by Andie Brock
‘Interesting. Who is this mystery woman with impeccable taste?’
‘Umm, I can’t tell you. I’ve just remembered I’m not supposed to say.’
‘Then I can see I am going to have to think of a way to prise the information out of you. Now, let me see...’ He paused, his eyes flitting darkly over her heated face, over the swell of her breasts that rose and fell with each ragged breath. ‘Where shall I start?’
His fingers slid under the bodice of her dress, releasing her breasts. For a moment he just stared at her, his eyes full of hunger, and Harper’s nipples, already almost unbearably hard, tightened still further. Then his hands reached to cup her breasts and he held their swollen weight with such care, such obvious appreciation, it was all she could do to stop herself from whimpering with pleasure.
He lowered his head until his mouth was only a fraction away from one breast, his hot, silky breath caressing her skin until slowly, very slowly, he took the puckered nipple in his mouth. Now Harper did moan, a blissful, guttural sound, coming from somewhere deep in the back of her throat. And as Vieri started to rasp his tongue over her aching peak, stopping only to suck again, to repeat his deliriously wonderful assault, Harper’s hands flew to the back of his head, holding him tightly against her, desperate for this torturous pleasure never to stop.
But eventually he moved, his head coming back up, a half-smile twisting his mouth. ‘Am I any nearer to breaking your code of silence? If not I am more than happy to continue.’
Please, yes. Harper screamed the words inside her head. He was teasing her, she knew that; he didn’t give a damn about who had picked out her dress. They were playing a game here but she had no idea what the rules were. Only that Vieri had made them up, that everything was on his terms. It felt forbidden, dangerous, and as if it was only going to end one way. Badly. But it also felt wildly exciting, exhilarating, like nothing she had ever experienced before. And deep down, somewhere inside that sex-befuddled brain of hers, she knew she would never have the strength to make it stop. She had no alternative but to play along.
‘I’ll give you a clue.’ She arched her back, jutting her chest forward, inviting him to take her once more. ‘She is almost related to you.’
Vieri frowned, then dipped his head again. ‘Well, that is going to be difficult.’ His hand cupped her other breast, his tongue delicately tracing the outline of her nipple. ‘Seeing as I have no living relatives. Not that I’m aware of anyway.’ Slowly his mouth closed around her nipple and Harper let herself surrender to the pleasure.
‘Think of your godfather, then.’
‘Alfonso?’ He abandoned her breast long enough to say the name, returning to muffle the next sentence against it. ‘What does he have to do with it?’
‘Because it was his niece, Donatella!’
‘Donatella?’
His reaction to her name was extreme—brutal. As if venom had somehow entered his bloodstream, his body went suddenly rigid, his head jerking back to expose the strong column of his neck.
‘Y...yes.’ Stuttering with surprise, Harper could only stare up at him in astonishment.
‘You are telling me that Donatella Sorrentino chose this dress for you?’
‘Yes. Why, does it matter?’
His reply was a violent oath in a foreign tongue. Releasing her shoulders, he leapt to his feet, for a second glaring down at her dishevelled body with undisguised hatred burning in his eyes. Then turning, he moved as if he was desperate to get away from her.
Harper stared at the broad expanse of his back in total shock. She could see the bunched muscles of his biceps flexing as he folded his arms in front of him, his shoulder blades jutted rigidly beneath the fine fabric of his shirt.
She pulled her eyes away, looking down at herself with distress, horror even. Her breasts were fully exposed, still tingling from where Vieri’s mouth had been, her nipples hard and throbbing. Snatching up the strap of the dress, she pulled it back over her shoulder, struggling to tuck herself back into the tight bodice. And only just in time.
Vieri swung back round to look at her again, resentment scoring his face, as if he had somehow hoped she had disappeared while his back was turned.
‘You need to go to bed.’ It was an order, a cruel dismissal, his blue-black eyes still alight with fury.
Harper certainly wasn’t going to challenge him. She couldn’t get away fast enough. Leaping off the sofa, she snatched up the skirt of her dress and swept past him, heading for her rooms as fast as she could, marching through her dressing room and into her bedroom and slamming the door behind her. Only then did she let herself breathe, leaning back against the door, slowly sliding down until she was crouched on the floor in a puddle of red satin. Only then did she let herself surrender to the misery and injustice of it all, to the painful burn of tears that blocked her throat.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘NEED ANY COMPANY?’
Vieri tightened his grip around the tumbler of whisky in his hand. He growled his negative reply, leaving the heavily perfumed female hovering beside him no room for doubt. The only company he wanted right now was the alcohol in his glass and the hope that enough of it would numb his murderous thoughts.
He had chosen this dingy bar, in a far from salubrious area of Palermo, because he didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to see anyone. Signalling to the barman to refill his glass, he took another deep slug of whisky, returning the glass to the sticky bar top with a thud. He’d drink this and then he’d go. Being here was doing nothing to improve his state of mind and he could already feel the beginnings of an alcohol-induced headache starting to thrum at his temples.
Donatella Sorrentino. He repeated her name in his head, feeling his muscles tighten, his skin crawl. The idea that she was here, somewhere in Palermo, at the same time as him filled him with a bitter loathing that refused to abate. He imagined that he could feel her evil presence all around him, even though he knew she would never frequent a place like this. But like a rat in a sewer she was there, unseen, a dark, malevolent presence.
Presumably she was back in Palermo because she had heard about Alfonso and was circling the water like a predatory shark. Well, she was going to be sorely disappointed. She might be Alfonso’s niece, his only living relative, but, as his godfather’s executor, Vieri knew for a fact that she wasn’t going to get a cent of his inheritance. The entire estate was to be divided between the many charities he supported. Alfonso had disowned his niece long ago, on the night his brother had been gunned down in the street—the night Donatella hadn’t so much as shed a tear for her father.
It disgusted Vieri to think that he could ever have been taken in by that woman. That he could have gone to bed with her, made love to her, planned a future with her. Blind to her faults, he had still been pining for her even after she had so unceremoniously dumped him. But discovering her final act of treachery had changed all that. And his misplaced devotion had turned into a heavy, poisonous weight that had sat inside him ever since.
He had only found out the truth by accident. Months after he and Donatella had gone their separate ways, Vieri had been dating a local girl when she had let slip that her sister was a nurse in a private clinic and that Donatella Sorrentino had been in for a termination. With a tidal wave of fury Vieri had known, right at that very moment, that the child had been his. Dates had been demanded, his poor unsuspecting girlfriend left with no choice but to extract the details from her sister. And they fitted perfectly. The child was his. Without even mentioning it to him, Donatella Sorrentino had had an abortion, terminated his child. A child that would have been the only family he had ever had.
Thanks to Alfonso, he had never had the chance to exact his revenge. Instead of tracking down Donatella with a view to God knew what, he had been put on a flight to New York, forced to concentrate on making a new life for himself. And now, of course, he was very grateful for that. He hadn’t laid eyes on Donatella since the day she had told him their affair was over. But
the thought of her here, in Palermo, filled him with a towering rage. And the idea that she had chosen Harper’s dress, come anywhere near her, in fact, exploded white lights behind his eyes.
Swirling the last of the liquor around in his glass, Vieri swallowed it in one gulp. It wasn’t helping. It couldn’t erase the thought of that evil woman tainting his Harper. His Harper? Where had that come from? Since when had he started to think of Harper McDonald as his? He drummed his fingers on the bar top. But there was no denying that Harper filled his thoughts more and more, that something about her, everything about her, made her impossible to ignore. Not just in a sexual way, although that was a powerful force, but in a more deep-rooted emotional way that was totally unfamiliar to him. A way that he didn’t want to examine.
Vieri put his head in his hands. This evening had been a disaster. His plan had been to let Harper enjoy the ball, then take her back to the apartment, soften her up by telling her that Leah was safe and well and then hit her with the fact that their ‘arrangement’ had been changed. That they were, in fact, going to have to get married. Vieri suspected that Harper wouldn’t take the news well, as indeed he hadn’t, but there was no alternative. They were in too deep. This was going to have to happen and somehow they had to deal with it.
But the plan had started to unravel very early on, triggered by seeing those predatory men’s hands all over Harper on the dance floor. And taking her out to the courtyard hadn’t helped, his control slipping dangerously when faced with the fierce temptation of her seductively sexy body. He had just about managed to keep a hold of himself and get her back to the apartment when they had started to argue, any ideas he had had of coaxing her into compliance replaced by bitter recriminations, macho chest-beating and veiled threats. It was not the way he had intended it to go. Especially when, on hearing himself telling her she could pack her bags and leave, the strangest sensation had crept over him. A sort of hollow emptiness, a panic almost, at the thought of losing her. It had come out of nowhere, that acute sense of loss, of abandonment. And the worst of it was, he knew it had nothing whatever to do with their ‘arrangement’ and everything to do with the way he was starting to feel about her. The way she had got to him.
Something that had been all too evident when he had given in to the thundering in his head and started to kiss her. One minute he had been incensed by the totally unjustified way she’d been laying into him and the next that fiery defiance was turning him on like a tap on full pressure. Somehow her incredible sexiness had got to him, hot-wired his libido into life until all he’d been able to think about was taking her in his arms and making love to her. Making her sweet body his.
And then she had mentioned Donatella. Vieri recalled her stunned expression when he had pushed her away, the hurt and pain that had been drawn across her face before she had collected herself, finally sweeping past him to the sanctuary of her room.
A couple of whisky-soaked hours had passed since then, but the memory still made Vieri grind down hard on his jaw. She hadn’t deserved that, the cruelly dismissive way he had treated her. He shouldn’t have taken out his seething anger for Donatella on her.
But maybe it was for the best. Throwing a handful of notes onto the bar, he rose unsteadily from the stool. For Harper’s sake they needed to keep their relationship professional, businesslike. Anything else, no matter how tempting, would just complicate matters, muddy the waters. He needed to protect her, against himself, because he couldn’t bear for her to get hurt. And that was what would happen if she tried to get close to him. Because he was emotionally sterile, he had nothing to give her. Donatella had seen to that.
It occurred to him that in a funny sort of way she had done him a favour by turning up, interfering in Harper’s choice of dress. If she hadn’t, the evening might well have ended in a very different way; it had certainly been heading rapidly down that path. He could have been in bed with Harper now, making love to her, maybe even for the second or third time. Because Vieri already knew that once with Harper would never be enough. Yes, it was just as well they had parted when they did.
Pushing open the door of the bar, he stumbled out, the cold air hitting his face, sobering him up. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers he set off in search of a taxi to take him home. The fact was, Harper McDonald was too good for him. He gave a gruff laugh into the night air. And that was something he had never imagined saying about any woman, ever.
* * *
‘Harper? Is that you?’ Harper had never, ever been so glad to hear her sister’s sleep-muffled voice.
‘Yes, Leah, it’s me.’
Awake for most of the night, Harper had been waiting for the hours to slowly drag by before she could finally call home. She had held her breath as the phone rang, willing her sister to answer it, terrified that she wasn’t there, that somehow she had gone missing again.
‘What time is it?’ Leah whispered groggily.
‘It’s nearly seven a.m. in Sicily.’
‘Sicily?’ This cut through the fog of sleep.
‘Yes, that’s where I am, Leah. In Sicily.’
‘What on earth are you doing there?’
‘What on earth do you think I’m doing here?’ Somewhere in amongst the massive relief that Leah was safe, Harper felt a surge of anger. ‘I’m clearing up your mess, of course.’ She gripped her phone tightly to her ear. ‘How could you do it, Leah? How could you disappear with thirty thousand dollars of Vieri Romano’s money?’
‘Oh.’ Harper could perfectly picture her sister’s guilty face. ‘You know about that?’
‘Of course I know about that. That’s why I’m here, repaying your debt.’
‘But how? I mean, I don’t understand.’
‘When you disappeared without a trace, thanks for that by the way, I had to go looking for you. I went to Spectrum...’
‘You flew to New York?’
‘No, I swam. Of course I bloody flew to New York.’ Harper took in a breath. ‘I was manhandled by Vieri’s henchmen because they thought I was you, then delivered to the great man himself, only to be told, once he’d established who I was, that you had scarpered with his money.’
‘Oh, God, Harper. I’m so sorry.’
‘So you should be. But frankly sorry isn’t going to cut it. So come on, then, I’m waiting. Why the hell did you do it?’
There was a pause on the other end of the phone.
‘It’s a bit of a long story.’
‘I thought it might be.’
‘I met this guy, Max Rodriguez.’ Leah started tentatively. ‘He was a bar manager at Spectrum but he was also a professional gambler. He said if I gave him the thirty thousand he could double it, maybe even triple it, in just one night.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘He was really convincing, Harper.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you to wonder why, if he was such a whizz at the gaming tables, he still needed to work in the bar of a nightclub?’
‘Not really.’
‘Honestly, Leah!’
‘It’s all very well for you to scoff now, with the benefit of hindsight. But at the time it seemed like an excellent plan. I thought I could repay Vieri, then send the rest of the money back home, take some of the pressure off you and Dad.’
‘How very kind.’ Harper kept the sarcasm in her voice but she could feel her anger starting to melt. This was typical of Leah, to get involved in a stupid, crazy scheme that brought nothing but trouble for those all around her, especially herself, but only because she was trying to help. Generous to a fault, and she had plenty of those, Leah did all the wrong things for the right reasons. ‘So what went wrong with this brilliant plan?’
‘Max lost the money.’ She sounded genuinely crestfallen. ‘Every last cent. I’d gone with him, to this casino in Atlantic City. Obviously I wasn’t going to let him just take my money without me being there to make sure he didn’t just run off with it.’
‘Obviously.’
�
��But after he’d lost the money he did a disappearing act. I ended up having to stay on at the casino, working in the kitchens to cover the drinks bill he’d run up, pay for the suite of rooms he’d booked, all using my money.’
‘Technically I think it was Vieri’s money.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘But you’re okay?’ Harper’s anxiety spiked. ‘I mean, they didn’t treat you badly?’
‘No. The staff at the casino were decent enough, given the circumstances. But owing Mr Romano thirty thousand dollars was bad enough in itself.’
‘Oh, Leah. Why didn’t you ring me?’
‘Because I was ashamed, I guess. Because I’d messed up yet again. I think I was hoping I would somehow get the money to repay him and no one need ever know anything about it.’
‘And how, exactly, were you going to do that?’
‘I don’t know. Rob a bank, marry a rich man, sell my body to the highest bidder?’
‘Leah!’
‘I had no idea, Harper, beyond going into hiding and getting as many jobs as I could and saving like hell so that I could at least start to pay some of the money back. I was being trained to work in the casino, on the tables, when Vieri’s goons burst in and bundled me into a limo. I had no idea where we were going. Turned out to be the nearest airport.’
‘But whatever were you thinking?’ Harper moved the phone to her other ear. ‘Even if by some miracle you hadn’t lost all the money, what about the original deal you had made with Vieri?’
‘I was going to pay him back his money and then pull out. I knew I’d have to look for a job somewhere else, but I figured it would be worth it.’
‘Didn’t you care about letting him down?’
‘Oh, come on, Harper. You don’t feel sorry for men like Vieri Romano! It was a stupid idea anyway.’
‘Yeah, a stupid idea that I now have to see through.’
‘So is that what you’re doing in Sicily?’ Leah breathed into the phone. ‘Honouring my agreement?’
