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Milly’s teeth gritted. ‘He’s the man I love!’
Gianni breathed in deep, his eyes flashing gold with raw menace. ‘You couldn’t possibly love a calculating little creep like that!’
‘Edward is none of your business! Haven’t you done enough damage?’
Gianni studied her with shimmering eyes, and then he reached for her without any warning at all. He pulled her into his powerful arms and brought his mouth down on hers. Suddenly she was on fire, her breath rasping in her throat, her slim body burning at every point of contact with his. The heated onslaught of that wide, sensual mouth was a revelation. Nothing had ever felt so necessary. Hunger clawed up through her with such greedy force that her head spun, her senses reeled. Riven with wild excitement, she pressed herself into his hard male frame with a shaken moan of surrender.
‘Faith!’ Davina intervened, shrill with condemnation.
As Gianni held Milly back from him she trembled in a daze of shock. She focused in startled embarrassment on the older woman lodged in the bedroom doorway.
‘I’m not Faith,’ she heard herself say unevenly, for she could hardly get air back into her lungs. ‘I’m Milly.’
‘You’re still an engaged woman!’ Davina turned to address Gianni. ‘She’s upset and confused. Why can’t you leave her alone?’
Momentarily, Milly was in a world of her own. She could not credit the terrifying intensity of what Gianni had made her feel. She had behaved like a wanton, pushing closer to him and clinging. If she was mortified now, she deserved to be. But then, as the older woman had pointed out, she was upset and in no state to know what she was really feeling…
‘I think it’s time you told Milly the truth about her engagement,’ Gianni murmured silkily.
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re trying to imply,’ Davina said thinly.
Gianni gazed down at Milly. His expressive mouth twisted. ‘On your wedding day, Edward becomes a fully-fledged partner in the family firm.’
Stunned by that statement, Milly stared back at him. ‘That’s not true-’
‘That news was to have been our wedding present to both you and Edward.’ Davina tilted her chin, defying further comment.
Gianni loosed a sardonic laugh. ‘Why don’t you tell her the truth, Mrs Jennings? Benson got that promise before he even asked her to marry him!’
‘That’s a lie!’ Milly’s hands curled into tight fists by her sides as she gazed expectantly at the older woman, willing her to shoot Gianni’s humiliating aspersions down in flames.
Coins of colour now embellished Davina’s cheeks. ‘It was a simple business agreement, Mr D’Angelo. Edward is my husband’s natural successor.’
‘Free partnerships are not the norm in the business world, Mrs Jennings. And you should’ve warned Benson to keep the news from his mother. She’s ensured that half the town knows why her son is prepared to take on another man’s child. You made it well worth his while,’ Gianni countered very drily.
Tell me it wasn’t like that, Milly wanted to beg the older woman strickenly, but she bit back the plea and straightened her shoulders to walk to the door. Only Edward could tell her what it had been like. Only Edward could convince her that he hadn’t needed the bribe of a partnership in the firm to persuade him to propose.
‘Where on earth are you going?’ Davina demanded.
‘To see Edward,’ Milly looked at Gianni D’Angelo, and, try as she could, she could not suppress the sheer loathing raging through her. ‘You are a complete and utter bastard!’ she raked at him, heedless of the other woman’s shocked gasp. ‘And I don’t need a memory to tell me why I left you!’
CHAPTER FIVE
REFUSING to be turned from her purpose, Milly snatched her car keys from the hall table and drove over to Jennings Engineering. On the way, she thought back over the months since she had started seeing Edward.
Right from the start he had been attentive and caring. The dream boyfriend for an unwed mother? a more cynical voice enquired. Certainly her pseudo-parents had heavily encouraged the relationship, but why not? As a family friend and a trusted employee, Edward had naturally impressed them as being ideal.
But Milly had been more impressed by Edward’s apparent indifference to her amnesia. She had relaxed in his company. Other men she had dated had assumed that she was promiscuous just because she already had a child; Edward’s respectful attitude had come as a very welcome relief. It was hardly surprising that she had fallen in love with him.
So what if it was a different kind of love from that which she had once felt for Gianni D’Angelo? From what she recalled of those emotions she imagined a lowering form of enslavement, made all the more dangerous and destructive by the strength of her sexual craving for him. There, it was out at last, she acknowledged angrily. An admission of the physical weakness which had probably got her involved with Gianni in the first place.
Yet sex barely figured in her relationship with Edward. But then what she felt for Edward was a more mature and lasting love. So cymbals didn’t clash and fireworks didn’t go off when Edward kissed her. But where had the cymbals and the fireworks got her before? Down and out and pregnant by a male so frighteningly ruthless she could only admire herself for walking out on him three years earlier.
Milly parked the car outside the small office block beside the engineering plant. She was relieved that Robin Jennings was still at home. She had had enough of other people’s interference.
A nightmare mistake had been made, but she was OK, she told herself bracingly; she was coping. Gianni had tried to destroy everything, but as long as she still had Edward she would manage to come to terms with all the rest. She blocked out the little voice that warned that she was hanging by her fingernails onto her last shred of control.
Edward was in his office. Her unannounced entrance made him rise from behind his desk in surprise. Strain from their contentious meeting the night before showed in the stiffness of his greeting.
