Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride

Virginia Whittaker poured Earl Grey tea into bonechina cups and added a sliver of lemon. ‘You just seem a little…out of sorts?’ she observed delicately.

One sure-fire way of getting over something was not keeping it alive by talking about it, so Sorcha took the cup of tea with a bland smile.

‘Oh, it’s probably all the excitement of my shortlived career as a sauce bottle model,’ she said airily.

‘And nothing to do with the fact that Cesare di Arcangelo has gone back, I suppose?’ questioned her mother shrewdly.

Just the mention of his name brought his dark, mocking face back into her mind with heartbreaking clarity, and yet their farewell seemed to mock her with its cold lack of passion. Two cool kisses on either cheek, followed by an equally cool look in his black eyes.

He had climbed into his sports car with all his stuff—including the brand-new silver beer tankard with his name inscribed on it, which everyone in the factory had clubbed together for and presented to him.

‘Cesare’s been very popular with the workforce,’ Rupert had confided.

Sorcha had ached, and hearing things like that hadn’t helped. The fact that everyone else thought Cesare was Mr Wonderful made her wonder what she had done wrong. She felt as if she had missed out—as if she had played it all wrong with Cesare. Except that relationships weren’t supposed to be a game, were they?

And added to her sense of loss was the certainty that the factory was too small for more than one boss. This was Rupert’s niche, not hers—and now it was too full of memories of Cesare for her to ever be able to settle. She certainly couldn’t carry on living at home like this, but her flat was let out for the whole year. They had offered her a post in the new factory, but she didn’t want to uproot herself and go and live in a part of the country where she knew no one—because that would surely only increase her isolation.

Her mother’s voice broke into Sorcha’s thoughts. ‘And I suppose you must be missing your affair with him?’

The bone-china cup very nearly met an untimely end, and Sorcha put it down with a hand which was trembling.

‘You…you knew? You knew I was having an affair with Cesare?’

Virginia sighed. ‘Oh, Sorcha—of course I knew. Everyone knew. It was as obvious as the nose on your face—even though you did everything you could to try to hide it.’

So all that effort had been for nothing! Her attempts to make it seem as if it were not happening had been totally transparent—and in so doing she had lost the opportunity to spend a whole night with him.

‘Maybe I’m not such a good liar as I thought I was,’ she said, swallowing down the sudden salty taste of tears which tainted her mouth.

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘No.’

‘I agree, Sorcha,’ said her mother wryly. ‘You’re actually a hopeless liar.’

‘Mum, I’m not in love with him. I’m…It’s…complicated.’ She sighed. ‘We’ve got history and, yes, we’re hugely attracted—but he wants the kind of woman who’s docile and will fit in with whatever he wants, while I’m…’

Her voice tailed off. Just what was she? And what did she want? The things which had once seemed so important to her now seemed to have lost their impact. As if she had been seeing the world in a certain way and it had suddenly blurred and changed its focus without her realising it.

‘I’m an independent woman,’ she finished, with a touch of defiance. Someone who neither wanted nor needed anyone else—yet look what had happened, no matter how much she tried to deny it. She both wanted and needed a man who did not reciprocate her feelings.

Her mother sliced through a ripe peach. ‘Has he been in touch?’

Sorcha shook her head. ‘He phoned Rupert after he told him about the small business award we’ve been nominated for.’

‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it, darling?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And even if things haven’t worked out with Cesare there are plenty of other men. I can’t tell you how many people have been coming up to me in the village and saying how it brightens their day when they pick up their sauce and shake you all over their omelette!’

Great, thought Sorcha. Nice way to be remembered.

Naturally, being nominated for a small business award was good publicity, and Sorcha was pleased for the company—and even more pleased to see how happy Rupert was.

‘Cesare gave me the confidence to believe in myself and the business,’ he had said quietly. ‘And now I do.’

Bully for Cesare, thought Sorcha sourly.

She went through the mechanics of living—presenting to the world a close approximation of what Sorcha Whittaker was like. But inside it was like having something gnawing away at her and leaving a great, gaping hole. Had she once wondered if it was possible to feel as deeply as she had done as a teenager? Now she knew the answer certainly to be yes—but what she had not banked on was the level of pain, the aching deep inside her that she couldn’t seem to fill with anything.

And then an invitation dropped through the letterbox—a stiff cream card, heavily embossed with gold, inviting Sorcha to a retrospective of Maceo di Ciccio’s work in a prestigious gallery situated on the Thames in London.

‘Are you going?’ asked Emma, who was almost unbearable to be with—her ‘loved-upness’ so tangible that it seemed to be emanating from her in waves, even all these weeks after her honeymoon.

‘I haven’t decided.’

‘Oh, do go, Sorcha—he might have included a photo of you, in your famous gingham apron!’

‘Very funny.’

‘And anyway,’ Emma added mischievously, ‘Cesare might be there.’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ said Sorcha crossly.

But he might be, mightn’t he?

Was that why Sorcha took such inordinate care about her appearance—even going to the rather devious lengths of wearing a floaty skirt.

Just so he can put his hand up it? mocked the voice of her conscience and she drew herself up short—because, yes, that was the truth of it. Cesare liked women wearing skirts and dresses—he had said so—and here she was, conforming to his idea of what a woman should be. Wasn’t that disgraceful?

But she didn’t change. Instead she drove into London with a fast-beating heart, and had to park miles away from her eventual destination.

It was a windy day, and the river was all silver as a pale, ineffectual sun struggled to make itself seen.

The gallery was beautiful—vast, with huge windows, and lit with the double dose of light which bounced off the restless water.

There were photos from every phase of Maceo’s development as a photographer. Moody black and white shots of the backstreets of a city she took to be Rome, and countless pictures of the world’s most beautiful women. He was good, thought Sorcha wryly.

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