Moth To The Flame

What had Jan said? As dark as Satan, and she was right, except for those curious tawny eyes. But perhaps she hadn’t been close enough to him to notice them, Juliet thought, and wished very much that she wasn’t either, particularly when they appeared to be contemptuously stripping her naked.

Trying to steady her voice, she said, ‘I think, signore, that you have made a mistake.’

He smiled grimly. ‘On the contrary, signorina, it is you that has made the mistake. I ordered you to leave my brother alone. I offered what I believe were generous terms for you to do so, yet you have ignored my letter and flag***rantly disobeyed my orders.’

Juliet’s lips parted soundlessly. Jan had said she had only seen him once and that at a distance, but had he seen her? It seemed not, or he would never have mistaken her for her sister.

A feeling of helplessness was beginning to overwhelm her. She simply wasn’t prepared for this. Jan had mentioned no letter nor any offer of terms, only talked vaguely of threats. Stealing a glance at Santino Vallone, Juliet could well believe that he would carry out any threat that he might utter. The dark face wore an expression of almost patrician disgust as he stared at her, but there was a ruthlessness about its hard lines that it was impossible to ignore. Formidable was a word she rarely used, but it applied to him.

The thought came to her that Jan might have been expecting this visit and might have deliberately absented herself, but she crushed it under. Jan had gone away to get married, and this man was here to put a spoke in the wheel of her wedding plans if he could. Only—he thought she was Jan, and clearly he had no idea that her marriage to his brother was so imminent.

All she had to do was explain, show him her passport from her handbag in the bedroom and he would leave. But he would leave in search of Jan and Mario and it was possible, even probable, that he would find them and perhaps even prevent the wedding taking place. Jan was obviously more disturbed by his influence than she had revealed, or why her hurried and secretive departure?

But if—if she let him go on believing that she was Jan, it was just possible that she could keep him on a string for a few days until the wedding was over and his interference no longer mattered. At the very least, she could give Jan and Mario a head start.

She flung her head back and lifted her chin. Her eyes sparked back at him. ‘Orders, signore? Who gave you the right to give me orders?’

He made an impatient gesture. ‘We are not here to talk of rights, signorina,’ he said coldly. ‘I have come to offer you for the last time the terms I stated in my letter. I understood from your reply that you were willing to consider them, but I am not prepared to put up with any more prevarication from you.’

Juliet digested his words in silence, her brain whirling feverishly. She seemed to be getting into deep water already. What could he mean? Had Jan actually written to him, and if so had she merely been pretending to agree to his terms in order to win time? Surely that was the answer. She could never have seriously considered his offer to buy her off. Juliet wouldn’t believe it. Jan could never have permitted such a consideration to enter her mind, she argued with herself vehemently. Her sister must simply have been playing for time.

She gave a little shrug. ‘You’re clearly so used to having people accede to your slightest wish, signore, I was afraid what the shock might do to you if I said what I really thought.’

The tawny eyes swept over her and she was aware of a daunting blaze in their depths.

‘Indeed, signorina?’ he drawled. ‘I think my system can stand the strain. What was wrong with the offer? Didn’t it contain sufficient money?’

A cold fury possessed Juliet. Whatever faults Jan might have, she was her sister, and no arrogant Italian male, however wealthy, was going to insinuate that she was some kind of cheap gold-digger eager to be bought off for some unknown amount of cash.

Her tone was dulcet, but her smile was dangerous as she said, ‘You don’t have sufficient money, signore. It’s Mario that I want, and no amount of bribery by you can alter that, so please don’t try.’

His lip curled. ‘I admire the note of conviction, signorina, but I don’t believe it. I also have my convictions, and one of them is that most men have their price, and all women. I am merely waiting to hear yours.’

She longed to do something thoroughly unladylike, like slapping him hard or raking her fingernails down his smooth tanned cheek, but she had to forget her own angry impulses and play the scene as if she were Jan.

Jan wouldn’t allow herself to be thrown by her deshabille and damp hair. She would have smiled, pouting a little at his discourtesy, and pushed back her hair, letting the robe open slightly at the front so that Santino Vallone was aware that under it she wore nothing but her perfume. She would have enticed him to a more approachable frame of mind, and played him like a fish on a hook with her audacious beauty.

But knowing what Jan would probably have done and acting on it herself were two entirely different things. And the depressing part of it was that Juliet didn’t have a clue where to start. Men like the arrogant Santino Vallone were totally out of her league. Yet she had to try if she was to continue to convince him that she was Jan.

‘Lost for words, signorina?’ came the jibing remark. ‘Or are you too busy doing sums in your head?’

She made herself smile at him. ‘Actually, signore, I was just thinking I find your low opinion of women in general and myself in particular rather distressing.’ She strove for lightness of tone. ‘I’m wondering what I can do to redress the balance.’

His brows rose sardonically. ‘So the little bird has decided to sing a different tune. Bravo! And yet you are very charming when you’re angry, cara, or at least when you’re pretending to be. No wonder you’ve had such a devastating effect on my gullible brother. But that little game’s over now—or was when you decided to break the rules, so let’s not waste any more time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Juliet shrugged, and felt the towelling robe slip away from one shoulder. Her immediate instinct was to drag it back into place and it took all the self-command of which she was capable to leave the revealing folds of fabric where they were. She could feel his eyes on her, frankly assessing, lingering over the exposed line of her throat and the creamy skin of her bare shoulder, and she could feel a tight knot of fear in her chest—fear and something perilously approaching excitement. Her hands began to ball into fists at her sides and she made herself relax. Jan, she thought wryly, would never tie herself into a mass of tensions just because a man was looking at her. Besides, she was supposed to be a successful model who was used to being looked at. And to be fair to herself, she wouldn’t be fighting this strange sort of panic under normal circumstances. Only these were not really normal circumstances, and this was not just any man.

She rallied herself defensively. ‘But I don’t quite understand you, signore. What game are you referring to and what rules am I supposed to have broken?’

‘Quite the guileless innocent, aren’t you, cara, when it suits you to be. The game is love, for want of a better word, and the rule is that a woman like you does not expect the man to marry her.’

She had half expected what he was going to say, but the shock of hearing it brutally spelled out was sickening. She felt as if a fist had been driven into the pit of her stomach, and her breathing quickened perceptibly.

His words did not apply to her—she knew that, and that should have lessened their impact, yet that was impossible because they applied to Jan instead. How dared he? she thought as hurt and bewilderment fought with the anger inside her. How dared he say such things—make such insinuations about Jan?

Clearly he must know that she and Mario had been living together, at least on a casual basis, and this was the reason for his condemnation. That was the traditional viewpoint after all. The man could be as wild as he chose, but the girl must be pure, jealously guarding her virginity for her wedding day. And because Jan had transgressed this unwritten law with her future husband, she was regarded as an outcast. The colour rose faintly in her cheeks as she realised that Santino had probably recognised the bathrobe that she was wearing at that moment as Mario’s and drawn his own conclusions.

She remembered too Jan’s bitter remarks about his hypocrisy. It was the ultimate in male chauvinism, she thought angrily, to use women for his own cynical pleasure and then despise the woman who had been his partner in that pleasure. Besides, Jan and Mario loved each other. Didn’t that enter into the reckoning? She found her own resolution hardening. She and Santino Vallone would play a whole new game, and this time she would invent the rules.

She smiled at him, her long lashes brushing her cheeks. ‘Your argument should be with Mario, signore. After all, it was he who proposed marriage to me, not the other way round.’

‘But I only have your word for that, cara,’ he said softly, with a sting underlying every word.

She pretended to wince, laughing a little as she did so, controlling her own rage and contempt. ‘Ouch, you play dirty, signore, and that’s not in the rules either.’

‘I write my own,’ he said quite pleasantly, and she believed him. Quite inconsequentially she found herself wondering how he would react when he discovered the truth about her deception, but she comforted herself with the reflection that by the time that happened she would be safely back in England and Jan and Mario would have to bear the brunt of his wrath together. Besides, she reasoned, Jan could always say with perfect truth that she’d had no idea what her sister had been up to in her absence.

‘You seem nervous,’ he observed.

‘Is it any wonder?’ She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. She had not intended it to be provocative—her lips were genuinely dry—but she saw his slight reaction to it and her confidence grew. ‘You—you disturb me.’

‘I’m flattered, cara.’ He sounded amused. ‘And you, I need hardly say, would disturb any red-blooded male.’

‘Do you include yourself in that category?’ she asked impudently.

‘Need you ask?’ He was drawling again.

She shrugged. ‘I’m intrigued, that’s all. I understood that it was because blue blood flows exclusively in the veins of the Vallone family that my candidature was unwelcome.’

She’d drawn a bow at a venture, but she knew she’d hit the target. She sent him a demure glance and saw that he was laughing openly.

‘Poor Mario,’ he said. ‘He never stood a chance, did he? And where is he? Skulking in the bedroom perhaps, afraid to show himself?’

‘Oh, no.’ She was startled by the unexpectedness of the question and came close to faltering. Naturally he would expect her to know Mario’s whereabouts, but could she manage to stall him on that as well? ‘I—I haven’t seen him today.’

He was no longer laughing, his brows drawn together in a dark frown.

‘That is curious. I missed him at the office and was told that he was meeting you here.’

‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘perhaps he changed his mind.’ She walked away and began to fiddle aimlessly with the roses. ‘Perhaps he’s changed his mind about everything and you don’t have to worry anymore. Have you considered that, signore?’

‘I doubt it,’ he said drily. ‘For one thing, you don’t find the prospect nearly worrying enough, cara. No woman sees a potential meal-ticket vanishing without making at least some effort to recover it. If you had any fears of Mario’s deserting you, then you’d have come to terms with me long ago.’

She pretended to yawn. ‘Well, the meal-ticket is elsewhere just now, signore. Which is a pity really, because it’s past time for dinner, and I’m starving—so if you’d excuse me …’

He consulted his watch. It was platinum, she noticed, and so were the elegant links in the cuffs of his silk shirt.

‘Go and pretty yourself, cara,’ he said almost brusquely. ‘I’ll take you to dinner.’