by Penny Jordan
‘Remember why you are here,’ Alessandro warned Leonora as he stepped back from her. ‘And if you want to defend a member of my sex, think about your brother.’
* * *
The room they were in had gradually filled up with new arrivals, and Leonora became separated from Alessandro, who had been appropriated by a stunning-looking woman who had put her arm through his and given Leonora an openly false smile as she had claimed that she promised to take Alessandro over to talk to her husband. There hadn’t been any husband anywhere at hand five minutes later, when she had seen them standing close together, the brunette gazing up hungrily into Alessandro’s face.
Not that she cared, of course. In fact she was glad to be relieved of his company after the way he had spoken to her. And yet for some reason she could feel a lump of misery forming in her throat, even though she was doing her best to circulate and speak to people. A strangely persistent man had just penned her into a corner and kept on asking her when an official announcement was going to be made. In the end she had escaped by telling him that he would have to ask Alessandro himself.
A passing waiter offered her a fresh drink but she shook her head. She wasn’t used to eating so late, and she had gone beyond hunger now to the point where she actually felt slightly sick and dizzy from a mixture of unrequited hunger, misery and tiredness. A discreet glance at her watch told her that it was only just nine o’clock—another hour to go before they would be eating.
Her feet ached in the high heels, and she eased her foot out of one of them, sighing as it fell over. Unable to slip it back on while standing, she reached down to replace the shoe—and then realised to her horror that her movement had caused her zip to slide down. Straightening up, she hugged the now loose top of her dress to her body and tried at the same time to walk backwards towards the wall, wondering what on earth she was going to do. She had no idea where the nearest loo might be, and it was impossible for her to re-zip her dress discreetly. It would need two hands and a good deal of effort—and even then she would not be able to fasten it completely, as she already knew.
Standing frozen with apprehension, her arms folded beneath her breasts, she longed to simply magically disappear. Alessandro would be furious if she showed him up, and she wasn’t exactly keen herself on the thought of her dress falling off—especially as all she was wearing underneath it was a pair of nude-coloured briefs.
‘Cold?’
Falcon. Leonora gulped and shook her head, and then felt her heart sink even further as one of her shoulder straps fell down.
‘That was a very passionate defence you made of Sandro,’ Falcon commented with a smile.
‘I feel very passionately about him,’ Leonora told him. That much was true, after all. She didn’t have to say that the passion she felt was of the angry rather than the sensual variety.
‘He’s angry with me now. He said that I humiliated him.’ Leonora didn’t know why she had made the admission, except that there was something about Falcon’s quiet demeanour that invited confessions like a magnet.
‘He’s a very proud man.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure you aren’t cold?’
Once again Leonora shook her head. And then, deciding that Falcon might well be her only chance of escaping from the room without losing both her dignity and her dress, she admitted, ‘It’s my dress. The zip wasn’t fastened properly and now it’s come down. I daren’t move in case it comes down even more.’
‘Ah, I see. Well, in that case—since Alessandro isn’t here to do the chivalrous thing and rescue you, perhaps as I am his brother you will allow me to do so for you?’
Where normally she would have felt uncomfortable and embarrassed, instead she actually felt strangely relieved—and very safe. Just as though she and Alessandro actually were an item, and Falcon was a sort of extra brother.
‘If you could,’ she said gratefully. ‘Only I don’t know how you can help me without anyone seeing.’
‘Easy. I shall just do this,’ Falcon told her with another smile, and he reached out and pulled her firmly towards him, so that she was half at right angles to his body, with her shoulder tucked into his chest.
He screened her from the other guests and then reached behind her to ease up the zip with the kind of skill that told her Alessandro’s brother was perfectly familiar with the complexities of fastening zips on female clothes. He even managed the hook and eye for her. Leonora gave him a smile of relieved gratitude.
On the other side of the room Alessandro watched Leonora and his brother with mounting fury. He had told her expressly not to flirt with Falcon, and yet that was exactly what she was doing—looking up at him with that doe-eyed look, smiling at him, laughing with him—whilst Falcon stood far too close to her. Fury—and it was fury, not jealousy, Alessandro assured himself—shot through him, every bit as potent and dangerous as Mount Etna erupting. It spewed rage through him like hot ashes and lava, burning its caustic path inside his head. She was doing it deliberately—she had to be. Well, she’d soon learn that that no one, least of all her, played him for a fool.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I HOPE YOU enjoyed flirting with my brother, because it has cost your brother his job.’
They were on their way in for the buffet dinner for the house guests, but Alessandro’s words had Leonora stopping in her tracks.
‘I wasn’t flirting with anyone.’
‘Liar,’ he contradicted her flatly. ‘I saw you with my own eyes. And don’t think I don’t know why you went expressly against my orders. You just had to try to make your point, didn’t you? But you’ll never compete with me and win, Leonora. I’m not that kind of man.’
‘No. It wasn’t like that at all,’ she protested immediately. ‘The trouble with you is that you’re so obsessed with proving that being a second son doesn’t make you second rate that you think that everyone’s out to challenge you, even when they aren’t.’
Her accusation infuriated Alessandro. He grabbed hold of her arm and almost dragged her into a small empty ante-room, closing the door and then telling her, ‘Falcon might flirt with you and allow you to think that he wants you, but I can tell you now that he doesn’t. The only reason he would show any interest in you would be out of some misguided belief that he needs to protect me. But I never make the same mistake twice. Once I might have been foolish enough to allow a woman to convince me that she wanted me, when all she really wanted was to use me as a stepping stone to get to Falcon, and everything that marrying him would have given her. But the speed with which she transferred her affections from me to Falcon taught me a lesson I haven’t forgotten.’
And what a painful lesson that would have been for him, Leonora recognised, given his pride and the cruelty with which his father reinforced his second-son status.
‘Do you still love her?’
The words were out before she could stop herself, and she wasn’t surprised when she saw a look of grim disbelief that she should ask such a personal question darkening his eyes.
‘I never loved her,’ he told her flatly. ‘But I swore that I’d never allow myself to be publicly humiliated again by a woman transferring her affections from me to someone else—especially not to Falcon, however well-meaning his intentions. Which is why—’
‘Why you blackmailed me into coming here with you.’
‘Which is why your behaviour has just cost your brother his job,’ Alessandro repeated.
‘But I wasn’t flirting with Falcon. You can ask him, if you like.’
‘I don’t need to ask him. I have eyes, and I could see what was going on.’
‘No, you couldn’t. Because what was “going on”, as you call it, was that my zip had come down because I hadn’t been able to fasten it properly. Falcon was zipping it up again for me.’
There was a ring of trut
h in her voice that forced Alessandro to listen.
‘If that’s true then why didn’t you ask me to fasten it for you before we left our room?’
Good question. Leonora weighed up the consequences of telling the truth or trying to bluff her way out with a fabrication. She’d never been a good liar, so she took a deep breath and told him honestly, ‘I didn’t want you to think I was trying to...’
‘To what?’ Alessandro pressed impatiently.
Leonora tilted her chin and told him defensively, ‘I didn’t want you thinking that I was trying to...well, come on to you.’
Her statement was too ridiculous not to be the truth, Alessandro decided.
‘And you have the gall to accuse me of being paranoid?’ he said in disbelief, reaching for the door to open it as he added, ‘Very well, I’ll accept your explanation—on this occasion.’
‘That’s big of you,’ Leonora muttered to herself as he held the door open for her.
She didn’t realise that Alessandro had heard her until he agreed coldly, ‘Yes, it is. And there’d better not be any more similar errors of judgement on your part, because I certainly shan’t be as lenient a second time.’
Much as she was tempted to challenge his arrogant attitude, Leonora decided against it. Not whilst he was holding over her the power to hurt her brother.
* * *
The evening was drawing to a close, and as Leonora fought to suppress her yawns Alessandro leaned towards her and said quietly, ‘You’re tired. You may as well go up to the room. I’ll follow you later.’
His apparent consideration for her now, contrasted with his attitude towards her earlier, caught her off guard, and touched her emotions in a way she didn’t want. Quickly she nodded her head, accepting his discreet hint that he was offering her the chance to get ready for bed in privacy.
As she stood up, Falcon, who had been engaged in conversation with someone seated further down the table, pushed his own chair back and came over to say, ‘You are going to bed? Then I shall say goodnight.’
Leonora began to smile politely, but to her shock Falcon placed his hands on her arms and kissed her, first on one cheek and then the other.
He was Sicilian, of course. And there had been nothing in the least bit sensual or sexual about his embrace. He did, after all, think that she and Alessandro were a couple. Still, she felt rather self-conscious, turning away from him as soon as he had released her, only to find that Alessandro had also stood up and was now standing in front of her. As she made to sidestep him he stopped her, taking hold of her hand and drawing her towards him, then bending his head.
By the time she realised that he was going to kiss her it was too late to do anything to try to stop him. His mouth was on hers, his arm around her, her own lips softening into mute obedience at the command of his. A swift glance upwards revealed the glint of his eyes between the dark frame of his lashes. Mesmerised and helpless, she felt the aftershock of her own response to him, swiftly pulling back from him, her face on fire.
It was a relief to get away and follow the footman who had been summoned to escort her back to the tower suite.
As they left the salon behind she acknowledged that, to her own surprise, she had actually enjoyed some parts of the evening. She had met some fascinating people, and had learned a great deal about the lives of Alessandro and his brothers as young boys. Everyone had mentioned how sad it had been for them to lose their mother, and there had even been discreet and not so discreet references to their father’s second marriage to his mistress, and his preference for the son he had with her over his sons by his first wife. She had learned too how unpopular Antonio had been and how many people thought that his death at the wheel of his sports car had removed a very unpleasant character from their lives. Alessandro himself had been spoken of with both admiration and respect for all that he had achieved.
When they reached the door to the tower suite the footman made a small half-bow to her, indicating that he was about to depart, and Leonora thanked him before opening the door and letting herself into the suite.
Her feet ached from her high-heeled shoes, and it was a relief to take them off. She’d have loved to soak in a long bath, but she wasn’t sure how much time she would have before Alessandro arrived. Luckily she was able to unfasten the hook and eye on her dress and then the zip. After stepping out of it in the dressing room she hung it up and padded barefoot, wearing only her briefs, through the bedroom in which the bed had been turned down, averting her gaze from its intimacy and hurrying into the bathroom.
* * *
Alessandro frowned as he watched Falcon, who was seated several feet away from him, deep in conversation with one of the guests. The feeling of acute and immediate male possessiveness he had experienced when Falcon had kissed Leonora goodnight hadn’t entirely subsided. Not that Leonora really meant anything to him, of course. No? Then why had he felt it so necessary to reinforce the fact that she was his? No reason. It had simply been a gut reaction, that was all. Impatiently he pushed back his chair, bidding those around him goodnight.
* * *
Removing her underwear, Leonora stepped into the glass-sided wet-room-style shower and turned on the water. The sensation of the powerful spray against her skin felt wonderful, and the heat of the water released the scent of the shower gel she’d found waiting for her in a basket of bathroom necessities.
She was so tired she’d be asleep the minute her head touched the pillow, Leonora decided thankfully, and she certainly had no fears that Alessandro would try to take advantage of the situation, despite the way he had kissed her downstairs in the salon. That had just been for show.
She reached out and turned off the water. She was about to step out of the shower when she saw it.
It was the most enormous spider she had ever seen, and it was crouching right in front of her exit from the shower. The only way she could get past it would be to step over it. A sick shudder ripped through her. She was terrified of spiders, always had been. Her brothers, of course, had been delighted to discover that their sister could be terrorised by creatures they were quite happy to pick up, and had teased her dreadfully with them until the day she had fainted when Leo had tried to put one down the back of her T-shirt.
What would it do? Would it come into the shower?
She started to shake, the blood leaving her face. She dared not take her gaze off it in case it moved. It was staring back at her. She was sure it was. Her stomach churned. She was a quivering mass of total terror. She knew that her fear was irrational, but knowing it didn’t help. Nothing had ever helped.
The spider lifted one leg—and then another. A petrified scream bubbled in her throat, but her throat muscles were too stiff with terror to let it escape. Her whole body was now rigid, her heart thundering into her chest wall so hard and so fast that it was making her feel dizzy. But she mustn’t faint, because then it might run all over her. A deep shudder broke her rigidity.
* * *
Alessandro opened the bedroom door, removing his dinner jacket as he closed it. All the lights were on but there was no sign of Leonora. He had expected that she would be in bed by now. He unfastened his bow tie and opened the top buttons of his dress shirt. Formal occasions and formal clothes were not his favourite things. Removing the cufflinks from his cuffs, he walked towards the dressing room. The door was open, and there was no sign of Leonora inside it, which meant that she must be in the bathroom.
He walked towards the half-open door, rapping on it warningly before calling out, ‘Leonora?’
* * *
Alessandro. Relief bubbled in Leonora’s throat, and her gaze immediately went to the door—only to return swiftly to the spider. It had moved. It was coming into the shower.
Alessandro heard her scream and thrust open the bathroom door. She was huddled in a corner of the shower, naked and white
-faced, one hand against her breasts, the other covering her sex, her eyes dark with terror.
‘What is it?’ Alessandro demanded, perplexed.
Leonora removed her hand from her breasts, every bit as softly full as he had imagined, with peach tip-tilted nipples, hard now, presumably from the cold, since he could see goosebumps on her arms. Between the fingers of her other splayed hand he could see the soft feathery curls of the hair covering her sex, and her modesty was somehow more erotic and tantalising than if she had been standing there naked. Her body had a lushness he hadn’t expected, and his own was responding to it.
‘It’s a spider.’ Her voice was thin with fear, and her body was shuddering as she looked at him, and then looked down again at the limestone floor, her breath catching in a terrified gasp as she cowered against the back of the shower. ‘It’s moving. Oh, please...no...’
Alessandro had never thought of himself as a potential hero—he was too cynical—but something about her obvious terror had him reacting as swiftly as any would-be James Bond. He reached for a towel, which he dropped over the spider, and then speedily lifted Leonora bodily from the shower, to hold her tightly as she shuddered convulsively in his arms in between sobs.
Grabbing another larger towel, he carried her into the bedroom and then put her down, wrapping the towel round her before heading back to the bathroom. He was just about to remove the towel from the trapped spider when he heard Leonora calling out shakily.
‘Please don’t kill it. It isn’t its fault that I’m terrified of it.’
A woman who hated spiders and yet who wouldn’t allow one to be despatched? She really was a one of a kind, he reflected as he scooped up the spider and very gently tipped it from his hand out of the bathroom window, and then closed the window.
Wrapped in her towel, but still shivering slightly with reaction, Leonora looked anxiously at Alessandro when he came back into the bedroom.