"BAD news. You'd better brace yourself." Unusually, his
brother sounded sympathetic, his tone low and concerned.
Dante's fingers closed more tightly on his mobile
phone. "For what?" he shot, his heart going crazy in case
his worst fears were realised.
"I'm sorry, Dante. I'm afraid that I have proof your wife
is playing around." Guido paused but Dante was too shocked
to speak. "I'm at your house now. She's upstairs. Drunk,
out cold — and...well, I have to tell you that she's not
wearing anything. There's concrete evidence that she's
been entertaining a lover..."
His brother murmured on but Dante heard nothing. He had
retreated into a world of stunned horror that slowly and
surely turned to a white-hot fury till his Italian blood
was boiling with volcanic rage.
It was true, then. All this time he'd been defending his
wife of four years to his brother, insisting that she
hadn't married his bank balance and that she did love him
despite her cool reserve. It seemed he'd been wrong.
Blinded by her beauty and her modesty.
Modesty? He gave a cynical laugh. Maybe even that had been
assumed. Miranda's reserve had disappeared in a
spectacular way whenever they'd made love. Fire hit his
belly as he grimly acknowledged that he'd never known such
pleasure. She was sensational in bed.
He drew in a sharp breath, pain searing through him as he
reflected that maybe she'd had a lot of practice in the
art of pleasing a man.
"Where's Carlo?" he jerked, praying that his son was
safely with the nanny in some English park. "Here in the
house," Guido said, to Dante's horror. "Yelling his head
off. I can't calm him."
A burning sickness lurched in his stomach and he swore
volubly in gutter Italian. Impotent rage began to cloud
his judgement and wild, half-formed plans of revenge
played havoc with his normally clear and balanced mind.
Appalled by what was happening to him, he shook himself
free of the red mist that demanded revenge for his wounded
manhood and tried to hang on to his sanity.
He could hardly breathe but he managed to growl out, "I'm
in a taxi not far from my house. I'll be home in ten
minutes or less."
"Ten...! What?!" gasped Guido. "B-but...you can't be!
You're not supposed to be due back at Gatwick for two
hours!"
"I caught an early flight... Santo cielo! What the hell
does it matter?" he roared, losing his cool.
Guido seemed to be panicking about something but Dante had
enough to worry about. Overwhelmed by helpless fury, he
turned off his mobile and told the cabbie to drive like
hell.
She was rocking. Being shaken. It hurt her head to move
and she tried to ward her attacker off but her arms
wouldn't do as they were told.
She groaned. Someone had put her entire skull in a pot and
brought it to the boil. It was swelling inside, driving
her mad. But at least the awful screaming had stopped at
last. It had sounded like a child...
"Miranda! Miranda!"
Rough fingers gripped her arm as the grating tones pierced
the chaos of her brain. She must be sick. That was it. Flu.
"Helllp mmme," she mumbled through a thick and lolling
tongue.
And found herself being lifted. Frightened, she found she
could do nothing because her limbs had become paralysed.
With a horrible swoop she was lowered onto the cold, hard
tiles of what must be the shower. "Open your eyes!"
snarled a furious voice.
She couldn't. They'd been superglued. Oh, God! What was
happening to her? She felt her stomach heave. And was
suddenly sick.
Words whirled around her. Bitter, vicious words that she
didn't understand. Her brain just wouldn't process them.
"Aaah!"
She choked and spluttered as a fierce spray of ice-cold
water jetted straight into her face. It continued
mercilessly, punishing her slumped body until she finally
managed to open her eyes a fraction.
"Dante!" Seeing him, she felt a rush of sheer relief and
gave a little sob. Everything would be all right now. His
face hovered above hers, her fever making his features
look threatening and distorted. Frightened, she clutched
at the rim of the shower. "Ill," she muttered weakly.
"I wish. You're drunk, you whore!" he flung in disgust.
And walked out.
Struck dumb by his reaction, she stayed crouched in the
shower, incapable of making sense of this nightmare. That
was it. A dream. She had a fever and this was an
hallucination. If she closed her eyes she might wake up
feeling better...
His mouth tightened as he strode off to check out the
master bedroom thoroughly. Tangled sheets. Two bottles of
champagne, two glasses. Miranda's clothes scattered
haphazardly about the room. He swallowed. On the floor was
a pair of men's briefs. And they weren't his.
There was the final proof. He felt his hand shaking as he
accepted a glass of brandy from Guido.
"I did try to warn you a long while ago," his brother said
gently.
"I know."
His own voice startled him. It had been nothing more than
a whisper. The shock of Miranda's infidelity had taken
away all his strength, all his pride and confidence.
Rammed them both down his throat. Sat there laughing at
him for being such a fool.
Knocking back the brandy, he returned to his son, who had
been yelling his head off when he'd arrived. He'd gone to
him first, of course. It had taken him several minutes to
calm Carlo down. Finally his son had fallen asleep,
utterly exhausted. Not until then had he gone to see what
state Miranda was in because she wasn't important any
more. She meant nothing.
He felt murderous that she'd abandoned their child while
she partied in the next bedroom with her lover. That, he
resolved, would never happen again.
Grimly he packed. Dazed, he accepted Guido's offer to keep
an eye on his wife till she recovered. Full of pain, he
caught up his sleeping son in his arms. And got the hell
out of Miranda's life forever. "THAT'S it!" Miranda
announced tightly.
She was trying not to hyperventilate. Despite her shaking
fingers, she managed to push the key in the lock of the
Knightsbridge house and disable the alarm.
Her rasping breath tore at her lungs and she wondered how
long she could hang on to the threads of apparent
normality. It seemed her brain was stuck, the same thing
going over and over in her mind till she wanted to scream
in despair and hopelessness.
Despite all her efforts over the past two weeks she'd
failed to trace her son — or her rat of a husband who'd
abducted him. Her impulse was to kick something. Howl her
eyes out in a darkened room. But she had something vital
to do first.
Hauling her case indoors with a violence that betrayed her
fractured nerves, she dropped the flight bag from her slim
shoulder and strode through the hall to the phone. Her
legs felt as if they belonged to someone else. She was
amazed they obeyed her at all.
"No more faffing about. I'm going to call the police!" she
muttered to her sister and snatched up the receiver, her
finger poised to stab at the dial.
"No!" Lizzie looked appalled, then registered Miranda's
astonished glance and gabbled on incoherently. "I mean...
well, we don't want to go public, do we? Think of the
damage we'll do if we accuse Dante of abduction! The
Severinis exist on their good name..."
Lizzie rambled on, mystifyingly defending the
indefensible. Miranda fumed. "What do I care?" she snapped.
She couldn't believe her sister's reluctance to bring the
whole Severini family to book. Not one of them had an
honourable bone in the whole of their aristocratic, self-
serving body.
A silent rage boiled within her as her husband's handsome,
savagely cruel face swam before her eyes. Almost
immediately she felt a lurch of misery and realised with
helpless despair that this entirely new image of him was
causing her untold grief.
Bleakly she stared at the purring phone. She wanted the
old Dante Severini back. The adoring, sensual man who'd
wooed and married her within a month. Not that calculating
monster who'd treated her so callously and had taken her
child away. She choked back a sob and realised she was too
upset to speak.
Shaking, she replaced the phone in its cradle, intent on
keeping up an appearance of self-control. If she let out
her true feelings, she knew that she'd probably smash the
entire contents of the house in frustration before sinking
into a morass of self-pity.
It was sheer will-power alone that held her slender body
rigid and erect. She was unbelievably tired but she
couldn't let up, wouldn't give in to what she saw as
weakness. Never had, never would, whatever the challenge.
"I must call in the authorities. We've spent the past
fourteen days jetting around, trying to trace Dante's
whereabouts," she said coldly. "And," she added, "I've had
my fill of those Severini lackeys who clam up the moment
his name is mentioned."
"It's company policy —" Lizzie began. "I said I was his
wife!" she snapped. "Showed them my passport!"
"They'd had instructions from Dante about an impostor —
" 'How dare he do that to me?" Miranda fumed. "I've never
been so humiliated in all my life! Being escorted off the
premises by security men...!"
Thinking of the terrible wall of silence she'd encountered
from Dante's continental staff in some of the major
capitals of Europe, she jerked up her head stubbornly.
This was war.
"I want my son," she clipped in a curt
understatement. "And..." Her voice faltered before she
could rally it. She swallowed. "He'll be wanting me."
In a quick movement she turned away, ostensibly to make
the call, but it was a means of hiding the sudden rush of
tears that blurred the steely blue of her agonised gaze.
The word 'want' didn't begin to describe her need — or
Carlo's. It was more visceral than just missing him
desperately. It was as if part of her had been ripped away
to leave a raw and bleeding wound.
But Carlo would be suffering more deeply. He wouldn't
understand why she wasn't there any more, why she didn't
tuck him up in bed, cuddle him and play with him...
"Oh, dear heaven!" she whispered under her breath.
Thinking about him, and how miserable he must be, she felt
as if swords were being plunged into her body over and
over again.
But tears weren't an option. She needed to stay calm and
alert. On no account could she afford to surrender to the
misery and fear that churned in her stomach, which kept
her awake long into the bleak and empty night.
A small, stifled moan escaped her pale lips. No child! No
husband! And she'd loved them both with such an all-
consuming passion...
At that moment the phone rang, its shrillness startling
her so profoundly that she grabbed it and clamped it to
her ear, her nerves scattered into pitiful shreds as she
answered without thinking, almost spitting out her name.
"Yes? Miranda here!"
There was a crackling sound and then silence, giving her
the opportunity to regain her composure. So she took a
deep breath and began again.
"Miranda Severini. Who's there?" she asked, sounding
several degrees cooler in tone.
"Dante."
Dante! The shock at hearing the caressing murmur was so
great that she staggered. In desperation her elegant hand
caught at the marble-topped table, the force of the
movement breaking a nail. Blindly she stared at its jagged
edge, her mind racing.
Contact with him at last! Suddenly her heart thundered
with hope but she didn't give her husband the satisfaction
of hearing her plead for her own child. She knew she'd
either scream at him hysterically or be choked into
silence by her tears.
Pride prevented her from offering him either of those
alternatives. With a supreme effort she schooled herself
to remain silent, waiting for him to continue while her
heart thudded and jerked painfully within her chest.
"Miranda? Dica! Speak!"
Annoyingly the huskily spoken words seeped into her very
veins. He'd always split her name into three lyrical
syllables; Mee-rahn-dah. And to her dismay, memories of
their love-filled days briefly melted the marrow of her
very bones.
Then she clenched her teeth to remind herself of Guido's
revelation. On that fateful day when she'd had that
terrible fever, her brother-in-law had poured coffee into
her and brought blankets so that she could curl up on the
sofa.
She'd known that Dante had gone off with Carlo, but didn't
understand why. Everything had been such a blur. Guido's
sympathy with her plight had caused him to spill the beans.
He'd told her that Dante had married her for the sake of
his inheritance. Apparently he had fathered her son purely
to curry favour with his childless uncle. The moment
Dante's uncle had died and the inheritance was safely in
the bag, he'd spirited Carlo away, too cowardly to face
her out.
She frowned, pieces of the jigsaw of that day still
missing. It puzzled her that her bed had been in such a
mess, though she supposed she must have tossed and turned
in her fevered state. But she couldn't understand what the
empty champagne bottles were doing in the rubbish bin, or
why two glasses were in the wrong cupboard.