AllFreeNovel
Share Us
the bedrooms in search of Carlo. But maybe he hadn't gone to bed yet. As she descended the main staircase, she saw a dim light showing below the library door and thought, Bingo!
Only she didn't hit the jackpot she expected when she quietly turned the handle and opened the door, intending to surprise him. Every muscle in her slender body jerked painfully tight. There was a roaring in her eardrums and for a split-second she thought she was going to pass out.
Carlo was sprawled along a comfortable sofa with Sunny in his arms. Both of them were fast asleep in the indolent, relaxed positions of lovers, Sunny's wonderful hair trailing (ike a banner across his chest, one of her hands resting loosely on his shoulder.
Later, she didn't recall actually stepping back and closing the door again, but she did recall her absolute terror of them waking up and seeing her standing there, gaping at them. She mounted the stairs again, returned to their bedroom and lifted the phone.
'I want a car to the airport now. Mr Philippides is asleep. There's no need to disturb him.' An hysterical laugh nearly choked her at that point. She reckoned that it would have taken an avalanche to disturb either of them. Lying there totally at peace on the same day as the very funeral. Dear God, how could he?
He had to want her, just as she had said. Maybe they hadn't even made love yet.. .Carlo had still been clothed, Sunny in one of her drapy white silk nightgowns. Did it matter? They had looked like bloody Romeo and Juliet, she thought sickly, so torn apart by what she had seen, she was still shaking all over with shock.
'So what can I tell him?' Gerald Amory enquired thinly. 'Nothing.' Jessica kept on sipping at her cup of coffee, holding it like a barrier in front of her drawn face.
'All right,' her father spelt out flatly. 'I can accept that you made a mistake rushing into marriage with him, but at least you could have the gumption to tell him that to his face instead of running away and hiding!'
She chewed nervously at her lower lip. It hurt that her father should be on Carlo's side. But how did she tell her father the truth? If she did, he would probably feel he couldn't work for Carlo any more, and he might throw up his new job and then where would he be? 'Are you pregnant?' Jessica stared in astonishment. Gerald sighed. 'Carlo thought you might be ... hormones putting you round the twist or some such thing.' 'I am not pregnant or crazy, thank you very much!' 'Well, you look awful. You've lost a lot of weight.' Silence fell, uneasy, tense.
'Every time he phones me, I feel worse,' her father persisted. 'He knows that we're in contact with each other. He knows that I know where you are.'
If she had had the energy left, she would have hated Carlo for putting her in such a position. What on earth was he playing at? In the six weeks since she had left Greece, it had become painfully obvious that Carlo had no intention of going public with his relationship with his former stepmother. Maybe he thought it was too soon, or maybe Carlo was quite happy just to have Sunny in his bed in secret.
Having run the gamut of every possible conjecture, Jessica had learnt that ultimately it really didn't matter. Carlo wanted Sunny. Sheer uncontrollable lust, or love— what difference did it make? Jessica just wanted to be left alone with the most intolerable burden of misery she had ever endured.
'He's worried sick about you.'
'Breaking his heart, no doubt,' Jessica muttered tightly.
'Why can't you see him?'
Because pride was all she had left, and if she saw him she might let herself down badly. Carlo didn't know that she had fallen in love with him and she didn't want him to know.
Her father took his leave, close-mouthed and disapproving. Having come down to London on business, he was flying back to Glasgow where he had recently embarked on his new job. Jessica looked round her tiny flatlet, over-furnished with her possessions from the cottage. She hadn't been able to find a permanent secretarial position yet. She had signed up with a temping agency and with the aid of some savings was just about managing to survive. But one day blurred with terrifying blankness into the next.
It was around ten when someone knocked on the door. She was on her way to bed and grimaced. Her nextdoor neighbour, a rather pushy male in his late twenties, had been putting his all into trying to chat her up this week, calling round at odd times, refusing to take no for an answer...
Exasperated, she opened the door and then fell back a step, the colour draining from her cheeks, shock cur-renting through her in debilitating waves. Carlo dealt her a razor-edged smile from the vantage point of his greatly superior height and thrust the door shut behind him with a powerful hand.
'Your father was followed. I knew he would meet up with you sooner or later,' Carlo imparted grimly.
'You had no right to do that!'
But she couldn't take her eyes off him. In a superbly cut pearl-grey suit that sleekly outlined his lean, muscular physique, a white silk shirt highlighting the gold of his skin and the darkness of his hair, Carlo looked
breathtakingly handsome. His impact slivered through her nerve-endings, leaving her disturbingly aware of his every movement and badly shaken. She felt horribly like a plant left to wither forgotten on a windowsill suddenly being tantalised with a jug of life-giving water.
'You are going to crawl by the time I'm finished with you,' Carlo sizzled down at her, emanating temper and arrogance and self-satisfaction in perceptible waves.
'I don't think so.' Squaring her slight shoulders, Jessica slung him a look of pure scorn, denying the craving that he could evoke inside her even when he was demonstrating all in one go all the less pleasant characteristics of his powerful personality.
'You have a VCR?' Seeing it for himself, Carlo headed for it in one long stride and deposited two videotapes beside it. 'We'll probably still be sitting here at lunchtime tomorrow. You are going to watch and inwardly digest every unutterably boring hour of this just as I had
'Carlo... w-what are you talking about?' she prompted, watching him feed in a tape with incredulous eyes.
'It was several weeks before it occurred to me that you might have taken off for a reason... as opposed to being just sheer bloody contrary!' he raked at her, suddenly sizzling with rage. 'And I was furious with you. I couldn't wait to get my hands on you. Then I dug out these tapes and I wanted to strangle you!'
/>
The tip of her tongue snaked out to dry her lips. What the blazes was he rattling on about? What were those tapes? The TV screen came alive with a most disorientating overhead view of the library outside Athens. It was eerie. Jessica gaped, totally dazed by the sight of Carlo striding through the door, pouring himself a large drink and then throwing himself on that self-same sofa.
