The Veranchetti Marriage. LYNNE GRAHAM

lying empty, and to tell the truth I’d prefer it occupied,” she had admitted. “You’ll look after my things. Isn’t it about time you cut loose from the nest? If you don’t watch out, they’ll stifle you.”

      The Taylors had approved neither of Kerry’s delight nor Vickie’s generosity. But Kerry had been obstinate in her desire to spend some time in London. She had even managed to find herself a temporary job in a nearby travel agency.

      “Just wait until you see the guy who uses the penthouse on the top floor,” Vickie had murmured before she left, giving Kerry the lowdown on her neighbours. “He’s devastating, but I’m never here long enough to make an impression. Anyhow,” she had laughed, “I guess he’s not really my type. He’s as conservative as hell. I stuck my neck out once and invited him to a party. He passed, giving me the hint that I shouldn’t have asked in the first place. Watch you don’t make a lot of noise. He also happens to own this building.”

      Kerry had almost sent Alex flying on the day she moved in. She had come rushing full-tilt out of the lift as he was trying to enter it, and they had collided, sending the file in his hand skimming over the floor. With her usual sunny cheer she had scrabbled about picking up scattered papers and chattering about the amount of work he brought home with him. She had received the most glacial smile.

      It had had no effect on her at all. She had taken her first proper look at him and her knees had gone wobbly. Devastating, Vickie had said rather scornfully. That combination of black hair and golden eyes had more than devastated Kerry. “Gosh, you’d make a marvellous portrait study,” she had said crassly, getting abstractedly back into the lift with him.

      “I assumed you were going out,” he had drawled flatteningly. “Do you normally speak to strangers like this?”

      “Oh, I’m Kerry Taylor, Vickie’s kid sister…you must know Vickie. Tall, blonde; she’s a model. She lives on the fourth floor.”

      “I do not,” he had interposed drily.

      She had reddened. “Well, I’m staying here this summer. I thought you might be wondering who I was. That’s why I explained.”

      “Your floor,” Alex had slotted into the nervous flood, stopping the lift on the correct level and making it impossible for her to do anything but remove herself.

      His unfriendliness had been an unpleasant surprise. Kerry had been born and brought up in a small community where she knew everybody. The anonymity of city life had been a shock to her system. But in her inimitable way she had made friends wherever she could. The security men in the foyer had quickly got on to first-name terms with her as she flashed in and out, generally late wherever she was going or rushing back for something she had forgotten.

      Alex had only used his apartment when he was at his London office. She hadn’t known that then. Nor had she even begun to realise how wealthy he was. She had seen him regularly, stepping in and out of his chauffeur-driven car. And the women…Vickie had not warned her about the women.

      She came in late one night from a party, and ended up sharing the lift with Alex and a svelte brunette. It had hit her that night that she was always looking out for Alex, and that the days she didn’t see him were distinctly empty ones. Meeting him with the sort of mature woman she naturally could not compete with had turned her stomach over sickly. She hadn’t been that na;auive. She had known very well that he wasn’t bringing a woman home in the early hours to play Scrabble. And it had hurt her. She could still remember standing in that lift, mutinously not speaking as she usually did, and feeling hatefully, agonisingly young.

      “Goodnight, Kerry,” Alex had murmured silkily, almost as if he knew what was on her mind.

      She hadn’t slept that night. She had paced the lounge, asking herself what kind of baby she was to let herself become obsessed by a male who didn’t know she was alive.

      A week later she had accidentally locked herself out of the apartment. The caretaker had been out, the security guard sympathetic but unable to help beyond offering to force the door for her. In her innocence she had imagined that Alex might have keys and, screwing up her courage, she had gone upstairs. His manservant had only allowed her as far as the hall. Alex had frowned the instant he saw her. “To what do I owe the honour?” he had demanded drily.

      But he had laughed when she muttered about her hope that he had a key. He had asked her if she would like to join him for supper. While she ate he had dredged out her life story and her ambition to study Fine Art at university. His manservant had intervened to announce that the caretaker was now available, and Alex had appraised her disappointed face and said, “Would you like to dine with me some evening?”

      “When?” she had breathed, making no attempt to conceal her delight, and he had laughed again. That was how it had begun.

      From the start she had feared that Alex thought she was too immature for him. At thirty, he was already head of the empire his late father had left him. As the eldest in his family he had assumed weighty responsibilities at an early age. In comparison, Kerry had been between school and university, and as carefree and unfailingly cheerful as Alex was serious. It was an attraction of opposites. Her dippy sense of humour and her penchant for disorganisation had fascinated Alex…but much against his will.

      Their short courtship had been erratic. Alex had tried to keep their relationship cool. Kerry had been wildly and quite frantically in love with him, and probably the whole world including Alex had been painfully conscious of the fact. The one strong card she had had then, without even realising it, was Alex’s almost fanatical possessiveness. One afternoon her door had been answered by another man when Alex called unexpectedly.

      Roy had been one of Vickie’s friends. He had only come to collect stuff that Vickie had let him store in her guest room. Kerry had merely offered him coffee. Alex had misunderstood. By the time that was cleared up, all pretence of playing it cool was over. Alex was laying down the law like Moses off the Mount. Somehow he had started to kiss her, and not as he had indulgently kissed her before. Things had got out of hand and perhaps, knowing Alex, they had done so more by design than accident. He had swept her off to bed in a passionate and stormy mood. Afterwards he had looked down at her and murmured, “Now you are mine, and damn your age, we’re going to get married.”

      It had been a breathless, whirlwind romance. Alex had bowled her parents over with his well-bred drawl and cool self-assurance. Kerry had not had a similar effect upon his family. She had soon appreciated that, behind the polite, cosmopolitan smiles, they all thought Alex was marrying beneath him and, what was more, choosing a female totally untutored in the talents required of a Veranchetti wife.

      But, possessed as she had believed herself to be of Alex’s love, Kerry had had no doubts. Their beautiful wedding had been followed by a fabulous honeymoon in the West Indies. Alex had then calmly dumped her in Rome with his mother. Athene had disliked Kerry on sight and nothing had given Athene more pleasure than when she was guilty of some social or fashionable gaffe. Within six months, even Kerry’s even temper was strained. Confined as she was to an existence of idle ease, it had seemed to her that Alex had only married her to imprison her. He jetted back from abroad, swept her arrogantly off to bed and brushed aside her justifiable complaints with a maddening air of masculine indulgence.

      He thought she was too young to run a household of her own. He didn’t think she ought to travel with him. All the women in his family had always stayed very properly at home, awaiting their menfolk. The first cracks had come early in their marriage. Lonely, isolated by her poor Italian and family indifference, Kerry had been quietly clambering up the walls when Vickie took a job with a Venetian fashion house.

      Against Alex’s wishes she had gone to Venice to spend a week with her sister. Alex had flown into Venice and dragged her out of Vickie’s apartment as if she was a misbehaving child. She had flatly refused to go home with him. She had not given way. As a result, Alex had labelled Vickie a bad influence.

      Amazingly he had, however, agreed to buy them their own house shortly after that episode. They had moved to Florence, and while Alex had grudgingly said that Vickie was welcome to visit,