Sharon Kendrik - Cruel Angel

Cressida felt like pinching herself to check that this was really happening. ‘I can’t have dinner with you. I’ve already told you—I’m expecting David.’

He gave a ruthless smile. ‘Then we will take him, too.’

An involuntary shiver ran up her spine. Stefano sounding reasonable like this was Stefano at his most dangerous. ‘What are you saying?’ she demanded, her voice breaking on the question. ‘What do you want?’

He shrugged. ‘That is the thing to do in this country, is it not? The ‘‘ civilised ’’ thing? The husband and the wife who have once shared their lives to sit having dinner with the new partner. Did you not once tell me that you wanted it to be an amicable divorce?’

She looked at him helplessly, remembering the stumbling letter she had written to him after six months of separation—another letter he had ignored. Had she really been so naïve as to say that to him? ‘What do you want?’ she repeated weakly.

‘I told you. Have dinner with me tonight, and our little secret will remain just that.’

The doorbell pealed, not as loudly as when he had pressed it, but loud enough to shatter the fraught silence.

Stefano smiled, his eyes roving in a lazy line from her bare toes to the curve of her hips where the satin clung. ‘It is your choice, my beauty—so choose.’

She was trapped, she realised, as her wide green eyes stared at his implacable face. She should just tell him to go to hell and be done with it. But Stefano was not the kind of man to heed such a demand. And, apart from compromising her neutral position as one of the players in a very tight-knit company, if word of her marriage to Stefano got out, could she really bear the gossip, the surmising, the endless questions? If her marriage was laid bare for general analysis, then wouldn’t it just force her to confront its failure herself? To remind her with heart-rending poignancy just how destroyed she had felt at its end?

The doorbell rang again.

‘Well, beauty,’ he murmured softly, ‘have you decided?’

‘Yes, damn you. Yes. The answer’s yes.’

CHAPTER THREE

THE instant she had made her decision, Cressida began to regret it. As she opened the door to David, she wondered what possible motive Stefano could have for wanting to meet the man she was sharing her life with. David stood smiling on the doorstep, looking casual and windswept, dressed in blue jeans, a matching denim shirt and a rather old tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbow. The scent of the pipe tobacco he sometimes smoked hung around him as he stepped forward to drop a light kiss on Cressida’s mouth.

‘Hello, love,’ he said.

A cold voice rang out. ‘Hadn’t you better go and change, Cressida?’ And there stood Stefano in the doorway, the thin smile on his mouth not echoed by the dark eyes.

‘Hello,’ said David interestedly, and Cressida saw Stefano’s mouth curl in derision at the younger man’s attitude.

It had been one of the things she had first admired about David—his easygoing nature, and his optimism. Even now, with an atmosphere which was as chilly as a winter’s afternoon, with the forbidding stance of the handsome stranger who stood in her flat, and she, herself, clad in a short dressing-gown, it was plain to see that David was merely curious to know who Stefano was. And for some obscure reason, this irked her. If the situation had been reversed . . . She couldn’t suppress a small shudder as she tried to imagine what Stefano’s reaction would be if he had found her, only half dressed, with a strange man in her flat.

She stepped forward awkwardly to make the introductions. ‘David Chalmers—this is Stefano di Camilla.’

David frowned, and, crossing his arms, he scratched the end of his nose in a thoughtful gesture. Cressida could see his mind working overtime.

‘Di Camilla,’ he said slowly. ‘Haven’t I heard—?’

‘You may have heard my name being mentioned,’ said Stefano smoothly, with scarcely a trace of the Italian accent which was so dominant when he was angry, or excited. ‘I have the honour of providing some measure of support to the superb play of yours which Cressida is starring in.’

Hypocritical swine, thought Cressida, glaring at him, but meeting no answering response. How could he lay it on like that, after the nasty little asides he’d made about David’s work?

David had stepped forward and grasped Stefano’s hand eagerly. ‘How do you do, Mr di Camilla?’ he said eagerly. ‘I’d heard Justin mention you, of course. We were getting worried—our other sponsors were threatening to pull out. You know, of course, how bad things are in this economic climate? I had no idea that events had progressed so far down the line. Justin might have told me,’ he added, as an aggrieved afterthought.

‘One of the conditions of my support was the need for confidentiality until the deal was certain,’ said Stefano blandly.

‘Oh, of course, of course—I quite understand!’ said David eagerly.

He was just like a bouncing little puppy, thought Cressida, trotting up to some wild creature eight times the size. Don’t trust him an inch, she willed, wondering whether she would be strong enough to follow her own advice.

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