Читать книгу Angel Of Darkness - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 6

‘I KNOW this is a shock for you,’ Daisy Wyatt murmured uncomfortably, absorbing her daughter’s stunned pallor. ‘I would have told you ages ago but I was afraid you might be upset.’

‘Might be?’ Kelda raked her rippling Titian red hair back from her brow, a fiery mix of disbelief and temper leaping through her taut frame. ‘For goodness’ sake, you’ve been divorced from the man for over four years! Why on earth did you start seeing him again?’

Daisy looked uneasy. Small and blonde and barely into her forties, she was a very pretty woman but right now her face was strained. ‘When I heard that Tomaso had had a heart attack, I...I—well...’ She stumbled under fire from an outraged emerald-green stare of enquiry. ‘I thought it was only decent to write with my good wishes for his recovery and Tomaso wrote me such a kind letter back asking me to visit...I didn’t see how I could refuse—’

‘But that was three months ago,’ Kelda condemned in a shaken tone. ‘You’ve been seeing him all this time and you never even dropped a hint!’

Daisy turned a guilty pink. ‘At the start, it didn’t seem worth mentioning. Just a few friendly visits to the hospital. Tomaso seemed so lonely. He didn’t seem to have many visitors, apart...’ She hesitated, assessing her daughter’s vibrating tension and hurriedly averting her gaze before reluctantly continuing, ‘Apart from Angelo, of course.’

That name struck Kelda like a stinging slap on the face. The fact that her sensitive mother wouldn’t meet her eyes when she said it didn’t help. Indeed, Daisy’s visible embarrassment on Kelda’s behalf merely piled on the agony. A moment out of time when she was eighteen. Inexplicable...inexcusable. Kelda blocked out the memories threatening her, refusing to recall that dreadful night and its appalling repercussions.

‘And I suppose Angelo was as chillingly contemptuous as he was when Tomaso married you and polluted the Rossetti family with a lowly hairdresser!’ Kelda snapped with ferocious bite. ‘I wish I could believe you cut him dead but I bet you didn’t!’

Daisy was studying her tightly linked hands. ‘Tomaso and I should never have got married in such a hurry the first time. Angelo hadn’t even met me... naturally, he was shocked.’

‘Look, I’ll make us a cup of tea.’ Kelda was so furious, she had to get out of the room before she burst a blood-vessel and said what she really thought. How could her mother make excuses for Angelo? How could she possibly do that? When Tomaso Rossetti had married Daisy eleven years ago, his son Angelo had scorned her, snubbed her and treated her as though she was a scheming, common little gold-digger with a greedy eye to the main chance. Kelda’s gentle, quiet mother had suffered agonies of discomfiture at Angelo’s merciless hands!

Safe in her pine galley kitchen, Kelda snatched in air in heated gasps. Her memories of Daisy’s short-lived second marriage were extremely painful. The discovery that Tomaso, for all his apparent devotion to her mother, was having an affair with another woman had shattered Kelda. The divorce had come as an incredible relief. It had freed her from the burden of a secret she had not dared to share with her vulnerable mother, and how could she tell Daisy the truth now? It wasn’t even as if she had any concrete proof to offer...nothing more than the dismayed and embarrassed confirmation of a classmate.

There had been a piece about Tomaso in a newspaper. ‘Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, doesn’t he?’ Helena had giggled. ‘He’s had a mistress on the go for years, some blonde he takes to hideaway country pubs for dirty weekends. And even though he only got married recently, he’s still seeing her...my father saw them all cosied up together in a dark corner only last week! Holding hands and kissing. Everybody’s dying to meet his new wife and see what she’s like—’

‘She’s my mother,’ Kelda had said flatly.

Helena had looked aghast. ‘Oh lord, I am sorry. I had no idea.’

Hell, why hadn’t she told Daisy straight after the divorce? Well quite naturally she had believed the divorce was final. Most divorces were. ‘We just weren’t compatible,’ Daisy had said sadly then, seemingly having no suspicion of Tomaso’s infidelity. And now Tomaso had actually had the neck to pop the question a second time! How the heck could Kelda have foreseen that eventuality? And heaven knew, right at this minute, it was a problem she could have done without. She had quite enough problems of her own!

Determinedly, however, Kelda suppressed the bitter awareness that, thanks to all the bad publicity she had received of late, her career as a top model was over. There was no point in crying over spilt milk, she told herself and her poor mother’s predicament was far more important.

Kelda had adored her own father, although her recollection of him was unhappily vague, built up on blurred impressions of a jovial, boisterous man, quick to temper, equally quick to laughter. She had only been five when her father began to spend long periods working abroad. She had only a couple of faded photographs of him when he was young and her mother had invariably resorted to tears whenever she tried to talk about him. But she still had every letter her father had ever written to her. The heart attack which had claimed his life in her twelfth year had seemed to devastate her mother at the time...

Yet four short months later Daisy had upped and married Tomaso Rossetti.

Her mother had been the manageress of a small hair salon, Tomaso, an extremely wealthy director in the Rossetti Industrial Bank. According to Daisy, she had been cutting Tomaso’s hair for years but she had never once mentioned him to Kelda! Indeed, Kelda had not even had a chance to meet Tomaso before the wedding took place.

The first news she had had of the marriage had been in the headmistress’s office at school. Called from class without any prior warning of what was coming, Kelda had been absolutely shattered when she was faced with a strange man with a proprietorial hand at her beaming mother’s waist and told he was her stepfather. And she hadn’t reacted exactly politely either. She had been appalled, resentful and alienated by the startling fact that the mother she loved could have kept so much from her. It had not been a promising start.

At the time, Kelda and her brother, Tim had been living with an elderly great-aunt in a quiet suburb of Liverpool, seeing their mother on only occasional weekends. Daisy had been unable to find a decent job outside London and her salary had not been enough to run to childcare outside school hours. She had refused to listen to Kelda when she argued that she was old enough to look after herself. Living as she then did in a far from salubrious inner city area, Daisy had been convinced that her children were far better off with their great-aunt.

‘We’ll all be together now!’ Daisy had enthused. ‘Tomaso wants us all to be one big happy family. He’s bought us a beautiful house in Surrey.’

She could have coped with Tomaso with her hands tied behind her back. It had been Angelo she hadn’t been able to handle. Angelo Cesare Rossetti. In the City, they called him the Angel of Darkness. It fitted him like a black velvet glove. Like an avenging dark angel, he destroyed anything and anybody foolish enough to get in his way. In comparison, his father was a positive pussycat, a gentleman of the old school, who treated women like creatures of spun-glass fragility in need of cherishing protection.

While Tomaso and Daisy had regularly scarpered abroad on what seemed to be one long impossibly extended honeymoon during the first years of their marriage, no doubt avoiding as best they could the poisonous atmosphere in their English home, Kelda had been left to Angelo’s tender mercies. Angelo, the stepbrother from hell, who had loathed her on sight. Mind you, it had been mutual, she conceded grimly. Even now when she saw Angelo’s name in a gossip column she still burned with an unholy, burning hatred that threatened to lick out of control.

As she slammed cups out on a tray, intelligence told her that she should be concentrating on Tomaso’s sins, not those of his son. Tomaso, who had probably ordered all his business acquaintances to stay away from the hospital while he plucked violin strings and talked about the misery of his lonely life at the top. Daisy was an easy mark for a sob-story.

Well, never let it be said that Kelda didn’t see her duty before her, even when it was unpleasant. The Rossettis had given her poor mother a very rough ride the first time around. Kelda intended to make sure that her mother thought twice, thrice and even more before she took the risk of marrying Tomaso again.

‘So when did Tomaso pop the question?’ she prompted with a brittle smile as she poured the tea.

‘Last night over dinner.’

‘He’s out of hospital, then.’ Kelda had had vague hopes that Tomaso had proposed from his sickbed. Her mother’s dreamy expression might then have been excused as compassion.

‘For ages. It wasn’t a bad attack, more of a warning really,’ Daisy shared. ‘And Angelo has persuaded him to retire. He knows just how to talk to his father and he’s been so kind—’

‘Angelo? Kind?’ Kelda echoed incredulously.

Her mother tensed. ‘He sent a car to pick me up and take me home again every time I visited the hospital.’

‘How many near-fatal collisions did it have?’

‘Angelo really has been wonderful, Kelda,’ Daisy murmured tautly. ‘He...he even took me out to lunch. I find him rather overwhelming but he is trying to be friendly and considerate...’

Kelda wanted to laugh like a hyena. Angelo...kind, wonderful, considerate? Only her trusting mother could be so easily taken in. But on another level she was deeply hurt that so much had been happening behind her back. ‘Does he know that his father’s proposed again?’

Daisy nodded and smiled. Kelda ground her teeth together.

‘Angelo even asked about you,’ her mother advanced in a clear effort to impress. ‘He was very sympathetic and understanding about...well, about that awful business in the papers.’

Kelda went white with rage and mortification and turned her head away. Of course, it had clearly been too much to hope that Angelo hadn’t been laughing heartily over her recent sufferings. He never read the tabloids but she just bet that he had made an exception when the gutter Press were tearing her apart. Kelda still felt soiled and besmirched by the lies that had been written about her and the vicious quotes from ex-boyfriends who had jumped on the bandwagon in revenge.

‘It’s such a shame that you didn’t let Danny Philips down more gently.’ Daisy sighed regretfully.

‘He was a married man!’ Kelda reminded her acidly. ‘Naturally, I got rid of him as soon as I found that out.’

‘I expect he didn’t mean to fall in love with you,’ Daisy murmured sadly.

‘He wasn’t in love with me...he just wanted to get me into bed like all the rest!’ Kelda fielded.

‘But he must have been terribly hurt to take an overdose like that, and maybe if you’d gone to see him in hospital—’

‘I’d have finished him off!’ Kelda broke in rawly. ‘He took an overdose because his wife found out he’d been seeing me. He took it to get back in with her and then he spilt his guts in that filthy newspaper to get his own back on me!’

‘It was wicked of him to tell all those lies about you.’ Daisy’s large blue eyes were swimming with tears. ‘I told Angelo that you’d never had an affair with anyone...’

‘P-Pardon?’

Her mother reddened. ‘I wanted Angelo to know that there wasn’t a word of truth in any of it. You’re not that sort of girl.’

Kelda was in agony. She adored her mother but she had never come closer to killing her! ‘Kelda’s saving herself for marriage.’ She could just hear her mother saying it! And she could see Angelo, struggling not to choke on his wine, sardonically amused by her mother’s blind faith in her daughter’s virtue. Hellfire embarrassment scorched Kelda.

‘Well...what do you think?’ Daisy asked hesitantly.

‘About what?’

‘About me marrying Tomaso again?’

Kelda steeled herself. ‘I think you’d be making the biggest mistake of your life. But of course...it’s your decision.’

‘I suppose the idea of us all being a f-family together is a little fanciful.’ Looking stricken, Daisy was visibly swallowing back tears of disappointment.

Kelda felt torn apart by guilt but she reminded herself that it was for her mother’s own good. ‘Have you given him an answer yet?’

‘No,’ Daisy conceded tightly.

‘If you do marry him, I’ll hardly cut you off...I expect we can still meet for lunch occasionally...’

‘Y-yes,’ Daisy gulped, bending her head. ‘But you and I are so close...what about weekends?’

‘I will never cross the threshold of any house that harbours Angelo as a regular visitor,’ Kelda stated without apology.

* * *

‘You mean she just dropped it on you?’ Her brother Tim burst out laughing. ‘Isn’t that just Daisy?’

It was the following day. They were lunching in a wine-bar round the corner from the insurance company where Tim worked.

‘It wasn’t funny! Why didn’t you warn me?’ Kelda snapped, throwing an icy glance of hauteur at the man at the next table, who had sat fixedly trying to catch her eye ever since she sat down.

Tim followed her gaze ruefully. ‘The Iceberg buries another victim...’

‘I loathe that stupid nickname!’ She set her perfect white teeth into a celery stick and crunched. As she chewed, she flung her head back, her mane of entirely natural pre-Raphaelite curls rippling back over her slim shoulders in tongues of fire. ‘Don’t use it!’

‘OK...OK!’ Tim held up both hands in mock surrender.

‘Why didn’t you tell me she was seeing Tomaso again?’

His mobile features tensed. ‘I guessed how you’d react.’

‘I bet you said nothing, you lily-livered swine!’ Kelda hissed across the table at him. ‘You don’t care if Tomaso runs around with other women behind her back!’

Tim had gone red. ‘I don’t think it’s any of my business.’

‘Oh, I’m all right, Jack!’

Tim grimaced. ‘How much of the way you feel has to do with Angelo?’

Kelda froze. ‘It’s got nothing to do with him!’

Tim gave her an unimpressed glance.

‘I can’t stand him...that’s true.’ Her restive hands snapped a carrot stick in two but she held his gaze fiercely. ‘But it’s Mum’s best interests that concern me.’

‘You’re terrified of Angelo.’ Tim looked almost amused.

‘Don’t be ridiculous...I loathe and despise him... I’m certainly not afraid of him!’

Tim sipped his wine. ‘Exactly what did happen the night of your eighteenth birthday bash? You know, I never did find out why Angelo had disappeared, Tomaso looked like thunder and Mum was on the brink of hysterics over breakfast the next morning...’

Every scrap of natural colour had drained from her complexion. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said tightly.

Her stomach was churning sickly. She broke out in a cold sweat. If she lived to be a hundred, she would still relive that evening in her nightmares. Angelo had humiliated her. Angelo had destroyed her. At a most sensitive age, he had instilled in her an aversion to sexual intimacy that she had still to overcome. The Iceberg was dead from the neck down, she reflected with raw shame and bitterness. She couldn’t bear a man to come too close. Her skin crawled when men got seductive and expectant. It made her feel soiled, cheap. Angelo had done that to her...with his scorn and revulsion.

‘You’re a promiscuous little tramp. It doesn’t matter how much money my father spends on you...you will never climb out of the gutter!’

Kelda swallowed back nausea with difficulty. She was lost in the past, savaged by an indictment that had merely heightened the intense vulnerability she concealed from the world.

‘Angelo seems to be encouraging Mum and Tomaso,’ Tim remarked. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t stick a spoke in his wheels.’

‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’ Kelda demanded.

Tim didn’t meet her eyes. ‘He called into the office one day last week.’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Actually, he’s offered to fix me up with a better job...’

‘I can see I’m on my own,’ Kelda breathed flatly.

Tim searched her vibrantly beautiful face anxiously. ‘He’s a vicious bastard when he’s crossed, Kelda. Stay out of it. Mum’s a big girl now. Let her make her own mistakes. And if Angelo’s prepared to bury the hatchet—’

‘I’ll lift it out of the ground and bury it in his back,’ Kelda slotted in with grim emphasis. ‘I have no intention of interfering between Mum and Tomaso but neither have I any intention of being roped in to play happy families. I’m not eighteen any more. I have a life of my own.’

Tim groaned. ‘You’re not half as tough as you like to act. If you annoy him, Angelo won’t just rock your boat, Kelda. He’ll blow you out of the water.’

Her hand shook slightly as she raised her glass. Tim’s imagery sent a chill snaking down her backbone.

‘Any recovery on the career front?’ Tim prompted abruptly.

She pulled a face. ‘I’m trying to sell my apartment.’

‘As bad as that?’ Tim looked shaken.

‘When the Fantasy campaign dropped me, I lost half my income...and other cancellations followed,’ she spelt out tautly.

‘But you’ll make it up again...you’re famous!’

‘Notorious,’ Kelda corrected with unconcealed bitterness. ‘And that’s not the sort of image that sells exclusive cosmetics and perfume. My contract with the agency is up in two months’ time. I don’t think it’ll be renewed.’

Tim said something unrepeatable about Danny Philips. Then he smiled. ‘You should marry Jeff. He’s stood by you and he’s got all his Daddy’s hotels coming to him—’

Kelda concealed her distaste. She knew she would miss the luxuries her high earnings had brought her but she had no intention of marrying to maintain that lifestyle.

‘I should have stopped seeing Jeff weeks ago,’ she confided wryly,.

‘I liked Jeff.’ Tim frowned at her. ‘Let him down gently.’

As she dressed for her dinner date that evening, she grimaced. She had already tried and failed twice to let Jeff down lightly. So much for her heartless bitch image! She liked Jeff but he was getting serious. He wasn’t the Mr Right her daft mother liked to talk about. Kelda had decided a long time ago that Mr Right didn’t exist. Not for her, anyway. She attracted all the wrong types.

The poseurs, the predators. To most men, she was a trophy to show off, a glorified sex object, whose greatest gift was the envious reactions she stirred up among their friends. Five feet nine in her bare feet, Kelda had the sleek slender lines of an elegant thoroughbred and a face that every camera loved. She had flawless skin, gorgeous hair and beautiful eyes. At sixteen she had suddenly blossomed from a gawky, flat-chested late developer into an eye-catching young woman, who turned heads wherever she went. The attention had been balm to a self-esteem continuously battered by Angelo’s cruel tongue.

He had so very nearly prevented her from becoming a model. If it hadn’t been for the divorce, she would have ended up resitting the final exams she had failed.

‘You let her go to London, she’ll go wild,’ Angelo had forecast. ‘She’s too immature, too undisciplined and too volatile.’

Angelo had always taken great pleasure in ensuring that whatever she most wanted she didn’t get and whatever she least wanted, she got in spades. But she hadn’t gone wild, had she? She had clawed her way up the ladder to success and exulted in her first Vogue cover. Rather childishly, she recalled reluctantly, she had sent a copy of that edition to Angelo, desperately afraid that he mightn’t have seen it. Very childish, she acknowledged. Then, Angelo had always brought out the worst in her character.

Jeff arrived with a massive bunch of red roses and her heart sank. Dinner at a candlelit restaurant followed. No matter how often she tried to tactfully change the subject, Jeff brought it back to marriage. He was like a terrier chasing a bone.

Her conscience smote her. Jeff had staunchly stood by her throughout the tabloid attacks. Other friends had deserted her like rats escaping a sinking ship. Jeff had had touching faith in her innocence. What a shame it was that you couldn’t love to order, she thought ruefully. She valued Jeff’s friendship but she was beginning to realise that no matter what she did, she was going to lose that as well.

‘I’m really very fond of you,’ Kelda stressed carefully.

‘I don’t want you to be bloody fond of me!’ he muttered with unexpected heat. ‘I want you to marry me.’

‘I can’t.’

For the remainder of the meal, he swung between arguing and a monolithic attack of the sulks. Kelda managed to charm him out of the worst of his mood but he was drinking too much. Unfortunately she had already agreed to join friends of his at a nightclub. Her attempt to pull out of the arrangement was badly received. Fearful of a public scene, she steeled herself to face what remained of a difficult evening. If it was at all possible, she didn’t want to hurt Jeff’s feelings.

Belatedly she realised that she had made the wrong decision. In the foyer of the club, Jeff suddenly attempted to drag her into his arms and Kelda slapped his hands away with the fury of a bristling tigress. Of all things, she hated being mauled in public.

‘I’m absolutely crazy about you!’ Jeff announced stridently. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘If you don’t behave yourself, I’m going home!’ she hissed at him in an undertone and turned on her heel, praying that he would cool off.

A split-second later, she stopped dead in her tracks, slaughtered by the sheer shock of finding Angelo less than six feet from her. He had the advantage, she registered. He had seen her first. At six feet four, he was one of the very few men capable of looking down on her even when she was wearing her highest heels.

She was paralysed, her heartbeat quickening, colour flooding her translucent skin and then slowly, painfully draining away again to leave her paper-white. Chillingly dark eyes cut into her like grappling hooks in search of choice and tender flesh. Every tiny muscle in her tensed body jerked tight as she braced herself for attack.

‘I presume you do intend to speak, Kelda.’ The smooth, cultured drawl sliced through the thickening atmosphere and clawed nasty vibrations of threat down her sensitive spine. He was like a sleek, terrifyingly dangerous black panther about to strike.

‘Did you hear someone speak?’ she asked Jeff, planting a trembling hand on his arm. ‘I didn’t.’

She swept past Angelo and his dainty little blonde sidekick with inches to spare and her classic nose as high in the air as she could hold it.

‘Do you realise who that was?’ Jeff bleated in her ear.

‘Once upon a time, my mother was married to his father. That creep was my stepbrother. And we didn’t part on such terms that I feel I have to notice him in public.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that your mother had been married to Tomaso Rossetti?’

Jeff was so helplessly impressed by anyone whose bank balance was greater than his father’s. ‘It wasn’t important.’

‘You just cut Angelo Rossetti dead,’ Jeff groaned. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

Sitting down, Kelda fought to still the nervous tremors still rippling through her. ‘He told me once that I had the manners of a slum child. He ought to be pleased to see how well I’ve turned out.’

Shock seemed to have sobered Jeff up. ‘My father’s into the Rossetti Bank to the tune of a million and we’re looking for an extension on the loan. I was so shattered by what you did out there, I didn’t speak either.’ Abruptly, he bolted upright again. ‘I’d better go and apologise.’

Her temples were throbbing. ‘I’m sorry...I didn’t intend to involve you—’

‘My God, you must have a death wish!’ Jeff muttered. ‘Nobody treats Angelo Rossetti like that and gets away with it.’

‘I think you’ll find that I have,’ Kelda asserted with more confidence than she actually felt.

She had gone too far. Temper and other emotions that she had no desire to examine had taken over. Did she never learn? Angelo taunted her and she still went for the bait. The teenage years might be behind her but evidently the responses weren’t. Only she could know the depth of the bitter mortification which overwhelmed her in Angelo’s radius. Nothing had changed.

Absolutely nothing had changed. In one glance she had learnt that. Angelo had stared her down with freezing hauteur and distaste. The dust beneath his feet would have inspired less repugnance. Of course he hadn’t seen her since that night...not once, not even briefly. He had gone abroad and shortly after that their parents had parted. She shuddered under the onslaught of a mess of confused emotions, none of which was pleasant.

Tonight she had reacted in self-defence as she had so often in the past. ‘Hit and run’ best summed it up, she conceded shamefacedly. If she hadn’t got away immediately, her control would have splintered and he would have seen that, caught unprepared, she was vulnerable. Naturally his hostility would be on a high again at the prospect of her re-entering the family circle with her slum-child manners and her legendary promiscuity.

But this time Angelo had been ahead of her. This time he was isolating her. She recognised the subtle brilliance of Angelo’s manipulation of her mother and her brother. How come they didn’t see it? Frankly, Tim was pleased at the idea of being part of the Rossetti clan again. Tim was always broke, always in debt. Tomaso was open-handed with money.

And Tim, like her mother, had always walked in awe of Angelo. Angelo was so clever that he had finished university in his teens. Angelo spoke half a dozen languages with the sort of fluency that made lesser mortals cringe. Angelo was so dazzlingly successful in the field of international finance that he was currently being tipped to become the youngest ever chief executive of Rossetti Industrial. Tongues that had dared to talk of nepotism had long since been silenced. Everything Angelo touched turned to gold. His opinions were quoted in the serious newspapers. Tomaso thought his son literally walked on water.

‘I must say that he was very gracious about it.’ Jeff reappeared, exuding an air of strong relief. ‘He’s asked us to join their table.’

Kelda went rigid. ‘But what about your friends?’

Jeff grimaced. ‘Don’t be so naïve, Kelda. You get an invite like that from Angelo Rossetti and you grab it. He’s got influence like you wouldn’t believe in all sorts of powerful corners—’

‘I’m sorry. I have a dreadful headache.’ Kelda stood up, her face a mask of disdain. ‘You can call a cab for me if you like—’

Slowly he shook his head. ‘Kelda...’

She was immovable. Catch her falling for a trick like that? No way would she give Angelo the opportunity to put her down in front of an audience. He excelled in that direction. Time was when she wouldn’t have had the wit to forestall him...time was when she would have waded in with both fists metaphorically flying, unconcerned by the presence of others. Suddenly she was unbelievably grateful to be a mature twenty-four, rather than an insecure, dreadfully unhappy teenager, trying to act older than she was.

Jeff was furious. She was wryly amused at the way the prospect of making an influential contact had cleared his wits and turned him off his previous insistence that he loved her and wanted to marry her. Insisting that he go and find his friends, she went home alone.

Switching on the lights in the lounge, she kicked off her shoes and switched on her answering machine. Nothing. Once there would have been at least a couple of messages. Not now...she was yesterday’s news. The Iceberg, who drove innocent married men to suicide. Her apartment would sell for far less than she had paid for it. Her bank balance was at an all-time low. She had had insurance for accident or injury but nothing to cover what amounted to being virtually unemployable. The media had turned her into a figure of hate. There had been plenty of pictures of Danny’s tear-stained, plain little wife. The wife that Kelda had not even known existed, living in the country as she did with their two young children while Danny had lived the life of a free and easy single man in the city during the week.

He had actually told Kelda that he went home most weekends to his elderly parents! With a sudden choked sound between a laugh and a sob, Kelda covered her working face with two unsteady hands. How could she have been so stupid? And how could Danny have told so many lies? For the money, she thought cynically. The true story would have made surpassingly unexciting reading. Danny had made her look like a vicious bitch, who used men up like tissues and threw them away when she got bored. And the truth...really the truth was far more pathetic, she reflected.

Here she was all dressed up in the proverbial sexy little black dress which showed off her perfect curves and endless legs and what was she, she asked herself painfully as she stared at her reflection in one of the mirrored wardrobes in her bedroom. A complete fraud! Less of a woman certainly than Danny’s poor little wife, who loved him and had borne his children and who had apparently been willing to forgive and forget from the instant he landed in that hospital bed!

What did it feel like to love like that? She couldn’t imagine it...she had never loved, only once experienced the devastation of desire...and that she never ever allowed herself to remember. It had hurt so much and so badly; she had been savaged by her own vulnerability. Deep down inside the pain was still there like an indoor alarm system. A man put his arms around her and if she felt anything at all, the alarm went off. If he makes me want him...what then? And she would go cold, inside and out.

The intercom buzzed beside the front door. It was two in the morning. With a crease between her brows, she pressed the button.

‘Angelo here...’

Kelda’s stomach clenched fearfully. She leapt back a step.

‘Go away!’ she shouted.

She heard muffled speech as if he had turned to speak to someone else.

‘Calm down, cara,’ Angelo purred.

Her lashes blinking in bemusement at the smooth endearment, Kelda let rip again, something terrifyingly akin to hysteria audible even to herself in her shrieked response. ‘Leave me alone!’

She walked away from the front door, breathing fast, and backed into the lounge where she sat down on the sofa and wrapped both arms round herself tightly. She had had a lousy evening, a lousy week, a lousy month come to that. She was not in the mood for a fight with Angelo. Dimly she had known that it would come, but she hadn’t been prepared for it to happen so soon.

It was with utter disbelief that she heard her front door open. She lurched bolt upright in genuine fear, cursing herself for not using the chain.

‘Do you think I should call a doctor, Mr Rossetti?’ a vaguely familiar male voice enquired. It was the night security guard.

‘No...I don’t think that will be necessary now that I am here. Thank you again.’

‘It’s a pleasure to be of service, Mr Rossetti.’

She heard the crackle of money changing hands and she still couldn’t move or react. She couldn’t believe that Angelo had somehow contrived to break into her very secure apartment with the assistance of the guard.

Angelo appeared in the doorway.

‘If you don’t g-get out, I’ll call the police!’ Kelda screeched at him.