The Vengeful Husband(51)

'What's wrong?' Luca prompted.



In her haste to escape those frighteningly astute eyes, Darcy lurched out of the shower. Grabbing up a towel, she took refuge in the dressing room to dry herself. I can't be in love with him. I can't be, she told herself sickly. It was a kind of immature infatuation and it had its sad roots in the past.



Karen had been right about her: she had spent too much time alone. Building romantic castles in the air around Luca Raffacani would be a very stupid move, and, having done it once and learnt her mistake, she was con­vinced she was too sensible to be so foolish again.



By one of those strange tricks of fate Luca found her attractive, and they were sexually compatible, but she would have to be an idiot to imagine that Luca might now develop some form of emotional attachment to her. He had said it himself only this morning, hadn't he? He had talked with outrageous unapologetic cool about how they should be 'skimming along the surface of things and having a great time in bed' rather than arguing. Suddenly Darcy was very glad she had slapped him so hard...



'Tell me about your sister,' Darcy invited Luca as they left the bedroom. Having donned an elegant black dress and fresh lingerie at speed, she had attempted to coax her damp curls into some semblance of a style, but she was out of breath and her cheeks were still pink with effort. 'It'll look strange if I know nothing about her.'



Luca, as sleek and cool and elegant as a male who had spent a leisurely hour showering, shaving and donning his superb dinner jacket and narrow black trousers, gave her a wry look. 'My parents died in a plane crash when Ilaria was eight. My aunt became her legal guardian. I was only nineteen. Emilia was a childless widow, eager to mother my sister, but she was very possessive. She made it difficult for me to maintain regular contact with Ilaria.' "That was selfish of her.'



'She also refused to allow me to share in Ilaria's upbring­ing when I was in a position to offer her a more settled home life. And she was a very liberal guardian. She spoilt Ilaria rotten. When my sister turned into a difficult teenager, Emilia saw her behaviour as rank ingratitude. Being a sub­stitute mother had become a burden. She demanded that I take responsibility for Ilaria and within the same month she moved to New York.'

'Oh, dear...' Darcy grimaced.



'Ilaria was devastated by that rejection and she furiously resented me. We had some troubled times,' Luca conceded with a rueful shrug. 'She's twenty now, but I have little contact with her. As soon as she reached eighteen, she de­manded an apartment of her own.'



'I'm sorry.' Seeing his dissatisfaction with this detached state of affairs, Darcy rested her hand on his sleeve in a sympathetic gesture. 'I always think the worst wounds are inflicted within the family circle. We're all much more vul­nerable where our own flesh and blood is concerned.'



'You're thinking of your father?'



'It's hard not to. I spent my whole life wanting to be somebody in his eyes, struggling to win his respect,' Darcy admitted gruffly.



'Everyone's like that with parents.'



Tensing as she noticed his attention dropping to the hand still curved to his arm, she hurriedly removed it, thinking then with pain that the kind of physical closeness which he was at ease with in bed seemed a complete no-no out of bed.



'But I was reaching for something I could never have. I don't think my father ever looked at me without resenting the fact that I wasn't the son he wanted...but all that made me do was try harder,' she confided ruefully.



Luca reached for her hand and curled lean fingers tautly round hers. 'Was that why you took the Adorata?' he de­manded in a roughened undertone, shrewd dark eyes drawn to her startled face. 'Darcy impressively riding to the rescue of the family fortunes with a pretend lucky find?'



Caught unprepared, Darcy lost every scrap of colour in her cheeks, her green eyes darkening with hurt at that ab­surd suspicion. Once again she had forgotten what lay be­tween them, and with too great a candour she had exposed herself to attack.
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'You must've lied to your father. He may have been domineering and aggressive, but he had the reputation of being an honest, upright man. Did you tell him that you had found it in some dusty antique shop where you had bought it for a song?' Luca pressed with remorseless per­sistence.

A door opened off the ball. Both Darcy and Luca whipped round. A slim, stunning girl with shoulder-length dark hair and a sullen expression subjected them to a stony appraisal.



'I have no intention of wasting an entire evening waiting for you to show up at your own dinner table, Luca,' Ilaria said with brittle sarcasm. 'Just why did you bother to invite me?'