A hand in the small of her back he edged her forwards, towards the bed, but she dug her heels in and said, ‘I can’t take them!’ And then, because that sounded really ungrateful because he obviously believed he’d been doing her—Jilly—a favour and no one liked having their generosity and good intentions shoved back at them, she amended, ‘It was a nice thought but I can’t take them.’ She dragged in a huge breath and got out in a rush, ‘I’m not Jilly. I’m her twin sister. I’m sorry to have deceived you, but I did have my reasons.’
For a long moment Cesare found it impossible to articulate a single word for the flood of relief that took his breath away. Many signs had told him that she was deeply uncomfortable with the situation she had put herself in—or her twin had forced her into—but finally she had found the courage to tell him the truth and saved him from having to accuse her. He admired her for that. More than admired her? He shelved that question and studied her instead.
Her long lashes veiled the brilliance of her eyes as she stared at the floor and her face was pale, her shoulders tense as if she were expecting a blow. Or his anger.
Quick to disabuse her of that expectation, he put a gentle forefinger beneath her chin and lifted her face to his.
Her colour returned in a flood. Milly felt it in the hot burn of her skin as she met the steady intensity of those dark-as-night eyes and dizziness almost overwhelmed her as he announced softly, ‘I know, Milly. I began to have suspicions almost as soon as we reached the villa from England. They were confirmed by telephone on the following morning just before we set out for the island. Jilly Lee had an identical twin, Milly.’
‘Oh!’ Her heart began to pound and her knees turned to unset jelly. ‘Why? Why didn’t you—?’
‘Say something?’ he supplied and, placing a steadying arm around her waist, he led her to a white velvet upholstered chaise and watched while she sank on to it with every appearance of wishing the floor would open up and swallow her. ‘I made a mental date on several occasions to hit you with what I knew but something always happened to make me hold back.’ He folded his lean powerful length on to the seat beside her and a smile warmed his voice to smooth honey. ‘And in retrospect I’m glad. My first intention was to let you stew during that first day on the island and then come down on you like several tons of bricks. Had I done so I would not have discovered how unlike your twin you really are.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Milly said strickenly, her breath catching in her throat. He was so close that the spicy, faintly lemony, husky male scent of him was in her nostrils; it made every nerve-ending in her body quiver. She felt punch drunk by his proximity and knew she shouldn’t.
A tiny whimper of distress escaped her and Cesare sprang to his feet and strode out of the room, so lithe and graceful he made her heart ache, and she didn’t know whether to be grateful because the raging anger she’d braced herself to meet hadn’t materialised or whether to curl up with smothering humiliation because all the time he’d known she wasn’t Jilly and must have been laughing his silk socks off at her useless attempts to pretend she was.
Returning moments later, Cesare put a glass into her hands, closing her fingers around the cut crystal bowl. ‘A little brandy. You are in shock, I think.’
He sounded so damned complacent! Milly tossed the fiery liquid back and a rare upsurge of rage had her blurting, ‘So all the time you were laughing at me! Watching me make a fool of myself! I hate you!’
‘No, you don’t,’ Cesare stated with infuriating calm and prised the empty glass from her tense fingers. ‘Whatever emotions you have inspired in me, mirth wasn’t one of them. I admit to being as furious as an angry bull when I first had my suspicions confirmed. That changed to interest. Why had you stepped into your twin’s shoes—quite literally—when you are so unlike each other?’
‘Not so!’ Milly contradicted, the effect of the alcohol in her bloodstream making her reckless. ‘We wear our hair differently, that’s all. Jilly would never wear hers short, but you weren’t to know that.’
‘Superficially you look alike, providing one scrapes away the layers of make-up your sister uses. But deep down, where it matters, you are astonishingly different.’ On that assurance, he cupped her flushed face with both hands. ‘Jilly is hard, self centred. Manipulative. Charming when it serves her purpose but insincere. She flaunts her sex to get what she wants. That makes her ugly.’
The balls of his thumbs stroked her delicate cheekbones and Milly’s heart missed a beat then turned over, making her forget what she’d been about to say in her sister’s defence as he continued. ‘You are beautiful. You are warm and gentle, caring. Yet unafraid to speak your mind if you think someone else has suffered an injustice—as you rebuked me, quite rightly, when my recent anxiety made me speak sharply to my grandmother. I admire that. That is the difference that sticks out a thousand miles.’
Glorying in the touch of his hands, heat curling deep in her pelvis, her nipples shamingly prominent, it was all Milly could do to stop herself from hurling herself at him, hold him close, beg him to kiss her.
She had to remind herself very vigorously that he was merely being kind to someone who’d just been shocked to learn she’d been the biggest fool in Christendom. Showing him that she wanted him quite desperately would only make her look an even bigger fool in his eyes than she already did!
‘Now—’ his hands left her face as he unfurled his impressive length and rose to his feet ‘—all this must have been difficult for you. Come—’ he took her hand and urged her to her feet‘— you will shower and change into something more suited to you and then we will eat and you will explain why you felt it necessary to impersonate your sister.’
Loving the feel of his strong fingers as they curled around her own, and despising herself for that weakness, Milly allowed herself to be escorted to the bed. ‘Choose what you would like to change into,’ he suggested, hitting the nail on the head with the shrewdness she was beginning to expect from him when he added, ‘You clearly are not comfortable in your sister’s choice of clothing.’
That comment needed no reply but Milly’s hands were unsteady as, at his prompting, she opened the nearest box and gasped as Cesare plucked a dream of a dress from the tissue layers. Delicate voile in subtle soft stripes of oyster and pale pink, it had a discreet V neckline, a slightly bloused bodice and a soft flowing skirt below the neat waistline. It was just the sort of dress she would have bought herself had she ever been remotely able to afford to do so.
Quelling her excitement as further goodies were revealed—tailored linen trousers, cream-coloured and light charcoal, elegant shirts, cool filmy skirts and tops, shoes with neat kitten heels, delicate fine cotton underwear hand-embroidered with pretty sprays of forget-menots—Milly felt deeply regretful as she stressed, ‘I can’t possibly accept all this.’
‘But of course you can.’ Cesare swept her objection aside with a downward slash of one long-fingered hand. ‘Look on these things as payment in lieu of wages.’
‘You said I had to work for nothing,’ she reminded him sternly because so far he had held the moral high ground and she was determined to snatch some of it for herself. Gentle and caring in his eyes—although she had never looked at herself in that light—but a doormat she most certainly wasn’t!
But as usual he had an unassailable come-back. ‘I made that stipulation when I believed I had cornered your sister. You are not your sister. You have put in the hours caring for my grandmother. Reading to her, chatting, bringing her flowers, taking her mind away from her injuries. I wouldn’t expect anyone to work for my family for nothing. I suggest you take that shower and get out of that thing you are wearing.’
Cesare turned away. The temptation to take that tacky apology for a skirt off her, strip the tight-fitting matching leather top from her lovely body and join her in the shower was overwhelming. An over-active libido? Or something else?
Milly had given up trying to figure him out. Basically he was a good man. H
e cared for his staff, was always polite and considerate in his dealings with them and he adored the grandmother who’d brought him up after he’d been orphaned. So, knowing she wasn’t the twin who stood accused of theft in his eyes, he had been kind to her, mostly, especially after he’d decided not to come down on her like several tons of bricks.
It really puzzled her. And it was pointless trying to figure it out and tying her brain in knots, she decided as she stepped out of the most welcome shower she’d ever taken in her life.
Wrapping herself in one of the huge fluffy bath sheets, a different thought struck her like a bolt of lightning and robbed her of the ability to breathe, to move.
When he’d started to make love to her it hadn’t been because he believed she was his ex-lover as she’d thought. He’d known she wasn’t!
It was she, Milly, who’d turned him on!
Her gaze met her reflection in one of the floor to ceiling mirrors and her heart jumped. Her eyes looked huge, sparkling and her mouth looked swollen, soft, as if she’d just been kissed to within an inch of her life.
Smothering an internal groan she turned away and began to towel dry her hair with startling vigour. She wasn’t going to go there! It was a non-starter of a track, ending nowhere!
She would just enjoy feeling fresh and clean, her skin perfumed with the fragrant body lotion she had found and was using lavishly. She slipped on the pretty undies and the dream of a dress, which fitted her to perfection and made her look cool, classy and strangely elegant—a far cry from the way she’d presented herself in Jilly’s cast-offs.
Locating a comb on the dressing table, she ran it through her silky hair and was ready. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the pair of oyster-coloured butter-soft leather kitten heels she’d selected and walked to the en suite bathroom door, ready now to do her utmost to convince Cesare that Jilly wasn’t a thief, that there must have been some terrible mistake. To beg him to try to trace her whereabouts because she was growing increasingly anxious for her vanished twin’s well-being.
As she entered the bedroom Cesare appeared in the doorway that led to the sitting room.
He had shed his suit jacket and his silk tie and there was a tension about the broad shoulders beneath the fine white cotton of his shirt. After a timeless head to toe scrutiny his eyes held hers for what seemed to Milly like long breathless moments, as if he could reach into her soul and read it.
And then he smiled. Slow and devastating. And commanded, his voice thick, ‘Come here.’
CHAPTER TEN
MILLY WENT LIKE a sleepwalker, something in the depths of those fathomless dark eyes, something slow, burning and impossible to resist, was drawing her to him.
Her whole body unbearably sensitized, she stood before him, felt the heat of him, the firm caress of his hands as they settled on either side of her tiny waist.
Lush ebony lashes veiled the gleam in his eyes and his voice was a purr of masculine appreciation as he murmured, ‘Bella, bella! La direttrice understood my directions perfectly.’ Then, the line of his gorgeous mouth wry with a hint of amusement, ‘Forgive me. Not one word of my native language must be spoken because you do not understand it! It was the first test I ran, weeks ago, and it heightened the suspicions I was already having.’
Cesare’s thumbs were rotating seductively against her ribcage, the wicked sensation making her breath tremble in her lungs, her breasts surge in urgent invitation for his touch against the confines of her pretty flower-sprigged bra. Her rosy flush had nothing to do with the humiliation of knowing that she hadn’t fooled him for more than a handful of hours and everything to do with her fierce hunger for him.
His hands had worked their way upwards and tension held her very still. Burningly expectant. Another fraction of an inch and his seductive hands would be touching the underswell of her breasts.
Barely containable excitement rippled down the length of her narrow spine and heat pooled wildly between her thighs as she willed with everything she had for his hands to move that fraction higher. Then, his voice oddly hoarse, he promised, ‘I will teach you my language. It will be a pleasure for both of us.’
At mind-blowing speed Milly came crashing to her senses, straight back down to earth.
What was he talking about? And what on earth did she think she was doing? Teach her his language? When? Did he expect her to stay on? As Filomena’s companion, even though that dear old lady would surely despise her for her deceit? Or because he fancied her, as he had briefly fancied Jilly, so she would be handy whenever he got the impulse to invite her to share his bed?
Pushing small hands against the hard breadth of his chest she swung away. Wrapping her arms around her midriff to stop herself from trembling, she clenched her teeth and gritted, ‘We need to talk about my sister, remember?’
‘We do?’ He sounded lightly amused as he positioned himself to stand behind her, his hands on her shoulders, fingers touching the bare flesh of her upper arms.
He touched his long sensual mouth to the pale hollow where her neck met her shoulder and she shuddered with forbidden delight and made herself resist the febrile temptation to turn, wrap her arms around his neck and beg for his kiss.
‘You hurt her badly,’ she pronounced baldly. She paced a step away from him, away from the danger of him. ‘That’s my educated guess.’
‘Tell me about it.’ He sounded genuinely perplexed. He was one class act, Milly reminded herself, he was a twenty-four carat womaniser. If she’d been weak enough to join in his no doubt standard seduction routine, then by now he would have been undressing her, and she would have been helping him, destination that handy big bed with no thought of future heartbreak, no thought except her consuming need for him.
Would it have given him a kick to notch up both twins?
Would she have welcomed his love-making because she loved him?
The thought appalled her, made her speechless so that Cesare had to prompt, ‘So tell me about your educated guess.’
The arrival of room service gave her breathing space, allowing her to piece together her fragmented wits while the slim young waiter whisked the trolley through tall windows that led out to a balcony.
‘We can talk while we eat.’ A hand in the small of her back propelled her over the sea of jade green and out on to the balcony that overlooked secluded gardens that gave up the heady perfume of jasmine into the dusky air.
Holding out a chair for her at the small round table he promised huskily, ‘And after talking, who knows?’
Milly closed her ears to that! And shivered slightly despite the warmth of the evening air. At his invitation, she helped herself to a little of this, a little of that, of what exactly she couldn’t have said because she was far too wound up to even think of eating.
A healthy gulp of the crisp, sparkling and delicious champagne gave her the impetus to state, ‘Jilly isn’t a thief. My guess is she only disappeared because you’d hurt her so badly. The last time we heard from her was when she wrote and told us she was leaving her job as a receptionist—at least I think it was a receptionist, I don’t remember exactly—at a high class nightclub here in Florence. She didn’t say where she was going or what she’d be doing, only that she would soon be able to pay back every penny she owed our mother.’
She levelled an accusing glance at him and stabbed a prawn as if she were wishing she could stab the fork into him. ‘She obviously believed everything was coming good. We had no idea she’d moved in with you, acting as your grandmother’s companion. She must have met you before, here in Florence, I would imagine. You were lovers and I guess she believed you and she would be married.’
Another throat cooling draught of champagne, then, ‘When she realised that wasn’t going to happen she left, broken-hearted.’ She shot him a darkly glittering look. ‘I know she’d never been in love before. She’d had loads of boyfriends. They didn’t seem able to resist her, from what she told us. But never anyone serious for her. Except you, apparently. And y
ou only wanted one thing. And that was sex,’ she spelled out with brutal frankness.
She set the glass down with a mini crash. ‘There has to be some misunderstanding about the theft. And I want you to undo some of the damage and help me find her.’ Her mouth wobbled. ‘I’m getting really worried about her. And she doesn’t even know—’ the wobble got serious‘—that Ma died.’
‘Cara.’ Cesare leaned across the table, his eyes intent on her troubled features. ‘I hate to see you upset. We will find her, I promise you. Already the search is well in hand.’
‘It is?’ A slight frown appeared between her eyes.
‘But of course.’ He leaned back again, relaxed, exuding male confidence.
‘But of course,’ she parroted as the penny dropped with a decided clang, an edge of bitterness in her tone. ‘Oh, silly me! You know, I only decided to step into Jilly’s shoes to stop you hounding her, to give her time to get over the way you must have treated her, let her get her act together so she’d be fit to speak in her own defence. But the moment you knew I wasn’t who I was pretending to be the search was back on.’
Across the table the slight elevation of one ebony brow infuriated her. She shot to her feet. ‘Take me back to the villa. It’s getting late.’ Her chin came up, her deep green eyes glinting with intent. ‘I’ll stay with Filomena until she’s back to normal—provided she wants me to when she learns who I really am—and then I’m off and you can hire another companion.’ It was the only way. She was really stupid and in grave danger of falling for a serial womaniser. Stay around him and she’d end up as broken-hearted as her twin.
‘Nonna doesn’t expect us to return tonight.’
The bald statement stopped her in her tracks. Oh, the rat! He had brought her here, had supplied her with a whole wardrobe of lovely new clothes, a fancy meal which she’d hardly touched, plied her with champagne, all with the intention of seducing her! Her face burned, hot as a furnace.
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