The Italian's Price

That her identical twin was thoughtless went without saying, but that didn’t mean Jilly wouldn’t get in touch at some stage, when she finally remembered her family back home. Sadly she reflected that Jilly didn’t even know that their mother had passed away. She would be gutted. So, until her twin remembered that she had a family who worried about her and made contact, she would have to stay put.

Pushing the floppy fringe of her short blonde hair out of her eyes, she opened the local evening paper she’d bought on her way home from work and optimistically turned to the Situations Vacant column.

She was going to need to find a new job.

Manda, her boss, had told her this morning that she was selling up. She and her husband wanted to start a family—at the age of thirty-six it was time. And conception might prove easier if she wasn’t rushing from pillar to post from the crack of dawn.

The likelihood of another florist taking over the business and keeping her on was slim—profits had been dropping for the last year. ‘You’d better start looking for something else,’ Manda had warned. ‘If you find something, don’t worry about working out your notice. I can wind the business down on my own. No probs.’ So that meant she had to find something double quick if she was to be able to pay the rent on this flat.

The sound of the doorbell made her spirits lift. Cleo, her best friend since schooldays, had said she’d pop by this evening, bring a bottle of wine, and they could discuss her wedding plans. Milly was to be chief bridesmaid.

Glad that her friend was a couple of hours early—she’d mentioned nine as the most likely time—she flew down the narrow, carpetless staircase to let her in. And found she was staring at a complete stranger.

A drop dead handsome stranger.

An unexplained sensation quivered its way down her spine, intensifying as a shard of triumph glimmered briefly in the stranger’s dark eyes and the sinfully sexy mouth curved in a smile that was definitely more predatory than friendly.

‘The disguise doesn’t fool me, Jilly, but it suits you—believe it or not.’

The deep voice was slightly accented; it made her toes curl. He obviously thought she was her glamorous twin, dressed in the sort of gear Jilly wouldn’t be seen dead in—faded old jeans and woolly sweater, the trademark long beautiful hair cut to a boyish bob, and she shook her head, about to tell him he’d made an understandable mistake. But he forestalled her, striding past her, drawling crushingly, ‘You should have known there was no place to hide. Lesson one—no one messes with me and mine. Lesson two—you pay for trying.’

Heavens! What had Jilly done now? The burning question went unspoken as he reached the foot of the dimly lit stairs and swung round to face her. Her breath caught, her heart hammered, speech was impossible for the moment because he looked so formidable.

Not an ounce of spare flesh on his impeccably suited six foot frame, broad shoulders, narrow waist and elegantly long legs. The dark hair, spangled with raindrops, was superbly cut, his features austerely sculpted but saved from coldness by a wickedly sensual mouth. And those eyes—rich dark chocolate with penetrating amber glints trained on her own green ones, which were wide with apprehension.

‘My grandmother is already missing you. I will not have her upset. I told her you had to leave the villa because of a family crisis. You will stick to that story.’ The long beautiful mouth tightened with distaste. ‘Personally, I wouldn’t let you within a mile of my home. But for Nonna’s sake you will return to Tuscany with me tomorrow. You will take up your duties, continue to amuse and charm her but with one stricture—’ he delivered chillingly‘—there will be no more shopping trips in Florence on the pretext of refreshing her wardrobe and somehow persuading her to fill yours with designer gear. Understood?’

Not waiting for a reply, he drawled icily, his eyes threateningly narrowed on her now ashen face, ‘The alternative is a spell in prison. I personally take care of my grandmother’s finances. Did you think the large cash withdrawals would remain unnoticed? That I wouldn’t make enquiries? The forged signatures on the cheques you presented are good enough for casual scrutiny by a clerk who recognised you as having accompanied the old lady who always used cash because she considered the use of plastic the devil’s work. But not good enough to fool me. Or an expert brought in by the courts.’

Milly gasped and turned whiter. Shock had her feet rooted to the spot. Her heart was thumping so heavily she could hardly breathe. Her stomach seemed to be turning inside out and her head was reeling.

All through his hostile diatribe she’d been struggling to make sense of what he was saying, putting her initial and instinctive need to butt in and correct him on hold as the conviction that her identical twin was in trouble deepened, until the mention of prison, of fraud and theft made it impossible to let on that she wasn’t the woman he was looking for.

Jilly was plainly in a horrible mess and until she could figure out what to do, how to protect her sister, she’d say nothing and hope she’d nodded off and this was a nightmare, not real.

But it was all too real.

He turned and headed for the door, his stride lithe and totally assured, his shoulders straight and elegant. He opened the door, admitting damp air. ‘I will collect you at six in the morning. Be ready. If you attempt to disappear again, be sure that I will find you. Be very sure of that.’

He turned then, his stunning eyes hard and cold. ‘In the event of your non-compliance to my demands, I shall have no hesitation in hauling you through the courts and seeing you behind bars. My desire to protect my grandmother from the pain of discovering that the hired companion she had grown to trust, rely on and love was nothing more than a devious thief is strong. But even that has its limits.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘HE CAN’T MAKE you do that!’ Cleo howled, her perky face scarlet with outrage.

Secretly, Milly desperately wished she could agree with her. But she loved her twin and her conscience wouldn’t let her wash her hands of her. When her friend had arrived, complete with samples of fabric, wedding magazines and a bottle of wine, she had still been sitting, stunned, on the draughty staircase.

And she’d let it all out, relaying every word the Italian had said and now, the wine poured, Cleo was glaring at her across the table. ‘You must be crazy. I won’t let you! Phone him and put him straight. Now. What’s his name and where’s he staying?’

Milly shrugged, fiddling abstractedly with the stem of her wineglass. ‘How should I know? It would have given the game away if I’d asked his name, wouldn’t it! He thinks I’m Jilly, his grandmother’s companion. So I shouldn’t need to ask his name! And, as for where he’s staying, I didn’t get the chance to ask since he didn’t let me get a word in edgewise, and I was too shocked to even think of asking, even if he had. He just kept on threatening—’

‘Which is exactly why you should tell him who you really are,’ Cleo stressed. ‘Have nothing more to do with him, let him go find the real Jilly. Let her pay for what she’s done.’

Milly could understand her friend’s strong misgivings, but, she said, ‘I’m really worried about her. The guy who was here has a short fuse, that was glaringly obvious. If I tell him the truth and he has to go searching for Jilly all over again he’ll quickly run out of patience and get the law involved. He looked and acted like the kind of guy who would get Interpol jumping and she’d be hunted down and dragged in front of a judge.’ Her stomach twisted painfully at the thought and her voice shook as she repeated, ‘I’m worried about her. She’s always been headstrong but never dishonest. I’m as sure as I can be that there’s been some ghastly mistake.’

Which earned her a sharp reply, ‘You don’t call it dishonest to persuade your mother to mortgage her home to the hilt, cash in that bond your father set up for a rainy day just before he died, get her to go in as an equal partner in that crackpot beauty salon business then do a runner when it went bust, leaving your mother with a mountain of debts, no home to call her own, just this grotty rented flat.’

Put like that it did sound, well, a bit selfish. Milly’s clear green eyes clouded. But, to be fair to her twin, their mother had been only too glad to fall in with Jilly’s plans if only to have her favourite daughter permanently home again. Jilly, the outgoing bubbly twin, able to charm the birds out of the trees, had always been everyone’s favourite. She, Milly, had always been the quiet one, the home-body happy to be in the background, lacking her identical twin’s glamour and drive, so she hadn’t resented occupying second place. Not at all.

They’d been eighteen when Dad had died of a massive and totally unexpected heart attack, leaving his wife shattered and helpless.

Dear Arthur had always made all the decisions, handled all the finances, ruled his small family with a rod of iron. After his death Jilly had persuaded mum to finance a crash course to enable her to get her Beauty Specialists Diploma. It had meant living away from home and had taken almost every penny of mum’s liquid savings. ‘I’ll pay every penny back when I’m earning loads, I promise. Will you do that for me, Ma? For my glittering future?’

Who could resist Jilly in cajoling mood? So it had fallen to her, Milly, to go to work for Manda, to take her father’s place when it came to handling the family’s dwindling finances, to orchestrate the necessary move from the spacious five-bedroom detached in the leafy countryside surrounding Ashton Lacey to a three bedroomed semi behind the cattle market.

When Jilly had briefly returned to the quiet market town with her diploma she had looked fantastic, lightly tanned courtesy of a sun-bed, her long blonde hair stylishly cut and glistening with subtle ash highlights, her make-up perfect, as was her figure encased in narrow white jeans and an emerald silk shirt that deepened the green of her eyes and made them look like glittering jewels.

She’d stayed two days, being waited on hand and foot by her captivated mother, until she’d left for London, imparting that she had a job interview lined up with a top flight beauty therapy clinic attached to a famous store and if Milly had felt envious she’d blanked out the unworthy emotion because her twin had what it took and she obviously didn’t.

Jilly had got the job. No one had doubted that she would, but Milly and her mother had both missed the fizz she brought to the staid household. Her mother had become in turn tetchy or morose and rarely smiled and Milly, although she’d done her best, hadn’t been able to take the place of the favourite missing daughter.

And then Jilly had returned and dropped her bombshell. ‘I’ve jacked it in. I want to open my own salon here in Ashton Lacey. Why should I be a wage slave when I could rake in all the profits!’

‘Where will the money come from?’ Milly had wanted to know. ‘It would cost a small fortune to set up.’

Jilly had turned her brittle smile on her. ‘Trust you to be a wet blanket, sis.’ Turning to her mother, her smile now honey-sweet, she said, ‘You know what they say, Ma, you’ve got to speculate to accumulate. So this is how I see it—you could mortgage this house and cash in that bond thing Dad set up and you and I could go into partnership, fifty-fifty, or sixty-forty in your favour if you prefer. You’d never regret it. I forecast great things! After two years working for someone else I know the business inside out. We’ll make money hand over fist—you’d never believe the profit margins! We could pay off the mortgage then sit back while the money rolls in. Say yes, Ma, and we’ll go hunting for suitable premises to rent tomorrow.’

Ma had agreed, of course she had, her happiness that darling Jilly would be around permanently blinding her to the very real risks, and Milly could remember feeling like a no-account misery when she’d pointed out all the possible pitfalls.

The business had gone bankrupt within a couple of years. As Milly had tried to point out, Ashton Lacey wasn’t ready for a glitzy state-of-the-art beauty salon. Drawing custom from a population mostly comprising the wives of small traders and scattered farmers had proved impossible and the few clients they’d had had rarely come a second time.

Everything had been sold to pay the creditors and Jilly hadn’t hung around long enough to help them find somewhere to live—the rented flat above the butcher’s—but had gone to Italy to seek her fortune.

To begin with there had been occasional postcards. She’d found work in Florence in an upmarket nightclub. Moved into a basement flat behind the Palazzo Vecchio, was meeting lots of interesting people, picking up the language and having loads of fun.

Sadly, she was not yet earning enough to be able to send money home to help pay off debts. She’d even given a phone number where she could be reached most late afternoons. Then, around eighteen months later, the final postcard,

‘Wow! I think I’ve made it! I’m moving on. If I play my cards right—and I’ll make sure I do—I’ll be able to pay back every penny, Ma darling. With interest! I’ll write again soon and give you a contact number.’

It had been the last they had heard of her.

‘Jilly always meant to make things right, pay back everything Ma had lost,’ Milly defended. ‘She’d get these wild ideas and truly believe in them at the time, though how she imagined she’d make a small fortune working as a paid companion beggars belief.’

‘Steal it, apparently,’ Cleo put in drily, making Milly want to smack her.

‘There’s been a mistake. I know it.’

Cleo shook her head. ‘It didn’t sound like it from what that guy told you. She’s obviously done another runner. I don’t know why you insist on defending her.’