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But it was no big secret to her any more, Kerry reflected apprehensively. Against all the odds, Luciano had come back to her and she knew why. While he had been in prison, he had focused his fantasies on her. Endless, wild, obsessional fantasies about her. That he could have put her in such an insanely inappropriate role even in his imagination still amazed Kerry but she knew that, unlikely as she herself found it, it was true. She had not been a love object but a lust object.
Even the fact that she had once dumped him had made her seem more desirable in Luciano’s eyes. Still viewing her as his reward and his prize, he had lost no time in reclaiming her when he had won his release. But lust would not last forever, nor would the illusion that she was fantasy or even trophy-wife material. Eventually Luciano would appreciate that what he had wanted five years back and what he wanted in the present might well be different things. Possibly about that same time, he might begin to notice that his wife was kind of on the plain and ordinary side for a guy with his looks and wealth.
Annoyed at the confidence-zapping tenor of her own reflections, Kerry wrapped herself in a large, fleecy towel. For an instant she felt horribly light-headed and she pulled a face, for it wasn’t the first time that she had felt dizzy. But then in recent days she had been rather off her food as well. Perhaps she had picked up some virus, and if she didn’t regain her usually healthy appetite she would have to go to the doctor.
Easing a comb through her tangled curls while she stood at the vanity basin, she found herself worrying about how the end of the Linwood wine-store chain would affect her stepbrother. Miles had worked so hard to keep Linwoods afloat. He demanded a lot from himself and he would be devastated that all his efforts had come to nothing. She wasn’t surprised that he had not been able to face phoning her to tell her that the receiver had been called in at the firm. She just hoped that he wasn’t trying to drown his sorrows again.
‘Kerry…’
Startled out of her troubled thoughts, Kerry saw Luciano standing in the doorway.
‘I was worried when you didn’t come home,’ he confided tautly. ‘I thought you might have had an accident, so I rang your sister.’
‘Which one?’
The silence stretched.
Luciano frowned, shrugged, finally surrendered. ‘All of them…’
‘All…of them?’ she gasped. ‘Even Freddy?’
‘Yeah.’ Luciano balled his hands into fists and dug them into the pockets of his well-cut trousers. There was nothing cool about having called all three of her sisters and he knew that.
Kerry studied his reflection in the mirror and she was trying very, very hard not to laugh, but the longer she studied him the less she could recall why she had
wanted to laugh. A faint blue-black shadow of stubble already emphasising his hard jawline and the mobile perfection of his wide, sensual mouth, his golden eyes gleaming below the dark fringe of his lashes, he looked gorgeous. Breathtakingly, devastatingly gorgeous. And hers, still hers, she reminded herself with relief.
‘Next time you’re planning to stay out for hours, phone me, mia carina,’ he urged, stepping up behind her, closing his arms round her to ease her back into contact with his lean, powerfully aroused length. ‘Where have you been?’
She rested her head back against his shoulder, suddenly boneless, suddenly weak with hunger for him. ‘Nowhere important…’
He loosened the towel. As it fell, baring the jutting fullness of her breasts, he vented a husky groan of appreciation and let his hands sweep up to mould her tender flesh. When his fingers massaged the engorged tips, a river of liquid heat pooled between her thighs and she moaned out loud. Just then she wanted him quite desperately and nothing else mattered. She closed her eyes and pushed back against him in wanton encouragement.
He spun her round, clamped her to him and let his tongue probe the moist sweetness of her lush mouth. While he penetrated her mouth with erotic thoroughness he lifted her against him and carried her through to the bed. She was wild for him, tugging at his belt, wrenching at his waistband, all fingers and thumbs and maddening clumsiness.
‘You’ve got me for the rest of my life…I’ll keep another five minutes,’ he teased with his wicked grin.
I’ll see about that, was her last conscious thought. She slid exploring fingers beneath his boxers, found him sleek and hard and amazingly responsive. Surprise mingled with even fiercer hunger in his scorching golden eyes. She pushed him flat. She bent over him and pleasured him with her mouth and her tongue. He shuddered, groaned, laced his hands into her hair, muttered in Italian. When he could stand it no more he pulled her under him without ceremony and drove into her, hard and fast. What followed was the most exquisite fulfilment she had ever experienced.
‘You’re amazing, bella mia,’ Luciano told her afterwards. ‘I’m never going to let you go.’
The following morning they returned to Ballybawn.
While they had been away in Italy, most of the work on the castle had been completed. Luciano was full of plans. He thought they should spend summer weekends at the castle but autumn and the whole of the winter in Tuscany, where the climate would be kinder to her grandmother’s arthritis. She knew without his even telling her that when the grapes were harvested they would be at the Villa Contarini.
In the old kitchen, which had been abandoned for a much smarter new one that was a lot more convenient to the dining room, Kerry checked the calendar on which she had kept a note of her monthly cycle. She was shaken to realise that it had been over two months since she had had a period. It had not seemed anything like that long to her. But she started smiling and found that she couldn’t stop. Was it possible that she was already pregnant? She thought of the dizzy spells and the way her appetite had faded and her hopes rose high. It would be a long drive to the nearest shop where she would be able to buy a pregnancy-testing kit but Kerry was undaunted. She had just located her grandfather’s car keys when she was called to the phone.
She was surprised to realise that her caller was Rochelle and for once her stepsister had nothing smart to say, but what she did have to say was shocking enough. ‘Miles has been arrested…’
‘You’re not serious,’ Kerry breathed after a staggered pause.
‘He told his solicitor that he wants to see you and that it’s urgent,’ Rochelle said tautly. ‘He’s got out on bail but he’s in really bad trouble…it’s a drugs offence—’
‘Drugs?’ Kerry was aghast.
‘He’s been using cocaine for a long time…’ Rochelle was crying now, making no attempt to hide the fact either. ‘I feel so guilty that I didn’t do anything for him!’
The first thing Kerry did after that call was book a flight back to London late that afternoon. She was in shock at what she had learned. Miles on drugs? Why had she never noticed anything amiss? But she tensed when she recalled his behaviour at her wedding. His life-and-soul-of-the-party act that day had been over-the-top. He was thinner than he had once been, more moody and irritable as well, but she had put those changes down to stress and too many late nights. That he might have a problem with drugs had not once crossed her mind.
