on earth—?’ Gwenna began.
He reached up and hauled her down to him, kissing her breathless with a hunger that could have burned out a bonfire. ‘I need you,’he confided hoarsely. ‘I really need you with me tonight, bellezza mia.’
Although he was far from sober, there was something in that appeal and the almost clumsy way he was holding her prisoner that melted Gwenna down deep inside. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she whispered, tracing one bronzed cheekbone with tender fingers.
He made love to her first with blazing power and potency, and then with a piercing sweetness that brought tears of gladness to her eyes in the aftermath.
‘Even when you’re drunk, you’re amazing,’ she muttered gently, wishing she knew what was wrong with him—because there was very definitely something wrong.
‘I’m not drunk,’ Angelo groaned, and even though it was a very warm night he kept hold of her until he slid into a restless sleep.
Before dawn, she wakened to see him emerging from the bathroom towelling dry his hair and she switched on the lights to study him with troubled blue eyes. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
His lean, darkly handsome face tightened. ‘I have something to tell you,’ he breathed abruptly. ‘I’ve done some stuff you know nothing about…’
Gwenna went rigid and suddenly she didn’t want to know what was wrong; she was afraid that any confession he made would haunt her for ever. She wanted to shove a brick in his mouth. Had he been with another woman? But, in the space of a month he had left her side for a total of just three nights and he had spent a lot of time on the phone to her those evenings.
Angelo had slammed the door shut on the secret room of sins concerning her inside his head. He was convinced there would be no profit and only loss if he risked walking the true confessions route. Instead he presented her with what he saw as good news, designed to alleviate her worries, protect her reputation and make her happy.
‘I’ve paid off your father’s debt to the garden restoration fund.’
Astounded by that announcement, Gwenna gazed at him with wide blue eyes. ‘That’s not possible. I thought he was being prosecuted—’
‘Prosecuting him wouldn’t be a good idea. Your father has made a full statement confessing to the forgery of your mother’s will. That’s to protect you and I from any future claim he might try to bring. I’ve also signed over ownership of the Massey estate to you. This way the dirty linen stays hidden and nobody need ever know. The garden committee is delighted—’
‘Obviously, but—’
Angelo sank down on the bed beside her. ‘If your father goes to prison now that you own the estate, some people will suspect that you were involved in his thefts. Mud sticks, cara.’
Gwenna winced. ‘I didn’t think of that…but I did think that he should be punished this time.’
‘Don’t worry. He’s an incorrigible thief. He’ll be caught stealing again and I won’t intervene,’ Angelo asserted with a confidence on that score that she found ever so slightly chilling. ‘This time around, however, I was thinking of you, and you don’t deserve to suffer any more for his crimes.’
‘Okay,’ she muttered uncertainly, wishing he had waited until she woke up properly before tackling such a serious subject. ‘But it means that you’ve lost thousands and thousands of pounds.’
Angelo shifted a smooth brown shoulder in remarkably casual dismissal. ‘My choice.’
‘And what about Furnridge?’ she pressed.
‘The company won’t suffer.’
‘But it’s just not right that you should make a loss because you want to protect me.’ Gwenna raked anxious fingers through her sleep-tangled honey-blonde tresses.
‘It feels right, bellezza mia.’ Angelo curved her back firmly into his arms and she rested her drowsy head back against his shoulder. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘Got a hangover?’ she quipped.
‘I wasn’t drunk so I couldn’t have one,’ Angelo asserted with level cool.
Gwenna turned her head round so that her cheek rested against him. He smelt of soap and the indefinable scent that was just him. With a drowsy smile she drifted back to sleep.
She wakened to the noise of a helicopter coming in to land and a phone ringing somewhere. It was almost lunchtime. She had slept in and was surprised that Angelo hadn’t roused her. From the veranda she could hear voices speaking in Italian on the level below. It sounded as though Angelo had flown in staff to work. After a shower she put on a light skirt and top and wandered downstairs in search of Angelo. The ground floor office suite was jumping with activity. People rushed past her, hurrying between one room and the next, while phones seemed to be ringing incessantly.
‘We need a massive piece of damage limitation,’ someone was saying urgently in English. ‘But it won’t do the boss any harm in the market-place.’
Angelo was in his study and he was doing something she had never seen him do in their entire acquaintance; he was doing nothing. In spite of the obvious crisis he was staring into space, pale as death beneath his olive skin, his striking bone structure clenched into hard, forbidding lines.
Gwenna closed the door behind her. ‘Please tell me what’s wrong,’ she pressed worriedly. ‘It was wrong last night as well, but you were determined to act like everything was okay. Where were you? Did something happen?’
Angelo rose lithely upright. ‘I had a couple of drinks and then went to the church and lit a candle for my mother. I got talking to the priest. That’s why I was out so late.’
Surprise and relief assailed her. ‘I could’ve come with you…’
‘I needed some time to think. But events have caught up with me. I have to tell you what happened because that information is now in the public domain. It’s in the papers, on the TV news, all over the internet.’
‘It sounds important, but I’m sure that whatever it is can’t be as bad as you seem to think. You seem…a little shocked,’ she said gently, striving to be tactful after his rejection of the suggestion that he might have imbibed too much alcohol the night before.
Grim dark eyes rested on her. ‘I’m angry and I’m bitter, but I am not shocked.’
Gwenna went the diplomatic route and nodded in agreement.
‘And to explain, I have to go back a few years. When I was eighteen I was called to a lawyer’s office and told who my parents really were. My mother had left instructions to that effect in her will,’ Angelo volunteered flatly. ‘Before she died she had already warned me that she came from a bad family, that my father was a dangerous man and that if they found out where we lived, they would try to take me away from her.’
Gwenna thought that such knowledge must have been a very frightening burden for a little boy to carry around with him. Introduced to that culture of secrecy and fear at a very young age, it was hardly surprising that he had matured into so reserved a character.
‘Riccardi
