CHAPTER SEVEN.

A LINE OF very expensive vehicles lined the imposing approach to Robert Donnington's palatial villa outside Florence.

'I thought this was a casual lunch for just a few people,' Prudence commented in dismay, horribly conscious that her sun dress could never hope to compete with the apparel of the guests who owned such cars. But she said nothing about the latter; it was hardly Nik's fault that she had taken the word ' casual' too literally.

'That is how the invitation was presented. But Robert's daughter, Chantal, likes to party,' Nik countered with a preoccupied air.

For an inescapable moment, Nik was thinking of the reality that Theo Demakis was currently lining up the big financial guns in an effort to bring him down. Theo had no idea that the marriage he had fostered had finally blossomed. Indeed, Nik had gone to great lengths to keep the fact a secret, because he was determined to keep Theo's malign influence out of their lives. Even so, Nik was uneasily aware that he should have cut short their honeymoon and returned to London to prepare for the battle ahead.

By staying on in Italy, he had left himself more exposed. Robert Donnington would back him. But the shrewd banker had already warned Nik that his sale of his multi-million-pound yacht to speed up the purchase of Oakmere Abbey had been badly timed, since it had dented his impregnable image and revealed a weak flank. Yet, given the chance to go back in time and let Oakmere go, Nik knew he would not have done anything differently; the abbey was Prudence's dream come true and, like the honeymoon, little enough recompense in his opinion for the disappointments she had endured in the past.

When Chantal Donnington came to greet them, Prudence tensed. She immediately recognised her hostess as one of Nik's exes. The willowy blonde's gushing welcome was not matched by the coolness of her green eyes, and with the excuse of taking Nik to join her father in the all-male preserve of the snooker room she divided Nik as cleanly from his wife as a surgeon.

Parked on the grandiose terrace with an alcoholic drink she didn't want, Prudence felt uncomfortably warm even in the shade. The golden heat of midday was like a blanket. She began to wonder if it was that time of the month-when she would sometimes feel under par-although it seemed like a very long time since she had suffered that particular reminder of her womanhood. She counted back the weeks and conceded that her menstrual cycle seemed to have been upset for some time. Were the birth-control pills the cause? She could not help recalling that her last period had been unusually brief. Was there a chance that the pills might not have done the trick and that she had fallen pregnant? No, that had to be wishful thinking, she scolded herself in exasperation.

Before she could dwell any longer on why she was not feeling her usual energetic and rudely healthy self, Chantal Donnington came over and trilled, 'Let me introduce you to a couple of guests who are just dying to meet you...'

Prudence's eyes widened when she saw a leggy dark-haired beauty in an outrageously short skirt approaching her. The brunette was accompanied by a spiky-haired blonde dressed in the sort of clinging white dress that only a very thin woman could aspire to wearing. Unless she was very much mistaken, and Prudence did not think her memory was at fault, she was about to meet another two of Nik's former lovers. The feminine antagonism in the air made the skin p.r.i.c.kle at the nape of her neck.

'I'm Jenna Marsden,' the brunette announced tautly.

'Zoe Amberley,' the blonde supplied with a challenging smile. 'You may not be aware of the fact but we all have something in common.'

'Nik...' Prudence saw no point in pretending ignorance.

'Nik Angelis is an extraordinary guy.' Zoe's husky voice made a suggestive meal of the statement and Prudence's tension increased. 'Quite unforgettable.'

'Yes, he certainly lives up to his legendary reputation.' Chantal rested spiteful green eyes on Prudence.

Although colour had blossomed over her cheekbones, Prudence just smiled as though she had the skin of a rhinoceros. 'Doesn't he just?'

'When Chantal mentioned that Nik's wife would be here today, Zoe and I agreed that we just had to meet you as well,' Jenna declared in a defensive rush that suggested that she was uncomfortable with the animosity in the air. 'What's it like being married to him?'

'Fabulous.' Prudence was striving not to feel cowed by the fact that she had three women a foot taller than she was towering over her. Actually, it was their sheer physical beauty rather than their height that intimidated her. Every comparison she had most feared was now in front of her in full daylight and living flesh: women with perfect faces and sleek, stunning bodies without flaw. No ordinary woman could bear such a cruel contrast. How could Nik not feel that his wife was less than what he deserved? Yet had Nik not made his choice of his own free will? And Nik, she reminded herself doggedly, was no fool and no sacrificial lamb either.

'I would not live with Nik's womanising,' Zoe p.r.o.nounced in a pitying tone.

'I would have far too much pride,' Chantal affirmed.

Prudence wore an expression of polite surprise because Nik had never, to her knowledge, offered any of his mistresses his exclusive attention. Or even pretended to do so.

'Any other woman would have divorced him long ago,' Zoe sneered.

Prudence could only think of how hard Nik had fought to stay married to her and a secretive little smile curved her full mouth in answer.

When Nik emerged from the villa and saw the three women surrounding Prudence, he went rigid. It could be no coincidence that another two of his exes should be present at a social engagement in Italy. He was outraged that Prudence should have become a target for his sins. Dark fury and concern flashing through his big, powerful frame, his lean, bronzed face hard, he strode across the terrace.

'Ladies...Zoe, Jenna,' Nik acknowledged, cool as ice, curving a protective arm to Prudence's tense spine. 'You must excuse us...'

Disconcerted by his sudden appearance, Chantal loosed a rather forced laugh. 'We were just curious, Nik. My goodness, you don't need to come rushing to your wife's rescue. All we really want to know is...what makes Prudence so very special?'

A razor-edged smile slashed Nik's hard mouth. 'She never forgets that she's a lady.'

As their companions absorbed that smooth, cutting counter-attack with varying degrees of discomfiture, Nik swept Prudence off to introduce her to Robert Donnington and soon afterwards lunch was served. At the table she and Nik were seated separately.

Jenna settled down into the chair next to Prudence. 'It took me so long to get over Nik,' she confided plaintively. 'I fell into a rebound romance after him and that went wrong, too.'

'You're so lovely, you're sure to meet someone else,' Prudence told her gently.

'But not someone like Nik,' the exquisite brunette lamented.

'You should concentrate on what annoyed you most about him,' Prudence advised.

The stress of deep thought was clearly marked on Jenna's lovely face. 'He never phoned...he wouldn't go to parties, business always came first,' she recited obediently.

With charged disbelief, Nik looked down the table half an hour later and saw his wife and Jenna Marsden laughing together as though they were the warmest of old friends. Glancing up, Prudence met Nik's burnished golden appraisal and ready colour warmed her complexion. His attention lingered on her and a wicked little frisson of heat and awareness awakened in her pelvis. While Jenna continued to give her chapter and verse on her most recent romantic disappointment, Prudence found her gaze continually stealing back to Nik's bold dark profile. Catching her watching him again, he flashed her a look and a smile which sizzled with a raw, erotic understanding that mesmerised her and set her treacherous body on fire. Nik could convey desire and invitation with a single flash of his stunning eyes.

It became an effort for Prudence to concentrate on what her companion was telling her. Mortified by the swollen sensitivity of her nipples, Prudence stopped looking in Nik's direction altogether but it was a punishment to practise such self-denial. She wanted him. He had made her shameless. He had taught her a desire she could not quench. Love and longing, she acknowledged, were destroying her self-control.

Fresh drinks were being served when Nik appeared by her side without warning. Without giving her the chance to ask what was happening, he a.s.sisted her out of her seat with cool a.s.surance.

'I've explained that the jet is on standby and that we have to leave now,' Nik spelt out quietly.

Prudence gathered that some business crisis was demanding that they leave Italy a day sooner than planned. Disappointment a.s.sailed her, for she had cherished every hour of their time at the villa. To have Nik all to herself for so long had been a joy and to lament the loss of a single day was childish and ungrateful, she told herself sharply. As they left the terrace she was conscious of Chantal and Zoe watching Nik with a blatant hunger that neither could hide. It shook her to see such naked s.e.xual longing.

But was she any stronger or wiser where Nik was concerned? Did she look at him the same way? Sudden doubt and fear gripped Prudence. Barely three weeks ago, she had seen Nik as the enemy and she had been full of fighting fervour with all her defences in place. But Nik had triumphed over her fears and her insecurities by the most simple and yet subtle moves. He had treated her to a glorious honeymoon in Italy, introduced her to a pa.s.sion that was indecently absorbing and had awarded her the heady effect of his entire attention. Was it any wonder that he currently had her eating out of his hand like a pet dove? And was she really planning to let that humiliating state of affairs continue?

He brought the Ferrari to a halt a couple of miles down the road. 'Come here...' he urged with husky impatience.

Dragged from the depths of her disturbing reflections, Prudence blinked. 'Sorry? What's wrong?'

'Wrong?' Gold fire leaping in his spectacular eyes, Nik released her seat belt and tugged her forward, saying with hungry appreciation, 'Nothing's wrong. A wife who can arouse me in a public place just by looking at me is a magnificent gift, not a problem. I got us out of there before I embarra.s.sed you...'

Prudence belatedly appreciated what had prompted their speedy departure from the Donnington'

s: l.u.s.t. She recalled the manner in which she had watched him. Wide-eyed with disconcertion, she blushed to the roots of her hair. 'You mean, we're not really racing back to the villa to pack and head for the airport?'

'We will be racing-only not to the airport. But first let me have a taste of you, pethi mou.' Nik bent his arrogant dark head. He toyed with the luscious fullness of her lower lip, gently nipping and grazing the tender skin and provoking helpless whimpers of eager response from her. Tilting her head back, she offered him her whole mouth as a playground and he set every pulse in her quivering body aflame with the measured thrust of his tongue.

His strong bone structure taut beneath his bronzed skin, he set her back from him and did up her seat belt again with a lot less cool than he had employed undoing it. Scorching golden eyes melded to hers in a stormy collision. 'I'm so hot for you I'm in pain but we can't make love here,' he pointed out raggedly, directing the powerful car back onto the road.

'I'm not used to you behaving like this,' she admitted breathlessly but she was trying so hard not to smile from ear to ear, for she had a wicked sense of achievement. He had just taught her how susceptible he could be and she was a fast learner. She knew that some day she would use that lesson to her advantage.

'I'm not used to it either.' Nik vented a rough laugh. 'Perhaps it's partly fired by admiration. Most women would have thrown a scene over being confronted by Chantal and co....'

Prudence winced. 'What would have been the point?'

'You handled it in a very stylish way. When I saw you talking to Jenna, though, I did wonder what you were talking about,' he admitted.

His expectant silence stretched. Smiling inside herself, Prudence said nothing. Let him wonder what had been discussed! She eyed her dazzling diamond ring with new complacency. She was amazed that she had been fretting about the state of their relationship only minutes earlier. There she had been, ready to get all worked up when she had nothing to worry about!

When the silence ticked on unbroken, Nik responded to the challenge. 'There will be no other women in my life now that I have you.'

Prudence felt as if the sun had just risen inside her. These were the promise, the commitment, the words she had needed to hear, but would never have asked him to give her. 'That's good. Particularly because I would be very unladylike and very unforgiving in the way I handled infidelity,' she told him softly.

Disconcerted though he was by that immediate warning, Nik almost laughed in appreciation of her timing. She was so different from every other woman he had ever known. She had no fear of him and she stood up to him. But she was no drama queen. Had it never dawned on Theo Demakis that his granddaughter was as clever as he was? It hadn't dawned on her stupid husband, Nik acknowledged ruefully, wondering what else he still had to discover about his wife.

At the villa, Nik lifted Prudence out of the car and right up into his arms to kiss her with raw hunger and need. She melted into his lean, hard body, exulting in his strength and burying her fingers in his luxuriant black hair.

'I want you so bad, thespinis mou,' he growled against her swollen mouth, moving across the threshold of their room as he backed her towards the bed.

He angled her back against him and dealt summarily with the straps of her dress and the cups of her bra, groaning with satisfaction when her luscious b.r.e.a.s.t.s spilled free into his appreciative hold. Her legs trembled. She was hot and shivering and weak all at once. He captured the straining pink peaks between his fingers and she gasped out loud. The sensation of tightness in her pelvis increased to an almost unbearable degree.

'Nik...please,' she moaned, utterly helpless in the grip of that pulse beat of desire.

'So glad you're suffering, too...' Nik let his teeth graze her soft, creamy shoulder while he wrenched her out of the dress with such a lack of finesse that the fabric tore. He ran his tongue down her spine, curved caressing hands to shape the sensual swell of her bottom and dropped to his knees to slowly, carefully, s.e.xily remove her panties.

'Oh...' Her teeth chattered together in reaction as he found the most sensitive spot on her entire body with his mouth. She shut her eyes tight, wild pleasure and erotic shock at that sudden intimacy travelling through her shivering length in waves. Hot liquid sensation pulsed through her for long, timeless moments. She was out of control and loving it.

He tumbled her back on the bed. Scorching golden eyes raked her with sensual ferocity. 'I can't wait...'

'Take your shirt off...'

He hauled it off with such violence that b.u.t.tons went flying.

Prudence feasted her eyes on him, wondered if she could wait until he got the rest of his clothes off and decided that she couldn't. She opened her arms, arched her spine and shifted her hips in silent invitation.

His burning gaze flared with white-hot desire. 'You tease...' he ground out helplessly, coming down to her with flattering impatience, all fire, hunger and aggressive masculine energy.

He plunged into her tender flesh with a sweet force that made her cry out. Nothing had ever been as wild as the pa.s.sion they generated in that fiery fusion. Her excitement was incredibly intense. He drove her to a shattering peak of pa.s.sion and the intolerable pleasure took her by storm. The power of the experience left her dazed and full of warmth and emotion.

Nik lifted his damp, dark head, smouldering eyes raking her flushed face. His charismatic smile curved his mobile mouth and he claimed her reddened lips in a tender kiss. 'You amazing woman...'

She wanted to tell him that she loved him but bit back the revealing words just in time. Even so she felt so happy she wanted to cry and she buried her head in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his damp, tawny skin with blissful satisfaction. She felt as if he was hers now, wholly, entirely, absolutely hers.

'I wonder if we made a baby this time,' Nik murmured huskily.

Consternation tensed Prudence's small frame. A spasm of pure, naked guilt travelled through her, because she had made no attempt to tell him that she was taking precautions against pregnancy. Of course, she had noticed that he had made no attempt to guard against that risk. She had, she was ashamed to admit, felt a tad superior in her knowledge that she was in full, if secret, control of her own fertility. But that had been right back at the beginning when she didn't trust him and believed she wanted a divorce. Everything had changed since then. She knew that this was the moment when she should speak up, but it seemed to her that such a confession would make things very complicated and might even damage the new bonds they had formed.

'You're very quiet.' Nik rested back on his elbow, watching her from below sinfully long black eyelashes, his lean, bronzed features achingly handsome. 'I know how much you want a child.'

Prudence squirmed like a b.u.t.terfly on a pin, torn by the knowledge of her deception. 'Yes-er- well, but-'

'I got used to the idea of having a family very fast. I like it,' Nik confided, pure devilment gleaming in his clear gaze as he let a seemingly idle hand stray from her waist down to her thigh and linger there. 'I like working on the project of making you a mother. I intend to devote an enormous amount of time and effort to that challenge...any objections?'

'None...' Even in the grip of shame over her craven lack of candour, Prudence could not resist that look and even less could she resist his touch. She would just stop taking the pills and he would never know, she thought weakly, quivering with antic.i.p.ation and excitement as he shifted fluidly closer.

Prudence a.s.sumed lack of sleep was to blame for her low appet.i.te at breakfast the next day. She also felt ever so slightly nauseous. Mid-morning they flew back to London. Prudence was so eager to see how her rescue animals had fared during her absence that she changed into practical clothes on the flight and asked to be delivered straight to the stable yard.

Five minutes later, the limo pulled up outside the abbey. As Nik climbed out he kicked over the handbag that Prudence had left lying on the floor. The soft caramel leather holdall he had bought her in Florence tipped out its contents onto the gravel of the driveway. His gaze arrowed in on the foil-packed strip that lay half-in, half-out of the bag. Bending down, he lifted it and fell very still.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

WITH DOTTIE'S HELP, Prudence placed baskets for her elderly dogs, Sooty and Minnie, into a cosy back hall and settled them there, since the cook had made it clear that he was no fan of four-legged animals in the kitchen quarters.

The older woman was defensive on Prudence's behalf. 'Oakmere is your home. You should just tell that fancy chef that he has to put up with the dogs!'

'The kitchen's his territory now and thank goodness that it is. I hate cooking,' Prudence reminded her equably. 'Not everyone approves of animals indoors.'

Prudence had never lived without at least a couple of dogs at her heels. She was keenly aware, however, that Nik had grown up without pets and was not accustomed to sharing accommodation with them. Dottie took her leave. Prudence was eager to explore the house and see how the renovations were coming on but it was getting late. Still muddy and more than a little bedraggled from the evening routine of watering and feeding, she hurried upstairs to shower and change before dinner. She also felt incredibly tired and thought that perhaps it was time she had a medical check-up. After all, she reminded herself, her menstrual cycle still seemed to be out of kilter and that was unusual.

Twenty minutes later Prudence emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and with her wet hair combed back from her brow. Nik was stationed by the tall bedroom windows. Her eyes lit up and eager words about how well the sanctuary had fared during her absence were bubbling on her lips. But when Nik swung round, she saw the grim darkness of his gaze and the forbidding cast of his strong, dark features and her tummy flipped in alarm.

'What's up? What's happened?' she questioned.

In answer, Nik tossed the packet of pills at her feet.

Prudence gulped and folded her lips, her guilt and dismay unconcealed. 'Oh, dear...'

'Is that all you've got to say to me?' Nik countered grittily.

Prudence floundered and sidestepped that direct question. 'The packet was in my handbag...how did you get hold of it?'

'I tripped over your bag in the limo and it fell out.'

Her colour high, Prudence stopped trying to evade the confrontation. She drew in a steadying breath. 'I had already decided to stop taking them-'

'And when did you take that momentous decision?'

Prudence reddened because she knew that her answer would not impress him. 'Last night...'

His thunderous aspect remained undiminished. 'When did you organise contraception?'

She told him.

'So, you've been lying to me from the minute that we began living together as husband and wife.'

Prudence squirmed but sought to defend herself. 'That's a very emotive way of putting it-'