LITMIR.BIZ

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you.’

      ‘So I see.’ He put his briefcase on the hall table. ‘Who was the man I saw leaving?’

      ‘The man?’ she questioned, but he could hear the sudden quaver in her voice.

      Definitely guilt, he thought grimly.

      ‘The man I met coming down in the elevator. Bad skin. Bad smell. Who was he, Darcy?’

      Darcy met the cool accusation in Renzo’s eyes and knew she had run out of reasons not to tell him.

      ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

      He didn’t respond straight away, just walked into the sitting room leaving her to follow him, her senses alerted to the sudden tension in his body and the forbidding set of his shoulders. Usually, he pulled her into his arms and kissed all the breath out of her when he arrived home but today he hadn’t even touched her. And when he turned around, Darcy was shocked by the cold expression on his face.

      ‘So talk,’ he said.

      She felt like someone who’d been put on stage in front of a vast audience and told to play a part she hadn’t learnt. Because she’d never spoken about this before, not to anyone. She’d buried it so deep it was almost inaccessible. But she needed to access it now, before his irritation grew any deeper.

      ‘He’s someone I was in care with.’

      ‘In care?’

      She nodded. ‘That’s what they call it in England, although it’s a bit of a misnomer because you don’t actually get much in the way of care. I lived in a children’s home in the north for most of my childhood.’

      His black eyes narrowed. ‘What happened to your parents?’

      Darcy could feel a bead of sweat trickling its way down her back. Here it was. The question which separated most normal people from the unlucky few. The question which made you feel a freak no matter which way you answered it. Was it any wonder she’d spent her life trying to avoid having to do so?

      And yet didn’t it demonstrate the shallowness of her relationship with Renzo that in all the time she’d known him—this was the first time he’d actually asked? Dead parents had been more than enough information for him. He hadn’t been the type of person to quiz her about her favourite memory or how she’d spent her long-ago Christmases.

      ‘I’m illegitimate,’ she said baldly. ‘I don’t know who my father was and neither did my mother. And she... Well, for a lot of my childhood, she wasn’t considered fit to be able to take care of me.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘She had...’ She hesitated. ‘She had a drug problem. She was a junkie.’

      He let out a long breath and Darcy found herself searching his face for some kind of understanding, some shred of compassion for a situation which had been out of her control. But his expression remained like ice. His black eyes were stony as they skimmed over her, looking at her as if it was the first time he’d seen her and not liking what they saw.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’

      ‘Because you didn’t ask. And you didn’t ask because you didn’t want to know!’ she exclaimed. ‘You made that very clear. We haven’t had the kind of relationship where we talked about stuff like this. You just wanted...sex.’

      She waited for him to deny it. To tell her that there had been more to it than that—and Darcy realised she was already thinking of their relationship in the past tense. But he didn’t deny it. His sudden closed look made his features appear shuttered as he walked over to the table near where he’d undressed her last night and her heart missed a beat as she saw him looking down at the polished surface, on which stood a lamp and nothing else.

      Nothing else.

      It took a moment for her to register the significance of this and that moment came when he lifted his black gaze to hers and slanted her an unfathomable look. ‘Where’s the necklace?’ he questioned softly.

      Darcy’s mind raced. In the heat of everything that had happened, she’d forgotten about the diamond necklace he’d bought last night for her at the auction. She vaguely remembered the dazzle of the costly gems as he’d dropped them onto the table, but his hands had been all over her at the time and it had blotted out everything except the magic of his touch. Had she absent-mindedly tidied it away when she was picking up her clothes this morning? No. It had definitely been there when...

      Fear and horror clamped themselves around her suddenly racing heart.

      When...

      Drake! Her throat dried as she remembered leaving him alone in the room while she went to fetch him a beer. Remembered the way he’d hurriedly left after his half-hearted attempt at blackmail. Had Drake stolen the necklace?

      Of course he had.

      ‘I don’t—’

      His voice was like steel. ‘Did your friend take it?’

      ‘He’s not—’

      ‘What’s the matter, Darcy?’ Contemptuously, he cut through her protest. ‘Did I arrive home unexpectedly and spoil your little plan?’

      ‘What plan?’

      ‘Oh, come on. Isn’t this what’s known in the trade as a scam? To rob me. To cheat on me.’

      Darcy stared at him in disbelief. ‘You can’t honestly believe that?’

      ‘Can’t I? Perhaps it’s the first clear-headed thought I’ve had in a long time, now that I’m no longer completely mesmerised by your pale skin and witchy eyes.’ He shook his head like a man who was emerging from a deep coma. ‘Now I’m beginning to wonder whether something like this was in your sights all along.’

      Darcy felt foreboding icing her skin. ‘What are you talking about?’ she whispered.

      ‘I’ve often wondered,’ he said harshly, ‘what you might give a man who has everything. Another house, or a faster car?’ He shook his head. ‘No. Material wealth means nothing when you have plenty. But innocence—ah! Now that is a very different thing.’

      ‘You’re not making sense.’

      ‘Think about it. What is a woman’s most prized possession, cara mia?’ The Italian words of endearment dripped like venom from his lips. ‘Sì. I can see from your growing look of comprehension that you are beginning to understand. Her virginity. Precious and priceless and the biggest bartering tool in the market. And hasn’t it always been that way?’

      ‘Renzo.’ She could hear the desperation in her voice now but she couldn’t seem to keep it at bay. ‘You don’t mean that.’

      ‘Sometimes I would ask myself,’ he continued, still in that same flat tone, ‘why someone as beautiful and sensual as you—someone hard-up and working in a dead-end job—hadn’t taken a rich lover to catapult herself out of her poverty before I came along.’

      Desperation morphed into indignation. ‘You mean...use a man as a meal ticket?’

      ‘Why are you looking so shocked—or is that simply an expression you’ve managed to perfect over the years? Isn’t that what every woman does ultimately—feed like a leech off a man?’ His black gaze roved over her. ‘But not you. At least, not initially. Did you decide to deny yourself pleasure—to look at the long game rather than the lure of instant gratification? To hold out for the richest man available, who just happened to be me—someone who was blown away by your extraordinary beauty coupled with an innocence I’d never experienced before?’ He gave a cynical smile. ‘But you were cunning, too. I see that now. For a cynic like me, a spirited show of independence was pretty much guaranteed to wear me down. So you refused my gifts. You bought cheap clothes and budget airline tickets while valiantly offering me the money you’d saved. What a touching gesture—the hard-up waitress offering the jaded architect a handful

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