And she didn’t need to give into blackmail because hadn’t she already decided to tell Renzo about her past? This might be the push she needed to see if he still wanted her when he discovered who she really was. Her mouth dried. Dared she take that risk?
She had no choice.
Drawing her shoulders back, she looked straight into Drake’s shifty eyes. ‘You’re not getting any money from me,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d like you to leave and not bother coming back.’
His lip curled and then he shrugged. ‘Have it your own way, Darcy.’
Of course, if she’d thought it through properly, she might have wondered why he obeyed her quite so eagerly...
* * *
Renzo’s eyes narrowed as the man with the pockmarked face shoved his way past, coming out of his private elevator as if he had every right to do so. His frown deepened. Had he been making some kind of delivery? Surely not, dressed like that? He stood for a moment watching his retreating back, instinct alerting him to a danger he didn’t quite understand. But it was enough to cast a shadow over a deliciously high mood which had led to him leaving work early—something which had caused his secretary to blink at him in astonishment.
In truth, Renzo had been pretty astonished himself. Taking a half-day off wasn’t the way he usually operated, but he had wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon with Darcy. Getting into bed with her. Running his fingers through her silky riot of curls. Losing himself deep in her tight, tight body with his mouth on her breast. Maybe even telling her how good she made him feel. Plus he’d received an urgent message reminding him that he needed to insure the necklace he’d spent a fortune on last night.
After watching the man leave the building, Renzo took the penthouse elevator where the faint smell of tobacco and beer still tainted the air. He unlocked the door to his apartment just as Darcy tore out of the sitting room. But the trouble was she didn’t look like the Darcy of this morning’s smouldering fantasies, when somehow he’d imagined arriving home to see her clad in that black satin basque and matching silk stockings he’d recently bought. Not only was she wearing jeans and a baggy shirt—her face was paler than usual and her eyes looked huge and haunted with something which looked like guilt. Now, why was that? he wondered.
‘Renzo!’ she exclaimed, raking a handful of bouncing red curls away from her forehead and giving him an uncertain smile. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘So I see.’ He put his briefcase on the hall table. ‘Who was the man I saw leaving?’
‘The man?’ she questioned, but he could hear the sudden quaver in her voice.
Definitely guilt, he thought grimly.
‘The man I met coming down in the elevator. Bad skin. Bad smell. Who was he, Darcy?’
Darcy met the cool accusation in Renzo’s eyes and knew she had run out of reasons not to tell him.
‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.
He didn’t respond straight away, just walked into the sitting room leaving her to follow him, her senses alerted to the sudden tension in his body and the forbidding set of his shoulders. Usually, he pulled her into his arms and kissed all the breath out of her when he arrived home but today he hadn’t even touched her. And when he turned around, Darcy was shocked by the cold expression on his face.
‘So talk,’ he said.
She felt like someone who’d been put on stage in front of a vast audience and told to play a part she hadn’t learnt. Because she’d never spoken about this before, not to anyone. She’d buried it so deep it was almost inaccessible. But she needed to access it now, before his irritation grew any deeper.
‘He’s someone I was in care with.’
‘In care?’
She nodded. ‘That’s what they call it in England, although it’s a bit of a misnomer because you don’t actually get much in the way of care. I lived in a children’s home in the north for most of my childhood.’
His black eyes narrowed. ‘What happened to your parents?’
Darcy could feel a bead of sweat trickling its way down her back. Here it was. The question which separated most normal people from the unlucky few. The question which made you feel a freak no matter which way you answered it. Was it any wonder she’d spent her life trying to avoid having to do so?
And yet didn’t it demonstrate the shallowness of her relationship with Renzo that in all the time she’d known him—this was the first time he’d actually asked? Dead parents had been more than enough information for him. He hadn’t been the type of person to quiz her about her favourite memory or how she’d spent her long-ago Christmases.
‘I’m illegitimate,’ she said baldly. ‘I don’t know who my father was and neither did my mother. And she... Well, for a lot of my childhood, she wasn’t considered fit to be able to take care of me.’
‘Why not?’
‘She had...’ She hesitated. ‘She had a drug problem. She was a junkie.’
He let out a long breath and Darcy found herself searching his face for some kind of understanding, some shred of compassion for a situation which had been out of her control. But his expression remained like ice. His black eyes were stony as they skimmed over her, looking at her as if it was the first time he’d seen her and not liking what they saw.
‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’
‘Because you didn’t ask. And you didn’t ask because you didn’t want to know!’ she exclaimed. ‘You made that very clear. We haven’t had the kind of relationship where we talked about stuff like this. You just wanted...sex.’
She waited for him to deny it. To tell her that there had been more to it than that—and Darcy realised she was already thinking of their relationship in the past tense. But he didn’t deny it. His sudden closed look made his features appear shuttered as he walked over to the table near where he’d undressed her last night and her heart missed a beat as she saw him looking down at the polished surface, on which stood a lamp and nothing else.
Nothing else.
It took a moment for her to register the significance of this and that moment came when he lifted his black gaze to hers and slanted her an unfathomable look. ‘Where’s the necklace?’ he questioned softly.
Darcy’s mind raced. In the heat of everything that had happened, she’d forgotten about the diamond necklace he’d bought last night for her at the auction. She vaguely remembered the dazzle of the costly gems as he’d dropped them onto the table, but his hands had been all over her at the time and it had blotted out everything except the magic of his touch. Had she absent-mindedly tidied it away when she was picking up her clothes this morning? No. It had definitely been there when...
Fear and horror clamped themselves around her suddenly racing heart.
When...
Drake! Her throat dried as she remembered leaving him alone in the room while she went to fetch him a beer. Remembered the way he’d hurriedly left after his half-hearted attempt at blackmail. Had Drake stolen the necklace?
Of course he had.
‘I don’t—’
His voice was like steel. ‘Did your friend take it?’
‘He’s not—’
‘What’s the matter, Darcy?’ Contemptuously, he cut through her protest. ‘Did I arrive home unexpectedly and spoil your