Kitabı oku: «The Italian's Summer Seduction», sayfa 3

Which reinforced her opinion that Filomena would listen to her, side with her in defence of her missing twin; she was genuinely very fond of her. Jilly had obviously done what she did best, had used her charm until the recipient was eating out of her pretty hands. A knack, Milly ruefully reminded herself, that she singularly lacked.

Yes, Filomena would roundly deny that Jilly had forged those cheques, would explain that she had signed them herself when she hadn’t been feeling on top form, which would be why the signatures had raised suspicions.

Emboldened by that possible explanation, she raised her eyes and found Cesare’s eyes on her, focused with an intensity that made her blood run cold and then hot. Very hot. The smile that played around the edges of his mouth was wilfully sinful and it did awful things to her.

Her stomach tightened then flipped, just as it had done earlier when he’d come to her room.

He’d entered after a perfunctory knock and she’d been standing there in her plain un-Jilly-like undies. Her face flaming, she’d grabbed her sister’s black silk sheath from where she’d laid it ready on the bed and held it in front of her. Feeling sick with embarrassment, she spilled out, ‘What do you want?’

Leaning with casual grace against the door frame he looked magnificent. All dark and brooding and unnervingly sexy in his cream dinner jacket and narrow black trousers. No wonder Jilly had fallen hook line and sinker for the heartless brute, was her near hysterical thought as she clasped the black dress infront of her as if it were body armour.

‘To remind you that we dine early, at seven-thirty, for my grandmother’s sake—in case you’d forgotten. You are already late.’ Delivered with extreme dryness.

‘Of course I hadn’t forgotten,’ she denied. How could she forget something she hadn’t known? ‘I fell asleep,’ she excused untruthfully, unable to tell him that she’d spent ages going over the room here and in the luxurious en suite bathroom, opening cupboards and drawers to see if Jilly had left anything behind that would tell her that her sister had meant to return when she’d recovered from the worst effects of a broken heart and shattered dreams.

She had found nothing, not even a hairpin. Disconsolately she’d run a bath and had soaked for an hour, then selected the black dress from amongst the things one of the staff must have unpacked, and had been getting ready to dress and go down to Filomena’s room and tell her everything.

‘I’ll be even later if you don’t leave so I can get dressed,’ Milly said tightly, willing him to take his desperately unnerving presence away.

‘I’ll wait.’ Posting his intention, Cesare sauntered further into the room and Milly, her chin set at a stubborn angle, her eyes glittering with loathing, backed out and slammed the bathroom door behind her.

Who the hell did he think he was? she raged internally. Bang went her intention to explain everything to his unsuspecting grandmother before they all had to sit through dinner together.

Struggling into the dress, she did her best to calm down. In her role as Filomena’s companion she would get loads of time alone with her tomorrow. She had wanted to get everything off her chest right now, but it would just have to wait.

And at least he hadn’t figured out that she wasn’t the real Jilly. If he had she would have been thrown out of the villa at the speed of light, the doors locked and barred behind her and her intentions to confess to Filomena and get her on side vanishing like a puff of smoke in a hurricane.

Facing one of the mirrored walls Milly noted that her face had gone scarlet from the combined effects of temper, frustration and her inability to pull the back zip all the way up.

And then, to her huge annoyance, Cesare’s reflection appeared behind her. ‘Allow me.’ In one concise movement he had the zip in place, the backs of his fingers brushing against skin that suddenly felt unbearably sensitised. ‘I thought you might have died in here.’ His mouth curved in sardonic humour and, Milly translated huffily, he thought she might have jumped out of the window with the family silver concealed in her underwear!

His reflected eyes, partially veiled by his thick dark lashes, swept slowly down her body and Milly’s insides squirmed, her face reddening again. The dress fitted like a second skin. Jilly had always worn her clothes on the tight side. ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it!’ Whereas she had always preferred not to draw attention to her curvy hips, tiny waist and the generous breasts that were even now humiliating her by peaking, thrusting unashamedly against the fine silk barrier of the dress.

She didn’t know what had come over her to make her body respond this way. The stress of the situation, she guessed, frustrated because she seemed to have no control over her own body.

Moving briskly to one side, she turned and marched back into the bedroom, pushed her feet into a pair of Jilly’s heels and followed him out into the corridor and now here they were, the ongoing stress of having to pretend to eat and respond to Filomena’s chatter thankfully coming to an end and he was leaning back in his chair, cradling his wineglass in one lean, tanned hand, the picture of smooth sophistication.

Cesare had made little contribution to the conversation, just watched her from the depths of those clever eyes, making her wish the floor would open like a trapdoor and swallow her up, but when a stout black-clad woman entered with a dark-haired slip of a girl in close attendance, Filomena stood. ‘No coffee for me, Rosa. I think I will retire early after today’s excitement.’ Cesare stood too and settled his grandmother back in her chair.

‘Stay a moment. I have a surprise for you.’

‘A nice one?’ Her smile was teasing.

‘I believe you’ll think so,’ he replied fondly. ‘Amalia is coming to see you tomorrow. She plans on staying for at least two weeks. Apparently, she’s spent the last six months in virtual hiding recovering from her latest facelift and various nips and tucks.’

‘Amalia! How splendid!’ Pleasure shone from the old lady’s eyes. She smiled for Milly. ‘The Contessa di Moroschini is my oldest friend and so outrageous! I know you will enjoy her!’

‘That’s something I’d like to talk to you about, Nonna.’ He turned to Milly, the gentle warmth that always transformed his harsh features when talking to his grandmother disappearing like water down a plughole. ‘As Amalia will be here to keep you company and amused with her latest and possibly near-scandalous doings, I thought I’d steal your companion for a week—take her to the island and allow her to rest and recover from her recent bereavement.’ He turned back to Filomena and Milly, too shocked to speak, felt a peculiar shudder race down her spine.

‘That’s if you approve, Nonna?’

‘A splendid idea!’ Satisfaction wreathed Filomena’s features as she again got to her feet and Milly decided that her guess had been right. Signora Saracino knew about her grandson’s affair with Jilly and hoped it would have a happy ending. She would have to be disabused at some time, told that her so-perfect grandson had cruelly given Jilly the elbow, had made her fly from the villa with a broken heart. But now? When she was so happy at the prospect of a visit from an old friend?

Assaulted by violently conflicting emotions, torn between coming clean and spoiling the old lady’s time with a much loved friend and carrying on the deception for a while longer and trying, somehow, to trace her sister, Milly also rose to her feet.

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Certainly not!’ Filomena was already heading towards the door as the coffee things were laid out and the young maid cleared the table. ‘I manage perfectly well. Enjoy your coffee and discuss your plans for the island.’

Her retreat blocked, Milly subsided back in her seat and wearily accepted the coffee Cesare had poured for her and bit back the instinctive words that would tell him she had no intention of going anywhere with him.

The real Jilly surely would have jumped at what would appear to be a chance of reconciliation. The opportunity to convince him that she hadn’t forged those cheques.

Not having a clue as to how to play it, she sat back and left the initiative to him, merely swallowing sickly when he drained his cup, setting it back on its saucer as he got elegantly to his feet and told her, ‘Be ready to leave at six-thirty,’ and strode from the room.

Milly shuddered. She felt sick. Stuck on an island with him. No chance to try to trace her sister. No time now to get Filomena on side, either. Alone with him, he’d no doubt speak Italian to her and the cat would be out of the bag with a vengeance.

He’d know she wasn’t Jilly.

And what he’d do then didn’t bear thinking about!

Chapter Five

ENIGMA SOLVED!

Everything neatly explained, from her look of total incomprehension when he’d addressed her in Italian to her flustered attempts to cover herself when he’d walked into her room and found her in her underwear. The Jilly he knew would have displayed no such modesty.

Inwardly on a high of triumph, Cesare landed the helicopter on the specially constructed pad on the west side of the privately owned island, the rocky side that looked out over the azure sea to the lushly forested hills of Elba on the horizon.

Waiting for the rotors to come to a standstill, he angled himself into his seat and studied his passenger through narrowed, luxuriantly veiled eyes.

Lying, cheating, devious minx! He wondered idly how she thought she would get away with it and what her motive had been in the first place, then dismissed the consideration as unimportant.

Two could play that game and he’d make a better fist of it than she had.

She was staring ahead, her shoulders rigid beneath the silky blue top she was wearing above cropped, narrow fitting white jeans. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left the villa, not even to ask where he was taking her, her lush mouth downturned like a sulky teenager, the only indication that anything was seriously amiss being the stark apprehension in those deep emerald eyes.

He could understand the apprehension. She was afraid of being found out. As well she might be; she was on decidedly shaky ground and must know it.

When he’d taken that call from the English agent back there on the mainland airstrip, he’d been icily furious but not riven by surprise. He’d been puzzled ever since he’d escorted Nonna’s absconding companion back to the villa and the flare of triumph over running the devious little thief to earth had died down sufficiently to let him see clearly.

The agent had made short work of discovering that there were two of them.

Jilly Lee and Milly Lee.

Identical twins.

His overriding imperative had been to wash his hands of the imposter, give her a well-deserved tongue lashing then walk away, leaving her standing on the airstrip, head back to the villa letting her find her own way back to England as best she could.

But in the space of time it took him to draw breath common sense had overcome his icy fury that she had believed she could make a fool of him—and, even worse, deceive his beloved grandmother.

To return to the villa now and explain everything to Nonna would be to deal her a severe blow. He couldn’t do it. Not yet. It would ruin the happiness she was currently enjoying. The company of her old friend—who hadn’t needed much in the way of pressure to agree to the last minute invitation to visit—and secure in the knowledge that her vibrant young companion was back in harness, her matchmaking tendencies surfacing again in her delight at his suggestion that he whisk her companion away to the island.

Nonna was old, she was frail and he loved her. Let her be happy for a little while longer.

His original intention to use the time on the island to solve the puzzle himself was now redundant. But he could amuse himself at her expense—she owed him a little light entertainment—and when she least expected it he would hit her with the fact that he knew the truth and hope to shock her sister’s whereabouts from her, assuming the Italian and English agents had drawn a blank.

‘You can get out now.’ Softly spoken, his condemning eyes on her delightful profile as he tried to read what went on inside that devious head.

The sisters were identical in face and body but this one—Milly—had an air of softness, almost vulnerability, about her that the other patently lacked. With her short blonde hair trailing soft tendrils against her tender nape and those startlingly green eyes she looked almost childlike. But there was nothing childlike about the full, pert breasts, tiny waist and luscious hips.

Gorgeous on the outside but inside they were, both of them, bent as corkscrews—she had to be just as devious and self serving as her much more in-your-face twin.

She gave no response, just the merest dip of her head to acknowledge she had heard him, her hands eventually straying with slow reluctance to the heavy-duty clasp of her seat belt.

Scared witless? As she had every right to be. Expecting him to bombard her with Italian, force her to confess she didn’t understand a word of the language and reveal her true identity. She would be quaking in her shoes, waiting for the axe to fall.

His smile was self-admittedly victorious as his feet touched the ground. He would gently erase the fear, lull her into a false sense of security. And then hit her with his knowledge. Not exactly ethical, he conceded, but Dio! Nobody treated Nonna like a cash cow or a dupe and got away with it—not while he had breath in his body!

It felt as though all the ants in the world were charging up and down her spine wearing spiked boots, Milly decided feverishly. In sickening mental turmoil, she watched as Cesare lifted down her old suitcase and shouldered his own rucksack. Reaching down for her case, he set off up the stony track at speed, leaving Milly with no option but to follow.

She had no idea why he had brought her here. Whatever his reason, it didn’t augur well for her, she acknowledged edgily. It certainly wasn’t for the good of her health!

He thought she was a thief, a common con-woman, and she, in her role as Jilly, hadn’t denied it and sought to clear her name as her maligned sister most surely would have done. She had just gone along with his dictates, seeing it as the only way to keep her sister out of his vindictive clutches and the cold hands of the law.

But she had the terrifying feeling that the deception would soon be discovered, laid bare before his contemptuous gaze. And then the hunt for the real Jilly Lee would be back on with a vengeance.

It wouldn’t take long. All he had to do was start conversing in Italian. Without his grandmother’s rules there was no reason why he shouldn’t use his native language and expect her to understand most, if not all, of it.

Knowing she had failed miserably and done her sister’s cause no good at all she was unable to concentrate on where she was going when her foot hit a rock and, emitting a sharp cry of alarm, she fell flat on her face and lay spreadeagled in the growing heat of the sun. Winded, humiliated, short moments later she felt herself lifted to her feet by two strong hands and her eyes sparkled like fine jewels with unshed tears of chagrin.

‘Are you hurt?’

Milly gulped for much needed oxygen and shook her head. Two displaced tears trickled down her pale-with-shock cheeks. He actually sounded as if he cared, his eyes narrowing with what looked suspiciously like concern as his gaze swept down the length of her shaken body.

His hands were on her slender shoulders now. They felt reassuring, comforting. She had the insane impulse to move closer to that strong, lean body, lay her troubled head against his broad chest and seek solace.

Hurriedly, she brushed the wimpy tears away and with them the weak need to be held by him. He was her sister’s enemy; therefore he was her enemy too.

In similar circumstances Jilly would swear like a trooper, brush herself down and make a joke of it. In the impersonation stakes she wasn’t doing too well.

She was going to have to try harder. Much harder. At least until he discovered that she wasn’t who she was pretending to be.

‘I’m fine.’ She forced a smile. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ She lifted her chin, wondering what Jilly would say next, and hit on, ‘How much further? Isn’t there any transport on the island?’

Her sister hadn’t been known to walk if she could take a cab and rarely put herself in a situation where there wasn’t one within hailing distance. But at her most Jilly-like comment to date Cesare’s wickedly sexy mouth turned down at one corner as he drawled, ‘There is nothing on the island but one stone cottage. No people, no roads and no bright lights.

His hands dropped from her shoulders and he turned away, striding along the rough track to where he’d dropped the luggage, then waited until she joined him. ‘My father had it built when he bought the island many years ago. By all accounts he was a workaholic and came here at least once a year to recharge his batteries.’

‘You must have happy memories of childhood holidays,’ Milly responded to his totally unexpected mention of anything remotely personal, trying to act as normally as possible under difficult circumstances, doing her level best not to get too het up over the possibility of him leaving her here with no way of returning to the mainland once her deception had been uncovered. She certainly wouldn’t put that kind of action past him!

For a moment she thought he wouldn’t respond to her innocuous remark. She glanced up at his tanned, extravagantly handsome features and saw his mouth tighten with what she could only translate as scorn. ‘My mother never came here. She was a metropolitan creature. My father brought his mistresses here, he didn’t want me around. I only learned of the existence of this hideaway after his death.’

Biting back instinctive words of sympathy because she knew he wouldn’t want them, Milly concentrated on getting up the increasingly steep track that traversed the sun-baked hillside where herbs and wild flowers merged their perfume with the tang of the sea and the scent of the pines she could see ahead of them. Breathless with heat and effort—neither of which seemed to affect him in the slightest—her mind was busy.

If his father had taken mistresses openly enough for him to know about them then that would explain why, given such an immoral role model, Cesare took it as the norm to take a woman to his bed and throw her out of it when he got tired of her.

Poor Jilly!

Glancing up at him, Milly noted with a peculiar twisting sensation in her tummy that the slight breeze from the sea had ruffled his short, dark as night hair. It made him look more approachable, less the hard-nosed, ultra sophisticated business tycoon, and it was again impressed on her exactly why her up-until-now inconstant sister had at last fallen truly, deeply in love. Very few women would be able to resist his potent brand of sexual charisma.

‘Almost there.’

The effect of his voice rippled through her like a mild electric shock. Smooth as silk, consoling? Her heart pattering she narrowed her eyes against the sun. They had crested the brow of the hill and a shallow wooded valley lay before them. On the opposite side, its back to the hill, beyond which she could glimpse the sea and the sand of a small cove, was a sturdy stone house facing the green valley. A quiet, secluded place, ideal for lovers.

‘Why have you brought me here?’ She didn’t want to know the answer because she knew she wouldn’t like it but she had to ask because not knowing was getting to her. And his reply made her feel giddy.

‘Why do you think, Jilly?’

The slanting smile on his shamelesly sexy mouth and the glinting, terrifyingly intimate light in those stunning eyes made her tummy loop over, forcing her to recall why this secluded hideaway on an uninhabited island had been built by his womanising father. Had he given her that snippet of information to make sure she made the connection?

He and Jilly had been lovers. Did he mean to take up where they’d left off? Demand her presence in his bed—away from his grandmother’s sharp eyes and knowing smiles—in part payment for the massive debt she had accumulated by, according to his warped and cynical mind, forging those cheques?

Her heart squeezed in a severe contraction and her legs turned into wavering pillars of cotton wool. Surely he couldn’t mean that! And, if he did, what on earth was she to do?

Looking down into her suddenly pale as milk face Cesare bit back a peal of husky laughter. Aside from her looks, her imposter rating would be lower than nought out of ten. She’d obviously got the message loud and clear and it had floored her. Didn’t she know how her twin would have reacted to such a neatly couched invitation? Like a heat seeking missile homing in on a coveted target. All over him like a second skin.

‘Come, I’ll help you. The track’s steep in places.’

Milly shuddered right down to her toes as he took her hand, the warmth of his soft, silky tone, the heat of his skin as his strong lean fingers closed around hers made her heart beat in a frenzy, her lungs struggling painfully because, try as she might, she couldn’t seem to breathe.

Yet, uncaring breaker of hearts as she guessed him to be, he was more than careful as he helped her to negotiate the trickier places, only releasing her hand as they came to the paved area in front of the house.

Windows lay open and the stout wooden door was unlocked; obviously he had no fear of squatters or thieves intent on lifting anything they could carry away.

Mild surprise deepened to bewilderment as he ushered her into a square stone-flagged room that appeared to double as kitchen and informal living area.

Flowers in a terracotta bowl graced the central chunky pine table and near a small but functional looking cooker a fridge hummed gently.

Driven by feminine curiosity, Milly dived to open the fridge door and survey the lavish contents. She turned, her eyes wide. ‘If no one else lives here, how did this stuff get here?’ Had he lied? Were there other people on this island, someone she could turn to for help if he left her here after discovering—as he surely would eventually—that she wasn’t who she claimed to be?

‘By motor launch, not by magic.’ His slight smile registered superior amusement. ‘I have a caretaker on the mainland who, apart from checking up on the property from time to time, sees it is stocked if I phone him to tell him I’m going to be here. He gets the generator working, makes sure the water pump is functioning properly and soon.’ One strongly marked brow elevated mockingly. ‘Did you imagine I brought you here to starve or exist on fish from the sea? If so, you’d have had to do the catching of them. I do not own such patience.’

Face flaming, her chin notched up by several degrees, Milly faced the unwelcome truth that they were indeed alone here.

She ought to have known how the other half lived. Just one word and a minion would be found to carry out orders at a moment’s notice! Silly of her to have overlooked that fact of a life!

And she wasn’t about to ask again exactly why he had brought her here and risk another loaded answer. Instead she said tightly, ‘Show me where I’m supposed to sleep and tell me what you want for lunch. I’m sure you expect me to wait on you!’

Because he wouldn’t know how to boil water. He might be a whiz at doing whatever clever stuff he did to earn a dazzling living, but brought up surrounded by a platoon of servants, anxious to cater to his slightest wish, he wouldn’t have a domesticated bone in his body.

‘Now there’s a thought!’ Slumbrous eyes scorched her, and Milly hastily looked away. He was lethally attractive and she sure as Hades wasn’t going to follow her twin down that fatal track. She heaved a sigh of relief when he picked up her suitcase and led her up the staircase tucked away at the far side of the room.

There were two doors leading off the square landing. The first he flung open revealed a bathroom of almost clinical utility, the second a bedroom that contained the biggest bed she had ever laid eyes on and not much else.

Did Cesare, following his father’s track record, bring his women here? Had he brought Jilly? If so, she had goofed badly when she’d queried the lavish supply of foodstuffs, asked where she would sleep, because there appeared to be only this one bedroom.

So where would he sleep? Her throat closed and her stomach churned with the weirdest sensation she had ever experienced. Whipping round on her sandalled feet, intent on telling him that there was no way she was sharing a bed with him and if he had brought her here with that in mind he was going to have to think again.

But there was just empty space where he had been and from downstairs she could hear his tuneful whistle. She ground her teeth in frustration. He sounded in a good mood, was her ireful thought.

Looking forward to making the woman he’d dragged back to Italy to make reparation for her supposed sins, pay off part of her dues in his bed?