LITMIR.BIZ

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Gwenna told him shakily.

      ‘Your attitude offends me,’ Angelo delivered with lethal cool.

      Her fingernails dug stinging crescents into her palms. The silence was awesome and terrifying in its totality. ‘Ditto.’

      Angelo raised an ebony brow. ‘Non ci capisco niente? I don’t understand.’

      ‘Me too … your attitude offends me,’ she traded quietly, a tight, fearful feeling trapped somewhere inside her.

      Angelo settled his chillingly intelligent gaze on her. ‘We have an agreement and you won’t walk away from it until I choose to set you free. You can’t insult me into dumping you.’

      ‘Is that what I’m doing?’

      But Angelo didn’t answer her. He walked out without another word. Snatching in a sustaining breath, she studied the door with the busted lock. Her legs feeling wobbly, she sank down on the bed. He had gone and, instead of being over the moon, she felt annoyed and confused and … strangely abandoned. Had he left to take advantage of more entertaining and compliant female company? Her small white teeth gritted. She hated him with a passion. She had not thought it possible to hate anyone so much. Indeed she had not realised that she had it in her to loathe any living being with such venom. That he should refuse even to be faithful was the ultimate put-down. She was glad she had come clean and told him that she was in love with someone else. That had offended him. How dared he talk to her as if she belonged to him? How dared he? Yet when he came close or touched her she couldn’t say no to him and he knew it. Indeed he knew his own power so well he had thrown it in her face.

      Hastily Gwenna stifled that disquieting train of thought. Her attraction to him was a crude, coarse, hormonal thing that had got the better of her self-discipline, she reasoned painfully. An irrational chemical reaction. Had she contrived to lie there like a stone statue he would’ve been a lot less keen. She glanced down and belatedly realised that she was still wearing the watch and that she had actually worn it in the bath. In guilty consternation, she examined it. The water had got in and fogged up the face. Had he noticed? She hoped he hadn’t assumed that she had deliberately set out to damage it …

      The diamond watch that swam without a lifebelt. Maybe she would take a hammer to it next, Angelo mused, his handsome mouth set in a bloodless line as his limo ferried him across the city. She didn’t want anything he gave her. Nor did she appreciate anything. Not the house, the garden, the clothes, the fabulous lifestyle that he had created for her benefit. Yet when had he ever made so much effort? Where, one might have wondered, was the punishment factor in his acquisition of his enemy’s daughter?

      Eyes hot as a bonfire, Angelo knocked back a brandy and savoured his misfortunes. Indifferent to the luxury that he offered, she preferred dressing like a tramp and grubbing through the soil in all weathers. He was the cruel bastard who had marooned her in a city mansion to be waited on hand and foot. That distance he had sensed within her? Oh, yes, there was very good reason for that distance. Although she was sleeping in his bed, it was in body rather than spirit because she loved another man. That struck Angelo as a deeply unnatural, distasteful and indeed outrageous state of affairs.

      He was astonished at how bitter, affronted and cheated he felt. No woman had ever had that effect on him. But then no woman had ever regarded him as less than the main event. Revenge was threatening to take on a twist and rebound on him. He should ditch her, forget about her. What man would accept the role of second best in a woman’s bed? Angelo wanted very badly to smash something. Maybe a whole lot of somethings. In an implacable rage he told his chauffeur to head for a nightclub. There was a hell of a lot of other women available …

      The following morning, Angelo attended a board meeting. He had had very little sleep. He had got drunk the night before, something he had not done since he was a teenager. Once he had learnt that his father had had a problem with alcohol, he had been ultra careful to monitor his consumption and he was annoyed and disturbed by his lack of discipline.

      Gwenna was out in the garden when Angelo called her at noon.

      The dark timbre of his deep voice vibrated down her spine and her tummy clenched. Sensual imagery threatened to engulf her and she tensed as though she had been slapped. No matter how hard she policed her mind he continually forged a bold passage into her thoughts. ‘Yes?’ she prompted tightly.

      ‘I’m planning to take you somewhere special tonight,’ Angelo told her smoothly.

      Her bright blue eyes widened in dismay. ‘But I can’t see you tonight—’

      ‘Why not?’

      Gwenna had no intention of cancelling her night out with Toby. ‘I’m already going out. I organised it yesterday.’

      ‘Un-organise it.’ With difficulty Angelo haltered his temper that was on a short fuse after the events of the past twenty-four hours. ‘I want to see you this evening.’

      ‘But I can’t alter the arrangement—this particular friend won’t be available another time.’

      ‘What gender is the friend?’

      She stiffened. ‘I don’t have to answer that—’

      ‘You just did.’

      ‘He’s a friend … okay?’ Gwenna fired back, sudden guilt coming at her out of nowhere, which she fiercely fought off. How much honesty did she really owe Angelo Riccardi?

      ‘I’ll meet up with you, then. Give me a time, a place.’

      She was aghast at that suggestion. ‘No way! I’m sorry, but I didn’t know you were planning to see me tonight. You can’t expect me to be available twenty-four hours a day!’

      ‘I do.’

      ‘I’ll start tomorrow … please be reasonable.’

      Unhappily, Angelo was not in a reasonable mood. Refusal rarely came his way. Refusal in the face of his expressed displeasure had never come his way. He called Franco and instructed him to ensure that Gwenna was watched over from a discreet distance. He thought he should know where she was, what she was doing, who she was with. He did, however, have complete trust in her. After all, she had been a virgin, which suggested that the object of her affections was, for whatever reasons, unattainable. On that basis, Angelo decided that there was no reason why he should even think about the matter.

      The bottom line for Angelo was that he still wanted Gwenna Hamilton. Even angry with her, he had fallen asleep aching for her and woken up in a worse state. He didn’t like that. But the more she held back and refused to play by his rules, the more determined he became to hold onto her. Was he suffering from some knee-jerk primal reaction to the challenge she set? Whatever, he was becoming increasingly eager for the moment when cool reason would be reinstated and he would find her more tiresome than desirable.

      CHAPTER SIX

      ‘I’VE been doing some research on your boyfriend,’ Toby confided with a disapproving shake of his head over drinks in a fashionable bar. ‘You’re seriously out of your league.’

      Gwenna wrinkled her nose in reproof. ‘What happened to tact?’

      ‘Your friends are supposed to be honest. From what I can understand, Angelo Riccardi makes it a mission to live up to his bad reputation.’ Toby pushed his tobacco-brown hair off his brow in a rueful gesture.

      An unexpected current of irritation darting through her in response to that criticism of Angelo, Gwenna folded her lips. ‘In what way?’

      ‘In every way. He’s a shark in business and he runs through women like a knife through butter. I mean, what are you playing at? You’re a softy—’

      ‘Perhaps Angelo brings out the concrete in me. I don’t know why we’re talking about him—’

      ‘How about he’s a billionaire? You only met him a few weeks back? He’s an urban predator and you’re a country mouse? You have nothing in common with him.

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