At Her Latin Lover's Command. Susan Stephens

      ‘You’re not particularly demonstrative,’ he snapped.

      ‘Are you comparing me with Italian mothers?’ she demanded. ‘You know how I am. I’m not effusive—never have been. I try not to spoil him. But I do hug and kiss him and think of his welfare all the time. I won’t have you saying I don’t love my own son when it’s written in my eyes for anyone to see! I absolutely adore him! I am his mother!’

      ‘To my eternal regret.’ Dante scowled. ‘And I find it inexplicable that he’s been asking for you every single day.’

      Anguish mingled with delight and longing in her expression. Dante glanced away as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.

      ‘Poor little scrap!’ she exclaimed, horrified by the trauma Carlo must have suffered. Dante had no option but to realise that she must have custody of their son. Emboldened, she lifted her head belligerently. ‘He must have been bewildered when you whisked him off! It’s unbelievable that you put him through this, Dante!’

      ‘I could hardly leave him with you after what I’d witnessed,’ he snarled.

      ‘Me? Supposedly drunk—?’

      ‘If only that were all!’ Loathing spilled from his eyes. ‘You’re a trollop, Miranda. You entertained a man in our bed, knocking back champagne with him and, by the state of you when I arrived, you might have been taking recreational drugs too. While our son lay neglected—’

      ‘None of that’s true!’ she cried in horror. ‘How can you say that—?’

      Pain was slashing into every line of his face. ‘With great difficulty!’ he snarled. ‘I know what I saw. You were disorientated and totally out of it. The evidence of your partying, your infidelity, was there for anyone to see—’

      ‘It’s an out-and-out lie!’ she croaked. ‘If that’s what you’re pretending…’

      Dante jerked around, the ferocity of his expression drying her throat so that she couldn’t continue. His face was taut with anger. In his eyes blazed a hatred so intense, so murderous that it was as if he’d stabbed her in the heart.

      ‘Pretending? Pretending?!’ he cried, in a slicingly cold voice that lashed her more surely than if he’d yelled at her. ‘I did not imagine that I came home unexpectedly from Milan and found you virtually comatose, the sheets soaked in champagne, and my son abandoned and screaming his head off in the nursery!’ he ripped out. ‘You were drugged, drunk and incapable. And from the marks on your body you’d clearly had rough sex with some,’ he choked and forced out, ‘some common thug—’

      ‘No! That’s a vile lie!’ Reliving that evening, she felt as if her head might burst. Everything that had happened was a terrible, sickening blur… ‘Of one thing I’m certain!’ she cried with passion. ‘I’ve never been unfaithful to you! I’ve told you that over and over again! I had flu—’

      ‘But no temperature. I checked,’ he said stonily.

      ‘I don’t care! That’s the only explanation—’

      ‘No. Regrettably, it is not.’

      ‘Flu!’ she insisted vehemently.

      ‘And champagne is a cure?’ he flung. ‘In two glasses?’

      Her hand strayed to her forehead. She felt nauseous, as she had on that day. Whenever she went to sleep now, she woke up sweating from terrible nightmares in which she seemed to be living out Dante’s fantasy that she’d had sex that night. Someone rough and uncaring was ripping off her clothes. Hurling her on the bed. Holding her down.

      She blanched. It was true she’d had bruises the next morning. Had that been Dante? she wondered in sudden shock. Taking his revenge?

      ‘Oh, God!’ she whispered.

      And suddenly her shoulders were being shaken, and she came back to the present time to find the black-eyed Dante standing in front of her and glaring at her in contempt.

      She stared at the flare of his jacket where it sat snugly over his slender hips. She must convince him of her innocence. Find out what he’d done. Then close the matter forever if she was ever to move on and reclaim her life.

      ‘I don’t know what happened,’ she ripped out hoarsely. ‘But I swear—’

      ‘Swear all you like. One thing is clear. To this day you have no idea what you were doing,’ he said in disgust. ‘Do you think that makes it all right?’ He sucked in a huge breath. ‘There could have been a football team enjoying your favours in your bedroom for all you know! You were too drunk and too drugged to have any idea what was happening!’ he exploded.

      ‘I wasn’t! None of that is true—!’

      ‘Yes! I was there! I saw you, remember?’

      He glared down at her with a look that told her he was about to say something significant.

      ‘What…what is it?’ she asked shakily.

      There was pure loathing in his eyes. ‘Surely you realise that under the circumstances,’ he snarled, ‘I can’t ever trust you to look after Carlo?’

      Horror-struck, she searched his implacable face. The room spun and she gripped the arms of the chair with clawing hands. Chalk-white, she desperately swallowed down the huge lump of emotion that was sitting like a leaden weight in her throat.

      ‘You—you mean…!’ Hardly able to breathe, she grabbed the cup and gulped down the still scalding liquid so that she could speak. ‘Is that it? Why you’ve brought me here? To tell me that…I—I can’t take Carlo home with me?’ she wavered.

      The black eyes scorched her into terror-struck silence.

      ‘Precisely,’ he clipped.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      LOSING control completely in her misery and anger, Miranda leapt up and slapped his arrogant, smug face, her hand cracking with a sound like a pistol shot.

      ‘You brute!’ she yelled. Blindly she launched herself at him, beating her fists against his chest. ‘You dragged me here, raising my hopes, deliberately taunting me… And all the time you never meant to let me have Carlo! I hate you! Loathe you! You’re utterly contemptible! He needs me, Dante! You know he does!’ she raged. ‘My baby needs me and I need him! You promised me I’d see him! You promised!’

      He grabbed her hands and wrestled them behind her back. He was breathing hard, his nostrils flared and white in contrast to the scarlet marks on his high cheekbones, his perfect white teeth bared in a grimace.

      ‘I know that!’ he seethed. ‘So this is what whips you into a frenzy! The thought of losing the chance to use Carlo to screw me for half my fortune—!’

      ‘I don’t want your money! I don’t care about your ill-gotten gains!’ she wailed. ‘It’s Carlo I care about! Punish me all you like, but don’t punish a three-year-old child!’

      Her body slammed into his with a controlled force. Her upturned face was inches from Dante’s grim mouth and she felt a sharp stab of fear at the blazing fury in his coal-black eyes.

      ‘Listen to me!’ he snarled. ‘I do not intend to give Carlo one more day’s distress! How dare you think I could hurt him? Why do you think I’ve swallowed my pride and compromised my honour to bring you over here? I never wanted to see you again. Whenever I think of you and the filth you’ve been consorting with, my guts scream with pain and disgust! I am ashamed that you have shamed the name of Severini. I wish I didn’t have to see you, a shallow, heartless woman who chose to marry purely for material gain—!’

      ‘I what? That’s absolute rubbish!’ she cried in astonishment.

      ‘—and even now you’re plotting to make as much as you can from