So the thought of being his lover bored her, did it?

She had ended their affair because he bored her?

Dio! But he would teach her differently! By the time he decided to end it she would be begging him to let her stay, clinging, pleading, promising him the earth, moon and stars if only he would keep her with him.

Or his name wasn’t Cesare Gianluca Andriotti!

She’s his in the bedroom,

but he can’t buy her love…

The ultimate fantasy becomes a reality

in

Harlequin Presents®.

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The Bedroom Surrender by Emma Darcy

(#2356) on sale in November

The Italian’s Trophy Mistress
Diana Hamilton

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

‘DARLINGS—have you heard? Henry Croft is divorcing his third wife and moving on to number four!’

Across the candlelit dinner table Claudia Neill’s black eyes sparked with what Bianca Jay could only describe as malicious glee, and a shiver inched coldly down her spine as Cesare’s younger sister continued, the sympathetic curve of her mouth at odds with the spiteful relish of her tone. ‘Amanda’s absolutely gutted, of course. The poor thing’s been living on a knife-edge since Henry was photographed at the Oscars with that busty little film star—whose name escapes me for the moment—but you know the one. Bit parts, mostly, huge blonde hair down to her waist. Used to sing in a pop group. Mind you, poor Amanda will get lots of lovely alimony—’

Claudia gave a languid shrug, her naked shoulders smooth as silk above the little black slip dress she was wearing. ‘However big the settlement, it won’t make up for being dumped for a younger, flashier model, will it? But what did poor Amanda expect? Marry a man with a roving eye, an image to live up to and more money than he knows what to do with and you can think yourself lucky if you last more than a couple of years!’

Was she supposed to answer that? Bianca wondered grittily as she tried to ignore the sudden lurch of her stomach. For the hundredth time she wished she hadn’t so weakly agreed to come. But Cesare had told her, ‘I’m sorry about this, especially as it’s my first night back in London. But it’s my little sister’s birthday and I promised to give her dinner at my apartment. There’ll only be the four of us. You, me, Claudia and Alan. And they won’t stay late; I believe their babysitter won’t stay beyond eleven—she can’t take the strain of trying to get those two little monsters to stay in bed! And then there will be just the two of us.’

And, as always, she had found him dangerously impossible to resist.

Throughout the evening she’d been thinking of that danger. It was a subject that had been occupying her mind almost constantly over the past few weeks. To tell him their six-month relationship was over before she got in too deep, did herself some serious damage. Or go on as they were, knowing that the day would inevitably come when he would tell her their affair was over. It was a decision she simply had to make.

‘Of course—’ Claudia was practically purring now, smiling sideways at her doting husband, one hand dipping a silver spoon into her strawberry sorbet, the other playing with the sapphire pendant that had been Cesare’s birthday gift to her ‘—Alan’s not wealthy enough to trade me in, so I guess I’m pretty safe.’ A fluting laugh, as artificial as tinsel, then her dark eyes fed on Bianca’s suddenly pale face. ‘And at least you and Cesare know where you stand, don’t you, my darlings? All the fun of a temporary affair with none of the chores of marriage.’

‘Chores?’ Alan lifted one sandy brow in an imitation of pained outrage, and Claudia rolled her dark eyes.

‘Oh, you know, caro—squabbling over my dress allowance, dealing with the twins’ tantrums, organising babysitters—’

But Bianca wasn’t listening. That had been a direct dig at her mistress status. It wasn’t a status she was remotely proud of. A rich man’s trophy, to be paraded around all the right places, casually introduced to his circle of exalted friends, and just as casually dropped when someone new and exciting piqued his interest.

She had met Cesare Andriotti through her PR work, organising the opening shindig for the latest in the string of luxury hotel, leisure and conference complexes owned by his illustrious family and bearing the Andriotti name.

It had been lust at first sight, she recalled, ignoring the friendly bickering going on between Claudia and her husband.

She’d known it was dangerous, not what she wanted. She was career-driven, independent, and had no time for a steady personal relationship—a husband and family wouldn’t fit in with the largely unsociable hours she worked, with the often draining emotional commitments she already had.

And how many times had she told herself that Cesare Andriotti was the kind of man she had most reason to despise?

Countless.

Wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, drop-dead handsome, with barrow-loads of Italian charisma and the almost indefinable touch of arrogance that sent delicious shivers down the spine of any female in his vicinity. The kind of men who had everything, who took mistresses, showered them with gifts, and felt they had the perfect right to drop them flat—very politely, with oodles of charm, of course—just when they felt like it.

She had tried to keep him at arm’s length—at least, that was what she had told herself she’d been doing—but within a month of first meeting him she’d become his mistress. She simply hadn’t been able to help herself. He had overwhelmed her, ridden roughshod over each and every one of her objections—moral, practical and self-preserving.

His eyes were on her; she could feel them. Her spine tingled. He’d been watching her ever since his sister had made that barbed comment about them having only a temporary affair.

She refused to turn her head and look at him, meet those incredibly sexy, slate-grey moody eyes, let her own eyes linger on that passionate mouth or devour the lean and whippy lines of that elegantly clad, seemingly indolent body. To do so would mean she would be lost, the ever-hardening resolve to end their affair blown apart in her body’s consuming need for him.

‘Might I ask a favour, sir?’ Alan asked gruffly, reddening as he amended, ‘Cesare.’

Alan Neill was Head of Accounts for the UK side of the huge financial empire, had fallen in love with Claudia Andriotti when she’d been visiting Cesare at his London apartment and had never quite come to terms with the fact that his boss was his brother-in-law.

Bianca’s heart went out to him.

At thirty-four years of age, heading up the Andriotti business empire since his father’s retirement four years ago, Cesare struck awe into the hearts and minds of everyone who met him. Alan was out of his depth. He was thoroughly nice, too stolid and loyal ever to even think of betraying his pretty, temperamental wife; Claudia would never have to worry about being traded in.

At his wife’s pointed arch of one fine, dark brow Alan stumbled on, ‘Would it be possible for us to have the company jet in early August? It seems a bit much to ask but, the fact is, the twins would be a nightmare on a commercial flight. Won’t keep still, into everything, and you know how shrill three-year-old boys are when they get over-excited.’ He pushed his fingers through his thick sandy hair and made an abortive attempt at a lightly relaxed laugh. ‘I’d hate to inflict them on fare-paying passengers.’

‘Darling—’ Claudia placed a delicate, scarlet-tipped hand on her husband’s sleeve ‘—do stop rambling. Of course Cesare won’t mind.’ She smiled at her brother, her long lashes fluttering. ‘Mamma and Papa insist we take the boys out to Calabria for their wedding anniversary in August. And I’m quite sure you have your orders, too! So, if we may, we’ll join you on the flight out and back again? But if you can’t make it—’ she pouted prettily ‘—then please may we have the use of the Lear?’

Bianca covered her wineglass with her long, tapering fingers as Cesare made a move to refill it, looking directly ahead, anywhere but at him, carefully keeping a slight smile on her face, her expression on the politely interested side of bland.

But she wasn’t listening to a word of the affectionate family conversation. Claudia had probably been twisting her big brother round her tiny finger since she had first learned to walk!

Any arrangements that were being made for the family reunion wouldn’t, of course, include her.

Meeting up with his sister and brother-in-law on one or two social occasions had been unavoidable, hence her inclusion in this private birthday celebration. She was important to him for the nights they could spend together. For now. But not important enough to be included in a visit to his parents.

She hadn’t met Cesare’s twin nephews, whose precocious misdemeanours were now being so fondly discussed. But she’d heard about them.

Right at the start of their affair Cesare had told her, in response to her probably gauche comment that she wasn’t into long-term commitment, ‘Neither am I. Why should I marry? My sister has already done her duty and presented the family with twin boys.’

His long fingers had been relaxed on the stem of his wineglass, the slight smile that had always both unnerved her and captivated her playing around his mouth as his eyes had slid lingeringly over her features. ‘Our arrangement suits me perfectly.’

At least he was honest, she thought tiredly as she watched the waiter from the firm of caterers Cesare always used when he entertained at his London apartment glide towards them with a tray of coffee. As she knew to her cost, many men in his rarefied financial position married and divorced with monotonous regularity.

That conversation had taken place back in the early days, she reminded herself as the waiter deferentially placed a gold-rimmed coffee cup in front of her. But things were changing. Cesare was beginning to want things she didn’t dare to give.

And now was the time to make a clean and decisive break before she was left with a shattered heart, aching regrets and a desperate yearning for things that could never be, things she hadn’t wanted in the first place, shouldn’t even be thinking about wanting now.

Placing her linen napkin on the table amongst the beautiful china, the Venetian glass, she murmured, ‘This has been delightful, but I really must go. Enjoy the rest of your birthday, Claudia.’

A polite social smile on her face, Bianca rose to her feet. She was shaking inside with the enormity of what she now knew she had to do, but no one must know it.

Claudia’s eyes were bright, almost chillingly knowing as she uttered with obviously false regret, ‘Darling, must you? Really? I would hate to think Alan and I had cramped your style!’

‘Not at all,’ Bianca made herself reply lightly and turned to Alan, who had risen awkwardly to his feet. ‘Please. Enjoy the rest of the evening,’ she said, before forcing herself to walk out of the elegantly appointed dining room with at least the outward appearance of unhurried grace.

Cesare was following, as she had known he would. She heard the scrape of his chair as he rose from the table, the low murmur of his velvety voice as he made his excuses, and her stomach twisted sharply inside her.

In the adjoining vast sitting room Bianca snatched her mobile from her slim evening bag and punched in the numbers of her usual minicab firm with shaking fingers. Her breath was coming in rapid, shallow gasps as she ended the call and Cesare, right beside her now, said, ‘Cara mia, what is wrong? You were to stay with me tonight. Don’t go. For three weeks I have ached for you.’

He placed both hands on her shoulders and she felt her body go rigid. His low-pitched sexy drawl swamped her with longing, the possessive pressure of his fingers burned through the tawny-coloured silk that clothed her shoulders, reinforcing the mindlessly driven need to turn in his arms, loop her hands against the back of his beautifully shaped proud head, tangle her fingers in the thick, silky luxuriance of his jet-black hair and drown in the passion of his kiss.

Fighting against the incredible danger, Bianca moved away, putting much-needed space between them, blinking fiercely to stop the prickle of tears becoming a flood. He’d asked her what was wrong. Everything was wrong. Their no-strings, light-hearted affair was becoming much deeper and darker, at least as far as she was concerned.

She was growing too dependent on him, inclined to be unreasonably angered and hurt when he had to cancel a date, missing him until she ached all over, could think of nothing but him when he was out of the country, her ears on permanent alert for the phone call that would tell her he was back in London.

She was falling fathoms deep in love with him, that was the answer to his question!

But no way could she tell him. No way!

Love wasn’t part of their ‘arrangement’.

A long, easy stride brought him in front of her. The slightly musky, slightly sharp scent of him engulfed her, pushing the words she knew she had to say to him back down her throat, making the struggle to reassemble them well nigh impossible.

‘Stay,’ he said gently. ‘I need you. If there’s a problem—with work, with anything—I’ll handle it.’ The slight but inescapable pressure of his fingertip beneath her chin forced her eyes to meet his. Slate-grey enigmas fringed with thick dark lashes above the proud jut of his cheekbones, the thinly arrogant blade of his nose at certain odds with the savage passion of his beautiful mouth. He was so shatteringly handsome he made her heart ache.

His automatic assumption that he could effortlessly solve problems that would tie lesser mortals in knots made her throat tighten with near-hysterical reaction. It had nothing to do with wealth or position and everything to do with his sheer masculine virility, the dynamism of his personality.

‘I can’t.’ Bianca managed the reply to his request through lips so numb they felt as if they didn’t belong to her, her eyes still held to the mesmerising force field of his.

‘Why? I thought it was all arranged.’ His long, lean fingers curved gently around her jaw and his head lowered just a little. A preliminary to kissing her senseless?

Unwilling to take that risk, she jerked her head away, dragging in an anguished breath. Of course she’d meant to stay, drawn to his presence like the proverbial moth to the flame, saved only by antennae that had sensed and finally and unmistakably understood the danger before it had been too late.

Her fingers digging into the soft kid of her slim evening bag, she mentally formed the words that once spoken would be completely final.

He would accept what she said with a word or two of polite regret; he had too much pride to ask her to reconsider. From the moment the words were out it would be over. There would be no going back.

A steadying breath, a straightening of her shoulders, a flick of a tongue-tip over lips that felt stiff and dry. ‘It’s over, Cesare. I won’t be seeing you again.’

There, it was out, the bald statement that would leave her with some self-respect, that would save her heart from permanent damage. It had taken all her resolve to say the words that had felt as if they were being dragged from her, dropping like stones into an atmosphere that had suddenly become charged with more than the effect of her tightly wired nerves.

The tension was coming from him now, a subtle hardening of his strong jawline, a momentary flicker in the depths of those enigmatic eyes, a lifting of the dark head, emphasising the whippy power of a six-foot frame that was outrageously masculine. It made her shudder in instinctive response.

Cesare gritted his teeth against a violent internal surge that seemed to be tearing him apart and had to use all his self-control to prevent himself from taking her in his arms and kissing her lovely mouth until she retracted her words.

She couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t let her!

Pulling a sharp breath through his nostrils, he closed his eyes briefly before allowing them to dwell on her face. Beautiful. There was a touch of the exotic about her creamy skin, the smooth black hair, lush mouth and long amber eyes, her slender, perfectly formed body clothed tonight in glowing tawny silk.

She couldn’t disguise the way her soft lips trembled, but there was a cold light of determination in her eyes that told him that, although the touch of his lips to hers, the slide of his hands, moving slowly from her slender shoulders to the globes of her breasts so tantalisingly delineated beneath the thin silky fabric, would ignite the conflagration of passion they were both helpless before, nothing would change her decision.

A vague uneasiness at the way their relationship had been going had been eating away at him for many weeks. Her refusal to move in with him, the look of pain when she’d refused the gifts that had been meant to give her pleasure, the way she had never once invited him into her home, her soft evasiveness when he’d questioned her about her family, her upbringing, her hopes for the future.

He knew as little about her now as he had done when he’d first met her and had known, with shattering immediacy, that he’d wanted her in his bed.

Despite the gossip, he hadn’t had as many mistresses as he’d been credited with. And when the time for parting had come, as it inevitably had, there had been no rancour on either side, no heartache.

So was it the mystery of her that made her different? He didn’t know. He only knew that he had never felt like this before. Emptied of his normal assurance, his self-sufficiency, filled instead with a yearning pain.

Denying the temptation to reach out and touch her, evoke the magic that would keep her with him just one more time, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his narrow-fitting black trousers and said with an impulsiveness that rocked him back on his heels, ‘Marry me, Bianca.’

CHAPTER TWO

MARRY him!

The shock of Cesare’s proposal had turned Bianca to stone, the only movement detectable being the frantic beating of her heart as it hammered against her ribs. Only the arrival of Denton, Cesare’s manservant, a few seconds later, snatched her out of the fantasy land where she and Cesare were bound together by love until death did them part and plunged her back into stark reality.

‘Your cab’s arrived, Miss Jay.’

Just five cockney-accented words were all it took to clear her head, strengthen her resolve, move her out of the paralysing shock that had held her immobile, allow her to focus on Denton’s impassive, homely features, force out a pallid smile, a word of thanks, turn again to Cesare, not meeting his eyes, and push the single word ‘goodbye’ through her lips.

And walk from the room, anguish a tight band around her heart, leaving behind the man she was growing to love with more passion than reason, pointedly ignoring his offer of marriage as if it were beneath her consideration, that insult the final and firmest nail in the coffin of their relationship.

As the cab made uneven progress towards Hampstead through the late-evening traffic Bianca pressed her fingertips against the burning pressure of her eyelids. She would not cry. She couldn’t allow herself that luxury. And even thinking about that shock proposal of marriage was counter-productive. If anything, it made everything worse. Far worse.

A permanent relationship was the last thing Cesare wanted; hadn’t he told her that much?

So why that shock proposal of marriage?

Shuddering as her stomach tied itself in nauseating knots, she forced herself to face facts, to find an answer to that question. He obviously hadn’t yet tired of their nights of blazing, unforgettable passion, she ticked off mentally. Cesare still wanted her physically, perhaps because the time they’d spent together had been governed by the foreign travel made necessary by his business commitments, her refusal to move in with him, her insistence that when she stayed with him she left at dawn, alone, taking a cab back to the home she shared with her mother.

So their time together had been snatched—and inevitably all the more precious for that. There had been nothing routine or predictable about their affair. Therefore, it followed, Cesare hadn’t yet grown bored.

Hence the surprise proposal. Bind her legally until he tired of her. It was the sort of thing that was taken for granted in the ultra-sophisticated circles he moved in. The sort of thing that brought devastation in its wake, as she knew only too well.

It was over, she lectured herself staunchly as the cab drew into the street where she lived. She had done the right, the sensible thing and now she had to forget Cesare Andriotti, forget the brief dead-end affair that had started to mean far too much to her, and concentrate on the immediate and problematic future.

Giving mental thanks for Aunt Jeanne’s willingness to be co-opted, Bianca paid off the driver and stood for a moment in the warm late-May evening, readying herself to enter the house.

She had to put her own anguish aside and get to grips with the love and duty she owed to her mother. Without Aunt Jeanne’s presence, she reminded herself, she would have been unable to attend Claudia’s birthday dinner party this evening, an event which had helped her to finally make up her mind about ending her affair with Cesare.

And without her aunt’s promise to keep an eye on her sister, Bianca’s mother, she would have had to have asked her boss, Stazia, for an extended period of leave, at least until her mother’s problems had been resolved.

Expelling a short sigh, she turned to face the house that wouldn’t be theirs for much longer.

The steps up to the white-painted door sheltered by a stone pediment, the empty window-boxes on either side that she really should have planted up weeks ago, the elegantly curtained windows. The desirable façade proclaimed respectability but hid anything but.

As if to reinforce her wry observation the door in front of her was flung open and a golden-skinned youth wearing a singlet and boxer shorts half fell, half hurtled down the steps followed by sundry articles of clothing accompanied by her mother’s cut-glass tones, now raised in ringing, withering scorn, ‘Damned sprog! What do you think I am? Desperate?’ Her tone lowered scathingly. ‘And a word of advice—polish up your wares before you attempt to sell them.’

Backlit by the hall illumination Helene Jay’s tall, bone-thin figure, wrapped in a filmy, ruffled robe, was bristling with outrage, her carefully tinted copper hair writhing about the ageing beauty of her far too heavily made-up face.

Ignoring the youth who was scrabbling around for his scattered belongings, Bianca mounted the steps. Her heart was somewhere near the soles of her feet and she wanted to collapse into floods of tears. To weep for what she had thrown away tonight and what she faced in the immediate future.

But letting go was out of the question. For the larger part of her twenty-five years she had had to be the stronger part of the mother-daughter relationship and now her mother needed every bit of support she could give her.

Two weeks ago her mother had been having the contents of her stomach unceremoniously pumped out. An overdose of sleeping pills and vast quantities of alcohol. ‘One teeny drink too many and I forgot I’d already taken my pills—too silly of me, darling,’ had been the excuse she’d feebly proffered.

But Bianca wasn’t so sure. Approaching her fiftieth birthday, no regular man in her life, her once fantastic looks fading rapidly, Helene Jay was pitifully vulnerable. Her always volatile temperament was daily growing more brittle. Anything could happen.

Reaching her mother’s side, Bianca took her arm, inwardly flinching at the extreme thinness of the flesh beneath her fingers, and turned her gently back into the hall, closing the door behind them.

‘Helene—don’t—’ she exhorted, her voice riven with compassion as a sudden storm of sobs shook the older woman’s frame. She couldn’t bear to see her mother like this, her thick black mascara smudged into panda-like circles, her scarlet lipstick gravitating into the fine lines around her mouth.

‘That little creep was a gigolo! I had no idea! How could I have?’ she wailed brokenly. ‘He assumed I had to pay for male company!’

‘Then he’s obviously either completely stupid, or blind.’ Bianca did her utmost to soothe the already battered ego, her shaking fingers reaching a tissue from her bag to mop the mascara-streaked tears from her mother’s face, murmuring with what she hoped was the right balance of humour and concern, ‘I thought you and Jeanne were settled for the night, watching television.’

Helene jerked her head away, her recent humiliation momentarily forgotten. ‘That programme you said was unmissable was deadly boring and Jeanne’s got no conversation to speak of—discussing knitting patterns and recipes is her idea of sparkling repartee—and do stop treating me like a child, darling. I know you mean well, but it can be stultifying! I needed a drink and as this house has become a positive temperance hall I went out to get one.’

And unknowingly picked up a gigolo, Bianca thought despairingly. Years ago her mother had never lacked attentive male company but as time had crept inexorably onwards adoring lovers had become demeaning one-night stands, her spending on the latest fashions more incautious, her drinking habits more injurious.

This latest incident with the golden youth who had wanted payment for services about to be rendered could be the final nudge that could tip the fading, once fabulously beautiful woman clear over the edge.

And where the heck was Jeanne?

As if in answer to Bianca’s unspoken question a stout, elderly woman descended the stairs, tying the belt of a serviceable fawn dressing gown around what passed for her waist.

‘I heard shouting—such a commotion! I came as soon as I could.’

As soon as she’d located her false teeth and removed her curlers, Bianca translated wearily. To Aunt Jeanne respectability was all.

‘I heard a man’s voice, calling you names—and you screeching.’ Her mild blue eyes hardened as she took in the ravaged state of her younger sister’s face. ‘You told me, Helene, that you were tired and fancied an early night. So I went up early, too.’ She vented a long sigh. ‘You tricked me. I didn’t come all this way to look after you to be made a fool of.’

Cesare bade his sister and brother-in-law goodnight, impatient to end the evening that had dragged so slowly since Bianca’s departure carefully concealed behind a bland smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

The caterers had left half an hour ago and Denton was doing some unnecessary clearing up in the kitchen. Curtly dismissing him for the night, Cesare turned off the lights and headed for his study.

Normally, the quiet, book-lined room was a peaceful oasis in his hectic working life. No fax machines, computer screens or telephones to spoil the relaxing atmosphere. Whatever the pressures, he made it a rule never to bring his work back to whichever home he happened to be using at the moment.

But tonight, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to relax anywhere on earth until he could get his head round what had happened.

Dumping an inch of malt whisky in a squat crystal tumbler, he paced the room, his stride rapid and edgy, anger holding his shoulders rigid.

She had said it was over. Just like that.

In his experience it didn’t happen that way. His occasional affairs had been ended by him, the demise carefully signalled weeks in advance. The parting was amicable with gentle words of regret, a lavish gift—a car, jewellery, an exotic holiday—according to the lady in question’s preferences.

But never like this. Never!

And never before he was ready to end it!

Slamming his empty glass down on the leather-topped desk, he scowled at the spines of the books on the shelves, not seeing them. The anger that raged through him in a roaring torrent demanded release.

And where in the name of all that was sacred had that proposal of marriage come from? Porca miseria—his mind must have gone walkabout! The words had slipped out without any direction from his brain, shocking him.

His hands balled into fists and his jaw clenched until his teeth ached. She had simply ignored what he’d said. Not by a flicker of those fabulous lashes had she revealed that his monumentally crazy offer of marriage had made the slightest impact,

Many women would have killed their own grandmothers to hear those words from his lips!

Bianca Jay had simply looked through him and walked away!

No one, but no one, humiliated Cesare Andriotti and got away with it!

His ebony brows flared as he bit out an expletive in rawly vented Italian. Then, collecting himself, he dragged in a deep breath, meant to be calming but not quite hitting the mark.

He had wanted Bianca Jay from the very first moment of seeing her. She hadn’t been a pushover but he’d got what he’d wanted from her in the end. But somehow, on a level he’d never encountered before, it had been far more complicated than the slaking of physical lust within the confines of a sophisticated affair.

The beautiful, elusive Bianca had begun to intrigue him. In bed they shared a mind-blowing ecstasy but out of it she kept him at a distance, never letting him get to really know her.

She’d flatly refused to move in with him and put their relationship on a semi-permanent basis, and had made it abundantly plain that she would accept none of the gifts he had instinctively wanted to shower on her, had refused to speak of her background, her family, easily and prettily changing the subject whenever he’d brought it up.

And although he’d increasingly wanted to know what made her the woman she was he’d respected her need for privacy, battening down his ever-growing desire to solve the mystery of her, pin down the elusiveness that was part of her tantalising contribution to their relationship.

Impatiently sloshing another inch of whisky into his glass, he took it to his desk and extracted a slim notebook from one of the drawers. Riffling through it, he found the number he wanted.

What had happened this evening had changed all the rules. Respecting her privacy was now completely out of the frame.

Sitting on the comfortably upholstered swivel chair, he reached for the phone, his shoulders relaxing, his eyes darkening and narrowing as his anger hardened into something darker, needier.

Don’t get mad, get even!

‘It’s not going to work, is it?’ Jeanne said decisively as she stirred the third spoonful of sugar into her breakfast coffee.

Dressed this morning in a light tweed skirt and cotton blouse, every iron-grey curl in its designated place, she looked what she was: sensible, stolid and utterly reliable. Sighing, Bianca had to agree with her aunt’s blunt statement. In the past she had coped alone with her mother’s growing excesses, her startling mood changes, but after the overdose episode she had been really frightened.

For the first time ever she’d sought outside help in the shape of her widowed Aunt Jeanne. Her amber eyes misted with tears as she recalled her aunt’s immediate offer. ‘She can stay with me in Bristol while you wind things up that end and find somewhere else to live. And I’ll spend the next week or two with you until she’s feeling more herself, keep an eye on her while you’re out at work. From the sound of it she shouldn’t be left too much on her own.’

Bianca had grasped the offer with both grateful hands. The lease on this house expired in a couple of months. Hunting for a flat she could afford, holding down her demanding job, deciding what to do about the furnishings—all while coping with her mother’s problems—would have been a nightmare.

Newly discharged from hospital, feeling frail and needy, Helene had listlessly agreed. But on the evidence of last night’s return to her former addictions, alcohol and men, it was obvious that she wouldn’t settle for five minutes in her sister’s tidy little semi in a quiet road on the outskirts of Bristol.

‘I love my sister but I can’t take the responsibility; it wouldn’t be fair on either of us,’ Jeanne admitted. ‘What she needs is professional help—one of those fancy clinics you read about, where film stars and footballers go to get themselves sorted out.’

‘If only!’ Bianca gave a wry smile as she passed her aunt a rack of fresh toast and sat to pour herself some desperately needed strong hot coffee. ‘She refuses to see her GP about her problems, mainly because she won’t admit she has any. But she’d probably go for a fancy, up-market clinic. It would suit her image!’ She took a grateful sip of the aromatic brew in her cup and added prosaically, ‘Unfortunately, there’s no way we could afford that sort of treatment.’

‘Nothing left of the settlement?’

‘That went years ago.’ Bianca lifted her shoulders in a weary shrug. Her mother’s divorce settlement had been recklessly spent on the latest designer clothes, lavish parties, an endless supply of drink.

‘Then ask your father to pay for treatment. He’s extremely wealthy, by all accounts. And it’s mostly his fault she’s the way she is.’ Jeanne spread butter lavishly on her toast. ‘You know, I always used to envy my little sister. When she married Conrad Jay I thought she had everything. Wealth beyond her wildest dreams—a bit “new money”, but you can’t have everything. At least his financial clout bought their way into the most glittering social circles. She was so beautiful and I was plain. But now I’m glad—about being plain.’ She took a healthy bite. ‘If you’ve never had any looks you can’t lose them and get all bitter and twisted about it. That said, you should approach your father for help.’

‘No.’ The refusal was instinctive. Seeing Jeanne’s quick frown, Bianca knew she had to elaborate and excuse her apparent stubbornness.

Although the sisters had kept in touch through the years, via the occasional phone call or letter, their lives had barely touched. There was so much her aunt didn’t know. And because Helene was sleeping off the effects of last night’s binge and the resulting aftermath, when she’d thrown her sister’s offering of a mug of sweet cocoa—‘To help you settle, dear’—at the sitting-room wall then had hysterics, Bianca and Jeanne could at least have a frank and full discussion.

‘I only met my father once. I was twelve,’ Bianca explained. ‘It was New Year’s Eve and he was visiting London—he was living in the States at that time. He wanted to see me—he’d never shown an atom of interest before. I went to his hotel hating him, not because he’d never so much as acknowledged my existence, but because of what he’d done to my mother.’

She leaned back in her chair, remembering that dreadful day. ‘A week before, something had gone wrong for Helene—don’t ask me what, I can’t remember—but she’d started drinking and getting maudlin and told me I was old enough to be told what a louse my father was.

‘She was twenty-one when she met and married him. For two years she was blissfully happy, living the high life, and then she suspected he was seeing someone else. So she deliberately got pregnant with me, thinking that would stop him straying. But it didn’t work. He left her for the latest sex symbol on the social scene. As part of the divorce settlement he bought a twenty-five-year lease on this house. And that was that; she never saw him again. I think she had loved him desperately, and never really got over it.’

Bianca shrugged, knowing she was probably about to shock her ultra-respectable aunt. ‘I grew up in the changing company of a variety of “uncles”. She could have married any one of them—they always seemed to be besotted. But there was always something wrong with them—in a nutshell they weren’t Conrad Jay. She never stopped loving him but she needed these men in her life to convince herself that she was still desirable, worth something.’

She pulled a wry face. ‘So there was I, twelve years old and hating my father, when that surprise phone call came through. Helene put me in a taxi to the hotel and my father put me in another to take me home.

‘In between I told him exactly what I thought of him for the way he’d hurt my mother and said that under no circumstances would I ever agree to see him again. All this in front of his latest new wife. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years older than me. So perhaps you understand why he is the last person I would ever appeal to for help. I have no idea how to contact him, even if I wanted to. And the moral of this story is something Helene once said to me—never marry a rich man. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’

Advice which had stuck more firmly than she’d realised, cemented in place by the damage such a marriage had done to her mother, the years of coping with the after-effects. Advice which had stood her in good stead when Cesare had made that shock offer of marriage.

Pushing him and what he had come to mean to her roughly out of her head, Bianca rose from the table and forced herself to think instead of how to handle the problem of helping Helene and holding down the job that was essential if she were to provide for them both.

Right at this moment it seemed completely impossible.

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