Читать книгу Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Ruthless Demands - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

‘SO COULD I have a lift with you up to London?’ Jemima asked the nanny cheerfully. ‘I assure you that a lift is all I want, but my being in the car will make it easier for you to get to know Nicky and I can run through his routine with you as well.’

‘Er... I...’ Nonplussed, the nanny, who had introduced herself as Lisa, hovered on the doorstep and looked at the tall, broadly built bodyguard standing behind her for direction.

The bodyguard dug out a cell phone and punched in a number and Jemima got the obvious message: nothing could be done because no plan could deviate in the smallest way without Luciano Vitale’s permission and approval. She scolded herself for thinking that she was being clever when she had come up with the idea the night before. Yet she truly wasn’t trying to interfere with Luciano’s day with Nicky. She simply wanted to be more accessible if anything went wrong.

‘I just thought I could take the opportunity to do some shopping,’ she fibbed nervously as the bodyguard’s conversation in staccato Italian continued at length.

‘Mr Vitale makes all the arrangements,’ Lisa told her with an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t want to screw up my first day on the job. It would be handy, though, to know a little more about your son.’

‘Miss Maurice?’ The bodyguard handed the phone to the nanny.

Jemima watched the woman stiffen, straighten her shoulders and pale as she evidently received her instructions while answering yes and no several times. She then extended the phone to Jemima.

Realising that it was now her turn to receive her orders, Jemima laughed out loud, stunning her companions.

‘So glad you’ve found something to laugh about today,’ Luciano drawled, sharp and swift as a stiletto stabbing at her down the line.

‘Oh, please don’t take it like that,’ Jemima babbled in dismay. ‘I promise you that you won’t see or hear from me today. I just want to be in London...to...er...shop—’

‘I can hear the lie in your voice—’

Her blood ran cold in her veins.

‘You got a sixth sense or something?’

‘Or something. Tell me the truth or I will not consider the idea,’ he told her coldly.

‘I wanted to be within reach...you know, in case you needed me. That’s all.’

At his end of the line, Luciano gritted his perfect white teeth. Where the hell did she get the nerve to bug him like this? He expelled his breath in a hiss of impatience. ‘Why would I need you?’

‘Not you, him,’ Jemima stressed. ‘And dial back the tension, Luciano. Nicky can be very temperamental. He works best with calm, quiet and soothing—’

Luciano was incredulous. ‘Let me get this straight—you are telling me how to behave?’

‘But not in a rude way, in a helpful way,’ Jemima emphasised.

‘You are irritating me,’ Luciano growled soft and low.

‘Ditto.’ Jemima groaned out loud, having forgotten her audience. ‘Less of the growly stuff would be nice but not if you replace it with the rave-from-the-grave voice.’

The rave from the grave, Luciano mouthed in silent disbelief. She was actually telling him that he irritated her. How dared she? A thieving whore...but the mother of his son...

‘You can travel to London with them and accompany Niccolò back again at five today. Pass the phone back to Rico...’

Jemima did as she was bid, handing Nicky’s baby bag to the second bodyguard who had appeared before tucking her nephew under her arm to lock up the house.

‘What a fuss about nothing,’ she wanted to remark to the nanny as she climbed into the limousine and the two women together secured the baby into the very fancy car seat awaiting him, but caution silenced her. Luciano was an intractable tyrant supported in his moods and habits by his intimidated employees. Presumably standing up to Luciano meant instant dismissal. Jemima suspected she wouldn’t last five minutes working for him because she had too much a mind of her own, so it was probably fortunate that he hadn’t jumped on her nanny offer. At the same time, however, she was relieved he had agreed to let her catch a lift to London and travel back with Nicky at the end of the day. She had been a tiny bit afraid that Luciano wasn’t planning on letting Nicky return to her again and now that looming fear could be set aside for at least one more day. Having passed her cell-phone number to Lisa, she asked to be dropped at the entrance to a Tube station.

The attraction of browsing round shops where she could not afford to buy anything held little appeal for Jemima. In recent months she had grown accustomed to being stony broke, to questioning every single purchase and asking herself if she really needed the item. And although she would have adored some new clothes and the chance to replace cosmetics that had run out, she was happy to make those sacrifices to keep Nicky and give her parents peace of mind in their retirement. A desire to make the best of whatever life threw at her had always driven Jemima and she took the same approach to her day out, heading to the first of her free attractions—the British Museum—before enjoying a picnic lunch in Kensington Gardens and a walk round the Tate Modern. She was on the banks of the Thames when her phone rang and she snatched it out.

‘Nicky’s ill... Where are you?’ Luciano demanded thinly. ‘I’ll have you picked up.’

Her frantic questions elicited no adequate response beyond the assurance that the baby was not in danger. Luciano was much more intent on retrieving her as soon as possible so that she could comfort the little boy. Jemima was perspiring with stress and anxiety by the time a limousine lifted her at the agreed pick-up point and drove her across London to an exclusive block of apartments. There, flanked by two enormous bodyguards, she got into a glass lift to be swept up to the penthouse.

‘I thought you were going to stay within reach!’ Luciano roared at her as she came through the front door.

Jemima was accustomed to dealing with distraught and often angry parents whose child had become upset at school or had suffered injury and at one glance she recognised that Luciano fell into that category. He was a powerful man who controlled everything around him but Nicky’s illness had made him feel powerless and that anger was the fallout. She could hear Nicky’s distressed choking wails echoing through the apartment and was not in the mood to waste time sparring with his anxious father. ‘Where is he?’

‘The doctor’s with him,’ Luciano gritted, closing a managing hand to her spine to herd her in the right direction. He was the most alarmingly dominant man and, even worse, she thought ruefully, it seemed to come entirely naturally to him, as if an autocratic need to trample over the little people had been programmed into him at birth. ‘Not that he’s been much use!’

Lisa was pacing the floor with a wailing Nicky and looked as though she had been through the wars. Earlier that day she had looked immaculate. Now her long hair was falling down untidily and her shirt was spattered with food stains. An older bespectacled man, who could only be the doctor, overlooked the scene with an air of discomfiture.

‘What’s wrong with Nicky?’ Jemima asked worriedly.

The doctor studied her anxiously. ‘A touch of tonsillitis...nothing more—’

‘My son would not be making such a fuss over so little,’ Luciano began wrathfully.

‘Oh, yes, he would.’ Jemima threw Luciano a wryly apologetic glance. ‘He makes a real fuss when he’s sick. He’s had tonsillitis a couple of times already and I was up all night with him.’

With a yell, Nicky unglued his reddened eyes and, focusing joyously on Jemima, he gave a frantic lurch in Lisa’s hold. The other woman crossed the room in haste to settle him into Jemima’s arms. ‘It’s obvious he wants his mum.’

‘Perhaps you could explain to...er...Nicky’s father that this is not a serious condition. The baby has a mild fever and a sore throat and possibly some ear pain.’ Exhausted, Nicky moaned against Jemima’s shoulder, his solid little body heavy against her as he slumped.

‘Try to get him to drink some water to keep him hydrated,’ the doctor advised with a wary glance in Luciano’s smouldering direction. ‘Within a couple of days and with the medication he’ll soon be back to normal.’

‘Thank you,’ Jemima pronounced quietly as she sank down on a comfortable leather seat and accepted the baby bottle of water Lisa helpfully extended. She studied Nicky and glanced across the room at Luciano. So, she finally had first-hand evidence of whose genes had dealt Nicky the theatrics and the fireworks, she thought wryly, ignoring Nicky when he twisted away his mouth from the bottle. ‘Do you want your cup?’ she asked.

Nicky looked up at her, dark eyes cross and shimmering with tears.

Jemima dug the baby cup out of the bag and proceeded to pour some water into it while still cradling Nicky.

‘Seems that he is one little boy who knows what he wants,’ Lisa remarked.

‘You’re spot on.’ Jemima watched the baby moisten his lips and then try a tiny sip. Forced to swallow, he grimaced and sobbed again while she praised him and told him what a brave, wonderful boy he was.

Luciano watched the performance unfolding with blazing dark golden eyes, angry frustration assailing him. He knew when he was facing a fait accompli. Jemima handled Nicky beautifully, clearly knew him inside out and responded smoothly to his needs. He himself and the highly qualified nanny had failed utterly to provide the comfort his son had needed. He wondered if little boys were programmed to want mothers over father figures. He wondered tensely how his son would cope without a mother, particularly with her sudden disappearance. Bemused by that flood of concern and the sort of deep questions he normally suppressed, Luciano grated his teeth together in frustration and called someone to show out the doctor.

‘It is only a mild illness,’ Jemima remarked quietly. ‘Relax.’

‘How the hell am I supposed to relax when my son is suffering?’ Luciano lashed back at her in fierce attack.

‘Sometimes you can’t fix things and the normal childhood illnesses fall into that category,’ Jemima pointed out gently.

Well, he cared about Nicky; he was quite accidentally revealing that with his behaviour. Of course, he had to be aggressive even in that, but then he was an aggressive man. And intelligence warned her that Luciano Vitale would not voluntarily share anything with her that he considered to be private or personal. Obviously his feelings about his son would fall squarely into that territory and it was not for her to pry, she told herself doggedly as Nicky snuffled into an exhausted sleep on her lap.

Luciano strode to the door, raking an impatient hand through his blue-black glossy hair. A dark shadow of stubble outlined his sculpted mouth and strong jawline. He was obviously the sort of man who had to shave twice a day. He had loosened his racy red tie at the collar, unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt. He looked a little more human and a little less perfect than at their previous meeting and she censured her selfish sense of satisfaction that he was finding his son more of a challenge than he had expected. Such a feeling was mean and ungenerous, she reminded herself angrily. Nicky was Luciano’s flesh and blood and she should be pleased that he was so keen to get to know his child.

Lisa reappeared and hovered.

‘The nanny will put my son in his cot for a nap now,’ Luciano announced. ‘We have to talk.’

Talk? What about? A frown indented Jemima’s brow as she passed her nephew carefully over to the young woman and the door closed in their wake.

‘What do you want to discuss?’ she asked stiffly.

Luciano shot her a chilling appraisal. ‘Oh, please, don’t come over all naïve on me now. I prefer honesty. You’ve made it clear that you want to make the most profit you can from having brought my child into the world,’ he pointed out with unconcealed contempt. ‘But I simply want what makes my son happy and it is patently obvious that in the short-term at least Niccolò will not be happy if you suddenly vanish from his life.’

Jemima studied him, surprised he was willing to admit that possibility.

‘Although there is nothing I can like, respect or admire about you, Jemima...my son is attached to you,’ he conceded in a grim-mouthed tone of finality. ‘I do not want to damage him by immediately forcing you out of his life. He deserves more consideration from me. After all, he did not choose the unusual circumstances of his birth—I did.’

His ringing assurance that he did not like, respect or admire her cut Jemima surprisingly deep and yet she was wryly amused by her apparent vulnerability towards his low opinion of her morals. He thought she was Julie and while she faked being Julie she had to own her sister’s mistakes and pay the price of them too.

Luciano watched her porcelain-fair skin wash a guilty pink that simply accentuated the ice-blue eyes, which reminded him of very pale aquamarines he had once glimpsed in his mother’s jewellery box. Those eyes and that full, soft pillowy mouth were snares that any man would zero in on, he told himself, his attention widening its scope to encompass the full, buoyant swell of her breasts below the simple tee she wore. He wondered what colour her bra was and marvelled at the ludicrous thought. What was he? A randy schoolboy? He had access to many sexual choices and almost any one of those women would be classier, safer and more beautiful than Jemima Barber, he reminded himself impatiently. Even so, it was his son’s mother who was making him hard and taut and needy where it mattered, when he was all too often indifferent to female fawning and flirtation.

But then possibly what annoyed him most about Jemima was that he had yet to see any sign that she was making the smallest effort to sexually attract him. She did not appear to be wearing make-up and her plain denim skirt came to her knees while she sat with her pale slim legs neatly and modestly folded to one side. It was like a simulated virginal act, he reasoned in exasperation. Possibly she had already worked out that hooker heels and too much exposed female flesh were not his style.

Sex was no big deal, he thought impatiently. That was a truth he had embraced long ago. He didn’t make time for sex, though, and perhaps that explained his reaction to his son’s mother. Possibly any reasonably appealing woman would have given him the same response. But the nanny did nothing for his libido, he conceded, and neither did any of the very attractive female staff he employed. No, Jemima Barber had something special about her, something insidiously sexy he had yet to pin down and label, and it drew him like a very strong magnet. And he loathed it, loathed it like poison in his system, because she was everything he despised in a woman.

The silence smouldered like a simmering pot on a gas hob. Jemima could feel heat striking through her, spreading up from the warmth in her pelvis. He did that to her. He made her tummy fill with butterflies. He made an embarrassing hot, slick sensation pulse between her thighs. He made her nipples tighten and push against the barrier of her bra.

That reality mortified and shamed her and reminded her of her first crush as a teenager when her body had gone haywire with a physical longing she hadn’t understood and hadn’t really been ready to embrace. But this was different because those responses were now attacking her adult body. She found herself studying that gorgeous face of his even though she didn’t want to stare, didn’t want to notice the perfection of his sleek cheekbones, the classic jut of his nose or the strong line of the jaw cradling that superbly masculine mouth. And then she fell into the dark and dangerous enticement of his deep-set eyes that were tigerish gold in the light from the window and once she looked she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even function, she thought in bemused dismay.

The door opened and an older woman came in carrying a tray. Coffee was poured. Luciano took his black and without sugar. Jemima took hers milky and sweet, their differences as pronounced in coffee as in everything else.

Cradling his cup in one elegant, long-fingered hand, Luciano murmured, ‘I’ve decided that I want you to accompany us to Sicily as the nanny you offered to be...’

Shock made Jemima’s lower lip part from her upper and she breathed again and a little faster, her eyes widening at that bombshell of a suggestion.

‘It would ease the transition for my son but it would be on the strict understanding that you would begin stepping back from him while allowing others to step forward to take your place in his little world,’ Luciano spelt out coolly. ‘He must learn to do without you.’

Jemima tried and failed to swallow as he described the role. He had delivered the killing blow of truth by telling her what he ultimately expected and wanted from her. Sicily and the nanny job would be very temporary for her and would come at a high cost for a woman who loved the child she cared for. She lost colour, pain knotting inside her at the prospect of walking away from Nicky, but at the same time with every word Luciano Vitale spoke she saw that whether she liked it or not he was worthy of her respect as a father. He detested her yet he still recognised the strength of her bond with his son and he was keen to protect Nicky from getting hurt. How could she judge him badly for that? A more gradual process of parting Jemima from her nephew should work much better than a sudden break, she reasoned unhappily. Luciano was taking the sensible, cautious approach to the problem.

Her silence perturbed Luciano, who had expected instant eager agreement. Didn’t Jemima Barber worship money and the high life? Wasn’t she a fish out of water in her parents’ modest home? He had assumed that was why she had made the strange offer to take on the role of acting as her son’s nanny. After all, only that position would grant her entry into Luciano’s wealthy, exclusive and privileged world. She was also broke, in debt and had to be afraid of the police catching up with her, so a trip abroad should have all the appeal of an escape hatch.

‘Have you changed your mind about that offer?’ Luciano asked in surprise.

‘Well, it was an impulse of the moment offer,’ Jemima admitted ruefully. ‘I didn’t really think it through. It was provoked by the prospect of parting from Nicky—’

‘Sicily may make the process a little less traumatic,’ Luciano commented tongue-in-cheek, reckoning that a few little treats like shopping trips round the fashion houses would quickly improve her attitude. Of course, he knew she wanted more and he was prepared to give her more to oil the wheels of persuasion. ‘If you agree, I will naturally settle your debts here in the UK and compensate the men whose credit cards you stole so that they will drop the charges. That would remove the threat of arrest as well.’

In shock at that smoothly outlined proposition, Jemima snatched in a stark breath of astonishment and studied him with frowning eyes. ‘But it wouldn’t be right to let you pay those bills.’

Luciano raised a cynical brow. ‘Of course you will be happy for me to settle your debts,’ he countered forcefully. ‘That is the sort of woman you are. Why are you trying to pretend otherwise?’

At that direct and unsettling question, Jemima flushed and hurriedly dropped her eyes. Julie would never have argued against such a benefit. In that he was quite correct. Her twin had always happily taken money to settle her problems and fulfil her dreams and not once had she protested or done anything that would have worked against her own natural interests. So, if Jemima was still set on pretending to be Julie, she had to bite her lip and go with the flow. She tried to take a sensible overview of her situation. The debts Julie had acquired in Jemima’s name were a major source of worry to both her and her parents. To be free of that pressure would be wonderful, she acknowledged guiltily.

‘And quite naturally I don’t want my son’s mother dragged into court over debts or dishonesty,’ Luciano pointed out without hesitation.

But I’m not your son’s mother, she suddenly wanted to tell him, because the web of her deceit was getting thicker and harder to justify. And what would happen if she simply told him the truth now? Would he still take her with them to Sicily? Still offer her the chance to learn how to part gently from the baby she loved? Jemima thought not. She stole a glance at him from below her lashes. She had lied to him. If he found that out, he would be so angry he would snatch up his son and walk away. He wasn’t a forgiving or understanding or tolerant man. Furthermore the only thing she had to offer on his terms was that she was supposedly the mother of his son. Shorn of that borrowed status, she would have no standing whatsoever in his eyes.

‘Obviously not,’ Jemima conceded tightly before she could lose her nerve again. ‘I’ll come to Sicily with Nicky—’

‘Niccolò,’ Luciano corrected without hesitation.

‘He’ll always be Nicky to me,’ she fielded quietly, refusing to give ground.

Something bright flashed in his dark gaze, lighting his eyes gold like the dawn sky, and she stiffened, like a small animal suddenly faced with a predator.

‘Doing what I tell you to do would be a wise move now,’ Luciano spelt out softly, his intent gaze raking down over the fullness of her pink lips, the swell of her tantalising breasts and the slim legs on view. He had never lusted after a woman of her ilk before. What did that say about him? But lust was healthy and indifference was not, he reasoned fiercely, all too reluctant to banish the sexual energy infusing him when for the first time in much longer than he cared to recall he felt alive again.

Suddenly restless, Jemima uncoiled her legs and stood up. ‘You’re trying to intimidate me.’

The golden gaze grew ever more intense. ‘Am I?’

‘I’ll do everything that is reasonable but I won’t be intimidated and I won’t grovel,’ she framed tautly, extraordinarily aware of the darker, deeper note in his rich drawl and the warning flare of his brows.

‘You won’t?’ Luciano’s intonation was soft and slippery as silk brushing her skin as he stalked closer, all predator, all threat.

And she should have backed away, she knew that was what she should do, but a current of inexplicable excitement was quivering up through Jemima and working its own seduction. ‘I won’t,’ she confirmed shakily, her own voice dropping in volume and, to her annoyance, emerging breathily.

‘But the idea of you grovelling at my knees is appealing, piccolo mia,’ Luciano confided huskily, eyes golden and predatory as a raptor’s locked to her upturned face. ‘The image of you giving me pleasure while you’re doing it gives me a high...’

At first, Jemima just couldn’t credit that he had said that to her and then she told herself that he couldn’t possibly have meant that sexual innuendo. A surge of embarrassment and uncertainty caused a burst of colour to fly into her cheeks and she blinked, trying to close him out, trying to rescue her brain from the sudden erotic imagery he had filled it with. That wasn’t something that had ever happened to her before in a man’s presence. She didn’t imagine doing sexual things with men as a rule, but maybe if she had, a little voice whispered, Steven would not have been so stupefied by her infinitely bolder twin. Something about Luciano Vitale got to her on a primal level she had never experienced before.

‘Did you really just say what I thought you said?’ she mumbled unevenly.