Moth To The Flame

She looked round her irresolutely. There was plenty of food, she knew. All she had to do was prepare some. And things could be very much worse, she reminded herself. True, she was disappointed that Jan was getting married in haste and secrecy, but judging by the reference to Santino Vallone in her note, she had her reasons. But she had the free run of the apartment in Jan’s absence, and only herself to consider for the next few days.

But she did not feel like a lonely meal after her solitary day. Jan would probably not have been particularly interested to hear about her experiences, but she would have lent an indifferent ear all the same. Now there was no one to share even at the remotest level her sense of wonder at all she had seen, or listen to her plans for the following day, and she felt almost childishly hurt.

Oh, damnation, she thought angrily, brushing the stinging tears from her eyes with a dismissive hand. She was in grave danger of relapsing into self-pity, which was not a failing she usually suffered from. What she had to do now was make the most of her remaining time in Rome, because when Jan returned she would be on her honeymoon, and that was a situation which she would not be able to intrude upon no matter how lonely she might feel. Jan’s return in fact would have to be the signal for her departure.

But she wouldn’t spend the evening brooding. She would shower and change and go out for a meal. The decision made, she felt infinitely more cheerful. As her stay was going to be inevitably curtailed, she could afford to splurge a little bit more on her daily spending. She walked through the bedroom and into the bathroom beyond, discarding sandals and clothes as she went.

It was bliss to wash the dust and heat of the day from her body under the shower, and she didn’t bother to use the shower cap hanging on the peg by the tiled cubicle. There was a range of talcs and toilet waters on a glass shelf above the bath and she sampled a few of them before scenting herself liberally from the most exotic. She picked up a towel and rubbed at her damp hair which tumbled in a copper cascade about her naked shoulders. She was just on the point of returning to the bedroom when she heard the door buzzer sound.

There was a towelling robe hanging on the back of the door and without pausing she grabbed at it, thrusting her arms into the sleeves and tying the belt round her slim waist. At the top of her mind was that it could be Jan, or even Mario come to invite her to go with them to what was, after all, a family occasion. As she hurried barefoot along the gallery towards the door, it occurred to her that the robe was much too large for her. In fact it would also have been much too large for Jan as well, and flushing slightly she realised it must belong to Mario. Perhaps he had merely moved out for a few nights to accommodate her, she thought as she fumbled for the chain on the door. In any case, it was none of her business.

The buzzer sounded again, loud and imperative, and in her haste she forgot all about the preliminary precaution of using the door intercom. Even as the door swung open, a warning note sounded inside her head, but by then it was too late, because the man who had been waiting impatiently on the threshold was already pushing his way past her into the apartment.

Juliet controlled a gasp of fury. Who does he think he is? she raged inwardly as the newcomer strode down the steps to the salotto and stood looking around him. If it was Mario, brother-in-law or no, she would give him a piece of her mind, but suddenly it was borne in upon her that Mario would surely be a younger man, and an unpleasing conviction began to take hold of her mind as she studied her peremptory visitor.

She felt at an utter disadvantage, of course—her hair hanging round her face in damp tendrils, and wearing nothing except this robe which plainly didn’t belong to her. She was in no fit state to cope with anyone—least of all this stranger who behaved as if he owned the place.

He was very dark, she saw, with thick hair untouched with grey, growing back from his forehead. He was deeply tanned with a high-bridged nose and a mouth that despite its sensual curve looked as if it had never uttered the word ‘compromise’ in its life. His eyes, when he swung back to look at her, were surprisingly light in colour—almost tawny, she found herself thinking, and oddly sinister against the darkness of his skin. And he was good and angry. About that there wasn’t the slightest doubt.

For reasons she could not have explained even to herself, Juliet found that she was instinctively tightening the sash of that stupid robe.

He rapped a question at her in Italian, and she shook her head.

‘I’m sorry.’ She was ashamed to hear a slight tremor in her voice. ‘Sono inglese. No comprende. Do you speak English?’

‘Of course I speak English,’ he snapped furiously, and so he did, faultlessly with barely a trace of an accent. ‘But I understood, signorina, that you spoke fluent Italian. Or is that merely another of the fairy stories that my impressionable brother has chosen to believe about you?’

Juliet swallowed. So her instinct had been right. His height alone should have warned her. He was certainly taller than most of the men she had seen that day, lean too, in an expensive dark suit with a silky texture. He had pushed the jacket back and was standing watching her, his hands resting lightly on his hips. But there was no relaxation in his pose. She was reminded all too strongly of a mountain lion about to spring.

What had Jan said? As dark as Satan, and she was right, except for those curious tawny eyes. But perhaps she hadn’t been close enough to him to notice them, Juliet thought, and wished very much that she wasn’t either, particularly when they appeared to be contemptuously stripping her naked.

Trying to steady her voice, she said, ‘I think, signore, that you have made a mistake.’

He smiled grimly. ‘On the contrary, signorina, it is you that has made the mistake. I ordered you to leave my brother alone. I offered what I believe were generous terms for you to do so, yet you have ignored my letter and flag***rantly disobeyed my orders.’

Juliet’s lips parted soundlessly. Jan had said she had only seen him once and that at a distance, but had he seen her? It seemed not, or he would never have mistaken her for her sister.

A feeling of helplessness was beginning to overwhelm her. She simply wasn’t prepared for this. Jan had mentioned no letter nor any offer of terms, only talked vaguely of threats. Stealing a glance at Santino Vallone, Juliet could well believe that he would carry out any threat that he might utter. The dark face wore an expression of almost patrician disgust as he stared at her, but there was a ruthlessness about its hard lines that it was impossible to ignore. Formidable was a word she rarely used, but it applied to him.

The thought came to her that Jan might have been expecting this visit and might have deliberately absented herself, but she crushed it under. Jan had gone away to get married, and this man was here to put a spoke in the wheel of her wedding plans if he could. Only—he thought she was Jan, and clearly he had no idea that her marriage to his brother was so imminent.

All she had to do was explain, show him her passport from her handbag in the bedroom and he would leave. But he would leave in search of Jan and Mario and it was possible, even probable, that he would find them and perhaps even prevent the wedding taking place. Jan was obviously more disturbed by his influence than she had revealed, or why her hurried and secretive departure?

But if—if she let him go on believing that she was Jan, it was just possible that she could keep him on a string for a few days until the wedding was over and his interference no longer mattered. At the very least, she could give Jan and Mario a head start.

She flung her head back and lifted her chin. Her eyes sparked back at him. ‘Orders, signore? Who gave you the right to give me orders?’

He made an impatient gesture. ‘We are not here to talk of rights, signorina,’ he said coldly. ‘I have come to offer you for the last time the terms I stated in my letter. I understood from your reply that you were willing to consider them, but I am not prepared to put up with any more prevarication from you.’

Juliet digested his words in silence, her brain whirling feverishly. She seemed to be getting into deep water already. What could he mean? Had Jan actually written to him, and if so had she merely been pretending to agree to his terms in order to win time? Surely that was the answer. She could never have seriously considered his offer to buy her off. Juliet wouldn’t believe it. Jan could never have permitted such a consideration to enter her mind, she argued with herself vehemently. Her sister must simply have been playing for time.

She gave a little shrug. ‘You’re clearly so used to having people accede to your slightest wish, signore, I was afraid what the shock might do to you if I said what I really thought.’

The tawny eyes swept over her and she was aware of a daunting blaze in their depths.

‘Indeed, signorina?’ he drawled. ‘I think my system can stand the strain. What was wrong with the offer? Didn’t it contain sufficient money?’

A cold fury possessed Juliet. Whatever faults Jan might have, she was her sister, and no arrogant Italian male, however wealthy, was going to insinuate that she was some kind of cheap gold-digger eager to be bought off for some unknown amount of cash.

Her tone was dulcet, but her smile was dangerous as she said, ‘You don’t have sufficient money, signore. It’s Mario that I want, and no amount of bribery by you can alter that, so please don’t try.’

His lip curled. ‘I admire the note of conviction, signorina, but I don’t believe it. I also have my convictions, and one of them is that most men have their price, and all women. I am merely waiting to hear yours.’

She longed to do something thoroughly unladylike, like slapping him hard or raking her fingernails down his smooth tanned cheek, but she had to forget her own angry impulses and play the scene as if she were Jan.

Jan wouldn’t allow herself to be thrown by her deshabille and damp hair. She would have smiled, pouting a little at his discourtesy, and pushed back her hair, letting the robe open slightly at the front so that Santino Vallone was aware that under it she wore nothing but her perfume. She would have enticed him to a more approachable frame of mind, and played him like a fish on a hook with her audacious beauty.

But knowing what Jan would probably have done and acting on it herself were two entirely different things. And the depressing part of it was that Juliet didn’t have a clue where to start. Men like the arrogant Santino Vallone were totally out of her league. Yet she had to try if she was to continue to convince him that she was Jan.

‘Lost for words, signorina?’ came the jibing remark. ‘Or are you too busy doing sums in your head?’

She made herself smile at him. ‘Actually, signore, I was just thinking I find your low opinion of women in general and myself in particular rather distressing.’ She strove for lightness of tone. ‘I’m wondering what I can do to redress the balance.’

His brows rose sardonically. ‘So the little bird has decided to sing a different tune. Bravo! And yet you are very charming when you’re angry, cara, or at least when you’re pretending to be. No wonder you’ve had such a devastating effect on my gullible brother. But that little game’s over now—or was when you decided to break the rules, so let’s not waste any more time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Juliet shrugged, and felt the towelling robe slip away from one shoulder. Her immediate instinct was to drag it back into place and it took all the self-command of which she was capable to leave the revealing folds of fabric where they were. She could feel his eyes on her, frankly assessing, lingering over the exposed line of her throat and the creamy skin of her bare shoulder, and she could feel a tight knot of fear in her chest—fear and something perilously approaching excitement. Her hands began to ball into fists at her sides and she made herself relax. Jan, she thought wryly, would never tie herself into a mass of tensions just because a man was looking at her. Besides, she was supposed to be a successful model who was used to being looked at. And to be fair to herself, she wouldn’t be fighting this strange sort of panic under normal circumstances. Only these were not really normal circumstances, and this was not just any man.

She rallied herself defensively. ‘But I don’t quite understand you, signore. What game are you referring to and what rules am I supposed to have broken?’

‘Quite the guileless innocent, aren’t you, cara, when it suits you to be. The game is love, for want of a better word, and the rule is that a woman like you does not expect the man to marry her.’

She had half expected what he was going to say, but the shock of hearing it brutally spelled out was sickening. She felt as if a fist had been driven into the pit of her stomach, and her breathing quickened perceptibly.

His words did not apply to her—she knew that, and that should have lessened their impact, yet that was impossible because they applied to Jan instead. How dared he? she thought as hurt and bewilderment fought with the anger inside her. How dared he say such things—make such insinuations about Jan?

Clearly he must know that she and Mario had been living together, at least on a casual basis, and this was the reason for his condemnation. That was the traditional viewpoint after all. The man could be as wild as he chose, but the girl must be pure, jealously guarding her virginity for her wedding day. And because Jan had transgressed this unwritten law with her future husband, she was regarded as an outcast. The colour rose faintly in her cheeks as she realised that Santino had probably recognised the bathrobe that she was wearing at that moment as Mario’s and drawn his own conclusions.

She remembered too Jan’s bitter remarks about his hypocrisy. It was the ultimate in male chauvinism, she thought angrily, to use women for his own cynical pleasure and then despise the woman who had been his partner in that pleasure. Besides, Jan and Mario loved each other. Didn’t that enter into the reckoning? She found her own resolution hardening. She and Santino Vallone would play a whole new game, and this time she would invent the rules.

She smiled at him, her long lashes brushing her cheeks. ‘Your argument should be with Mario, signore. After all, it was he who proposed marriage to me, not the other way round.’

‘But I only have your word for that, cara,’ he said softly, with a sting underlying every word.

She pretended to wince, laughing a little as she did so, controlling her own rage and contempt. ‘Ouch, you play dirty, signore, and that’s not in the rules either.’

‘I write my own,’ he said quite pleasantly, and she believed him. Quite inconsequentially she found herself wondering how he would react when he discovered the truth about her deception, but she comforted herself with the reflection that by the time that happened she would be safely back in England and Jan and Mario would have to bear the brunt of his wrath together. Besides, she reasoned, Jan could always say with perfect truth that she’d had no idea what her sister had been up to in her absence.

‘You seem nervous,’ he observed.

‘Is it any wonder?’ She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. She had not intended it to be provocative—her lips were genuinely dry—but she saw his slight reaction to it and her confidence grew. ‘You—you disturb me.’

‘I’m flattered, cara.’ He sounded amused. ‘And you, I need hardly say, would disturb any red-blooded male.’

‘Do you include yourself in that category?’ she asked impudently.

‘Need you ask?’ He was drawling again.

She shrugged. ‘I’m intrigued, that’s all. I understood that it was because blue blood flows exclusively in the veins of the Vallone family that my candidature was unwelcome.’

She’d drawn a bow at a venture, but she knew she’d hit the target. She sent him a demure glance and saw that he was laughing openly.

‘Poor Mario,’ he said. ‘He never stood a chance, did he? And where is he? Skulking in the bedroom perhaps, afraid to show himself?’

‘Oh, no.’ She was startled by the unexpectedness of the question and came close to faltering. Naturally he would expect her to know Mario’s whereabouts, but could she manage to stall him on that as well? ‘I—I haven’t seen him today.’

He was no longer laughing, his brows drawn together in a dark frown.

‘That is curious. I missed him at the office and was told that he was meeting you here.’

‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘perhaps he changed his mind.’ She walked away and began to fiddle aimlessly with the roses. ‘Perhaps he’s changed his mind about everything and you don’t have to worry anymore. Have you considered that, signore?’

‘I doubt it,’ he said drily. ‘For one thing, you don’t find the prospect nearly worrying enough, cara. No woman sees a potential meal-ticket vanishing without making at least some effort to recover it. If you had any fears of Mario’s deserting you, then you’d have come to terms with me long ago.’

She pretended to yawn. ‘Well, the meal-ticket is elsewhere just now, signore. Which is a pity really, because it’s past time for dinner, and I’m starving—so if you’d excuse me …’

He consulted his watch. It was platinum, she noticed, and so were the elegant links in the cuffs of his silk shirt.

‘Go and pretty yourself, cara,’ he said almost brusquely. ‘I’ll take you to dinner.’

Juliet was frankly taken aback. She hadn’t intended him to react like that. The strain of this play-acting was beginning to tell on her, and she had hoped he would take the hint and leave.

‘But you don’t want to dine with me,’ she said uncertainly. It was Juliet speaking now, all the assumed bravado dropping from her like a cloak.

‘I didn’t, it’s true, but I find it an idea that gains in appeal with each minute that passes.’ His lips curled in apparent self-derision. ‘Hurry and dress, bella mia, while I phone and book a table for us.’

She was about to protest again, but she hesitated. He was going to find it acutely suspicious, if, having led him on as she had to admit she had been doing, she now displayed a genuine reluctance to be in his company.

She groaned inwardly. She was hungry all right. She’d made do with a simple lunch of fruit, but the thought of another couple of hours in his company, this time in the secluded intimacy of a restaurant, was calculated to destroy her appetite. Jan would have carried the whole thing off without a tremor—she’d wanted after all to beard the lion in his den, but she—all she wanted was some peace. She had no real confidence that she would be able to continue with her self-imposed charade over the next few days. If she had to, she would leave the flat and trust to luck that she would find a cheap hotel somewhere, and that Santino Vallone wasn’t having her watched, a course of action she was certain would not be beyond him.

She gave him a cautious glance beneath her lashes. That terrifying anger she had glimpsed seemed to have subsided for the moment, but she sensed that it was still there just beneath the surface and she had no wish to unleash it again.

She managed a breathless little laugh. ‘Well, thank you, signore. But I wonder what the gossip columnists will make of you dining těte-à-těte with your future sister-in-law?’

He had the telephone receiver in his hand and was in the act of dialling, but he turned slightly and looked at her over his shoulder.

‘I imagine they’ll draw the appropriate conclusions,’ he said softly. ‘And allow me to remind you yet again, Janina mia, that you have no future as my sister-in-law.’

He turned his attention back to his telephone call and Juliet fled.

Once in the bedroom, she gave a swift glance along the brief line of clothes hanging in her section of the wardrobes, and shook her head. They were all strictly Juliet dresses, and none of them appropriate for the role she was playing. She gave a longing glance at one new dress she had brought for this holiday—white with bands of delicate Swiss embroidery, cut in an Empire style which showed off her slenderness and gave her an air of fragility.

But for an evening in a smart Rome restaurant with Santino Vallone, fragility was the last effect she wanted to achieve. She pushed the sliding door along and stared at the racks’ of clothes belonging to Jan. There was bound to be something here that she could use. She wondered where Santino was taking her, and hoped fervently that it would not be a restaurant where Jan was known. She couldn’t hope to keep the deception going with someone who would recognise Jan on sight, although she supposed there was enough of a superficial resemblance to pass at a distance. They were about the same height and build and their colouring was similar, and she supposed this was why Santino Vallone had not questioned her identity. He had expected to meet a red-haired English girl at the apartment, and his expectations had been fulfilled, although not quite in the way he thought.

She seized a dress at random and held it against herself, looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror. It was black and ankle-length, the skirt of a silky crepe, and the long-sleeved bodice in exquisite black lace. It was far more décolletée than anything she had ever worn, but she just had to hope it would give her the air of sophistication that she needed.

Her hair was another problem. Although it was almost dry again, it would not be appropriate to tie it back in her usual simple style, and she supposed the most sensible thing to do would be to twist it into a smooth knot at the nape of her neck. Nor could she hope to imitate Jan’s expertise with cosmetics, just make sparing use of eyeshadow to accentuate the green in her eyes, and relieve some of the pallor in her cheeks with blusher. She was not dissatisfied with the result when she had finished, and her hairstyle was very becoming, she thought, showing off her small ears and the delicate line of her jaw. No matter how tremulous she might feel, outwardly she looked poised and in control of the situation, and that was as much as she could hope for. She gave herself one last look and turned to reach for her dress which she had left lying across the bed.

From the doorway, Santino said coolly, ‘Charming. My respect for Mario’s judgment, if not for his common sense, increases by leaps and bounds.’

Juliet couldn’t suppress the startled cry that rose to her lips. All she was aware of were his eyes appraising her, as she stood there defenceless in the lacy black waist slip, and the half-cup bra which lifted her rounded breasts without covering them. Her face flamed and she snatched up the dress, holding it in front of her.

‘How dare you walk in without knocking!’

His brows rose. ‘Why the pretence at modesty, cara? You’ve worn more revealing garments every day, I’m certain, on that catwalk at Di Lorenzo with more eyes upon you than mine, not to mention that more private performance that I was privileged to glimpse at the Contessa Leontana’s party a few months ago.’

She was too embarrassed to heed his words closely. She knew that Jan would have outstared him, and it was true that girls wore less than she had on now every day on the beaches of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, and if she herself had been sunbathing in a bikini she could probably have borne his scrutiny. But this was not a beach, it was a bedroom, and she’d never been in this kind of situation half-clothed with a man before. It might be utterly ridiculous in this day and age, but it was true. In some ways she was as old-fashioned as Mim herself.