Lynne Graham - Dark Angel

‘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 tipped 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.’