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‘It is here,’ he replied, as calm as anything.
‘Then try using it if you want to be understood,’ she advised, sounding waspish but not even caring any more. The lift doors opened then. Maybe it was timely, because she’d seen the way his chest had lifted and fallen. He was controlling the desire to retaliate in kind.
Aware that she was stupidly treading the fine line to destruction, she slipped out from beneath his overpowering stance and walked quickly out of the lift and across the lobby on legs that were threatening to collapse—
The telephone was ringing. She stopped and frowned as she turned instinctively in the direction of the nearest extension which happened to be in the office.
‘I will get it,’ he said, striding towards the office. She didn’t demur, for it had to be for him. The life of a venture capitalist didn’t recognise time zones.
She was just removing her coat when she heard his voice make its usual deep curt acknowledgement to whoever was trying to contact him.
Silence followed. Something about it made her go still. Then his voice came, hard and tight, and as she stared at him he spun his back to her, his body bristling with tension as he became involved in a question and answer session in thick deep Italian with whoever was on the other end of the phone.
Then the phone was slammed down. Silence hit. For the space of ten excruciating seconds, he just continued to stand there staring at the wall in front of him while she waited with bated breath, somehow knowing that something dreadful had just happened.
When he did move, she found herself taking an unsteady step backwards as he strode towards her. ‘W-what’s wrong?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Nothing,’ he clipped, but he was lying. ‘I have to go out,’ he announced, striding right by her. Then he was gone, disappearing back into the lift and sending it downwards without even offering her a single glance!
Whomever he had been talking to had given him an excuse to get away from here before they had a chance to talk—and, good grief, but he’d taken it with wings on his feet!
It hurt. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t. In a daze filled with bitter new experiences tonight, she walked into the office, draped her coat over a chair, then sat down without really knowing she had done it.
A flickering red light suddenly intruded on the edge of her vision. As she turned towards it, it was purely instinctive to press the play-back button on the answering machine.
Almost immediately a shrill, near-hysterical voice came whipping into the room with her. And even though it spoke in an agitated mix of Italian and English, she got the drift of what it was saying.
‘Where are you, Giancarlo?’ it was demanding urgently. ‘I have been ringing and ringing—’ It was his sister’s voice, Natalia realised as Alegra suddenly switched to Italian. She recognised it because she had spoken to her several times while working with Edward.
Then—‘Edward.’ She picked out his name from the garble. Followed almost instantly by another couple of recognisable words that had her going cold inside.
It was the link between Edward and the name of a famous hospital right here in London that really shook her.
Edward was ill. She knew it without a hint of a doubt in her head!
Natalia got up and ran…
CHAPTER TEN
GIANCARLO felt sick. Standing here with Alegra weeping in his arms and talking wildly, all he could think was—I am going to be sick.
‘He made the confession, Giancarlo,’ Alegra sobbed out in shrill broken English. ‘He starts acting strange. Then he suddenly insists we leave the cruise and fly home. We are almost here when he has the attack. He thinks he is going to die, so he decides to tell all! But what does this confession do for me?’ she choked, so utterly distraught it was wretched. ‘He took another woman to his bed! He made a child with her! He betrayed me and defiled me and now he is going to die on me!’
‘He will not die, cara,’ he murmured, finding the comforting words from somewhere, but he didn’t know where from because his brain had crashed, the sheer scale of the horror unfolding before him just too much for it to take in. ‘Shh,’ he soothed. ‘He will live—he will live.’
And he will, Giancarlo found himself vowing angrily. Because he wanted Edward very much alive so he could personally kill both him and Natalia Deyton!
Natalia. His heart suddenly wrenched, the pain and the anger shooting out in all directions and holding him stock-stone still. Natalia the witch. Natalia the bitch. Natalia the lying, cheating, artful deceiver, who had knowingly and calculatingly lured him into bed with her—so she could foist Edward’s bastard off on him!
‘But then he deserves to die for doing this to me!’ Alegra burst out. ‘A child, Giancarlo! He made a child with another woman! I will never forgive him!’
The Sicilian promise. His bones clenched at the sound of it. Yet he understood it—hell, did he understand!
A sound by the waiting-room door caught his attention. Looking up, he immediately began to burn inside because—there she was, standing in the doorway as if his own wrath had conjured her up, and looking achingly, destructively beautiful in her sparkling black dress, which somehow reminded him of the Fabergé watch.
A watch she’d probably filched out of Edward’s safe along with everything else he’d asked her to get out of there. As her own idea of payment for services rendered—to both Edward and himself?
And now she had the cheek to turn up here, when she must know that the game was up, looking all pale and ethereal and—
