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Desires Captive Penny Jordan MILLS & BOON
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CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
‘SAFFRON, my dear, you look wonderful—so like your mother!’ Behind the pride in her father’s voice, Saffron caught the note of pain and understood the reasons for it. For so long they had been estranged from one another—almost from the day of her mother’s death when she was a schoolgirl of twelve and her father a busy, grief-stricken man of forty. Now that was over, miraculously they had found the way back to one another, and both of them treasured their new-found relationship. ‘You approve then?’ Saffron pirouetted in front of her father, the gauzy skirts of her dress fluttering round her body. The dress had been hideously expensive! She had bought it in London, especially for this occasion, which had been meant to herald the beginning of their long-awaited holiday together, but as he was the head of Wykeham Industries, Sir Richard’s time was not entirely his own, and on the eve of their departure for Rome he had had to tell Saffron that it would be several days before he could join her at their villa in southern Italy. ‘Most definitely,’ Sir Richard assured her. ‘And that’s after being presented with the bill.’ He marvelled at the change in her, from rebellious teenager to poised young woman; and it had happened almost overnight. He was so proud of this daughter, the child he had so nearly lost completely through his own bitterness following his wife’s death. He had forgotten that Saffron had lost a mother too, and his guilt showed a little in the concern with which he regarded her. ‘I am sorry about our holiday,’ he added, ‘but with luck I shouldn’t need to be in San Francisco for long. You’ll enjoy yourself tonight at least. Signor Veldini appears to have invited most of Rome society to this party.’ ‘To impress you so that you’ll agree to invest in his business,’ Saffron commented shrewdly. The warm gold skin and dark red hair she had inherited from her mother, coupled with a bone structure a model would have envied, had resulted in looks that had made her a photographer’s favourite almost all her teenage life. Add to the sculptured perfection of her face, a perfect pocket Venus-shaped body, and it was no wonder that his daughter never lacked male escorts, Richard Wykeham thought as he watched her. The dress she had chosen for tonight’s party made her look as fragile and ethereal as a water-nymph. A frown creased his forehead momentarily, and seeing it Saffron smiled encouragingly. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered as she took his arm and he opened the door of her hotel room. ‘I won’t let you down by sulking all evening because you can’t come with me—those days are gone.’ ‘They should never have been. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my business…’ ‘We made a pact not to dwell on the past,’ Saffron reminded him, the green depths of her eyes momentarily shadowed as she remembered the arid years of her adolescence and the pain of losing her mother. A limousine was waiting to ferry them to the Veldinis’ impressive villa in one of Rome’s most exclusive suburbs. Saffron had spoken no less than the truth when she had stated that Signor Veldini was hoping to persuade her father to invest in his company, but Richard Wykeham had a formidable reputation as an astute businessman and Saffron knew that it would take far more than a society party to convince him. As they sped through the city she glanced at her father’s face. She had been so looking forward to their holiday—their first together since the death of her mother. Her father had done his best. There had been a constant stream of mother-substitutes in the form of boarding schoolmistresses and housekeepers, but it hadn’t been enough, and in an effort to make her father take notice of her she had involved herself in scrape after scrape. It was only within the last twelve months—since her twentieth birthday—that she had abandoned the wild set she had taken up with after leaving school—young adults like herself; the first generation offspring of self-made men, whose fathers had more money than time to spend on them and who themselves had been set apart from their parents by virtue of the public school education their parents had so proudly bought for them. When would parents learn that children needed love, not money? Saffron wondered to herself. The greater part of her own rebellion had sprung not from any desire to share the wilder exploits of her set, but simply to draw her father’s attention to her. It had taken the death of one of that set from drug abuse to shock her into the realisation of where her life was going, forcing her to attempt to reach out for her father one last time, and miraculously he had responded. In the last twelve months there had been far fewer aimless shopping sprees and hectic weekends of partying, and instead Saffron had discovered that she was becoming more and more involved in the welfare side of her father’s business. His companies were known for their caring attitude towards their employees and, encouraged by her father, Saffron had become involved in a newly organised department designed to take this one step further, particularly to help the single-parent families amongst the employees, and Saffron had found this so absorbing that she had gradually let her old life slip away. She knew her father was glad. If she did go out nowadays, it was normally for dinner, or to dance in a far more sedate nightclub than those she had previously frequented. Many of her old friends scoffed. Some of the boys in her crowd had been particularly mocking, reminding her of how she had always been the life and soul of the party, ready for any enterprise, always the first to agree to some impractical scheme. But that was before she had realised the fine tightrope they were all walking. It was considered smart in her set to indulge in drinks and soft drugs, although something in Saffron had always made her hold back
