Her Mediterranean Playboy (4 page)

Once Vittorio was in the car beside her he leaned forward to close the panel that separated the driver from the passengers. ‘Beppe does not approve of my being involved with a divorcée,’ he said. ‘Like a lot of people of his age and religious conviction, he is a little old-fashioned in that regard.’

Ally frowned as she tried to wriggle further away from those long, strong thighs of his that seemed to be taking up far too much room. ‘You don’t seem to me to be the type to be overly concerned about other people’s opinions,’ she said. ‘If you were you would never have orchestrated this ridiculous charade in the first place.’

He stretched out one of his long arms along the back of the seat, his fingers so close to the nape of her neck that she felt every single hair stand to attention, as if anticipating his touch. She drew in a wobbly breath and sent out her tongue to remove the dry dust of panic from her lips.

‘I have decided no one must know it is a charade,’ he said, locking gazes with her. ‘Apart from Rocco, of course.’

She sent him a worried glance. ‘I don’t have to see him, do I?’

He gave her a studied look. ‘You will have to be seen with him amongst the rest of my family for our affair to be taken seriously. And you will have to be very careful you do not betray yourself by hankering after him like a lovesick fool.’

She turned her head and folded her arms crossly. ‘I can assure you I will be doing no such thing.’

‘I do not see why you should be so angry with him for breaking off your affair,’ he said. ‘You only slept with him—what was it?—two or three times? And he only did it because you threw yourself at him.’

‘That’s a lie!’ Ally said, recalling her sister’s tearful confession. ‘He told me he loved me and was going to leave his wife for me.’

Vittorio’s teeth ground together as he struggled to rein in his anger. ‘You think he would leave his beautiful wife for a cheap little trollop like you? He used you just as you used him. A couple of quick tumbles in a sleazy hotel room, a handful of jewels and a wad of cash is usually how it goes with women like you, is it not?’

She glared back at him. ‘Did he tell you he paid me?’

Vittorio held her dark blue gaze. ‘No, but he did not need to—for you took the money yourself, did you not? You refused to go away. You wanted more than he was prepared to give. So you decided to make as much trouble for him as you could without giving a single thought as to how your behaviour would impact on other members of his family.’

Ally was at a loss to know what to say in response. She could imagine how desperately hurt Alex would have been to have been so cruelly shunted aside by the man she had fallen in love with—a man who had obviously lied to her from the start. It would have devastated her sister to find she had been betrayed in such a way, and while it didn’t excuse her foolish behaviour in regard to Vittorio’s car and the theft of the cash, Ally didn’t feel it was fair that Alex had to shoulder all the blame while Rocco hid behind his wife’s brother’s broad back.

‘I will tell the rest of my family and the press I have fallen for you,’ Vittorio continued. ‘I do not want anyone to suspect anything to the contrary in case it somehow gets back to my sister. She is enduring a difficult enough pregnancy as it is.’

Ally’s eyes suddenly went wide. ‘Rocco’s wife is
pregnant?
’ she gasped in shock.

His own eyes narrowed as he looked at her. ‘Yes. Did he not tell you?’

She compressed her lips, wishing she had done so earlier, so those words wouldn’t have come blurting out to raise that flag of suspicion in his astute brown gaze. ‘I didn’t even know he was married until after we…you know…got together.’

He made a sound of derision in his throat. ‘You deceitful little tart.’ He almost spat the words at her. ‘You knew exactly what you were getting into. You chased him all the way from London. You have been hounding him for the last month, hoping to change his mind about keeping you in his bed.’

Ally was starting to put some pieces of the puzzle together in her head, and it didn’t make a particularly attractive picture. From what she could make out Alex had had a fling with Rocco in London and fallen madly in love. Then, throwing in her job,
had flown to Rome in the hope he would continue to see her. It went against everything she knew about her sister to think Alex would actively pursue a man whose wife was expecting a child. There must have been more to it than that. Someone was lying, and she was determined to find out the whole story before she revealed to Vittorio who she really was.

‘I didn’t know about his wife’s pregnancy,’ she said, reasonably confident she was speaking for her twin. ‘He never once mentioned it.’

He suddenly grasped her chin between two strong fingers, forcing her gaze to meet his. ‘I do not believe you,’ he ground out. ‘My brother-in-law told me how devious you are, how conniving you can be when you want something you cannot have.’

Ally glared at him venomously. ‘If you put your hands on me again I will scratch your arrogant face until even your cad of a brother-in-law doesn’t recognise you.’

His smile was deliberately taunting as he released her. ‘You have quite a spirit,’ he observed musingly. ‘It needs to be tamed, of course, but we have two weeks in which to do so. I am confident I can get you eating out of my hand, given the right inducement.’

She sent him a scathing look. ‘You would need more than two weeks to tame me, you arrogant bastard. You are exactly the sort of man I abhor. You see women as objects to titillate your every need. You lure them in and then cast them aside as if they mean nothing to you. You disgust me. My flesh crawls at the thought of you touching me.’

‘And yet you enjoyed the attentions of my brother-in-law, a man who belongs to someone else?’

Ally could hear the disgust in his tone, and turned her head to look out of the window so she didn’t have to see it on his face. It upset her more than she wanted it to. Having an affair with a married man was a mistake any woman could make if the man didn’t reveal his marital status early in the piece, but what if her sister
had
eventually known about Rocco’s wife’s pregnancy?

It worried her that Alex might have been unstable enough to continue the affair regardless. She had been off her medication for weeks, maybe even longer. That in itself was a recipe for
disaster. She had witnessed her sister’s rapid mood swings before. Life was like an out-of-control rollercoaster when Alex was not properly medicated. It was such a delicate balancing act, getting the right levels, making sure her sister stayed on her medication regime and avoided all the triggers that would cause a relapse.

‘But you are not my brother-in-law’s mistress now,’ he said. ‘To all intents and purposes you are mine. Every step you take from this moment on will be documented by the press. If you put even one foot wrong the prison cell I was talking about will become a cold, hard reality. Do not think I will not do it, for I can and I will if I feel it is necessary.’

Ally secretly admired his loyalty to his brother-in-law and pregnant sister. It reminded her of her own devotion to Alex. She almost wished she could tell him so, but current circumstances prevented it. Although he was undoubtedly a playboy, he seemed so much more principled than his cowardly brother-in-law.

The car pulled into a leafy street close to the Villa Borghese. The driver was out of the car and dealing with the suitcases before Ally could even unfold her trembling legs from the vehicle.

She looked up at the impressive building; it was a seventeenth-century
palazzo
, with several sun-drenched terraces that made the most of the view over the city and the green oasis that housed so many of the tourist attractions she had read about in her travel guide.

The warm air carried a seductive hint of honeysuckle and star jasmine as she walked up the steps with Vittorio’s palm beneath her elbow, the touch of his flesh against hers sending little jolts of electricity up and down her arm.

‘I have cleared my diary for the next few days,’ he said as they entered the building. ‘We will spend as much time as possible together in order to send a very clear message to the press that they got it wrong when they cited you as Rocco’s lover. It happens occasionally, as we are very similar in looks and are the same age. We could almost be taken for twins.’

Ally physically stumbled on the
palazzo
steps as he mentioned the word. She looked up at him, to see if he had noticed anything untoward, but he was already speaking to someone
who appeared to be some sort of senior housekeeper. She couldn’t follow the staccato Italian, but she caught one or two words that seemed to suggest Vittorio’s household staff were not generally used to accommodating his various mistresses. The looks she was receiving seemed to confirm it. She was apparently in a class of her own, being allowed access to his private domain. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. Although it made sense he would want everyone to assume she was his current lady-love, and moving into his
palazzo
was certainly a confirmation to the press that she was being treated unlike any other woman he had been involved with previously.

‘You have been assigned the suite of rooms next to mine,’ Vittorio said. ‘There is an adjoining door between the bedrooms, but you can lock it on your side if you should feel the need to do so.’

Ally couldn’t help curling her lip at him. ‘You surely don’t think I would be tempted to crawl into
your
bed, do you?’

His eyes communicated his arrogant disdain. ‘You would be turned away if you did,’ he said in a harsh undertone. ‘I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing any sort of relationship with you. You are exactly the sort of woman I make every effort to avoid. You are clingy and dependent, intent on finding yourself a benevolent fool who will indulge your every whim.’

Ally was sure his bruising tirade wasn’t over, but the appearance of yet another staff member put an abrupt end to it.

A demure young woman carrying a vase of summer roses smiled shyly, and in halting English asked if Ally would like to be shown her room.

‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ Ally said, without bothering to seek Vittorio’s approval. She was exhausted, and could think of nothing better than a few minutes on her own to gather her scattered thoughts.

The suite the girl called Ghita led her into was luxuriously appointed beyond anything Ally had ever experienced. The floors were of polished Italian marble, covered here and there with ankle-deep rugs, and the windows were full length, festooned with voluminous silk curtains, and overlooked massive gardens
awash with colourful blooms similar to the fragrant ones the young girl had just placed on the bedside table.

‘Would you like me to pour you a cool drink?’ Ghita asked. ‘It is very hot today,
sì
?’

Ally smiled, instantly relaxing in the atmosphere of the girl’s open friendliness. ‘Yes, it is. I’m not used to it yet. I guess it will take a few more days to acclimatise. It was still winter when I left home.’

It was only when Ghita gave her a confused look that Ally realised her little slip. ‘I—I m-mean it was much cooler in London than here,’ she amended quickly.

‘Sì,’
Ghita said, smiling again. ‘I have not been to England. I have heard it rains a lot there, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Ally said, surreptitiously letting out a relieved sigh. ‘It does.’

‘Signor Vassallo is very nice, is he not?’ Ghita said. ‘I think it very funny how the paparazzi got it wrong—you know, about you being Signor Rocco’s lover.’

‘Yes…yes, it was highly…er…amusing…’ Ally said weakly, searching around for her handbag without success. Had she left it in the car, or was it with the rest of her things? It had been on the floor of the car at her feet. Her mind was so rattled and her head was starting to pound so sickeningly she couldn’t remember whether she had brought it upstairs or not. She thought of the money stashed inside it and wished she could ask Alex what she had been doing with it. Had she stolen it from Rocco Montano, as Vittorio had said? Her sister might be a little unpredictable at times, but Ally was sure Alex would never take something that wasn’t hers.

‘Ghita, do you think you could bring me my handbag?’ she asked. ‘I think I must have left it in the car, or on one of the tables in the foyer. I have the beginnings of a headache, and I have some painkillers that will ease it if I take them in time.’

‘Sì,’
Ghita said. ‘I will see to it straight away.’

The young girl came back a few moments later with Ally’s bag and handed it to her.

‘Anyway, the press are
stupido
,’ she prattled on as she poured
a tall glass of iced water from a jug on a side table. ‘They know nothing about anything. Everyone knows they make things up to sell papers and magazines.’

‘Oh, really?’ Ally asked absently as she took the glass from the girl and swallowed two pills from her bag.

‘Why would you damage Signor Vassallo’s car if you were Rocco’s lover?’ Ghita asked. ‘It does not make sense. It was a lovers’ tiff, no? You were angry at Signor Vittorio for not publicly acknowledging you. So what if you have been married before? It is the twenty-first century,
sì
? But he has openly presented you now, and all is well, is it not? You are here in his
palazzo
. No other woman has ever had that privilege. It will be fun. Like a
celebrazione
, no?’

Ally had never felt less like celebrating in her life, but she smiled back at the young girl regardless. ‘Yes,’ she said, her stomach tying itself into knots. ‘I’m sure it will be heaps of fun.’

A
LLY
whooshed out an exhausted breath once the young housemaid had left. She sank onto one of the deeply cushioned sofas and, laying back her head, closed her eyes, trying to allow the pills to do their job and ease the vice-like tension across her brow.

She had never been in such an awkward position before. She felt as if she was betraying every principle she had clung to all of her life. Honesty and openness had been tossed aside for subterfuge and mendacity. How long could she maintain this appallingly dangerous charade? What if she had to meet her twin’s lover face to face? Would
he
see the swap for what it was? After all, he had been her sister’s lover. The physical intimacy they had shared, even if it had only been on a few occasions, would surely give him an edge Vittorio did not have, having only met her the once.

Even thinking about Vittorio Vassallo set her nerves jumping all over the place. He was going to be sleeping on the other side of that door—the door that she had not yet locked. What if he took it upon himself and came in to claim his mock mistress? She wouldn’t put it past him. She had seen the attraction in his black-as-night gaze every time it rested on her, reluctant as it was. He was fighting it just as much as she was, but for totally different reasons. He would think it beneath himself to sample his brother-in-law’s leftovers, but she had much more to lose—her virginity, for one thing. Even though she was twenty-five years old, she had never taken a lover. There had been plenty of opportunities, but her natural reserve had made her cautious around
men. And her responsibilities towards her twin had made it almost impossible at times to have a life of her own. It had only been during the last year or so that she had felt an easing of the burden, and even so it had all blown up in her face yet again.

She clenched her hands in determination. She
had
to get Alex through this. If it took every ounce of courage, every atom of her being, to see her sister come out the other side in full health again it would be worth it.

There was a knock at the door, and, hoping it was the cheerful little Ghita, with fresh water for the jug Ally had almost drained, she rose to answer it.

Vittorio’s tall figure stooped as he entered the room, his eyes immediately going to the door that separated his room from hers. ‘I notice you have not locked the door,’ he commented, turning back to look at her. ‘What does that mean, I wonder? Is it that you trust me to keep my side of the bargain, or are you hoping I will change my mind and be tempted to sample you for myself, as Rocco has done?’

‘I wouldn’t sleep with you if you paid me a king’s ransom,’ she spat back venomously.

‘You slept with my brother-in-law for what you could get out of him,’ he said. ‘If money and notoriety is what you want then I can give you much more of both than Rocco ever could.’

Her mouth tightened as she held his challenging look. ‘I told you why I slept with him, and it had nothing to do with money.’

‘Ah, yes.’ His mocking smile was back. ‘You fell in love with him. Or perhaps it was the size of his wallet, no? I am sure you checked that out before you—’ he made the finger sign of quotation marks in the air ‘—“lost your heart” to him.’

She frowned at him. ‘You don’t think it’s possible for someone to fall in love not knowing anything about the other person?’ she asked. ‘What about instant chemistry? Or connecting on some other level, such as intellectually or spiritually?’

His eyes glinted at her. ‘You are as convincing as Rocco warned. He said you had ways and means about you that would make any man crazy with lust for you.’

She upped her chin, her brilliant blue eyes challenging him.
‘But not you, Mr Vittorio-Never-Makes-an-Error-of-Judgement-Vassallo? Right?’

His eyes locked with hers. ‘How much would you want to make this affair a real one?’

She looked at him as if he had just asked her to straighten the Tower of Pisa with one fingertip.
‘What did you say?’
Her voice came out like a squeak.

He stepped up close to her, one of his hands threading through the silk of her silver-blonde hair, coiling it around his fingers, tethering her to him. ‘How much to be my mistress?’ he asked again, softly this time, smoulderingly, seductively.

Ally’s eyes went wide with both apprehension and attraction. She could barely make sense of it. One part of her wanted to slap that arrogantly confident look off his too handsome face. The other part of her—the part she didn’t even recognise as herself—wanted to wind her arms around his neck and bring that sensual mouth down to hers. She could feel the seductive pull of his inscrutable dark gaze as it warred with hers, and she could see the flare of his pupils signalling the desire he was no longer bothering to conceal. The thought of him possessing her intimately made her knees sag and her legs go weak. She could feel her inner body beginning to pulse with an ache for fulfilment she instinctively knew he would be more than capable of satisfying. She felt it in his touch; she breathed it in his male scent. The power and potency of him was making her whole body leap to fervent life.

‘I am a very rich man, Ally,’ he said into the erotically charged silence. ‘What is it you want? Diamonds? An apartment? An all-expenses-paid holiday to somewhere exotic?’

Ally moistened her lips, wondering what he would say if she told him what she really wanted. She wanted her sister to be well most of all—and she would
do
anything, and
give
anything to bring that about.

But for herself personally? That was simple. It was what most women wanted. Ally wanted to be loved, to be swept off her feet and adored by a man who would remain faithful to her, supporting her through all of life’s ups and downs. And she wanted to
have children, so she could experience the stability of a loving family unit and make up for all she and Alex had missed out on in the past.

‘I want security,’ she said in the end, taking the middle ground. ‘It is how women are made. It’s in our genetic code. We choose partners on the basis of how good a provider they can be. There is nothing sinister or avaricious about it. It’s just the way things are.’

His mouth slanted in a smile as he slowly unwound her hair from his fingers. ‘So you are making a science out of seduction, no?’

Ally pursed her lips at him, trying not to shiver in reaction as each hair on her head responded to his touch. ‘I’m not trying to seduce you, Vittorio,’ she said. ‘I am trying to be sensible about this…this unusual situation we are in.’

His charcoal eyes bored into hers. ‘It is, as you say, unusual—but that does not mean it cannot be mutually satisfying,’ he said. ‘You apparently made the mistake of falling for a married man. I dare say a lot of women have done so many times before, and no doubt very many will continue to do so in the future. But I am not married, and you are now free, so why not explore the possibilities?’

‘W-what do you mean by p-possibilities?’ she asked, stumbling over her words as he cupped the nape of her neck with the warmth of his palm.

His gaze went to her mouth. ‘Do I need to spell it out for you, Ally?’

Her throat moved up and down as his gaze locked on hers. ‘I’m not ready for…for any…er…entanglements…’ she said.

‘Do not tell me you still have hankerings after Rocco?’ he asked as his index finger began a slow caress from the shell of her ear right to the corner of her mouth.

Ally gave a mental gulp as he stopped just short of her tingling, quivering lips. ‘N-no, this is not about Rocco,’ she said. ‘I care nothing for him.’

He hooked one brow upwards, his dark eyes still watching her intently. ‘Nothing at all, eh?’

She gave her head a little shake. ‘No…he means nothing to me…er…now.’

He studied her features in silence for a moment or two before saying, ‘I will leave you to prepare for our first public outing this evening. I have already phoned my older sister Justina and her husband, and told them of our affair. They will accept you as my current love interest—you will have no need to feel uncomfortable around them if you happen to meet them over the next few days. They believe, as I had hoped, that the press made a stupid mistake.’

‘What about Rocco? Have you told him about us?’ Ally asked.

‘Yes, but he was not happy about my solution to the problem,’ he said, his dark, mysterious gaze piercing as it held hers. ‘I found that intriguing, considering he begged me to do something about you hassling him.’

Ally sent her tongue out to moisten her lips. ‘Perhaps your brother-in-law hasn’t told you everything that went on between us? Have you considered that?’

‘I am looking into it from all angles, so to speak, in case one or both of you is not being up-front and honest with me,’ he said with another penetrating look. ‘But I think I already know who is lying. It is so obvious, is it not?’

Ally felt her nerves start to fray at the edges at his cat-and-mouse tactics. ‘I will not be toyed with by you as I was by your cowardly brother-in-law,’ she said tightly. ‘I am not some cheap tart who can be bought and then thrown away when you’re finished with me. I’m telling you now if I
was
really involved with you I would
not
go away without a fight.’

He moved forward again, before she could counteract it, and tipped up her chin with his hard fingers, his eyes clashing with hers. ‘Then you have just met your match, Ally Sharpe,’ he said with a smouldering look. ‘For I like nothing better than a showdown, and this one I can feel in my blood is going to end up with us in bed.’

Ally pulled out of his hold and glared up at him. ‘Get out!’ she shrieked. ‘Get out of here you bast—’

He put his hand over her mouth, blocking the rest of her words. ‘Do not shout at me,
cara
,’ he said in an infuriatingly calm tone. ‘The household staff will think we are not as in love as we claim to be.’

Ally tried to say
I hate you
against the firm pressure of his palm, but it came out muffled. So instead she sank her teeth into the pad of his thumb, hard enough to break the skin. He put her from him with a muttered curse, his mouth covering the place where hers had been. There was something disconcertingly intimate about the action; his mouth was now in contact with traces of her saliva.

She took a step backwards, shocked at her behaviour, ashamed by how she was reacting to him. ‘I—I’m sorry,’ she said, her colour rising. ‘Are you…are you OK?’

He wrapped his thumb in his handkerchief before he met her anxious gaze. ‘It is nothing—just a scratch.’

She stepped forward and took his hand, carefully unwrapping the makeshift bandage and looking at the imprint of her teeth on his skin.

She looked up at him, his hand still cradled in hers. ‘Please forgive me. I can’t believe I just did that. I’m not normally the type of person to lose control like that.’

His dark eyes seemed to be particularly intent as they held hers. ‘Not according to my brother-in-law. And do not forget I have photographs of you acting very much out of control.’

Ally bit her bottom lip as she let his hand go. ‘I’m not really myself right now,’ she said with unintentional irony. ‘I have been having some problems lately…’

‘What sort of problems?’

‘Emotional stuff,’ she said, lowering her gaze a fraction. ‘I’ll be fine now. I’ve finally accepted Rocco is not available. I was naïve to get involved with him. I should have seen the signs. I’m hopeless at reading people—married men in particular. Some are just flirting for the sake of it. I should have left him alone, but I became a little obsessed. I feel embarrassed thinking about it now. It was so out of character and immature of me.’

‘It is of no importance now,’ he said. ‘We have resolved the situation rather cleverly, have we not? In two weeks it will all be over. You can go back to London or Australia and resume your former life.’

‘Yes…’ Ally said, thinking longingly of her neat, ordered life
back at home. She didn’t want to think about how boring and empty it seemed in comparison. Doing so made the last few hours seem like a hair-raising rollercoaster of emotion—emotion she had never thought herself capable of feeling.

Vittorio moved to the door. ‘I will see you downstairs at seven. I will send Ghita up to show you the way.’

Ally watched as the door closed behind him. She felt as if she was trapped inside with all her lies, each one she had told circling above her head like a hornet waiting to strike.

She gave a little shiver and turned away—only to confront the door that connected Vittorio’s sleeping quarters with hers. She drew in a prickly breath and walked across the cloud-soft rug. She lifted her hand to turn the key, but before she had even placed her fingers on the key she heard the sound of the door being locked from the other side. Her hand fell back by her side, her breathing shallow and uneven as she thought about what had motivated Vittorio to lock the door himself.

Was it because he didn’t trust her? Or, even more alarming, was it because he didn’t trust himself?

Ally took her mobile into the bathroom with her and called her sister, only to be told by one of the clinic staff that Alex was having a particularly bad time of it and had had to be heavily sedated again.

‘I am afraid she began self-mutilating,’ the psychiatric nurse informed her soberly. ‘Somehow she found something sharp. The doctor has changed the dosage of her medication, so she should be feeling better in a day or two. I will tell her you called.’

Ally felt her stomach clench in anguish. ‘Do you think I should come straight there as soon as I can get a train or a flight?’ she asked.

‘No, it is better for us to deal with her. Sometimes visits by family members can make things harder in the early stages of rehabilitation. We have a wonderful therapist who is assigned to Alex. She is confident she can bring your sister back to full health. Try not to be too concerned—she is in very good hands. We just have to be patient until she is stabilised.’

In spite of the clinic nurse’s assurances, Ally felt sick with
worry as she closed the face of her phone. But she had other things to be concerned about besides her sister’s health. In less than two hours she had to meet the press in her role as Vittorio Vassallo’s mistress. How on earth would she maintain her composure if he decided to kiss her, as she was almost certain he had intended to do earlier? Her lips were still buzzing from that feather-light touch that had come so tantalisingly close to her mouth.