The Sicilian's Defiant Virgin

by Susan Stephens

  ‘Since I started working at the club. He was a regular there—but you know that. Raoul was always lovely to chat to—always so pleasant and polite.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ he pressed.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at. Raoul talked about you and I talked about Lyddie. We got sad together. It was my job to cheer him up. Not just my job, my pleasure,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Raoul was different.’

  ‘How was he different?’

  ‘Special. Raoul was special. He didn’t come to the casino to wallow in self-pity, he came to forget, which was why he played the tables every night.’

  ‘Forget,’ Luca murmured.

  Guilt had struck him again at the thought that Raoul might have wanted to change his life, but Luca hadn’t been there to help him. Raoul had tried so hard to win their father’s love, and had failed as utterly as he had. The thought that Raoul had had no one but this girl to confide in cut him like a knife.

  ‘You were kind to Raoul,’ he said, staring keenly at her.

  ‘Of course I was kind to Raoul. Your brother was kind to me. We always made time for each other...’ Her voice tailed away as if she wished that she could have done more for Raoul too.

  ‘And there was definitely nothing more between you than friendship?’

  ‘What could it be? Blackmail? Sex? Stop it,’ she insisted. ‘There was nothing between your brother and me, but friendship. It doesn’t always have to be about sex.’

  ‘It usually is between a man and a woman.’

  ‘Well, not this time,’ she assured him hotly. ‘And if all these ugly thoughts have been swirling round in your head, how could you make love to me? Was it a test, Luca? Has this all been some sort of horrible game?’

  As she sprang to her feet he caught hold of her, and, dragging her close, he assured her, ‘This is not a game, Jen. This is all too real for me.’

  ‘And to me,’ she assured him tensely. ‘Do you think I like being interrogated as if I’ve got something to hide?’

  ‘I think that if I had known your sister, and you met me and asked me about Lyddie, I would tell you every tiny detail I could remember. Nothing you can tell me about Raoul is too small or inconsequential. Everything you know about Raoul will colour in the picture that was my brother—my estranged brother. I need this information like I need air to breathe, and for no other reason than I loved my brother, and now it’s too late to tell Raoul just how much he meant to me.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HIS LOVE FOR his brother was stronger than his need to know why the woman in front of him would inherit Raoul’s estate, Luca realised. Every word he’d said to Jen was true. He was desperate for the smallest detail, and if there was something Jen wasn’t telling him—all his demons launched themselves on him at once. ‘There has to be something more to your friendship with Raoul—something you’re not telling me.’

  ‘Why?’ Jen demanded. ‘Why do you think I’m hiding something? Why does there have to be more than the truth?’

  ‘Because there must be,’ he insisted. ‘You have to be hiding something. Maybe it’s a secret my brother couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone but you—I don’t know,’ he admitted with frustration. He was so used to being in control, this level of emotional incontinence was new to him, and he had to take a moment to calm down.

  ‘You answer my question,’ Jen insisted.

  Silence.

  ‘What is your business here on the island? You haven’t told me yet, and I need to know exactly what I’m involved in.’

  ‘My life on the island isn’t connected to my business, if that helps. I don’t know what else to tell you, other than the fact that your job remains the same. You’ve been hired to catalogue jewels for a sick old man, and then set up an exhibition that he can be proud of. I want his life to end well, and you can supply that ending for him. All you need to know about me is that everything I do is within the law, and that nothing I do could ever hurt you, or Raoul’s memory. My business interests extend across the world, and, though they are many and varied, all of them are legitimate.’

  ‘So why couldn’t you find time for your brother, if your business is so vast and you have so many people working for you?’

  ‘It was the other way around, Jen. Raoul didn’t want to see me.’

  ‘Because you couldn’t accept him—’ She had stopped as if she’d said too much.

  ‘Accept him?’ he pressed urgently. ‘Accept his gambling debts, do you mean?’

  Jen looked increasingly uncomfortable, but remained stubbornly silent.

  ‘Tell me,’ he insisted. ‘Why can’t you tell me what you know about Raoul? I wouldn’t be this cruel to you, if our situations were reversed.’

  ‘I made a promise,’ she fired back. ‘And I won’t break that promise. I can say this—it wasn’t easy for Raoul to live in his father’s world. I think he came to believe that it wasn’t even possible.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that,’ he agreed grimly, ‘but it still doesn’t explain why Raoul felt it necessary to distance himself from me.’

  ‘He believed you’d grown apart and he didn’t know how to heal the gulf.’

  ‘Clearly,’ he murmured bitterly. ‘But I think you know exactly what the problem was, but you choose not to tell me.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s only the same as you refusing to spell out what you do.’

  ‘I’m in the security business, as you know.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ she queried, looking sceptical.

  ‘That’s it,’ he confirmed. ‘If I go into any more detail my business will no longer be secure. I can tell you that my operatives protect some of the most high-profile people in the world, and also provide safe escort for some of the most valuable items on the planet.’

  ‘Like the Emperor’s Diamond.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he confirmed.

  ‘You said your father’s retired to Florida, so who’s going to take over his business interests?’

  ‘No one. What remains of his empire has been dismantled.’

  ‘By you?’

  ‘It’s enough for you to know that I will never take over my father’s business—not in the way you think, though I do have a lifelong responsibility towards the people on this island.’

  ‘What about the old man who kissed your hand?’

  ‘Traditions take a long time to change, and the older men and women on the island don’t know how things will turn out now my father’s left the island. It’s up to me to reassure them, and that will take a little time.’

  ‘I appreciate your honesty,’ she said after a few moments.

  ‘As I would appreciate yours,’ he said pointedly. ‘Who else can I ask about Raoul?’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything that doesn’t break my promise to your brother.’

  Jen was in a bind. She wanted to be completely open with Luca, but Raoul had begged her not to share some of the things he’d told her. It would break his father’s heart, he’d said. Like Luca, Raoul had only ever felt concern for the father who had shunned him and who had never shown him any love.

  Why did people like Don Tebaldi have children in the first place? His two sons had cared for him more than he’d ever cared for them. Jen’s eyes stung with tears as she remembered the highly charged conversations she’d shared with Raoul. He’d been such a kind and funny man, in spite of the lack of love in his life. Raoul had felt things deeply, and now he was dead.

  ‘Please,’ Luca said quietly.

  She couldn’t help but think of Lyddie, and how hungry Jen would be for the smallest nugget of information. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me, and then I’ll decide.’

  ‘All right, I will.’ She paused. ‘Raoul was gay, and he didn’t think you would understand.’

  Luca was quiet for the longest time. ‘What?’ he said at last, staring at her in disbelief.

  ‘Raoul was gay,’ Jen repeated. ‘Once he came out, he said it would
be impossible for him to come back to Sicily to face you and his father.’

  ‘He couldn’t face me?’ Luca repeated. ‘Raoul was gay? Is that...everything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s what stopped him getting in touch with me? Are you sure?’

  Burying his head in his hands, Luca squeezed his arms together, as if the hurt inside him had to be held in.

  Lifting his head, he stared at her with incomprehension. ‘My brother couldn’t tell me that he was gay?’ And then, quietly, ‘Am I such a monster?’

  ‘No, Luca. No—’

  ‘How did he think I’d react? Raoul was my brother. I loved him unconditionally. Don’t tell me that that’s what made him gamble? No. No—’

  ‘Luca, please...’

  Coming around the library table, she reached for him, but he pulled away.

  ‘My love for Raoul was absolute, unquestioned. I only ever wanted him to be happy. What went wrong?’ he asked softly.

  ‘He loved you,’ Jen said with confidence. ‘Raoul couldn’t bear the thought of losing your love.’

  ‘He could never lose my love,’ Luca exclaimed fiercely.

  ‘But what about your father?’

  Luca made an angry dismissive sound.

  ‘And the islanders?’

  He shook his head firmly at this. ‘There are no people on this earth more loving and accepting than the people who share our island home.’

  ‘Then, it must be your father who stopped Raoul coming back. I got the sense during some of our conversations that Raoul had tested the waters and found them deeply unwelcoming.’

  ‘There was a conversation between me and my father at Raoul’s funeral,’ Luca remembered, narrowing his eyes as he thought back. ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now I know I’m a fool, because I should have protected Raoul better than I did. I should have been there for him when he needed me. I wish he’d trusted me enough. I’ll never be able to make it up to him now—’

  Hurt was bleeding from him as surely as if he’d been shot. She reached out. ‘Blaming yourself won’t help, Luca.’

  ‘But Dio! It hurts.’ Balling his hands into fists, he rested them on the library table, with his head down, grimacing as if a real physical pain had gripped him. ‘You have no idea how much it hurts.’

  ‘But I do,’ Jen said gently, ‘because I hurt too. There are always things left unsaid, and things we wished we’d had time to say, or do, when someone we love dies, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t love Raoul enough, or I didn’t love Lyddie enough. It just means that life can be cruel sometimes, taking those we love without warning.’

  When Lyddie died there were so many things left unsaid. How much worse must it have been for Luca who had been estranged from his brother before Raoul’s death? Both the brothers were the losers in this. Their father didn’t have the capacity to love anything apart from his secret hoard of jewels, it seemed to Jen. She felt sorry for Don Tebaldi, for the love he’d wasted.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything?’ Luca demanded, searching her face.

  ‘Not everything, no,’ Jen admitted. ‘But I’ve told you everything I can without breaking my pledge to your brother. I can tell you this. It wouldn’t help you to know anything more, so why don’t you let Raoul’s secrets die with him?’

  ‘I can’t do that.’ Luca’s voice had gained a hard edge. ‘And I don’t appreciate you deciding what you will and won’t tell me.’

  ‘It’s up to me what I tell you,’ Jen said without rancour, making allowances for how upset he was.

  ‘Why?’ Luca demanded, his expression blackening.

  ‘Because I’m protecting the living as well as the dead.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’

  ‘That’s all I’m prepared to say.’ She would keep her word to his brother. ‘I promised Raoul that if I ever got the chance to meet you, I would tell you as much as I have. I begged him to get in touch with you. I told him that if you were anything like him, all you’d care about was Raoul’s happiness.’

  ‘You were right to do that, and I tried, but Raoul always kept me at arm’s length, which was why we drifted apart.’

  ‘Perhaps you were both partially responsible,’ Jen suggested.

  Luca shook his head. ‘I can’t answer that,’ he said grimly, ‘but there are things I have to know.’

  ‘What things?’ Jen demanded tensely, flinching away from the harsh expression on his face, which seemed to be directed at her. ‘You’re talking in riddles, and I’ve already told you that I can’t help you any more than I have.’

  ‘You must—’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I can’t.’

  In his frustration at her refusal, Luca grabbed hold of her. She was acutely aware of every inch of him pressed up hard against her curves, but making love in anger was impossible for her, and she told him so.

  He stared at her in a fury of grief, and then groaned. ‘Forgive me. This is not the way it’s supposed to be. I loved Raoul so much, and now he’s gone, and if I’m not careful, I’ll drive you away.’ His face softened as Jen inhaled sharply with surprise. ‘And then who will catalogue my father’s collection?’ he teased.

  Jen slowly shook her head. ‘You’re impossible.’

  ‘I do my best,’ Luca agreed with a wry tug of his mouth.

  It took her a few moments to relax completely and accept that, just as she could be overwhelmed by her long-neglected emotions, so could Luca.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he murmured.

  Things changed rapidly when Luca took her in his arms. The anger between them subsided and another emotion altogether filled the gap. She was acutely aware of the insistent thrust of Luca’s thick erection, and the very last thing she wanted to do was to argue with him. The moment he kissed her, she knew she was lost. She returned his hunger with matching heat. All she could think about was claiming him and reliving the pleasure they’d so recently shared. Whatever they’d said, and whatever accusations had flown between them, there was only one imperative now, and that was to be one with Luca.

  Their tongues tangled. Her fingers bit into his shoulders. She ground her body against him, seeking more contact, but it could never be enough. She needed to be one with him, hot flesh to hot flesh, and, groaning with need, she clasped his buttocks to bind him tight to her.

  Wordless sounds of need accompanied her actions as she released him to work on his belt buckle. She had it free in a couple of seconds. Next she tackled the button at the top of his zipper. Her hands were shaking as she fumbled to push it through the mean little hole, but to her relief his zip came down smoothly. Her first sight of his erection was her reward. Clearly visible through his black silk shorts, it was a prize she was determined to lose no time claiming. Cupping him in her hands, she sank to her knees. Freeing him from his shorts, she took him deep into her mouth. Working him, she had the satisfaction of hearing Luca groan. Tangling his hands in her hair, he cupped her head to keep her close. For every pass she made, and every groan he gave, she was also becoming increasingly aroused, but her greedy body would have to wait, because this was all for him.

  ‘Yes,’ Luca ground out on a stifled breath.

  She teased him mercilessly with her tongue, before increasing the suction and taking him deep again.

  ‘Enough!’ he exclaimed. ‘Or you’ll be so frustrated, you’ll never come down—’

  ‘I’ll risk it for you,’ she said recklessly.

  Luca disagreed, and sweeping her into his arms, he arranged her to his liking on the firm seat of the Chesterfield. Bringing her skirt to her waist, he exposed her flimsy thong.

  He had placed her over the sidearm of the sofa so her upper body was stretched out on the seat and she could see everything he was doing to her. That was his intention, she was sure. The thought alone was enough to excite her. She had never imagined that anything could be as arousing as this. Her hips were
lifted high on the padded arm when Luca nudged his way between her thighs. He stared down at her, his face, so full of the promise of pleasure to come. She cried out on a shaking breath as he slowly drew the smooth dome of his erection down the length of the infuriating barrier that was her thong. Throwing her head back, she closed her eyes to concentrate on the ache of pleasure. Hungry for more, she arced her hips in an attempt to catch more contact. With a sound of denial, Luca pulled back. Reaching down, he cupped her. The warmth of his hand, and the knowledge that those skilful fingers were so close to doing what she needed them to do, was a rocket to her senses. She thrashed her head about as he allowed her a couple of passes, and gasped noisily with excitement when he lifted her to dispose of her thong. Having done this, he spread her legs wide. She was completely exposed, completely at his mercy.

  ‘Please,’ she begged.

  ‘Do you need this?’ Luca enquired in a gentle, seemingly concerned tone.

  ‘You know I do,’ she gasped as he fisted his erection.

  He laughed softly as he ran the tip across her heated flesh, making her whimper from the extremes of pleasure. And he did this not once, but several times. The sensation was exquisite torture. She never wanted it to end, and, desperate for more, she lifted her hips, hoping to catch more of him, but he always moved away in time. She thrust her hips again, and this time almost caught him. She wouldn’t trust to luck next time. Capturing his buttocks in her hands, she bound his hips to hers, and, with a deep groan of surrender, Luca plunged deep.

  ‘Oh, yes...yes...’ This was what she wanted...this was what she needed. Working fast and hard, she moved with him, and moments later fell.

  ‘More?’ Luca murmured when she was quiet again.

  She laughed contentedly. It was the only answer he needed. Her body was still pulsing with pleasure when he plunged deep again. Hard and flexing, he was as hungry for this as she was. Reaching up, she invited herself into his arms. Lifting her, he held her securely as she wrapped her legs around his waist. On a joint breath of noisy approval, he thrust up and into her, hard and deep. This time it was an even wilder dance towards release. They were both fierce. She couldn’t get enough of him, and it seemed Luca felt the same. She had to have him...this!