Eve rested her forehead against the limousine window and shut her eyes, delicately probing the painful possibility that she was mistaking Raphael di Lazaro’s undoubted good-looks and dazzling sex appeal for something more meaningful. A year or so ago, before she’d landed the job on the Glitterati fashion desk, Lou had done an article on women who fell in love with prisoners on Death Row. Over a bottle or two of cheap red in a wine bar in Oxford, Eve and Lou had discussed this phenomenon, snorting in contemptuous pity at the idea that anyone could let their heart rule their head in such a spectacularly foolish way. Was she similarly deluded?
But she hadn’t imagined the sheer strength that had held her and guided her as she’d walked down the catwalk just as surely as if his arms had been around her. Or the haunted need that lay just behind the expressionless public mask. Or the bone-deep, instinctive courage that would make him step out and grab her from the path of an oncoming car …
No! She banged her head softly but emphatically against the glass, as if to knock the sense back into it once and for all. The facts spoke for themselves. His name was on that paper, right above where it said drugs. He had followed her after the press conference and tried to buy her off.
Rational, intellectual Eve pressed her fingers to her temples and took a steadying breath. No matter what her heart was saying, her head knew perfectly well that he was still the most likely suspect. She had come to find answers, and she was still determined to do that. She just hadn’t anticipated how painful it was going to be.
Sighing, she dragged her attention back to Sienna, who was thoughtfully examining a glossy acrylic nail. ‘Will it involve taking my clothes off?’ she was saying, still on her mobile—though whether it was to the agent or the boyfriend, Eve couldn’t be sure. The glamorous model looked sensational, in spray-on white trousers and a diaphanous gold chiffon top that fell in soft, semi-transparent folds from a gold beaded choker at the neck. Only Eve would know that it had taken half an hour to construct her perfect cleavage with tape, and that much of the luxuriant black hair was, in fact, nylon extensions.
Nothing is as it seems on the surface, Eve thought bitterly.
They were close enough now to be able to see celebrities emerging from cars like gilded butterflies from their chrysalises. Everyone was faithfully sticking to the theme, and from the women’s barely-there dresses to the men’s over-the-top tailoring and salon tans the red carpet was transformed into a sea of gold.
Eve’s own wardrobe was a little light on glitz, so Sienna had offered to lend her something from her own seemingly endless supply of clothes. It had been a kind offer but, coming as it had from a six-foot supermodel with a chest as flat as an ironing board, not remotely helpful. In the end Eve had been forced to resort to her faithful old jeans and jewelled Indian flip-flops, teamed with the only vaguely metallic-coloured thing she owned—a little vintage lace-trimmed camisole top from the 1930s, its cream silk darkened with age to a deep biscuity gold. In spite of the heat she’d fully intended to throw a jacket over the top, but Sienna had absolutely forbidden it, frogmarching her from the room without listening to her cries of protest.
‘Of course you don’t look like a hooker! This, in case you hadn’t noticed, is the look of this summer. Honestly, Eve, I thought you were supposed to be a fashion journalist!’
Good point. She’d allowed herself to get so preoccupied with Raphael Di Lazaro she’d almost forgotten.
The car glided to a halt and Sienna gracefully unfolded her long limbs and stepped out. Waiting nervously for the paparazzi storm that heralded Sienna’s arrival to subside before she stepped out of the safety of the limousine herself, Eve tried to arrange her face into a confident smile, but found her efforts considerably hampered by the sticky gold lipgloss Sienna had persuaded her to wear.
Drifts of sand specially imported from Egypt edged the red carpet and rose in mini-dunes at the entrance to the store, which was flanked with two enormous statues of the sphinx. But even this display of extravagant kitsch didn’t prepare Eve for the spectacle that awaited them inside.
‘What do you think?’ yelled Sienna above the din, gesturing around them. ‘Didn’t I tell you the Lazaro parties are always wild?’
‘It’s unreal!’ said Eve, looking round. Against a backdrop of gilded palm trees and faux-pyramids, A-list celebrities were being sprayed with Golden by scantily clad ‘Egyptian’ slave-girls, in Cleopatra-style wigs and scarlet lipstick. The air was heavy with the perfume, which smelt like a mixture of fruit salad and ozone.
In the centre of the floor a vast three-tiered fountain, topped by Tutankhamen’s head, gushed champagne. A youth in a loincloth appeared beside them, proffering a plate of canapés. Forbidden by Sienna from wearing her glasses, Eve peered shortsightedly at them.
‘What on earth are they?’
‘South Sea tiger prawns in a vodka marinade, finished with eighteen-carat-gold leaf,’ said the youth. ‘Gold leaf?’ echoed Eve faintly.
Sienna giggled. ‘No, thanks. I’m catching a plane this evening. Don’t want to set off the metal detectors. Come and get a drink,’ she shouted to Eve, disappearing into the seething mass of exotically dressed celebrities.
It was impossible to squeeze through the crowd around the champagne fountain. Eve found herself alone on the fringes, craning above a hundred glossy, seriously high-maintenance heads to see where Sienna had gone.
Suddenly an arm snaked round her waist from behind. She whirled round to look into the laughing bloodshot eyes of the man from the retrospective. The man Raphael had been so keen to steal her away from.
‘We meet again, angel. I see you standing here all alone, and I wonder how my brother could be so careless as to leave you unattended in the midst of such.’ he looked around with a wolfish grin ‘… debauchery. You are like a beautiful rose blooming in a vase of artificial flowers.’ His eyes moved lazily up and down her body for a moment, while a slow smile spread across his face.
‘You’re Raphael’s brother?’
‘Si. Half-brother. Though twice as charming. Luca di Lazaro.’
She took the hand he extended towards her. ‘Eve Middlemiss.’
‘Beautiful,’ he murmured, looking very pleased about something and holding onto her hand for far longer than was necessary. ‘And where is Raphael?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Eve managed a sort of grim smile, in spite of the lipgloss. ‘But I’d like to find him.’
‘Don’t rush off, bella. Let me get you a drink. Is very hot in here, no? We need a passionfruit daiquiri!’
‘I don’t really …’
‘Don’t worry, bambino,’ he soothed, laying a hot hand on her bare shoulder. ‘It has hardly any alcohol. You’ll love it. Trust me.’
In his father’s private office on the top floor, Raphael held out the remote control, flicking from one CCTV image to another. Antonio had invested in the very best technology available to ensure that the Lazaro security system was state-of-the-art. Cameras were placed in strategic positions on each of the store’s three floors, and also covered a large area of the street outside, and the information they generated was closely monitored by a highly trained team.
Raphael had considered briefing them on the necessity of keeping close tabs on Luca, but decided against it. The fewer people who knew about the investigation into his brother’s drug dealing the better. This was one job he could not entrust to anyone else, and if Luca made one suspicious move, or got too close to anyone, Raphael would be watching.
His eyes were gritty and his whole body ached with fatigue. After the ordeal of the press conference he had planned to return to his apartment for a few hours of much-needed sleep, but the encounter with Eve Middlemiss had put paid to that. How much did she know?
His first thought when he’d seen her at the press conference was that she was a scheming, unscrupulous journalist who’d got the little-girl-lost act down to award-winning standard. Now he wasn’t so sure. Her naïvety … her total bloody cluelessness … w
as way too realistic to be put on. And yet somehow she knew enough to blow an international drugs investigation sky-high.
He sighed and passed his hands briefly over his face. The situation with Luca was volatile enough without having an airhead blonde journalist set on writing some half-witted exposé charging around like a bull in a china shop.
No, that was all wrong. Not a bull … Something far more dangerously delicate than that. A fawn, perhaps. She was like a fawn careering through a minefield. The memory of her wide, frightened eyes as she’d stepped in front of the taxi came back to him, followed swiftly by the feel of the soft swell of her breast beneath her T-shirt as he’d pulled her back.
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair as a flicker of desire licked though him, and turned his attention abruptly back to the CCTV monitor. It didn’t really matter what metaphor you chose. The fact remained that Eve Middlemiss was a problem. A complication he could well do without.
His mouth set in a grim line of contempt as he studied the screen. The scene it showed was like a nightmarish cross between a third-rate porn movie and a big-budget blockbuster. A very high-profile footballer’s wife and an Oscar-tipped Hollywood starlet were cavorting in the champagne fountain as a crowd of onlookers clapped and cheered. Raphael’s gaze skimmed dismissively over them, coming to rest instead on the knot of people around the fountain.
Only the tension in his broad shoulders betrayed the strength of his ruthlessly controlled emotion as he located Luca.
Raphael didn’t flinch, but the light from the screen showed the sudden shuttered stillness of his face as he watched his brother pick a strand of hair from the slickly glossed lips of Eve Middlemiss. She was looking up at Luca trustingly, her lips pouting and slightly parted, and once he had moved the stray hair, with much careful concern, she tentatively pressed them together. It was a movement that was curiously childlike, but at the same time piercingly erotic.
Gripping the remote control, Raphael saw his knuckles show bone-white through the suntanned skin of his hands. Dimly, as if from a great distance, he was aware of the pounding blood in his ears. He was a man who lived on his instincts, whose survival in the volatile Columbian underworld of drugs gangs and hired killers had depended on his ability to make split-second decisions. Every nerve and fibre of his being was telling him to go down and drag Eve Middlemiss away from Luca.
Now.
But of course it was out of the question. He pulled a hand across his stinging eyes, concentrating on thinking rationally. He’d tried to warn her. She wouldn’t listen. She was, contrary to appearances, a grown-up, for goodness’ sake. If she chose to play Russian Roulette with the devil all he could do was try to anticipate when the gun was going to go off.
He checked his watch. The party would last maybe two hours—that was about the maximum length of a celebrity’s attention span. Leaning back in his chair, he resigned himself to his vigil.
All sense of time was suspended as he switched into professional mode and operated on automatic pilot. With ice-cold detachment he followed Eve and Luca’s progress though the party, watching every gesture, tracking every drink, noting every movement. Throughout he remained motionless, unblinking and completely impassive.
Until the moment Luca put his jacket around Eve’s bare shoulders and drew her, swaying slightly, towards the exit.
And then, letting out a stream of Italian expletives, Raphael was across the room and out of the door in seconds.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS rush hour.
Sitting in the stream of slow-moving traffic, Raphael swore quietly under his breath. His hunch was that Luca would be taking Eve to the exclusive nightclub where the Lazaro party would continue into the small hours—one of Luca’s favourite haunts. Raphael wondered how many girls had taken the first steps on the road to addiction hell in its opulent darkness.
He glanced at his watch. The traffic ahead was barely moving, and it had been just over ten minutes since he’d watched them leave.
Taking an abrupt right turn into a narrow sidestreet marked Senso Vietato—No Entry—he accelerated through the dustbins and empty cardboard boxes.
The backstreets ran parallel to the wide open space of a piazza, and Raphael weighed up the possibility of cutting right across it. On one hand it would get him to where he needed to be in half the time, on the other he was much more likely to attract the attention of the polizia and be pulled over. And what would happen to Eve then?
She would just be one more in the countless number of girls whose lives Luca had wrecked. Only this time Raphael would alert his contacts in the drug squad and make sure that they were onto him. Once they had caught Luca in the act, as it were, they would have the evidence they needed to make an arrest, and, since Luca was certainly not the kind of honourable person who would keep the names of his associates to himself, he would bring the whole morally bankrupt lot of them down with him. It was an appealing thought.
One more girl. Surely it was a price worth paying? He should just pick up his mobile and dial the contact number he’d been given. They could have a team of undercover officers at the nightclub in no time.
In his head it was all so obvious.
But somewhere deep inside him something was telling him that Eve Middlemiss wasn’t just one more girl. Raphael Di Lazaro was far too accustomed to burying his emotions to consider the possibility that it might be his heart.
As she walked arm-in-arm with Luca along the edge of the piazza, Eve peered into the little gold rope-handled carrier she had been given as they left the party and gave a little skip of delight. It wasn’t just the absence of her glasses that was making the whole business of focusing the teeniest bit difficult, but she could have sworn that the writing on the little box which nestled beside the miniature bottle of Golden said ‘Tiffany’.
‘Ooh, Luca—look!’ She beamed, extracting it from layers of tissue. ‘Grown-up jewellery!’
The next moment there was a screech of tyres as a dark blue sports car appeared from one of the narrow side-streets and skidded to a halt inches away from them. Slamming a fist down on the bonnet, Luca hurled a stream of abuse at the driver.
‘Idiota! Are you blind? Can you not read? It’s a pedestrian zone, you—’
He stopped and gave a snarl of fury as the car door opened and Raphael got out. His face was deathly pale but his eyes blazed.
‘Don’t you ever give up, Luca?’
The malice in Luca’s voice made Eve shudder. ‘Lighten up, for once in your miserable life, Raphael. When are you going to see that you can’t just treat women like inconvenient items of luggage, and abandon them whenever it suits you? This little beauty was all alone so I looked after her, kept her amused. You should be grateful!’
‘Looked after her? Benedetta Maria.’ Raphael shook his head helplessly and turned to Eve, addressing her with icy calm. ‘Can you not find a way to amuse yourself that doesn’t involve a near death experience?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Get in the car. I’m taking you home.’
Eve’s heart, having skipped a beat somewhere, was now crashing about at twice its normal speed. Shocked into speechlessness, she shook her head in disbelief.
‘I … You …’ she spluttered. ‘You are unbelievable! All of a sudden it’s my fault for being in the way when you were driving like a complete madman in a pedestrian zone!’
Fists clenched into balls of frustration, Raphael cursed quietly and swung away while he regained his composure. When he turned back to address her his tone was grave, and without her glasses she completely missed the small, rueful smile that accompanied his words.
‘Actually, it was your fault—yes.’
Eve saw red. ‘Of course! No—you’re absolutely right! Naturally it was up to me to make sure I was not in the way of your testosterone-fuelled display of macho prowess. My fault entirely. But then I’m just a silly, inexperienced journalist on a low-rent publication,’ she yelled, sarcastically echoing his words of
that morning. ‘It’s completely over my little blonde head to walk safely along the street. I’m not fit—’
She didn’t get any further. Without warning he reached out and slipped a hand beneath the silky fall of hair at the back of her neck and drew her mouth to his. The gentle pressure of his lips sent a surge of hot, liquid need crashing through her, driving out every logical thought and rational argument and replacing it with one thought, one desire.
Instinctively her body curved into his, and Luca’s jacket slipped from her shoulders and fell to the ground. Raphael’s tongue teased the sensitive softness of her mouth, and a small whimper of longing escaped her as his lips moved from hers to kiss the secret place beneath her ear.
She was lost, drowning in fathomless depths of ecstasy from which she had no wish ever to be rescued. Behind her closed eyelids the darkness swirled and formed itself into a thousand erotic images as the potent cocktail of four passionfruit daiquiris, one shot of adrenaline and a kick of one-hundred-percent pure longing went straight to her head. And her knees. And her.
His breath was warm against her neck as he murmured, ‘Sorry. I’m sorry—OK? Come with me. Now.’
She heard him open the car door and her eyelids fluttered open, the daylight intruding starkly on her own dark world of fantasy. Raphael wasn’t staring seductively into her eyes, but looking over her shoulder to where Luca still stood, watching them as he spoke quietly into his mobile phone.
‘Come on. Into the car.’
Dumbly she slid into the low passenger seat and watched him stride grimly round to the other side of the car. The tenderness of a few moments before had evaporated, replaced by cold efficiency. A shiver ran through her as she realised the kiss had been nothing more than a tactic to get her into the car.
As he slipped sinuously into the driver’s seat she swallowed nervously and shrank away from him, stunned by the change in him. God, what was she doing? How had she let herself be manipulated so easily? Her hand crept towards the door, but stopped before it reached the handle.
Latin Lovers: Italian Playboys Page 38