LITMIR.BIZ

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mother.’

      His brows pleated. ‘So? He was her husband.’

      Gwenna was surprised enough to look up again. She had forgotten that he had moved down to her level and she collided unwarily with lustrous dark eyes the colour of autumn. A very dangerous man with strikingly beautiful eyes that made her heartbeat race. She shut her eyes tight in self-reproach. What was the matter with her?

      ‘Gwenna,’ Angelo chided huskily. ‘I thought women loved to talk about themselves. What’s wrong with you?’

      ‘My father wasn’t married to my mother,’ she admitted flatly.

      Angelo frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’

      Gwenna reddened. ‘Mum had an on-off affair with Dad that dragged on for years and years. He was married to his first wife then.’

      ‘I wasn’t aware that your father had been married twice.’

      ‘Yeah, well, why would you be?’ Gwenna was mortified by the need to explain the unpalatable facts. ‘When Mum fell pregnant with me she thought he would leave his wife, who couldn’t have children. But he didn’t. Sometimes we didn’t see Dad for months on end and then he’d come visiting with extravagant pressies. My mother liked things like that…I don’t.’

      ‘But your father must’ve raised you…you have his name,’ Angelo pointed out flatly.

      ‘Mum died when I was eight and I went to live with Dad and he adopted me. His first wife wasn’t happy about that and they divorced.’

      ‘I had no idea.’ Angelo was furious that the confidential report he had had done on Hamilton had omitted such highly relevant details. He was astonished by the reality that her mother appeared to have been yet another one of the older man’s sadly deluded female victims. But no sooner had that angle occurred to Angelo than he reminded himself that she was still Donald Hamilton’s only child with the taint of his blood in her veins.

      Gwenna watched him rise to his full imposing height, the sleek, hard planes of his darkly handsome features shuttered and cool. She assumed that the story she had just told him had made him think less of her. A lot of people had despised her mother for having an affair with another woman’s husband and giving birth to his child. Taunted and teased at primary school, Gwenna had had few friends. The locals had expressed their scorn and disapproval by excluding Donald Hamilton’s mistress and child from community activities.

      In the uneasy silence, Angelo squashed the urge to ask further personal questions. He did not do personal in relationships. He kept it simple. He strolled out of the bathroom. I don’t even like you. That assertion rang clear as a bell in his head all over again, infuriating him. Since when had he cared whether he was liked or not? But then women made a real effort to please him. They were deferential, flattering…servile? The suspicion revolted him. Couldn’t he handle a challenge? Wasn’t he man enough to handle what could just be the very first honest woman he had met? At the last possible moment, Angelo paused in the doorway. Tugging a fleecy towel off the rail he shook it out and strode back to extend it to her. ‘Stop worrying about things.’

      ‘I’m not worried.’

      ‘You’re stressed out of your mind,’ Angelo corrected.

      In an abrupt movement she scrambled up, water streaming off her slender curves in rivulets, and accepted the embrace of the towel. She felt manipulated, controlled, managed into doing what he wanted her to do. He lifted her out of the bath.

      ‘Don’t,’ she dared, drawing hurriedly back from him to firmly anchor the towel beneath her arms.

      Gleaming eyes surveyed her from below a lush fringe of black lashes and she could feel her skin tightening and burning over her cheeks. Her lips felt full and moist and she imagined and immediately craved the scorching heat and pressure of his mouth on hers. She went rigid in rejection but still cruel sensation leapt and danced over her, wreaking havoc with her body. She was madly conscious and thoroughly ashamed of the straining prominence of her nipples and the wicked dampness of the tender place between her thighs.

      ‘You see, you may not like me, passione mia,’ Angelo murmured silkily, ‘but all I have to do is carry you back to that bed and you’re one hundred per cent mine.’

      Gwenna was white with humiliation and self-loathing and she reacted with anger to that derisive gibe. ‘I’m not yours and I never will be because you can’t touch me where it matters,’ she launched back furiously. ‘I don’t care what you think of me, or what you say or do with anyone else either, because I gave my heart a long time ago to someone worth ten of you!’

      As Gwenna spun away to the vanity basin Angelo closed a lean, strong hand to a slim white shoulder to turn her back. Incredulous dark eyes flashed down at her. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You’re telling me that you’re in love with another man?’ he pressed in a raw undertone.

      Slowly she nodded, savouring the anger she had roused and yet disturbed by that ungenerous response. Being mean, argumentative or vengeful had not come naturally to her until she had met him. The reactions Angelo Riccardi incited were as foreign to her nature as the emotional highs and lows she was experiencing. ‘I don’t like the way you make me behave.’

      ‘You don’t like?’ Angelo framed in a dark, deep voice redolent of thunder in a confined space. ‘Dannazione! Who is this guy?’

      Gwenna tilted her chin. ‘You don’t have the right to ask me that question.’

      Angelo’s lean, shapely hands clenched into potent fists. He did not lose his temper. He never, ever lost it and prided himself on his rock-solid self-control. But a rage like a burning blinding surge of darkness was rising up inside him. Barely able to credit her answer, he strode into the bedroom and swung forcefully back to face her. ‘On the contrary, I have every right. I set no boundaries on our arrangement.’

      ‘You wanted my body and you’ve got it. You didn’t ask for and you’re certainly not getting anything else!’ Gwenna muttered bitterly.

      ‘His name,’ Angelo framed in a tone of ice.

      ‘None of your business.’

      ‘I expect compliance.’ Angelo fixed his tie and reached for his jacket. She was hyper-aware of his every move.

      ‘What I think and what I feel is my business,’ 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

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