Kitabı oku: «The Sicilian's Defiant Virgin»

CHAPTER ONE

‘CHE? BUON DIO!’

Nothing could be worse than his younger brother’s funeral. Until Luca Tebaldi’s father hit him with a fresh disaster.

Swearing savagely under his breath, Luca closed his father’s study door on the stream of mourners who had gathered in Sicily to show their fealty to the Tebaldi clan, rather than to demonstrate their grief at the loss of Luca’s reckless younger brother Raoul in a senseless accident. The Tebaldis were the uncrowned kings of Sicily, but on days like this Luca’s guilt at leaving his homeland as a youth ran thick and deep and ugly.

The funeral was being held on the Tebaldis’ private island off the toe of Sicily, where the Tebaldi family had ruled unchallenged for a thousand years. Luca had rebelled as a youth against the lifestyle of his father and brother, believing their actions belonged to another age. His success was founded on shrewd moves in business, and legitimate takeovers. He had begged his father and brother on countless occasions to change their ways before it was too late. There was no satisfaction in being proved right.

‘If all I had to worry about was Raoul’s gambling debts...’ The man the world still called Don Tebaldi slumped back in his leather chair, looking spent and exhausted.

‘Whatever has happened, I’ll put it right,’ Luca soothed his father. ‘You have nothing to worry about.’ They might not see eye to eye, but blood was thicker than water.

‘You can’t put this right, Luca,’ his father assured him.

‘I’ll fix it,’ Luca stated firmly. He had never seen his father looking quite so defeated.

‘As if I didn’t have enough with your brother’s gambling, Raoul thought it would be amusing to leave his estate to some girl he met at that casino in London.’

There was no change in Luca’s expression, but his mind was whirring. His brother had been a compulsive gambler, who had increasingly distanced himself from Luca. On their last meeting Raoul had said Luca would never understand him.

‘I retire to Florida soon,’ Luca’s father reminded him. ‘You’ll have to go to London to clear up Raoul’s mess. Who better for the task than you, with your morally judgemental view on life?’

His father’s angry gesture and the sneer on his face revealed Don Tebaldi’s contempt for his sons—one too weak, and the other too strong, he would say.

Luca found it incomprehensible that a parent could feel such a level of loathing for their children. He watched as a man turned suddenly old manoeuvred his arthritic limbs behind the desk. A lifetime of excess had finally caught up with his father. He felt compassion, though they had never been close. Considering the practical side of the problem, his business interests were so successful he could easily take a break. He must. His father needed him.

‘This wouldn’t have happened if you had followed me into the family business,’ his father moaned as he buried his face in his hands.

‘Joining the family business was never an option for me, and it never will be,’ Luca said.

His father lifted his face from his hands, his expression hardening into the unforgiving mask Luca remembered so well from his childhood.

‘You don’t deserve my love,’ he spat out viciously. ‘You’re not worthy to be my son. Raoul was weak, and you are worse, because you could have taken over from me, making the name Tebaldi great again.’

‘I would do anything to help you, but not that,’ Luca replied evenly, his mind already working on his trip to London.

His father’s scornful look remained trained on his face. Neither of his sons had been blessed with his killer instinct, Don Tebaldi would tell them when Luca and Raoul were youths, as if this were a quality they should aspire to.

‘You are a stubborn fool, Luca. You always were.’

‘Because I won’t do as you say?’

‘Correct. And as for Raoul?’ His father made a sound of disgust.

‘Raoul always tried to please you, Father—’

‘Then, he failed!’ his father raged, slamming his fist on the desk to make the point.

Luca said nothing. He’d been out of the loop for a long time working on his various charitable projects. He wished he’d been around for his brother. He wished his father could show some emotion, other than hate. Even Don Tebaldi’s shadowed study reeked of bitterness and disappointment in his sons, yet Luca felt compelled to offer reassurance to the older man—and he would have done, if his father’s cold stare hadn’t forbidden any form of human contact between them. It was an expression that lacked every shred of parental warmth.

‘Leave me,’ his father commanded. ‘If you’ve nothing positive to offer, get out!’

‘Never,’ Luca said quietly. ‘Family comes first, whether I work for the family business, or not.’

‘What family business?’ his father hissed bitterly. ‘There’s nothing left thanks to your brother.’

‘There are islanders to protect,’ Luca argued quietly.

‘Then, you do it!’ his father blazed. ‘I’m done here.’ Dropping his head into his hands, the once great leader began to sob like a child.

Tactfully turning his back, Luca waited for the storm to blow over. He wasn’t going anywhere. Neither his father nor Raoul had ever been able to accept that he would love them, no matter what.

Luca Tebaldi could have been a worthy successor to a man who had ruled his fiefdom with a rod of iron for more than fifty years. Well over six feet tall, with the hard-muscled frame of a Roman gladiator, Luca was considered to be outrageously good-looking. With the intellect of a scholar and the keen stare of a warrior, Luca possessed the type of dangerously compelling glamour of a man born to rule. But it was Luca’s steel-trap mind that had brought him such huge success. His business interests were wholly legitimate, and had been founded far away from his father’s crumbling empire. Rampant sex appeal made him irresistible to women, but Luca had no time for softening influences in his life, though his late, hugely passionate Italian mother had drummed into him an appreciation of the fairer sex. Luca’s raging libido was a hitch that he and his iron control had learned to live with.

His father looked up. ‘How could you not know what was happening to Raoul? You both own property in London.’

‘Our paths rarely crossed,’ Luca admitted. His life was so different from that of his fast-living brother. ‘Is there anything more I should know before I leave for London?’ he pressed, wanting to move past the histrionics to the meat of the matter.

His father shrugged. ‘Raoul owed money everywhere. He left several properties, all heavily mortgaged—’ These he dismissed with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. ‘It’s the trust fund that concerns me. She gets that!’

A trust fund worth millions, Luca calculated, and one of the few sources of money Raoul hadn’t been able to get his hands on to fritter away. Raoul wouldn’t have been able to touch the trust until his thirtieth birthday, a date still six months in the future. ‘This will make Raoul’s girlfriend very wealthy indeed,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘Do we know anything about her?’

‘Enough to destroy her,’ his father informed him with relish.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Luca ruled. ‘Raoul didn’t expect to be killed. He almost certainly drew up this will on a whim—probably after you fell out about something?’ The brief look on his father’s face suggested he was right. ‘My brother would almost certainly have changed his intentions in time.’

‘How comforting,’ his father scoffed. ‘What I need to know, is, what are you going to do about it now?’

‘I’d rather Raoul had lived,’ Luca reproached his father.

‘Live to your prescription?’ his father scorned angrily. ‘Hard work and trust in your fellow man—who doesn’t give a flying fig about you, by the way. I’d rather be dead than live like that!’

‘Raoul has paid the ultimate price,’ Luca pointed out sharply.

He’d had enough of pandering to a self-centred old man. He was still grieving for his brother, and longed for solitude so he could dwell on happier times. Raoul hadn’t always been weak, or a criminal. As a child with the world at his feet, Raoul had been trusting and funny and mischievous. Luca remembered him as a wild-haired scamp, who had liked to tag along with Luca and his friends to show the older boys how reckless he could be. Raoul could swim as fast as they could, and he could dive as deep too, sometimes remaining submerged for so long that Luca had to dive down to bring him up again. It was always a prank, designed to wind Luca up, but Raoul’s daring had been his entry ticket into the group. Luca and his friends had grown out of their wildness as life forced them to shoulder increased responsibility, but Raoul had never lost his lust for danger, and in one last reckless act had joined an infamous street-racing gang. He’d been killed instantly in a head-on collision between two cars. By some miracle, there were no other casualties, but Raoul’s death was the most hideous waste of life.

‘What a tragedy,’ Luca murmured out loud as he remembered the details as relayed to him by the police officers on the scene.

‘What a mess,’ his father argued. ‘Sometimes I think your brother’s sole intention was to hurt me.’

Always the self-pity, Luca thought, but when his father’s fist closed around a lethal-looking paper knife and he looked as if he might stab it into the document in front of him, which Luca presumed could only be Raoul’s will, he intervened. ‘May I see that before you destroy it?’

‘Be my guest.’ His father shoved the papers across the desk. ‘Raoul’s lawyer was here before the funeral. “As a courtesy to you, Don Tebaldi—”’ His father mimicked a wheedling voice. ‘When you and I both know he was only interested in his fee.’

‘You can’t blame him for that,’ Luca observed as he settled down to read. ‘Raoul wasn’t always quick to pay his debts.’ He glanced up briefly. ‘And he certainly isn’t in a position to do so now.’

His father’s expression hardened. ‘You’re missing the point, Luca. The lawyer’s visit was a warning. He was telling me—me, Don Tebaldi—not to accidentally misplace Raoul’s will, or destroy it, as he had already cast his weasel eyes over it.’

‘Raoul was free to do as he liked,’ Luca commented mildly. ‘This document seems very thorough. This girl must have meant a lot to him.’

‘It’s unlikely the girl was a love interest,’ his father rapped. ‘More likely, she was a clever trickster. Thanks to Raoul’s mismanagement the Tebaldi family has lost most of its power and influence, but we still have enemies, Luca. How do I know that one of them hasn’t put this girl up to this act of extortion?’ He clutched his chest theatrically. ‘I can just imagine—’

‘Has she been notified of Raoul’s death?’ Luca interrupted.

‘I asked the lawyer to hold off.’ Having made an instant recovery, his father shrugged. ‘I made it worth his while to do so. And she won’t find out from the media. Your brother’s death will hardly make the international news. Raoul would have had to make a mark on the world to do that. So yes, we can keep it quiet for now. You’re still one step ahead of her. Go to London. Buy her off. Do whatever it takes—’

While his father warmed to his theme, Luca battled the ache of loss for a brother he had loved as a child, and had lost touch with as an adult. The few times they’d met recently, Raoul had mocked the way Luca lived his life, while Luca had been frustrated that Raoul couldn’t seem to break free of the vicious cycle of gambling and debt. On their last meeting, he had sensed Raoul had wanted to tell him something, but hadn’t felt able to confide in him. It was no use asking his father what this might have been, but maybe the girl could help. He would take the jet to London to find out who she was and what she wanted.

It was time to drill down into the facts. ‘What do we know about this woman?’

Having tired of the theatricals, his father had moved on to studying the racing papers. ‘She’s a mouse,’ he stated with confidence, glancing up. ‘She’ll give you no trouble. She lives quietly on her own with no money, no family, and no way to fight us.’

Luca frowned. ‘The lawyer told you this?’

‘I still have my contacts.’ His father laid a finger down the side of his nose to demonstrate how clever he was. ‘She works behind the scenes at Smithers & Worseley—the auction house that handles the high-value gemstones I collect. She makes tea there, and polishes dust off picture frames, from what I can gather, though she is studying for some fancy title or other.’ His father sneered at this, but then brightened as he considered his own cleverness. ‘I lost no time calling London this morning to find out what I could about her.’

Putting financial gain over the death of his son on the day of the funeral might have shocked Luca, if he hadn’t known his father so well.

‘I used the old charm on the chairman of the auction house,’ his father recounted gleefully. ‘He was only too happy to gossip with Don Tebaldi, one of his most favoured clients—’

Probably the most gullible too, Luca thought. His father was like a magpie when it came to collecting glittering gems.

An idea had begun to take root in Luca’s mind. He’d read something about a fabulous gemstone with a curse on it that was due to be sold in the next few days at Smithers & Worseley. When a gem came with a curse, it was a dead cert his father would pay over the odds for it. Don Tebaldi’s hidden collection was second to none. He kept his treasures hidden away on the island, where no one but he could gloat over them.

‘The girl has a second job, working in a high-end bar attached to the casino where your brother used to play the tables,’ his father continued, showing his contempt for the girl with a derisive laugh. ‘I imagine she took the job so she could keep a lookout for men with money.’

‘We don’t know that.’ Luca frowned. Only the facts interested Luca, and he doubted any woman with sense would make a play for a compulsive gambler like Raoul. ‘I’ll find her,’ he promised grimly. ‘You say she’s a mouse, but we’ve no proof of that. Either way, she’s going to be a very wealthy mouse, which means she can gnaw her way through the security I’ve put in place to protect you from the past.’

‘The past?’ his father derided. ‘Pshaw! Those shadows can’t reach me when I’ve retired to Florida. I’m part of the past. I’m finished now,’ he added with a wail of self-pity. ‘Do what you have to, Luca. Seduce her, if you must,’ he recommended, his face brightening at the thought.

Luca hummed. He had more important things to do than indulge his father’s fantasies. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

‘Then, share it,’ his father insisted impatiently.

‘We’ve got six months until Raoul’s trust is released,’ Luca said as he calmly calculated the facts. ‘She can’t get her hands on the money until then. And, just in case the lawyer has a sudden fit of conscience, I’ll keep her out of his way.’

‘Bring her here to the island?’ his father said, catching on.

‘It seems to be the obvious solution,’ Luca confirmed.

His father perked up. ‘But how will you persuade her to do that?’

‘You’ll buy another gemstone,’ he said.

‘Ah...’ As realisation slowly dawned on his face Don Tebaldi relaxed. ‘This is a brilliant solution, Luca—and one you must set in place at once. But allow yourself some fun along the way. Life doesn’t have to be all about principles and caring. She may turn out to be a pretty girl, and she owes us something for the stress she’s caused me.’

Disgusted, Luca refrained from comment. It was time to hunt down the mouse.

* * *

‘It’s Retro Night at the club!’ Jay-Dee, who was usually a server like Jen at the casino, announced so loudly the club speakers howled with feedback.

For one night only Jay-Dee was MC for the annual charity event. He was in his element, Jen thought with amusement. Jay-Dee had a warm, theatrical manner, and so much verve for life, everyone loved him.

Jen thought of her friends at the casino as gloriously colourful exclamation marks in the regular pattern of her neat and ordered life. When she wasn’t working in the silent intensity of the auction house, she was poring over study books with her feet so close to her three-bar electric fire in the bedsit where she lived, she was in danger of getting chilblains. Qualifying as a gemologist was Jen’s goal. Her mother had been a renowned gemologist, who had passed on her fascination with treasures locked deep in the earth to her daughters. The stories she’d told them about hidden treasures when they were little girls, it was no wonder that Lyddie had grown up wanting to wear the sparkling jewels, while Jen had desperately wanted to learn more about them. She had never lost the sense of magic her mother had passed on to her, or the thought that somewhere beneath her feet there could be precious minerals, or even diamonds.

But it was Jen’s job at the casino that put the chilli spice in her life, and went some way to replacing the family she’d lost. She and Lyddie had lost their parents when Jen was just eighteen. A car crash had taken them, and then the local authority had wanted to take Lyddie. Their father and mother had set such a shining example that as soon as Jen was over the worst of the shock, she was determined to keep things running as smoothly as possible for her sister. Those in authority insisted that Jen was too young to take on the responsibility of a teenage sister, but she had fought to keep Lyddie with her, and Jen’s dogged persistence had finally paid off. There was no chance she would have let Lyddie go into care. She’d heard what could happen to thirteen-year-old girls, and as long as she had breath in her body no one was going to take her sister away—only fate could do that, Jen reflected wistfully.

‘Reach for your wallets!’ Jay-Dee’s strident voice shook Jen alert. ‘You know you want to!’ he bellowed. ‘The charity needs our help! We might need help from the charity one day—think of that!’ He glanced towards the wings where Jen was standing. ‘Dig deep, my friends! Our first lot...’ He gestured frantically that it was time for Jen to join him on the stage. ‘What will you give me for this plump rabbit, ready for the pot...?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Jen exploded with laughter as she checked her long furry ears were fixed in place. ‘How am I supposed to walk on stage after an introduction like that?’

‘With attitude,’ one of Jen’s best friends, casino manager Tess, who was standing with her, advised.

‘Does Jay-Dee have to whip the crowd into such a frenzy? If this retro night wasn’t in aid of such a worthwhile charity you’d never get me up there.’

The charity was particularly dear to Jen’s heart. Its volunteers had helped her when her sister died. One of them had been at her side from the moment she first saw Lyddie lying in a coma in ICU, right up to the heart-wrenching memorial service for her sister.

‘Raising money for this charity is the only reason I’ve allowed myself to be dressed by a sadistic corset engineer and have a powder puff stuck on my bum,’ Jen said as she silently dedicated the next hour or so to the sister who would have loved nothing more than to be here in the midst of the fun to cheer her on.

‘The more excitement you generate, the more they’ll pay,’ practical-minded Tess declared as she tweaked the bow tie she was sporting with her boxy, forties-style suit. ‘You’ll enjoy it once the spotlight hits you.’

‘Can I have your word on that?’ Jen asked wryly.

‘Hop to it, bunny! Hop!’ Tess commanded, miming a whip-crack.

‘I feel like a rabbit trapped in headlights, while the hounds bay blue murder from the side of the road—’

‘You don’t strike me as anything short of a tiger—if a rather small one,’ Tess conceded with amusement. ‘You should be proud of your assets,’ she added, casting an appreciative eye over Jen’s closely bound form.

‘With those lights at least I won’t be able to see any of the medallion men bidding to have dinner with me—if any of them bid, which I doubt.’

‘They’ll bid,’ Tess assured her. ‘Now, get out there and strut your stuff, Ms Wabbit!’

‘What will you give me for this plump rabbit, ready for the pot?’ Jay-Dee said again in a slightly hysterical tone as he glanced repeatedly into the wings.

‘Here goes nothing!’ Jen declared, knowing she couldn’t put off her entrance any longer.

She felt exposed in the spotlight. Her satin suit was cut like a particularly revealing swimming costume. High on the leg, it left very little to the imagination, paired with flesh-toned fishnet tights, and stratospheric heels. Even Jen had to admit that with her long red hair left flowing free beneath her bunny ears the effect was startling—if a little different from her normal, understated-to-a-fault self.

‘Here’s to you, Lyddie,’ she murmured as the stage lights blinded her.

Jay-Dee, who was dressed in garish eighties flares and platform boots, gasped with relief as he rushed to lead Jen centre stage.

‘You look beeeoootiful,’ he gushed as the crowd went wild.

‘I look ridiculous,’ Jen argued, laughing. Getting into the mood of the night, she struck a pose.