‘First door along the hall.’
‘Be back in a minute.’
Getting rid of the condom. He’d kept his promise about protection. Even so, she would feel safer taking a contraceptive pill if they were to have an ongoing relationship.
The back view of Jake as he strode away was just as awesome as the rest of him—a perfectly proportioned male physique. Surely every woman he’d ever been with had wanted to hold on to him. She was no different. She could only hope she was different in Jake’s mind—a woman he wanted to hold on to.
He moved into the hall, out of sight. She heard the bathroom door being opened. A few moments later the sound of another door being opened made her wonder why he was checking out the guest bedroom.
‘Merlina?’
She jack-knifed up from the pillows, shock pumping through her heart.
That was not Jake’s voice calling out her name.
It was her father’s!
CHAPTER TEN
MERLINA bolted out of bed. She was stark naked. And so was Jake in the bathroom! Their clothes were on the living-room floor. Any second now her father would see them and…a string of loud Italian curses told her he had.
‘Merlina, get out here this minute!’ came the thunderous command.
‘Coming, Papa!’ she yelled back, frantically hoping Jake would hear and understand the warning to stay in the bathroom and let her handle her father.
Almost sick with panic, she raced to her clothes cupboard, grabbed her silk dressing-gown off its hanger and put it on as fast as she could. Her hairbrush was in one of the bags Jake had carried in so the best she could do was a finger-comb. It was impossible to make herself look respectable, anyway. Her father was probably still staring at the evidence that she wasn’t.
Why, oh, why hadn’t he rung the doorbell instead of appropriating the spare key and letting himself in? She would have had time to hide the discarded clothes, time to…but there was no time!
On the dubious principle that attack was the best form of defence, she fronted up to him in the living-room and asked, ‘What are you doing here, Papa?’
‘What am I doing here?’ he repeated incredulously. He threw his hands up in the air in his usual histrionic fashion. His thick, wavy, grey hair was tossed back. The black eyebrows rose, mocking the question. His hawkish nose sniffed the air in battle-readiness. His barrel chest was all puffed out and his teeth—very white against a face darkly weathered by working outside in the vineyard—gnashed before biting out the words again. ‘What am I doing here?’
He was starting to sound like a Greek chorus but Merlina knew this was venting in the Italian style, building up to the storm where hail stones would rain on her head.
‘You don’t usually drop in without warning,’ she slid in quickly.
‘How can I warn you when you do not answer your telephone?’ His dark eyes flashed furious accusation as he wildly gesticulated to punctuate every point he made. ‘Not on Saturday. Not on Sunday. Not today. And when we ring your workplace we are told you are not employed there any more. Told by a stranger. No news of this from our daughter.’
‘I would have got around to telling you,’ she excused, shrugging off the necessity for instant communication about everything—her family’s favourite pastime. ‘Why were you calling me? Is something wrong at home?’
‘And look where this precious independence of yours has got you!’ he lashed out with a sweeping gesture of disgust at the clothes on the floor.
Merlina unclenched her jaw, took a deep breath and persisted with her question. ‘What’s happened? What’s brought you here? Is Mamma okay?’
‘No, your mother is not okay,’ he retorted fiercely. ‘She is worried sick about you. All day she is saying, something bad has happened to Merlina. I feel it here.’ He slammed his hand over his heart, play-acting her mother’s distress. ‘I cannot bear it, Angelo, she says. You must fly to Sydney, find her. And what do I find? What do I find?’ His arms flew up in outrage again. ‘My daughter—’ his eyes raked down her red silk dressing-gown ‘—a scarlet woman!’
Merlina couldn’t help rolling her eyes. He’d have her painted as a prostitute next. Banned from his household forever. The modern world and her father had no meeting ground. The big problem was…she didn’t want to lose her family. Somehow she had to fight this, but how?
‘You’ve got that wrong, Mr Rossi,’ came the calm statement from behind her.
Jake!
She spun around.
He was coming down the hall, a white bath-towel tucked around his waist, but the rest of him still flagrantly naked. Didn’t he realise that his appearance would enflame her father’s rage? Her heart pitter-pattered in a frenzy of fear over what might happen next.
‘So! You’ve come out of hiding,’ her father jeered contemptuously, drawing himself up to match Jake’s height and look down his Roman nose at him.
‘I wasn’t hiding,’ Jake corrected him. ‘I’d gone to the bathroom and I couldn’t help overhearing what was going on out here. Seemed to me I should step in.’ He curved his arm around her shoulders in a protective hug. ‘I won’t have Merlina abused, Mr Rossi.’
Her father glared at him. ‘It is you who has abused my daughter, stripping her of her virtue.’
‘Papa, please—’
Her plea for some temperance was cut off, her attempt only serving to bring her father’s wrath down on her again. ‘Who is this man? Did I not teach you to save your virginity for your husband?’
‘My name is Jake Devila…’
‘Devila?’ Enlightenment struck. ‘Is that not the name of your employer, Merlina?’
‘I don’t work for him any more, Papa.’
‘What? He sacked you from your job because you let him seduce you into going to bed with him?’
‘No, Papa…’
He ignored her denial, attacking Jake again. ‘You are a man without honour. Using your position of power over my daughter to turn her mind.’
‘He didn’t,’ Merlina cried. She’d simply given her mind a rest and followed her heart for once.
Her father’s finger went up in victorious argument. ‘He forced you to have your hair cut. And Sylvana told us he insisted you wear immodest clothes to work.’
‘There were good reasons for that,’ Merlina almost shouted in her urgent need to be heard. Sylvana’s big mouth should have been zippered at birth!