Mistress Bought and Paid For

Lydia was finding it impossible to concentrate. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand—’

‘Don’t you? I’m offering a pretty basic deal. I want you in my bed—’

Shock roared through her, leaving her light-headed. ‘I don’t believe you—’

‘Of course you would have to throw yourself heart and soul into the role of being my mistress—’

‘This doesn’t make sense—’

His brilliant eyes were ice-cold. ‘It makes perfect sense. Watching you endeavour to meet my every wish and need will provide me with considerable entertainment. I’m not an easy guy to please.’

Lydia had turned bone-white. ‘You can’t despise me and want me like that at the same time.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s immoral!’ she gasped.

‘When did I say I was moral?’

‘I can’t believe your nerve. I can’t believe you can approach me with such a proposition!’ Lydia lanced back at him, burning with furious mortification. ‘Maybe you don’t have any standards, but I do—’

‘I don’t steal,’ Cristiano proclaimed, in a super-soft undertone.

‘Maybe I don’t either. But you’re only interested in trying to take advantage of the fact that I’m in trouble, and I think that is disgusting!’

‘I’ve made a fortune from opportunism, cara mia.’

‘Well, you lucked out when you met me—because I’d sooner go to prison than sink to the level of being your mistress!’

Shimmering dark golden eyes connected with hers. ‘I don’t think so.’

The force field of energy he projected was all around her, like an invisible web of silent intimidation. Unable to break the hold of his compelling scrutiny, she felt his anger, and it somehow soothed the ache deep down inside her.

‘I know so.’

As she stepped past him, he curved a light hand to her spine and stilled her. He bent his handsome dark head and the cool, irresistible power of his sensual mouth claimed hers. It was everything she had secretly feared, everything she had ever craved. With the utmost gentleness he let his tongue steal between her parted lips and explore the moist interior. He delved deeper. She moaned low in her throat, heard her own plaintive cry of surrender and acceptance, and wanted to die of shame. But still she couldn’t break free of the fierce physical excitement that controlled her. That inner conflict made her quiver, as though she was in the eye of a storm.

Cristiano stepped back. He had not held her. He had not given her that much excuse to succumb. ‘Answer the phone…’

Only when she was separated from him did the world crowd back in on her again, and she heard the phone’s insistent shrill. She surged in a feverish rush to answer it. Fighting to rescue her smashed composure, but nowhere near strong enough to meet Cristiano’s appraisal, Lydia snapped a damp palm round the receiver. It was her solicitor. She stiffened in dismay when she learned that the police had requested a meeting today, rather than in four days’ time, as had been previously arranged.

‘It’s your choice. You don’t have to go to the station. But evidently they have some new information, and I feel it would be in your best interests to agree to make yourself available today,’ her legal adviser informed her.

Lydia breathed in deep. ‘Right…yes, I’ll go.’

Her lips were tingling and her knees were weak. Perhaps an extra trip to the police station was her punishment for making such a fool of herself with Cristiano Andreotti, she thought crazily. How could he still live and breathe when she hated him with such venom? Or did she hate herself even more? How could she have sacrificed her pride for one kiss? Had stress deranged her wits? What vindictive fate had brought Cristiano back to her door when she was at her weakest?

In one harried step she reached the front door and yanked it wide. ‘I have a pressing invitation to have another chat with the police, so you’ll have to leave.’

‘I’ve arranged for a glazier to replace the window,’ Cristiano informed her.

Her teeth gritted. ‘And why the heck would you have done that?’

‘Isn’t it fortunate that I did, when you have to go out again?’ In a fluid gesture, Cristiano cast a business card down on the shelf to one side of her. ‘My number…for when you come to your senses and accept the inevitable.’

‘You are not an inevitable event in my life.’

Cristiano looked down at her from the vantage point of his superior height, his slumberous golden eyes glittering down towards hers in a collision course as keen as an arrow thudding into a target. ‘Conversation is a much overrated pursuit between men and women. The kiss told me all I needed to know.’

Inwardly she shrank from that humiliating reminder. Her body had responded to him in blatant disregard of her entrenched dislike and defiance. But then how much would Cristiano Andreotti care about that? As he had just admitted, without an ounce of shame, he was more into the physical than the cerebral where women were concerned. She could not help but remember how she’d used to chatter on the phone to him. Had he been bored witless by the way she had rattled on?

While she wondered, Cristiano inclined his handsome dark head, strolled out, and swung into the limousine waiting for him. The long, opulent vehicle purred away from the kerb and disappeared from her view as if it and its owner had never been there.

Five minutes later a glazier arrived to replace the broken windowpane. All smiles, he told her that for what he was being paid he had been more than happy to give her job priority.

As she made her way to the police station that afternoon, Lydia was consumed by a helpless need to rerun Cristiano’s visit in her mind over and over again. In a nutshell, he had offered to recompense the Happy Holidays charity in return for her sexual favours. Had he been acquainted with her abysmal lack of experience in that department, however, he might have been rather less keen, she thought ruefully. Yet she could not forget that eighteen months ago she had been so besotted with Cristiano that she had been on the very brink of being whatever he wanted her to be…

She was not proud of that weakness. But then she blamed her susceptibility on the fact that she had first seen Cristiano Andreotti in a glossy magazine spread when she was only fourteen years old. He had been twenty-two. Convinced that he was the most breathtakingly gorgeous guy she had ever seen, she had torn out his picture and kept it. She had not just stuck him in a drawer—no, she had ironed his paper image and put him in a photo frame, and spent seemingly infinite, essentially adolescent moments devouring his picture with wistful contentment. She had much preferred those dreams to the often crude reality of the young men she’d encountered.

In fact more than six years were to pass before she actually met Cristiano—years during which her popularity as a model had gradually brought her to the point where she had an occasional entry ticket into his rarefied world of wealth and privilege. Once she’d had the thrill of seeing him across a nightclub, lounging back like royalty and looking bored, while a bevy of women fought for his attention. He hadn’t seen her or noticed her.

A frightening experience when she was only thirteen had made Lydia wary of men. After that she’d found it hard to flirt, and was careful not to bare too much flesh in mixed company. That she was still a virgin was a secret she’d kept very much to herself, for she had moved in circles where casual sex was considered the norm. She had also been endlessly hunted by rapacious men eager to bed her just so that they could add her to a macho tally of conquests. When she’d finally realised that she was being labelled frigid by the men she refused, she had been deeply hurt and embarrassed. It had seemed easier not to date at all. It had not occurred to her that her very unavailability might make her an even more tempting target for a predatory male.

The day she’d peered through the curtains at a Paris fashion show and seen Cristiano Andreotti seated in the very front row, she had been overwhelmed. The teenager who had once cherished his photo as a pin-up had surfaced inside her again. Edgy as a beginner on the runway, she had been afraid even to glance in his direction. In fact when he’d asked to be introduced to her, she’d been so sick with nerves that she hadn’t dared to look directly at him. He had asked her for her phone number and she had told him that her mobile had been stolen. A moment later she had had to race off to do a private showing for a VIP. Later Cristiano had had a new phone delivered to her hotel, and his had been the first call, his rich dark drawl coiling round her like melting honey.

He had wanted to see her that night, but she’d had a booking back in London early the following day.

‘I’ll be in Sydney next week. Phone and say you’re ill so that you can stay on in Paris,’ he’d urged.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You can if you want to see me.’

‘And if you want to see me you can wait,’ she’d heard herself reply.

‘Are you always this difficult?’

That had been her first—and not her last—taste of dealing with a very rich and powerful guy, accustomed to the instant gratification of his every expressed wish. Anything less than immediate acceptance or agreement was perceived as a negative response.

Even so, Cristiano had still flown her back to Paris the following evening to dine with him, and they had got on so well that they had still been talking in the early hours. Perfect white roses had awaited her when she returned to London, and he had called her every day for a week afterwards. She had felt cherished and appreciated. Every step of their relationship had struck her as being the very essence of romance. Plenty of people had warned her that Cristiano had a reputation for being notoriously cold-blooded when it came to her sex, but she’d paid no heed. She had ridden the crest of the wave of phone calls and all-too-brief meetings while secretly dreaming, as women had from time immemorial, of love and happily-ever-after. At no stage had it crossed her mind that she might simply be an object to be used and abused in a game being played by a super-rich, egotistical man.

Now, the pain of that final recollection did nothing to ease Lydia’s tension as she found herself back in a police interview room.

The inspector gave her a surprisingly genial smile. ‘Tell me about your mother’s house in France,’ he invited.

‘France?’ Lydia’s astonishment was unhidden. ‘But my mother doesn’t have a house in France.’

‘We believe that she does, and according to our source it’s quite a luxurious second home. Five bedrooms and a pool, no less. At least, that is what she told a friend last year. That kind of set-up doesn’t come cheap in the south of France.’