The Sicilian Boss's Mistress

He had left Sicily for Milan, where he’d started up a small air freight business—ironically initially transporting the products of the city’s designers to international shows. He had gone on from there to passenger flights and the separate luxury of first-class-only flights, so that now he had every aspect of the modern airline business covered.

He had even learned to use his second-son status to his own advantage. Membership of a titled family was something he used as cynically and deliberately as he used the powerful streak of sensuality he had discovered he possessed in the self-indulgent hedonistic months that had followed Sofia’s defection.

The shell of the personality he had constructed for himself as Alessandro Leopardi was simply an image he projected for business purposes—an outer garment he could remove at will. Only he knew that somewhere deep inside himself there was still a vulnerable part of him that was the ‘spare heir’—conceived only to fill that role, and of no value to anyone outside of that.

Alessandro could hardly remember their mother—she had died shortly after his younger brother Rocco’s birth, when he had been only two years old himself. Everyone who had known her said that she had been a saint. Too saintly by far for her husband, who had spurned her and humiliated her publicly, turning instead to his mistress.

Did that same dark tide from his father’s veins run within his own? Alessandro had no idea. He was merely thankful that, unlike his elder brother, he would never need to find out—because his own duty to the Leopardi name stopped well short of having to provide it with a future heir.

He removed a bottle of water from the suite’s well-stocked bar and poured some into a glass. He could feel the stiff, unyielding thickness of the formal invitation jabbing his flesh in exactly the same way in which Falcon’s stiff, unyielding determination that his brothers should pay their dues to their Leopardi blood jabbed his own conscience.

He and Rocco both owed Falcon a great deal. He had taught them and guided them, and he had protected them. Those were heavy duties for a young boy to have taken on, and it was perhaps no wonder that he had always imposed his own sense of duty on them—that he still did so now.

Alessandro didn’t need to remove Falcon’s letter from his pocket to remember what it said. Falcon never wasted words.

‘Alessandro Leopardi,’ he had written on the invitation, ‘and guest’.

A challenge to him? Alessandro shrugged away the sharp pinprick of angry pride.

He would have to go, of course.

He was never comfortable when he had to return to the castle in Sicily where he had grown up. It held far too many unhappy memories. If he had to visit the island he preferred to stay in the family villa in town. Home for him now was wherever he happened to be—although he had an apartment in Milan and another in Florence, and a villa in a secluded and exclusive enclave close to Positano.

He looked at his watch, a one-off made especially for him. He would be leaving by helicopter from City Airport soon, for his own private jet and the onward flight to Florence, where he would stay at his apartment in the exclusive renovated palazzo that had originally belonged to his mother’s family.

‘Look, Leonora, I really don’t think this is a good idea.’

Leonora gave her younger brother a scathing look.

‘Well, I do—and you promised.’

Leo groaned. ‘That was when I was halfway down one of Dad’s best reds, and you’d tricked me.’ He stood up, his brown hair tousled. He might be six foot three in his socks, but right now he still managed to have the frustrated look of a younger brother who had just been outwitted by his older and smarter sister, Leonora decided triumphantly.

‘You agreed that the next time you flew your boss into London in the private jet I could fly him back.’

‘Why? He hates women pilots.’

‘I know. After all, he’s turned my job applications down often enough.’

Leo’s expression changed. ‘Look, you aren’t going to do anything silly, are you? Like barging into his office, telling him you flew the plane and asking him for a job? You’d have as much chance of succeeding as you would have of getting into his bed,’ Leo told her forthrightly.

Leonora knew all about the stunning beauties the Sicilian billionaire who owned the airline her younger brother worked for dated, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow Leo to guess how much his comment hurt—as though somehow it was a given that she wasn’t woman enough to attract the interest of a man like Alessandro Leopardi. Not, of course, that she wanted to be one of Alessandro Leopardi’s women, but she certainly did want to be one of his pilots.

‘No, of course I’m not going to ask him for a job.’

Leonora crossed her fingers behind her back. She was in full jokey can-do Leonora mode now—even in the privacy of her own thoughts. It just wasn’t fair. She was every bit as good a pilot as her younger brother, if not better, and she just knew that if she proved that to Alessandro Leopardi he would offer her a job. His exclusive first-class service flew passengers all over the world, and she wanted to be one of that elite group even more than she had once wanted to work for someone like Alessandro himself as a private pilot.

‘You can’t possibly think you’ll really get away with this,’ Leo protested.

‘No, I don’t think it. I know it,’ Leonora told him promptly, going on firmly, ‘Since you let me fly the new jet when you were sent to collect it I’ve been having extra lessons in one, and I’ve probably racked up more flying hours than you have.’ She didn’t even want to think about how much it had cost her to get those flying miles in such an expensive craft, or how many lessons in Mandarin she had had to teach to earn the money.

‘Okay, so you can fly the plane. But you haven’t got a uniform.’

‘Ta-dah!’ Leonora said, opening her trench coat to reveal the uniform, and then producing her cap from the supermarket bag in which she had been carrying it.

Leo’s face was a picture. ‘You know if you get found out that I’ll be the one losing my job.’

‘Only wimps get found out,’ Leonora replied as she slipped off her coat and swept up her hair before cramming it under the cap

‘Captain Leo Thaxton at your service.’

Leo groaned again. ‘Isn’t it enough that you’ve stolen my uniform without stealing my name as well?’

‘No,’ Leonora told him. ‘It’s my name too. I’ve never had cause until now to be glad our parents thought it a good idea to give us practically the same name. Now, come on.’

‘What about the co-pilot?’

‘What about him? It’s Paul Watson, isn’t it? The one who breaks Alessandro Leopardi’s rule about his pilots not partying with the stewardesses? I’m sure I shall be able to persuade him that it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to say anything.’

‘I knew I should never have told you about Paul. He’s going to kill me.’

Ignoring him, Leonora demanded, ‘Come on. I need you to drive me to the airport and get me through all the security stuff.’

‘I do not know why you’re doing this.’ Leo groaned again, and then corrected himself. ‘That’s not true, of course. I do know why you’re doing it. You are doing it because you are the most stubborn and determined female ever.’

‘That’s right,’ Leonora agreed breezily. But inwardly she was thinking, I’m doing it because I hate, hate, hate not getting what I want, and I want that job with Avanti Airlines more than I want anything else in the world.

Yes, all of that was true—and when she was working full-pelt in her ‘I’m up for anything’ tomboy mode in front of an audience it was easy to pretend that the other Leonora— the one who longed for love and commitment, and to be allowed to be that other self she dreamed of—simply did not exist. At least for the length of her ‘performance’.

She did want her dream job, of course, and she certainly wanted the opportunity to challenge Alessandro Leopardi, to demand that he explain to her just why her sex weighed so heavily against her when she had such excellent qualifications. It was, after all, against the law to disqualify an applicant for a job on the grounds of their sex. There was no point in telling Leo about her plans, though. He would only worry. Better to let him think she was trying to make a point to him rather than planning to make Alessandro Leopardi agree that she was a good pilot and worthy of being given the job she craved so much.

CHAPTER TWO

IT HAD been a good flight, but then Alessandro had not expected it would be anything other than good. He had, after all, flown the new jet himself shortly after they had first taken delivery of it six months earlier, and had been very impressed with the way it handled.

Alessandro did not have his own pilot. Instead he preferred to use one of the pilots who flew his executive jets for the first-class-only service, because that way he got to ensure that they were maintaining the high standard he set for all those who worked for him.

Leo Thaxton was his youngest pilot, and today’s flight had shown how well he was maturing into the job. Alessandro had particularly liked the way he had handled the small amount of turbulent weather they had run into halfway through the flight, smoothing the plane through it by taking it a little higher. Thaxton had shown good judgement there.

Nodding to the steward who was holding out his coat and his laptop for him, Alessandro left the aircraft. His car was already waiting for him on the tarmac, and he didn’t so much as give the plane a backwards glance as his chauffeur opened the passenger door for him.

* * *

She had done it! Alessandro Leopardi couldn’t say now that she wasn’t good enough to fly his planes any more. Leonora felt almost ready to burst with triumph and excitement—only there was no one there for her to share her triumph with. Paul and the rest of the crew had left the minute Alessandro Leopardi had disappeared in his car.

She had booked herself into a small hotel in Florence and onto a returning commercial flight to London in a couple of days’ time. Now that phase one of her plan had been completed she needed to move on to phase two, which was to confront Alessandro Leopardi in his office and persuade him to give her a job. It shouldn’t be difficult now. She had the qualifications, and now she had proved that she had the skill as well. Plus, there was such a thing as legal equal opportunities, as she was perfectly willing to remind him should she need to do so.

They had only just reached the barrier to the private car park when Alessandro realised that he had left his mobile on the plane. Leaning forward, he instructed the driver to turn round and drive back.

Lost in her excited dreams, Leonora hadn’t seen the car come back, or the door open, or Alessandro Leopardi get out as she left the plane, pulling off her cap as she did so to let her hair cascade down her back.

She saw him when she had reached the bottom of the gangway, though. Because he was standing there waiting for her, blocking her exit from it.

For a moment they looked at one another in silence. She was tall, but even standing on the steps she was still not quite at eye level with him and had to tilt her head back slightly to look up at him properly.

His question— ‘What is the meaning of this? Where is the pilot?’—was so icily cold that for once Leonora struggled to manage her normal flip tone.

‘You’re looking at her,’ she told him.

He knew who she was immediately. After all he had looked at her many job applications often enough, and the photographs accompanying them. She looked far more sensually attractive in the flesh, with her hair worn loose. To his own disbelief, given the situation and his own normally unbreakable control over every aspect of himself and most especially his sexuality, he could feel his body responding to her proximity and that sensuality. Had he somehow known that she would affect him like this? Was that why he was so resolutely opposed to employing her? Of course not. He did not employ female pilots on principle— equal opportunities rules or not. Besides, he was Sicilian—and generally speaking everyone knew that Sicilian men had their own code of contact.

His eyes were so dark it was impossible to see their colour, and they were unreadable. But the slight flaring of his nostrils had already given away his rage. Leonora tried to clamp down on her sudden feeling that just maybe she had flown higher than she had planned. Her lungs certainly felt that the air was short of oxygen—or was that just her own apprehension?

‘If that’s true then you are in one hell of a lot of trouble—and so is Leo Thaxton.’

Alessandro Leopardi’s harsh words confirmed that he wasn’t about to treat her behaviour lightly.

‘You can’t blame Leo.’ She immediately defended her brother. ‘I made him do it. I wanted to prove to you that I can fly just as well as any man, and that I deserve a job.’

‘What you and your brother both deserve is a prison sentence,’ he told her mercilessly. ‘And what you certainly will be doing is looking for a job together.’

Leonora’s eyes rounded. This wasn’t going the way she had planned at all.

‘You can’t sack Leo. It wasn’t his fault.’

‘Then whose fault was it?’

‘Yours—for not giving me a chance to try out for a job,’ she told him promptly.

Alessandro had never met anyone so infuriating or so reckless in ignoring the realities of the situation. By rights she ought to be treating him with kid gloves, not challenging him and arguing with him. He moved irritably from one foot to the other, reminded of the presence of the invitation in his pocket as its sharpness dug into his flesh.

The invitation. He looked at Leonora, and a plan began to form inside his head. She was attractive, if you liked her type—which he didn’t. He liked groomed women, not girls with a mass of hair, too much attitude and too little sensuality.

‘I most certainly can sack him, and I fully intend to do so,’ he assured Leonora grimly.

He meant it, Leonora recognised. She could see that, and for the first time she realised that this wasn’t a game she was playing. The consequences of what she had done were going to be very damaging—not just for her, but for Leo as well. Even worse was the mortifying recognition that, far from showing him that she could be the best, all she had done was prove that she was a failure.

Humiliation burned bright flags of red into her high sculpted cheekbones, highlighting the purity of her bone structure. She couldn’t let him sack Leo. Apart from the fact that her brother loved his job, she could just imagine the comments that he and Piers—especially Piers—would make for the rest of her life, lording it over her as they so liked to do, because she was a girl and she had been born second.

Which would be worse? Swallowing her pride now and begging this man she would never see again to spare Leo, or facing her brothers as a failure?

She took a deep breath.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. Please don’t sack Leo.’

She sounded as though she was choking on every word, Alessandro recognised. Her brother obviously meant a great deal to her. Good.

‘I will think about it. Provided you—’

Leonora’s head jerked up immediately, her eyes shadowing with apprehension. Whatever it took to make sure Leo did not lose his job she would have to do—even if Alessandro Leopardi told her that she was never to apply for a job with him again. Even that, Leonora recognised bleakly.

‘I’ll do anything just so long as you don’t sack Leo,’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘Anything! Whatever it is you want me to do, I’ll do it.’

The moment her impetuous words were out, Leonora’s mouth formed a self-conscious O whilst her face burned even more hotly as she realised just how her offer might be interpreted. However, before she had time to correct any possible misinterpretation, Alessandro Leopardi was speaking coolly.

‘I won’t sack your brother—little as he deserves to be kept on, in view of his stupidity and weakness in agreeing or allowing you to force him to agree to your illegal charade—provided you accompany me to a family function I am obliged to attend.’

Leonora stared at him, disbelief and distaste clearly visible in her expression. ‘There are escort agencies who provide women for that kind of thing. Why don’t you use one of them? After all, it isn’t as though you can’t afford to.’

She knew immediately that her blunt speaking had been a bad mistake. She could see the tinge of angry heat burning his face, moving into the high cheekbones and then flashing like a warning beacon in the darkness of his eyes.

‘I would remind you that whilst I could afford to pay a woman to accompany me, you cannot afford to refuse me. Unless, of course, you are prepared to see your brother lose his job?’

To her chagrin his attitude caused Leonora to do something she hadn’t done since she’d left her early teenage years behind her. She glowered at him and stuck out her bottom lip, with all the angry defiance of a rebellious teenager facing a resolute and immovable human obstacle to what they wanted to do. And then she compounded her regression to impotent resentment by saying crossly, ‘Well, I can’t think why you’d want to pick me to accompany you. After all, I’m not a model, or…or…a C-list starlet.’

Her face was burning again, but it wasn’t her fault if his penchant for glamorous airheads was regularly recorded in celebrity gossip magazines—not that she ever bothered reading such things. It was Leo who was constantly pointing out yet another paparazzi photograph of his boss with some leggy, pouting beauty on his arm.

‘The reason I’ve picked you, as you put it, has nothing whatsoever to do with your looks—or lack of them,’ Alessandro told her unkindly.

This time she wasn’t going to overreact, Leonora told herself. She was a mature woman, after all. A professional and fully qualified pilot. Someone who was not going to be tricked into behaving like an immature teenager because she couldn’t control her own emotions.

‘You are such a girl!’ her brothers had loved to tease her when they had been growing up, and she still hated being put in a position where her emotions might threaten to make her look vulnerable or betray her.

‘But you obviously want me to accompany you badly enough to blackmail me?’ Leonora couldn’t resist pointing out.

‘That’s right,’ Alessandro agreed, so pleasantly and with such an unexpectedly warm smile that for a handful of seconds Leonora was caught off guard. And she found that for some inexplicable reason she was curling her toes in her navy-blue loafers.

He exuded an air of male virility that aroused within her a raft of unfamiliar and complex emotions that undermined and weakened her. There was something about the way he turned his head, the look in the slate-grey eyes and the shape of his wholly male mouth that disrupted her ability to think logically and forced her to keep looking at him.

‘You see, this way I shall have complete control over both the situation and you, without having to face any future comebacks—or indeed the kickbacks your sex has a less than lovable habit of demanding.’

‘If you don’t like the demands your girlfriends make on you then I would suggest that the fault lies with you and your judgement, and not my sex as a whole. There are any number of heterosexual women who don’t ask for, or expect or even want anything from a man.’

‘You’re wrong about that. All women want something— either materially, emotionally or physically, and very often all three. Whereas all I want from you is your presence at my side in public as my partner, your recognition that in future there will be no relationship of any kind between us, and your complete silence on the whole subject—publicly and privately.’

‘Not much, then,’ Leonora muttered under her breath.

But he must have heard her, because he gave her a coldly arrogant look and told her, ‘Set against your brother’s future career, I would have said that it is not very much at all. Merely your absolute obedience to my will and to the instructions I shall give you for one single evening.’

‘Like I said—that’s blackmail,’ Lenora was objecting, before she could stop herself.

‘You may choose to see it as blackmail. I on the other hand see it as a justifiable claim for compensation from a person who has knowingly deprived me of something that is mine by right—in this case the skills of my employee, your brother.’

‘I’m just as qualified as Leo—in fact I’m more qualified.’

‘Maybe so, but you were not my choice of pilot. Now, as I was saying, if I am to refrain from sacking your brother then I shall require your complete obedience to my will.’

Her complete obedience to his will? Leonora opened her mouth in a furious hiss of disagreement, and then closed it again as she remembered Leo.

There was one thing she had to say, though—one stand she had to make.

Holding his gaze, she told him bluntly, ‘If this complete obedience to your instructions has anything to do with any kind of sexual activity then I’m afraid that Leo will have to lose his job.’

Alessandro looked at her in disbelief.

‘Are you seriously suggesting that you think I am sexually propositioning you?’ he demanded haughtily.

Leonora stood her ground.

‘Not necessarily. I’m simply letting you know what I won’t do.’

She had surprised him, Alessandro admitted. He was so used to women throwing themselves at him, practically begging him to take what they were offering, that it had simply never occurred to him that a woman like this one— so desperate to get a job with his airline that she was prepared to risk doing something that was both illegal and dangerous—would baulk at the thought of offering him sex. But patently that was exactly what she was doing, and he could see from the tension gripping her body that she meant what she had said.

Something—curiosity, male pride, his deep-rooted inherited Leopardi arrogance—Alessandro did not know which—spiked into life inside him, hard-edged and determined to make its presence felt. He shrugged it aside. Some ancient macho instinct had been aroused by her challenge— so what? He was mature enough, sophisticated enough, well supplied enough with all the sexual companionship he needed not to have to take any notice of it.

‘Good. And now I shall let you know that you will never be asked. My standards in that regard, as in everything else in my life, are very high. You do not come anywhere near meeting them.’ His smile was cruel and mocking as he went on coldly, ‘I may be a second son, but I never, ever accept second best, much less third-rate. Now, since we have both made our position clear, maybe we can discuss what I shall require of you rather than what I most certainly do not?’

He had insulted her, but he could not hurt her, Leonora assured herself as she glared dry-eyed at him. She didn’t care how third-rate he considered her to be sexually. In fact she was glad that he wasn’t interested in her.

Alessandro pushed back the cuff of his shirt and looked at his watch. Why had he made that comment to her about his position as a second son? He didn’t have to justify or explain himself in any way to anyone, never mind this irritatingly challenging woman who was the very last person he would have chosen to accompany him to the castello had he actually had any choice.

He could, of course, always go on his own, but that stubborn stiff pride that had driven him all his life insisted he had to prove to his elder brother that he could produce a woman who would not under any circumstances look at any other man—and that included Falcon himself. In that respect Leonora Thaxton was perfect, since he possessed the power to ensure that she would not do so.

He gave her a mercilessly assessing look, his mouth compressing. The raw material might be there, in the tumbled hair and the well-shaped face with its clear skin, but that raw material was in need of a good deal of polishing if his elder brother was not to take one look at her and, with a lift of that famously derogatory eyebrow of his, burst out laughing.