianfranco, really hard, but it seems to me that, no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be good enough.’

A stunned silence followed her quivering emotional outburst.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you felt that way? I thought you wanted to be part of a family.’

‘Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve been saying? I did, I do want to be part of a family, but I’m on the outside looking in where you,’ she accused, ‘put me.’

He looked genuinely shocked by her claim. ‘If that is true it was not my intention.’

‘You never do anything accidentally, Gianfranco. You manipulate people.’

‘Per amor di Dio, you act as though I planned everything …’ Releasing a hard laugh, he dragged a hand through his ebony hair and shook his head. ‘Since the moment I met you I have been playing catch-up; my life has been about as planned as a forest fire!’

The antagonism drained from Dervla as if someone had released an escape valve. They were just going around in circles. He didn’t love her and he wasn’t going to change, so what was the point in this?

‘Right, fine, well, it doesn’t matter any more,’ she said dully. ‘I’ll let you get on with doing your parent things. I’m staying with Sue just now and you’ve got her number.’

A look of astonishment spread across Gianfranco’s lean dark face. For a moment he just stared at her. ‘You expect me to stand here and let you walk away …?’

She shrugged, pretending a lack of interest she didn’t feel. ‘Why not?’

His sable brows twitched into a dark disapproving line. ‘What are you talking about? You are my wife, though you seem to have forgotten that.’

Dervla knew she was only his wife on paper. In his heart he would only ever have one wife and it wasn’t her. ‘I was your wife two days ago,’ she observed. ‘I didn’t see you going out of your way to see if I was all right.’

‘So I was meant to follow you?’ Eyes smouldering, he stepped down to her level and curved his hands possessively across her narrow ribcage, drawing her towards him until they stood barely an inch apart. The indentation above his aquiline nose deepened as his glance moved across her face.

‘You don’t look well,’ he accused, concern for her fragile appearance making his voice harsh.

‘I didn’t have much time to make myself presentable.’ She made no mention of the fact her brain had gone into meltdown the moment she had heard his voice. ‘You said it was urgent so I assumed a trip to the hairdresser’s was out of the question.’

The tart retort brought a fleeting smile to his dark eyes. The smile was not there when he said in an intense voice that made her sensitive stomach muscles quiver, ‘Your hair always looks beautiful.’

She wanted to lean into him and feel his arms close around her so much it hurt.

Gianfranco’s expression was distracted as he brushed a stray curl from her cheek with his knuckles. ‘Your skin is so soft!’ Silky soft … soft all over.

He sucked in air through his flared nostrils as his body reacted strongly to the jolt of lust the stray thought produced.

‘I simply meant that you look …’ he angled his dark head and allowed his narrowed gaze to travel over the sweet curves of her face ‘… tired,’ he decided, tracing the dark crescents beneath her eyes with the side of his thumb.

Dervla, her thoughts totally occupied with coping with the ache of longing—he was so damned close—had no energy in reserve for prevarication. ‘I’ve not been sleeping.’

Sleeping had become inseparably connected in her mind with the heat of his body, the warm, clean, masculine scent of his silky-textured skin. A sofa and a sleeping bag were just no substitute.

‘Neither have I.’

So Alberto had not been wrong about the pacing. ‘You haven’t?’ That was something. ‘Why?’

‘I was angry with you.’

‘Angry? I thought you might have missed me …?’

Dervla heard the pleading note in her voice and experienced a stab of self revulsion—where were her pride and self-respect? She was virtually begging.

‘Oh, God, this is my fault!’ She shook her head, her expression self-recriminatory as she admitted, ‘If I’d agreed to be your mistress things wouldn’t have got so complicated! I mean, all you ever actually wanted was sex and that’s not complicated.’

‘It wasn’t before I met you,’ he intoned grimly. Nothing in his life had been simple since he’d met Dervla.

‘Maybe you wish we hadn’t got married at all?’ A silence followed her words. It stretched and she wanted a hole to open up at her feet and swallow her.

‘When you left that way, I was angry, I was concerned, I was …’ He stopped, his smouldering dark eyes meshing with Dervla’s wide wary gaze.

He vented a frustrated-sounding expletive in his native tongue and pushed both hands into his dark hair before burying his face in his hands.

For what felt like a long time to Dervla he stayed that way. Then his hands fell away and he dragged a hand across his unshaven jaw as his head came up.

The action was so intensely weary that her tender heart took a direct hit. She had been so dazed to find him standing there she had missed the fact that he looked totally exhausted.

More than that, she realised, her troubled stare taking in the telling tension in the skin pulled taut across his chiselled cheekbones and the strain etched into the lines radiating from his deepset eyes, he looked like a man who had been to hell and made the return journey.