Bedded and Wedded for Revenge Read online

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘I felt guilty about Andreas buying me off. I would have left it alone, but, as I told you, your stepmother came to see me,’ he said. ‘There was something about her that I hadn’t seen before, a chilling sort of ruthlessness. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants. I hadn’t seen that in her before, in spite of the things you often said she did and said to you.’

  ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘She tried to blackmail me,’ he said. ‘I think your father must have guessed the truth about the accident. That’s probably why he contacted Andreas Trigliani as he presumed I would be an obvious choice of husband to fulfil his terms.’

  ‘Whose own bribe you readily accepted?’ Gemma said, her tone laced with accusation.

  His eyes moved away from hers again. ‘I would rather accept money from a man like Andreas Trigliani than be toyed with by someone like your stepmother.’

  Gemma couldn’t help agreeing with him even though it pained her to admit it.

  ‘I hated lying to you, Gemma,’ he said. ‘You have been the one friend who has stood by me all these years. What I have done to you is unforgivable. I wish I could rewrite the past but no one can. We’ve both in our different ways paid a huge price for stupid mistakes. I only hope you can find some happiness now as I have found with Jeremy waiting for me outside.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ Gemma finally managed to say, but it was all she could get past her burning, tight throat.

  ‘Goodbye, Gemma. I probably won’t see you again. I think it’s best.’

  Gemma couldn’t speak as she assisted him to the door. She stood in its frame and watched as Jeremy came up and helped Michael into the van with loving concern.

  She closed the door and leaned against it once they had driven off, her mind spinning off in all directions with such force she didn’t at first recognise she wasn’t alone.

  She looked up and saw Susanne standing there with a duster in her hand, her face a picture of incredulity, not unlike what Gemma was still feeling.

  ‘I didn’t leave at my usual time,’ the housekeeper explained. ‘I didn’t hear the doorbell at first; I was putting rubbish out. I thought I’d stay a bit longer as I was worried about you. Are you all right?’

  Gemma pushed herself away from the door. ‘I think so.’

  ‘I heard most of it,’ Susanne confessed. ‘I think you should tell Andreas immediately.’

  Gemma turned to look at her. ‘He won’t believe me.’

  ‘Then I will tell him.’

  ‘You can if you like, but there’s something I have to do first,’ Gemma said as she reached for the phone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Susanne asked.

  ‘I’m calling for a taxi,’ Gemma answered. ‘I think it’s time my stepmother and I had a little chat.’

  Susanne pushed the phone out of her hand. ‘You don’t need to call a taxi. I’ll take you myself.’

  Gemma released the phone. ‘I don’t want to embroil you in something like this.’

  Susanne gave her a smile. ‘We’re friends, right? Friends stand beside each other. You need backup right now and, since your husband is unavailable, I will have to step in.’

  ‘I can’t ask you do to this.’

  ‘You’re not asking me.’ Susanne grabbed her bag and keys and hastily scribbled a note and left it on the hall table. ‘Come on. We’re on a hunt for the truth and, let me tell you, I’m like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to the truth. I don’t stop until I uncover it.’

  Gemma followed in her wake, wondering what Andreas was going to say when he came home and found both his housekeeper and wife gone without trace.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MARCIA LANDERSTALLE had clearly not been expecting visitors and at first refused to answer the door of her penthouse suite at The Landerstalle Hotel.

  Susanne pulled some strings with one of the managers and brandished a skeleton key as she rejoined Gemma. ‘It always pays to have connections,’ she said with a little smile of victory.

  ‘You’re really good at this,’ Gemma remarked. ‘I’m quaking in my shoes, but you’re taking this all in your stride.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve had to deal with difficult people all my life,’ Susanne said and she rapped at the door again. ‘Come on, Marcia. I’ve got a key. Either you let us in or we come in. Your choice.’

  The door opened after a slight pause and Gemma came face to face with her stepmother for the first time in nearly five and a half years.

  Marcia’s cold light blue gaze stripped Gemma. ‘You’ve put on weight, I see. I told you you would if you didn’t control yourself.’

  Gemma fought against the emotional backlash the cruel taunt evoked, trying not to recall the many times she had engaged in self-abuse to rid her mind of those vicious jibes.

  ‘Come on, Marcia,’ Susanne sprang to Gemma’s defence. ‘Didn’t you know that middle age spread wasn’t something you ate but something you were supposed to avoid?’

  Gemma felt the urge to giggle at Susanne’s acerbic wit, but the seriousness of the situation called for solemnity.

  She faced her stepmother squarely, calling on the acting skill she had been putting in practice with Andreas. ‘I thought I should inform you that I finally remember what happened the night of my accident. My amnesia is no longer. I have remembered everything.’

  As ploys went it certainly worked if the pallor of Marcia’s face was anything to go by. Gemma watched as the older woman sank to the nearest sofa, her hands visibly shaking.

  But before Gemma could say anything else there was a sound behind her and she turned to see Andreas framed in the doorway.

  Susanne ushered him in, murmuring something to him in an undertone.

  Gemma met his gaze briefly, surprised to find his eyes warm as they connected with hers.

  She reluctantly turned back to face her stepmother. ‘Why don’t you save me the trouble of recounting that night and tell it in your own words?’ she suggested, taking a risk she wasn’t sure was going to pay off.

  Marcia’s eyes flickered to Andreas, then to Susanne and back to Gemma. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I think you do,’ Gemma said. ‘Michael Carter came to see me this evening. He told me the truth about what I told him the night I went to his house, how upset I was after yet another run-in with you.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Marcia said. ‘You don’t remember a thing.’

  ‘I remember a lot more than you realise,’ Gemma said.

  ‘You’re trying to threaten me to scare me off fighting for your father’s estate,’ Marcia said.

  ‘He would have left you with everything without question if he didn’t have doubts,’ Gemma pointed out.

  ‘You’ve always been a lying little cow,’ Marcia snarled. ‘Look at the way you treated Andreas here. The whole staff was talking about it for weeks afterwards. You lied to gain favour with your father. Andreas hadn’t done a thing to you, but you wilfully ruined his reputation by asserting he had. You’re a cold-hearted little bitch who didn’t even have the grace to make peace with your father before he died.’

  ‘You have the choice to tell it your way or hear my version,’ Gemma challenged. ‘Somehow the courts might not take too kindly to hearing the truth about what happened that night.’

  ‘She is right.’ Andreas stepped forward, placing a gentle and protective arm around Gemma’s waist. ‘It is time for you to tell the truth or have it told for you. I have engaged a legal team who assure me they will make mincemeat of your claims to Lionel Landerstalle’s estate. You have not got a hope, not unless you are willing to put everything you own on the line. The court case could go on for years. I have enough money to fuel it indefinitely but you do not.’

  The defeat flickered on Marcia’s face but it was clear she wasn’t going down without a last-minute fight. ‘I’m glad I did what I did,’ she snarled viciously. ‘You deserved it, you little bitch, for be
ing so difficult. I tried my best with you over the years but you refused to accept me. I wanted a child but your father wouldn’t hear of it. He was fed up with how difficult you were and refused to take a chance on having another child in case he or she turned out spoilt and wilful like you. You ruined my life and I thought it was high time you were taught a lesson.’

  Gemma felt her throat move up and down as her stepmother’s gaze burned into hers. ‘You were being your usual flirtatious self at your party,’ Marcia continued. ‘But for once you weren’t drinking. One of the guests who had come with one of your so-called girlfriends had his eye on you all evening and I told him you liked him. I suggested he take you a drink and take things from there.’

  Gemma felt the tightening of Andreas’s arm around her as the memory of that evening returned with brutal force. She clamped her eyes shut, but it only made it worse. The only thing that held her together was the strong fortress of Andreas beside her.

  ‘I didn’t know he would lace your drink with a party drug,’ Marcia said, although she showed no regret on her face or in her tone.

  ‘That’s what the argument the night of the accident was about, wasn’t it?’ Andreas asked the question Gemma would have asked if she could have located her voice. ‘You told Gemma what you had done by encouraging that low-life creep to abuse her in such a despicable way. You told her how you had vicariously destroyed her life in a petty payback that had devastating consequences for her.’

  Marcia put up her chin. ‘She asked for it. She was always prancing about as if she was better than anyone else. Besides, I thought there was a rough sort of justice in it. After all, she had cried wolf over your treatment of her. I thought it was only fair that no one believed her when the tables were turned.’

  ‘So you took it into your own hands and ruined her young life as if it meant nothing?’ he accused, the red hot anger running through his voice unmistakable.

  ‘She deserved it,’ Marcia bit out. ‘You of all people should agree with me. Isn’t that why you married her—to get revenge for what she did to you?’

  Gemma felt her breath come to a screeching halt in her chest. She couldn’t look at Andreas in case she saw the truth of her stepmother’s words reflected in the dark gaze she had come to love so much.

  ‘I do not wish to discuss my reasons for marrying Gemma with someone like you,’ he said. ‘All I will say is I am glad I did so. I have not regretted a single day of my marriage.’

  Gemma heard someone sobbing and realised it was Susanne, her face buried in a handkerchief.

  ‘Lionel Landerstalle trusted me enough to take care of his daughter and I took his trust very seriously,’ Andreas went on. ‘I suggest you cancel your lawyer. You have no hope of winning this case. Gemma may have some lapses in her memory, but I have done some investigations of my own and the one thing her father knew was that you were having an affair a few months before he died. The on-and-off-again affair that Gemma had discovered you were having just before her accident, which, conveniently for you, she had lost the memory of relaying to you.’

  ‘She should have died in that accident,’ Marcia said with a venomous glare. ‘She ruined my life with Lionel. She came between us constantly from the word go. I only had the affair because I was so unhappy because of her.’

  ‘She was just a child,’ Andreas said. ‘You were the adult. It was up to you to make the necessary adjustments—’

  ‘No, wait,’ Gemma interrupted, turning from the shelter of Andreas’s arms to face her stepmother. ‘Marcia…I have many regrets about how I behaved when you first came on the scene. Andreas is to some degree right in that I was just a child, but I was a very spoilt child and I didn’t really give you a chance. I made your life hell. I was jealous and missed my mother. I know you are not essentially a bad person; I’m not sure anyone really is deep inside.’ She took a shaky breath and continued, ‘I am so deeply ashamed that you weren’t able to have the child you desperately wanted. I didn’t realise I had caused my father to deny you that right.’

  ‘Cara,’ Andreas began with a cautionary hand on her arm, but she ignored him and went on regardless. ‘Please, Marcia. Forgive me for what I did. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that and I’m sorry.’

  Marcia’s face crumpled and she shook her head in remorse and regret for what she had done. Before Andreas could stop her, Gemma had broken free from his protective hold to embrace her stepmother.

  It was some minutes before Marcia and Gemma separated; both of their faces were ravaged by tears, but Andreas had never felt such pride in all his life at the way Gemma gently spoke to her stepmother as they were finally leaving.

  ‘You can have whatever you want from my father’s estate,’ she said. ‘I just need enough funds to see me through for the next couple of months. I also need to pay Andreas back, but the rest is yours. I would have liked to give you the hotel but I promised Andreas I would sell it to him, but perhaps we can come to some arrangement—you know, where you live in the hotel rent-free.’

  Marcia nodded, unable to speak.

  ‘Come, piccola,’ Andreas said wryly. ‘My housekeeper is—what do you call it in English? Turning into a basket case?’

  Gemma smiled at Susanne, who was still doing her best to mop up her tears. ‘She’s not a basket case, Andreas. She’s a woman with a soft heart.’

  ‘Dio Mio!’ He slapped his head theatrically with his hand. ‘Do not tell me I have now two such women in my life.’

  It was immensely frustrating to Gemma to have to wait until Susanne had been escorted to her car before she could speak privately with Andreas.

  She considered doing so in the car on the way back to his house, but decided to wait until they were both inside without the distraction of driving through traffic.

  Andreas took her into his arms as soon as they entered the house, but, although Gemma longed for the comfort of his arms, she knew she had things to confess.

  ‘Andreas…I need to talk to you.’

  ‘I am tired of talking,’ he said. ‘I want to make love to you.’

  She peered up into his eyes. ‘Did you really mean it when you said you were glad you married me and that you hadn’t regretted a single day?’

  He gave her a rueful smile. ‘I was not ready to admit it until this evening, but, yes, I am very glad I married you. I admit I had nefarious motives for doing so. I had devised various plans for revenge, but seeing you again changed all that. You had changed. As much as I fought it I fell in love with you all over again, but even more hopelessly this time.’

  ‘I have a confession to make,’ she said, unable to meet his eyes. ‘I have memory loss, great holes of it which frustrate me daily, but the one thing I have never forgotten is how I treated you.’ She raised her eyes back to his. ‘Can you ever forgive me for that, both for treating you that way and also for lying to you so often in the last few weeks?’

  He smiled as he drew her closer. ‘I had already begun to suspect you had not forgotten me, cara. I felt it in your kiss, the touch of your hands and the way your eyes avoided mine so often.’

  ‘You knew?’

  He smiled. ‘You are not a very good liar, cara. Did I not tell you that before? You made many little slips and I was storing them up, ready to call you to account, when I realised I loved you too much to hurt you.’

  ‘There’s something else…’ She lowered her gaze again.

  ‘If you are about to confess about where the hundred thousand dollars went, I already know.’

  She blinked at him in shock. ‘You do?’

  ‘I had a paper trail done, but don’t worry, no one else will find out. I realised it must be someone from the shelter you were helping. The private investigator I engaged told me it had to remain a secret for the mother and child’s protection. He was concerned he might have frightened your friend. He had been following a little too closely and she had seemed very agitated. But they are perfectly safe now and you should hear soon if the operation has been a su
ccess.’

  Gemma felt relief flood through her that he finally knew but there was just one more secret she had to confess.

  She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Um…there’s something else I have to tell you.’

  ‘Must we waste time with all these confessions when all I want to do is claim you as my own?’ he asked. ‘I want to make love to you. I am bursting with the need to do so.’

  She lifted her troubled eyes to his. ‘I can’t give you what you want, Andreas. You said when you offered to marry me that I was to give you a child. It was part of the deal.’

  ‘Do not worry, mia piccola, I know you need more time. We will not rush things. When the time is right it will happen.’

  ‘But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, Andreas,’ she said, bordering on despair. ‘I am unable to have children.’

  He stared at her for a long time, his expression giving nothing away.

  ‘It was the accident.’ She filled the silence. ‘The doctor said I would probably need IVF to conceive. It would take a miracle for it to happen any other way.’

  Andreas held her close, his heart beating solidly, firmly against hers. ‘Then we will hope and pray for a miracle and if one does not occur then we will go looking for one by some other means, all right?’

  She looked up at him and smiled, her heart feeling as if it were taking up all the available room in her chest. ‘All right,’ she said, her eyes shining with joy. ‘I’ll start praying right now.’

  He pulled her even closer. ‘You can do that later, but in the meantime I have something else in mind.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m game enough to ask what it is,’ she said as he began to nuzzle her neck, her skin shivering all over. ‘Is it something I’m going to enjoy?’

  He lifted his head to give her a smoulderingly sexy look.

  ‘You are not just going to enjoy it—you are never going to forget it for the rest of your life.’