The Italian's Defiant Mistress

‘It’s unreal!’ said Eve, looking round. Against a backdrop of gilded palm trees and faux-pyramids, A-list celebrities were being sprayed with Golden by scantily clad ‘Egyptian’ slave-girls, in Cleopatra-style wigs and scarlet lipstick. The air was heavy with the perfume, which smelt like a mixture of fruit salad and ozone.

In the centre of the floor a vast three-tiered fountain, topped by Tutankhamen’s head, gushed champagne. A youth in a loincloth appeared beside them, proffering a plate of canapés. Forbidden by Sienna from wearing her glasses, Eve peered shortsightedly at them.

‘What on earth are they?’

‘South Sea tiger prawns in a vodka marinade, finished with eighteen-carat-gold leaf,’ said the youth.

‘Gold leaf?’ echoed Eve faintly.

Sienna giggled. ‘No, thanks. I’m catching a plane this evening. Don’t want to set off the metal detectors. Come and get a drink,’ she shouted to Eve, disappearing into the seething mass of exotically dressed celebrities.

It was impossible to squeeze through the crowd around the champagne fountain. Eve found herself alone on the fringes, craning above a hundred glossy, seriously high-maintenance heads to see where Sienna had gone.

Suddenly an arm snaked round her waist from behind. She whirled round to look into the laughing bloodshot eyes of the man from the retrospective. The man Raphael had been so keen to steal her away from.

‘We meet again, angel. I see you standing here all alone, and I wonder how my brother could be so careless as to leave you unattended in the midst of such…’ he looked around with a wolfish grin ‘…debauchery. You are like a beautiful rose blooming in a vase of artificial flowers.’ His eyes moved lazily up and down her body for a moment, while a slow smile spread across his face.

‘You’re Raphael’s brother?’

‘Si. Half-brother. Though twice as charming. Luca di Lazaro.’

She took the hand he extended towards her. ‘Eve Middlemiss.’

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured, looking very pleased about something and holding onto her hand for far longer than was necessary. ‘And where is Raphael?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Eve managed a sort of grim smile, in spite of the lipgloss. ‘But I’d like to find him.’

‘Don’t rush off, bella. Let me get you a drink. Is very hot in here, no? We need a passionfruit daiquiri!’

‘I don’t really…’

‘Don’t worry, bambino,’ he soothed, laying a hot hand on her bare shoulder. ‘It has hardly any alcohol. You’ll love it. Trust me.’

In his father’s private office on the top floor, Raphael held out the remote control, flicking from one CCTV image to another. Antonio had invested in the very best technology available to ensure that the Lazaro security system was state-of-the-art. Cameras were placed in strategic positions on each of the store’s three floors, and also covered a large area of the street outside, and the information they generated was closely monitored by a highly trained team.

Raphael had considered briefing them on the necessity of keeping close tabs on Luca, but decided against it. The fewer people who knew about the investigation into his brother’s drug dealing the better. This was one job he could not entrust to anyone else, and if Luca made one suspicious move, or got too close to anyone, Raphael would be watching.

His eyes were gritty and his whole body ached with fatigue. After the ordeal of the press conference he had planned to return to his apartment for a few hours of much-needed sleep, but the encounter with Eve Middlemiss had put paid to that.

How much did she know?

His first thought when he’d seen her at the press conference was that she was a scheming, unscrupulous journalist who’d got the little-girl-lost act down to award-winning standard. Now he wasn’t so sure. Her naïvety…her total bloody cluelessness…was way too realistic to be put on. And yet somehow she knew enough to blow an international drugs investigation sky-high.

He sighed and passed his hands briefly over his face. The situation with Luca was volatile enough without having an airhead blonde journalist set on writing some half-witted exposé charging around like a bull in a china shop.

No, that was all wrong. Not a bull…Something far more dangerously delicate than that. A fawn, perhaps. She was like a fawn careering through a minefield. The memory of her wide, frightened eyes as she’d stepped in front of the taxi came back to him, followed swiftly by the feel of the soft swell of her breast beneath her T-shirt as he’d pulled her back.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair as a flicker of desire licked though him, and turned his attention abruptly back to the CCTV monitor. It didn’t really matter what metaphor you chose. The fact remained that Eve Middlemiss was a problem. A complication he could well do without.

His mouth set in a grim line of contempt as he studied the screen. The scene it showed was like a nightmarish cross between a third-rate porn movie and a big-budget blockbuster. A very high-profile footballer’s wife and an Oscar-tipped Hollywood starlet were cavorting in the champagne fountain as a crowd of onlookers clapped and cheered. Raphael’s gaze skimmed dismissively over them, coming to rest instead on the knot of people around the fountain.

Only the tension in his broad shoulders betrayed the strength of his ruthlessly controlled emotion as he located Luca.

Raphael didn’t flinch, but the light from the screen showed the sudden shuttered stillness of his face as he watched his brother pick a strand of hair from the slickly glossed lips of Eve Middlemiss. She was looking up at Luca trustingly, her lips pouting and slightly parted, and once he had moved the stray hair, with much careful concern, she tentatively pressed them together. It was a movement that was curiously childlike, but at the same time piercingly erotic.

Gripping the remote control, Raphael saw his knuckles show bone-white through the suntanned skin of his hands. Dimly, as if from a great distance, he was aware of the pounding blood in his ears. He was a man who lived on his instincts, whose survival in the volatile Columbian underworld of drugs gangs and hired killers had depended on his ability to make split-second decisions. Every nerve and fibre of his being was telling him to go down and drag Eve Middlemiss away from Luca.