crushed the paper in her hands and looked at Paolo, stricken. ‘You bought this here?’
He nodded. ‘There’s a good newsagent who sells a few foreign newspapers. This was the only popular English paper on sale this morning but he said he’d had half a dozen copies of this one. If you look at the date you’ll see that it was out in England yesterday.’
Pale, she said, ‘So others may have read the story.’
Paolo nodded grimly and took the screwed-up paper, smoothing it out again to study Stephen’s face in the grey photo. ‘Is it a good likeness?’
She glanced at the hard face, the fleshless cheekbones, the cool grey eyes, that insistent jawline. A little shiver ran through her.
‘Yes.’
Paolo screwed the newspaper up again and tossed it into a nearby refuse bin.
‘What did he do to you?’
She gave a choky little sigh. ‘Nothing—nothing at all. Poor man, he must be utterly bewildered—that’s why I couldn’t tell him face to face.’
‘That would have been an idea,’ Paolo said without inflexion.
She flinched as if from an accusation, guilt in her eyes, and shot him a distraught look. ‘I know—I know I should have, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t talk to him. He would never have understood unless I told him…and I couldn’t talk about it, Paolo; I still can’t talk about it.’
‘Ah,’ he said on an indrawn breath. ‘So. That is what it is all about.’
She turned to look at him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. ‘Oh, you’re so quick; you always know what I’m talking about. That’s why I came here to find you—at least you’ll understand. I can talk to you without having to dot every I and cross every T.’
He touched her cheek with one fingertip. ‘I had a suspicion that this might be behind it, but it’s years ago—you should have had therapy, you know, talked it out with a professional.’
‘I couldn’t.’ Her pink mouth was stubborn, unhappy. The breeze blew her black hair across her cheek and she brushed it away angrily.
‘That’s just why you ought to try!’
‘Anyway, nothing really happened. I’m not the victim of some horrible crime.’
‘Crimes of the heart can be as disastrous.’
Another sigh shook her. ‘Yes. Don’t let’s talk about it.’
He grimaced. ‘OK. Tell me how you met this guy Stephen Durrant, then—tell me about him. He didn’t make a great impression on me on the phone.’
She turned and walked further along the lake, under a line of magnolia trees in bloom, their flowers perched like great white birds on the glossy green leaves.
‘Stephen heads a big property company…DLKC Properties. I don’t expect you’ll have heard of them.’
‘I have,’ Paolo said, shooting a narrowed glance at her. ‘So he’s behind them, is he? I thought they were an international consortium.’
‘They are, but Stephen is the main shareholder.’
‘He must be very rich, then. They weathered the storm when property took a nosedive a few years back. A lot of other companies were wiped out but DLKC survived intact.
‘A friend of mine bought a flat in a block they built in Tenerife—it was brilliantly designed, and a nice place to live, I thought. The landscaping was excellent—well laid out gardens, a nice-sized pool…’ He stopped and grinned down at her. ‘Sorry; you know how obsessed I am with design.’
‘I remember,’ she said, smiling back. ‘And you know I love my work too. I’m always sorry for people who don’t enjoy their job.’
‘Does Stephen Durrant enjoy his?’
She couldn’t put Paolo off the scent. She looked at him wryly.
‘Stephen lives for his work; he rarely has time for anything else.’
‘Including you?’
She looked away, across the lake. ‘He made time for me. When he remembered.’
‘Ah,’ Paolo said again. ‘Did that make you angry?’
‘Angry?’ She was taken aback by the question. ‘Why should it?’
But hadn’t she resented the fact that Stephen had so little time and saw her so rarely? At the same time, though, she had been relieved, because she was afraid of him getting too close, becoming too important to her. Afraid of him, of herself.
Why are you such a coward? she thought wildly. Why are you so scared of everything?
‘He has a reputation as a bit of a hard man, doesn’t he?’ murmured Paolo, watching her troubled face.
She turned away, picked a leaf from a bush and crumpled it in her cold hands, inhaling the aromatic scent of the oils released.
‘Well, he’s very successful. I suppose most successful people are pretty tough.’
Paolo nodded thoughtfully. ‘Is he a self-made man? He sounds like one.’
‘He built his business up himself, but he inherited a small building firm from an uncle when he was twenty.’
‘How old is he now?’
‘Thirty-six.’
‘Did the age-gap bother you?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve never been interested in anyone my own age; I prefer older men.’ She stopped dead, catching Paolo’s eyes, and flushed scarlet, then went dead white. Hurriedly she walked on and he caught up with her.
After a moment or two he said, ‘But you’re scared of Stephen, aren’t you?’
‘If you knew him, you’d be scared of him.’
‘Then why in God’s name did you agree to marry him?’
‘I don’t know,’ she wailed, her face working in anguish.
‘Surely to God you knew how you felt about him, Gabriella?’ Paolo sounded impatient, angry with her, and that made her feel worse. She was terrified of angry scenes, of someone looking at her accusingly, blaming her. Tears stung her eyes.
‘I felt…safe…with him…’ she whispered, and Paolo was silent for a moment.
‘What changed?’
She didn’t answer, looking away.
Paolo said, ‘I take it that he is in love with you?’
Her long black hair blew across her face again, in blinding strands, and she didn’t push it away this time. Her eyes hidden, she whispered, ‘I don’t know.’
Paolo’s voice hardened. ‘Oh, come on, mia cara, you must know how he feels about you!’
She knew Stephen wanted her physically—that fact had been blazingly obvious when he had lost control and started making love to her with that terrifying heat. She shivered. He had never been like that before. Why that night?
But she knew why; she had known at the time although in her sheer blind panic she hadn’t allowed herself to think about her own guilt. Now she did, and Paolo frowned as he watched her changing, disturbed face.
‘Don’t look like that. It can’t be that bad!’
Can’t it? she thought, staring across at the sunlit, white-capped mountains and remembering her mood that last evening. She had been edgy, shy, uneasy, but she had tried to hide it because she and Stephen had been the guests of honour at a pre-wedding party given for them by Stephen’s elder sister, Beatrice, in her beautiful Regent’s Park home. In her late forties, she was