Mistress Arrangements. Helen Bianchin

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СКАЧАТЬ I had.’

      ‘Knowing how much you despise me,’ Stefano drawled softly, ‘I can only be intrigued by the degree of desperation that forces you to confront me with a request for money.’

      Her eyes were remarkably steady, and she did her best to keep the intense emotion from her voice. ‘Someone I care for very much needs an operation,’ she said quietly. It was true, even if it was truth by partial omission. ‘Specialist care, a private hospital.’

      One eyebrow lifted with mocking cynicism. ‘A man?’

      She curled her fingers into a tight ball and thrust her hands behind her back. ‘No,’ she denied in a curiously flat voice.

      ‘Then who, Carly?’ he queried silkily. His eyes raked hers, compelling, inexorable, and inescapable.

      ‘A child.’

      ‘Am I permitted to know whose child?’

      He wouldn’t give in until she presented him with all the details, and she suddenly hated him, with an intensity that was vaguely shocking, for all the pain, the anger and the futility, for having dared, herself, to love him unreservedly, only to have that love thrown back in her face.

      Seven years ago she’d hurled one accusation after another at the man who had steadfastly refused to confirm, deny or explain his actions. As a result, she’d frequently given vent to angry recrimination which rarely succeeded in provoking his retaliation.

      Except once. Then he’d castigated her as the child he considered her to be, and when she’d hit him he’d unceremoniously hauled her back into their bed and subjected her to a lesson she was never likely to forget.

      The following morning she’d packed a bag, and driven steadily east until hunger and exhaustion had forced her to stop. Then she’d rung her mother, offered the briefest of explanations and assured her she’d be in touch.

      That had been the last personal contact she’d had with the man she had married. Until now.

      ‘My daughter,’ she enlightened starkly, and watched his features reassemble, the broad facial bones seeming more pronounced, the jaw clearly defined beneath the taut musculature bonding fibre to bone. The composite picture portrayed a harsh ruthlessness she found infinitely frightening.

      ‘I suggest,’ he began in a voice pitched so low that it sounded like silk being razed by steel, ‘you contact the child’s father.’

      Carly visibly shivered. His icy anger was almost a tangible entity, cooling the room, and there was a finality in his words, an inexorability she knew she’d never be able to circumvent unless she told the absolute truth—now.

      ‘Ann-Marie was born exactly seven months and three weeks after I left Perth.’ There were papers in her bag. A birth certificate, blood-group records—hers, Ann-Marie’s, a copy of his. Photos. Several of them, showing Ann-Marie as a babe in arms, a toddler, then on each consecutive birthday, all showing an acute similarity to the man who had fathered her: the same colouring, dark, thick, silky hair, and grey eyes.

      Carly retrieved them, thrusting one after the other into Stefano’s hands as irrefutable proof. ‘She’s your daughter, Stefano. Yours.’

      The atmosphere in the lounge was so highly charged that Carly almost expected it to ignite into incendiary flame.

      His expression was impossible to read, and as the seconds dragged silently by she felt like screaming—anything to get some reaction.

      ‘Tell me,’ Stefano began in a voice that was satin-smooth and dangerous, ‘was I to be forever kept in ignorance of her existence?’

      Oh, dear lord, how could she answer that? Should she even dare, when she wasn’t sure of the answer herself? ‘Maybe when she was older I would have offered her the opportunity to get in touch with you,’ she admitted with hesitant honesty.

      ‘Grazie.’ His voice was as chilling as an ice floe in an arctic wasteland. ‘And how, precisely, did you intend to achieve that? By having her turn up on my doorstep, ten, fifteen years from now, with a briefly penned note of explanation in her hand?’

      He was furiously angry; the whiplash of his words tore at her defences, ripping them to shreds. ‘Damn you,’ he swore softly. ‘Damn you to hell.’

      He looked capable of anything, and she took an involuntary step backwards from the sheer forcefield of his rage. ‘Right at this moment, it would give me the utmost pleasure to wring your slender neck.’ He appeared to rein in his temper with visible effort. ‘What surgical procedure?’ he demanded grimly. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

      With a voice that shook slightly she relayed the details, watching with detached fascination as he scrawled a series of letters and numbers with firm, swift strokes on to a notepad.

      ‘Your address and telephone number.’ The underlying threat of anger was almost a palpable force. She could sense it, almost feel its intensity, and she felt impossibly afraid.

      It took considerable effort to maintain an aura of calm, but she managed it. ‘Your assurance that Ann-Marie’s medical expenses will be met is all that’s necessary.’

      His eyes caught hers and held them captive, and she shivered at the ruthlessness apparent in their depths. ‘You can’t believe I’ll hand over a cheque and let you walk out of here?’ he said with deadly softness, and a cold hand suddenly clutched at her heart and squeezed hard.

      ‘I’ll make every attempt to pay you back,’ Carly ventured stiffly, and saw his eyes harden.

      ‘I intend that you shall.’ His voice was velvet-encased steel, and caused the blood in her veins to chill.

      A knock at the door provided an unexpected intrusion, and Carly cast him a startled glance as his secretary entered the room and placed a laden tray down on to the coffee-table. It said much for the secretary’s demeanour that she gave no visible indication of having seen the deposed picture frame or the glass that lay scattered on the carpet.

      Carly watched the woman’s movements as she poured aromatic coffee from a steaming pot into two cups and removed clear plastic film from a plate of delectable sandwiches.

      ‘Contact Bryan Thorpe, Renate,’ Stefano instructed smoothly. ‘Extend my apologies and reschedule our meeting for Monday.’

      Renate didn’t blink. ‘Yes, of course.’ She straightened from her task, her smile practised and polite as she turned and left the room.

      Carly eyed the sandwiches with longing, aware that the last meal she’d eaten was breakfast. The coffee was tempting, and she lifted the cup to her lips with both hands, took a savouring sip, then shakily replaced it down on to the saucer.

      The need to escape this room was almost as imperative as her desire to escape the man who occupied it, for despite her resolve his presence had an alarming effect on her equilibrium, stirring alive an entire gamut of emotions, the foremost of which was fear. The feeling was so intense that all her senses seemed elevated, heightened to a degree where she felt her entire body was a finely tuned instrument awaiting the maestro’s touch. Which was crazy—insane.

      ‘There’s no need to cancel your appointment,’ she told him with more courage than СКАЧАТЬ