‘MOST thoughtful of Luciano, don’t you think?’ Hunt O’Brien passed the letter complete with oily fingerprints to Kerry and bent over the ancient generator again. ‘Life will go on just as before for all our dear friends. ‘
Frowning in surprise, Kerry scanned the letter from Luciano’s solicitor, which in the event of the repossession order being granted not only promised ongoing employment to O’Brien employees but also urged that estate businesses should continue to trade as normal. Her troubled turquoise eyes clouded. Luciano was willing to be generous to everyone involved with one notable exception: her grandparents. Were her grandparents being punished for their association with her? How could Luciano offer such a far-reaching assurance unless he intended to maintain the castle as a private dwelling?
‘Next month, your grandmother and I will as usual be visiting Cousin Tommy,’ her grandparent remarked. ‘Tommy always enjoys the company. Perhaps we could make it a more permanent arrangement…what do you think?’
While making noncommittal sounds, Kerry thought that the elderly bachelor’s other relatives might be distinctly dismayed if the O’Briens were to demonstrate a desire to become more than biannual guests in his Dublin home. Yet she was reluctant to rain doubt on her grandfather’s fond hope when she had as yet failed to come up with any alternative. In just three days, the High Court would deal with the repossession order but there was no chance of a miracle in that line when Hunt O’Brien had refused to even try to fight the order.
Indeed, on that score Kerry had found the older man immoveable.
‘I owe money I can’t repay…I won’t interfere with the course of the law,’ he had sighed.
‘But people would have a lot of sympathy—’
‘No. I must do what’s right and behave with dignity,’ he had insisted.
The generator kicked nosily into life again and the old man beamed with pleasure. It had always been a source of huge satisfaction to Hunt O’Brien that Ballybawn Castle was not joined to the national electricity grid. Since 1897, Ballybawn had generated its own power from a complex water system originally designed by her great-grandfather. Mercifully the years when rain had been less than plentiful had been few. However, blackouts were not unusual and, owing to the finite nature of the output, the ground floor alone of the castle was wired for electric light.
Only when Kerry gave that brief letter a second perusal did it dawn on her that it could be the loophole and the very escape clause that she had been frantically seeking to buy some time. What if…she was to become an official estate employee? As long as she was signed up as such before ownership of the castle passed into other hands, she too would be protected from the threat of immediate eviction. Of course, it would have to be a job that included live-in accommodation. She would become the housekeeper, she decided. It had been some time since Ballybawn had rejoiced in such a luxury but the former cook’s quarters were spacious, for Bridget, the previous occupant, had raised a large family there.
In the tiny estate office in the old stable yard, Kerry filled out an application form and backdated it for the files. Printing out an employment contract, she went off to find her grandmother. Viola, who had always maintained that flowers ought to stay in the garden to enhance the view, was fixing ground elder, dandelions and reeds from the lake in a vase in the great hall.
‘If only it wasn’t too early for the convolvulus to bloom,’ Viola lamented.
‘It still looks lovely.’ Kerry gave the arrangement of what the unimaginative might have regarded as weeds an admiring appraisal, slotted a pen into her grandmother’s hand and showed her where to sign on the dotted line.
‘Have we engaged a new member of staff?’ Viola asked, twitching the reeds to a more prominent position with careful hands.
‘A housekeeper,’ Kerry advanced, deadpan.
‘Oh…how nice that will be!’ Viola trilled with warm approval. ‘I shall be able to give my menus to her instead of to you and inspect the linen cupboard again.’
Back in the office, Kerry filed her new employment contract and organised a tenants’ meeting so that she would pass on the contents of the solicitor’s letter, for naturally the estate tenants had been very concerned about their own future. Ballybawn was, after all, the centre of a thriving cottage industry. At the same time, however, Kerry’s business enterprises had, through lack of investment capital, been based more on the principle of bartering and exchanging services than on market forces.
Thus, a local builder, who rented premises on the estate at a favourable rate, had over the years helped Kerry to create two holiday cottages from what had once been staff quarters at the rear of the castle. The imposing reception rooms in the Georgian wing used by Elphie Hewitt to showcase her own artistic talent were also rented out for parties and receptions. The castle gardens were maintained by a landscaper, who also ran a nursery on the estate. His plants were on sale in the stable yard, which also contained an artist’s gallery and the studios of several local crafts people. In Kerry’s hands, Ballybawn had become the trading heart of the community.
Three days later Kerry waited for her grandfather to emerge from the local court sitting, and when he reappeared he had tears shining in his blue eyes. She was too distressed by the sight of his pain to intrude by asking questions. As he climbed into the car, he paused to say heavily, ‘The officials will be coming in to do valuations and such. We’ll have a month to move…’
Exactly four weeks later, Luciano braked at a tiny junction that boasted an embarrassment of signposts.
Two of them pointed in opposing directions to Ballybawn Castle. Deciding against the potholed road with the discouraging central furrow of grass, he drove about five kilometres down the other before finding himself back at the same staggered crossroads. To say that he did not take that revelation in good part would have been an understatement. A journey that he had believed would only take him an hour had already taken him three.
Within minutes of taking the grassy lane Luciano was, however, rewarded with a fleeting glimpse of a gingerbread turret through dense thickets of trees. An imposing castellated entrance appeared round the next corner. While frowning at the huge cracks in the façade of the gateway, he received his first view of a castle straight out of a Gothic fantasy. A hotchpotch of improbable turrets and elaborate battlements broke the skyline. He was not impressed by the beauty of the limestone in the afternoon sunshine or the glory of the mature woodland that embellished Ballybawn because the very first thing he noticed was the giant tarpaulin that was lashed to part of the roof. As repairing the roof had been the main purpose of the loan he had advanced, righteous anger hardened Luciano’s lean, dark features.
Shooting the Ferrari to a halt in the rough parking area below the trees, he headed up to the castle. Three huge Irish wolfhounds charged down the grass slope towards him in an ecstasy of over-excited barking. Any notion that he might be under attack was soon dispelled by the excessive enthusiasm of his welcome. Forced to repel the onslaught of lolling tongues and giant muddy paws from dogs who had clearly not enjoyed even the most basic training, Luciano uttered a ringing rebuke. The gambolling hounds went into confused retreat and he entered the castle’s imposing porch alone. He looked in surprise at the furniture, walking sticks, boots and coats, not to mention the moth-eaten stuffed stag’s head still ornamenting the wall. Evidently, regardless of the reality that Ballybawn was now his property, the O’Briens remained in residence.
Kerry heard the dogs barking and groaned out loud. In the middle of baking for the visitors’ tour booked for the next day, she paused only to brush the flour off her skirt before racing for the front entrance to see who had arrived. There she came to a sudden shocked halt the instant she saw the tall, powerful male poised by the smoke-blackened fireplace. In his leather jacket and faded jeans, luxuriant black hair tousled by the breeze, a slight hint of a stubble already darkening his aggressive jawline, Luciano had all the stunning impact of a punch in the stomach.
‘I wasn’t expecting you this soon…’ Kerry admitted, mouth running dry, brain empty of inspirational openings as she thought in dismay of all the tasks she had yet to accomplish.
Not the slightest bit surprised by her appearance, for it had not once occurred to him that she would not live up to her threat of staying on in the castle, Luciano sent her a grim dark golden glance. ‘Where are your grandparents?’
‘In Dublin staying with a relative…I left them there yesterday.’ Kerry sucked in a steadying breath, heart thumping hard inside her tight chest as she decided that that was really all the information he required at present.
Relieved of the prospect of being forced to deal with the O’Briens in person, Luciano flung back his arrogant dark head in interrogative mode. ‘So what are you doing here?’
Self-conscious pink bloomed in Kerry’s cheeks. ‘I’m…I’m the castle housekeeper.’
As he received that declaration, black lashes with the exotic density of silk fans almost hit Luciano’s hard cheekbones. Grudging appreciation grabbed him. It was perfect. Indeed, he almost congratulated her on making such creative use of his concession that estate employees would be retained until further notice. But if she had already rehomed her grandparents in Dublin, what was her game plan? She had to have an ulterior motive and a strategy in mind. Exactly what could Kerry hope to achieve by pretending to be his housekeeper?
Proximity. As Machiavellian designs came as naturally to Luciano as the art of breathing, he was quick to decide that her most likely objective was…him. Here he was, her former fiancé, now in possession of loads of cash and her ancestral home. So what if he was an excon deemed to have played away with her stepsister? Needs must when the devil rides…hadn’t that once been one of Kerry’s cute little sayings? She could only have assumed the role of housekeeper in the hope of catching him in a weak moment and marrying him. Forewarned of that fell motive, Luciano squared his broad shoulders, wide, sensual mouth curling. He would go to his grave before he caught wedding fever in her vicinity again.
In the buzzing silence, Kerry closed her restive hands together. She could only hate him for the sheer cruelty with which her grandparents had been stripped of their possessions. Unfortunately, hatred was not an emotion she could afford to luxuriate in or risk showing him. At most she had six to eight weeks before her grandparents would have to return from Dublin. In that time, Luciano would decide whether to sell on the castle or to put it to some other use. If she was lucky, he would continue to employ her in some capacity and she would be able to share her accommodation with the older couple.
Luciano gazed down at her with gleaming dark golden eyes. ‘And what do your duties as a housekeeper entail?’
Bright turquoise eyes carefully veiled, Kerry tilted her chin. ‘You’re the boss…you tell me.’
‘You can start by showing me to the main bedroom.’
‘It’s in the tower but, although my grandfather used it, I don’t think it’s suitable for—’
‘Then the tower is where I want to be.’ Luciano moved fast to crush any suggestion that he would settle for anything less than an O’Brien born to the privilege.
Kerry compressed her lush mouth and opened the door that closed off the spiral stone staircase and kept the worst of the cold draughts out of the rest of the castle. If he wanted to bath in lake water in Ballybawn’s very oldest bath and freeze, that was his business. Or was it? Did she want him to be uncomfortable at Ballybawn? Her own best hopes depended on him retaining ownership.
‘It’s quite cold in the tower. My grandparents liked it that way. Grandpa thought it was healthier,’ she admitted uneasily.
‘I’ll survive.’ At the very top of the stone staircase that climbed four floors, Luciano strode past her into the mediaeval pannelled room which had a shabby four-poster bed as a centrepiece. A wonderful barrel-vaulted wooden ceiling soared above and he was impressed. The narrow casement windows gave a spectacular view of the rolling wooded hills backed by the distant blue mountains.
Folding her arms, her slim body taut, Kerry studied him while he stood there. Light gleamed over his cropped black hair and delineated the hard, bronzed lines of his classic profile. His sleek leather designer jacket moulded his muscular physique with the same fidelity as the denim jeans that hugged his lean hips and long, powerful thighs. Something hot and forbidden curled low in her tummy, tensing her up even more. In punishment for her own weakness, she dug her fingernails hard into the tender skin of her elbows.
Aware of her watching him with the fine-tuned senses that made him the very dangerous enemy that he was, Luciano pictured her sprawled naked across the bed. In his imagination, he saw her clear as day: glorious hair flaming in contrast against the simple white quilt, small, pouting breasts, pale, perfect limbs. Before he could dredge himself back out of that erotic daydream, the damage was done. His body clenched hard in urgent sexual response, and all the volatile impatience that lay at the heart of his forceful character surged to the fore.
‘I still want you,’ Luciano confessed without hesitation, ebony lashes low over the smouldering golden onslaught of his challenging gaze. ‘And you want me just as much. Let’s ditch the flirtatious foreplay and just go to bed.’
For the count of ten endless seconds, Kerry stared back at him with wide, disconcerted eyes and parted lips from which no sound emerged. He still wanted her? Even now, he could find her attractive? That startling revelation sliced right through Kerry’s every defence. Immediately she felt different about that kiss at his office. If that had been prompted by a passionate impulse rather than a desire to humiliate her…what? What? There her disturbing thought-train screeched to a guilty, confused halt. How on earth could she be allowing herself even to think about Luciano in such intimate terms again?
‘Time feels very precious to me right now. I intend to live every moment,’ Luciano confided huskily, shrugging free of his jacket and tossing it in a careless, graceful movement onto a chair. ‘Live it with me.’
He was the very last word in smooth and cool and he had been born knowing all the best lines, Kerry thought with angry pain. He might still be so heartbreakingly gorgeous that he could dazzle her but she now had the distinct advantage of knowing what a cruel and ruthless bastard he was at heart. He was the male who in the wake of the repossession order had allowed a valuer to come in to lay claim to the few saleable items that still remained in the castle…everything, from furniture right down to the family portraits, her grandfather’s beloved books and even her grandmother’s pathetic collection of damaged Chinese porcelain.
‘I really can’t believe you’re talking to me like this after what you’ve done to my family over the last few weeks,’ Kerry condemned unevenly, her face firing with colour when she found herself still having to fight to drag her attention from the magnetic lure of his gaze.
Luciano gave a slight wince that implied that she had clumsily touched on an indelicate subject. ‘Debts have to be settled.’
‘Yeah…right,’ Kerry conceded on a rising note of helpless bitterness. ‘So Grandpa was conned into acting like an old-fashioned gentleman and agreeing to a voluntary arrangement with your representative to meet those debts. Then, guess what? The valuer decides that Ballybawn is a tumbledown white elephant and undervalues it, so that even after you get the castle Grandpa still owes you money—’
‘What are you talking about?’ Luciano cut in.
‘You’ve stripped my grandparents of everything but the clothes on their backs. You’ve got a few sticks of furniture, books, some paintings…maybe I could accept that if you were broke, but when you’re filthy rich you’ve got no excuse to be that stingy and greedy!’ Kerry slammed back at him in seething accusation.
Beneath that hail of abuse, angry colour burnished Luciano’s proud cheekbones. Having taken no interest whatsoever in the finer points of how that debt was discharged, he had had no idea that his legal team had been quite that efficient, but he was damned if he was about to apologise or show the smallest sign of regret.
‘I was fleeced by you and your family for four and a half years…did you or your grandparents ever lose any sleep over that fact?’ Luciano enquired grittily.
In frustration, Kerry moved forward. ‘I keep on telling you that I didn’t know the loan repayments weren’t being made—’
‘Did it once occur to you that when I gave you that loan I was surrendering my dream of buying a vineyard in my own country? Or that, back then, I lent what was a lot of money on my terms…and a considerable sacrifice?’ Luciano launched with raw force, hard, dark golden eyes scorching her with his contempt. ‘No, it didn’t, did it? In fact, you didn’t even care enough to ensure that a loan made purely for your benefit was utilised or even repaid in a businesslike manner!’
The blood had drained from Kerry’s fair complexion. Genuine dismay had seized her but resentment soon followed in its wake. He had had a dream of buying a vineyard in Italy? It was the first she’d heard of that ambition! Why had he not shared that with her while they were engaged? Even worse, why was she only now being told that the wretched money had constituted a far greater proportion of what he had had then than she could ever have appreciated? Indeed, why had he offered the loan in the first place? That grand and generous gesture had been typical of Luciano’s macho style but his silence on the true costs had been equally so.
‘If you’d been more frank with me at the time, I wouldn’t have allowed you to give Grandpa that money…I mean, it wasn’t like anyone asked you to do it,’ Kerry framed jaggedly. ‘I understand your anger but—’
Luciano sent her a burning look of outrage. ‘Accidenti…how could you understand my anger?’ he demanded, blazing dark fury flaring in his lean, strong face. ‘Especially when I realised that you weren’t worth the sacrifice!’
‘Luciano…’ Kerry forced out his name from bloodless lips, her throat convulsing and dry as a bone. ‘Don’t say that—’
‘You were useless in every way that mattered!’ Luciano derided with harsh emphasis. ‘You had no loyalty and even less faith in me. You weren’t even woman enough to share my bed—’
Kerry flinched. She was trembling, feeling sick, only standing her ground out of pride.
‘I made all the allowances, I did all the giving, and at the end of the day you still let me down. You let a woolly-headed old man play ducks and drakes with my money…the final insult for me has to be the sight of that bloody big tarpaulin on the roof!’
At that, even though his attack had ripped her apart inside herself, Kerry pushed her head up high again. ‘That woolly-headed old man is the same man that you chose to give your money to—’
‘I expected to be around while it was being spent!’
‘The roof on the tower and the roof over about half of the Georgian wing were replaced but there wasn’t enough cash to do more than running repairs on the rest. Re-roofing an historic building is horribly expensive, so before you accuse anyone of inappropriate use of that loan I suggest you check out the actual cost of the work that was done.’ Her narrow back ramrod straight, Kerry urged her wobbling legs to carry her out onto the landing. ‘I’m going downstairs to make dinner.’
‘Don’t bother…I’ll see to myself,’ Luciano groaned, striving not to let his brooding gaze linger on her pale, clenched profile. He did not feel quite so good about hurting her as he had believed he would.
Too raw not to suspect his true meaning, Kerry had to resist a childish need to assure him that she was now a very efficient cook capable of catering to quite large parties. With that appalling word, ‘useless’, still ringing a cruel and savage indictment in her ears, she went down to the kitchen. No loyalty, no faith in him. Such charges struck at the very heart of all that she respected.
What faith had Luciano expected her to demonstrate in him after she had discovered that he had lied to her about being at Heathlands with Rochelle that night? What loyalty had he sought to encourage when he had accepted the return of her engagement ring with anger but without a single word of argument? And not once had he contacted her after his arrest, not once had he made a single tiny move that might have suggested that he ever wanted to lay eyes on her again for any reason!
In every way, Kerry had interpreted his behaviour and his silence as that of a guilty man: a male who knew he’d been unfaithful and could not be bothered protesting otherwise, a male facing serious criminal charges for embezzling from her father’s business, who saw no point in trying to retain contact with Harold Linwood’s daughter.
But what if Luciano was telling her the truth? What if he had not betrayed her with Rochelle and was indeed the victim of a legal miscarriage of justice? Succumbing to the gathering force of her own turmoil, Kerry chopped fresh herbs to a consistency finer than dust. Yes, she finally conceded with raging, hurting bitterness, Luciano’s behaviour towards her after his arrest could be seen in a different light. He was arrogant, proud and as stubborn as a pig. When he believed he was in the right he did not compromise, he just dug his heels in harder. The challenge of owning up to actually needing someone whom he believed had wronged him could very easily have come between Luciano da Valenza and his wits. But in those circumstances that would not be her fault, would it be? A ballooning tightness clogged up her throat.
‘Not even woman enough to share my bed’? That had been the lowest of attacks, she thought with pained bitterness.
Between the ages of ten and fifteen, Kerry had been forced to listen to regular references to what a promiscuous tramp her own mother had been. Carrie had had at least three affairs during her stormy marriage to Harold Linwood and her father had never come to terms with the embarrassment his feckless first wife had inflicted on him. Nor had he ever been able to hide his fear that promiscuity might be hereditary and that Kerry would turn out to be man-mad too. Even her stepmother had enjoyed voicing stinging little barbs that emphasised her own superiority over her predecessor as both wife and parent, and Rochelle had reaped immense entertainment from telling all her schoolfriends that the mother who had deserted Kerry had been a nymphomaniac. Made to live with the degrading shame of Carrie’s mistakes as though they had been her own, Kerry had promised herself that she would never give anybody reason or excuse to talk about her in similiar terms.
As a teenager she had been very shy and she had only had a couple of boyfriends before she met Luciano. Saying no to sex had never been a challenge. Indeed, until Luciano came into her life temptation had not even touched her. But the instant she experienced that reckless, dangerous desire to just let him do whatever he wanted to do with her terrifyingly willing body, all those years of cautious preconditioning had exercised their effect. For the first time she had been afraid that maybe, after all, she might be over-sexed the way her mother appeared to have been and at serious risk of making a total mess of her life. Saying no to Luciano had then acquired all the true fervour of a defensive battle campaign.
But after he had asked her to marry him she had questioned her own belief that she ought to continue exercising the same restraint until that wedding ring was on her finger. However, the unhappy truth of Luciano’s prior fling with Rochelle in Italy had then come to light and put paid to all such self-doubt. Apart from anything else, Kerry had just wanted to kill him for having a past that had destroyed her present. Yet since then she had not once felt a hint of the same crazy, tormenting desire for any other man.
Miles truly did know her inside out, Kerry conceded heavily. Humiliating as it was to acknowledge, she did still have far too many powerful feelings for Luciano. Why else was she allowing his unjust accusations to upset her so much? No, she would not think about that bold sexual invitation of his, she would not surrender to the weak, stupid side of her own nature that longed to believe that she might still mean something to him. Even as she gave way to that latter thought, she recognised fearfully that deep down inside herself she had been hiding all along from the awareness that she wanted Luciano back.
She sucked in a steadying breath. Did that mean that she believed he was telling the truth about not having slept with Rochelle during their engagement? Or just that she was willing to believe anything he told her that might give her an excuse to be with him again? But was he seeing Rochelle again? Or was her stepsister up to her old tricks? Rochelle would have found out from Miles that Kerry was over in London seeing Luciano and her stepbrother. Rochelle’s claim that Luciano had asked her out might well have been a lie that she had hoped her brother might pass on in all innocence for her.
Angry at the amount of hope that surged through her at that suspicion, Kerry made herself sit down at the kitchen table to work through the remainder of the drawer of unanswered letters which she had abandoned on the dresser almost six weeks earlier. The last thing Luciano needed in his current mood was to come on the actual evidence of her grandfather’s indefensible refusal to deal with his own financial problems.
When she came on a larger than average envelope she frowned, for it was addressed to her and not to Hunt O’Brien. Why on earth had a letter for her been put away unopened? Possibly, her grandfather had only noticed the English postmark and had assumed it was yet another threatening communication from Luciano’s lawyer. Slitting it open, she found another envelope inside directed to ‘The Linwood Family’ at her father’s address in England and an accompanying brief note from her stepmother:
‘If you take my advice, you won’t follow this enquiry up.’
Curiosity heightened even more, Kerry removed a single sheet of headed notepaper from the second envelope. It was an enquiry from a London solicitors’ firm, asking if the Linwood family had any connection to a Caroline or Carrie Linwood, who was also believed to have gone by the surnames of Carlton and Sutton. Kerry’s tummy lurched. Was that her mother that was being referred to? Who else? Prior to marrying Kerry’s father, Carrie had been calling herself Carlton. In fact, Carrie had preferred to use any name, it seemed, other than O’Brien, the one she had been born with.
She knew what the letter meant. Carrie was dead. What else could it mean? Over four years ago, some solicitor had been trying to locate Carrie’s relatives. She scrunched up the letter, pushed it aside with a trembling hand and wished that she had not noticed that the original envelope had been intended for her. Her shaken eyes gritted up with tears. Why had she never tried to trace Carrie? Why had she been so hard and unforgiving? Or was it simply that she been too scared of receiving yet another rejection from the woman who had walked away when she was four years old and never looked back?
As Kerry tried to stifle the sudden gasping sobs that overcame her with her hands, the kitchen door opened.
Luciano strode in, lean, dark features sardonic. ‘I can’t find an electric socket in the bedroom,’ he delivered before he realised that she was in floods of tears.
Kerry dragged in a shuddering breath and dropped her head, hoping that he hadn’t noticed. ‘There isn’t any…there’s no electricity upstairs.’
No electricity upstairs. Consumed by total disbelief at that declaration but appreciating that further questioning on that score would seem inappropriate at that moment, Luciano hovered in rare indecision. Obviously, he had really upset her. She had always been maddeningly over-sensitive to his habit of straight talking. Did you really need to tell her she was useless? the uneasy voice of conscience asked him. His lithe, powerful frame emanating fierce tension, he approached the table much as if it had been an executioners’ block.
‘I was in a rough mood…I didn’t intend to hurt you,’ he stated with a graceful shrug of dismissal, knowing that he was lying, knowing that there was something in him that just wanted to lash out at her every time she came near him.
But that was entirely her fault, not his, Luciano assured himself. Any normal woman who had just looked at him with that amount of sheer physical longing would have hit the bed sheets with alacrity, for he had never subscribed to the belief that women were any less sexual beings than men. It had taken Kerry to make a drama out of his natural male reaction to that unspoken but obvious invitation of hers. And to ignore his proposition. And to duck the challenge of denying that, in spite of her prudish principles and prejudice, she did want him. As Luciano spoke, Kerry was frozen in her seat. He actually thought that she was weeping her head off over what he had said to her? Flattening her palms to the table, she leapt upright to settle scornful blue eyes on him. ‘You don’t have the power to hurt me any more!’ she slammed back at him. ‘I was upset about something private that has nothing to do with you.’
Luciano’s furious golden gaze fell on the letter crunched into a telling ball. Without even thinking about it, he reached for it to satisfy his need to know what could possibly be more important than him.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Throwing him an angry look of astonishment, Kerry snatched up the letter and dug it into the back pocket of her skirt.
At that point Luciano recognised the smell of charring food and he strode over to the range to look down without surprise at the casserole that had boiled dry and burned into the bargain. It was petty but the discovery that she was still as utterly hopeless at cooking as she had always been gave him a warm sense of consolation and continuity.
As she took in the same view Kerry’s soft pink mouth wobbled and then thinned into a tight line of restraint. ‘I’ll make something else—’
‘No, I wouldn’t dream of putting you to so much trouble,’ Luciano purred.
To her horror, she discovered she just wanted to hit him again. To hit him so hard she knocked him into the middle of next week and closed that smart mouth of his. She had been looking forward to his shock when she presented him with a perfectly cooked meal. Really, she had been very well rid of him, she told herself feverishly. Being married to a guy who could whip up fantastic dishes with the galling, flamboyant expertise of a seasoned chef but who very rarely had the time to do so would have been an endless nerve-racking ordeal.
‘I’ll eat out,’ Luciano continued.
Unable to make even a stab at faking the concern of a housekeeper keen to feed her employer, Kerry jerked a thin shoulder. Had he still to appreciate how remote from civilisation Ballybawn was? There wasn’t a restaurant within miles, but he could find that out the way he found out most things: the hard way.
‘But before I do that, I’d like to see round the castle,’ Luciano concluded.
‘It’ll be getting dark in an hour—’
‘Then we’ll use torches…or doesn’t Ballybawn have those either?’ Luciano countered silkily.
Ten minutes later Luciano was treated to a detailed display of the workings of the Ballybawn water-powered electrical system, which was housed in a lean-to below the trees. Kerry became quite animated as she described her great-grandfather’s inventive expertise, while not seeming to notice that he remained distinctly underwhelmed. ‘That we produce our own electricity is a very special part of living at Ballybawn,’ she completed, patting the ancient, rusting turbine with a fond hand.
‘I won’t live without electricity,’ Luciano said with gentle irony.
‘We’ve got electricity…just not upstairs.’ Kerry angled a reproving glance at him as if electricity at any other level was an outrageous luxury he should be ashamed to even mention. ‘And why would you need electricity in a bedroom? Oil lamps have been used at the castle without the slightest inconvenience for well over a hundred years.’
‘I have a sneaking fondness for those little switches that magically give light in darkness. I also like to plug in lots of consumer products…cellphone charger, PC, satellite TV, music, digital phone—’
‘You can use all those things downstairs. You can use the library as an office,’ Kerry told him stubbornly. ‘Or even one of the units in the stable yard. Grandpa allowed the yard to be connected to the mains because some of the tenants have to use equipment that consumes a lot of power.’
‘Oil lamps are dangerous. I’m very surprised that you haven’t had a fire.’ Luciano wondered how he had ever convinced himself that she bore not the slightest resemblance to her scatty grandparents. Only a fanatic would ask him to start using an oil lamp.
Fires littered the history of the castle, and as soon as her grandmother had become a little unsteady on her feet Kerry had persuaded the older woman to move into a downstairs bedroom. However, nothing would have made her admit that to Luciano. He had owned Ballybawn for less than a day and already it seemed he was thinking about making sweeping changes that filled her with dismay and an urgent need to protect the castle’s historic heritage.
As the inspection of Ballybawn continued, Luciano just sank deeper and deeper into shock. On his arrival, he had been too preoccupied to pay proper heed to what he was seeing of the castle. Throughout his imprisonment, however, he had confidently pictured Kerry living it up at his expense in some grand aristocratic home. For that reason, discovering the harsh reality of her lifestyle truly shattered him. Contemporary living standards had passed Ballybawn by. The O’Briens had existed with the primitive conditions of their ancestors but without the many servants who would have eased the privations of a household that had no labour-saving devices. The only means of heating the huge, cold rooms came from monster fireplaces, and what few electrical fitments he saw ought to have been given museum status and indeed, in his opinion, constituted a serious safety hazard.
Damp and decay were in full control of the wing once inhabited by Great-Uncle Ivor and the door had simply been shut on that part of the castle. While though in a more acceptable condition, the Georgian wing had become the showroom for what he could only have described as the trompe l’oeil artist from hell. Grandiose decorating themes that would have been more at home in a Roman villa, or, in one case, the dank tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh, had turned the gracious rooms into the equivalent of a tacky theme park.
‘These rooms are hired out for wedding receptions and private parties. I do the catering for some of the functions.’ Kerry was frustrated by his brooding silence, her expectant eyes clinging to his impassive profile. ‘Before my friend, Elphie Hewitt, made this her base, the paper was hanging in strips off the walls and there was no decent furniture. Grandpa didn’t have the funds to re-decorate but now these rooms are habitable again and they are better used than left empty.’
Having decided to save the atmospheric and charming heart of the castle to the last, and with the light fading fast, Kerry took him outside again at that point to walk the several hundred yards to the old stable yard. There Luciano gazed without surprise—for he was way way beyond surprise—at the superb architecture of buildings built to last and in infinitely better order than the castle itself. Kerry’s ancestors had spent much more on housing their horses than they had on their own home. Without any apparent awareness of the incongruity, she then showed him round a holiday cottage that offered a first-class luxury comparison.
Her enthusiasm and pride in what she was showing him undimmed, Kerry led him back indoors. A parade of sad, shabby rooms followed. Some of the multi-paned windows sported little boards where panes were missing and rickety furniture was propped up on bricks and books. Nowhere could he see anything of any true value: just the obvious spaces and marks on the walls that revealed where pictures had once hung and where pieces of furniture must have stood before being removed to be sold. That she had spent five years struggling to maintain a castle in the midst of such pitiful poverty shook him even more. That she should want to fight to remain within the cold, damp, comfort-free walls struck him as certifiable insanity.
He also saw that she did not see what he saw. Love for her family home had blinded her to defects that screamed at him. He was asked to admire the great hall, which was embellished with collections of strange metal implements hung on wall-grids apparently made of rusty chicken wire, curtains that hung in rags of faded grandeur and a peculiar floral arrangement of weeds.
‘That portrait is of Florence O’Brien. She’s supposed to be the family ghost,’ Kerry informed him with determined cheer.
Almost desperate to find something worthy of the appreciation she seemed to expect, Luciano duly studied the remaining primitive, smoke-stained oil above the massive hearth. He was disappointed yet again, for the canvas featured an unattractive redhead with protuberant, staring eyes which seemed to follow him round the room. He almost quipped that any self-respecting ghost ought to have long since shipped out for more impressive surroundings but thought better of levity. After all, Ballybawn was no joke and he did not feel like laughing: he had just been landed with the biggest and most expensive white elephant in the history of the world.
The tour finished in the tower, where he discovered that Kerry was still occupying the bedroom below his.
‘I liked to be close to my grandparents in case they needed me,’ Kerry muttered awkwardly. ‘I’ll move out tonight—’
‘There’s no need to do that.’ Luciano expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss. ‘Look, your grandparents can keep all the contents of the castle. I don’t want any of this stuff.’
Kerry gave him a surprised, questioning look. ‘You…don’t?’
‘No.’ As an expression of bemused gratitude covered her delicate features, Luciano was lacerated by raw discomfiture and he swung away in a restless movement to approach the window. Darkness was rolling in fast and the lake was becoming a mere reflective gleam of still water at the foot of the gently sloping hill on which the castle stood.
Even as relief swept through Kerry and she marvelled at his change of heart, she wondered what had brought it about. ‘Does that mean that you’ve already decided what you’re going to do with Ballybawn?’
He could set a match to it and put it out of five hundred years of misery, Luciano reflected with a complete lack of humour. He had taken her beloved castle from her and he didn’t want it. Nor could he even begin to imagine what he might do with a castle that promised to be a money pit of nightmare proportions. Realistically, he had no need of a home in the Irish countryside and the amount of restoration required would ensure that investment from a business point of view would be wildly unprofitable. Regret was a rare emotion for him and shame rarer still. Yet what possible satisfaction could he receive from an act of revenge that he could only now appreciate had consisted of kicking the unfortunate when they were already literally down and out?
His objectives, Luciano recognised with grim reluctance, had become set in stone while he paced his prison cell like a caged animal. When he finally won his freedom, he had been too impatient to reconsider those targets. He had had no idea how impoverished the O’Briens were. Nor could he ever have dreamt that Kerry and her grandparents might be living in appalling conditions just to keep a giant hovel in the family.
But then, if he was honest with himself, it had not suited his purpose to acknowledge that the older couple ought to have had their advanced age and needs taken into compassionate account. He had refused to make a more personal appraisal of their situation. Determined not to be deflected from his driving desire to punish Kerry, he had remained one careful step removed from the whole unpleasant business of repossessing Ballybawn Castle. Now, he conceded grimly, he was paying the price for being the ruthless bastard he had always wanted to be: he was ashamed of himself.
Bewildered by his failure to respond to her question, Kerry stared at Luciano. Although his back was turned to her, nothing could have concealed the savage tension etched in the rigid set of his broad shoulders. He seemed troubled, angry…or did he? In her experience, Luciano was outspoken when anything annoyed him. When he went silent he unnerved her, for she found herself worriedly awaiting a sudden explosion of temperament. Yet what could he have to be angry about? He had got the castle, hadn’t he? What more could he want?
In an abrupt movement, Luciano turned, golden eyes glittering below the dense screen of his lashes, lean strong features taut with indefinable emotion. ‘I’m going out…I don’t know when I’ll be back.’
As he followed that announcement with immediate action, Kerry was taken by surprise. From the entrance hall, she listened to the telling screech of car tyres quarrelling with gravel as he reversed his sports car at speed and drove off. What on earth was the matter with him? The reproachful eyes of her grandfather’s wolfhounds reminded her that she had yet to feed them their third meal of the day.
It was only later while she was making up a fire in Luciano’s bedroom that she allowed herself to think again about that disturbing letter relating to her mother. No matter how upsetting it might be to learn how and when Carrie had died, she needed to know the facts for her own peace of mind and, what was more, her grandparents had an even greater right to learn what had happened to their only child. After a snack in place of the ruined evening meal, she sat down to write a reply explaining that she was Carrie’s daughter. Afraid that the solicitor might refuse to advance information without further proof of her identity, she enclosed a copy of both her birth certificate and her mother’s. Ashamed of the manner in which she found herself listening out every moment for Luciano’s return, she climbed into her grandfather’s twenty-five-year-old car and drove down to the village to post the letter.
Only when she was getting into bed did it occur to her that she had responded to a letter that had been sent over four years ago as if it had arrived only the day before. She would wait a couple of weeks and if she’d heard nothing from the solicitor she would try phoning the firm. Where had Luciano gone? Why didn’t she just face it? Hard as she found it to comprehend, he had seemed almost impervious to the charm of Ballybawn. Had he decided to sell the castle? Was that why her grandparents were now to retain all the contents? Her heart sank.
Having had to drive a very long way before he finally, accidentally, came on a bar where only the most basic of meals was on offer, Luciano returned to Ballybawn. As it was barely eleven, he was surprised to find only the light in the entrance hall burning and Kerry nowhere to be found. Was she out or in bed? The sight and sound of a triple-decker sandwich of snoring wolfhounds in a giant, shaggy mat on the tower landing below his suggested that she had retired for the night. Utilising the torch from his car, he passed on up to his own room, where a big fire cast leaping shadows on the panelled walls. He imagined her hauling those logs all the way up the steep spiral staircase and he grimaced. For a woman who had done him wrong she had an inspired grasp of how to make him feel bad.
He explored the en suite facilities and all hope of a shower died fast. History rather than modern plumbing had triumphed and an ancient discoloured copper bath tub sat below the stone window. There was no doubt about it, Luciano decided. An almost biblical amount of personal suffering and discomfort featured in life at Ballybawn. He turned on a tap and water that had a brackish green tinge and remained resolutely cold gushed out. Without hesitation, he headed for the holiday cottage and its irresistible parade of mod cons. With very little persuasion, he could have stayed the night there glorying in the joy of unrestricted electricity, but promptings he was reluctant to examine sent him back to his tower bedroom.
By his bed he found a dog-eared copy of an old guide book about the history of Ballybawn. To remove his mind from the reality that, in spite of the fire, he was cold, he began to read and it was riveting stuff. Buckets of bad luck had pursued the O’Briens from their earliest beginnings, for in every war and rebellion they had supported the losing side. In the seventeenth century, he read that, ‘Florrie’, Florence O’Brien of the staring eyes, had drowned herself in the lake after finding her bridegroom carousing with her maid and her restless spirit was said to wail in mourning whenever an O’Brien woman was on the brink of marriage.
In the sardonic act of wondering whether or not that little book had been left out quite by accident for his perusal, Luciano flung it aside. He had decided to view his sojourn at Ballybawn as a much-needed period of enforced relaxation in a novel and bracing environment, and in the morning he was calling in every builder, plumber, glazier, roofer and electrician he could find.
It was wonderful what a difference a few hours could make to one’s convictions, Luciano mused. His loan to Kerry’s grandparents had not been misspent: it had been eaten alive by pressing need. All he had to do was figure out a cool way of backing himself out of the tight corner he had put himself in so that he could give them back the home from hell. Of course, he would have to make at least part of it habitable, not only because it was a crime to put tenants at risk but also for his own occasional visits and comfort. Kerry would be very grateful. He would figure as the soul of forgiving generosity.
While he wondered how long it would take him to seduce her into his bed to keep him warm, a noise intruded on his concentration: it was a dog howling. Springing out of bed in exasperation, Luciano strode from his room stark naked to give the dog the benefit of his opinion on baying to the moon. However, having opened the door, he discovered too late that the canine contingent had sneaked up a level and had just been waiting their chance. All three hounds hurtled past him in their frantic eagerness to gain entry to his room. He watched in astonishment as the dogs flopped down on their bellies and shot below the bed at impressive speed.
‘You’re not staying,’ Luciano warned them.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard another, longer bout of that same keening cry and it provoked a chorus of anxious doggy whines in response. It was a woman crying and with such solid walls and doors the sound could only be carrying up to his room through the chimney. Kerry was sobbing her heart out and frightening the dogs.
‘I wouldn’t give you house room,’ he told the spineless animals shivering beneath the four-poster as he pulled on his jeans at speed. ‘You’re supposed to be guard dogs and you’re hiding just because of a stupid echo!’
Heading barefoot down to the floor below and fast chilling in the unbelievably icy temperature of the stairwell, Luciano thrust open the door and strode straight into Kerry’s room. It was in darkness but the torch illuminated her bed.
‘I can hear you crying…’ he murmured with a buoyancy he only just managed to keep out of his voice. ‘It’s not reasonable to expect me to listen to that and do nothing.’
‘Wha…at?’ Kerry mumbled sleepily, pushing herself up on one elbow and then squinting against the unkind beam of light engulfing her.
‘Don’t waste your time trying to convince me that you were asleep, cara,’ Luciano urged.
‘Well, I’m not asleep now because you woke me up,’ Kerry answered in bewilderment as she reached for the matches to light the storm lantern by her bed. ‘Why did you do that?’
Luciano spread wide impatient arms in emphasis. ‘Dio mio! I could hear you crying from the floor above—’
‘But I haven’t been crying.’ What on earth was he doing in her bedroom in the middle of the night? And why was he spouting some cock-and-bull story about having heard her crying when she had been fast asleep?
As the glow from the lantern began to slowly cast dim light, Luciano lowered the torch that had been blinding her. Taken aback to then note that his lithe, lean masculine frame was only clad in jeans, she studied his bare brown torso where lean, corded muscle rippled below smooth, bronzed skin and a riot of short dark curls sprinkled his chest. Involuntarily, her gaze wandered over his sleek, taut midriff and lingered. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe and she could feel her wretched face burning like a bonfire with embarrassment.
‘You…were…crying,’ Luciano ground out in exasperation, brilliant golden eyes probing her blushing visage for evidence.
‘Over you again…I suppose?’ Kerry found it almost soothing to recognise that on one level Luciano had not changed a jot: he was the centre of his own world and he had always assumed that he was the centre of hers too.
‘I heard you, but if you want to deny it, go ahead. But I would be obliged if you would remove the dogs from under my bed—’
‘Sorry…?’ Kerry frowned.
‘You heard me.’ Luciano dealt her a fulminating look before he left the room.
Not content with waking her up, he was now acting as if it was her fault that the dogs were in his room, but he must have let them in! Scrambling angrily out of bed and safe in the knowledge that her nightie was about as revealing as a shroud, she sped up the twisting stairwell and stalked into his room.
‘Out!’ she launched at the trio of long, pointed noses peering out guiltily at her from below the high bed. In any other mood, she would have laughed at the picture the dogs made, for Finn, Bab and Conn might be the size of little ponies but they were still only puppies. One by one the littermates emerged, cast a last look of regret at the fire they were used to sleeping beside and slunk out.
‘Just keep your door shut,’ she advised Luciano sharply, bright blue eyes enhanced by the furious flush on her cheeks. ‘And stay on this side of it…don’t wake me up in the middle of the night with daft stories!’
Aggressive jawline clenched while his brilliant gaze continued to scan the extraordinary voluminous confection of white cotton and lace covering her from throat to toe, Luciano breathed, ‘Dio mio! It was not a daft story. I heard someone sobbing—’
‘It’s a windy night and the rafters creak and groan.’ Now painfully conscious of his wondering appraisal of her antique nightdress, Kerry stiffened, feeling foolish. As she realised that she would have given her right arm to have startled his expectations of her with sexy satin instead, she was so angry with herself for even caring that she added with withering scorn, ‘Or maybe our fabled Florrie is haunting you…Florrie’s got to have it in for unfaithful men!’
That she should throw that same charge at him again sent dark fury hurtling through Luciano. Before she could walk out, he sent the door crashing shut with the heel of his hand. ‘Is hit and run all you’re good for? Or have you got the backbone to face facts?’
Already regretting having tossed that incendiary final comment, Kerry was disconcerted by his furious reaction and forced to a halt. She folded her arms with a jerk. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my backbone—’
‘But there’s a lot wrong with that narrow little mind of yours!’ Lean, strong face grim, Luciano’s dark golden eyes smouldered over her. ‘Do you think if some previous lover of yours had shown up the way Rochelle did when we were engaged that I would have reacted in the same way as you? That I would have resented and blamed you for a past encounter that nothing could change? You let her come between us. You encouraged her behaviour by overreacting to her every move—’
‘I didn’t see you rejecting her!’ Kerry accused heatedly, his every censorious word cutting through her defensive barriers.
‘I told her to cool it…but, believe it or not, it wasn’t a crime for her to speak to me in an office environment. She likes to play games and you were a very responsive target. The minute she appeared, you started behaving like a jealous kid,’ Luciano derided. ‘Porca miseria…our engagement seemed to mean nothing to you. Then you wanted some perfect fantasy guy who had never lived until he’d met you—’
‘No, I didn’t!’ Struggling to control the tempestuous surge of her emotions, Kerry sent him a stark look of reproach. ‘I just needed to know that you loved me. Without that, I couldn’t feel secure and I couldn’t believe that you could find me more attractive than her…’
Luciano had stilled and faint perceptible colour had burnished his hard cheekbones. His shimmering golden eyes were no longer seeking to strike aggressive sparks off hers but veiled by his dense black lashes. In the tense silence, he parted his lips as though he was about to say something, then seemed to think better of it and sealed them closed again.
Biting pain scythed through Kerry at the confirmation of what she had long suspected. He had never loved her. He had liked her, perhaps fancied her a certain amount too, but that had been about it. ‘Were you really naive enough to think that I would eventually inherit my father’s wine stores?’
A preoccupied air about him, his arrogant dark head came up, a questioning frown etched between his winged brows. ‘Of course not. When I told your father that I was going to ask you to marry me, he went out of his way to inform me that you wouldn’t be featuring much in his will. I was angry that he should imply that I would care either way.’ Belated comprehension hardened Luciano’s fabulous bone structure, outrage narrowing his gaze. ‘Is that what you thought?’
Her eyes fell from his in sudden shame.
His pride was lacerated by that insult to his integrity. ‘How stupid can you be?’ Luciano demanded. ‘I was so crazy about you I lost my wits! For what other reason would I have gone looking for a poppy field in which to propose?’
Kerry froze, lifted her lashes, focused on his enraged dark features and had not a doubt in her head that she was hearing the whole, the absolute and ultimate truth: I was crazy about you. That declaration rang like a jubilee chorus of bells in her ears, for it freed her from a suspicion that had murdered her self-esteem. In the grip of those heightened emotions, her eyes shining, she moved closer. ‘So why couldn’t you have told me that then? It would’ve made such a difference.’
‘You shouldn’t have needed to be told.’ Luciano was furious that temper had betrayed him into making that revealing admission but he was already getting distracted by her proximity. It disturbed him that even in that weird tent thing she was wearing she still looked incredibly feminine, and then his glittering gaze zeroed in on her full, soft mouth and a different kind of tension altogether seized him.
‘Were you ashamed of it?’ she whispered in confusion.
‘What is this? An interrogation?’ But Luciano had already lost his angry focus on what for him had been the main issue of his integrity.
‘I just want to know…’ Kerry collided unwarily with his drugging golden eyes and was caught and held. It was so quiet in the room that all she could hear was the rush of her own breathing and the crackle of the fire in the hearth.
‘Know what?’ Luciano framed thickly, lifting his hand to let his forefinger trace the voluptuous curve of her lower lip, all recollection of the previous dialogue wiped from a mind taken over by far more primal images.
Although it was the merest, briefest touch, her heartbeat went haywire. Locked into his mesmeric scrutiny, she quivered with the force of the longing that had come out of nowhere and taken her prisoner. Her breasts stirred, the sensitive tips abraded by the coarse cotton of her nightdress, and a dulled ache clenched tight at the very heart of her. The slow, heavy pulse in the atmosphere made the tip of her tongue steal out to moisten her dry lower lip in a nervous flicker.
In one sudden movement, Luciano reached for her, spreading his hands to her narrow ribcage to propel her right off her feet, up into his arms, so that he could bring his hard, hungry lips crashing down on hers. A muffled gasp of shock sounded in her throat but the explosion of inner heat that seized her when his tongue probed the moist recesses of her tender mouth with ruthless masculine expertise only made her cling to his broad shoulders, her head swimming, all awareness of time and place torn from her. When she surfaced from that devastating kiss, Luciano was in the act of tumbling her down on the bed.
Molten golden eyes flaming over her, lean, dark, handsome features taut with desire, he breathed in a roughened undertone, ‘Share my bed tonight. Let me make love to you…’