LYNNE GRAHAM: The Heat Of Passion

Jessica sank back to the present and discovered that she was shivering. Her first thought was for her father. No matter what he said, he shouldn’t be alone. Grabbing up a coat, she let herself out of the tiny cottage she rented and climbed into her car to drive over to his house.

‘But your father’s at work, Mrs Turner. What would he be doing home at this time of the day?’ Her father’s housekeeper studied her with a questioning frown.

Jessica swallowed hard, fighting to keep her face unconcerned. ‘I thought he was finishing early.’

‘Well, he didn’t mention it to me.’

‘I’ll catch him later.’ Jessica climbed back into her car.

Dear God, where had her father gone? She must have been out of her mind to let him wander off like that in the state he was in! Another little voice asked her what she was doing. Her father had said he needed time on his own. She was not his keeper. Shouldn’t she respect his wishes? But the nagging sense of urgency nibbling at her nerve-endings wouldn’t leave her alone.

Reluctantly she went home again. Carlo... she couldn’t get Carlo out of her mind. Would she go to the Deangate Hall Hotel to crawl and beg and plead as once her father had done with her mother? Her stomach gave a sensitive heave. What would be the point? She knew Carlo Saracini. There was no way he would let her father off the hook. Carlo wanted revenge. He couldn’t touch Jessica but he knew just how deep the bond was between father and daughter. It would be a sweeter revenge than any that dark Machiavellian intellect might have calculated.

‘Some day you will come to me on your knees and beg me to take you... and I will break you.’

,As she remembered, perspiration dampened her short upper lip.

Carlo Saracini had destroyed her life. He had hacked to pieces everything she held dear. Her love for Simon, her happiness, her tranquillity... and in the end her self-respect. She had fought him to the very last shred of her endurance and then had learnt the secret of her own frailty in a shattering hour of self-discovery. Shuddering with disgust, she shut out the memories but the humiliation and the shame lived on as strongly as ever.

Carlo was one hundred per cent predator. Ruthless, unforgiving, utterly intolerant of those weaker than himself. She would never ever forget the way he had looked at her on her wedding-day. With smouldering incredulous fury and naked hatred. The Alpha male, fabulously rich, indecently successful and stunningly hand some...rejected. Right up until the very last moment Carlo had expected her to change her mind and fling herself at his feet.

‘I will never forgive you.’

Carlo Saracini’s parting assurance outside the church door. She had been shaking so badly by that stage, Simon had practically been holding her upright. She looked like a ghost in the wedding photographs. Simon had assured her that he had forgiven her but as she lived day in, day out with the farce of her marriage, she had never been able to forgive herself.

Jessica raised an unsteady hand to her pounding temples, struggling with the greatest of difficulty to retain her concentration. Why on earth hadn’t she realised before now that her father was in trouble? She had been too involved in her own problems, she acknowledged wretchedly.

Simon bad been ill for a long time before his death. His business had crashed in the recession, leaving nothing but debts. Her father had urged her to come home but she had refused. She hadn’t wanted to turn into the Daddy’s little girl she had been before her marriage. She hadn’t even had a job in those days. All she had ever thought about as a teenager was marrying Simon and having children. She shoved that particular recollection away with helpless bitterness.

Carlo had invited her to the Deangate to gloat over her father’s downfall. A sadist to the backbone, he wanted to experience her pain personally. Why should she give him the satisfaction when she knew that he would not allow her father to go unpunished? No way was she going to keep that appointment at the Deangate Hotel!

Jessica climbed out of her car. It was dark and cold and wet, just like that other day long ago, that day she couldn’t bear to remember. She straightened slight shoulders, tightened the sash on her serviceable beige raincoat and lifted her head high as she crossed the car park. This was for her father. This was her duty. So what if she felt physically sick at the prospect of seeing Carlo Saracini again? She owed this meeting to her father.

If the opportunity to watch her squirm gave Carlo a kick, maybe...just maybe it might be possible to persuade him to mitigate the severity of the punishment he was doubtless planning. Naturally the money would have to be repaid. And the only way that could be done would be by the sale of her father’s home. And since houses didn’t sell overnight, Carlo would have to be prepared to allow time for that sale to take place. All that she would ask would be that he did not drag her father through court and utterly destroy him.

Was that so much to ask? she wondered tautly as she approached the reception desk of the Deangate Hotel. Yes, it was a great deal to ask of a male of Carlo’s ilk.

‘Can I help you?’ a smiling receptionist asked, jolting her out of her reverie.

‘My name is Turner. I have an appointment with Mr Saracini at eight,’ Jessica advanced with all the appearance of a job-hunter, mentioning an interview.

‘I’ll call up... Mrs Turner.’ The young woman’s eyes flicked over the wedding-ring on Jessica’s hand.

Jessica moved away a step or two, a nervous hand brushing up to check the sleek severity of the French pleat she had employed to confine her eye-catching hair.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Turner...’

Jessica turned back. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Mr Saracini...’ The brunette cleared her throat awkwardly.

‘Yes?’ Jessica pressed tightly.

‘He says that he does not recognise your name—’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Jessica breathed in deeply, hot pink abruptly washing her ivory pale complexion as she belatedly understood. Carlo had taken exception to her marital name. One slim hand braced on the edge of the desk. She swallowed hard on her fury. ‘Try Amory,’ she suggested thinly.

‘Amory?’ the receptionist repeated with a perplexed look.

‘Just tell Mr Saracini that a Miss Amory is here,’ Jessica enunciated between gritted teeth.

‘You can go up,’ she was told ten seconds later.

The lift disgorged two couples in full evening dress. She walked in, her heart in her throat. The Deangate Hotel was one of the most expensive country house establishments in Britain. It lay five miles out of Barton and few locals had the income required to avail themselves of such unashamed luxury. Jessica had always hated the place. This was where her mother had come to meet men. This was where she had trysted with her lovers. And there was a peculiar agony to Jessica’s awareness that it was in this very same establishment that she had forever lost her claim to the moral high ground.

Had she been smug and pious in those days? Her mother had once accused her of that...

‘You’re just like your father,’ Carole had condemned with bitter resentment. ‘You’re so bloody virtuous, you ought to be wearing a halo! So smug, you make me sick! But you won’t get through life like that. Some day you’re going to fall off your pedestal and fall flat on your pious little face and it’ll serve you damned well right!’

And she had fallen, boy, had she fallen. With an inner shudder of distaste, Jessica stepped out of the lift, outraged by the direction of her thoughts. She had come here without allowing herself to think of what she had to face at journey’s end but the eerie familiarity of her surroundings was like a razor twisting inside her.