The Sicilian's Mistress by Lynne Graham

to propose.
    â€˜Where on earth are you going?’ Davina demanded.
    â€˜To see Edward,’ Milly looked at Gianni D’Angelo, and, try as she could, she could not suppress the sheer loathing raging through her. ‘You are a complete and utter bastard!’ she raked at him, heedless of the other woman’s shocked gasp. ‘And I don’t need a memory to tell me why I left you!’

CHAPTER FIVE
    R EFUSING to be turned from her purpose, Milly snatched her car keys from the hall table and drove over to Jennings Engineering. On the way, she thought back over the months since she had started seeing Edward.
    Right from the start he had been attentive and caring. The dream boyfriend for an unwed mother? a more cynical voice enquired. Certainly her pseudo-parents had heavily encouraged the relationship, but why not? As a family friend and a trusted employee, Edward had naturally impressed them as being ideal.
    But Milly had been more impressed by Edward’s apparent indifference to her amnesia. She had relaxed in his company. Other men she had dated had assumed that she was promiscuous just because she already had a child; Edward’s respectful attitude had come as a very welcome relief. It was hardly surprising that she had fallen in love with him.
    So what if it was a different kind of love from that which she had once felt for Gianni D’Angelo? From what she recalled of those emotions she imagined a lowering form of enslavement, made all the more dangerous and destructive by the strength of her sexual craving for him. There, it was out at last, she acknowledged angrily. An admission of the physical weakness which had probably got her involved with Gianni in the first place.
    Yet sex barely figured in her relationship with Edward. But then what she felt for Edward was a more mature and lasting love. So cymbals didn’t clash and fireworks didn’t go off when Edward kissed her. But where had the cymbals and the fireworks got her before? Down and out and pregnant by a male so frighteningly ruthless she could only admire herself for walking out on him three years earlier.
    Milly parked the car outside the small office block beside the engineering plant. She was relieved that Robin Jennings was still at home. She had had enough of other people’s interference.
    A nightmare mistake had been made, but she was OK, she told herself bracingly; she was coping. Gianni had tried to destroy everything, but as long as she still had Edward she would manage to come to terms with all the rest. She blocked out the little voice that warned that she was hanging by her fingernails onto her last shred of control.
    Edward was in his office. Her unannounced entrance made him rise from behind his desk in surprise. Strain from their contentious meeting the night before showed in the stiffness of his greeting.
    â€˜I was going to call you this afternoon,’ he told her rather defensively.
    â€˜I needed to see you to talk. This morning I found out something that I wish you’d thought to share openly with me,’ Milly admitted tautly.
    â€˜Unlike your life, mine is an open book,’ Edward retorted crisply. ‘I’ve kept nothing from you.’
    â€˜What about the partnership you get the day you marry me?’ Milly enquired, wanting him to tell her that that was a very twisted version of the truth.
    Edward stiffened. ‘Your parents told me they wanted that news to be a surprise. Naturally I didn’t discuss it with you.’
    Her knees now unreliable supports, Milly dropped down on the arm of a chair. ‘Would you have asked me to marry you without that partnership, Edward?’ she asked tightly. ‘Please be honest.’
    Edward’s fair complexion reddened. ‘That is a very unfair question.’
    â€˜But you’re not denying that the partnership was put on the table before you decided to propose, are you?’
    Edward studied her with unconcealed