‘Were you aware that your mother’s marriage to Harold Linwood was not her first marriage? At the age of nineteen your mother entered another marriage, which also ended in divorce.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ Eyes widening in astonishment, Kerry was transfixed.
‘In the course of that marriage, your mother also had other children—’
‘I beg your pardon…?’ Kerry gasped.
‘—and I have been asked to tell you that you have three older sisters. They have been searching for you for some years and are eager to meet you.’
The telephone almost dropped clean out of Kerry’s nerv
eless fingers.
‘Your sisters are also keen for this matter to remain private and confidential and I must ask you to be discreet.’
‘Huh…’ Kerry was nodding like a marionette at the other end of the phone. Her brain refused to process the very great shock she had just been dealt and the trauma was in no way eased by a man who contrived to speak as though his revelations were an everyday event.
‘An open ticket for a flight to London is waiting for you at Shannon Airport. Please call me when you intend to travel. You will be met off your flight and taken to the hotel where your sisters would like their initial meeting with you to take place.’
Sisters? Kerry’s thoughts lagged behind the travel arrangements being suggested. Her mother had once been married to someone other than Harold Linwood? Children had been born of that union…three little girls? But if that was true, where had those other daughters been all this time? Where in particular had they been during the early years of Kerry’s life? And why had her parent been incorrectly styled on her marriage certificate as a single rather than a divorced woman?
The barrage of questions she attempted to ask was blocked by the solicitor’s polite explanation that her sisters would prefer to exchange personal details with her at their first meeting. At his request, she noted down his phone number and actually allowed him to ring off before regaining sufficient brain power to call him back to declare that she would fly to London the following day.
Three…sisters? Sisters related to her by blood. Three of them! Frantic excitement bubbled through Kerry. All her life, she had felt very much alone even when surrounded by Linwoods, even when living with her grandparents, who inhabited a world quite removed from more mundane reality. Three older sisters had been searching for her for several years. Searching for her, Kerry savoured, feeling extraordinarily important and wanted as she recalled that heart-warming piece of information.
Bursting at the seams with her news, Kerry found that she was heading back to the library before she even realised what she was doing. Why was she even considering telling Luciano? Why the automatic surge in his direction? Ashamed of herself, she hung back. Wasn’t she fortunate that she had learned about her sisters at a time when she was desperate for something other than Luciano, who was tearing her apart, to concentrate on?
She phoned Miles and, on the brink of sharing her discovery about her family background, remembered her sisters’ somewhat puzzling request for discretion. Her stepbrother seemed very preoccupied. He made an audible effort to sound cheerful at the prospect of her impending visit but generally seemed in unusually low spirits.
Before she could lose her nerve, she went off to find Luciano to inform him that she would be taking time off.
‘Yes, I can see why a jacuzzi would hit the right spot…’ the architect Luciano had brought in as a consultant was confessing with a companionable shudder at the cheerless stone interior of the bathroom adjoining Luciano’s bedroom.
‘A…what?’ Kerry exclaimed from behind the two men. ‘Only a vandal would rip out an early copper bath and put an anachronism like a jacuzzi into a sixteenth-century tower house!’
Dark golden eyes landed on her in a sudden glancing volatile collision. ‘A non-functional bath is a waste of space.’
‘It’s living history—’
‘Perhaps I don’t want to live history,’ Luciano gritted between even white teeth.
With a harried excuse, his architect went into retreat.
‘I just wanted to check that it’s all right for me to be away for a couple of days. I’m off to London too—’
Luxuriant black lashes narrowed over Luciano’s reflective gaze and he almost smiled. ‘You can travel with me tomorrow.’
Kerry wondered if there was a bedroom on his private jet. It was a ghastly, demeaning thing to have to admit but she was not sure that she was up to resisting his powers of persuasion in a confined space. ‘No, thanks. I’ve…er..already made my arrangements.’
Luciano’s lean brown hands flexed straight into fists and then more slowly out of them again. ‘Why has London suddenly become an attraction?’
Kerry made the first excuse that came to mind. ‘I want to see Miles—’
‘Even knowing how I feel about you seeing him?’ Luciano ground out in a lethally quiet enquiry.
The very sound of that chilling intonation made her feel as if he had raised a tripwire against her knees. Inside herself, she discovered a truly terrifying desire to sacrifice Miles, sacrifice anything and everything, just to steal a little happiness with Luciano. But at what cost? That was just a silly girlish dream, Kerry labelled with anguished understanding, for she would never abandon her grandparents.
‘Yes, even knowing how you feel about that,’ Kerry confirmed flatly.