to prove.’
Relief gushed through her as he released her.
Rather than let him see it, Ravenna bent her head as if examining her wrist for bruises. There wouldn’t be any. His touch hadn’t been brutal, but its implacability had scared her.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ she said finally, looking up into his arresting, aristocratic face. ‘My mother loved your father.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’ Jonas shook his head, his lips curling in a sneer. ‘I’m not some callow kid who believes in fairy tales. She was on the make—out to snare a rich lover. It was obvious to everyone.’ He raised a silencing hand when she would have spoken. ‘She flaunted herself every chance she got.’
‘My mother never—’
‘He was years older, with a wife, a home, a family. He had an extraordinarily comfortable lifestyle, the respect of his peers and a social life he revelled in. You think a man of my father’s disposition would give all that up unless he’d been lured into it by a clever gold-digger?’
Ravenna hesitated, as ever torn by the knowledge of how many people had been hurt by Piers and her mother. But loyalty made her speak up.
‘You don’t believe in love, then?’
‘Love?’ He almost snorted the word. ‘Silvia pandered to his desires in the most obvious way. I’m sure he loved flaunting her just as he loved showing off his other possessions.’ His gaze raked the room, lingering on a Cézanne on the far wall that Ravenna knew for a fact was a copy of an original sold just last year. The derisive twist of Jonas’ lips told her he knew it too.
‘And as for her...’ Wide shoulders shrugged. ‘He was just a meal ticket. They had nothing in common except a love of luxury and an aversion to hard work. Why should she toil on as a housekeeper when she could be kept in style for simply letting him—’
‘That’s enough!’ Bile blocked Ravenna’s throat and she swallowed hard, forcing it down. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of your poison.’
His brows rose. ‘You’re hardly a schoolkid any more, Ravenna.’ This time when he said her name there was no lingering warmth and no frisson of subtle reaction. ‘You can’t pretend.’
‘Leave it!’ She put up her hand for silence. ‘We’ll never agree, so leave it.’ She hefted in a deep, steadying breath. ‘Just cut to the chase and tell me why you’re here.’
* * *
Fury still sizzled in Jonas’ blood so he took his time slowing his breathing and finding his equilibrium. It wasn’t like him to lose his cool. He was known for his detachment, his calm clarity of vision even in the most potentially dangerous of commercial ventures.
And in his personal life...he’d learned his lesson early, watching his father lurch from one failed love affair to another. He’d seen the ecstatic highs of each new fixation, then the boredom and disappointment of each failure.
Jonas wasn’t like his father. He’d made it his business to be as different from the old man as humanly possible. He was rock steady, reliable, controlled.
Except right now his hands shook with the force of his feelings. He swept the gilded room with a contemptuous glance and assured himself it was inevitable his father’s flashy love nest would evoke a reaction.
‘Well? I’m waiting.’
At her husky voice he turned to survey her.
Ravenna Ruggiero. He’d never have recognised her as the tear-stained girl he remembered. Then she’d been lanky with the coltishness of youth, her features still settling and her hair in ribbons, as if to remind him she was still a child. Only her mouth and her stunning eyes had hinted at beauty. And the low register of her voice that even then had unsettled him with its promise of sensuality to come.
It had come all right.
Silvia Ruggiero had been a stunning woman in her prime. But her daughter, even dressed in sombre, loose clothes, outshone her as a flawless diamond did a showy synthetic gem.
There was something about Ravenna. Not just a face that drew the eye as a magnet drew metal so he’d had to force himself not to stare. But an elegance, a grace, that contrasted with yet magnified the earthy sexuality of her voice, and that sassy attitude of hers...
The feel of her stretched up against him, her breasts almost grazing him as she panted her fury in defiance of his superior strength, had stirred something long dormant.
Suspended in a moment of sheer, heady excitement, he’d revelled in the proximity of her soft curves and lush mouth. There’d been a subversive pleasure in her combative attitude, in watching the sparks fly as she launched herself at him.
For the first time in his life Jonas, who preferred his pleasures planned, wondered about being on the receiving end of such unbridled passion. Not just her anger, but—
‘Did you hear me?’ Fingers clicked in the air before him, dragging his attention to her flushed face.
The colour suited her better, he realised, than the milky pallor he’d noticed earlier. Then he cursed himself for the stray thought.
‘You want to know what your mother’s been up to?’ It was easy to thrust aside his unsettling distraction and focus on familiar ire. ‘She’s stolen money. My money.’
He had the satisfaction of seeing Ravenna’s eyes widen.
It galled him that she’d had the temerity to defend Silvia when they both knew the truth about her mother. Like a magpie with an eye for a pretty, expensive bauble, she’d feathered her nest with his father’s wealth.
Jonas recalled the day he’d come home unexpectedly to Deveson Hall from London and found the housekeeper in his mother’s suite, in front of a mirror, holding an heirloom choker of sapphires and pearls to her throat. Instead of embarrassment at being caught out, she’d laughed and simply said no woman could have resisted the temptation if she’d found the necklace lying there. Without turning a hair she’d put it down on the dressing table and turned to plump the cushions on a nearby settee.
‘No.’ This time Ravenna’s low voice sounded scratchy as if with shock. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’
‘Wouldn’t she?’ He looked around the over-stuffed room, wondering how many of the pieces were what they appeared. Money had obviously been tight enough for his father to cash in the more valuable pieces.
‘Of course not.’ Ravenna’s certainty tugged his attention back to her. No longer flushed but pale and composed, she stared back with infuriating certainty.
‘Then how do you explain the fact she forged my father’s signature in a cheque book she shouldn’t even have had access to?’
‘Why blame my mother?’
‘No one else had access. Piers would have kept it safely by him, believe me.’ He let his gaze rove the room. ‘I’m sure if we search the apartment we’ll find it.’
‘There’ll be no searching the apartment. And even if it was here, what’s to say it wasn’t Piers’
