The Sicilian's Defiant Virgin

by Susan Stephens

  She was getting a bad feeling about this.

  He reminded her of Raoul Tebaldi, a compulsive gambler Jen had come to know at the club. Everyone knew that Raoul was the son of a man who had been a notorious gangster in his day, but Jen had come to like the quiet Sicilian. She’d lost her sister, and Raoul was estranged from his family. The distance from his brother had hurt him most of all, because they had been close when they were young. This sense of loss had given them a bond, and they’d become close. Jen had looked forward to seeing Raoul each night at the club, but he hadn’t been around for quite some time. A pang of dread struck her now, at the thought that something might have happened to Raoul, but, seeing the maître d’ beckoning to her out of the corner of her eye, she knew she had to cut this short.

  ‘I promise we’ll have dinner another night,’ she assured the Sicilian stranger.

  ‘I can’t wait long,’ he said.

  Jen’s heart leapt in her chest, though she told herself sensibly that what he meant was that he would be leaving London soon, and not that he was impatient to see her.

  ‘I won’t let you down,’ she promised.

  His narrowed eyes suggested she’d better not. ‘Let’s make our dinner at a time and a place of my choosing,’ he suggested. ‘And then it will be a surprise.’

  ‘It should be here,’ she said. ‘That’s what you’ve paid for.’

  ‘So long as we make a date before I leave,’ he conceded, not wanting to put her off by appearing harsh.

  ‘I’m sure that will be possible,’ she said.

  The girl was either as innocent as she looked, or she was a very good actress. Neither possibility could explain Raoul’s actions. Innocence had hardly been his younger brother’s area of expertise, and if she had somehow manipulated Raoul, she could be trouble. As his father had predicted, the tragedy hadn’t made the international news, so he doubted she knew his brother was dead. He couldn’t be certain if Raoul had shared the contents of his will with her, but he would find out.

  ‘You’ll enjoy the food here,’ she said. ‘And you’ll eat free.’

  If ten thousand could be called free, he thought as the balance tipped in favour of her innocence. ‘Eat here?’ he said, frowning.

  ‘Why not?’ she said, turning her face up to him in a way that made his senses stir.

  He had accompanied her to the fringes of the restaurant, but the casino was too strong a reminder of everything he’d got wrong where his brother was concerned. He wanted to leave so he couldn’t see Raoul drinking too much at the bar, or throwing his money away at the tables. He had loved his brother deeply, and had longed for them to be reunited, but Raoul had pushed him away. And now it was too late.

  ‘You won’t be disappointed,’ she said, misreading his expression. ‘The chefs are excellent.’

  ‘But you might like a change,’ he said. ‘You can go anywhere—and I do mean anywhere in the world.’

  Jen was stunned. The man was wealthy enough to pay a fortune to have dinner with her for some reason, and now he was suggesting she should leap on board his billionaire bandwagon and go with him to places unknown. How stupid would she have to be to do that?

  Her heart disagreed and raced with excitement. Her body wasn’t much help. It looked to casting off years of celibacy with unbounded enthusiasm. Thankfully, she had more sense. He could have any woman he wanted. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date. It was time to get real.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said politely, ‘but as we’ve never met before, I’m sure you’ll understand if I tell you that I’d feel safer here.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asked.

  There was amusement in his eyes. ‘I don’t know you,’ she said.

  And then, with the charity at the forefront of her mind, she suggested, ‘How about seven’ o clock tomorrow evening, here? Before the club gets busy,’ she explained. ‘Would that suit you?’ Whether it did or not, that was her best and final offer.

  ‘I’m looking forward to it already,’ he said.

  There was another suspicious glow in his eyes. ‘Good. So am I—and now I really do have to go.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, turning.

  She still stared at him admiringly as he walked away, transfixed by his long, lean legs, and muscular back view. It was only when he had completely disappeared from sight she realised that they hadn’t even introduced themselves. So, was he related to Raoul Tebaldi, or not?

  He must have put something down on paper when he bought the auction lot, Jen reasoned. No one parted with that type of money without attaching a name to it.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  She turned to see Tess, the casino manager, staring at her with concern. Tess’s sixth sense where staff were concerned was unbeatable.

  ‘He wasn’t bothering you, was he?’ Tess demanded as she followed Jen’s stare to the door.

  ‘No. He wanted to have that dinner tonight, and as we’re short-handed I told him that I couldn’t do that. Did he remind you of someone?’ she added, frowning. ‘Do you remember Raoul, that lonely man who used to play the tables until he had no money left?’

  Tess shrugged. ‘I see thousands of men come through here every year. None of them hold my attention for long, unless they complain about something. Why do you ask?’

  Jen shrugged. ‘No reason. And I’m probably wrong. Anyway, I do feel better having laid down some ground rules.’

  ‘I would have done that for you,’ Tess insisted. ‘You only had to ask.’

  ‘I can handle men like him,’ Jen assured Tess with more confidence than she felt. ‘I wouldn’t deserve a job here if I couldn’t...’

  ‘But?’ Tess queried, picking up on Jen’s hesitation.

  ‘But he struck me as a man who doesn’t play by the rules,’ Jen said thoughtfully.

  ‘Unless he writes them?’ Tess suggested.

  Jen hummed. She didn’t want to burden Tess with her concerns, and it was no use brooding on them. Work would take her mind off the mystery man—she hoped.

  * * *

  It was a relief to leave the club. He dragged on the chilly London air as if it were the purest oxygen. He felt as if his head had been under water for the past half-hour. He blamed himself for not stopping Raoul’s downslide sooner. He couldn’t believe he’d been so blind to his brother’s troubles, or that things had got so bad.

  Raoul’s debts were eye-watering. He’d paid them off, dealing with an expressionless man behind a grill at the club, and then he made his donation to the charity. Next he had to unpick the story of a woman who’d just become an unlikely heiress to a fortune she knew nothing about. He had made no final decision about Jennifer Sanderson. She appealed to him with her bold challenges and her curvaceous body. It was all too easy to imagine her clinging to his arms in the throes of passion. That might not be what he was here for, but it was the thought he carried with him from the club.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘DID THAT MAN I was talking to hand over the money for the auction lot?’ Jen asked Tess as casually as she could at the end of the night.

  ‘All ten thousand,’ Tess confirmed. ‘And he paid off his brother’s gambling debts.’

  ‘His brother?’

  ‘Raoul Tebaldi.’

  A shiver raced down Jen’s spine at the thought that, just as she had suspected, the Sicilian stranger was Raoul’s brother. Raoul had confided in her that he was on a downward spiral, and only wished he were still close to his brother. ‘If only I could confide in Luca as I used to when we were young,’ he’d said with such longing in his eyes.

  Luca...

  ‘I don’t know anything more about the guy who bought the dinner with you,’ Tess admitted. ‘My best guess is, he’ll be back to collect what he’s paid for. He didn’t strike me as the type to cut and run.’

  ‘Worse luck,’ Jen said, only half joking.

  ‘Who are you trying to kid?’ Tess demanded, shooting Jen a shrewd look. ‘It
isn’t every day a man walks into the club and pays a fortune to have dinner with you—especially not one who looks like that.’

  ‘Which is exactly why I’m so suspicious,’ Jen confessed. ‘Surely, I’m hardly his type.’

  ‘He’s a generous guy with plenty of money,’ Tess argued. ‘Why read any more into it than that? My job here is to keep everyone happy and make sure things run smoothly, while yours is to make everyone feel welcome—and no more than that. You hit the right balance beautifully, Jen, which is why you’re so popular.’

  All Jen could think was, what had happened to Raoul? She didn’t have a good feeling about it. The coincidence of his brother buying time with her was just too strong. Why had he done that? What did he want? Had Raoul mentioned her to Luca? That seemed unlikely. Was it possible that while she’d been getting on with her life, another tragedy had been unfolding?

  * * *

  Friday morning, aka almost the weekend, and Jen was settling in to her day job. Officially, according to her employment records, she was a part-time student studying to be a gemologist, working in central London on day release from college, so she could gain hands-on experience of working with precious stones. In reality, she went to college three days a week, and the rest of the time she was gofer and tea lady to the distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the board at Smithers & Worseley Auction House, London

  ‘The buyer’s request is quite straightforward,’ the chairman of the prestigious house had just announced.

  Staring down his aquiline nose through gold half-moon glasses, Melvyn Worseley Esquire proceeded to explain: ‘Don Tebaldi, our venerable client from Sicily—some of you may have heard of him?’

  Sicily? Jen was now fully alert.

  The chairman gave a dramatic pause, during which a chorus of critical hums rang out around the boardroom table. Everyone knew the reputation of the infamous Don Tebaldi, a man supposedly retired, but in the world he inhabited did anyone ever really retire? That was the unspoken question.

  ‘Has requested that a member of our staff shall hand-carry the Emperor’s Diamond to Sicily, where that same member of staff will create an exhibition of Don Tebaldi’s private collection, having as its centrepiece the notorious stone.’

  ‘Relieving Don Tebaldi of the need to touch the stone,’ one director commented with a scornful laugh. ‘He might be an old gangster, but he’s just as afraid of its supposed curse as everyone else.’

  The chairman paused to allow the laughter to die down. ‘His son, Signor Luca Tebaldi—’

  Jen’s head shot up. Luca Tebaldi! The man she’d met at the club.

  ‘Will be organising security,’ the chairman continued, ‘for both the courier of the gem, and the gem itself.’ He looked straight at Jen. ‘Am I correct in thinking that you passed the module for presenting an exhibition with a certificate of excellence, Jennifer?’

  ‘What, me? No—yes. I mean, definitely yes.’ Hearing Luca’s name again had thrown her. Hearing it mentioned in the same breath as travelling to Sicily to put on some sort of exhibition for his father was distinctly alarming. She’d had the strongest sense of events overtaking her from the moment he’d stood in her way at the club.

  ‘No wonder Don Tebaldi doesn’t want to handle the gem,’ another director commented. ‘Who does? Though from what I’ve heard, the Don’s luck has already run out.’

  The cruel laughter around the table grated on Jen.

  ‘His business has been on the downslide for some time now,’ the chairman agreed, ‘though these things can be reversed, and there’s no reason to suppose the Tebaldis won’t remain good clients of ours...’

  Was that all he cared about? Jen thought as the chairman’s stare rested on her face.

  ‘For some unaccountable reason,’ the chairman continued, ‘Don Tebaldi has asked for you by name, Jennifer. You are to courier the stone to Sicily, and you are to display it along with the rest of his gems.’

  ‘Me?’ she said faintly.

  ‘I explained that you were still a student,’ the chairman told her to murmurs of surprise around the table, ‘but Don Tebaldi has insisted. It appears that he has researched every member of staff, and, having read your college report and discovered that you are this year’s top student, he has asked—insisted, actually, on hiring your new, fresh approach.’

  ‘But I can’t—’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ the chairman argued sharply. ‘Don Tebaldi has amassed a priceless collection over the years, and it’s a great honour for you to be selected for this task. You must think how it will look on your CV.’

  And on the auction house register. The chairman did nothing that wouldn’t benefit the house. But why choose a student when the world was full of experts? What was going on?

  ‘It’s all settled,’ the chairman informed her briskly. ‘Don Tebaldi will accept no one else but you, so you will be travelling to Sicily at the same time as the Emperor’s Diamond, and when you get there you will catalogue his collection, and arrange an exhibition for him.’

  This did not go down well around the boardroom table, Jen noticed. And who could be surprised when some of the leading experts in the world were seated next to her?

  ‘Yes, I found it surprising too,’ the chairman admitted, removing his spectacles to pinch the bridge of his nose. ‘But then I remembered that Jennifer has a second job at the casino, and I wondered if she might have met one of the members of the Tebaldi family there...?’

  Jen’s cheeks reddened as everyone turned to look at her. ‘I might have done,’ she admitted.

  ‘Well, I can’t complain about your work here, so I can only hope you won’t let Smithers & Worseley down.’

  She was certainly a dab hand at making sure the lid was on the biscuit tin. Now she had to hope that the ideas that had won her the top prize at college would translate into something to please a client.

  ‘This shouldn’t be a problem for you, should it?’ the chairman pressed, raising a bristly silver brow.

  He didn’t really care who went, Jen deduced. The chairman was only interested in the kudos of a member of his staff entering the secret world of Don Tebaldi. The chance to hear a first-hand account of treasures that had been locked away for years had blinded him to everything else. Whether he was suspicious or not over this unlikely train of events, he had decided that Jen would be the sacrificial lamb.

  As for her own suspicions? Keep thinking about that glowing entry on your CV, Jen instructed herself firmly.

  ‘I’d be happy to catalogue Don Tebaldi’s collection, and organise an exhibition for him.’ She had plenty of experience of organising things and people since her parents’ death. Too much experience, probably, and even she couldn’t deny that she was the top student in her year.

  ‘Good. Well, that’s settled, then,’ the chairman said with satisfaction. ‘You’re fast becoming indispensable to us, Jennifer,’ he added with a self-satisfied smile at a job well done. ‘Think of it as a free holiday,’ he added magnanimously. ‘It can be your bonus for the year.’

  That didn’t mean she’d get a pay rise. She’d still be catching a bus to work twenty years from now, while the members of the board would still be chauffeured to work in their Bentleys.

  ‘You will meet with Signor Luca Tebaldi at three, here in this office,’ the chairman added.

  So soon?

  Jen didn’t hear much else for the rest of the meeting. She would have liked more time to prepare. Raoul disappearing, and now the sale of a valuable and notorious stone to the man who turned out to be his father—and Raoul’s brother buying time with Jen at the club? Was she supposed to believe it was all coincidence?

  ‘Jennifer?’ the chairman said sharply. ‘Are you listening to me? I was just saying that Signor Tebaldi expects to view his father’s latest purchase, following which he will arrange transport details for both the Emperor’s Diamond, and for you. This is a great opportunity for you, Jennifer,’ he finished, shaking his head at her apparent lack of interest as
he settled back.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said, sitting up. ‘And thank you so much for the opportunity.’ At least she’d have chance to get to the bottom of this mystery.

  For Lyddie, Jen thought, shooting her professional smile around the table.

  Lyddie had only recently started her career as a model when she was killed two years ago. She had insisted on cycling everywhere in London, saying it was the easiest way to get around. At least Lyddie had got the chance to wear the jewels she had loved so much, having landed an endorsement for an exclusive jewellery house. She’d been on her way to model the next season’s collection of diamonds when she was knocked off her bike. Jen would do this work in memory of those she’d lost, and make it a fitting tribute to the sister and the parents she had adored. She smiled, remembering Lyddie had never been able to pass a jeweller’s window without squeaking with excitement when she spotted some rare stone their mother had described to them. The sparkling gems had become a bond between them when their mother died, reminding them of story time, and the three of them safe, and sitting close together.

  ‘I will inform your college and ask for leave of absence, so you’ve nothing to worry about—especially not with the summer holidays fast approaching,’ the chairman told her. ‘Just one more thing,’ he added, avoiding Jen’s gaze. ‘We must be sure to welcome Signor Luca Tebaldi with the utmost hospitality.’

  Jen frowned at this comment. The utmost hospitality seemed to imply more than simply hand-carrying a precious stone to Sicily. She would be professional and polite, and that was all. If the chairman expected anything more of her, perhaps to drum up future business, he was destined to be disappointed.

  ‘Signor Luca Tebaldi’s father has been an outstanding contributor to our profits,’ the chairman continued, confirming Jen’s fears with a meaningful look. ‘We can only hope his son will become an equally valuable client in the future.’