A Tainted Beauty

by Sharon Kendrick

  But taste was subjective, wasn’t it? Lily imagined the bedrooms turned from their faded familiarity into places with horrible swagged four-poster beds. She thought of corporate beige carpeting and those over-the-top hotel displays of flowers, which always made her think of funeral parlours. ‘And that’s supposed to reassure me?’

  He felt like telling her that it was not her place to be reassured, yet he wanted her so much that he was prepared to overlook her impertinence. ‘If it means that you’ll have dinner with me, then, yes—be reassured. Come on, Lily. Just one evening. One dinner. What are you so frightened of?’

  She wondered what he’d say if she answered ‘everything’. If she told him that the whole world looked a terrifying place just now. That she was worrying about her brother’s future. About how the two of them were going to adjust to living in that tiny apartment.

  But hot on the trail of her fears came the realisation that she was becoming a bit of a hermit. She tried to remember the last time she’d been tempted to go out for dinner with a man. Her broken relationship with Tom had damaged her, yes—but wasn’t she in danger of letting the damage deepen if she locked herself away, like some medieval woman in a tower? When had she last done something really reckless, just for the hell of it? Why shouldn’t she spend the evening with Ciro D’Angelo—unless she really thought herself so spineless that she’d be unable to resist falling into bed with him?

  ‘I don’t want a late night,’ she warned.

  Ciro smiled as a feeling of triumph spread through his veins. ‘What’s your number?’

  ‘407649,’ she said, noticing that he didn’t bother writing it down as he took a card from his pocket and handed it to her.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ he said.

  A figure appeared at the window—a middle-aged woman carrying jars of jam—and Ciro automatically got up to hold the door open for her, noticing her curious glance as she passed. Stepping outside into the sunlit day, his senses began to fizz with excitement. Because for a moment back then, he’d thought that Lily Scott was going to refuse to have dinner with him. A moment when he had tasted the unfamiliar flavour of uncertainty.

  Yet wasn’t this the way things were supposed to be, before emancipation had made women almost laughably easy? Before they’d mistakenly thought that behaving as predatorily as men was somehow a good thing. Men used to have to work at getting a woman into bed—this was just the first time in his life that it had ever happened to him.

  He shot a last glance towards the tearoom, where he could see Lily’s pink-covered curves in all their splendour and he could feel the powerful arrowing of lust. Was she aware that she had hooked him with a hunger which was tearing at his groin? His mouth flattened with a look which anyone who knew him would have recognised instantly. It was a look which preceded getting exactly what he wanted.

  Because no matter how much she tried to resist him, Lily Scott would soon be in his bed.

  She was, after all, only human.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT HAD been a stupid thing to agree to and Lily wondered what on earth had got into her. She should pick up the phone and tell Ciro D’Angelo she’d changed her mind. That she hadn’t been thinking straight when she’d agreed to have dinner with him. But what could she possibly say to back that up, which wouldn’t have her sounding like some kind of wimp?

  I’m sorry, Ciro—but you make me feel all the things I’ve vowed never to feel again. You make me ache with longing when I look at you—and I don’t do that stuff. Not any more.

  But then it passed beyond the time when she could reasonably cancel—especially as her stepmother had come up to her room and started bombarding her with furious but unanswerable questions about why Ciro D’Angelo had asked her out in the first place.

  After she’d managed to get rid of her, Lily grabbed a quick shower—only just emerging dripping into a towel, when her brother rang from boarding school. Jonny loved the Grange even more than she did but he spent the entire conversation reassuring her that the new flat was going to be absolutely fine and that she wasn’t to worry about a thing. She realised that at sixteen he was in for something of a shock when he saw their new home for himself. Yet there had been something about his determined bravery which had made her mouth wobble and she’d had to try very hard not to cry. He’d had so much to cope with in his short life, she thought fiercely—and this was just one more thing.

  By the time she put down the phone it was getting on for eight and there wasn’t time for much more than a lick of lipstick, or to pile the damp strands of her hair on top of her head in a rapid up-do. She hesitated over what to wear but ended up wriggling into a dress which was always guaranteed to lift her mood, no matter what. She’d made it herself from a vintage pattern in the feminine design of the fifties—the only style which seemed to suit her curvy figure. It was deep-blue and fitted, the sweetheart neckline a little on the low side, but the ankle brushing hemline made the dress feel relatively demure. And that was important on this particular night. She had no intention of giving out the wrong kind of message to Ciro D’Angelo. Of making him think that she would just fall into his arms as she was certain that every other woman did.

  Hearing the sound of his car roaring down the drive soon after eight, Lily picked up her handbag, aware of the simmering waves of anger emanating from her stepmother who was standing by the front door like a guard-dog.

  ‘Do you know what kind of man he is?’ Suzy demanded.

  ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me,’ said Lily flatly.

  ‘A billionaire who’s famous the world over for his sophisticated conquests, that’s who! A man who dates supermodels and heiresses! Care to tell me where you fit into that kind of world, Lily?’ Running a speculative palm over a short skirt which made the very best of her undeniably good legs, Suzy adopted a look of sudden coyness. ‘Why, he’s closer to my age than yours.’

  Lily opened the front door. Was he? She guessed he must be. What was he—mid-thirties? While Suzy was only just forty herself. A faint shiver ran through her as she looked at her beautiful stepmother and a disturbingly graphic image came to mind. Of Suzy coming on to Ciro and running those glossy red nails through the ebony gleam of his hair. Suddenly, she felt sick. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘That he’s out of your league!’ With an effort, Suzy forced a smile. ‘I’m only telling you for your own protection, Lily. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ said Lily quietly, closing the door behind her.

  On suddenly shaky legs, she crunched her way over the gravel to where Ciro was just getting out of the car. And despite her reservations about her stepmother’s motives, suddenly she could see exactly what Suzy had meant. Out of her league? Why, in his expensive suit, with his skin burnished gold by the evening sun, he looked like someone who’d fallen to earth from a different planet.

  Yet he didn’t resemble the seasoned seducer Suzy had just described. In fact, he was looking at her with a heart-stopping smile curving the edges of his incredible mouth.

  ‘Dio, quanto sei incantevole,’ he murmured as he held open the car door for her.

  Lily slid onto the low seat. ‘You do realise that not speaking Italian means I’m at a disadvantage, and I don’t have a clue what that means?’

  He hesitated for only a moment. ‘It means that you look very… nice.’

  Lily suspected that the word ‘nice’ wasn’t one which featured in Ciro D’Angelo’s vocabulary. And the look he was slanting at her certainly didn’t make her feel ‘nice’. In fact, it was making her feel deliciously and dangerously sexy. Demurely, she smoothed her dress down over her knees as he closed the door. ‘Thanks.’

  He got in beside her. ‘I’ve left the roof down—you don’t mind? Women sometimes fuss about their hair.’

  Quashing down her faint feeling of hysteria that already he was talking about other women, Lily shook her head. ‘I’ve got so many pins in it that it would take a
wind-tunnel to dislodge it.’

  He shot her a curious glance. ‘Do you never wear it down?’

  ‘Not very often. It’s so thick that it just gets in the way.’

  ‘I’ll bet it does.’ Suddenly, he imagined what it might look like cascading over her bare breasts and an almost unbearable wave of desire washed over him. With an effort, he tried to think of something other than what kind of nipples she had. ‘Have you decided where you’re going to live?’

  Lily gave a mirthless smile. He made it sound as if she had hundreds of choices at her fingertips. ‘I’m going to be moving to the apartment above the teashop where I work.’

  ‘And what’s it like?’

  She wondered how he would react if she answered ‘like a shoebox’. ‘Oh, it’s very convenient for work,’ she said stoically. ‘It hasn’t been lived in for a couple of years and it needs a little decorating. I want to make it look like home by the time Jonny arrives next week.’

  Ciro’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel as something unfamiliar exploded inside him. ‘Jonny?’

  ‘My brother.’

  Her brother. If he’d suddenly heard that his share prices had just quadrupled in value, Ciro could not have felt more pleasure than he did at that moment. ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Yes. He’s away at boarding school, but he’ll be home next weekend. He hasn’t seen the new place yet and I wanted to brighten it up for him.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘And you don’t have any—’

  ‘No, we don’t have any parents.’ Lily’s words quickly cut through his as she anticipated the next question, because she’d heard it asked a million times before and always in that same slightly tentative tone which came pretty close to pity. ‘They’re both dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s life.’ She stared very hard at the road ahead. ‘How about you?’

  ‘My mother is still alive. She lives in Naples. My father… well, he died a long time ago.’

  Lily heard the sudden bitterness which had entered his voice but the steeliness of his profile made her bite back the question which had been hovering on her lips. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘Everybody has their own stuff which they carry around with them.’

  ‘I guess they do,’ said Ciro, finding himself in the unusual situation of having an intimate conversation with a woman he hadn’t even had sex with. And the thought of having sex with her made him start to ache again.

  ‘Why not just sit back and enjoy the ride?’ he said unevenly.

  Lily tried to do as he suggested, but it wasn’t easy. She wanted to pretend that this was her life. She wanted to forget the cramped reality of her new home and the worry of how she could possibly make it feel big enough for Jonny, when he came home. And she wanted to stop feeling this powerful sexual attraction towards the dark and dangerous Neapolitan.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘A place called The Meadow House—do you know it?’

  ‘You mean the hotel?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ he said, without missing a beat.

  Lily gave her dress an unnecessary tug. ‘You’re staying there?’

  ‘Mmm. I didn’t want to drive back to London after dinner, and besides—’ he glanced in his rear mirror ‘—I like to think of it as a bit of a fact-finding mission. Finding out what the local competition is like. They’ve just employed a Michelin-starred chef who’s come from Paris to oversee the kitchen and I’m interested to know what’s on the menu.’

  Lily wasn’t remotely interested in the food on offer, or the fortunes of some unknown chef, and she suspected that Ciro wasn’t either. Because it didn’t matter how he dressed it up. The bottom line was that he was taking her back to his hotel—and the message from that was loud and clear. He obviously expected her to sleep with him!

  She glanced down at his powerful thighs. At the strong, olive-skinned hands which bit into the soft leather of the steering wheel as if it were a woman’s flesh. Of course he expected her to sleep with him! He was a red-blooded Italian man and the atmosphere between them had been sizzling from the get-go. He was hardly bringing her to his hotel for an evening of sophisticated chit-chat!

  But she was disappointed that he could be so… obvious. Despite all her reservations about this date, she’d expected him to at least have a stab at playing the gentleman. Did he really think she was going to fall into bed with him simply because she’d agreed to have dinner? She stared at the hedgerows which were whipping past them, their leaves gilded rose-gold by the light of the setting sun. Because if that was the case—then he was in for a shock.

  Lost in thought, Lily barely noticed the rest of the journey until the car slid to a halt in the car park at the back of The Meadow House, alongside a fleet of other shiny and expensive vehicles. She followed Ciro into the main reception where everyone seemed to know him, and they were taken through to the garden at the back.

  Here, the tables had been laid up as if the management had suddenly decided to hold an impromptu picnic. The place settings had a Bohemian look, with mismatched crockery and wine glasses which were coloured ruby, emerald and amber. Starry jasmine scented the air and tea-lights glimmered on every available surface, so that it felt like walking into an intimate arena of flickering light.

  Despite her reservations about the evening ahead, or the fact that their arrival had attracted the interest of the upmarket diners, Lily was enchanted as she looked around. ‘Oh, it’s beautiful,’ she said softly.

  Ciro watched as the candlelight gilded her golden head. ‘You’ve never been here before?’

  ‘Never.’

  He heard the trace of wistfulness in her voice as they sat down and once again he found himself wondering why she sometimes seemed so lost. As if she’d suddenly found herself alone in a great big world with most of the cares of it on her slender shoulders. What had happened to make her like that? He waited until they’d ordered and their champagne had been poured, before sitting back and studying her.

  The candlelight was casting flickering shadows over the pale skin of her décolletage, deepening the shadows where her luscious breasts curved invitingly.

  ‘Pretty dress,’ he murmured.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Pretty colour, too. Did you buy it especially to match your eyes?’

  Lily smiled. She’d bought the material because it had been in the end-of-line bin and an absolute bargain. ‘Actually, I didn’t buy it at all. I made it myself.’

  ‘You make your own clothes?’

  If she’d announced that she wing-walked on light aircraft, he couldn’t have looked or sounded more shocked. ‘You seem surprised.’

  ‘That’s because I am.’ Ciro took a sip of water to ease the sudden dryness in his throat. ‘I don’t usually come across women who are quite so accomplished, or so hard-working.’

  ‘No?’ Lily couldn’t stop herself. ‘Then what kind of women do you usually come across?’

  There was a pause as Ciro considered her question. He thought of pencil skirts and killer stilettos. Of glossy lips and crotchless panties. Of women who were this soft, sweet creature’s very antithesis. He thought of Eugenia, with her impeccable pedigree and beautiful, calculating expression. And he looked into Lily’s blue eyes and nobody seemed to exist in that moment except for her. ‘Nobody who matters,’ he said softly. ‘And here comes our food.’

  The waiter brought plates of squash, fanned into artistic golden slivers and dotted with soft goat’s cheese, and Lily stared at it, wondering if she would be able to do it justice. How ironic to be presented with such delicious food on the one time her normally robust appetite seemed to have deserted her. But maybe Ciro felt the same way, judging from the way he was picking uninterestedly at his starter.

  Their barely touched plates were replaced with fish and vegetables and Lily forced herself to eat some more, looking up to find his dark eyes fixed intently on her as s
he finished a mouthful.

  ‘I have spinach in my teeth?’ she said.

  He shook his head, envying any vegetable which had been given such intimate access. ‘Your teeth are perfect. I’m just curious about you, that’s all.’

  She pushed her plate away and picked up her wine glass. ‘In what way?’

  ‘I want to know why you’re leaving the Grange to share a flat above a tearoom with your brother.’

  ‘Because my father didn’t make a will.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Lily’s fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass, his words reminding her of all the upheaval which lay ahead. ‘Because he remarried after my mother died—to a woman much younger than him. And presumably he was too… well, too preoccupied to remember to keep his affairs up to date. Not that there was much time for that.’ She worried her teeth along the surface of her lip, almost glad of that brief moment of discomfort. ‘They’d only been married ten months when he dropped dead from a heart attack.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply.

  The sympathy in his voice took Lily back to a memory she’d tried her best to erase—but some memories were too big and dramatic to ever forget. The image of her father clutching at his chest—his face waxy and beaded with sweat. The piercing sound of her stepmother’s hysterical screams echoing around the dining room. After shouting at Suzy to call the ambulance, Lily had done what she could—but it had been in vain. A first-aid certificate was pretty useless when it came to single-handedly trying to resuscitate a middle-aged man who was considerably overweight—and Tony Scott had been pronounced dead at the scene.

  Quickly, Lily raised her champagne glass to her lips and took a deep mouthful, the sharp bubbles making her blink. ‘Stuff happens,’ she said, in a flat voice. ‘You can’t change it. Suzy got everything and I had to accept that.’

  Ciro’s eyes narrowed. She showed a remarkable lack of resentment about her fate, he thought—especially as her stepmother seemed to have no qualms about sending her out penniless into the world.