by Lynne Graham
Vitale frowned and stared enquiringly at her. ‘Yes, but—’
‘Then I could say that I was cataloguing them or researching them for you,’ Jazz announced with satisfaction. ‘I was only six months off completing a BA in History of Art when Mum’s life fell apart and I had to drop out. I may not have attained my degree but I have done placements in museums and galleries, so I do have good working experience.’
‘If what you’re telling me is true, why are you working in a shop and as a cleaner?’
‘Because without that degree certificate, I can’t work in my field. I’ll finish my studies once life has settled down again,’ she said with wry acceptance.
Vitale struggled to imagine the added stress of studying at degree level in spite of her dyslexia and all its attendant difficulties and a grudging respect flared in him because she had fought her disability and refused to allow it to hold her back. ‘Why did you drop out?’
‘Mum’s second husband, Jeff, died suddenly and she was inconsolable.’ Jazz grimaced. ‘That was long before the debt collectors began calling and we found out about the loans Jeff had taken out and forged her name on. I took time out from university but things went downhill very quickly from that point and I couldn’t leave Mum alone. We were officially homeless and living in a boarding house when she was diagnosed with cancer and that was when my aunt asked us to move in with her. It’s been a rough couple of years.’
Vitale made no comment, backing away from the personal aspects of the information she was giving him, deeming them not his business, not his concern. He needed to concentrate on the end game alone and that was preparing her for the night of the ball.
‘How soon can you move in?’ he prompted impatiently.
Jazz stiffened at that blunt question. ‘This week sometime?’ she suggested.
‘I’ll send a car to collect you tomorrow at nine and pack for a long stay. We don’t have time to waste,’ Vitale pronounced as she slid out of the seat and straightened, the pert swell of her small breasts prominent in a tee shirt that was a little too tight, the skirt clinging to her slim thighs and the curve of her bottom, the fabric shiny with age. Her ankles looked ridiculously narrow and delicate above those clodhopper sandals with their towering heels. The pulse at his groin that nagged at his usually well-disciplined body went crazy.
‘Tomorrow’s a little soon, surely?’ Jazz queried in dismay.
Vitale compressed his lips, exasperated by his physical reaction to her. ‘We have a great deal to accomplish.’
‘Am I really that unpresentable?’ Jazz heard herself ask sharply.
‘Cinderella shall go to the ball,’ Vitale retorted with diplomatic conviction, ducking an answer that was obvious to him even if it was not to her. ‘When I put my mind to anything, I make it work.’
In something of a daze, Jazz refused the offer of a car to take her home and muttered the fiction that she had some shopping to do. In truth she only ever shopped at the supermarket, not having the money to spare for treats. But she knew she needed time to get her head clear and work out what she was going to say before she went home again, and that was how she ended up sitting in a park in the spring sunshine, feeling much as though she had had a run-in with a truck that had squashed her flat.
‘She’s as flat as an ironing board, not to mention the hideous rag-doll hair but, worst of all, she’s a child, Angel...’
Vitale’s well-bred voice filtered down through the years to sound afresh inside her head. Angel spoke Greek and Vitale spoke Italian, so the brothers had always communicated in English. Angel had been teasing Vitale about her crush and of course Jazz had been so innocent at fourteen that it had not even occurred to her that the boys had noticed her infatuation, and that unwelcome discovery as much as Vitale’s withering description of her lack of attractiveness had savaged Jazz. She had known she wasn’t much to look at, but knowing and having it said out loud by the object of her misplaced affections had cut her deep. Furthermore, being deemed to be still a child, even though in hindsight she now agreed with that conviction, had hurt even more at the time and she had hated him for it. She still remembered the dreadful moment when the boys had appeared out of the summerhouse and had seen her standing there, white as a sheet on the path, realising that they had been overheard.
Angel had grimaced but Vitale had looked genuinely appalled. At eighteen, Vitale hadn’t had the ability to hide his feelings that he did as an adult, and at that moment Vitale had recognised how upset she was and had deeply regretted his words, his troubled dark golden eyes telegraphing that truth. Not that he would have admitted it or said anything, though, or even apologised, she conceded wryly, because royalty did not admit fault or indeed do anything that lowered the dignified cool front of polished perfection.
“Cinderella shall go to the ball,” he had said as if he were conferring some enormous honour on her. As if she cared about his stupid fancy ball, or his even more stupid bet! But she did care about her mother, she reminded herself ruefully, and if Vitale was willing to help her family, she was willing to eat dirt, strain every sinew to please and play Cinderella...even if the process did sting her pride and humiliate her and there would be no glass slipper waiting for her!
CHAPTER THREE
‘I’M ONLY WORRIED because you had such a thing for him when you were young.’ Peggy Starling rested anxious green eyes on her daughter’s pink cheeks. ‘Living in the same house with him now, working for him.’
‘He’s a prince, Mum,’ Jazz pointed out, wishing her colour didn’t change so revealingly, wishing she could honestly swear that she now found Vitale totally unattractive. ‘I’m not an idiot.’
‘But you were never really aware of him being a royal at Chimneys because Mr Russell wanted him treated like any other boy while he was staying there and his title was never used,’ her mother reasoned uncomfortably. ‘I just don’t want you getting hurt again.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Peggy, stop fussing!’ Clodagh interrupted impatiently, a small woman in her late thirties with the trademark family red hair cut short. ‘Jazz is a grown woman now and she’s been offered a decent job and a nice place to live for a couple of months. Don’t spoil it for her!’
Jazz gave her aunt a grateful glance. ‘The extra money will come in useful and I’ll visit regularly,’ she promised.
Her possessions in a bag, Jazz hugged her mother and her aunt and took her leave, walking downstairs, because the lift was always broken, and out to the shabby street where a completely out-of-place long black shiny limousine awaited her. Amusement filtered through her nerves when she saw that the muscular driver was out patrolling round the car, keen to protect his pride and joy from a hovering cluster of jeering kids.
Vitale strode out of his office when he heard the slam of the front door of the town house because somewhere in the back of his mind he couldn’t quite credit that he was doing what he was doing and that Jazz would actually turn up. More fool him, he thought sardonically, reckoning that the financial help he was offering would be more than sufficient as a bait on the hook of her commitment.
He scanned her slim silhouette in jeans and a sweater, wondering if he ought to be planning to take before and after photos for some silly scrapbook while acknowledging that her hair, her skin, her eyes, her truly perfect little face required no improvement whatsoever. His attention fell in surprise to the bulging carrier bag she carried.
‘I told you to pack for a long stay,’ he reminded her with a frown. ‘I meant bring everything you require to be comfortable.’
Jazz shrugged. ‘This is everything I own,’ she said tightly.
‘It can’t be,’ Vitale pronounced in disbelief, accustomed to women who travelled with suitcases that ran into double figures.
‘Being homeless strips you of your possessions pretty efficiently,’ Jazz told him drily. ‘I only kept one snow globe, my first one...’
And a faint shard of memory pierced Vitale’s brain. He recalled her dragging h
im and Angel into her bedroom to show off her snow globe collection when they must all have been very young. She had had three of those ugly plastic domes and the first one had had an evil little Santa Claus figure inside it. He and Angel had surveyed the girlie display, unimpressed. ‘They’re beautiful,’ Vitale had finally squeezed out, trying to be kind under the onslaught of her expectant green eyes, and knowing that a lie was necessary because she was tiny, and he still remembered the huge smile she had given him, which had assured him that he had said the right thing.
‘The Santa one?’ he queried.
Disconcerted, Jazz stared back at him in astonishment. ‘You remember that?’
‘It stayed with me. I’ve never seen a snow globe since,’ Vitale told her truthfully, relieved to be off the difficult subject of her having been homeless at one stage, while censuring himself for not having registered the practical consequences of such an upsetting experience.
‘So, when do the lessons start?’ Jazz prompted.
‘Come into my office. The housekeeper will show you to your room later.’
Jazz straightened her slender spine and tried hard not to stare at Vitale, which was an enormous challenge when he looked so striking in an exquisitely tailored dark grey suit that outlined his lean, powerful physique to perfection, a white shirt and dark silk tie crisp at his brown throat. So, he’s gorgeous, get over it, she railed inwardly at herself until the full onslaught of spectacular dark golden eyes heavily fringed by black lashes drove even that sensible thought from her mind.
‘First you get measured up for a new wardrobe. Next you get elocution.’
‘Elocution?’ Jazz gasped.
For all the world as though he had suggested keelhauling her under Angel’s yacht, Vitale thought helplessly.
‘You can’t do this with a noticeable regional accent,’ Vitale sliced in. ‘Stop reacting to everything I say as though it’s personal.’
‘It is freaking personal when someone says you don’t talk properly!’ Jazz slashed back at him furiously, her colour heightened.
‘And the language,’ Vitale reminded her without skipping a beat, refusing to be sidetracked from his ultimate goal. ‘I’m not insulting you. Stop personalising this arrangement. You are being prepared for an acting role.’
The reminder was a timely one, but it still struck Jazz as very personal when a man looked at her and decided he had to change virtually everything about her. She compressed her lips and said instead, ‘Freaking is not a bad word.’
Vitale released a groan, gold-tipped lashes flying high while he noticed the fullness of her soft pink lips even when she was trying to fold them flat, and his body succumbed to an involuntary stirring he fiercely resented. ‘Are you going to argue about everything?’
Common sense assailed Jazz and she bent down to rummage industriously in her carrier bag. ‘Not if you settle these loans,’ she muttered in as apologetic a tone as she could manage while still hating him for picking out her every flaw.
Vitale watched her settle a small heap of crumpled papers on his desk while striving to halter her temper, a battle he could read on her eloquent face. He supposed he could live with ‘freaking’ if he had to. For that matter he knew several socialites who swore like troopers and he wondered if he was setting his expectations rather too high, well aware that if he had a flaw, and he wasn’t willing to acknowledge that he did, it was a desire for perfection.
‘After elocution comes lessons in etiquette,’ he informed her doggedly, suppressing that rare instant of self-doubt. ‘You have to know how to address the other guests, many of whom will have titles.’
‘It sounds like a really fun-packed morning,’ Jazz pronounced acidly.
Amusement flashed through Vitale but he crushed it at source, reluctant to encourage her irreverence. Of course, he wasn’t used to any woman behaving around him the way Jazz did. Jazz had smoothly shifted straight back into treating him the same way she had treated him when they were teenagers and it was a disorientating experience, but not actively unpleasant, he registered in surprise. There was no awe or flattery, no ego-boosting jokes or flirtatious smiles or carefully choreographed speeches. In the strangest way he found her attitude, her very refusal to be impressed by his status, refreshing.
Later that same day, Jazz got a break at lunchtime. She heaved a sigh over the morning she had endured; lessons had never before made her feel so bored and fed up because all the subject matter was dry as dust. For the first time, however, she was becoming fully aware that Vitale occupied a very different world from her own and the prospect of having to face weeks of such coaching sessions made her wince. But if that was what rescuing her mother demanded from her, she would knuckle down and learn what she had to learn, she conceded reluctantly. A sheaf of supporting notes in front of her, she stroked coloured felt-tipped pens through salient points to highlight them, a practice she had used at university to make reading less of a challenge for her dyslexia. It would be easier for her to ask for spoken notes that she could listen to but she absolutely hated asking for special treatment that drew attention to her learning disability, particularly when it would only remind Vitale of yet another one of her flaws.
Her room, however, was beautiful, she allowed with a rueful smile that took in her silk-clad bed, the polished furniture and the door into the en-suite bathroom. She might as well have been staying in a top-flight exclusive hotel because her surroundings were impossibly luxurious and decidedly in the category of a major treat. The lunch, served in a fancy dining room, had been excellent as well, she was thinking as she sped downstairs for the afternoon session of coaching, wondering what was next on the agenda.
‘Jazz?’ a voice said in disbelief.
Jazz stopped dead mid-flight and stared down at the tall dark man staring up at her from the foyer, swiftly recognising him from his high public profile in the media. ‘Angel?’ she queried in shock.
‘What the hell are you doing in my brother’s house?’ Angel demanded bluntly, scanning her casual jeans-clad appearance with frowning attention.
Trying to think fast, Jazz descended the stairs, wondering what she was supposed to say to Vitale’s half-brother. Were the two men still as close as they had been as kids?
‘I think that’s a secret so I’d rather not go into detail,’ she parried awkwardly. ‘How are you?’
‘That’s OK, Jenkins,’ Angel addressed the older man still standing at the front door as if in readiness for the Greek billionaire’s departure. ‘You can serve coffee in the drawing room for Jazz and I.’
‘Where’s Vitale?’ Jazz enquired nervously.
‘Out but we must catch up,’ Angel said with innate assurance while the older man spread wide the door of what she assumed to be the drawing room.
‘Who’s Jenkins?’ she asked to forestall further questions when the door was closed again.
‘Vitale’s butler. This is a pretty old-fashioned household,’ Angel told her cheerfully. ‘Now tell me about the secret because I know my brother better than anyone and Vitale does not have secrets.’
‘I can’t... Don’t push me,’ Jazz protested in desperation. ‘My mother and I are in a bit of a pickle and Vitale is helping us out.’
‘Charitable Vitale?’ Angel inclined his head thoughtfully. ‘Sorry, that doesn’t wash.’
‘I contacted your father first,’ Jazz admitted, hoping that fact would distract him, because Angel was displaying all the characteristics of a terrier on the scent of a juicy bone.
‘Tell me about your mother,’ Angel invited smoothly.
Jazz gave him a brief résumé of their plight and confided that she had told her family that she was working for Vitale even though she strictly wasn’t. ‘But if it hadn’t been for the b-bet—’ she stumbled helplessly at letting that word escape ‘—Vitale wouldn’t have needed me in the first place.’
‘Bet,’ Angel repeated with a sudden flashing smile of triumph. ‘Zac, our kid brother, I surmise. And what is the bet? Vitale
tells me everything.’
And since she had already given away half the story she gave him the whole. Angel gave her a shattered appraisal before he dropped down beside her on the sofa and burst out laughing, so genuinely amused at the prospect of her being coached for a public appearance at a royal ball that she ended up laughing too. Angel had always been so much more down-to-earth than his brother.
That was the point when Vitale entered the room, seeing his brother and Jazz seated close and laughing in a scene of considerable intimacy. That unanticipated sight sent a current of deep-seated rage roaring through Vitale like a hurricane.
‘Jazz...you’re supposed to be with Jenkins right now, not entertaining my brother!’ he bit out rawly, dark golden eyes scorching hot with angry condemnation on her flushed face.
‘Jenkins?’ she queried, rising upright.
‘Table manners,’ he extended crushingly, sending a tide of red rushing across her stricken face and not feeling the slightest bit guilty about it.
Jazz fled, mortified that he would say that to her in front of Angel as if she were a half-bred savage, who didn’t know how to eat in polite company. Was she? Ridiculous tears prickled at the backs of her eyes and stung. Did Vitale remember her as having had dreadful table manners when she was younger? It was a deeply embarrassing suspicion.
‘Well, wasn’t that unroyal eruption educational?’ Angel quipped as he sprang upright and studied Vitale with a measuring scrutiny. ‘Yes, she’s turned out quite a looker, our childhood playmate.’
* * *
Jazz was only a little soothed to learn that Vitale’s butler had been co-opted into teaching her about the right cutlery to use, rather than her manners. Furthermore, for once, she was receiving a lesson she needed, she acknowledged grudgingly, when she was presented with a formal table setting in the dining room that contained a remarkably bewildering choice of knives, forks and spoons. When that was done, she returned to her room and was seated against the headboard, reading a book she had got in a charity shop, when the door opened with an abrupt lack of warning.
