Mistress for a Month

“One night. I’ll reduce the bet to one night.”

Slowly she turned to face him, her expression haughty and scornful. “Pity, Rico? From you? I’m surprised. But I must refuse your gallant gesture. A bet is a bet. You demanded I be your mistress for a month, so your mistress for a month I will be. Not a day less. Not a day more.”

Her contrariness jolted him. Was this her pride still talking, or did she have some other secret agenda? Whatever the case, experience had taught Rico never to try to second-guess Renée, so he just shrugged.

“Fine by me.” Far be it from him to lessen her sentence. She’d made her bed now. Let her lie in it.

“You might think that tonight,” she replied. “You might think differently in a month’s time.”

“Is that a threat, Renée? Or a challenge?”

“It’s a promise”

Three Rich Men

Three Australian billionaires;

they can have anything and anyone…

except three beautiful women…

Meet Charles, Rico and Ali, three incredibly wealthy friends all living in Sydney. They meet every Friday night to play poker and exchange news about business and their pleasures—which include the pursuit of Sydney’s most beautiful women.

Up until now, no single woman has ever managed to pin down the elusive, exclusive and eminently eligible bachelors. But that’s all about to change…. But will these three rich men marry for love—or are they desired for their money?

Mistress for a Month—Rico’s story

#2361

Available only from Harlequin Presents®.

Mistress for a Month

Miranda Lee

Three Rich Men

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

RICO MANDRETTI jumped into his shiny red Ferrari and headed, not towards Randwick Racecourse, but straight for his parents’ place on the rural outskirts of Sydney. His plans had changed. Last night had changed them.

‘Not today,’ Rico muttered to himself as he sped out through Sydney’s sprawling western suburbs, oblivious of the second glances he received from most of the women in the cars he passed, and all of the women in the cars he was forced to idle next to when the lights turned red.

Only one woman occupied Rico’s mind these days. Only one woman did he crave to look at him as if he was a man worth looking at and not some prima-donna playboy with no substance at all.

For over five years he’d endured Renée Selinsky’s barbs over the card table every Friday night, as well as at the races on a Saturday afternoon.

Five years was a long time to tolerate such treatment. Too long.

Yet he had to confess that till last night he’d enjoyed their verbal sparring in a perverse fashion, despite the fact Renée usually got the better of him. When she’d temporarily subjected him to the cold-shoulder treatment a few months back, he’d hated it. Rico discovered during that difficult time that he’d rather have his buttons pressed than be ignored.

Still, Renée had pressed his buttons one too many times last night.

Be damned if he was going to be on the end of that woman’s caustic tongue again today at the races. Enough was enough!

The lights turned green and he floored the accelerator. The Ferrari leapt forward, tyres screeching slightly as he scorched up the road. But, given the speed limit on that section of highway, and the regular traffic lights, there was no solace for Rico’s frustration in speeding, and no escape for his thoughts.

Soon he was idling at the next set of red lights, practically grinding his teeth when his mind returned once more to his nemesis.

She’d be at the races by now, probably sitting at the bar in the members’ stand, sipping a glass of champagne and looking her usual cool and classy self, not caring a whit that he hadn’t turned up, whilst he was sitting here in his car, stewing away, already regretting his decision not to go. He loved the races. They were one of his passions in life. And one of hers, unfortunately.

That was how he’d met Renée in the first place, through their mutual love of horse racing. Just over five years ago she’d become the third partner in the syndicate he and his best friend, Charles, had formed with the help of Ward Jackman, one of Sydney’s up-and-coming young horse trainers.

Rico could still remember the first day he met the up-till-then mysterious Mrs Selinsky. The three co-owners had gathered at Randwick races to see their first horse race, a lovely chestnut filly named Flame of Gold.

Before that day, Rico had only known of his lady co-owner’s existence on paper. He’d no idea that she was also Renée, the owner of Renée’s modeling agency and the widow of Joseph Selinsky, a very wealthy banker who’d been almost forty years his second wife’s senior, and who’d passed away the previous year. He did know she was a rich widow, but he’d pictured an overweight, over-groomed madam in her sixties or seventies with more money than she could spend in the beauty salon, and a penchant for gambling.

Nothing had prepared Rico for the sleekly sophisticated, super-stylish and super-intelligent thirty-year-old which Mrs Selinsky had proved to be. And certainly nothing had prepared Rico for her instantly negative reaction to him. He was used to being fawned over by the opposite sex, not the exact opposite.

Looking back, he’d been attracted to her right from first sight, despite his having another woman on his arm that day. His fiancée, in fact. Jasmine. The bright, bubbly, beautifully blonde Jasmine. He’d thought himself in love with Jasmine, and he’d married her a month later.

It was a marriage which had been doomed from the start. God, if he’d only known then what he knew now.

But would that have changed anything? he pondered as he revved up the Ferrari’s engine in anticipation of these lights turning green. What if he’d realised Jasmine was an unfeeling fortune-hunter before their wedding? Or that his so-called love for her was the result of his being cleverly conned and constantly flattered? What if he’d broken up with his faking fiancée and pursued the enigmatic and striking Renée instead?

Renée’s reaction to him might have been very different if he’d been single and available five years ago, instead of engaged and supposedly besotted with his fiancée.

After all, he was Rico Mandretti, the producer and star of A Passion for Pasta, the most successful cooking show on television. The merry widow—as he’d soon nicknamed Renée—obviously knew the value of a dollar, given she’d already married once for money. Rico could not imagine a woman of her youth and beauty marrying a man in his sixties for love.

Whilst Rico hadn’t had as many dollars in the bank as Renée’s late husband at that stage, he’d still been well-heeled, with the potential for earning more in the years to come, which had since proven correct. His little cooking show—as Renée mockingly liked to call it—was now syndicated to over twenty countries and the money was rolling in, with more business ventures popping up each year, from cookbooks to product endorsements to his more recent idea of franchising A Passion for Pasta restaurants in every major city in Australia.

Aside from his earning potential, he’d also only been twenty-nine back then, brimming with macho confidence and testosterone. In his sexual prime, so to speak.

Rico liked to think Renée would have fallen into his arms, but he knew he was just kidding himself. He’d been split up from Jasmine for two years now, his divorce signed and sealed over a year ago, and Renée’s negative attitude to him hadn’t changed one bit. If anything, she’d grown more hostile to him whilst his desire for her had become unbearably acute.

It pained Rico to think that she found nothing attractive in him whatsoever. In fact, she obviously despised him. Why? What had he ever done to her to cause such antagonism? Was it his Italian background? She sometimes sounded off about his being a Latin-lover type, all hormones and no brains.

Rico knew there was more to himself than that. But not when he was around her these days, he accepted ruefully. Lately, whenever she turned those slanting green eyes on him and made one of her biting comments, he turned into the kind of mindless macho animal she obviously thought him. His ability to play poker suffered. Hell, his ability to do anything well suffered! The charm he was famous for disappeared, along with his capacity to think.

Aah, but he could still feel. Even as his blood boiled with the blackest of resentments, his body would burn with a white-hot need. That was why he was avoiding his nemesis this weekend. Because Rico suspected he was nearing spontaneous combustion where she was concerned. Who knew what he would do or say the next time she goaded him the way she had last night?

‘Now, if you’d married someone like Dominique, Rico,’ Renée had remarked after Charles announced his wife was expecting, ‘you’d have a baby or two of your own by now. If you’re really as keen on the idea of a traditional marriage and family as you claim, then for pity’s sake stop dilly-dallying with the Leannes of this world and find yourself a nice girl who’ll give you what you supposedly want.’

Rico had literally had to bite his tongue to stop himself from retorting that he took women like Leanne to bed in a vain attempt to burn out the frustration he experienced from not being able to have her.

Somehow, he’d managed an enigmatic little smile, and experienced some satisfaction in seeing her green eyes darken with a frustration of her own.

Mark one up for Rico for a change!

But for how long could he manage such iron self-control? Not too much longer, he suspected.

Charles and Ali wouldn’t know what hit them if and when he exploded. Rico might have been born and brought up here in Sydney, but he was Italian through and through, with an Italian’s volatile temperament.

A peasant, Renée had once labelled him. Which was quite true. He did come from peasant stock. And was proud of it!

Rico’s other two Friday-night poker-playing partners were blue-blood gentlemen by comparison. His best friend, Charles, was Charles Brandon, a few years older than Rico and the owner of Brandon Beer, Australia’s premier boutique brewery. Ali was Prince Ali of Dubar, the youngest son of an oil-rich sheikh, dispatched to Australia a decade before to run the royal Arab family’s thoroughbred interests down under.

Both men had been born into money, but neither was anything like the lazy, spoilt, silver-spoon variety of human being whom Rico despised.

Charles had spent years dragging his family firm back from the brink of bankruptcy after his profligate father died, leaving Brandon Beer in a right old mess.

That achievement had taken grit, determination and vision, all qualities Rico admired.

Ali didn’t act like some pampered prince, either. He worked very hard, running the thoroughbred stud which occupied over a thousand acres of prime horse land in the Hunter Valley. Rico had seen with his own eyes how hands-on Ali was with running and managing that complex and extremely large establishment.

It had been Ali, actually, who’d brought the four poker-players together. He was the breeder of Flame of Gold. After she’d won the Silver Slipper Stakes, the three ecstatic owners and one highly elated breeder had had a celebratory dinner together. Over a seafood banquet down at the quay, they’d discovered a mutual love, not just of racehorses but also of playing cards. Gambling of various kinds, it seemed, was in all their blood. They’d played their first game of poker together later that night and made a pact to play together every Friday night after that.

Being ill or overseas were the only excuses not to show up at the presidential suite at Sydney’s five-star Regency Hotel every Friday night at eight. That was where Ali stayed each weekend, flying in from his country property by helicopter late on a Friday and returning on the Sunday.

Rico smiled wryly when he thought of how, when he’d been hospitalised with an injured knee after a skiing mishap last year, he’d insisted that the others come to his hospital room for their Friday-night poker session. The evening had not been a great success, however, with Ali having a couple of security guards trailing along.

Looking back, he could see that his own insistence on playing that night, despite his handicapped condition, highlighted his rapidly growing obsession with the merry widow. He hadn’t been able to stand the thought of not seeing her that week. Now he wasn’t sure if he could stand seeing her again at all! He was fast reaching breaking point. Something was going to give. And soon.

Rico’s stress level lessened slightly once the more densely populated suburbs were behind him and his eyes could feast on more grass and trees. He breathed in deeply through his nostrils, smelling the cleaner air and smiling with fond memories as the city was finally left behind and he drove past familiar places. The small bush primary school he’d attended as a child. The creek where he’d gone swimming in the summer. The old community hall where he’d taken dancing lessons, much to his father’s disgust.

As far back as he could remember, Rico had been determined to one day be a star. By the time he turned twelve, he’d envisaged a career on the stage in the sort of singing, dancing, foot-stomping show he adored. But whilst his dancing technique was excellent, he’d grown too tall and too big to look as elegant and graceful as shorter, leaner dancers. On top of that, his singing left a lot to be desired. Once that career path was dashed, he’d focused his ambition on straight acting, seeing himself as an Australian John Travolta. People often said he looked like him.

His early acting career had been a hit-and-miss affair, especially after he’d failed to get into any of the élite and very restricted Australian acting academies. He did succeed in landing a few bit parts in soaps, plus a couple of television advertisements and one minor role in a TV movie, but at a lot of auditions he was told he was too big, and too Italian-looking.

Although not entirely convinced, Rico finally began looking more at a career behind the camera rather than in front of it. Producing and directing became his revised ambition, both on television and in the booming Australian film industry. He learned the ropes as a camera and sound man, working for Fortune productions, who were responsible for the most popular shows on TV back then. He watched and observed and learned till he decided he was ready to make his own show.

With backing from his large family—Rico had three indulgent older brothers and five doting older sisters—he started production on A Passion for Pasta, having noted that cooking and lifestyle programmes were really taking off. But the Australian-Italian chef he hired for the pilot episode turned out to be a bundle of nerves in front of the camera, with Rico constantly having to jump in and show him what to do, and how to do it.

Despite his not having any formal training as a chef, it soon became obvious that he was a natural in the part as the show’s host. Rico had finally found his niche. Suddenly, his size didn’t matter, his Italian looks were an asset and the Italian accent he could bung on without any trouble at all gave a touch of authenticity. It also helped that he really was a very good amateur cook, his mother having taught him. It was Signora Mandretti’s very real passion for pasta, and her creativeness with the product—feeding her large family on a tight budget required more than a little inventiveness—which had inspired the show’s title and content.

A Passion for Pasta was an instant success once Rico had found a buyer, and he hadn’t looked back.

Not that any of his successes ever impressed Renée. They had certainly impressed Jasmine, however. She’d known a good thing when she saw it.

Rico pulled a face at the memory of the gold-digger he’d married. He was still flabbergasted over how much the family law court judge had awarded her for the privilege of being a pampered princess for three years.

Still, it had been worth any price in the end to get Jasmine out of his life, although he’d deeply resented her demanding—and getting, mind you—both their Bondi Beach apartment and his favourite car, a one-off black Porsche which he’d had especially fitted out with black leather seats and thick black carpet on the floors.

Black had always been Rico’s favourite colour, both in clothes and cars. He’d bought the red Ferrari he was now driving on a mad impulse, telling himself that a change was as good as a holiday, an act which had rebounded on him when Renée had recently seen him getting into it in the car park at the races.

‘I should have known that the red Ferrari was your car,’ she’d said with a sniff of her delicately flaring nostrils. ‘What else would an Italian playboy drive?’

On that occasion—as was depressingly often the case these days—he hadn’t been able to think of a snappy comeback quick enough, and she’d driven off in her sedate and stylish BMW with a superior smirk on her face.

His mind returning to Renée once more brought a scowl to his. He’d promised himself earlier he wasn’t going to think about that witch today. He’d already given her enough thought to last a lifetime!

The sight of a very familiar roadside postbox coming up on his right soon wiped the scowl from his face.

His parents’ property wasn’t anything fancy. Just a few acres of market garden with a large but plain two-storeyed cream brick house perched on the small rise in the middle of the land. But Rico’s heart seemed to expand at the sight of it and he found himself smiling as he turned into the driveway.

There was nothing like coming home. Home to your roots, and to people who really knew you, and loved you all the same.

CHAPTER TWO

TERESA MANDRETTI was picking some herbs from her private vegetable and herb garden—the one she planted and personally tended—when a figure moved into the corner of her eye.

‘Enrico!’ she exclaimed on lifting her head and seeing her youngest child walking towards her. ‘You startled me. I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.’

The first Sunday of the month was traditionally family day at the Mandretti household, with her youngest son always coming home to share lunch with his parents, plus as many of his siblings and their families that could make it.

‘Mum.’ He opened his arms and drew her into a wrap-around hug, his six-foot-two, broad-shouldered frame totally enveloping her own short, plump one.

How he had come to be so big and tall, Teresa could only guess. His father, Frederico, was not a big man. When the family back in Italy had seen photos of Enrico at his twenty-first birthday, they said he had to be a throwback to Frederico’s father, who’d reputedly been a giant of a man. Teresa had never actually met her father-in-law. Frederico Senior had been killed in a fight with another man when he was only thirty-five, having flown into a jealous rage when this other fellow had paid what he called “improper” attention to his wife.

Teresa could well imagine that this was where Enrico got quite a few of his genes. Her youngest son had a temper on him, too.

‘Have you had lunch?’ she asked when her son finally let her come up for air. He was a hugger, was Enrico, like all the Mandrettis. Teresa was from more reserved stock. Which was why she’d found Frederico Mandretti so attractive. He’d taken no notice of her shyness and swept her off to his bed before she could say no. They’d been married a few weeks later with her first son already in her belly. They’d migrated to Australia a few months after that, just in time for Frederico the Third to be born in their new country.

‘No, but I’m not hungry,’ came her son’s surprising reply.

Teresa’s eyes narrowed. Not hungry? Her Enrico, who could eat a horse even if he was dying! Something was not right here.

‘What’s wrong, Enrico?’ she asked with a mother’s worried eyes and voice.

‘Nothing’s wrong, Mum. Truly. I had a very large, very late breakfast, that’s all. Where’s Dad?’

‘He’s gone to the races. Not the horse races. The dog races. Down at Appin. Uncle Guiseppe has a couple of runners today.’

‘Dad should buy himself a greyhound or two. The walking would do him good. Get rid of that spare tyre he’s carrying around his middle. I think he’s been eating too much of your pasta.’

Teresa bridled. ‘Are you saying your papa is fat?’

‘Not fat, exactly. Just well fed.’

Teresa suspected Enrico was deliberately diverting the subject away from himself. She knew all her children well, but she knew Enrico even better than the others. He’d come along when she’d thought there would be no more bambinos. She’d already had eight children, one each year or so, three boys followed by five girls. After giving birth to Katrina, the doctor had told her she should not have any more babies. Her body was exhausted. So she’d gone on the Pill with her sensible priest’s permission, and for the next nine years, had not had the worry of being pregnant.

But the Pill was not perfect, it seemed, and another child had eventually been conceived. Although she was worried, a termination had not even been considered, and fortunately Teresa had been blessed with a trouble-free pregnancy that time and an amazingly easy birth. Enrico being a boy was an added bonus after having had five girls in a row.

Of course, he’d been very spoiled, by all of them, but especially his sisters. Still, despite the temper tantrums he threw when he didn’t get what he wanted, Enrico had been a loving child who had grown into a loving man. Everyone in the family adored him, not the least being herself. Teresa would never have admitted it openly, but Enrico held a special place in her heart, possibly because he was her youngest. With the ten-year age gap between Enrico and his closest sister, Teresa had been able to devote a lot of time to raising her last baby. Enrico had followed her around like a little puppy, and mother and son were very close.

Enrico could never fool her. Aside from his suspicious lack of hunger today, she knew something had to be up to take him away from the races on a Saturday afternoon. With a mother’s intuition, she sensed it had something to do with a woman. Possibly with that Renée lady he often spoke about but whom she’d never met, the one he played poker with every Friday night and who was part of his racing syndicate. Teresa had sensed an odd note in his voice whenever he mentioned her.

And he mentioned her quite a bit.

Teresa would have liked to ask him about her but suspected that the direct approach would be a waste of time. At thirty-four, her youngest son was long past the age that he confided matters concerning his personal and private life to his mother. Which was a pity. If he’d consulted her before he’d become tangled up with that Jasmine creature, she could have saved her son a lot of heartache.