A Passionate Revenge Read online

  ‘I’ll stick with the second of those,’ she said jerkily, pushing past him. Her starved lungs inhaled the scent of him and her nerve-endings twitched excruciatingly. So her voice was tart and irritable when she flung back, ‘Making love is not on my agenda.’

  Though she wished it were. She had to do something to satisfy her demented hunger. Perhaps it was like a biological clock, she thought gloomily. Her body was beginning to protest that she’d starved it.

  ‘Poor fiancé. He must be very frustrated,’ he mocked.

  Not half as frustrated as she was. ‘Where’s that coffee?’ she snapped, with scant regard for their relative positions.

  Vido waited for his pulses to stop running a marathon and thought of her intriguing remark about sex. Could that explain the hunger that poured out of her and set him on fire? More to the point, could she be still a virgin? It would explain the air of innocence that mingled with her natural sexiness, and which made her blush every time he made a questionable comment.

  The marathon began again. His heartbeat racked up a notch or two and he did his best to tame his galloping blood pressure by vigorously wiping over the marble-topped table he’d had imported from Milan.

  ‘I got this table specially, for working pasta,’ he said unnecessarily when he’d finished.

  Bent over the sack of flour, Anna ignored him and continued to fill a bowl with it, perfectly aware that he was now admiring her back view.

  ‘Black,’ she prompted icily, seeing that he’d only got as far as standing by the gleaming new espresso machine. ‘One sugar.’

  And she stalked back to gather the ingredients she needed. Free-range organic eggs. Sea salt. Extra-virgin cold-pressed olive oil. Her tension evaporated like magic as she sifted the flour onto the marble slab. It fell like a fine cloud and formed into the shape of a volcano.

  Lovingly her small fist made a well in the centre. Her face became free of anxiety, all her concentration focused on the pleasure ahead.

  He hungered for the fluidity of her body and had to discipline himself severely to stay by the hissing, snorting machine. Every languorous, loving movement she made mesmerised him.

  Reverently she cracked the eggs, her lush mouth parted with pleasure as she added the salt. Her hands plunged into the mixture, combining the ingredients until they became a sticky paste. Back and forth. Back and forth. Vido’s loins tightened.

  Panting softly, her small white teeth visible against the darkness of her mouth, she began to knead, the rhythm of her body and the arch of her back quite beautiful to watch. A warm liquidity flowed through him. Never in his life had he ever known anything so exquisitely arousing.

  Surreptitiously he put on a CD and Pavarotti’s passionate arias filled the room. Anna smiled to herself and her graceful arms seemed to move in perfect time with the music.

  He felt overwhelmed by powerful emotions, which all seemed to be bound up in the small figure of the woman lyrically swaying backwards and forwards as she kneaded the dough.

  Surrendering to his senses, he watched the dough become elastic, springing eagerly beneath her practised hands as if it were a living thing. Which, on reflection, he supposed it was. A serene joy seemed to surround her and it affected him deeply as her passion communicated itself to him.

  Her movements, the perfect curve of her jaw and the sweet arcs of her arms, were unutterably sensual. Strands of curling ebony hair were escaping from her prim little chignon with the vigour of her attack on the dough and they were drifting down to frame her face with an appealing abandon.

  Absently her hands kept pushing her hair back into place, leaving those appealing little daubs of flour everywhere, which he’d remembered from the past.

  Irresistible. And he hated her for causing his arousal. Hated her more fiercely than ever because he wanted to be consumed by the kind of woman who’d become his wife. Not the granddaughter of the man who might have been the root cause of his mother’s death. Not the spiteful hellcat of a woman who’d blackened his name without a moment’s thought.

  But his brain seemed to have lost its connection with his body. He found himself standing behind her before he realised he’d moved. Close to, he could see every detail of the soft, achingly vulnerable nape of her neck and the fineness of the tendrils of glassy black hair. Her shoulders were slight, her back lithe and straining with effort, the long corded muscles beside her spine demanding his caress.

  After a moment her movements slowed. She knew he was there. He held his breath, waiting.

  As if unable to stand it any longer, she turned, clearly as shocked as he was by the bolt of electricity that crackled between them.

  ‘What…?’

  There was flour in tempting little smudges all over her face just waiting to be brushed away by his questing fingers. To be followed by his mouth. Tongue. Teeth. Hell. He wanted to ravage her, to subdue her till she begged for mercy.

  Like him, she was breathing heavily. Her spine had been thrust back against the table and she couldn’t move away, a situation he found unbearably tempting and erotic.

  He could kiss her now and she wouldn’t resist. Hazily he realised that she had been partially aroused by her love of cooking. If she ever responded to him he wanted it to be for him, and him alone. Not as a side effect of making pasta, he thought angrily.

  ‘Did you say one sugar?’ he clipped, to kill his lust stone dead.

  She jerked as if he’d hit her and turned abruptly back, smashing her fist into the dough.

  ‘Yes,’ she growled, pummelling with impressive ferocity.

  Muttering oaths under his breath, he stalked off, hampered somewhat by his own arousal. That had been stupid in the extreme. He had to remember that she was engaged. He was supposed to be an honourable man—though his feelings were far from that at the moment. Every instinct was screaming at him to take her, then and there. Then to send her away, free at last of the terrible shackles she’d clamped on him.

  Unfortunately, seducing her wasn’t compatible with his avowed honour. Any attempt to get her into his bed would confirm that her assessment of his character had been correct.

  Dio! How could he prove himself to be honourable and satisfy his catastrophic physical need for her?

  ‘Coffee.’

  Controlling his breathing, he slid it onto the table where she was brushing the dough with oil then covering it with a damp cloth so that it could rest. His testosterone levels needed a rest too. Perhaps, he thought ruefully, watching her convey it to the fridge, he should slide onto the shelf with the damn pasta and cool down.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The ache was beginning to gnaw at him intolerably. Pretending nonchalance, he lounged against the worktop and nibbled an amoretto biscuit, wondering what the hell he was going to do.

  Pink-faced from effort—he assumed—Anna briskly washed her hands and proceeded to chop rosemary and garlic, which she stuffed into the side of lamb. With great care, her small pink tongue sticking out as she did so, and making his insides melt, she neatly sewed up the lamb and put it in a tin before pouring on white wine and slipping the dish into the roasting oven.

  The aromas of his boyhood were tantalising his senses. His head was swimming. Perhaps he needed a cold douche. And what better, he suddenly realised, than to see Anna playing footsie with her fiancé and gazing adoringly into the man’s eyes?

  ‘I hope you don’t find it too intimidating meeting everyone tonight,’ he said, injecting as much doubt into his tone as he could.

  Her eyes flashed to his in immediate concern. ‘Why? Should I?’ she asked warily.

  Her nervousness was obvious. She’d oiled the cake tin twice.

  ‘Possibly. We can be a pretty high-powered lot. I am rather throwing you to the lions and you’d be the centre of attention because they’d all be assessing you,’ he said, laying it on with a trowel. ‘Why don’t you invite someone you know to give you moral support?’ he asked with what he hoped was deceptive innocence.

  Ever s
ince she was seventeen, she’d tried to build up her self-assurance. But Vido knew her of old, and he was right. The evening daunted her because it was vital that she succeeded. For her grandpa’s sake, for Peter’s, for her own pride and financial stability.

  She thought of her various friends who might come, and then she beamed. There was one ideal person to accompany her. Not only was he used to swimming with the sharks in the world of business, but his presence would offer protection of a kind.

  Tensely he watched, willing her to choose her boyfriend.

  ‘How about my fiancé?’ she asked, with a rush of eager excitement that illogically annoyed him. ‘He’s in London, but he’d be thrilled to come over.’

  He produced an ‘if-you-must’ shrug and paid a good deal of attention to stirring his espresso to disguise his satisfaction. He badly needed to see them together. It might be an evening of masochism for him, but at least it would kill his desire for Anna if he realised that she was committed, body and soul, to this city slicker.

  ‘Fine. He can stay here tonight if you like.’ He hesitated, struck by the obvious. She might want to sleep with her fiancé. He clenched his teeth together hard. Thinking of Anna sighing with delight in another man’s arms was ridiculously uncomfortable to contemplate. With an effort, he bit the bullet and offered her up on a plate to her fiancé. ‘Unless…’ He held his breath, meeting her eyes then with an intensely watchful stare. Virgin or not? Suddenly it seemed to have become a matter of great importance to him. ‘Unless you want him to go back to your house.’

  Anna tensed and immediately busied herself with weighing the chestnut flour.

  ‘Two-fifty…three hundred grams,’ she muttered, wondering why the thought of making love with Peter should be so distasteful to her when she would have leapt into Vido’s bed with alacrity if there could have been no consequences whatsoever. ‘I’m sure Peter would be delighted to accept your invitation for dinner. He’s very interested in Solutions Inc. Since he’d need to leave early in the morning, it would make more sense if he stayed here tonight, thank you,’ she said coolly.

  He didn’t comment straight away and when she shot him a puzzled glance she saw that he was pushing his hands through his hair and looking rather distracted. Shaken, even. Seeing him so dishevelled and vulnerable made her heart lurch.

  It struck her that she was still searching for love—and stupidly imagining that Vido could provide it merely because she found him sexually exciting. The two didn’t necessarily go together, of course.

  But it occurred to her that she wasn’t sure if love or sex figured in her relationship with Peter at all. In fact it had worried her that he’d been finding excuses not to visit, ever since it had become public knowledge that her grandfather had sold his factory and Stanford House and she was no longer an heiress.

  Doubts filled her mind. Initially Peter had been wonderfully attentive. A perfect gentleman. But lately he’d been rather curt with her. She’d put that down to the stress of his job. It could be that in the beginning, Peter had latched on to her because of her financial prospects. She felt slightly sick. And knew she must seriously examine her own feelings for him that very night.

  ‘Your fiancé is welcome.’ Vido’s voice was unmistakably shaky.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked with a puzzled frown.

  He gave a secretive smile. ‘I could be. Ask me tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She couldn’t look away. Felt as if she was on shifting sand.

  ‘You will. Call your fiancé. Invite him.’

  A strange excitement seemed to be simmering inside him. He smiled as he held out his mobile to her.

  She didn’t want to go over to him. The space between them was already thick with tension and narrowing the gap would crush the air out of her.

  He seemed to understand this because he put the phone down on the worktop and moved to the French doors to study the giant cedar spreading its branches across the billiard-table lawn.

  Horribly agitated, she hurried to the phone. Maybe hearing Peter’s voice would put her emotions back on course.

  ‘Talbot.’

  Nothing. She felt nothing at all. No lift of her heart or her spirits. No fireworks going off in her head, as they did when she looked at Vido. Appalled by the implications of that, she ventured a subdued, ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like good news,’ he said with undisguised disappointment. ‘Oh, Anna! What did you do wrong? I can’t believe you’ve blown it,’ he complained irritably. ‘You’re hopeless. We’d worked out a great interviewee technique—’

  She hardly heard Peter’s petulant reproach. Her huge grey eyes were fixed on Vido again, homing in on him as if he was the centre of her life. Slowly he turned and the involuntary clenching of her body flung her mind into turmoil.

  He was scrutinising her in a very odd way. She realised that he must be puzzled that she and Peter didn’t coo at one another. But she wasn’t lovey-dovey. Never had been.

  She broke in on Peter’s censure, annoyed at his assumption. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’ She tried to kill the irritation. Vido’s eyebrows had lifted in surprise at her tone so she injected sweetness and light into it. ‘I’m on trial. Darling.’ The endearment was squeezed out after a brief hesitation and sounded odd even to her ears. ‘I’m cooking dinner and you’ve been invited along. It would be wonderful if you could come,’ she added, trying to believe that herself. ‘You can stay the night at Stanford House,’ she finished stiltedly, in case Peter got the wrong idea.

  Tension seemed to be holding Vido unnaturally still. He knew she wasn’t starry-eyed about Peter, she thought, her throat drying. She licked her lips and shuddered at the slow, predatory smile that curved his hungry mouth.

  Peter had to come, she thought frantically. If only to protect her from her chaotic hormones and Vido’s casual attitude to sex. If Vido ever realised how she felt, he’d be sliding her into his bed before she knew it—just for the hell of it. Another notch on his bedpost.

  A golden, liquid warmth melted her entire body, prompting her to think ‘so what?’.

  Outrageous! She despaired of herself.

  Suddenly she realised that Peter was already accepting and she forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘…fantastic! I never thought you’d do it!’ Peter enthused.

  ‘I’m not there yet,’ she cautioned. ‘It depends on the meal and whether I get on with the rest of the staff—’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘…everything I’d hoped for. I can use the opportunity to make myself known! I’ll tell them about myself and ask to be considered for a job. Great stuff. I’ll leave now so I can get in as much networking as possible. See you later. Don’t be surprised if I don’t spend much time with you. There’s a lot at stake here for me.’

  He’d cut the connection. Dreading his arrival now and alarmed that Solutions Inc might take him on, she wondered how on earth she’d get through the evening. Vido would expect her to show affection towards Peter. The way she was feeling now, she’d barely be able to give him the time of day.

  Feeling distinctly edgy, she softened her face in the hope that her voice would be warm and loving as a result, and said into the totally empty ether, ‘Bye, darling. Look forward to that.’

  Vido had moved close to her again. With her eyes fixed in a cowardly gaze at his midriff, she held out the phone. His hand closed over hers and she looked up at him as her pulses fluttered as if a thousand butterflies were trapped in her body.

  ‘When did you say you’re marrying him?’ Vido asked softly.

  Panic ripped through her. There couldn’t be a marriage. It would be a travesty to marry a man she didn’t love. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Eventually she fudged, ‘I said two months. Why?’

  He had to stop her from making a terrible mistake. She had no real, deep feelings for the man. She just needed to be loved.

  If he kissed her now he knew she’d respond. It might even
prove to her that this Peter wasn’t the man for her. Vido gave a silent groan. The trouble was, he was ham-strung by honour.

  The ache in his body had become even more intolerable.

  ‘Why?’ He thought rapidly. ‘Well, holiday arrangements would be necessary if we took you on,’ he explained. Frowning, he checked his watch. ‘I’ve been here long enough. I have a date with a horse,’ he muttered. ‘See you at seven-thirty.’

  ‘Wait!’ she breathed.

  He paused, almost shaking in his efforts to stay away from her. When he wanted to pull her roughly towards him, envelop her in his arms and kiss her until she moaned for more.

  ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘I—I was w-wondering,’ she stumbled, and stopped as if she was apprehensive.

  His wretched protective gene asserted itself and made him relax his brusque manner. Looking down on her upturned, anxious face, those grey eyes wide and soulful and the trembling mouth alluringly petal-soft, he felt a lurch of recklessness come over him. She was willing. He knew that. Perhaps…

  His eyes darkened as he melted. ‘Yes?’ he husked encouragingly, letting the word linger on his mouth.

  ‘What—?’

  Anna blinked, evidently surprised by the squeak that had emerged from her throat. His gaze went there. To the long, slender perfection of it. He would dip his tongue into that little hollow where her pulse leapt so tellingly…

  ‘What shall I wear?’ she whispered.

  Shaken from his contemplation of her slender jawline and his calculation of how many kisses it would take to reach her ear, he wondered if he’d heard correctly.

  ‘Wear.’ And she nodded. His breath shuddered out. So that had been the reason for her anxiety! And he, like a fool, had imagined that she was as affected by their closeness as he was. ‘People wear what they like.’ The voice that had emerged didn’t sound like his own. More like a rasping saw cutting through steel. Anna had backed away, assuming that he was annoyed by her all-too-feminine worries. ‘Camilla usually puts on something long and glamorous. Some of the other women wear jeans, like a few of the men. Anyone with Italian blood tends to opt for understated, classic casuals. No rules. Wear whatever you like.’