Kerry flinched and coiled her taut hands together in front of her. ‘So…er…you’re more or less admitting it—’
‘Like hell I am!’ His steady golden gaze flamed with outrage.
‘But I even know what you’re going to say…that Rochelle was lying and that she could’ve taken that cufflink from the office!’
‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’ Luciano’s response was one of dangerous, menacing quietness.
‘Or maybe you’re about to suggest that I’m making this all up in an effort to cover up that crazy family conspiracy you mentioned yesterday!’ Kerry condemned with even more dismissive scorn, but she was trembling with the force of her own emotions and her voice was shaking. ‘But I know for a fact that you did sleep with my stepsister that night!’
‘Dio mio…I refuse to listen to another word of this!?
??
‘Only you could have told Rochelle that I was still a virgin and why!’ Kerry slammed back at him in agonised condemnation. ‘And if I’d needed any further confirmation, you lied to me—’
‘I have never lied to you.’ Lean, arrogant face clenched hard, Luciano made that emphatic statement with conviction.
‘—about where you were that night! I phoned your apartment and there was no answer. But when I called again the next morning, you insisted that you had been in all evening and that you must’ve been in the shower. But you did go out, you were at Heathlands, you were at my father’s home that night!’ Ashen pale as she had to force out those distressing facts, Kerry had to pause to draw breath.
By this time Luciano was so still that he could have rivalled a stone statue. But just as swiftly, he unfroze and his lean hands curled straight into powerful fists. Rage and frustration were eating him alive. He had driven over to Heathlands to see Harold Linwood that evening. He had lied about it. One of those harmless little untruths that only another guy could have understood, he rationalised in a fiercer fury than ever. And in the circumstances, who of an earthly ilk could have blamed him? What male in his right mind would have risked unleashing yet another painful three-act tragedy from Kerry with the news that he had quite accidentally found Rochelle…home alone?
Kerry’s hands were coiled into tight fists too. Her entire being was concentrated on Luciano. At last, it had come: his moment of truth when at the very least he should be unable to meet her eyes. In a head-on collision his sizzling dark golden gaze sought hers in defiance of that belief. Her mouth ran dry and confusion claimed her.
‘I know that you lied to me…’ Kerry found herself repeating in case he had yet to get that message.
Luciano shifted a broad shoulder in a fluid shrug but rage was smouldering like hot lava inside him. After all he had said and done, she had still let Rochelle come between them. Even now, she was so gullible that she could not see the bigger picture. He knew only one Linwood capable of winding Rochelle up to stage such a stunt. And it had worked and the timing had been perfect, he acknowledged with savage bitterness. He had been arrested and Kerry, who might have become a very useful ally in the enemy camp while he fought to prove his innocence, had walked away from him.
‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ Kerry muttered in growing bewilderment. ‘Does that mean that you’re ashamed of yourself?’
‘No…’ Luciano breathed with savage restraint. ‘I’m just thinking that you got what you deserved—’
‘What…I…deserved? Are you telling me that I deserved to have you go behind my back to carry on with my stepsister?’ Kerry gasped strickenly.
‘Don’t you understand anything yet?’ Luciano demanded with derisive force. ‘Nothing happened between Rochelle and me that night or on any other occasion while we were engaged.’
‘But you lied about being there that night!’ Kerry almost shouted back at him in her distress.
Luciano subjected her to a withering appraisal. ‘I was sick and tired of the way you reacted every time Rochelle came anywhere near me. I drove over to Heathlands to see your father. Rochelle said he was due home. I waited about fifteen minutes and then decided it would make more sense to see him at the office. I knew you’d go into a real mood if I told you that I’d seen her, so I took the easy way out and chose not to mention it.’
Kerry was trembling but her face was stiff with discomfiture. He was forcing her to remember how much friction her insecurity over Rochelle had caused between them and how her own constant need for reassurance had taxed his patience. ‘It couldn’t have happened like that—’
‘It did.’ The very indifference with which Luciano spoke shook her faith in her own conviction of his guilt. ‘But it hardly matters now.’
But to Kerry it still mattered a great deal, and his explanation plunged her into confusion. Was it possible that Rochelle had lied to her? That it could all have been lies? That Luciano had decided not to mention his visit to Heathlands simply because he knew that she would have made a fuss when she learned that he had seen Rochelle there? She refused to believe that, refused to credit that she was listening to anything more than a clever story.
‘You o-owe me the truth…’ Kerry stammered in turmoil.
‘I owe you nothing but I’m not about to admit to something I didn’t do just to make you feel better,’ Luciano countered with lethal cool.
‘It’s not a matter of making me f-feel better!’ Tears of frustration flooding her eyes without warning, Kerry spun away, fighting to regain control of the tempestuous emotions he had unleashed. But it was as if he had yanked the very ground from beneath her feet. She needed him to admit that he had been unfaithful. To make her feel better? A choking sob clogged up her throat but mercifully remained there. If she had to face the unimaginable and terrifying alternative; that she had ditched him when he had done nothing, how could she live with that? How could she ever learn to live with that?
‘What…about….that…cuff-link?’ she pressed in near desperation.
‘I was always losing them.’ His attention welded to her bent head and pinched profile, Luciano was rigid with angry tension. He did not want to hear her stammer or see her tears. He resented being made to feel like a bully when all he wanted to do was get on with business. ‘The fact that your stepsister knew that we weren’t lovers? I imagine that she knew you well enough to make an accurate guess. Now, let’s leave the subject there.’
‘I can’t…’ Kerry admitted jaggedly as she lifted her head, bright blue eyes full of anguished appeal.
‘You must,’ Luciano traded with icy cool. ‘We have more important issues to deal with.’