VITTORIO'S LOVER (Vittorio Series) (3 page)

“Like you’re afraid to face him without a body guard by your side?”

“Or that I can’t stand on my own without a man to prop me up,” she added. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Marcus leaned down and dropped a chaste kiss on her cheek. “As long as you promise not to leave without
telling me how to get in touch with you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jenesa smiled warmly.

After he wandered off, she meandered through the crowd, scanning the face of every Italian male with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. Marcus had introduced her to the three older Vittorio brothers; Simon, Logan, and Dante, who were all married – quite happily, by Marcus’ accounting. Luca had yet to make an appearance, and apparently there was another brother, but he was out of the country and wouldn’t be here tonight.
A good thing, too
, Jenesa thought. The Vittorio men all bore a striking resemblance to each other. Having met three of them, and with the fourth brother being a no-show, figuring out which one was Luca shouldn’t be a problem.

She wondered if her determination to have it out with Luca Vittorio would be so unyielding if she was doing it for herself. Probably not, she conceded. It was her little sister, Jillian, who’d been seduced by that cheating rat. He’d
taken advantage of her inexperience with men and then broken her heart with his cold rejection. Jenesa would never forget the look of utter despair on Jillian’s face or the harsh sobs that had wracked her slender body when she confessed to sleeping with a man she barely knew.

It had taken quite some time to drag the man’s name out of her
sister; even then, his name and the events leading up to the brief but disastrous affair had been pieced together in between crying jags. Jillian had fallen into a dark depression and refused to discuss it any further. At a loss as to what she should do, Jenesa had taken Jillian to stay with their older sister, Linette.

“I’m worried sick about her,” Jenesa admitted once they’d gotten Jillian settled into the guest room.

“We can’t just stand by and let this…this
womanizer
get away with it,” Linette sputtered.

“No, we can’t,” she agreed.

Together, she and Linette had gathered as much information as they could about Luca Vittorio. It wasn’t difficult; Vittorio Enterprises had made each of the five brothers multi-millionaires on the day of their birth, while their Italian heritage and sexy-as-sin good looks ensured they became the target of every gossip tabloid from the time they were mere teenagers. Luca had a reputation with the ladies, certainly, but there hadn’t been so much as a hint of scandal since he started dating Caroline Masters about six months ago. Had he been faithful to Caroline during that time, or was poor Jillian just one of many who had fallen victim to his charm?

Regardless, Jenesa couldn’t let
it go unchallenged. He needed to know there were consequences for his actions and that crushing a young woman’s heart simply to satisfy his hedonistic sexual urges was deplorable. Nothing could be done to salvage Jillian’s battered self-esteem; that was something only time could restore to her, but Luca Vittorio was not going to come out of this unscathed, not if she and Linette had anything to say about it. Unfortunately, Jenesa’s attempts to reach him and arrange for a private meeting had failed. His personal assistant refused to put her calls through, promising each time to inform him it was an urgent matter.

They’d hit a brick wall: if he wouldn’t take her calls, there was no way in hell he would see her if she showed up at his office unannounced.

The opportunity to meet him face to face presented itself a few days later, although neither of them recognized it
as such right away. Rumors gleaned from several tabloids regarding a party being held at the Vittorio mansion the following week snagged their attention. Speculation pertaining to Luca’s relationship with Caroline and whether they intended to announce their engagement at the party only made Jenesa more determined to speak with him. Despite her persistence, however, Luca’s assistant remained immovable.

Even Linette’s triumphant revelation that she’d procured the direct phone number to Luca’s office didn’t help.
Upset because Jillian was still in a downhill spiral, and angry because Luca wasn’t returning her calls, Jenesa had dialed his direct line and babbled her way through a message that was both hostile and emotional. Desperate to impress upon him the importance of contacting her, she’d foolishly threatened to show up at his engagement party and let his future bride know exactly what type of man she was marrying. When he’d called her bluff by ignoring the call, Jenesa had no choice but to go to the party and make good on her word.

She hadn’t expected Luca Vittorio to be so intensely masculine, although meeting his brothers should have given her a clue.
Caught off guard when he wrapped his arm around her waist and said they needed to talk, Jenesa could do little more than nod as her hormones galloped rough shod over her brain. Physically, the man was breathtaking. Hair as dark as a raven’s wings, eyes a deep, rich brown that made her feel like a pat of butter beneath a blazing hot sun, and full, sensuous lips that drove the melty feeling inside her to a boiling point. He was tall, at least six foot three, with broad shoulders and a heavily muscled chest that tapered down to narrow hips and impossibly long legs.

Foolishly distracted by his imposing presence, i
t didn’t even occur to her that Luca had mistaken her for Jillian until he asked how much she’d had to drink that night. Instinctively protecting her sister, Jenesa made no attempt to correct him. It hurt to know he had so little regard for Jillian that he didn’t remember what she looked like. For one thing, Jillian was taller and thinner than she was, and her eyes were a misty blue, not gray. Another thing that irked her was that Luca had called her Jenesa, which meant he’d spent the night with Jillian and didn’t even catch her name!

Her
anger had been real. She hated him for the way he’d treated Jillian, despised his arrogance and the assumption that she was only after his precious money. Jenesa had responded with a passionate appeal, desperate to make him feel the ache in her heart. It was nothing compared to Jillian’s pain, but something she’d said must have sunk into that thick skull of his. Not only had he apologized, but Jenesa heard the sincerity in his voice and knew it wasn’t simply a ploy to appease her so she would leave. Emotion welled up inside her, making it impossible to speak. 

Compass
ion flickered across face, followed by a plethora of other sentiments she couldn’t quite define. Except the last one:
Desire
. It was there in his eyes, a slow burning fire that lured her to its flame as if she had no will of her own. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, had no defense against the powerful effect he had on her. The erratic beat of her heart became a thunderous roar when Luca slipped his arms around her waist and drew her into the intense heat of his body. Faintly, she asked what he was doing. A silly question, given the close proximity of his lips.

And then he kissed her.

A warm, tingling sensation coursed through her veins; his fierce possession of her mouth steadily urging her core temperature higher and higher. As his strong arms pulled her closer, Jenesa’s hands snaked up his chest and curled around his neck. It was…incredible…the most amazing experience of her life, and for several glorious minutes the world and everything in it ceased to exist. There was only this man and this moment where the euphoric pleasure of being held in his arms and kissed senseless dominated all else.

But it didn’t last. How could it? The laws of nature were unforgiving; what goes
up must come down, and Jenesa’s fall from the stratosphere was swift and brutal.

Luca murmured her name. It was nothing more than a whisper, a breathless sigh that she might not have heard at all if the night hadn’t been so still.
Jenesa
. That was all it took to catapult her back to earth where the ugly truth awaited her.

Luca wasn’t the only one who had betrayed Jillian
.

                                                  TWO

Raffaele felt her withdrawing from him; emotionally at first, and then physically. He didn’t care for it. He didn’t like how empty his arms felt without her or the way his body ached to feel her feminine warmth pressed up against him. It didn’t make sense, any of it. When had his disgust for this woman turned into desire? And what the hell had compelled him to kiss her? No, that was
not
just a kiss, Raffaele thought as he looked down at her swollen lips. He’d taken possession of her delectable mouth as if it was his right, as if he was laying claim to
her
.

He’d
had his fair share of lovers and obviously been drawn to them for one reason or another, but Raffaele had never experienced a physical attraction this powerful with
any
woman before. The instant her lips parted to welcome his kiss, a low electrical current streaked through his body. He could feel the sexual chemistry sizzling in the air around them as he lowered his head and drove his mouth down onto hers. To say that kissing Jenesa Harding was stimulating would have been the understatement of a lifetime; it was like clutching the end of a live wire.

Even now when she
stood there looking guilty as sin for having kissed him back, he could feel the connection between them. As his eyes swept over her, it occurred to him that Luca couldn’t possibly have felt the same intense desire that was burning inside of him right now. If he had, there was no way in hell he would have been satisfied with just one night. Caroline was exceptionally beautiful, but she was also emotionally detached. Why his brother chose to bind himself to a woman incapable of the fire and passion that was essential in the marital bed was beyond him. But Caroline wasn’t his problem; it was getting Jenesa out of here before she discovered he wasn’t Luca.

“It seems we have unfinished business after all,” he
said with a lazy smile.

Her already flushed cheeks turn
ed an even darker hue. “You can’t be serious! Do you honestly think I want anything to do with you now that I know you’re going to marry someone else? Anyway, you would be insane to risk it again, especially after what happened the last time. Not that you thought to ask,” she said with a crispness to her tone, “but the possibility of pregnancy must have crossed your mind.”

An Arctic wind couldn’t have cooled his ardor any faster than those last few words.
What a fool he’d been to fall for her indignant protests and that wide-eyed look of innocence. He should have guessed by how eagerly Jenesa responded to his kisses that she knew exactly what she was doing. The fact that she was a blonde should have clued him in too; Luca always went for the dark-haired, exotic look. Which meant Raffaele’s first assessment of her was correct.
She
had seduced his brother, not the other way around. And now she was going to play the pregnancy card?

For all he knew, Jenesa could have slept with any number of men before she’d zeroed in on Luca.
Maybe she was already pregnant when she lured him into her bed and was hoping to pawn another man’s child off as his. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had schemed to trap one of the Vittorio brothers into marriage, and he doubted it would be the last. Oh, she was clever; he had to give her that. She was also quite an accomplished actress. The unobtrusive behavior at the party as well as her demure acquiesce as he’d whisked her into the gardens had been calculated moves to throw him off. And he’d almost fallen for it, Raffaele thought, enraged.

Internally, he was seething. Outwardly, Raffaele appeared unruffled as his eyes locked with hers. “
Are
you pregnant, Jenesa?”

She didn’t answer right away, which only served
to escalate the hostility he already felt towards her. He expected her to jump on it, especially since she was the one who slipped it into the conversation. Apparently, Jenesa’s plans were more elaborate than simply springing the news of a baby on him.

It was fortunate that his cell phone rang at that moment; it masked the real reason for the sudden shift in his mood.
Luca’s name flashed across the screen. Raffaele excused himself but didn’t bother moving away from Jenesa. Even if she listened to the entire conversation, he was speaking in rapid Italian and knew she wouldn’t understand a word of it. By the time he disconnected the call, Raffaele was sorely tempted to throttle the deceitful little witch. He didn’t, of course. He’d never raised his hand to a woman in his life and had no intention of allowing her to bring him that low.

Still…that didn’t mean he
was willing to let her go without extracting some sort of retribution. Oh, yes, one way or another, Jenesa was going to pay for the stunt she was attempting to pull. And Raffaele was going to enjoy watching her squirm.  

                                                     ***

She was going to hell, that’s all there was to it. God was going to cast her into the pits of fire for all the lies that kept spewing from her lips. The fact that she hadn’t come here intending to deceive Luca probably wasn’t enough to save her, not when you stacked it against the whoppers she’d already told…and the ones she was about to. It was too late to unravel the deceptive web she’d weaved. Besides, the truth would only be necessary if it turned out that Jillian had conceived.