The Sicilian's Defiant Virgin

by Susan Stephens

  Wherever she moved in the room, it was impossible to escape the force of Luca Tebaldi’s personality. She’d always thought the boardroom a large, spacious room, but now it didn’t seem nearly big enough. Where the task she’d been set was concerned, failure was not an option, and tension between them was growing She was determined to make a success of the project, so it was time to build bridges between them.

  ‘I’m a little blunt sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘When I said I’d been through something similar to you, I was talking about the loss my sister.’

  ‘I see.’

  His face had softened slightly, enough for her to add, ‘Lyddie was killed in a terrible accident two years ago.’

  ‘And your parents?”

  ‘Both dead. But your loss is more recent, and I remember how it felt when Lyddie died. The shock of her death being irreversible took me out for a while, but it did get better. The grief didn’t fade, but I learned how to deal with it. I make the most of every precious day now in memory of my sister. I owe you dinner,’ she said, rather than dwell on something that went too deep to discuss with a man she’d just met. ‘Tonight, as we arranged?’

  ‘Eight o’ clock, your place?’ he suggested.

  ‘No. The casino,’ Jen countered. ‘It makes sense, as the supper you’ve paid for will be there.’

  ‘Your address,’ Luca argued quietly. ‘I’ve planned a dinner at a place of my choosing.’

  ‘I’d rather stick to the original arrangement,’ Jen insisted.

  ‘The club might be what I bought, but it’s not what I want. I paid a lot of money for the privilege of having dinner with you, but I want you to enjoy it too.’

  His argument was persuasive, and he could steal her breath away with just a look. She couldn’t forget the charity would benefit from his money. Plus, she wanted to get to know him a little better so she could talk about Raoul.

  Every reason paled in the face of sharing an evening with Luca Tebaldi, but she was still uneasy.

  ‘The one-way system to my address is a little complicated.’

  ‘I’ll find it,’ he said with a look that made her pulse race.

  What had she agreed to? She wasn’t exactly big on the dating scene. She had left all that to Lyddie. Jen’s vivacious sister had been born with confidence when it came to men. When Lyddie had died, Jen had retreated even more into her shell. She hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone about her sister’s death, so hibernation had seemed a safer bet—until the charity had persuaded her that she needed to get back to work, and go out. She must socialise, they’d insisted. The more she talked to people, the more she would discover that they had problems too, and that would help her to be strong for them, until eventually she was strong for herself.

  ‘Tonight,’ Luca said, shooting her one last dark, amused look as he headed for the door.

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘Am I?’

  She glanced at the jewel case on the table. ‘Don’t you want to take a closer look at your father’s latest purchase before you go?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. A smile tugged at his mouth. ‘The cursed stone.’

  Jen’s body responded eagerly to the warmth in Luca’s eyes as she insisted, ‘It’s a piece of compacted carbon: inert, and, hopefully, unaffected by all the hype surrounding it.’

  ‘I like that.’ He laughed, and it was a real laugh that reached his eyes, and warmed her even more. ‘I’ve no interest in gemstones,’ he confessed, ‘beyond seeing this one safely installed with the rest of my father’s haul. I remain unmoved,’ he said with a grin. ‘Except for the price, of course.’

  ‘Which would move most people,’ Jen agreed.

  It was impossible to resist his charm, even if his cold side chilled her, Jen thought. In the short time she’d known him, Luca Tebaldi had changed her thoughts on men, if only because she would compare every man she met to him in the future.

  ‘It’s been interesting seeing you again, Signorina Sanderson, and I look forward to our supper tonight.’

  So did she, Jen realised as they shared an uncomplicated, yet unexpectedly intimate look.

  ‘Until tonight—’ Luca was already gone, leaving Jen with the distinct impression that there was something about this situation she wasn’t getting.

  * * *

  Luca would be arriving any time now. She was so excited—ridiculously so. She hadn’t been on a date for—this wasn’t a date. This was a charity lot he’d bought. She hated it when cold reality swamped her. Take her home, for instance. She wasn’t going to be ashamed, even though he was a billionaire, and she lived in a bedsit in someone else’s house. The space was small, but it was clean and it smelled good. She had been allowed to decorate and had put her own stamp on the room, with bright paint-box colours on the walls, and a rag rug she’d made herself out of scraps of material covering the worst of the bald patches on the threadbare carpet. She had added to the sparse furnishings with lucky finds from the local second-hand shops. Plastic dumpers contained the rest of her worldly possessions, along with those vital documents everyone had to keep. Framed photos of Jen’s parents, and of Lyddie, took pride of place. Jen’s eyes welled with tears as she stared at her sister’s photograph. It had been taken just before Lyddie died, around two years ago, and was a vibrant, happy reminder of a moment captured in time. Jen had taken the photograph in the park close by. Lyddie had been acting the fool, turning cartwheels and grinning at Jen, and her face was still lit up with mischief, suggesting cruelly to Jen that she could breeze through the door at any time.

  Dragging her gaze away with difficulty, Jen turned to test the soil in the plant pots on the window sill with her knuckles. Most of her specimens had been rescued unloved and neglected from various offices at the auction house, apart from one new addition: a small pink rose she’d bought in memory of Lyddie, and Raoul Tebaldi, the lonely man at the casino, as Jen would always think of him.

  And now it was time to decide what to wear for the all-important date with Luca. She was not ashamed of her wardrobe, though she shopped in thrift stores most of the time, searching for vintage pieces that had escaped the eagle eye of collectors. She had picked up and discarded several items before coming to a decision for tonight. She could imagine the type of high-end restaurant Luca favoured. She couldn’t compete with his million-dollar wardrobe, and so she had finally settled on a pretty, fifties-style dress from the second-hand-gown rail that served as her wardrobe. The dress was royal blue lightweight cotton, covered in sprigs of white flowers. Full skirted, it was nipped in at the waist, and had three-quarter sleeves with crisp white turn-back cuffs. Darted to show off the bust, it fastened down the front with tiny pearl buttons, and there was a belt of the same fabric cinching her waist. With its high neck and white Peter Pan collar, she felt ladylike and poised. It was certainly a change from jeans, or the mouse suit she wore at the office, and was far more modest than Ms Bunny’s outfit. ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ was all well and good, but people did judge, and it was crucial to get this right tonight.

  The dress was armour of sorts, Jen concluded, her pulse picking up from frenzied to frantic when the front door bell rang, and something told her she would need her armour tonight. Luca could be warm, but he could be challenging too; either way she’d need her wits about her. Snatching up a wrap, she opened the door and stood back.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, looking her up and down.

  Had she got it wrong? Was the fifties outfit too much? Was he having second thoughts? Was she?

  About all of it, Jen concluded. Luca was gorgeous. She was average. He was rich. She was poor. But he was due his dinner, and the charity needed his money. When Lyddie died Jen had vowed to value life, and live it to the full. This was the perfect opportunity to make good on that pledge.

  As Luca stared past her into the house, she could imagine what he was thinking. The house was conventional. Her room was not. The blaze of colour, together with the happy chaos of trying to
decide what to wear tonight, had left its mark. She doubted that Luca, living in his sleek, expensive world, had ever seen anything quite like it. Oh, well...

  Girding her loins—aka hanging her structured fifties handbag over her arm—she picked up her house keys, and smiled at her escort.

  Luca’s dark stare swept over her. ‘You look amazing.’

  Relief. She’d got one thing right. He didn’t look bad, either. Casual dress suited him. But it was hardly the outfit of choice for a gourmet restaurant. Relax, Jen told herself as she led the way down the path. She halted at the side of his car, a low-slung model, sleek, black, and very expensive. She imagined the engine would purr and then roar.

  ‘Would you like me to help you in?’ he asked politely.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ That mouth! Firm and faintly smiling, Luca’s was a mouth made for sin—for softening and for teasing—

  It could be a hard mouth too, Jen reminded herself. But he was on his best behaviour tonight. Polite and charming, she thought as he opened the passenger door and stood back. And drop-dead gorgeous. Luca had the type of masculine glamour film stars could only dream about. And those eyes could tell a thousand stories, all of them X-rated, she had no doubt. She quickly looked away, but not before he’d caught her staring. He smiled as she mused on the subject of rampant Tatars from the plains—that was what he looked like, with his tangle of wild black hair, and the imperious line of his sweeping ebony brows. Gathering the skirt of her dress, she did her best to slide into the car with grace, as if this were something she did most days. It certainly took more of a knack than stepping onto a bus, but she could handle it—

  Really?

  She cursed vigorously as her heel caught in the hem of her dress.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Luca offered.

  Before she could refuse, he was down on his knees in front of her, freeing the hem.

  I will! Oh, yes, I will—flew unbidden into her mind. She shoved it straight out again. This wasn’t a game. This was deadly serious, she thought as Luca’s magnetic stare lifted to fix on her face.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE SCENT OF expensive leather and hand-polished walnut embraced Jen as she settled into a ridiculously comfortable seat. Closing her door with a satisfying clunk, Luca strode around to the driver’s side and climbed in. She was instantly acutely aware of him, so close she only had to reach out a little way and she could touch him. His masculine appeal seemed magnified tenfold in the confines of the luxurious vehicle.

  ‘I can still get us a table at the club, if you’d like to go there instead,’ she said on a throat that felt as tight as if someone were standing on it.

  Luca’s answer was to switch on the engine, proving that his muscle car preferred to roar, rather than purr. Why wasn’t she surprised? Jen thought as he pulled smoothly into the slow-moving evening traffic. She tried to settle back and enjoy the ride, but she had already broken her cardinal rule by getting into the car of a man she hardly knew—and this was hardly a regular guy. And they were going where, exactly? She didn’t have a clue, Jen realised with a pang of alarm as soft jazz filled the air. If Luca’s choice of music was meant to relax her, it was a major fail. And now they were driving out of the city—

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘To an airfield.’

  ‘An airfield?’ Jen exclaimed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Um...’ Luca flashed a bemused glance at her. ‘To catch a plane.’

  He might think that was funny, but she didn’t. ‘Going where, exactly?’ she pressed in a firm tone.

  ‘To Sicily, of course,’ he said, frowning.

  ‘Sicily?’ The way he said it, you might think it was a café down the road. ‘But I don’t have my passport with me.’

  ‘No problem. It’s being couriered to the jet right now.’

  ‘You’ve been in my room?’ she exclaimed, fuming.

  ‘Not exactly. I have people who arrange this sort of thing for me.’

  Of course he did. A billionaire’s contacts would be many and varied, she accepted grudgingly,

  ‘You’ve been hired, and you know where the job is situated.’ Luca gave a relaxed shrug. ‘You might as well visit Sicily sooner as later.’

  Turning the wheel, he swung onto the slip road leading to the motorway.

  ‘But I haven’t packed anything,’ Jen protested. ‘I didn’t expect—’ And even if she had, Luca’s high-handed attitude was outrageous.

  ‘I apologise for the short notice,’ Luca drawled, managing not to sound sorry at all.

  ‘Short notice?’ Jen exclaimed. ‘Don’t you mean no notice? You should have warned me what you had in mind.’

  ‘What kind of surprise is that?’ He smiled.

  She didn’t.

  ‘Tonight wasn’t supposed to be a surprise,’ Jen pointed out. ‘What you bought at the auction was a quiet dinner for two at the club, and nothing more.’

  ‘Do you always play by the rules, Jennifer?’

  As Luca accelerated into the fast lane, she gathered he didn’t.

  ‘Last chance,’ he said. ‘Tell me if you want to go back?’

  Throw everything up? That was where this would lead. She’d probably lose her job at the auction house, and that might threaten the qualification she’d worked so hard for. And she’d learn nothing more about Raoul, or Luca—in fact, she might never see him again.

  ‘Well?’ he said, glancing at her. ‘What do you want to do?’

  There was an exit coming up. She had about two minutes to decide—thirty seconds at the speed Luca was driving.

  ‘I’m not kidnapping you, ’ he said with amusement. ‘I’m merely acting according to the security details I’ve put in place to protect you and my father’s latest gaudy purchase.’

  ‘The Emperor’s Diamond?’ She had never heard the precious stone referred to with anything other than awe.

  ‘Please don’t tell me he’s bought something else?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly.

  ‘Are you spellbound by its worth?’

  ‘No,’ she said honestly. ‘Its value means nothing to me, beyond the fact that I have a duty of care towards a purchase made by a client. I’m fascinated by the gem’s provenance—who cut the stone, who owned it before your father, and how it came to be discovered in the first place—that’s what fires my interest.’ She frowned. If Luca disapproved of his father’s hobby, why had he taken time out of his busy life to come to London to set these plans in motion? ‘A quick phone call was all it would have taken to warn me that you intended to fly to Sicily tonight—’

  ‘The essence of security is silence,’ he insisted. ‘The fewer people who know my plans, the safer those plans will be.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’ He softened this question with a faint quirk of his mouth. ‘We hardly know each other, after all.’

  ‘And your flight plan just happens to be filed?’

  ‘My jet is always fuelled and ready.’

  Of course it was.

  ‘Surely you won’t pass up the opportunity to see my father’s fabulous collection of jewels? You’ve got around thirty seconds to decide’ He was already braking.

  ‘Your father’s haul?’ She couldn’t resist reminding Luca of his previous comment.

  Her reward was a brief grin that coated every part of her with heat. Thankfully, her brain was still working. ‘Experts with years of experience would bite your hand off for the chance you’ve given me. So, why me, Luca?’

  ‘I wanted your fresh take,’ he said, keeping his attention firmly fixed on the road ahead.

  She dug her heels in. ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘You’re studying to be a gemologist, aren’t you?’

  ‘Studying being the operative word,’ Jen agreed.

  ‘But you’re top of your class.’

  ‘I’m a student. I’ve been sitting in a classroom with a professor teaching me. I would have thought you�
��d need the professor for this job, not the student.’

  He shrugged. ‘New ideas and a fresh approach are more important to me than some tried and tested formula.’

  Or was she of some other interest to him altogether? Jen wondered. ‘Will I meet your father?’ The thought of a meeting with a man with such an intimidating reputation alarmed Jen, but she’d rather be prepared for it than not.

  ‘No. He retired to Florida recently.’

  So why was she creating an exhibition for Don Tebaldi? ‘Won’t he want the jewels with him, or at least want to see his latest purchase?’

  ‘He trusts me.’ Luca huffed a laugh without humour. ‘He might not like me but he trusts me.’

  A father not liking his own child was so far out of Jen’s experience she couldn’t get her head around it. She’d grown up safe in the knowledge that she had two loving parents, which had made their tragic passing all the harder to bear.

  ‘My father didn’t like either of his sons,’ Luca explained without emotion. ‘He held us both in contempt. There was only room for one bull elephant in our herd, and that was my father.’

  She let the subject drop. She could feel Luca’s bitterness and hurt. This was the most he’d opened up to her, and went some way to explaining why Raoul had felt so abandoned. On the face of it, this trip was a dream come true, but dreams could be deceptive, and this was happening too soon in her career. It didn’t make sense when people ten years her senior would have trampled her in their rush to catalogue the treasures of one of the world’s most notorious and secretive collectors. She was confident she had the ability to do the job, and she was excited to see the jewels. The thought of spending more time with Luca was exciting too, but she didn’t fully trust his motives. Worse. She didn’t trust herself. She had no experience of men. She was a frustrated virgin, which was the human equivalent of a powder keg waiting to blow.