Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Ruthless Demands. Lynne Graham

very beginning of your dealings with Julie, your son’s real mother was using Jemima Barber’s identity to hide behind.’

      ‘But why? You believe this was a conspiracy from the start?’

      ‘Who can tell? With one of them dead it’s doubtful that the full truth will ever be known,’ Charles pointed out cynically.

      Rage began to shadow Luciano’s rational mind as the ramifications for his son began to filter into his thoughts. His son’s mother had deceived him and his staff from day one and now she was dead and, as such, untouchable. Luciano was his son’s only living relative. He refused to credit that an aunt could possibly have a claim to challenge his own. So, naturally, Jemima had not owned up to the truth. After all, her only way of making a profit through Niccolò was by pretending to be his birth mother.

      As they climbed into a limousine outside the airport Luciano watched his son nestle trustingly into Jemima’s arms and then complain loudly at being placed in the car seat instead. His lean dark features shadowed. He was finally a parent and already he had failed. He had failed to protect his son from hurt. Niccolò had been encouraged to form a bond with his two-faced, duplicitous aunt and would be emotionally bereft when the woman disappeared from his world. Who did Luciano blame for the formation of that deceptive bond? Jemima Barber! She must’ve known from the outset that her only weapon would be the baby’s attachment to her. Niccolò was only a baby but he had already been tricked into bestowing affection where he should not. Luciano, in a rage beyond anything he had ever experienced, ground his even white teeth together while he pretended an interest in the emails on his tablet.

      She was a lying, cheating prostituta with a stone for a heart! And just like her late sister, the only thing that greased the wheels in Jemima’s world was money. There was no other explanation for her behaviour! At any time she could have admitted the truth but she had preferred to lie and stage a scam to ensure that she wielded the greatest power she could and made the biggest possible profit out of her dishonesty. In ignorance Luciano had agreed to settle her debts—her sister’s debts?—and had made the mistake of offering her an all-expenses-paid trip to Sicily. And she would have even more cause to celebrate when she saw what awaited her at the castle...

      Of course he didn’t want her now, he told himself fiercely. He wanted nothing more to do with her and out of sight would be out of mind. How long had it been since a woman put one over on him? He suppressed a shudder of all too fresh recollection. What did it say about him that the women who most attracted him were thoroughly immoral and unscrupulous characters? Was that some hangover from his ancestral forebears? Something dark and shady in his blood that slyly influenced his choices?

      Although Jemima was trying not to stare at Luciano she was convinced that something unpleasant had happened. She had watched his lean, darkly handsome face freeze into rigidity while he was talking on the phone at the airport. Had he received bad news? Some business setback? Or something of a more personal nature? Jemima acknowledged how very little she actually knew about Luciano Vitale. He was a widower who had lost a wife and a daughter and that was the summit of her information. But whatever was amiss, Luciano’s jaw was rock hard with tension and he had barely acknowledged the existence of Jemima and his son since the jet had landed. Ironically, Nicky, who acted up whenever Luciano actively tried to get closer to him, now chose to stretch out an inviting hand towards his father, who might as well have been on another planet for all the interest he was showing in him. Still, there was yet another similarity between the two of them, Jemima reflected helplessly. Neither one of them could bear to be ignored...and ten to one that was exactly why Nicky was vying for attention now.

      The limousine came to a halt and Jemima looked out of the window, surprised to see various aircraft parked. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

      ‘A private airfield. I use a helicopter to fly to my home,’ Luciano divulged, his firmly modelled lips compressing.

      Jemima’s eyes widened in surprise. She had never been on a helicopter before and yet he evidently regularly used them just to travel home. Nothing could have more easily illustrated the vast gulf between their worlds. While they were boarding the helicopter, there was no further conversation, which was probably just as well because Jemima was concentrating on her exciting new experience.

      As the helicopter took off Jemima peered out of the window to watch a slice of sea appear at a crazy angle. Her brow pleated in astonishment when the craft then flew out directly over the water. Where on earth were they going? Naturally she had assumed that Luciano’s home was either in a city or in the mountainous interior but as the minutes passed on their seabound journey it was clear that their destination could only be another island.

      She watched land appear again with keen interest. A bright patchwork of forested slopes, olive groves and a vast brown building on the shoreline of a long beach appeared. The building had towers and turrets like a castle, and as the helicopter dropped down to land in the manicured grounds enclosed by tall boundary walls she realised that it was a genuine castle.

      ‘What’s this place called?’ she asked as she hopped down onto the grass and approached Luciano to take Nicky back off him.

      ‘Castello del Drogo. The island is named for it. I’ll keep him,’ Luciano told her, hoisting the sleepy baby against his shoulder in a blatantly protective movement, his eyes as dark and cool as the night sky and about as far from melting honey as eyes could get, she thought ruefully.

      Refusing to be quieted by his discouraging coldness, Jemima smiled. ‘How long have you lived here?’

      ‘A couple of years. It has the privacy I need. Intruders can only approach by sky or sea and both are monitored. I can walk by the sea here without fear of a camera appearing from the bushes,’ he spelt out flatly.

      They got into the beach buggy waiting to waft them up to the doors of the castle. Jemima was smiling, her earlier concerns forgotten as she rejoiced in the warmth of late afternoon and the beautiful gardens surrounding them. It would be really interesting to stay in a castle, she thought absently, studying the imposing fortress before her. ‘How old is it?’

      ‘The oldest section is medieval, the youngest eighteenth century.’

      They mounted shallow steps to the giant porticoed entrance where two women awaited their arrival. Both wore black, one of possibly pensioner age and the other around fortyish.

      The hall was an imposing oval shape with a marble floor and black ebonised furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Jemima was silenced by the sheer splendour of the castle, especially when she compared it to her parents’ tiny retirement home. How could she ever have denied Nicky the wealthy lifestyle that his father evidently enjoyed?

      ‘Do you own the whole island?’ she whispered, unable to contain her curiosity.

      ‘Yes,’ he admitted in the sort of tone that implied that it was not a very big deal to own your own island, and in Jemima’s mind the gulf between them stretched even wider.

      Luciano introduced the older woman as his housekeeper, Agnese, and the younger as her daughter and Nicky’s new nanny, Carlotta. He settled the baby into Carlotta’s arms and addressed her in Italian. Jemima reminded herself doggedly of her agreement to step back from Nicky as he was borne off screaming, presumably to be fed and put to bed. As Carlotta mounted the stairs Jemima could hear her talking softly and soothingly to the distressed baby and her concern eased a little.

      ‘Agnese will show you to your room,’ Luciano announced.

      Agnese’s small creased face was as frozen as an ice sculpture. Telling herself that that was still preferable to a dirty look, Jemima followed the older woman upstairs and down a tiled passageway with ancient stone walls. Double doors were flung wide and light flooded across the most amazing bedroom Jemima had ever seen. Tall windows cast sunshine over the sumptuously hung four-poster bed. Gorgeous furniture vied with opulent fabric and a glorious floral arrangement to take her attention. Taken aback as she realised that the palatial room was for her use, Jemima hovered by the little table bearing the magnificent flowers and watched wide-eyed as an actual maid in a uniform appeared through one of the several additional doors to smile and stand back as