by Rachel Lyndhurst; Carmen Falcone; Ros Clarke; Annie Seaton; Christine Bell
Lorenzo shook himself to dull the painful ache in his groin before the next interviewee came in—male, forties, an experienced finance director, certainly unexciting enough to dull the lust that had taken him by force. He leaned back and cupped his hands behind his head. He felt positive for once and was already enjoying the anticipated shock that would ripple throughout the underworld and trash media when the news of his engagement broke. His new fiancée would appear as if from nowhere—a fairy-tale, whirlwind romance. The Sicilian and the beautiful British nobody.
Perfect.
He was mere weeks away from liquidating every last square meter of real estate he owned in Italy, and then he would leave Sicily forever. The dark days would be over at last, and his headaches would go away.
This was a good day, a very good day, indeed.
Chapter Three
“Geoffrey, how much did Ferrante pay for this contract?”
Lora’s brother pursed his lips and battered the keyboard of his bulky old beige computer, apparently pretending his contract base was so vast he couldn’t recall the facts off the top of his head. Lora lowered her voice to a growl. “Geoffrey…”
“Yes, yes!” His cerise-rimmed, tin-colored eyes widened under gingery eyebrows, and he poked his neck toward the screen like a hungry tortoise. “The data is just loading.”
She gripped the back of the chair in front of his desk with such force her fingers hurt. “For God’s sake, stop stalling. We both know you only have one other live contract at the moment. Henry the cleaner down at Meatipak.”
“Meatipak?”
She frowned at her pathetic sibling. “Yes, the pet food factory. He does the offices, has been cleaning them for the last two years, and you’re paying him a whisker over the minimum wage. If I know that, then you must, unless that fragrant wife of yours, Sybil, has pawned an essential part of your brain to someone completely desperate.”
He continued to stare at the computer screen. “Bloody hell, sis, you’re a tad crabby this afternoon.”
“Understatement of the year.” She leaned forward. “Why the hell are you messing about with gangsters like Ferrante and dragging me into your sordid mess?”
Geoffrey had the grace to wince and rub his clammy brow as he pushed his chair backward with his feet; a few dusty box files toppled onto the portable radiator behind him. “Look, I know it’s not a normal assignment, slightly different from what we both expected, but—”
“But? This had better be good.”
“Well, his last staffing agency completely fucked up, and they had deals worth six figures a year throughout Ferrante’s UK companies, so it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down.”
She drew in a deep, exasperated breath. “The truth, Geoffrey, or I’m going to have to kick you very, very hard.”
“When Ferrante’s people approached me with all this work, I knew I could get the staff in. Given time.” He licked his lips and coughed. “There was only this one immediate position that was tricky.”
“The shocking position you put me in?”
“Only the best would do, Sugarplum, and only my brilliant sister could satisfy The Shark.”
Lora could spot Geoffrey-smarm before he had even uttered the word “Sugarplum,” and she was now on the point of exploding with anger at his continuing lies. “The debt, the money—how much do you owe these vile people?”
Geoffrey picked up a piece of printer paper and began to make an airplane out of it. “Oh, that.”
“Yes, that,” she said and snatched the paper out of his hands.
He shuddered and ran the flat of his palm over the side of his head, a gesture that he often employed under pressure. “I’m somewhat surprised it was even mentioned, actually.”
“It wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t told Ferrante he could stuff his fake fiancée job.”
Geoffrey seemed to fade to concrete gray all over, apart from the slick of rusty orange hair on top of his head. “Christ, you didn’t, did you?”
“I bloody well did, and then he told me I had to do it if I wanted you to live! Like something out of a mafia movie; it was ridiculous.” She scrunched the airplane into a ball and threw it in the wastebasket. “Why on earth does he need a fake fiancée anyway?”
“That’s none of our business,” he muttered and sucked his bottom lip under his plaque-thick front teeth. “But you agreed to do it? Left on good terms in the end, right?”
“I wanted to get out of there alive, so of course I pretended I was going to do it. But if you think for one second that I actually will, then—”
“You must do it, Sis.” His voice was creaky, as if he was about to burst into tears.
“Hell’s teeth, how much do you owe them?”
He rocked his upper body back and forth for a few seconds while rubbing his hands frenetically together. “About two hundred thousand, a bit more with interest next week.”
“What?” She felt physically sick with horror. “Why? How? What have you been doing?”
“Some poor investments, took a gamble on doubling my pot to cover some credit cards, but it didn’t work out like I expected, and things got worse the more I tried to fix it.”
She was desperate to step back from the edge of the abyss Geoffrey had created. “Then you’ll have to re-mortgage your house or something. Or get Sybil to take in laundry. I don’t care what you have to do, but I’m not bailing you out of this.”
He shrugged. “House and business already mortgaged up to the hilt to finance the villa.”
“The villa…you didn’t…” Typical, ridiculous, hen-pecked, social-climbing Geoffrey. “In France? Again? She got you to buy two villas in Cannes?”
“No, we sold the first one to finance the new one; it had a bigger hot tub. In St. Tropez. Sweet of you to remember, though.”
Lora remembered a particularly grim afternoon with her sister-in-law, being forced to stare at internet property sites. “Then you’ll have to let it go. You’re living beyond your means. Sell it.”
“Can’t. Locked into a special financing deal with a French bank that was bought out by the Spanish—one that went bust, and it was all underwritten by that Icelandic lot. Remember them? Impossible to shift anything for at least five years without losing half the value of the property.”
“I don’t believe a word of it. Sell it.”
He shook his head and took something wrapped in plastic wrap out of his desk drawer. “Sybil would divorce me for even suggesting it.”
“Let her.”
“Sybil is my world; you know that.” He offered her a slightly bent and flaking sausage roll. “I’d die without her.”
Lora shook her head in disgust but felt a twinge of compassion for the pitiful specimen of a man in front of her. “She’ll be the death of you in the end anyway at this rate. I’m assuming she has no idea you’re up to your eyes in debt because you indulge her all the time?”
“She doesn’t ask for much.”
Lora didn’t even try to hide her disgust. “I can’t believe you’ve spent all that money when we’re supposed to be scraping enough together for Mum’s care home fees. I thought I’d seen it all when you bought Sybil that resin Trevi fountain thing.”
“Water feature, Petal, water feature.”
“Oh, that’s what it is. Silly me, it’s so much more than a monstrosity that costs as much as a brand new small car and doesn’t even look real because it’s yellow.”
“You know what Sybil’s like when she sets her mind on something, but until she gets it, she’s putty in my hands.” He spluttered when a piece of sausage roll went down the wrong way, and he rolled his eyes for a few seconds to recover. “Relatively putty-like anyway.”
“But it’s a massive great lump of yellow plastic!”
“To you, it is, my honeybee, but to me it represents my annual blow job. Wouldn’t want to miss out on that.”
“For God’s sake.” Lora hesitated at the beep of an incoming text message and then growled at h
er cell phone. “Go away.”
Geoffrey squidged up the dirty plastic wrap and threw it toward the waste paper basket. “Long-lost boyfriend?”
“I have a lot of clients these days, although I did email and text them all to say I was taking a month off.” She frowned when his rubbish bounced off a pile of photocopying paper and came to rest in the middle of the floor. “Which I will be reversing very shortly.” She stared at the screen. “Right, who is it? Dear Miss Howard, please be advised that your flight details have been updated successfully.”
Geoffrey made a grunting noise and began to shove paperwork into his desk drawer. “Probably time you were off. You have to pop down and see Mummy for us both, remember?”
“Oh yes, I must nip down a hundred miles and see Mummy.” She wondered if he even realized she was being sarcastic. “And then come back and pack for Sorrento?”
Geoffrey was characteristically tactless as well as oblivious in his reply. “Hmm, yes, Sorrento, lovely. Lucky old you.”
Another text bleeped through and was a sharp reminder that she could not, would not allow her brother to cajole her into being Lorenzo Ferrante’s fake fiancée at any price. “No, Geoffrey, not lucky old me, because I’m not going to do it.”
He slapped the desk with both hands like an angry seal. “I thought we’d been through all this.”
Anger and an ever-increasing sense of danger flooded her veins. “We haven’t even started. I’m not doing it, no way. You may be in a bad place right now, but I don’t see why it always has to be me who fixes your screw ups. You’ll just have to confess all to Sybil and get her to be Ferrante’s fake fiancée. Or some other poor woman you know. Or dress up and pretend to be a woman yourself. He won’t care, and the lucky candidate will get lots of nice clothes.”
“I can’t do that!”
His voice had risen to a whiney pitch, and it made her want to retch. “I’m not giving you any choice. I’m going back to my own business and leaving you to stew in your own mess. End of story.”
Geoffrey looked as if he was in serious pain and clutched a fist to his chest. He inhaled dramatically, and Lora braced herself for a fake heart attack, because nothing he tried would surprise her now. “You don’t understand. It has to be you, my sister, or…or they will kill me.”
Did she believe that? She wasn’t sure, but the panic in his voice sounded genuine, and he did look scared. She softened her voice. “Then go straight to the police and tell them everything. I’ll go with you if it would help. You’re unlikely to be the only idiot they’re extorting, so the authorities will protect you. You might even end up with a medal for turning informant.”
“This isn’t funny.”
She shook her head with exasperation. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“These people aren’t scared of the police, Lora. They have people on the inside. People high up. There’s nowhere for me to go, nowhere to hide, and they know where you and Mummy live.” He glared at her and rubbed his shiny nose. “We have to make sure Mummy is safe, after all. You want that, too, don’t you?”
“Of course I do, but this isn’t fair! This is your mess, your mistakes, your greed.”
“Just this one last time, Lora, and I’ll never ask you to do anything like this again.”
“I should let them blow your stupid brain cell out.”
He stood up and tucked his crumpled shirt somewhere between his round belly and creaking trouser waistband. “But if you don’t settle down and accept that you need to do this one tiny thing, I will have no choice but to go public on that unprofessional affair you had.”
“Affair?”
“The local MP, what was his name? Maxwell, yes that was it. If the Federation of Holistic Therapists was to find out you’d been carrying on with a client, you’d be removed from their register immediately. Good-bye career, business, and the joy of self-employment.”
The sneaky underhand little rat. “It wasn’t an affair, and you know it.”
“He told me it was, and his wife heartily agreed, as I recall. Nasty business. Mummy would be most upset if she got wind of it, as well. Not good for her heart all that scandal now he’s so high up in the government. Media would have a field day.”
Lora swallowed down the bile rising in her throat at the memory of what had actually happened years ago in her front room, the reason why she never took on male clients anymore and practiced from rented clinic space in shared premises. “I wish to God I’d never come to you and Sybil for help that night. I should have told the police everything when I had the chance.”
“Well, you screwed up, honey, and all the forensic evidence was washed away five years ago. That door is now shut.”
She was rammed right into an impossibly tight corner. “This is blackmail.”
“Call it what you like.” He rattled a set of keys and then locked his desk. “Hard times call for tough decisions.”
“Dick.”
Her cell phone beeped again, and Geoffrey snatched it up from the desk and read as he walked toward the office door with his jacket slung over one shoulder. “Hmm, Please also be informed that your itinerary has now been revised. Mr. Ferrante expects you at the airstrip at 1700 for immediate take off to Naples. A car will collect you from your home address at 1500. Have a great trip. Travel Department.” He made an O with his mouth. “Life in the fast lane…” He handed her the phone, tossed the keys into the air, and they clattered to the floor.
Idiot. “Great, so there’s no way I can make it to see Mummy now. You’ll have to do it.”
A shutter fell down over his eyes before he stooped to pick up the keys and then ushered her out of the office. “No can do. Sorry and all that.” He slammed the office door shut and jiggled the handle a few times to make sure it was locked. “But, listen, she’s so gaga, she won’t even notice. Dump the guilt and go earn her nursing fees. Help her in a practical way.”
Exasperation and despair crashed over her when she realized how throwaway everything was for him, how he lacked empathy, how everything was to do with his own happiness and to hell with everyone else. “Do you know what I really, really hate about you?”
He was halfway across the asphalt before she could finish the sentence and either didn’t hear her or pretended not to. It was remarkable how he could shift all that lard up a gear when he wanted to. A hard ball formed in her stomach as she watched Geoffrey’s brand new Mercedes screech out of the office car park. He had no idea; he never had. Sheltered and privileged as a child, he’d never come to grips with how the majority of people lived, and her looking out for him all the time when they were kids probably hadn’t helped. She’d done her best to protect her little brother, just as her mother had begged her to. Perhaps that had been a mistake in the long run. Geoffrey felt at ease with himself and being a “businessman,” but couldn’t see that he had made so little progress in the last three years that his staffing agency was no more than a hobby. And now he’d screwed up so badly with what little money he had there wasn’t much hope of redemption. It would never end well.
Nevertheless, she was now in a deeply crappy situation. No time to cave in to the feelings of despair, guilt, and fear she could feel sneaking up on her. She was furious at the current mess Geoffrey had dropped her in, and in a perfect world, she should have somebody to shout at because of it, too. But, as usual, she was on her own.
Chapter Four
“So, tell me about your children.”
Lora had been trying her best not to fidget, fiddle with her hair, or bite her fingernails since they’d landed in Naples and transferred to a big, black limousine. Lorenzo Ferrante’s private jet had been predictably luxurious with large leather seats and plenty of space for them to avoid each other. He had worked solidly on his laptop throughout the flight but was now sitting next to her when she’d hoped he might take the front seat with the driver. No chance. His presence was impossible to ignore, and, to her dismay, it unsettled her as much as their first meeting in London.
It wasn’t just that he had looks that took her breath away and made her feel fuzzy. His proximity was a serious intrusion into her personal space. Perhaps Italians didn’t understand the concept, or maybe it was that Lorenzo Ferrante did what the hell he liked, wherever he liked, regardless of anyone else’s feelings.
Lorenzo adjusted a cufflink without looking at her. “The girls, yes, of course. Five-year-old twins devoted to their grandmother, ignored by their birth mother, and probably very spoiled by normal standards.”
“I’m sure they’re adorable,” she said without a shred of conviction. She’d cared for plenty of rich, bratty offspring in her nannying days and knew the score. “And I’ll bet they worship their daddy.”
“Possibly.” He took a small black box from inside his jacket pocket. “The ring. Please put it on.”
She took the velvet case and flipped it open. “Shit, that’s a big rock. Do you seriously want me to wear this?”
His full lips formed a half-frown, half-smile shape as he took her hand firmly in his and slid the cool bauble onto her ring finger. “You’re not going to be a very convincing fiancée without one.”
He twisted the ring into position, and a spark of sensation ran the length of her arm, hitting the middle of her chest like a flying bolt. His hand lingered on hers, and bright blue eyes sliced into her. He was so close she could almost taste him—cedar wood and dark, exotic spice. “I suppose not,” she murmured and fought desperately against wondering what it would be like to kiss him.
