The Italian's Trophy Mistress

Two weeks ago her mother had been having the contents of her stomach unceremoniously pumped out. An overdose of sleeping pills and vast quantities of alcohol. ‘One teeny drink too many and I forgot I’d already taken my pills—too silly of me, darling,’ had been the excuse she’d feebly proffered.

But Bianca wasn’t so sure. Approaching her fiftieth birthday, no regular man in her life, her once fantastic looks fading rapidly, Helene Jay was pitifully vulnerable. Her always volatile temperament was daily growing more brittle. Anything could happen.

Reaching her mother’s side, Bianca took her arm, inwardly flinching at the extreme thinness of the flesh beneath her fingers, and turned her gently back into the hall, closing the door behind them.

‘Helene—don’t—’ she exhorted, her voice riven with compassion as a sudden storm of sobs shook the older woman’s frame. She couldn’t bear to see her mother like this, her thick black mascara smudged into panda-like circles, her scarlet lipstick gravitating into the fine lines around her mouth.

‘That little creep was a gigolo! I had no idea! How could I have?’ she wailed brokenly. ‘He assumed I had to pay for male company!’

‘Then he’s obviously either completely stupid, or blind.’ Bianca did her utmost to soothe the already battered ego, her shaking fingers reaching a tissue from her bag to mop the mascara-streaked tears from her mother’s face, murmuring with what she hoped was the right balance of humour and concern, ‘I thought you and Jeanne were settled for the night, watching television.’

Helene jerked her head away, her recent humiliation momentarily forgotten. ‘That programme you said was unmissable was deadly boring and Jeanne’s got no conversation to speak of—discussing knitting patterns and recipes is her idea of sparkling repartee—and do stop treating me like a child, darling. I know you mean well, but it can be stultifying! I needed a drink and as this house has become a positive temperance hall I went out to get one.’

And unknowingly picked up a gigolo, Bianca thought despairingly. Years ago her mother had never lacked attentive male company but as time had crept inexorably onwards adoring lovers had become demeaning one-night stands, her spending on the latest fashions more incautious, her drinking habits more injurious.

This latest incident with the golden youth who had wanted payment for services about to be rendered could be the final nudge that could tip the fading, once fabulously beautiful woman clear over the edge.

And where the heck was Jeanne?

As if in answer to Bianca’s unspoken question a stout, elderly woman descended the stairs, tying the belt of a serviceable fawn dressing gown around what passed for her waist.

‘I heard shouting—such a commotion! I came as soon as I could.’

As soon as she’d located her false teeth and removed her curlers, Bianca translated wearily. To Aunt Jeanne respectability was all.

‘I heard a man’s voice, calling you names—and you screeching.’ Her mild blue eyes hardened as she took in the ravaged state of her younger sister’s face. ‘You told me, Helene, that you were tired and fancied an early night. So I went up early, too.’ She vented a long sigh. ‘You tricked me. I didn’t come all this way to look after you to be made a fool of.’

Cesare bade his sister and brother-in-law goodnight, impatient to end the evening that had dragged so slowly since Bianca’s departure carefully concealed behind a bland smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

The caterers had left half an hour ago and Denton was doing some unnecessary clearing up in the kitchen. Curtly dismissing him for the night, Cesare turned off the lights and headed for his study.

Normally, the quiet, book-lined room was a peaceful oasis in his hectic working life. No fax machines, computer screens or telephones to spoil the relaxing atmosphere. Whatever the pressures, he made it a rule never to bring his work back to whichever home he happened to be using at the moment.

But tonight, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to relax anywhere on earth until he could get his head round what had happened.

Dumping an inch of malt whisky in a squat crystal tumbler, he paced the room, his stride rapid and edgy, anger holding his shoulders rigid.

She had said it was over. Just like that.

In his experience it didn’t happen that way. His occasional affairs had been ended by him, the demise carefully signalled weeks in advance. The parting was amicable with gentle words of regret, a lavish gift—a car, jewellery, an exotic holiday—according to the lady in question’s preferences.

But never like this. Never!

And never before he was ready to end it!

Slamming his empty glass down on the leather-topped desk, he scowled at the spines of the books on the shelves, not seeing them. The anger that raged through him in a roaring torrent demanded release.

And where in the name of all that was sacred had that proposal of marriage come from? Porca miseria—his mind must have gone walkabout! The words had slipped out without any direction from his brain, shocking him.

His hands balled into fists and his jaw clenched until his teeth ached. She had simply ignored what he’d said. Not by a flicker of those fabulous lashes had she revealed that his monumentally crazy offer of marriage had made the slightest impact,

Many women would have killed their own grandmothers to hear those words from his lips!

Bianca Jay had simply looked through him and walked away!

No one, but no one, humiliated Cesare Andriotti and got away with it!

His ebony brows flared as he bit out an expletive in rawly vented Italian. Then, collecting himself, he dragged in a deep breath, meant to be calming but not quite hitting the mark.

He had wanted Bianca Jay from the very first moment of seeing her. She hadn’t been a pushover but he’d got what he’d wanted from her in the end. But somehow, on a level he’d never encountered before, it had been far more complicated than the slaking of physical lust within the confines of a sophisticated affair.

The beautiful, elusive Bianca had begun to intrigue him. In bed they shared a mind-blowing ecstasy but out of it she kept him at a distance, never letting him get to really know her.

She’d flatly refused to move in with him and put their relationship on a semi-permanent basis, and had made it abundantly plain that she would accept none of the gifts he had instinctively wanted to shower on her, had refused to speak of her background, her family, easily and prettily changing the subject whenever he’d brought it up.

And although he’d increasingly wanted to know what made her the woman she was he’d respected her need for privacy, battening down his ever-growing desire to solve the mystery of her, pin down the elusiveness that was part of her tantalising contribution to their relationship.

Impatiently sloshing another inch of whisky into his glass, he took it to his desk and extracted a slim notebook from one of the drawers. Riffling through it, he found the number he wanted.

What had happened this evening had changed all the rules. Respecting her privacy was now completely out of the frame.

Sitting on the comfortably upholstered swivel chair, he reached for the phone, his shoulders relaxing, his eyes darkening and narrowing as his anger hardened into something darker, needier.

Don’t get mad, get even!

‘It’s not going to work, is it?’ Jeanne said decisively as she stirred the third spoonful of sugar into her breakfast coffee.

Dressed this morning in a light tweed skirt and cotton blouse, every iron-grey curl in its designated place, she looked what she was: sensible, stolid and utterly reliable. Sighing, Bianca had to agree with her aunt’s blunt statement. In the past she had coped alone with her mother’s growing excesses, her startling mood changes, but after the overdose episode she had been really frightened.

For the first time ever she’d sought outside help in the shape of her widowed Aunt Jeanne. Her amber eyes misted with tears as she recalled her aunt’s immediate offer. ‘She can stay with me in Bristol while you wind things up that end and find somewhere else to live. And I’ll spend the next week or two with you until she’s feeling more herself, keep an eye on her while you’re out at work. From the sound of it she shouldn’t be left too much on her own.’

Bianca had grasped the offer with both grateful hands. The lease on this house expired in a couple of months. Hunting for a flat she could afford, holding down her demanding job, deciding what to do about the furnishings—all while coping with her mother’s problems—would have been a nightmare.

Newly discharged from hospital, feeling frail and needy, Helene had listlessly agreed. But on the evidence of last night’s return to her former addictions, alcohol and men, it was obvious that she wouldn’t settle for five minutes in her sister’s tidy little semi in a quiet road on the outskirts of Bristol.

‘I love my sister but I can’t take the responsibility; it wouldn’t be fair on either of us,’ Jeanne admitted. ‘What she needs is professional help—one of those fancy clinics you read about, where film stars and footballers go to get themselves sorted out.’

‘If only!’ Bianca gave a wry smile as she passed her aunt a rack of fresh toast and sat to pour herself some desperately needed strong hot coffee. ‘She refuses to see her GP about her problems, mainly because she won’t admit she has any. But she’d probably go for a fancy, up-market clinic. It would suit her image!’ She took a grateful sip of the aromatic brew in her cup and added prosaically, ‘Unfortunately, there’s no way we could afford that sort of treatment.’

‘Nothing left of the settlement?’

‘That went years ago.’ Bianca lifted her shoulders in a weary shrug. Her mother’s divorce settlement had been recklessly spent on the latest designer clothes, lavish parties, an endless supply of drink.

‘Then ask your father to pay for treatment. He’s extremely wealthy, by all accounts. And it’s mostly his fault she’s the way she is.’ Jeanne spread butter lavishly on her toast. ‘You know, I always used to envy my little sister. When she married Conrad Jay I thought she had everything. Wealth beyond her wildest dreams—a bit “new money”, but you can’t have everything. At least his financial clout bought their way into the most glittering social circles. She was so beautiful and I was plain. But now I’m glad—about being plain.’ She took a healthy bite. ‘If you’ve never had any looks you can’t lose them and get all bitter and twisted about it. That said, you should approach your father for help.’

‘No.’ The refusal was instinctive. Seeing Jeanne’s quick frown, Bianca knew she had to elaborate and excuse her apparent stubbornness.

Although the sisters had kept in touch through the years, via the occasional phone call or letter, their lives had barely touched. There was so much her aunt didn’t know. And because Helene was sleeping off the effects of last night’s binge and the resulting aftermath, when she’d thrown her sister’s offering of a mug of sweet cocoa—‘To help you settle, dear’—at the sitting-room wall then had hysterics, Bianca and Jeanne could at least have a frank and full discussion.

‘I only met my father once. I was twelve,’ Bianca explained. ‘It was New Year’s Eve and he was visiting London—he was living in the States at that time. He wanted to see me—he’d never shown an atom of interest before. I went to his hotel hating him, not because he’d never so much as acknowledged my existence, but because of what he’d done to my mother.’

She leaned back in her chair, remembering that dreadful day. ‘A week before, something had gone wrong for Helene—don’t ask me what, I can’t remember—but she’d started drinking and getting maudlin and told me I was old enough to be told what a louse my father was.

‘She was twenty-one when she met and married him. For two years she was blissfully happy, living the high life, and then she suspected he was seeing someone else. So she deliberately got pregnant with me, thinking that would stop him straying. But it didn’t work. He left her for the latest sex symbol on the social scene. As part of the divorce settlement he bought a twenty-five-year lease on this house. And that was that; she never saw him again. I think she had loved him desperately, and never really got over it.’

Bianca shrugged, knowing she was probably about to shock her ultra-respectable aunt. ‘I grew up in the changing company of a variety of “uncles”. She could have married any one of them—they always seemed to be besotted. But there was always something wrong with them—in a nutshell they weren’t Conrad Jay. She never stopped loving him but she needed these men in her life to convince herself that she was still desirable, worth something.’

She pulled a wry face. ‘So there was I, twelve years old and hating my father, when that surprise phone call came through. Helene put me in a taxi to the hotel and my father put me in another to take me home.

‘In between I told him exactly what I thought of him for the way he’d hurt my mother and said that under no circumstances would I ever agree to see him again. All this in front of his latest new wife. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years older than me. So perhaps you understand why he is the last person I would ever appeal to for help. I have no idea how to contact him, even if I wanted to. And the moral of this story is something Helene once said to me—never marry a rich man. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’

Advice which had stuck more firmly than she’d realised, cemented in place by the damage such a marriage had done to her mother, the years of coping with the after-effects. Advice which had stood her in good stead when Cesare had made that shock offer of marriage.

Pushing him and what he had come to mean to her roughly out of her head, Bianca rose from the table and forced herself to think instead of how to handle the problem of helping Helene and holding down the job that was essential if she were to provide for them both.

Right at this moment it seemed completely impossible.

CHAPTER THREE

HE HAD her!

Had her exactly where he wanted her!

Cesare slid the sleek black Ferrari into a fortuitously vacant kerbside slot in front of the Hampstead house and switched off the ignition, the iron fist of inner harshness crushing that gut-punch of triumph, hardening his icy resolve.

His mouth flattened into a line of grim determination. Whatever the beautiful minx thought, he hadn’t finished with Bianca Jay yet, not by a mile. The information he had at his fingertips would ensure that, until he said it was over, their affair would continue. On his terms this time, not hers. His Italian pride demanded it.

She would be taught that no woman brushed an Andriotti male aside as if he were of no more importance than a fly! It was a salutary lesson he would take great pleasure in giving.

Flicking a glance at the façade of her home, he battened down the recurring upsurge of anger with steely control. Don’t get mad, get even, he reminded himself. Her carefully hoarded secrets were his now and he would use every last one of them to his own advantage.

Exiting the car, he activated the top-of-the-range security system, his mouth hard and flat as he mounted the steps and pressed the doorbell.

Yesterday’s phone call to her boss, Stazia Lynley, had elicited the information that she had just received a surprise call from Bianca herself, requesting an indefinite period of unpaid leave, so unless she was in the habit of going shopping at eight in the morning she would answer the summons.

His loins kicked and hardened at the mere thought of seeing her again, of drowning in the witchery of her beautiful amber eyes, in the special just-for-him look of steamy sultriness that swamped the glorious, glowing depths when they lay together in tangled sheets. Two eager bodies, hours of mind-melting passion, melding her physically to him. Yet keeping her just out of reach, he reminded himself. Because he’d never known the truth of her; the real Bianca Jay had been carefully kept from him.

Until now.

Switching off lust was far harder than blocking out anger, he conceded edgily as he pressed his thumb against the bell-push again and kept it there. But by the time he heard the rasp of the bolts being drawn back his face was as bland as a slashing bone structure, a blade of a nose and a passionate mouth could ever hope to be.

‘Cesare—’ His name on the lushness of her lips was a falling sigh, as if seeing him here was more than she could hope to cope with, and as the quick flush of telltale and immediate colour receded he noted that her skin was ashy pale, her eyes dark-circled as if she’s spent the past night in wakeful worry.

He hated to see that, although he knew he shouldn’t. Compassion shouldn’t come into the equation in his dealings with the witch who had taken his ego and stamped on it. Why should she sleep easily when he’d lain awake all night, alternately plotting revenge or consumed with anger and damaged pride?

Impatiently consoling the stubborn part of himself that felt pain at her distress with the knowledge that her anxiety over her mother would soon be ended, and quelling the stab of guilt over having brought her from her bed—as evidenced by the rumpled state of her long, silky black hair, the robe hastily flung on and belted over her naked body—he responded coolly, ‘We need to talk.’

‘There’s nothing to say.’ Her voice was wary and the hand that gripped the edge of the partly open door was white-knuckled. Her heart had leapt into her throat and was staying there, beating fast enough to choke her.

She had never thought to see him again, truly believing that having been told their affair was over he would watch her walk away with little or no regret, shrug his impressive shoulders and begin the process of finding the next willing candidate to share his night-time activities. It was the sort of thing men like him did.

Eyes that had been downcast since that first split second of recognition now flicked wide to meet his head-on. And as that familiar hot excitement permeated her bloodstream she wished she’d kept her eyes firmly on the floor.

Clad in a perfectly tailored light silky grey suit, the crisp white shirt emphasising the olive tones of his skin and the tough, shadowed jawline that was always dark no matter how often he shaved, the dark charcoal of his tie that matched the broody, moody colour of his eyes, he looked exactly what he was—all-sophisticated Italian male, king of the heap, effortlessly in total command of who he was, what he did.

Bianca sucked in a sharp, much-needed gulp of air. The incredible impact of him had hit her with the usual enervating body-blow, making it impossible for her to do anything to deny him entry when he calmly walked past her into the hall.

‘Where?’ he asked succinctly, his narrowed eyes watching her with immovable cool, one dark brow elevating slightly to emphasise his question.

Wordlessly, every inch of her skin quivering beneath the covering of soft dove-grey satin, Bianca led the way to the sitting room at the back of the tall, narrow house, her mind flittering like an intoxicated gnat as she sought reasons for his presence.

To call her names because she’d ended their affair before he’d had time to grow bored with the relationship? That didn’t seem in character. To him and many other men in his position affairs such as theirs had been were ephemeral and easily forgotten.

To beg her to return to him, or to repeat his crazy proposal of marriage? Both seemed unlikely. His Italian pride wouldn’t let him beg.

But if he did, her tired mind panicked, would she be able to resist when she only had to look at him to be swamped by this incredible need?

She really didn’t want this, her weary brain shrieked in protest. To see Cesare again was more than she could handle on top of everything else.

Her boss hadn’t been one bit pleased at her inability to put a time limit on the amount of leave she needed. It was impossible to say how long it would take to find alternative, affordable accommodation and organise the move, somehow persuade a stubborn Helene to seek medical help, convince Jeanne that her presence was essential for a while longer.

Closing the sitting room door behind them, Bianca gave him what she hoped would pass as a look of impatience, desperately trying to keep the revealing mute misery from her eyes.

Cesare Andriotti should have looked out of place, his potent masculinity at odds with Helene’s choice of ultra-feminine decor. But, as always, she thought with grudging admiration, he took control, his surroundings fading into insignificance before the force field of his commanding personality as he gestured her to one of the pair of delicate Edwardian chairs flanking a rosewood tripod table in the window embrasure, before taking his time about seating himself.

His long legs loosely crossed at the ankles, his arms resting on the delicate rosewood supports, his dark head tipped back against the high, velvet-upholstered back of the chair, he looked totally relaxed, only the cold, brilliant glitter of his eyes telling her that, whatever his reason for being here, he meant business.

The silence sizzled with sexual tension, with the stinging expectation of she knew not what. The way he was looking at her now was doing her head in, his incredibly sexy, moody eyes sliding over her as if he was assessing every curve, line and hollow of her lightly clad body, awarding her desirability points out of ten.

Biting her lip, she managed thickly, ‘What do you want, Cesare?’ And in a last-ditch attempt to stamp some of her own authority on this unlooked-for meeting, she added, ‘I honestly don’t have much time; I’ve a lot to get through today.’

And watched her words misfire as he ignored her pathetic attempt to take control and listed smoothly, ‘Your lease runs out shortly and on your salary I doubt you can afford to renew it. Therefore the need to find alternative accommodation is imperative. Not easy, not when one considers the price of property in London, and Helene Sinclair’s liking for the luxuries of this life.’ He steepled his fingers, the tips resting against the sensual curve of his lower lip. ‘Am I not right?’

Gazing at him speechlessly, Bianca felt what little colour she did have drain out of her face. How did he know her mother’s maiden name? Who could have told him that the twenty-five-year lease that had been part of her mother’s divorce settlement was coming to an end?

She had been so careful to keep her personal life, her worries and concerns, out of their relationship. Not because she was ashamed of what her mother was rapidly becoming—falling in love with a wealthy sophisticate who thought it was his right to change his wives as often as he changed his cars had been to blame for the mess Helene was making of her life—but because opening up to Cesare would have made her even more vulnerable than she had been where he was concerned.

Besides, he wouldn’t have been interested in her problems. Theirs had been the sort of affair he was used to, with both partners keeping to the ground rules. No strings, no commitment and certainly no messy soul-baring to bore the socks off him.

Unaffected by her silence, he continued remorselessly, ‘A sought-after and very lovely model in her late teens and early twenties, your mother became used to admiring attention and the rewards of a big salary.’

He tilted her a look that told her he was amused by the way her mouth had fallen open with horrified disbelief at what she was hearing. ‘Of course,’ he opined smoothly, ‘after her marriage to your father she would have become used to a life of idle luxury, the glitter and glamour of the international social scene, where all she had to do was look beautiful and collect the homage of enchanted males. After the divorce,’ he continued with chilling silkiness, ‘she’d long since lost the work ethic. But that didn’t matter, did it? There was a substantial settlement.