Italian Bachelors: Steamy Seductions

‘Are you joking?’ Vittore groaned. ‘After the last time, she said she’d kill me! I have to get it right this time.’

While Dante hovered with a frown, the voices died away as the couple retreated. What the hell was all that about? His original notion that Topsy might be involved with his stepfather had dwindled, but after that cosy exchange suspicion ran rampant through him again. Why were Vittore and his wife’s secretary whispering in corners? Why were they meeting up in Florence in secret? How could that be innocent? What had to be hidden from his mother? After the last time, she’d kill me! A previous act of infidelity, Dante decided in disgust. Was that what Vittore had been referring to?

He did not like to think that his mother would even consider forgiving and forgetting such a betrayal, but he could not overlook the fact that she had spent many years married to a man who had forced her to close her eyes to his infidelity and accept it. His parent could be slipping back into that unfortunate pattern, refusing to see the truth that this time around she had no reason to feel that she had no choice but to accept such behaviour.

* * *

It was ten minutes to midday and Topsy was dressed for lunch in Florence, her curvy figure simply clad in a green sundress with shoestring straps. Tense though she was, Vittore had contrived to put a smile on her face. That cliché about try, try, try again when you got it wrong might have been specially coined for Sofia’s husband. Vittore wanted to give his wife a piece of jewellery that she would actually like and wear and, since Vittore had a natural love of bling and sparkle while Sofia preferred plain and elegant, her bridegroom had repeatedly got his gift choices wrong. That was why Topsy was to accompany Vittore to the design studio to choose a piece that her employer might genuinely appreciate for her birthday.

Topsy joined Sofia to briefly discuss the floral arrangements for the fancy-dress ball and then headed downstairs, stiffening as the ancient bell over the massive gothic front door rang noisily and checking her watch: it was five to twelve. When she saw the hulking bodyguard on the step, she recognised him as Danilo, the head of Mikhail’s security, and, while she wondered if the forbidding older man had been sent to collect her in an effort to daunt her, her soft mouth firmed.

‘Where’s your luggage?’ Danilo enquired with a frown.

Topsy’s heart sank. Had she misunderstood Mikhail? Was he expecting her to simply pack up and go home with him to London? Her chin came up. ‘I’m coming back here after lunch. I’m not leaving.’

Danilo made no comment, which didn’t surprise her because he was not a chatty man. He stood out on the step instead wielding his mobile phone and talking in Russian, undoubtedly checking up on his employer’s expectations.

As she lifted her handbag from the hall chair where she had left it earlier she saw Dante poised in the doorway of his study, lean, strong, dark face taut. At the sight of him, her heart jumped as though someone had closed a hand round the organ and squeezed. His straight dark brows were low over dazzling green eyes thickly enhanced by lashes black as coal as he gazed back at her. He was so beautiful. Without warning she was reliving the touch of his finger on her lips the night before, the little bristles of dangerous pleasure that had travelled down her spine to warm secret places, making her breasts ache and her knees tremble. Colour washed her cheeks, a hunger she couldn’t deny stirring like a threatening storm.

‘Are you ready to leave?’ Danilo prompted impatiently.

Topsy spun back to the older man and walked out of the door. Unfortunately the heat of the summer sun did nothing to cool her overheated skin.

The limo had barely driven off when Dante crossed the wide hall, inclining his arrogant dark head in acknowledgement of the younger man waiting by the car that had just drawn up outside. He had decided to have Topsy followed. He wanted to know who she was meeting in Florence and why she had been shaken by the invitation. The more he learned about her, the closer he might come to working out what was going on at the castle. Everybody around him was acting weird, he thought impatiently. His mother was lying about on a chaise longue like some fragile Victorian lady suffering from a decline, while Vittore was whistling under his breath and whispering in dark corners with the hired help.

* * *

Topsy’s brother-in-law looked grim when he greeted her at the door of his hotel suite. A waiter was already setting out food from a heated trolley and hovering. With a flick of an imperious hand, Mikhail dismissed him and urged Topsy to sit down.

‘So, what’s going on? What are you up to?’ he asked Topsy baldly before she even got her bottom onto a seat.

‘That’s my business,’ Topsy replied quietly as she tucked into her starter.

‘If it threatens Kat’s peace of mind, it’s mine,’ Mikhail overruled without hesitation. ‘She’s pregnant again, by the way.’

That announcement took Topsy by surprise because her sister suffered from fertility problems and having had IVF to conceive her twins had tried it again but, sadly, without success. ‘Oh, my goodness, that’s wonderful news!’ she exclaimed, knowing how much her eldest sister had longed for another child. ‘But...er...how?’

‘It happened naturally this time but you can understand why I won’t have her upset at the moment,’ he pointed out levelly. ‘It’s cards-on-the-table time, Topsy. If the draw at the castle is Dante Leonetti, you need to be aware of the kind of lifestyle he leads.’

‘Dante is not the draw and, yes, I do have a secret but it’s private and nothing to do with anyone else in the family, nor would it matter to them,’ Topsy proffered with conviction. ‘I’m almost twenty-four years old, Mikhail. Don’t expect me to explain everything I do.’

Her brother-in-law compressed his hard mouth. ‘I still remember you in your school uniform.’

‘And how many years ago is that?’ Topsy sighed. ‘I’m a big girl now.’

‘No, you’re physically tiny and still very naïve,’ Mikhail countered impatiently. ‘But don’t lay that at my door. Your sisters refuse to accept that baby has grown up.’

At that unexpected admission, which implied some understanding of her plight, Topsy relaxed a tiny bit. ‘I know. It’s ridiculous to get to my age and have to lie to lead my own life.’

Mikhail sat back into his chair. ‘Dante Leonetti?’ he queried with a raised brow. ‘How is he involved in this?’

‘He’s not. I don’t know why you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about him.’ But Topsy could feel her face burning, her eyes evading his direct look because she knew that she was insanely attracted to Dante.

‘He’s a player, Topsy. You couldn’t handle him,’ her brother-in-law told her in a tone of warning. ‘At one stage a couple of years ago he was famous in banking circles for keeping three mistresses. One in New York, one in Milan and one in Tokyo.’

Topsy was appalled. ‘Three? Seriously?’ she pressed, wide-eyed.

‘Seriously, he’s the equivalent of a suicide mission for a young woman from a sheltered background,’ Mikhail delivered.

‘Nothing’s going on, Mikhail,’ Topsy parried. ‘I have a summer job with Dante’s mother in a particularly beautiful part of the world. That’s virtually all there is to this.’

Dante had or had had three mistresses. That sleazy little fact rattled round and round in Topsy’s head throughout the drive back to the castle and left her feeling quite nauseous. What sort of a man went from one woman to another like that, treating them like interchangeable sexual utilities? And why did the X-rated imagery now assailing her overactive imagination actually wound and hurt? Why should it matter to her what he did in his bed? It wasn’t as though she were planning to have an affair with him. She couldn’t possibly be jealous of a man she barely knew. Yet neither could she doubt Mikhail’s veracity because Kat’s husband employed a highly trained investigative team. Through them, he had unparalleled access to background information about people he did business with and he was even more rigorous in checking out those who might offer a threat to members of his family.

* * *

While Topsy was lunching with Mikhail, Dante was entertaining an unexpected guest. Jerome St Charles, a member of the House of Lords and a widower, owned a house nearby where he often spent the summer with his adult children and their families. For a time, Dante had gone to school with Jerome’s son, James, and as neighbours of long standing the two families still occasionally socialised. Once, Dante had even cherished the vague hope that his mother might return Jerome’s obvious interest and admiration but nothing had come of it. Sad though it was in his view, his mother had remained impervious to male advances until Vittore came along.

‘I’m sorry to drop in on you without an invite. I would’ve phoned first but I didn’t know quite how to broach the subject,’ Jerome told him, a troubled look on his patrician face as he pushed an uneasy hand through his thick grey hair in a nervous gesture. ‘I’m afraid this is likely to be a rather embarrassing interview, but I’m fond of your mother and I felt I had to speak up and tell you what I know.’

Disconcerted as he was by that opening speech, Dante frowned at that reference to his parent and his light eyes narrowed with questioning intensity. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Jerome.’

‘It’s this...’ The older man settled a local newspaper down on the table beside the window.

Dante lifted it up and gazed down at a print photograph of his mother with Topsy standing in the background. The picture adorned an in-depth article about the charity to support women who had had miscarriages that his mother had started up about ten years earlier. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘That pretty brunette working for your mother—I’ve...er...met her before,’ Jerome divulged awkwardly. ‘In London. I spent an evening with her... I...er...paid for her time.’

His green eyes darkening and cooling by several degrees, Dante stared back at him in unconcealed disbelief. ‘Topsy? You paid for her time?’

Colour marking his cheekbones, the older man sighed. ‘It’s not quite as sordid as it sounds. She’s not—as far as I know—a prostitute, but when I spent time with her she was available for the right price as an escort. I took her out to dinner one evening. I enjoy young attractive female company now and again and very pleasant she was too,’ he acknowledged ruefully. ‘But what’s a girl like that doing working for your mother?’

‘Let me get this straight...’ Dante paused, his strong jaw line now set hard as granite, a tiny muscle tugging at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. ‘When you met Topsy Marshall, she was working as an escort? And you hired her?’

Jerome nodded. ‘We dined out. It was purely platonic. I had the pleasure of an attractive woman on my arm and she, of course, would’ve received a fee for her time.’

Dante gritted his even white teeth together, a combustible mix of anger and revulsion burning through him. Topsy was an escort; Topsy had worked as an escort! She had fooled him, he reflected rawly. Hadn’t he been falling for the vulnerable ditzy act she was putting on? He was not easily shocked but the news that she had worked as an escort did shock him. Nevertheless he had complete trust in the older man, whom he had known all his life. Even though Jerome was embarrassed to admit that he had hired an escort, his sense of honour and his concern for Dante’s mother had not allowed him to remain silent and Dante respected the sacrifice of dignity that the older man had made.

Jerome had barely departed before Dante received a call from his bodyguard telling him who Topsy had met up with in Florence. After what he had learned from Jerome he was just a little better prepared for that revelation. Mikhail Kusnirovich, the Russian oil oligarch, her ex-flame? Presumably, she was a former mistress, what else? Dante swallowed hard, knowing he no longer needed to wonder why she had been picked up by a limo or where her reputedly expensive diamond necklace had come from. Those expensive trappings told their own sleazy story. Such a dubious background did, however, make it seem highly unlikely that she had designs on Vittore, who had virtually no money of his own and no hope of any unless he got a divorce.

Had Topsy been summoned to the Russian’s hotel suite in Florence simply for sex? Dante, his heart pounding, his hands clenched into fists, green eyes ablaze, paced his study in an ever-deepening rage. What else would she have been doing in a hotel suite but laying herself down on a bed? Mikhail Kusnirovich had made a booty call and she had answered it without the smallest protest. It could not get much more basic than that.

Yet he recalled her dismay during that phone call, his original suspicion that she was alarmed. Certainly, Kusnirovich was a man few women would dare to reject, a man of unsavoury reputation. Che diavolo! Was he making excuses for her now? She was a whore; what else could she be from such a background as Jerome had given him? Jerome might not have taken advantage of the situation but other men assuredly would have expected, even demanded, something a good deal less innocent than her company. Under no circumstances should such a Jezebel be working for his mother!

* * *

In a reflective mood, Topsy mounted the steps to the castle. Mikhail had not leant on her as heavily as she had feared, his mood doubtless softened by the delightful and surprising news that he was to become a father again without the necessity of Kat having to undergo another gruelling round of IVF treatment. Mikhail had also recognised that it was ridiculous for Topsy’s sisters to fuss over her every move as much as they did and hopefully his more realistic attitude would eventually persuade Kat that her constant worrying about her youngest sibling was unnecessary.

Topsy was heading for the imposing main staircase when a door opened.