Sicilian Nights Omnibus (4 page)

He had insulted her, but he could not hurt her, Leonora assured herself as she glared dry-eyed at him. She didn’t care how third-rate he considered her to be sexually. In fact she was glad that he wasn’t interested in her.

Alessandro pushed back the cuff of his shirt and looked at his watch. Why had he made that comment to her about his position as a second son? He didn’t have to justify or explain himself in any way to anyone, never mind this irritatingly challenging woman who was the very last person he would have chosen to accompany him to the
castello
had he actually had any choice.

He could, of course, always go on his own, but that stubborn stiff pride that had driven him all his life insisted he had to prove to his elder brother that he could produce a woman who would not under any circumstances look at any other man—and that included Falcon himself. In that respect Leonora Thaxton was perfect, since he possessed the power to ensure that she would not do so.

He gave her a mercilessly assessing look, his mouth compressing. The raw material might be there, in the tumbled hair and the well-shaped face with its clear skin, but that raw material was in need of a good deal of polishing if his elder brother was not to take one look at her and, with a lift of that famously derogatory eyebrow of his, burst out laughing.

‘Come,’ he announced. ‘My chauffeur’s wife will be wondering where he is, and Pietro himself will be wanting his supper. My car is this way.’

Did he really expect her to believe that he was in the least bit concerned about his chauffeur or his chauffeur’s wife? Leonora thought indignantly, as she was forced to run to catch up with him as he strode away from her, plainly expecting her to follow him to where she could now see a large limousine waiting in the shadows.

The chauffeur had the doors open for them as they reached the car, and Leonora’s heart sank as she realised that she was going to have to share the admittedly generously proportioned back seat of the car with Alessandro.

As she sat down beside him on the tan leather seat he instructed her, ‘You will need to give Pietro your passport so that he can show it at the customs office at the gate.’ And then opened his laptop and ignored her, leaving her to seethe.

She handed over her passport, which was duly presented to the customs officer, but it was into Alessandro’s outstretched hand that the chauffeur placed the returned passport once they were through the gate, not her own. Alessandro did not return it to her, despite the demanding look she gave him, choosing instead to slip it into the inside pocket of his jacket without so much as lifting his eyes from his laptop to meet her angry look.

CHAPTER THREE

‘C
ATERINA
WILL
SHOW
you to the guest suite, and once you have refreshed yourself I will explain to you over supper the role I wish you to play. Since we shall have to leave Florence by mid-afternoon tomorrow we will not have much time, so immediately after breakfast we will address the matter of providing you with a suitable wardrobe for the weekend.’

‘I have a change of clothes with me,’ Leonora said, pointedly looking down at the small case which Pietro had placed on the marble-tiled floor of the elegant hallway in the two-storey apartment inside this eighteenth-century
palazzo
to which Alessandro had brought her.

Alessandro followed her gaze, and then swept his eyes from the case to the full length of her body and her face, with a comprehensive thoroughness that lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.

‘And that change will be what? A pair of jeans and a shirt?’

‘What if it is?’ Leonora demanded.

‘The events to which I wish you to accompany me have been organised by my elder brother to celebrate and commemorate the granting to our family of its titles. They are not the kind of events at which guests will appear wearing jeans, which is why I am about to organise the services of a personal shopper who will ensure that you have the correct clothes.’

He began ticking the items off on his fingers, their lean, strong length somehow managing to distract Leonora to such an extent that she couldn’t drag her gaze away from them. They were such very male hands, she thought, leaner and longer-fingered than the broader hands of her father and her brothers, tanned and with well-groomed nails, and yet here and there she could see small telltale white scars, as though the artistic streak revealed by the elegant length of his hands had manifested itself in a creative skill, but that of master sculptor rather than a painter.

‘Tomorrow evening we shall be attending a cocktail party. And then on Saturday there will be an official luncheon party at the
castello
,
with various civic guests of honour. In the evening there is to be a grand costume ball, and the celebrations are concluding with a special church service on Sunday.’

A cocktail party, a formal lunch, a costume ball and a church service. Leonora’s heart sank further with every item Alessandro added to the list. She didn’t have to search very far back in her memory to produce an unhappy image of the horrors of her one and only attempt at ‘glamour’ dressing, and the howls of laughter with which her brothers had greeted her appearance in the prom dress she had been persuaded into buying by a university friend for their finals ball. She just wasn’t the pretty dress type—never mind the glam cocktail dress type. Whenever she did have to attend any kind of formal event she always stuck to a plain tuxedo trouser suit, with the jacket worn over a simple silk camisole top.

‘I really think it would be much easier if you chose someone else to accompany you,’ she felt obliged to say, her face burning when he looked at her in a way that made her feel as though she was piloting a plane that had just dropped ten thousand feet through the sky without any warning.

‘I’m sure you do,’ he agreed dryly.

‘You must know dozens of women who would be more suitable.’

‘That depends on how you define suitability,’ he told her. ‘Certainly I know many women who possess the sophistication and the beauty to carry off such a role, but, as I’ve already said, their compliance with my requirements would lead to them making demands for payment that I am not prepared to make. Whereas, whilst you may lack what they possess, I have the advantage of knowing that you will follow my wishes to the letter or risk costing your brother his job.’

‘I can’t see what can possibly be so important about accompanying you to a few social events that it necessitates a vow of absolute obedience and my agreement to your total control over that obedience.’ Leonora chafed against his warning.

‘I have my reasons for wishing to ensure that the woman who accompanies me to these events conducts herself in such a way that there can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that she is wholly and absolutely committed to me and only to me, and at the same time also conducts herself with dignity and elegance—of manner and mind.’

‘So a stunning Z-list glamour puss whose
modus operandi
involves going commando and drinking cocktails isn’t high on your list of potential arm candy for this weekend, then?’ Leonora guessed mischievously.

The manner in which he drew himself up to his full height and gave her a look that would have set Mount Etna alight if they’d been anywhere near it was certainly impressive, Leonora admitted. Her comment had certainly got under his skin.

‘That kind of vulgarity is exactly what I do
not
want,’ he agreed coldly, adding warningly, ‘And that extends to the vulgarity of mind that gives rise to such comments.’ He stared at her. ‘Fortunately you are well educated enough to be able to converse intelligently with my brother’s guests, and if you are asked about our relationship you will say simply that we met through your brother, who is one of my pilots. Falcon in particular will try to question you. My younger brother and I have good cause to be grateful to our elder brother for the care he gave us whilst we were growing up, and I must warn you that he will attempt to test you to see if you are worthy of me.’

When Leonora’s eyes glittered with angry resentment, Alessandro shook his head.

‘You are jumping to conclusions which are not valid. My brother’s anxiety as to your worthiness has nothing to do with your social status. His concern will be to see that you will not hurt me, and it is on that issue that he will seek to test you, by hinting that he can offer you far more than I.’ He frowned as his mobile purred, telling Leonora briskly before he answered it, ‘We shall discuss all of this in more detail over supper.’

He turned away from her to take his call, leaving Leonora to look helplessly towards the magnificent wrought-iron staircase that soared up from the hallway to the upper floor. She was a reluctant eavesdropper on his conversation as he said coolly, ‘Yes, I shall be bringing someone with me, Don Falcon. Her name?’ He paused and looked at Leonora. ‘Her name is Leonora Thaxton.’

Leonora’s heart thundered with half a dozen heavy and dizzying beats. Hunger, she told herself pragmatically. That was all it was.

She focused on the cream marble of the staircase, which should have been so cold but somehow, in this Florentine setting, was a thing of beauty and sensuality that made her long to reach out and stroke the beautiful stone. Wanting to stroke the marble was fine, but she’d better not allow that longing to spread to wanting to reach out and stroke its owner, she warned herself—and then was thoroughly shocked that she should feel it necessary to give herself such a warning.

After all, why on earth would she want to touch Alessandro Leopardi, when she could barely tolerate being in the same room with him?

The only piece of furniture in the hallway was a large and ornate gilded table with a dark onyx top, on which sat a large alabaster urn filled with greenery and white lilies, their scent perfuming the air like a caress. Everything about the hallway made Leonora feel out of place and awkward, somehow underlining her own lack of sensuality whilst subtly highlighting its own. But was it the hallway that was making her so aware of her own lack of sensuality or Alessandro himself?

What if it
was
him? He could think what he liked about her—she didn’t care, Leonora told herself stoutly, reverting to the defensive mechanisms she had learned as a girl. She didn’t care one little bit as he finished his call and turned back to her.

A woman—Caterina, Leonora presumed—emerged from a door set at the back of the hallway. She gave Leonora a sharp look that whilst not exactly welcoming wasn’t hostile either.

Alessandro addressed her in Italian, instructing her to take Leonora to the guest suite. Leonora, whose own Italian was excellent, was just thinking to herself that it might be a good idea not to reveal that she spoke Italian when Alessandro turned to her and said in that language, ‘I seem to recall that your many job applications made mention of the fact that you are proficient in several languages, one of which is Italian.’

He had read her applications himself, and had still rejected her—despite the excellence of her qualifications? Rejected her as her brothers had so often done because she was female? Immediately and instinctively Leonora reverted to another of the habits of her childhood: wanting to get her own back. Without stopping to think she answered him in Mandarin, but the rush of triumph she felt was quickly destroyed when he spoke to her in the same language.

‘Since Caterina does not speak Mandarin, I have to assume that your decision to do so is an exhibition of showing off more suited to a foolish child than an adult woman, and as such it reinforces my belief that you are not the kind of candidate who is suited to work for me,’ he said coldly.

‘Really? And to think I thought that it was my sex and my hormones that barred me,’ Leonora retaliated sweetly.

‘You’ve just underlined the reason for yourself—your immaturity,’ Alessandro told her crushingly.

Why, why,
why
had she let that stupid childish desire to show she was not just as good as but better than any male goad her? Leonora asked herself grimly. She turned away from him and spoke directly to Caterina in fluent Italian, earning the reward of a delighted smile from the older woman as she explained that she was Alessandro’s housekeeper.

Five minutes later Leonora was earning herself another approving smile from Caterina as she gazed round the guest suite to which Caterina had taken her with awed delight.

The
palazzo
had obviously undergone a very sympathetic restoration and refurbishment process in the recent past, Leonora guessed as she admired the strong clean lines of the large, high-ceilinged rooms connected by a magnificent pair of open double doors. Whilst the elegance of its original plasterwork and ceiling cornicing and the beautifully panelled and carved doors had been retained, the walls had obviously been replastered, and were painted in an ivory that seemed to change colour with the light pouring in from the glass doors that led onto an ironwork girded balcony overlooking an internal courtyard garden. Silver-grey floorboards reflected more light, and the room’s mix of an antique bed with pieces of far more modern furniture gave the suite an air of being lived in rather than being a museum set-piece.

At the touch of a remote control Caterina proudly revealed not just a flatscreen TV but a computer, a pull-out desk and a sound system discreetly hidden away behind a folding wall.

‘Is good,
sì
?’ she asked Leonora in English, inviting praise of something of which she was obviously proud.

‘It is wonderful,’ Leonora agreed, telling her in Italian, ‘It is a perfect blend of past and present—a very
simpatico
restoration.’

Caterina beamed. ‘This building and many others belonged to the family of Signor Alessandro’s
mamma
,
and so came to him and his brothers. Together they have worked to keep the family history but also to make it comfortable to live in now. Don Falcon, he sits on the council that takes care of those buildings that are owned by many of the old Florentine families, and he makes Signor Alessandro pay much money from his airline to help with the restoration work. Signor Alessandro knows that he cannot refuse his elder brother. Don Falcon has the most power because he is the eldest.’

‘How many brothers and sisters are there?’ Leonora asked her curiously.

‘No sister. They are all three boys. Signor Alessandro is the second brother.’

The second brother—the second child, just like her. Leonora frowned. She didn’t want to find any kind of connection between them, but as a second child he must have experienced, as she had, all that it meant to be a middle child, sandwiched between the lordly eldest and the favoured baby of the family, constantly having to fight for his position and for adult attention and love, never quite as good or grown-up as his elder sibling nor allowed to get away with as much as his indulged younger sibling. She wanted instead to continue to dislike and resent him. And besides, her situation had been worse—because she had been a girl sandwiched between two brothers. As same-sex siblings Alessandro and his siblings would have been able to bond together.

Or would he have had to compete even harder than she had done? Not that it mattered. She refused to start feeling sympathetic towards him. Look at the way he was treating her—threatening and blackmailing her...

Caterina had gone, giving her some time to freshen up before going back downstairs to have supper with Alessandro and receive her instructions.

In addition to the sitting room and bedroom, the guest suite also possessed a dressing room and a huge bathroom, with a sunken rectangular bath so large it could have easily accommodated a whole family and a state-of-the-art wet-room-style shower area.

Since it wasn’t going to take her very long to get changed, Leonora allowed herself to be tempted out onto the balcony. Florence... Right now she should have been enjoying the magic of the city, making plans to visit all those treasures she wanted to see, instead of standing here, the captive of a man who was ruthlessly using her for his own ends.

It was dark outside, and all she could see of the courtyard garden beneath her balcony were various small areas illuminated by strategically placed floodlights that revealed a long, narrow canal-style water feature, gravel walkways and various plants. There was a staircase from her balcony down to the garden, and as she stood on the balcony she could smell the scents of the night air and—so she told herself—of Florence itself.

Half an hour later, having showered and changed into her jeans and a top, she had just finished answering Leo’s anxious text asking if all had gone well. She had given an airy and untrue response to the effect that there was nothing for him to worry about and that she was looking forward to her short break in Florence.