An Enticing Debt to Pay

CHAPTER TWO

RAVENNA LOCKED HER knees as the room swirled sickeningly.

She reached out a groping hand to steady herself and grabbed fabric, fingers digging claw-like as she fought panic.

The last few months had been tougher than anything she could once have imagined. They’d tested her to the limits of endurance. But nothing had prepared her to confront such pure hatred as she saw in Jonas Deveson’s face. There was no softness in his expression, just adamantine determination. It scared her to the core.

Shock slammed into her and the knowledge, surer with every gasping breath, that he was serious. He intended to send her mother to prison.

A hand covered hers to the wrist, long fingers encompassing hers easily, sending darts of searing heat through her chilled flesh.

Stunned, Ravenna looked down to find she’d grabbed the only thing near—the lapel of Jonas Deveson’s tailored jacket. Now he held her hard and fast.

‘Are you all right?’ Concern turned his deep voice to mellow treacle. She felt it softening sinew and taut muscle, easing her shocked stasis enough that she finally managed to inhale. The spinning room settled.

She tugged her hand away. Worryingly, she felt cold without that skin-to-skin contact.

Ravenna spun on her foot and paced to the window. This time when she clutched fabric it was the heavy gold swag of curtain. It was rich and smooth under her tingling fingers, but not as reassuring as the fine wool warmed by Jonas Deveson’s body.

She shook her head, banishing the absurd thought.

‘Ravenna?’

Her head jerked up. She remembered him calling her by name years before, the only time they’d really talked. In her emotionally charged state then she’d imagined no one but he could ever make her name sound so appealing. For years her unusual name had been the source of countless jibes. She’d been labelled the scrawny raven and far, far worse at school. It was disturbing to discover that even now he turned her name into something special.

‘What?’

‘Are you okay?’ His voice came from closer and she stiffened her spine.

‘As okay as you can expect when you barge in here threatening my mother with gaol.’

For a moment longer Ravenna stared out of the window. The Place des Vosges, elegant and symmetrical with its manicured gardens, looked as unchanged as ever, as if nothing could disturb its self-conscious complacency.

But she’d learned the hard way that real life was never static, never safe.

Reluctantly she turned to find him looming over her, his eyes unreadable.

‘What is she supposed to have done?’

‘There’s no suppose about it. Do you think I’d come here—’ his voice was ripe with contempt as he swept the salon with a wide gesture ‘—if it wasn’t fact?’

Ravenna’s heart dropped. She couldn’t believe her mother had done anything terrible, but at the same time she knew only the most extreme circumstances would bring Jonas Deveson within a kilometre of Silvia Ruggiero. There was hatred in his eyes when he spoke of her.

‘You’re too angry to think straight.’ At her words his lowering dark brows shot up towards his hairline. Clearly this was a man unused to opposition.

She drew another, slower breath. ‘You’ve despised my mother for years and now you think you’ve found a way to make her pay for the sin of falling in love with your father.’

The sizzle of fire in his eyes told her she’d hit the nail on the head. Her hands slipped onto her hips as she let righteous indignation fortify her waning strength.

‘I think you’ve decided that, without Piers here to defend her, she’s easy prey.’ Her breath hitched. ‘But she’s not alone. You’d do well to remember that.’

‘What? She’s moved on already?’ His voice was contemptuous. ‘She’s found another protector to take his place? That must be some sort of record.’

Ravenna wasn’t aware of lunging towards him but suddenly she was so close she saw his pupils dilate as her open hand swung up hard and fast towards his cheek.

The movement came to a juddering halt that reverberated through her as he caught her wrist. He lifted it high so she stretched up on her toes, leaning towards him. Her breasts, belly and thighs tingled as if from an electric charge as the heat of his body, mere centimetres away, burned hers.

His eyebrows lowered, angling down straight and obstinate over eyes so intent they seemed to peer into her very soul.

His scent—clean male skin and a hint of citrus—invaded her nostrils. Abruptly she realised she’d ventured too far into dangerous territory when she found herself inhaling and holding her breath.

A shimmy of reaction jittered through her. A reaction she couldn’t name. It froze the air in her lungs.

Instinct warned he was dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with her mother.

Ravenna tugged hard but he refused to release her hand.

Leaning up towards him like this, almost touching along the length of their bodies, Ravenna became fully aware of the raw, masculine power hidden beneath the designer suit. The clothes were those of an urbane businessman. The burning stare and aura of charged testosterone spoke instead of primitive male power, barely leashed.

She breathed deep, trying to douse rising panic, and registered an unfamiliar spicy musk note in the air. Her nerves stretched tighter.

Never had Ravenna felt so aware of the imbalance of physical power between male and female. Of the fact that, despite her height, she was no match for this man who held her so easily and so off balance.

‘Nobody slaps me.’ His lips barely moved, yet Ravenna felt his warm breath on her face with each terse word.

‘Nobody insults my mother like that.’

Even stretched taut against him, her mind grappling with a multitude of new sensations, she refused to back down. She stared into those glittering, merciless eyes and felt a thrill of fear, realising he was utterly unyielding.

‘Then we’re at an impasse, Ms Ruggiero.’

Did he tug her closer or did she sway towards him? Suddenly keeping her balance was almost impossible as she teetered on the balls of her feet.

‘In which case there’s no need for the macho act. You can let me go.’ She paused, deliberately going limp in his hold. ‘Unless you feel you have something to prove.’

Relief gushed through her as he released her.

Rather than let him see it, Ravenna bent her head as if examining her wrist for bruises. There wouldn’t be any. His touch hadn’t been brutal, but its implacability had scared her.

‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ she said finally, looking up into his arresting, aristocratic face. ‘My mother loved your father.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’ Jonas shook his head, his lips curling in a sneer. ‘I’m not some callow kid who believes in fairy tales. She was on the make—out to snare a rich lover. It was obvious to everyone.’ He raised a silencing hand when she would have spoken. ‘She flaunted herself every chance she got.’

‘My mother never—’

‘He was years older, with a wife, a home, a family. He had an extraordinarily comfortable lifestyle, the respect of his peers and a social life he revelled in. You think a man of my father’s disposition would give all that up unless he’d been lured into it by a clever gold-digger?’

Ravenna hesitated, as ever torn by the knowledge of how many people had been hurt by Piers and her mother. But loyalty made her speak up.

‘You don’t believe in love, then?’

‘Love?’ He almost snorted the word. ‘Silvia pandered to his desires in the most obvious way. I’m sure he loved flaunting her just as he loved showing off his other possessions.’ His gaze raked the room, lingering on a Cézanne on the far wall that Ravenna knew for a fact was a copy of an original sold just last year. The derisive twist of Jonas’ lips told her he knew it too.

‘And as for her...’ Wide shoulders shrugged. ‘He was just a meal ticket. They had nothing in common except a love of luxury and an aversion to hard work. Why should she toil on as a housekeeper when she could be kept in style for simply letting him—’

‘That’s enough!’ Bile blocked Ravenna’s throat and she swallowed hard, forcing it down. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of your poison.’

His brows rose. ‘You’re hardly a schoolkid any more, Ravenna.’ This time when he said her name there was no lingering warmth and no frisson of subtle reaction. ‘You can’t pretend.’

‘Leave it!’ She put up her hand for silence. ‘We’ll never agree, so leave it.’ She hefted in a deep, steadying breath. ‘Just cut to the chase and tell me why you’re here.’

* * *

Fury still sizzled in Jonas’ blood so he took his time slowing his breathing and finding his equilibrium. It wasn’t like him to lose his cool. He was known for his detachment, his calm clarity of vision even in the most potentially dangerous of commercial ventures.

And in his personal life...he’d learned his lesson early, watching his father lurch from one failed love affair to another. He’d seen the ecstatic highs of each new fixation, then the boredom and disappointment of each failure.

Jonas wasn’t like his father. He’d made it his business to be as different from the old man as humanly possible. He was rock steady, reliable, controlled.

Except right now his hands shook with the force of his feelings. He swept the gilded room with a contemptuous glance and assured himself it was inevitable his father’s flashy love nest would evoke a reaction.

‘Well? I’m waiting.’

At her husky voice he turned to survey her.

Ravenna Ruggiero. He’d never have recognised her as the tear-stained girl he remembered. Then she’d been lanky with the coltishness of youth, her features still settling and her hair in ribbons, as if to remind him she was still a child. Only her mouth and her stunning eyes had hinted at beauty. And the low register of her voice that even then had unsettled him with its promise of sensuality to come.

It had come all right.

Silvia Ruggiero had been a stunning woman in her prime. But her daughter, even dressed in sombre, loose clothes, outshone her as a flawless diamond did a showy synthetic gem.

There was something about Ravenna. Not just a face that drew the eye as a magnet drew metal so he’d had to force himself not to stare. But an elegance, a grace, that contrasted with yet magnified the earthy sexuality of her voice, and that sassy attitude of hers...

The feel of her stretched up against him, her breasts almost grazing him as she panted her fury in defiance of his superior strength, had stirred something long dormant.

Suspended in a moment of sheer, heady excitement, he’d revelled in the proximity of her soft curves and lush mouth. There’d been a subversive pleasure in her combative attitude, in watching the sparks fly as she launched herself at him.

For the first time in his life Jonas, who preferred his pleasures planned, wondered about being on the receiving end of such unbridled passion. Not just her anger, but—

‘Did you hear me?’ Fingers clicked in the air before him, dragging his attention to her flushed face.

The colour suited her better, he realised, than the milky pallor he’d noticed earlier. Then he cursed himself for the stray thought.

‘You want to know what your mother’s been up to?’ It was easy to thrust aside his unsettling distraction and focus on familiar ire. ‘She’s stolen money. My money.’

He had the satisfaction of seeing Ravenna’s eyes widen.

It galled him that she’d had the temerity to defend Silvia when they both knew the truth about her mother. Like a magpie with an eye for a pretty, expensive bauble, she’d feathered her nest with his father’s wealth.

Jonas recalled the day he’d come home unexpectedly to Deveson Hall from London and found the housekeeper in his mother’s suite, in front of a mirror, holding an heirloom choker of sapphires and pearls to her throat. Instead of embarrassment at being caught out, she’d laughed and simply said no woman could have resisted the temptation if she’d found the necklace lying there. Without turning a hair she’d put it down on the dressing table and turned to plump the cushions on a nearby settee.

‘No.’ This time Ravenna’s low voice sounded scratchy as if with shock. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

‘Wouldn’t she?’ He looked around the over-stuffed room, wondering how many of the pieces were what they appeared. Money had obviously been tight enough for his father to cash in the more valuable pieces.

‘Of course not.’ Ravenna’s certainty tugged his attention back to her. No longer flushed but pale and composed, she stared back with infuriating certainty.

‘Then how do you explain the fact she forged my father’s signature in a cheque book she shouldn’t even have had access to?’

‘Why blame my mother?’

‘No one else had access. Piers would have kept it safely by him, believe me.’ He let his gaze rove the room. ‘I’m sure if we search the apartment we’ll find it.’

‘There’ll be no searching the apartment. And even if it was here, what’s to say it wasn’t Piers’ signature? His handwriting could have changed when he got ill.’

Jonas shook his head. ‘That would have been convenient, wouldn’t it? But it won’t wash. Unless you can explain how he managed to cash a cheque the day after he died.’

Her eyes widened, growing huge in her taut face.

‘I don’t believe you.’ It was a whisper but even that was like a flame to gunpowder. How could she deny her mother’s wrongdoing even now?

‘I don’t care what you believe.’ It was a lie. Her blind faith in the gold-digging Silvia was like salt on a raw wound. Perhaps because he’d never known such loyalty from his own parents. Why should she lavish it on a woman so patently undeserving?

Piers had been an absentee parent, finding plenty of reasons to stay in the city rather than at the Hall. As for his mother—he supposed she’d loved him in her own abstracted way. But she’d been more focused on her personal disappointment in marrying a man who loved not her but the wealth she’d brought with her.

Jonas slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew the photocopied cheques.

‘Here.’ He held them out, daring her to take them. ‘I never lie.’ His father had been an expert at distorting the truth for his convenience. As a kid Jonas had vowed never to do the same.

He watched Ravenna swallow, the movement convulsive, then she reached out and took the papers. Her head bowed as she stared at them.

The sound of her breath hissing in told him he’d finally got through to her. There was no escaping the truth.

The papers moved as if in a strong breeze and he realised her hands were trembling.

In that instant guilt pierced his self-satisfaction. Belatedly it struck him that taking out his anger on Silvia’s daughter was beneath him.

His belly clenched as he reviewed their encounter. Even given his determination to make Silvia pay for her crime, he’d behaved crassly. He’d stalked in, making demands when a simple request for information would have done. Worse, he’d been too caught up in own emotional turmoil to spare a thought for the shock this would be for Ravenna.

‘Do you want to sit down?’ The words shot out like bullets, rapid and harsh with self-disgust.

She didn’t say anything, just stood, head bowed, staring at the papers in her shaking hands.

Hell! Was she in shock?

He leant towards her, trying to read her expression.

All he registered was the stiff set of her jaw and the scent of warm cinnamon and fragrant woman.

And the way she bit her bottom lip, pearly teeth sinking deep in that lush fullness.

Jonas breathed in slowly, telling himself the heat whirling in his belly was shame, not arousal.

The idea of being turned on so easily by any woman was anathema to a man who prided himself on his restraint. When she was the daughter of the woman who’d destroyed his mother... Unthinkable!

‘Ravenna?’ His voice sounded ridiculously hesitant, as if the ground had shifted beneath his feet.

She looked up, her eyes ablaze as they met his. Then her gaze shifted towards the window.

‘You’re mistaken.’ Her voice sounded wrong, he realised, tight and hard. ‘Silvia had nothing to do with this.’

‘Stop denying, Ravenna. It’s too late for that. I’ve got proof of her forgery.’

‘Proof of forgery, yes. But not Silvia’s.’ She shifted, standing taller.

Jonas shook his head, weary of the unexpected emotional edge to this interview. ‘Just tell me where she is and I’ll deal with her.’

Those warm sherry eyes lifted to his and he stilled as he saw how they’d glazed with emotion.

‘You don’t need to deal with her. She had nothing to do with it.’ Ravenna tilted her chin up, her gaze meeting his squarely. ‘I did it. I took your money.’

CHAPTER THREE

RAVENNA’S PULSE KICKED as Jonas stiffened. Her throat dried so much it hurt to swallow. But she didn’t dare turn away. Instead she met his stare unflinchingly.

She feared if she showed even a flicker of the emotions rioting inside, he wouldn’t believe her.

He had to! The alternative, of pinning the theft on her mother, was untenable.

With Jonas’ revelation so much fell into place—Piers’ remarkable generosity in not just covering her medical costs these last months, but funding the long convalescent stay at an exorbitantly expensive Swiss health resort.

Only it hadn’t been Piers making that final, massive payment, had it? It must have been Silvia—breaking the law to help her daughter.

Ravenna’s heart plummeted as she recalled her mother’s insistence that she needed total rest to recuperate. That without the health resort there was a danger of the treatment failing. Ravenna, too weary by then to protest when all she wanted was to rest quietly and get her strength back, hadn’t put up much resistance.

She’d never sponged off Piers’ wealth, and had silenced her protesting conscience by vowing to pay back every last euro. It was only when she’d arrived at the Paris apartment the other day that she realised they were euros Piers and her mother could ill afford.

Guilt had struck Ravenna when she saw how much they’d sold off. But she’d never for a moment thought her mother had purloined money that wasn’t hers!

Oh, Mamma, what have you done?

Through the years Silvia had gone without again and again so Ravenna could have warm clothes and a roof over her head. And later, so she could go to the respected school her mother thought she needed. But to take what wasn’t hers...!

‘You’re lying.’ Jonas’ frigid eyes raked her face and a chill skimmed her backbone.

Ravenna smoothed damp palms down her trousers and angled her chin, trying to quell the roiling nausea in her stomach.

‘I don’t lie.’ It was true. Maybe that was why she hadn’t convinced him. Her muscles clenched as desperation rose.

She couldn’t let him guess the truth. Already a broken woman, Mamma would be destroyed by the shame and stress of gaol.

For a moment Ravenna toyed with blurting out the whole truth, revealing why her mother had stolen the funds and throwing them both on Jonas Deveson’s mercy.

Except he didn’t have any mercy.

That softer side he’d once shown her years before had been an aberration. In the six years Silvia and Piers had been together, Jonas hadn’t once condescended to acknowledge his father’s existence. He had ice in his veins rather than warm blood, and a predilection for holding a grudge.

Now it seemed he had a taste for vengeance too.

That might be ice in his veins but there was fire blazing in his eyes. It had been there since he shouldered his way into the apartment, prowling the room with lofty condescension as if his father’s death meant nothing to him.

His hatred for her mother was a palpable weight in the charged atmosphere.

He blamed Silvia for his father’s defection. He’d sided with the rest of his aristocratic connections in shunning the working-class foreigner who’d had the temerity to poach one of their own.

Ravenna had to keep this from her. If Mamma found the theft had been discovered she’d come forward and accept the penalty. Ravenna couldn’t let her do that, not when she saw the violence in Jonas Deveson’s eyes. She couldn’t condone what Mamma had done but could understand it, especially since she must have been overwrought about Piers.

‘You haven’t got it in you to do that, Ravenna.’ He shook his head. ‘Theft is more your mother’s style.’

Fury boiled in her bloodstream. She didn’t know which was worse, his bone-deep hatred of her mother or that he thought he knew either of them when at Deveson Hall family hadn’t mixed with staff.

His certainty of her innocence should have appeased her; instead, tainted as it was by prejudice, Ravenna found herself angrier than she could ever remember. Rage steamed across her skin and seeped from her pores.

‘You have no idea of what her style is or mine.’ Her teeth gritted around the words.

His damnably supercilious eyebrows rose again. ‘I’m a good judge of character.’

That was what Ravenna feared. That was why she had to work hard to convince him.

Maybe if her mother had a spotless reputation she’d ride out a trial with nothing worse than a caution and community service. But sadly that wasn’t the case.

Years before, when Silvia had been young and homeless, kicked out by her father for shaming the family with her pregnancy, she’d resorted to shoplifting to feed herself. She’d been tried then released on a good behaviour bond. That had terrified the young woman who’d been until then completely law abiding.

Much later, when Ravenna was nine, her mother had been accused of stealing from the house where she worked. Ravenna remembered Mamma’s ravaged, parchment-white face as the police led her away under the critical gaze of the woman who employed her. It didn’t matter that the charges had been dropped when the woman’s daughter was found trying to sell the missing heirloom pieces. Silvia had been dismissed, presumably because her employer couldn’t face the embarrassment of having accused an innocent woman.

Mud stuck and innocence didn’t seem to matter in the face of prejudice.

Look at the way Jonas already judged her. If she went to trial he’d dredge up her past and every scurrilous innuendo he could uncover and probably create a few for good measure. His air of ruthlessness that chilled Ravenna. His lawyers would make mincemeat out of her mother.