you need to know.’
‘This…isn’t like you,’ Camilla ventured uncertainly.
‘You don’t know the humiliation they put me through. It was like a physical pain to be treated like a leper. The people I’d worked with spat at me.’ He took a moment to get himself together. This was screwing him up, big time. ‘The daughter was clever. She made sure that the stolen money came from a fund that the workers had saved for a works outing.’
‘So how did the daughter frame you?’ Camilla asked, round-eyed.
‘She planted the cash in my locker.’
‘Why would she do that?’ His PA’s cut-glass accent was more pronounced than ever.
There was a tightening of his jaw. ‘Spite. We’d had a row. She accused me of sleeping around while I was dating her. And of planning to marry her for her inheritance.’ His eyes gleamed and his mouth was savage.
‘I imagine you weren’t.’
He gave her a filthy look. ‘I was so shocked I could hardly speak. Now do you understand how passionate I feel about this?’
‘Oh, yes. Was she beautiful?’ Camilla asked a little shakily.
With a jerk of rogue emotion in his chest he recalled the sixteen-year-old Anna; long-legged and lissom with a sexuality that had given him dreams at night. And of her nose that had been so large and deformed that she’d been called a witch from nursery school onwards.
He shrugged. ‘I loved her. God knows why. She’d seemed sweet and innocent and made me laugh. But underneath she was a heartless little bitch.’
The more he thought of Anna’s malice, the angrier he became. But she’d get her comeuppance too. He didn’t know where she was, but he’d find her. And make her life a living nightmare till he had what he wanted.
His eyes gleamed like pan-warmed chocolate beneath the arrowed arches of his fair brows. It was ironic that Willoughby had lost both his fortune and Stanford House. Whilst he, the illegitimate son of the old man’s cook, was no longer dirt poor and starving, but rich beyond his wildest childhood dreams—and still two years short of thirty.
He gave a sardonic laugh, his head tipping back and catching the sun that glinted on his flowing hair, turning it to a rich pale gold. His teeth shone pearly in an olive skin that had been deepened to a dark honey shade from ten years of Italian sunshine.
A little curl of desire rippled through Camilla’s shapely body because Vido was breathtakingly beautiful. Her elegant hand turned his chin. Her lips were on his before he could draw away and he suffered the kiss in silence, even making a half-hearted attempt at deepening the embrace.
So his appetite for women was still subnormal. He fumed in frustration. Anna’s fault. She’d all but castrated him where love was concerned. His wounded heart had hardened and no woman had melted even a little corner in all his years in Italy.
He wanted to love Camilla and had tried his very best to do so. She was a brilliant hostess, witty and clever and an asset to his business. He longed for a wife and children. But these—and peace of mind—were unattainable unless he felt he had dealt with his demons in his own, inimitable way.
‘Let’s go,’ he said huskily and felt guilty when Camilla looked pleased, perhaps assuming his choking emotion was due to a different passion.
Dark eyes stone-cold with ruthless intent, he started up the car and swung out into Cottage Lane, heading for his office in London.
Anna knelt on the garden path, her capable fingers busily tweaking out weeds from the colourful herbaceous borders of the typically English cottage garden.
Sitting back to review the results of her labours, she couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast with the magnificent gardens of Stanford House, where she’d once lived. This little patch in the front garden was all she had now. Ten feet by six. A far cry from the acres where she’d once roamed, a lonely, unloved—and unlovely—girl.
Almost unthinkingly, her muddy fingers went to her nose. Now it was a normal size and fitted her face properly. She smiled with gentle pleasure.
But being ugly had left her a lasting legacy. She was even more careful not to reveal her feelings to anyone. The episode with Vido had cured her of that.
Anna frowned and tackled a stubborn dock root with grim determination, pushing back the pain that had leapt to squeeze her heart like a vice. Why open old wounds? Sure she’d loved him, madly, wildly, deeply, although she hadn’t dared say so in case he’d laughed at her temerity. After all, he’d been the most popular boy in school and she’d been—what had those girls said?—a hideous little bat.
OK, he’d kissed her several times, and she’d hardly been able to believe her luck. But her grandfather and the girls at school had told her why he was dating her. He was ambitious as hell and she was an heiress. Why else would an Adonis suck up to someone as hideous as her?
She bit her lip, suffering once again the hard nails of painful truth. Her world had come crashing about her ears that day when she’d been forced to accept that Vido was just a callous fortune-hunter. She’d been a means to an end. Nothing more.
Anna frowned. He was yesterday’s news. Soon she’d be married and she’d be able to forget her hurt and the lack of self-esteem that still haunted her.
Thankfully, her fiancé, Peter, liked her silences and her quiet reserve. He hated emotional, demonstrative women. And she was lucky to have found someone who appreciated her qualities. A matter-of-fact and rather cool man, who was very attentive but didn’t arouse horrible, uncontrollable longings that scared her with their raw intensity.
A screech of brakes came from the lane and then the sound of a reversing car, but she paid no attention. When Stanford House had been sold, precipitating her grandfather’s stroke, she’d taken over the nearby cottage that in better times had belonged to their gardener.
It was situated only two hundred yards from the beautiful old farmhouse where Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, had been born. Passing tourists often stopped to admire and photograph her tiny black and white timbered cottage with its picturesque thatched roof, too.
Wistfully she mused that it would be nice if her grandfather could appreciate the cottage’s charm. But it was unlikely. He had railed against his bankruptcy and hated what he called ‘coming down in the world’.
It wasn’t surprising that he’d had a stroke. Her heart went out to him. He’d changed from being a gruff and domineering man and now looked helpless and frightened. She decided to pick him some flowers. Hopefully there would be better news about him when she next visited.
Tensely Vido glowered at the woman’s slender back and the mass of gleaming black hair. Even after ten years, Anna’s spectacular body was unmistakable. So were his conflicting emotions.
He felt shaken by his reaction at seeing Anna. A devastating mix of need and loathing had hurtled unchecked through his body, filling him with fury that he could actually lust after such a mean-spirited woman. He shouldn’t feel like this. Not after all this time.
‘Ogling the local peasantry isn’t your style,’ murmured Camilla in amusement.
He took
