Challenge

by Sophie Weston

  `Happened?' Sue allowed the question to convey all her amused suspicion.

  But Jessica was not amused. It brought alive too vividly her own suspicions of the night before. Yes, Leandro had been there very conveniently, hadn't he? And he had not offered any explanation for his presence in the corridor, either. Jessica knew well enough that he had one of the master suites on the higher deck. There was no reason for him to penetrate to the level where she and Sue were staying.

  `Hey, Jess, don't look like that! I told you, I don't blame you. He's a nice guy, and it's time you had a fling.'

  Jessica put away her dark suspicions. There was nothing she could do about them, and he had given his word that it wouldn't happen again, hadn't he?

  So she snorted and said with a return to her usual astringency, 'You ought to offer Leandro a deal—you do his public relations for him, he plies you with champagne at four in the afternoon.'

  Sue grinned at the reference to their conversation of the day before.

  `Well, I haven't had any yet,' she pointed out, though the look she gave Jessica was searching.

  Jessica waved a hand at the bell push. 'Then summon Enrico and demand a whole new life experience,' she said.

  `Champagne for breakfast?' Sue's voice was awed.

  She had it, too. Admittedly it was mixed with freshly squeezed orange juice and flanked by hot sweet rolls, but Sue's expression was as bemused as if she had floated home at dawn to drink champagne in romantic bliss with the love of her life.

  `I prefer egg and bacon, myself,' said Jessica, teasing her.

  `Then why don't you have it?' asked Sue, lathering homemade plum jam on to a roll with enthusiasm.

  `Because Enrico doesn't like bringing full breakfasts into the cabins. If I want to make a pig of myself I'm expected to go and do it formally at the table,' Jessica said candidly.

  `So why. . .?' Sue stopped and put down her jammy handful. 'Leandro?' she asked with understanding. 'You don't want to have breakfast with Leandro.'

  `Or any other meal if I can get out of it,' agreed Jessica.

  Sue resumed eating. At length she said abruptly, 'How did you get that bruise? You didn't really have a fight, did you?'

  `With the Body Beautiful?' Jessica hoped she sounded suitably disdainful. There was no reason for it, but she had the strongest urge to keep the exact details, and above all her unwilling suspicions, about last night to herself. 'Yes, of course.' She clasped her hands to her breast dramatically. 'He tried to seduce me and, when I resisted, struck me to the ground in his rage.'

  `Oh, right,' said Sue placidly, clearly relieved. 'And then went home leaving you unseduced?'

  'I have no idea where he went,' said Jessica loftily. Sue laughed. 'Probably drowned himself, in the best tradition.'

  Jessica sniffed. 'No such luck. He swims like a fish.'

  'Yes, I suppose he would.' Sue contemplated the thought of their host's nephew for a few pleasurable seconds. 'Do you suppose there's anything he doesn't do superbly well?' she wondered, her voice just a little wistful.

  'Yes,' snapped Jessica. 'Work.'

  She was able to see the truth of her assertion within a few hours. She was returning from a light lunch on deck when she saw the launch approach. Leandro was standing behind the spray shield. He waved to her.

  Reluctantly, Jessica went to the rail. It was odd, she thought, impatient with herself, the effect he had on her—as if she was compelled to obey his slightest whim, even when it was unvoiced.

  She was wearing her most disagreeable face when he came up to her. Leandro duly took note of the fact.

  'You're looking very sour,' he remarked in his most caressing tone. 'What have I done now?'

  'Done?' Jessica gave him her most limpid smile. 'You? I didn't know you believed in doing things, Leandro.'

  He gave a soft laugh. 'You know, when you are angry your eyes go bright green,' he said irrelevantly.

  She shrugged, annoyed. It was perfectly true, she knew.

  'Angry with me?'

  She hunched a shoulder, turning away from him to look across the water to the little sheltered harbour. The sun turned the sea into a glimmering cluster of light. Beyond, the little town, with its ochre and rose paint and wooded embracing hills, looked unreal.

  'Why?' he asked quietly, his hand just touching her bare arm.

  She stood very still, like a mesmerised animal.

  'I don't know.' It was not much more than a breath. 'Because you make me-I can't explain.'

  `What do I make you do?' For once he was not playing the heavy romantic. He did not seem amused, either. He might almost have been serious.

  Not looking at him, Jessica said in a rush, `Do things.' She drummed her fists on the rail. 'Do things I don't want to do.'

  `Jessica. . .' He turned her round into his arms. She was stiff, still angry, but she went.

  He held her against him for a long moment. His skin was warm from the sun; she could feel his heart beating under her cheek. He said her name again, and she looked at him.

  `What things you don't want to do?' he murmured, a smile in his voice. 'This?'

  And kissed her. Jessica knew he was going to kiss her and did nothing to resist. She even reached up to him, her hands sliding round his neck as his head dipped and her eyes unfocused.

  It was a surprisingly ungentle kiss. His hands were like steel bars on her shoulder blades and his teeth grazed the soft inner skin of her lip. He kissed her until she was breathless and then went on kissing her until she struggled away from him, gasping.

  She held herself away from him, one hand braced against his chest, which was rising and falling deeply. Presumably, thought Jessica as sanity returned, he was as badly in need of air as she was herself.

  She said wryly, 'Are you into suffocation, Leandro?' His eyes danced. 'It has its compensations.'

  She stepped back, one hand at her throat in a pantomime of relief. can't say I see any.'

  `You will,' he said, crinkling his eyes at her.

  She smoothed her hair. 'You think?'

  'I'd put money on it,' he said, with infuriating assurance.

  She looked away from him. He was too attractive, damn him, and he knew it.

  `I doubt it,' she said in her coolest tone. She surveyed him, now taking in that he was dressed relatively formally, with a blazer thrown over a crisp open-necked shirt, and impeccably creased dark trousers. 'Have you been to town?'

  For a moment his eyes blanked, then he said, 'You saw me in the launch. You know I have been ashore.'

  `Yes, but where. Portofino? Or the big city?'

  He seemed to hesitate, then he said, 'I have been taking the car for a run. I felt like some speed.'

  The opportunity to tease him in return for once was irresistible. 'Company on board a bit slow for you?' Jessica asked innocently.

  His eyes gleamed. 'Not at all,' he said, and whirled her back into his arms and off her balance in one lightning movement.

  `Let me go!' snapped Jessica, thoroughly annoyed.

  But Leandro was enjoying himself. Her feet flailed. She caught a toe against the side of the boat and gave a squeak of pain and annoyance, but he ignored it.

  At last Leandro lifted his head and laughed down at her. He was still holding her so that her toes were just off the ground. She tossed her hair back and glared at him.

  `Oaf!' she snapped.

  He set her down with exaggerated care. She shook her shoulders, smoothing her cotton skirt with fingers that she tried not to notice were shaking.

  `Not at all.' He helped her straighten her skirt. Jessica could have hit him. 'I am simply reluctant to let a challenge go unanswered.'

  `I'll bear that in mind,' she told him with feeling. 'No more challenges.'

  The golden eyes laughed down at her. 'That,' he told her solemnly, 'would be a pity.'

  It was unthinkable that this man could have hit her in the dark last night, surely? The little chilled question in

  the back of her mind
surfaced again unbidden. Jessica shook her head, unaware that her eyes darkened unhappily.

  `What's wrong?' asked Leandro, suddenly sober. She gave him a swift, not very convincing smile. `I'm not wild about being grabbed and swung in the

  air,' she said with a palpable effort.

  `I'll grab you and throw you to the floor next time, then,' he promised lightly, but his eyes were searching. `There is something more than that, though. Tell me.'

  He must know, surely. Still. . .

  Soberly, Jessica said, 'Last night.'

  At once he was tense, still and tense like a fighter poised for combat. But his voice was silky. 'What about last night?'

  `Why were you there? Just at the moment when. .

  `When you had your accident,' he interrupted smoothly. 'But I wasn't. I came along and found you out cold. I don't know how long you had been lying there.'

  And Jessica, remembering the hands which had broken her fall, had to accept that either her memory was at fault or he was not going to tell her the truth. She looked at him, searching his eyes for a clue, but there was nothing there.

  She had a feeling, in her bones, that he was lying. She did not know why. It hurt, too, and she could not account for that, either.

  She turned away. 'I must get back to work,' she said in a colourless voice.

  `Wait.' He did not touch her but, as usual, she obeyed him, she thought wryly. 'We have not yet had our talk.'

  `I have no time,' she said, not meeting his eyes. 'There's a lot to do.'

  `Leave it till this evening when it is cooler.' His voice was an invitation in itself. 'Come and sunbathe for an hour and talk to me. We need some time together, I think.'

  Jessica, who could think of very little that she needed less, gave a strangled laugh.

  `That's not what I'm paid for.'

  `Don't be prim. My uncle won't care.'

  care,' she said obstinately, and backed away from

  him.

  `Don't look so scared!' Leandro was amused. promise not to jump on you again.' He threw his hands up in the air comically in mock surrender. 'Look, I give in. I only want to talk.'

  `No,' said Jessica almost violently. It was addressed as much to herself as to him. will not!'

  She almost fled from him, down the companionway and back to her cabin where Sue, typing furiously, looked up in some surprise.

  `There you are! I thought you'd got lost again. Prince Giorgio telephoned.'

  `Oh, blast!' Jessica swung herself on to the desk and pounded her fists on her knee. 'I've been trying to get hold of him for days. Bother, bother, bother. Why did he have to call the one time I was away from the phone?'

  `Well, it won't matter much,' Sue comforted her. 'He's coming aboard.'

  `Really?' Jessica was astounded. The Prince had told her that he would not be returning to the yacht for several weeks, that she had the free run of it in his absence. `Are you sure?'

  `Positive. He says there's some trouble.'

  Jessica swung her legs thoughtfully. 'Trouble? What sort of trouble? Difficulties about planning permission?'

  Sue shook her head. 'Nothing to do with the project. He said it was personal.' She hesitated. `He didn't sound too pleased.'

  `Personal?'

  For a moment Jessica's overactive conscience made her wonder whether the Prince disapproved of her sun-

  bathing with his nephew as she had done yesterday. Then she caught herself. That was nonsensical. As Leandro said, his uncle would not care, even if he knew. And there was no one to tell him. She frowned.

  Sue said, 'He said something about it being a family problem. I wondered—that is, I rather got the impression that—well, to be truthful, that he was annoyed.'

  `Leandro,' said Jessica slowly. 'The adored nephew has dropped in the popularity ratings.'

  Sue bent over her keyboard. 'That's what it sounded like,' she agreed.

  `Now why do you suppose that is?' Jessica mused. `Because he's lazing around doing nothing? Prince Giorgio must be used to that. Because he's flirting with the opposition? Maybe Prince Giorgio isn't keen on him inviting Spinoletti on board.'

  `Or maybe because he's flirting with the architect?' murmured Sue.

  Jessica nearly fell off her corner of the desk in outrage. Sue grinned at her.

  `You're ridiculous,' Jessica said crossly, and took herself off to work in dignified—if slightly sulky—silence.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PRINCE GIORGIO arrived before dinner. Jessica vaguely heard the commotion of his arrival and, when she went out into the corridor, saw a mountain of matching baggage being wheeled along. She was slightly surprised. Although the Prince was always dapper, she had not expected him to travel with such a volume of luggage.

  When she arrived on deck for pre-dinner drinks, however, she saw she had been mistaken.

  `May I introduce Miss Shelburne, Ida?' the Prince said to a tall lady. 'Miss Shelburne, my sister, Signora Volpi.'

  Jessica murmured something, holding out her hand. For a moment, to her intense surprise, she thought it might be ignored, then Ida Volpi lifted a heavily beringed hand and just touched the ends of her fingers.

  `You are working for my brother?' asked Signora Volpi in strongly accented English.

  Jessica agreed that she was.

  `You are lucky to be here on his boat,' was the next comment.

  It might of course have been meant kindly and lost something in the Signora's evidently imperfect command of English. Jessica did not think so. She wondered whether the Signora was rude to employees on principle, or whether she particularly disliked foreign females.

  `Young foreign females,' said Sue later. 'She's got a chip on her shoulder about being over fifty, apparently. And about being the poor relation.'

  Jessica gave a little shiver. She knew all too clearly what it was like to be a poor relation and she pitied Sig-

  nora Volpi sincerely if that was the case. She did not tell Sue, however. That was part of her life so buried in the past that nobody knew about it. It was even fading from her mother's memory, or so she hoped.

  So she said, 'She doesn't look poor. Maybe it depends on your benchmark, though. I suppose in relation to her brother she is hard up.'

  She did not think any more about the matter. For one thing it was none of her business, for another she really was working flat out now. She had had an idea to solve the acute drainage problems of one end of the site and was furiously bent on calculation as a result.

  She even managed to put Leandro out of her mind for long stretches at a time.

  He, however, sought her out eventually. Sue had gone to Portofino in the launch the next afternoon, leaving Jessica with slide rule and calculator, happily absorbed. The door of the cabin opened without her noticing.

  `Impressive,' said an amused voice.

  Jessica jumped violently, displacing several files and a sketch that had been balanced on top of them. He picked them up courteously.

  `I didn't mean to startle you out of your skin,' he said. `You do throw yourself into your work, don't you?'

  Jessica, remembering their last encounter and her all too pliant response.., thought it prudent to retire behind a chair.

  `That's what I'm paid for,' she reminded him coolly.

  A look of annoyance crossed the handsome face. 'I wish you'd stop talking like that. I don't give a damn what you're paid for.'

  `I'd noticed,' she agreed—and then added, perhaps unwisely, 'I think your mother might not agree with you.'

  Leandro's face darkened further. 'My mother,' he said precisely, 'is a fool and a snob. I avoid her whenever possible. When not, I ignore most of what she says.'

  Jessica was startled. There was real feeling in the cold voice. She felt embarrassed. She did not want to know about Leandro Volpi's feelings; it made him all too human. It made him seem like herself, or Sue. As long as he remained a glamorous, remote figure she could just—resist him. If he came any closer, it might no longer be possible.<
br />
  So she said hastily, 'Your mother was quite right to remind me that I'm here as an employee. The prevailing holiday atmosphere can be very distracting.'

  Leandro showed his teeth. 'I have never managed to distract you,' he complained.

  Prudently Jessica did not answer that, though he waited expectantly.

  When she stayed resolutely silent he laughed. 'Coward,' he remarked. 'I suppose you won't come ashore with me either?'

  `Certainly not,' said Jessica with more haste than was quite dignified.

  Leandro shook his head sorrowfully, 'Not even when my uncle approves? Even orders it?'

  Jessica's eyes narrowed. 'What are you talking about?'

  `My uncle Giorgio,' said Leandro airily, 'thought it would be a good idea if I took you back to the site. He does not have the time himself. He was,' he added mischievously, 'grateful to me for offering.'

  Jessica strove with herself. 'How good of you,' she said at last.

  `Yes, I thought that,' he agreed, pleased with himself. `Unfortunately, today is not convenient.'

  `I thought my uncle was paying you to suit his convenience, not your own?' murmured Leandro.

  Jessica could have hit him. She pressed her lips together to keep back a sharp retort, while Leandro watched her in not unsympathetic amusement.

  At last he said, 'Come on, Jessica. You want to see the site again, you told him so. I heard you tell Sandra so,

  myself. And here's the ideal opportunity. I'll see you on deck in ten minutes.'

  When he had gone, Jessica walked over to the wall and, with great precision, banged her fist against it. It served to relieve her feelings, but it also made her feel very childish. Why did he have this effect on her? Normally she was so calm, so in control of herself and her surroundings. Why did Leandro Volpi have the power to reduce her to inarticulate fury—and then make her do exactly what he had already decided she should do?

  There was no point in seething, however. He thought it very funny, but all it did for Jessica was to make her lose her sense of proportion.

  So she went and climbed into jeans and a workmanlike shirt, pulling on stout sensible shoes for scrambling over uneven ground, and went sedately up to join him.