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