Lynne Graham - Mistresses

‘I want your answer now,’ Angelo told her flatly.

‘Yes … you’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse,’ Gwenna breathed shakily.

Angelo extended his hand.

‘But let’s not pretend that it’s a civilised offer,’ Gwenna heard herself add as she took a step back from him.

Angelo took a step forward and before she had the slightest idea of his intention he framed her cheek with long brown fingers and brought his beautiful insolent mouth down in a mocking taunt on hers. Shock held her paralysed for the first ten seconds and then a wild surge of heat flamed up between her thighs, stretching every feminine muscle wickedly taut. It was like flame in freezing temperatures, shocking and sudden and shatteringly sweet. He lifted his arrogant dark head again, his scorching dark golden gaze raking in an assessing arc over her dazed expression.

‘Being civilised can be overrated, cara. My lawyers will be in touch. If everything is in order, I’ll contact you next week.’

DONALD HAMILTON slowly shook his distinguished head. ‘I’ll have nothing left, not even my independence.’

‘The valuations aren’t what you hoped? Even for the city apartment?’ Gwenna questioned anxiously.

‘I would say that the figures are anything but generous.’

Gwenna frowned. ‘Of course property prices have fallen in some areas. How did the Massey garden and nursery fare in the valuation stakes?’

‘The estate is listed and protected by law,’ Donald reminded her. ‘That keeps its value low because there are too many rules preventing more profitable types of development. The nursery is a small enterprise. You’ve worked wonders there but …’

‘It’s hardly big business,’ Gwenna filled in heavily.

‘Even so, if selling up protects me from having to make a court appearance, how can I possibly complain?’ her father asked her in a more upbeat tone. ‘As for what you told me about you and the owner of Rialto, that’s made all this even more amazing.’

Amazing? It seemed an odd choice of word. Gwenna coloured, her lashes concealing her bemused eyes. She was still wondering if the older man had quite grasped what she had delicately endeavoured to tell him with regard to her future association with Angelo Riccardi. In an effort to conceal her confusion, she bent down to pet Piglet, who was slumped at her feet.

‘You’re a beautiful woman and all grown up now.’ Donald Hamilton treated his daughter to a distinctly misty-eyed appraisal. ‘I mustn’t forget that. I’m not at all surprised that a man of Angelo Riccardi’s calibre should notice you and go for you in a big way.’

‘Well … he did notice me,’ his daughter muttered half under her breath, reckoning that her father could not possibly have registered the sort of liaison that she was being offered. No doubt that was a mercy, for she had worried about him kicking up a fuss even though she had packaged the unlovely truth with the pretence that she had been similarly impressed by Angelo Riccardi.

‘Perhaps you could have a little word with him about the valuations,’ the older man murmured casually. ‘Not right now, necessarily, but possibly in a week or two.’

Having tensed, Gwenna slowly lifted her head. ‘Have a word with him?’

‘You can’t be that naïve,’ Donald Hamilton said with a chuckle. ‘Obviously you’ve got influence with the man in the seat of power.’

‘I don’t think you can say that—’

‘This is not the time for false modesty,’ her father told her a touch irritably. ‘Choose your moment to speak to him about how unhappy you are over the treatment of your family. My word, do I have to paint pictures for you? Have you any idea what my life is going to be like when I don’t have a penny to call my own? When I’m forced to live off your stepmother like some ghastly ageing gigolo?’

But Gwenna was both taken aback and dismayed by his assumption that she would be able to persuade Angelo Riccardi to offer the older man a better price for his properties. She was very pale. ‘Look, I’m sorry … I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. All I’ve been thinking about is keeping you out of prison.’

Donald Hamilton winced as though she had been guilty of a gross lack of tact. ‘I think that risk has been safely laid to rest now and life does go on,’ he declared. ‘It is going to be very difficult for me to find another job.’

‘Yes, I suppose it will be. But how are you expecting me to help out by speaking to Angelo Riccardi?’ Gwenna asked apprehensively.

Her father grimaced. ‘You can be very naïve, Gwenna. For as long as you have Riccardi’s interest the world will be your oyster. Ideally I would like my job back at Furnridge Leather.’

Gwenna was staggered by that announcement. ‘Your old job?’

‘Yes.’ Impervious to her incredulity, Donald Hamilton added, ‘That would silence the scandalmongers. And help me get back on my feet again.’

Gwenna swallowed hard. ‘I honestly don’t think that I could do anything to help you to get your old job back.’

‘Well, if not it, something of equivalent status elsewhere. Why so shocked?’ he queried with dissatisfaction. ‘It would be no big deal to Riccardi to do one little favour for you.’

For once, Gwenna found it a relief to be joined by Eva and her stepsisters. She did not know how to tell her father that she did not have the influence he imagined, but she did feel that his expectations were unrealistic. At the same time, she strove to make allowances for his state of mind. He was under enormous pressure and the troubled state of his relationship with his wife was not helping.

‘Nice to see that you’re still running round in your dreary old Barbour and jeans like Little Miss Ordinary.’ Penelope treated Gwenna to a sour appraisal. ‘When does Angelo Riccardi wave his magic wand and turn you into a sex kitten? Or does mud turn him on?’

Gwenna had no wish to consider what might turn Angelo Riccardi on. Ever since that startling kiss, she had blanked him out of her mind. The discovery that he could dredge such a physical response from her had been deeply unwelcome. Indeed she was mortified to her core to appreciate that she was not impervious to his sexual charge. But, equally, forewarned was forearmed, and she had no plans to gratify his ego in that manner again.

‘You lucky, lucky cow,’ Wanda groaned with unhidden envy. ‘When I think of the effort I make to look beautiful, it’s depressing that you can go out looking like a dog’s dinner and still pull a billionaire.’

‘It won’t last five minutes,’ her stepmother, Eva, forecast with a dismissive but speaking distaste that raised goose bumps of chagrin below Gwenna’s skin. ‘These things never do.’

‘I’d better go. I’ve got orders to take to the post office,’ Gwenna muttered, keen to make her escape from the trio of cold, critical gazes fixed to her. Her stepmother’s contempt bit deepest of all.

‘Don’t forget what I’m going through here,’ her father urged, having taken the unusual step of accompanying his daughter to the door.

‘Of course, I won’t.’ Gwenna was touched by the affectionate hug he gave her.

‘See if you can work out something on my behalf with Riccardi.’

Gwenna drove slowly back to the nursery in the van. There was nothing more that she could do for her father at present, she thought unhappily. He was going to have to deal with the fact that his life was never going to be the same again, but that would take time. Her brow was pounding out her tension. Reasoning was a challenge when she felt as though the shock of recent events had set up a barrier between her and her wits. She was still struggling to accept that, in the space of ten days, her whole life had fallen down round her like a house of cards and with it the future that she had taken for granted. The village where she had lived from birth would no longer be her home. She would be barred from the gardens where she had grown up and happily worked whenever she had a moment free. The business she had laboured so hard to build would pass on to a stranger and might not even survive. After all, the profit margins at the nursery were low and, with Joyce on maternity leave, she was working alone.