Kitabı oku: «The Virgin's Sicilian Protector»

CHAPTER ONE

THE PICTURE SPLASHED across the front page of the newspaper was damning. Arianna focused her bleary gaze on the photograph of herself, almost spilling out of a tiny bikini top and swigging champagne from a bottle, and shuddered.

Once she would not have given a damn that she’d made the headlines yet again. But that had been before she’d had an epiphany on her twenty-fourth birthday, just over a year ago, and realised that nothing she did would make her father take any notice of her. The only thing he was interested in, besides making money, was controlling her, as he had controlled her mother.

Arianna regularly spent the summer at the family villa in Positano and, although she’d never bothered to learn the language properly, she’d picked up enough Italian to be able to translate the paragraph beneath the newspaper picture.

The return of the Brat Pack!

Once again the offspring of many of Europe’s wealthiest families have flocked to the Amalfi coast to spend the summer partying.

Heiress Arianna Fitzgerald was clearly enjoying herself with close friend, reality television star Jonny Monaghan, aboard his luxury yacht.

Arianna is the daughter of billionaire fashion designer Randolph Fitzgerald and has been famously described in the British press as ‘the most privileged and pointless person on the planet’.

That particular comment had been reprinted so often that Arianna was bored of reading it. She dropped the newspaper down on the patio tiles, feeling too disorientated to wonder who had left it where she was bound to see it, and rolled over onto her back, trying to remember why she had spent the night on a sun lounger by the pool. Her head was thumping and her mouth was parched. She had no recollection of how she had come to be on Jonny’s boat, or how she had arrived at Villa Cadenza. Nor could she remember tying a sarong around her to cover up the miniscule gold bikini that had been a regrettable impulse buy when she had been in Australia.

God, she felt awful. But it couldn’t be a hangover because she’d barely drunk any alcohol. She wondered if someone could have spiked the bottle of champagne she’d taken a sip out of. Jonny and his crowd—who had once been her crowd—used cocaine and other so-called recreational substances to alleviate their terminal boredom. But, although Arianna had partied as hard and as frequently as her peers, she’d never taken drugs, because she had seen the devastating effects they’d had on some of her friends.

As she lay there trying to summon the energy to get up off the lounger and go into the house, she heard footsteps on the marble tiles, and the aroma of coffee assailed her senses. Good old Filippo. The butler had been kind to Arianna when she’d been a child—unlike most of the temporary nannies her father had employed to look after her during the school holidays. She had attended an exclusive English boarding school but her refusal to accept any kind of authority had led to her being expelled when she’d been fifteen.

Filippo was one of the few people who had not seemed to disapprove of her when she’d been a surly pre-teen and then a rebellious young adult. She could also testify that the butler’s secret recipe for a hangover cure worked. But what she craved right now was strong black coffee.

The footsteps halted and Arianna frowned. It was true she had never paid any attention to Filippo’s footwear before, but she was sure he did not usually wear heavy-duty black leather boots. Or faded denim jeans. She lifted her gaze and discovered that the waistband of the jeans sat low on a pair of lean hips, above which was a black T-shirt stretched tight over a flat stomach and a broad, impressively muscular chest.

The man, who was definitely too tall to be Filippo, was carrying a tray. Had her father employed a new butler? She craned her neck so that her gaze reached the man’s face and her heart crashed against her ribs.

‘Who are you? And where’s Filippo?’ Her voice sounded husky because her throat was dry, not because the stranger’s stunning good looks had taken her breath away, she assured herself.

‘My name is Santino Vasari. I’m your new bodyguard.’ The deep rumble of his voice, as sensuous as dark molasses, had a peculiar effect on Arianna’s insides. ‘Your father said he would let you know that he had hired me.’

‘Oh, yes.’ The fog around her brain was clearing and she remembered the text she’d received from her father yesterday when she had arrived in London on a long-haul flight from Sydney. Stupidly, her heart had leapt when she’d seen Randolph’s name flash up on her phone’s screen. She’d wondered if he’d missed her while she had been in Australia for six months. But the message had simply said that a bodyguard would meet her at Villa Cadenza, and that Santino Vasari was an ex-soldier who had turned to private protection work after he’d left the army.

His incredible physique certainly suggested that he had been in the armed forces. Arianna licked her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and flushed when his gaze focused on her mouth. She felt at a disadvantage sprawled on the sun bed while his eyes roamed over the silk sarong that had become bunched up around her thighs before he continued a leisurely inspection of her bare legs. She was used to attracting attention. Indeed, she had spent much of the past decade seeking notoriety and scandal. But something about Santino Vasari and her unexpected reaction to him made her sit up and swing her legs over the side of the lounger.

She winced as the movement exacerbated her pounding headache and the smirk on Santino’s lips sent a sizzle of temper through her.

‘I did not ask for a bodyguard. You have had a wasted journey here,’ she said abruptly. Her cut-glass English accent was as sharp as a razor. ‘I don’t want you, Mr Vasari.’

‘Is that a fact?’ There was disbelief in his lazy drawl. An arrogant, almost cocky confidence that every woman who laid eyes on him wanted him. His self-assurance was probably not misplaced, Arianna acknowledged. ‘Handsome’ did not come close to describing the ruggedly masculine beauty of his chiselled features: the slashing lines of his cheekbones that emphasised the harsh angles of his face and the square, worryingly determined jaw, covered with dark stubble the same colour as the almost black hair that curled rebelliously over his collar.

Santino Vasari did not appear to be fazed by her frosty attitude. He strolled towards her, moving with a loose-limbed grace that reminded Arianna of a prowling lion—silent, purposeful and decidedly dangerous. His manner was relaxed but his eyes—startlingly green eyes that gleamed as brightly as peridots—were watchful and unsettlingly perceptive.

Her heart gave another hard kick in her chest when he dropped his gaze to the swell of her breasts. Heat surged through her. She felt her nipples pucker but managed to resist the urge to glance down to see if they were visible through her bikini top. No other man had ever had such a potent effect on her. Not one. She’d come to the conclusion some time ago that she had a low sex drive—or maybe she was frigid, as an ex-boyfriend had told her when she had refused to have sex with him.

Arianna lifted her chin and forced herself to meet Santino’s mocking look with cool indifference. But when he placed the tray on a low table, before he pulled a chair up close to her sun bed and sat down, her heartbeat accelerated. Her senses seemed more acute and she breathed in the spicy sandalwood scent of his aftershave carried on the warm, early morning air.

‘You see, Arianna...’ he murmured, and she quickly tore her gaze from his mouth. ‘May I call you Arianna? “Miss Fitzgerald” is frankly a bit of a mouthful when we are going to be spending a lot of time together.’

‘The hell we are!’

He ignored her angry outburst. ‘Whether you like it or not your father has hired me to be your protection officer, which means that I will accompany you every time you leave the house.’

She drummed her long, perfectly manicured nails on the arm of the sun lounger. ‘Why has Randolph developed a sudden urge to protect me when he has never shown any concern for me before? And why does he think I need protecting while I’m here? Positano has a low crime rate, and I’m well known in the area. I’ve been coming here every summer since I was a child.’

‘You certainly announced your arrival in Amalfi,’ Santino said in a dry tone. He picked up the newspaper. ‘You were still asleep when I brought you a copy of today’s paper. The picture of you fooling around with your sailor boyfriend made the front page of many of the English and European tabloids, as well as the local press here on the Amalfi Coast. Anyone who wants to find you won’t have to look very hard.’

Arianna shrugged to hide her discomfiture that she’d been unaware of his presence while she’d slept. It made her feel vulnerable, somehow, knowing that he was the only man who had ever seen her asleep. ‘I don’t suppose anyone will be looking for me. Most of my friends are aware that I spend the summer in Positano.’

She wondered why Santino had sounded terse, but as she stared at the newspaper she suddenly understood. ‘I’m not stupid, Mr Vasari. I am aware of the reason why my father hired you.’

She thought that he tensed, although she couldn’t be sure. His eyes narrowed on her face but his tone bordered on uninterested as he murmured, ‘And what reason is that?’

‘Randolph employed you to make sure that I keep out of trouble and out of the papers, didn’t he?’

‘You have a well-documented history of getting into trouble.’ Santino flicked his gaze back to the newspaper photo, and the look of contempt that crossed his hard features filled Arianna with an emotion that she was startled to realise was shame.

She had never cared what other people thought of her, or at least that was what she had tried to convince herself. The scathing words of the headmistress who had expelled her from her school—that she would amount to nothing in life unless she changed her attitude—still stung ten years later. But, Arianna assured herself, she absolutely did not care what a man who made a living from looking menacing, and who was probably all brawn and no brains, thought of her.

‘Drinking yourself to oblivion and flaunting your body like a hooker seems like pretty stupid behaviour in my opinion,’ Santino Vasari said, and something in his tone made her feel as small and insignificant as she’d felt all those years ago in the headmistress’s office.

Her jaw dropped. No one had ever spoken to her quite so bluntly before, and the thought struck her that if her father had criticised her just once it would have been an indication that he cared about her. But Randolph’s lack of interest had led to her running wild throughout her teenage years and she’d behaved like the spoilt brat that the tabloids, and the odious man who was sitting too close to her and invading her personal space, believed she was.

‘I did not ask for, nor am I the least bit interested in, your opinion,’ she informed Santino icily.

The glitter in his green eyes sent a frisson of excitement through her when she realised that he was struggling to control his temper. At least she made him feel something—which she had never achieved with her father.

‘I expected you to arrive at Naples airport on a flight from London yesterday. But, when I went to meet you, you didn’t show up,’ he said curtly. ‘How did you get to Positano?’

She shrugged. ‘At Heathrow I bumped into a friend, Davina, who was about to fly to Amalfi on her father’s company jet and she invited me to go with her.’ It was all coming back to Arianna now. The private jet had landed at an airfield near to the Amalfi coast and Davina had arranged to join Jonny and a group of friends on his yacht Sun Princess.

By then it had been something like thirty-nine hours since Arianna had left Sydney and she had hardly eaten or drunk anything in that time. She’d been too tired to argue when Jonny had pulled her onto the yacht, saying that he would take her along the coast to Positano. All she had wanted to do was sleep, but with a party in full swing it had been impossible. At least sunbathing on the deck had allowed her to close her eyes, and she had worn the gold bikini for the first time without realising how inadequately the tiny triangles of material covered her breasts.

When someone had passed her a bottle of champagne, she’d taken a sip to quench her thirst. It was bad luck that just then a speedboat had raced alongside the yacht and the paparazzi on board had taken the photograph which had made it onto the front page of the newspapers.

She glanced at Santino’s arresting face. He was not handsome in a pretty sense, unlike some of the male models with whom she had worked on fashion shoots. Featuring on the front covers of upmarket glossy magazines was her only claim to a career, she acknowledged ruefully.

Santino’s hard-boned features and powerfully muscular physique exuded a raw masculinity and brooding sensuality that evoked a visceral longing deep in Arianna’s pelvis. Her reaction shocked her. For all of her adult life she had flirted and acted the role of a siren, tempting men with her beauty. But she’d never felt desire or chemistry, or whatever this wild heat in her blood was called.

Inexplicably she found herself tempted to explain the true version of what had happened on the yacht. Even more oddly, she considered telling him the truth about herself: that she had finally grown up and wanted to make something good out of her life. But he probably wouldn’t believe her, and he would not care anyway. No one ever had. Not her business-obsessed father or her mother who, when Arianna had been a child, had abandoned her for a lover and a new life on the other side of the world.

She watched Santino press the plunger down on the cafetière and pour coffee into the single cup on the tray. Eagerly she reached out her hand to take the cup but he lifted it to his lips and took a long sip.

‘It’s good coffee,’ he murmured appreciatively. ‘I suggest you go and get yourself some. You look as though you could do with a dose of caffeine.’

She flushed, wondering if she looked as bad as he had implied. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair and guessed she looked a wreck after she’d travelled from one time zone to another. Her body clock had gone haywire and she wasn’t suffering from a hangover but severe dehydration. ‘I assumed that Filippo had asked you to deliver the coffee to me,’ she said sharply.

‘The butler was whizzing up a concoction of what looked like raw eggs and spinach in a blender.’ Santino gave a shrug. ‘Filippo told me he usually makes the smoothie to cure your hangover after you’ve had a heavy night of partying.’

He removed the cover from a plate to reveal Arianna’s favourite breakfast that the cook, Ida, always prepared for her of freshly baked rolls and thin slices of ham. Her stomach growled with hunger as she watched him pick up a roll and bite into it. With any luck he would choke, she thought sourly.

‘The cook told me she is preparing agnello arrosto con fagioli bianco for dinner—roast lamb with white beans,’ he said after he had polished off a second roll. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head, causing the hem of his T-shirt to ride up, revealing a strip of his bronzed torso and a sprinkling of black hairs that disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans. ‘I can see I’m going to enjoy staying at Villa Cadenza.’

The glimpse of his taut, tanned abdomen had a strange effect on Arianna’s insides and she felt hot all over imagining where his body hair grew more thickly beneath the zip of his jeans. She knew she was blushing, and when she dragged her gaze away from Santino’s crotch up to his face the gleam of amusement in his eyes added fuel to her simmering temper.

‘You won’t be staying here,’ she told him furiously. ‘I’m going to call my father and put an end to this ridiculous situation.’

Arianna spied her handbag and suitcase on the floor close to the sun bed. Vaguely she remembered that one of the crew on Jonny’s yacht had brought her and her luggage to the villa in the early hours of the morning. The front door had been locked and she hadn’t wanted to wake the butler so she had slept on a sun bed for the rest of the night.

She dug out her phone and called her father’s private number. But inevitably it was his personal assistant, Monica, who answered and gave the usual excuse that Randolph was busy and did not want to be disturbed. ‘I’ll tell him you phoned and I’m sure he’ll be in touch when he has time,’ the PA said smoothly, although she must know that Randolph had never in living memory returned one of his daughter’s calls.

‘I’d like to leave a message for him.’ Arianna watched Santino pour out the last of the coffee from the cafetière and gulp it down, and her blood boiled. ‘Will you tell my father that I have no need of a bodyguard and I have fired Mr Vasari?’ She gave Santino a haughty look. ‘He will be leaving Villa Cadenza immediately.’

* * *

Santino let his eyes roam over Arianna as she leaned back on the sun bed while she talked on her phone. Her long, tanned legs went on for ever and the silk sarong tied around her body did not hide the fullness of her breasts. Desire spiked sharp and urgent in his groin and he was thankful that the newspaper on his lap hid the betraying bulge beneath his jeans. He had known before he’d agreed to be her bodyguard that she was beautiful, but he had been unprepared for the hunger she aroused in him, the white-hot lust that surged through his veins.

She had recently starred in an advertising campaign for a famous perfume brand and pictures of her on billboards wearing sexy, black lace underwear had ignited a fire inside him. Sex was used indiscriminately by advertisers to sell products, and no doubt every red-blooded male who looked at the photos of Arianna wanted to run their hands over her lush curves and kiss her sensual mouth that was both an invitation and a challenge. But it was a challenge he must ignore, Santino reminded himself.

When he had found her asleep on the sun lounger earlier he’d realised that a camera could not capture the true essence of her beauty. Fine-boned and slender, she’d looked as fragile as a porcelain figurine, and she was quite the loveliest thing he had ever seen. It was those exquisite cheekbones and the delicate perfection of her elfin features, he thought broodily. Photographs did not do justice to the luminosity of her English rose complexion.

She had woken a few minutes ago and her long, curling lashes had swept upwards as she’d surveyed him with her big brown eyes flecked with gold. He told himself he must have imagined he had glimpsed a haunting vulnerability in her gaze. The sulky pout of her mouth was too sensual, too provocative, for her to be anything other than the brazen temptress beloved by the tabloids and gossip columns.

Santino rubbed his hand around the back of his neck to ease a knot of tension in his muscles. His fingers automatically slipped beneath his shirt collar and traced the ten-inch scar from a bullet wound he’d received while he’d been serving in Afghanistan. The bullet had entered just below his shoulder blade and ripped open his body before exiting his neck at the base of his skull. It was incredible that he had survived, and, like the images in his mind of war, the scar would never completely fade. Nor would his guilt.

Eight years ago he had come close to death on a dusty, blood-spattered desert road. His life had been saved by his best friend and fellow SAS member, Mac Wilson, who had dragged him out of the line of fire. But that act of immense bravery had cost Mac his legs when an IED had exploded beneath him.

Restlessly, Santino stood up and walked across the terrace, aware that Arianna’s gaze followed him. His thoughts flew back to six months ago when Mac had requested his help to bring down a gang of drug smugglers believed to be responsible for his sister’s death. Mac was determined to bring Laura’s Italian boyfriend to justice but he had no proof that the man, Enzo, had supplied her with the cocaine which had killed her. Mac had asked Santino to infiltrate the gang who had links to the Calabrian mafia, known as the ’Ndrangheta. He had not needed to remind Santino that he was unable to do so himself because he was confined to a wheelchair.

Working undercover, Santino had discovered that, as well as drug smuggling, the gang had carried out several high-profile kidnappings and been paid millions of pounds of ransom money. Their next target was the English heiress Arianna Fitzgerald. The kidnappers had kept her under surveillance for some time and knew that she spent the summer at her father’s villa on the Amalfi coast. Santino had alerted the Italian police, but they had been unable to contact Arianna, so had warned her father of the threat to his daughter.

Santino recalled his meeting with Randolph Fitzgerald a week ago at the billionaire’s Kensington home Lyle House.

‘You are the best person to protect my daughter when she returns from Australia, Mr Vasari. Name your price. What will it take to persuade you to accept the job of Arianna’s bodyguard?’

Santino had been irritated by the other man’s arrogant assumption that everything could be bought and everyone had a price, but he guessed that those things were probably true for one of the richest men in England. ‘I am not a CPO,’ Santino had reminded Randolph. ‘I have given you the names of several security agencies who can provide close protection officers and will arrange for your daughter to receive round-the-clock protection.’

‘Your training and experience with the SAS gives me confidence that you will be able to keep Arianna safe. After all, it was you who found out that a mafia gang are planning to snatch her from my villa in Positano and demand a multi-million-pound ransom for her release. The Italian police are hunting for the gang but, until they are arrested, the threat to Arianna remains.’

It was true that the in-depth knowledge Santino had amassed about the gang members while he had pretended to be one of them meant he knew how they operated and could be one step ahead of them. But it was also true that he had no desire to babysit a spoilt socialite who, by her own father’s admission, was headstrong and difficult.

Even if only a fraction of the reports about Arianna Fitzgerald’s party lifestyle were true, she had earned her reputation as a good-time girl. For years her face and her stunning body—invariably poured into figure-hugging dresses—had regularly appeared on the front pages of the tabloids. One social commentator had sarcastically observed that Arianna would turn up to the opening of an envelope if it gave her an opportunity to pose for the cameras.

‘I left the army a long time ago and since then I have established a successful career. I don’t need a job,’ Santino had told her father bluntly. ‘It could be months before all the gang members involved in the kidnap plot are apprehended. I can’t take that amount of time away from my business interests.’

Randolph nodded. ‘I believe your chain of delicatessens under the brand name of Toni’s Deli has outlets across the UK and in many European cities. You sold the business eighteen months ago and since then you have concentrated on growing your investment portfolio.’

Noticing Santino’s surprise, Randolph had added drily, ‘I did my homework about you, Mr Vasari, and I have a proposition that might interest you.’

Despite himself, Santino had been curious. ‘I’m guessing that your proposition is dependent on my agreement to protect Arianna?’

‘Preparations are underway to float Fitzgerald Design on the stock market and a price has been set at thirty-five pounds per share.’ The fashion designer handed Santino a piece of paper. ‘The top figure is the valuation of the company, and the figure beneath it is the number of shares I am prepared to give you in return for you taking on the role of my daughter’s bodyguard until the kidnap threat is over.’

Santino lifted his brows when he looked at the figures. ‘It would cost you a lot less to employ a CPO through a security agency.’

‘As I have already stated, I believe you are the best man for the job.’ Randolph leaned back in his chair. ‘You are no doubt aware that my daughter frequently appears on the front pages of a certain type of newspaper. For some reason Arianna seems to enjoy courting notoriety, but the publicity surrounding her is likely to have brought her to the attention of the gang who intend to kidnap her. An important element of your job will be to shield her from the paparazzi and keep her out of the headlines.’

Randolph was clearly confident that the offer of a significant number of shares in Fitzgerald Design would persuade him to agree to be Arianna’s bodyguard, Santino had mused. Why shouldn’t he accept the shares as payment for protecting a pampered young woman who, quite frankly, sounded as if she was a pain in the backside?