Читать книгу Mistress Bought and Paid For - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 5

CRISTIANO ANDREOTTI, the software billionaire, stood on the topmost deck of the megayacht Lestara. Built to his exacting specifications, and already regarded as the most beautiful craft ever built, Lestara was a floating palace, complete with twin helipads, a cinema, a freshwater swimming pool and a sleek landing craft tucked in her stern. Yet Cristiano was infuriatingly conscious of the faintest tinge of disappointment with his latest acquisition.

His guests, however, were talking about the yacht in hushed tones of reverence.

‘Unbelievable…’

‘The most staggering level of luxury I’ve ever seen…’

‘You have a private hospital and you’re never ill…wow, is all I can say…’

‘The gym and the basketball court are to die for…’

‘The glass viewing area in the hull blew me away…’

‘Sixty crew members to sail her and wait on you…you must feel like a king…’

His lean, darkly handsome profile detached, his brilliant dark eyes bleak, Cristiano continued to look out to sea. A king? Not so as he had noticed. He wondered if he had brought company on board to say for him what he no longer said or felt himself. Increasingly, only aggressive takeovers or extreme sports gave Cristiano a genuine buzz. Born into fabulous wealth, he had discovered that few experiences, or indeed possessions, lived up to their initial promise.

‘Have you heard the gossip?’ the socialite Jodie Morgan was asking in her piercing English upper-class voice when he emerged from his reverie. ‘About Lia Powell?’ she continued.

As Cristiano tensed at the unexpected sound of that name, female giggles broke out.

‘There are rumours all around London. How do you think she’ll take to life in prison?’

‘Who are you talking about?’ his friend, Philip Hazlett, enquired.

‘The Powell girl…that model who took off with Mort Stevens. Her career dive-bombed when he was done for drugs and she disappeared off the map,’ Jodie reminded her fiancé cheerfully. ‘A couple of months ago she tried to make a comeback by doing good works—’

‘Yes. I believe she organised a fashion show for some children’s charity called Happy Holidays and made a mess of it,’ Philip interposed in a suggestive tone of finality.

Impervious to the hint that the subject matter might not be welcome, Jodie continued to tell the story. ‘Lia persuaded her fellow models to donate their services free to the show, and the goss is she robbed the poor little kiddies blind by pocketing the proceeds!’

A spark of raw splintering gold flared in Cristiano’s brooding, dark gaze. He was grimly amused by Philip’s attempt to silence Jodie. Evidently the socialite was not aware that Lia Powell and Cristiano had briefly been an item. For a nanosecond time leapt back eighteen months, to Cristiano’s first glimpse of Lia Powell during a Paris show. Slender and sinuous as a willow wand, she had stalked down the catwalk like a warrior princess, her pale blonde hair rippling back from her hauntingly lovely face like silvery streamers of moonlight. Huge eyes the mesmeric blue of lapis lazuli had blanked him when he was introduced. Her smile had been a masterpiece of indifference. Accustomed to instant awe and fawning attention, Cristiano had been intrigued, his lust heightened by that rare sense of being challenged. He had been eager to see just how well she played a game he had assumed was naïvely aimed at increasing his interest.

But, unusually, Cristiano had underestimated the brazen avarice and ambition of his scheming target. Although he had been unaware of it, he had not been the only wealthy male in Lia’s sights, and she had been chasing a better offer than a casual affair. After a handful of dates he had invited her to his country house for the weekend. There Lia had come over all virginal and refused to share his suite. At dawn the following day, however, she had eloped with one of his guests: a dissolute rock star more than twice her age, famous for his very expensive habit of marrying his youthful arm-candy. As he chirpily introduced Lia to the press as his new fiancée, Mort Stevens must have seemed the more rewarding prospect in financial terms. Unhappily for Lia, though, cruel fate had intervened to ensure that all her plotting and planning had come to nothing in the end.

With an almost imperceptible signal, Cristiano inclined his imperious dark head and his watchful PA hurried over to receive his instructions. While his guests were served with lunch on the entertainment deck Cristiano was in his office, being briefed with the facts he needed. A discreet phone call to a national newspaper editor revealed, in the time-honoured phrase beloved of the tabloids, that Lia was ‘helping the police with their enquiries’. But soon everyone would know the real story. Who could have sympathy for a woman accused of defrauding underprivileged children?

A slow, hard-edged smile of satisfaction slashed Cristiano’s bold, masculine mouth. He was conscious of an energy surge of pure badness. All boredom had fled. It was said that revenge was a dish best eaten cold, but Cristiano was more into hot and spicy flavours. While she’d played for time eighteen months ago, Lia Powell had faked prudish innocence to stay out of his bed. She had then, with breathtaking impudence, cheated on him beneath his own roof. She was the only woman who had ever said no to Cristiano and walked out on him. He knew that the secret of her lingering attraction in his mind could only be that basic.

When it came to sex, Cristiano knew himself inside out. He was much more clued up than his late father, whose life had been destroyed by his hopeless addiction to a woman with as much heart as a carcass on a butcher’s block. He had even fewer illusions about Lia Powell. She was a worthless little scrubber with no morals. But she was still a bloody gorgeous one, he mused with ruthless cool, and for the price of her freedom she could be his. He had no doubt of that fact. Any charity would prefer recompense and a handsome donation over an indiscreet and costly court case. He could buy Lia Powell’s pardon. He could buy her. He had never paid for sex before. Did he want her on such tacky terms? He discovered that the very thought of having leggy Lia tangled within his sheets and eager to please excited him more than anything had in a very long time. She would be on call whenever he so desired, to provide easy and uncomplicated sexual release.

He was willing to acknowledge that where women were concerned he had a low boredom threshold. In fact he was notorious for the brevity of his relationships. But this would be something different—something new and fresh. A contractual agreement would be the best blueprint for such an arrangement. His lawyers would relish that novel challenge almost as much as he would revel in having Lia act out his every tacky fantasy…

The young bespectacled solicitor gave Lydia a troubled look. ‘I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.’

Lydia dropped her head, weariness engulfing her. ‘I know…’

‘You must protect yourself,’ he warned her equally wearily.

‘Not if that means my mother taking the blame,’ Lydia countered in a tight, driven voice. ‘This is nothing to do with her and I won’t have her involved.’

‘But as co-signatory on the cheques she is involved,’ the solicitor pointed out flatly. ‘Naturally the police want to speak to her as well.’

Lydia said nothing. During the preceding long and nerve-racking interview with two officers she had been asked repeatedly where her mother, Virginia Carlton, was. Nobody had believed her when she’d said she didn’t know, and she had tried not to care. After all, even if she had known she would have protected the older woman by keeping her whereabouts a secret. She was determined not to let her mother pay the price for her daughter’s mistakes.

Now, one of the fraud officers reappeared. He told her that, although she was to be released on bail while more enquiries were made, she would have to return to the station in four days’ time for further questioning. Even as her heart sank at that assurance, Lydia was informed that she would have to leave the interview room and wait in a cell for the necessary paperwork to be prepared. Her tummy flipped in dismay. Her solicitor protested, but to no avail.

The cell door was mercifully closed on her before a violent fit of shaking overtook her tall, slender frame. Sinking down on the hard sleeping platform, Lydia wrapped trembling arms round herself in an effort to get a grip. There was no point in giving way to the fear and the panic pulling at her. Matters were only going to get worse, she reminded herself heavily. The wheels of justice were grinding into motion to prosecute and punish her, and if she was found guilty she would serve a prison sentence. Eventually the sight of a cell would be very familiar to her. The money from the Happy Holidays account was gone, and she could neither repay it nor borrow it. The conviction that she could only blame herself for that state of affairs hit her hard.

Her thin shoulders slumped, guilt racking her. It was a familiar feeling. Things always went horribly wrong, and it seemed that it was her fault…

When Lydia had been ten years old she had survived a boating accident in which her father and her kid brother had drowned. Her mother, Virginia, had been distraught. ‘This is your fault!’ she had screamed furiously at her daughter. ‘Who was it who begged and begged to go on that stupid boat trip? You killed them. You killed the two of them!’

And, even though other people had hushed the hysterical older woman, Lydia had known that her grieving parent was only speaking the unpalatable truth. Then, when her father’s business had gone bankrupt, and their comfortable standard of living had vanished overnight, Lydia had known that she was to blame for that as well. It had been a huge relief when she’d discovered just a few years later that she had the earning power to give that luxury lifestyle back to her mother. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one Lydia had made a small fortune as a model.

But then, Lydia acknowledged wretchedly, she had become selfish—stupidly, wickedly selfish. And shortsighted. She’d hated modelling, and a bad experience and a broken heart had persuaded her to leave the fashion world behind and train as a garden designer. Everything that since had gone wrong could be traced back to that single foolish and fanciful decision…

Still in fear of the press cameras that had greeted her arrival at the police station, Lydia walked stiffly out to the reception area. Thankfully the only person to show the slightest interest in her appearance was the small curvaceous brunette seated there. Her cousin Gwenna stood up, frowning when she saw the exhaustion etched on Lydia’s face. Yet the younger woman still looked so incredibly beautiful that even Gwenna found it hard not to stare. The pure lines of Lydia’s delicate bone structure, allied to her dazzling blue eyes and the mane of naturally pale blonde hair, took most people’s breath away.

‘Gwenna?’ Lydia was dismayed that the other woman had subjected herself to the embarrassment of coming to the police station on her behalf. ‘You shouldn’t have come—’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Gwenna scolded her in Welsh as she marched her much taller cousin out into the night and on to the car park, with her head held high and her chin at a determined angle, defying the camera flashes. ‘You’re family—and where else should I be? I’m here to take you home—’

Lydia was too touched by Gwenna’s appearance to be able to find the right words in Welsh, a language that she had only recently rediscovered. She swallowed hard on the thickness in her throat and climbed into Gwenna’s ancient hatchback. As a young child she had often stayed in Gwenna’s Welsh-speaking home while her own parents were abroad. Eighteen months back, when Lydia’s life had been in awful turmoil, Gwenna had phoned to invite her to use the family farm as a bolthole. The generous warmth of that offer had meant a great deal to Lydia at a time when her friends had abandoned her.

‘I really appreciate you doing this, but I think you should forget that you know me for a while—’

‘I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Gwenna interposed, in probably much the same no-nonsense tone that she employed with the teenagers she taught. In her early thirties, she had short dark hair that shone as though it had been polished.

When Lydia unlocked the door of the tiny terraced house where she now lived, Gwenna headed straight for the kitchen. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea while you nip upstairs and pack a bag.’

Lydia stiffened. ‘No, I’m not coming home with you. This is a small community and you have to live and work here. You mustn’t get caught up in my problems.’

Gwenna turned. ‘Lydia—’

‘No…’ Fierce conviction made Lydia’s soft voice unusually firm. ‘I mean it. Think of your father. He’s barely over the loss of your mother. Let’s not upset him with this as well.’

The brunette’s look of disconcertion told Lydia that she had stumbled on the one argument that would work—for Gwenna was protective of her elderly parent.

‘But thanks for caring,’ Lydia tacked on gently.

Sudden anger brightened Gwenna’s troubled gaze. ‘But it’s not a matter of caring. You didn’t take that money and we all know who did!’

Her colour fluctuating at that assertion, Lydia breathed, ‘Maybe you think you know—’

‘Come off it! You’re so straight you can’t tell a lie without crossing your fingers!’ her cousin told her impatiently. ‘Do you expect me to keep quiet while you take the rap for a woman who couldn’t care less about you?’

Losing colour at that blunt statement, Lydia switched on the kettle. Gwenna had never been able to understand the nature of Lydia’s relationship with her mother. The brunette’s family had been blessed with a quiet and secure lifestyle, while Virginia had survived tragedy and a succession of thoroughly unreliable men that would have broken a lesser woman. ‘My mother has had a very tough life—’

‘Look, she was telling you that when you were five years old, making you fetch and carry like a little slave while she moaned about the horrors of motherhood. And let’s not overlook the fact that between them your mother and your stepfather have managed to spend every penny you ever earned!’

There was reproach in Lydia’s troubled gaze. ‘You can’t blame them because the nightclub failed and I lost everything last year. I was naïve about the amount of money I’d made as a model. I thought it would last a lifetime—’

‘It would have done if you had only been keeping yourself, and not Virginia and Dennis with their huge house and flash cars. I can’t believe that you had the slightest personal interest in opening a nightclub either.’ Her companion sighed.

Lydia said nothing. When she had stopped modelling she had effectively dispossessed her stepfather of his job managing her career and her money. Agreeing to provide the capital for a nightclub had seemed the least she could do. Sadly, the enterprise had crashed. But Lydia had come to terms with the loss of her financial security. Although she was only twenty-two years old, she was well used to picking herself up after a disappointment.

Busily engaged in making tea, Gwenna was wishing that she could get her hands on Lydia’s greedy mother and thieving stepfather. Given the chance she would soon tell them what she thought of them! The couple had turned Lydia into the family cash cow, and had enjoyed the high life on the lucrative proceeds of her modelling career. Although Virginia had never worked herself, she had always been able to spend like there was no tomorrow.

‘You have to deal with this,’ Gwenna told her cousin impatiently. ‘Virginia stole the money you raised from the fashion show and spent it—’

Lydia shook her head in tired disagreement. ‘Dennis had left her with a pile of debts. She knew I couldn’t help and she panicked.’

‘Stop making excuses for her. She forged your signature on the cheques that emptied the Happy Holidays account. She did everything she could to make you look like the guilty party, and now she’s done a runner! Don’t let her do this to you,’ Gwenna pleaded in frustration. ‘A criminal conviction will wreck your life. How many people will employ an ex-con?’

When Gwenna had gone home, Lydia retrieved the letter that she’d seen lying on her doormat and read it with a growing hollow feeling inside. It was a brief note from a couple who had accepted her quote to design their garden. They would have been her first proper clients since she had completed her college course. But they had dropped this letter through her letterbox earlier today to say that they had changed their minds. She suspected that what had changed their minds had been news of her visit to the local police station. No doubt her face would be all over the tabloids tomorrow morning.

Later, in bed, she tossed and turned. The evening before she’d had to go out to buy food. An odd little pool of silence had seemed to enclose her as she’d packed her groceries at the supermarket. When she’d looked up, a couple of women had been treating her to a contemptuous appraisal. Evidently rumours of the stolen money had already spread to the highly efficient local grapevine. It had been a disturbing experience.

On the edge of an uneasy doze, Lydia was yanked rudely back to full wakefulness by the sound of a crash and glass breaking. Switching on the bedside light, she got out of bed. Had someone smashed a bottle outside on the street? She went downstairs and found the window in her small cosy sitting room broken. She hovered in the doorway, wondering how such a thing could have happened, and then she saw something lying on the floor in the middle of the shattered glass. It was a stone with a piece of paper wrapped round it. Frowning she spread it out to read.

YOU THIEVING BITCH GO BACK TO WHERE YOU BELONG!

The brutal capitals were written in red felt-tip. Her heart started to hammer like crazy and she felt physically sick. She made herself fetch a brush and dustpan to clean up the glass. She propped an old cupboard door from the coal shed over the gaping hole and slowly climbed back up the stairs. But if sleep had been elusive before, it was now impossible, and she lay still and quiet and barely breathing, flinching at every sound she heard.

Having finally fallen asleep around seven the next morning, she was still in bed when the doorbell went at ten. She assumed that it was the postman and, knowing that he would not wait long, rose in haste, pulling on her cotton wrap and racing downstairs to answer the door.

As her stunned gaze took in the very tall black-haired male outside on the street, she was gripped by total disbelief and pinned to the spot in complete stillness. Cristiano Andreotti. Even though she thought he could only be a figment of her imagination, the compelling effect of his exotic dark charisma and hard-edged masculinity still knocked her for six. Her heart started pounding and her soft pink mouth opened on a soundless ooh.

His magnificent bone structure was accentuated by the smooth olive planes of his high cheekbones. Although he shaved twice daily, faint blue-black shading still emphasised his strong jaw and beautifully modelled mouth. But her mind refused to move on from recognition to acceptance. Because Cristiano Andreotti did not belong on the doorstep of a terraced house in the back street of a nondescript Welsh market town. His natural milieu was much more exclusive, and always redolent of the privilege of the very rich.

Cristiano studied her with unflinching intensity. He had never seen her without make-up before. He saw the changes in her, picked up on every flaw with the eagerness of a man who had dimly expected and possibly even hoped to be disappointed in her. She had lost weight. She was pale, and her tiredness was patent. Her mane of fair hair fell in a tangle round her slight shoulders, no longer glossy and styled into smooth layers of silk by a professional hand. In the midst of cataloguing those differences with the precision of a male to whom no detail was too small, he met eyes as blue as sapphires. Just as suddenly he realised that she was, if anything, more breathtakingly beautiful than ever. Only this time around she was as nature had made her, with glorious eyes, skin like clotted cream and full, pouting mouth. Desire ripped through his big powerful frame with the dangerous force of a storm tide.

‘May I come in?’ he enquired lazily, his rich, resonant drawl wrapping round her rigid spinal cord like a silk caress. The habit of command and high expectation was so engrained in every syllable that it did not even occur to her to deny him.