Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Ruthless Demands. Lynne Graham

knowledge in the weirdest way. It shouldn’t make any difference to his attitude to her...but somehow it did. He could no longer confuse her with Julie the escort or with his late wife, Gigi. Jemima had been considerably more sexually innocent than either.

      Hearing Luciano’s movements in the bathroom, Jemima emerged from her own reverie and hurriedly yanked the sheet up over her bare breasts even if the gesture did strike her as too little too late. Luciano appeared in the doorway. What did he think of her now? she wondered for a split second before reality finally came crashing back down on her again. In the storm of her personal doubts and insecurities she had miraculously contrived to forget the lies she had told and they were about to catch up with her, she reckoned wretchedly. Luciano knew now, he had to know that a virgin couldn’t possibly be Nicky’s mum.

      Where had her wits been when she’d let him sweep her off to bed? How had she managed to overlook the need to protect the one intimate fact that could prove she was a liar? Of course it hadn’t once occurred to her that she would have sex with Luciano. Fantasy was one thing, actually acting on fantasy something else entirely. Nor had she calculated the very real danger of tempting a male as aggressively dominant as Luciano. He was passionate and oversexed. Knowing she wanted him, he had targeted her and she had been an easy challenge, she reflected shamefacedly.

      ‘So...’ Luciano breathed silkily, leaning back against the door frame barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only well-worn jeans. With that much unclad masculine flesh on view she found it impossible not to stare. ‘What price do you put on your virginity?’

      Jemima blinked. ‘Price?’ she parroted in stricken disbelief.

      Luciano raised a well-defined black brow. ‘Well, obviously there has to be a price for me to pay because you put a price on absolutely everything else. You put a price on my son’s worth, didn’t you? Giving away something for free isn’t your style.’

      Her face had flamed hot as a fire. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

      Luciano shifted an impatient hand and studied her fixedly. ‘Quit with the lies, Jemima. Lies only make me angry and you don’t want me angry,’ he warned her.

      Lean muscles flexed below bronzed skin as he changed position. The deep chill in his assurance crept through her like the sudden touch of icicles on too-hot skin. He was scaring her but he didn’t need to scare her because Jemima was already fully aware of the wrong she had done. ‘All right, I won’t tell you any more lies,’ she muttered heavily. ‘You know I’m not Nicky’s birth mother now, don’t you?’

      ‘Obviously. So what’s the going rate for a virgin these days?’ Luciano asked with scorching derision. ‘Presumably you gave it up for a good reason and with you the reason will always relate to profit.’

      ‘I’m not like that, Luciano!’ Jemima exclaimed in consternation.

      His beautiful sensual mouth twisted. ‘If you can try to sell a baby, I assume you can put a price tag on virginity.’

      ‘I wouldn’t ever have tried to sell a baby!’ Jemima argued fiercely. ‘I know how wrong that would be!’

      ‘But it wasn’t wrong to keep his father from him when his mother was already dead?’ he shot at her smoothly.

      Jemima flinched at that direct question, sudden tears springing to her eyes and stinging like mad. She could not even blame her late twin for her predicament. Indeed she was all too well aware that she had buried herself in the hole she had dug. After all, she had lied to Luciano from the moment she’d met him and compounded her errors by having sex with him. She had done worse than blur the boundaries between right and wrong, she had stepped right over those boundaries.

      ‘My first question should be...who are you?’ Luciano drawled. ‘But then that would make me a liar too because I already knew that you weren’t who you were pretending to be before we hit the bed.’

      Jemima stared at him in dismay. ‘You already knew?’ she exclaimed, disconcerted yet again. ‘And yet you still...’ Her voice drained away as she glanced involuntarily at the disordered bedding.

      Angry tension pulled Luciano’s muscles taut. ‘I wasn’t expecting a virgin...’

      Jemima was still struggling to accept his earlier statement. ‘You knew I wasn’t Nicky’s mother and yet you were still willing—’

      ‘Sex is sex, Jemima, and I had had a lot to drink. When the urge controlled me, I didn’t really care who you were,’ Luciano told her with derision.

      Her tightly controlled face washed pink and then ran pale. She knew she was being punished for not being more careful about who she became intimate with. He was telling her that he had just used her to scratch an itch and that the shock of her true identity hadn’t been enough to repel him. ‘How long have you known?’ she whispered sickly.

      ‘Since we landed in Sicily.’

      Her pale eyes widened because she was recalling his change of mood at the airport. ‘I know what you must think of me—’

      ‘You have no idea what I think of you,’ Luciano cut in with icy bite.

      ‘I love Nicky so much—’

      ‘Of course you’re going to say that.’

      ‘I was afraid that if I told you I was only his aunt, you’d just take him away immediately.’

      ‘I expected you to say that too,’ Luciano incised, lounging back against the door frame, the light behind him glimmering over his powerful pectorals and the hard slab of rippling muscle below.

      ‘I’ve been with Nicky since he was only a few days old,’ Jemima told him in her own defence while struggling not to sound pleading.

      ‘And you knew all along that your twin had acted as a surrogate mother?’

      ‘Yes, but she wouldn’t tell me your name or any details. Julie didn’t trust anyone...ever,’ Jemima completed with feeling emphasis. ‘She knew that I wasn’t comfortable with the decisions she had made and although she left Nicky in my care she didn’t give me any information that I could have used to interfere with her plans.’

      Luciano wasn’t convinced. Consistent liars told more lies with ease, adding complex layers of falsehood to their stories to make them seem more credible. Been there, done that...visited the graves, he conceded with a sudden deep inner chill of recoil from his own experiences. His dark eyes iced over with a diamond glitter.

      ‘You and your sister grew up in separate adoptive homes?’

      ‘Yes...’

      ‘And when did you first meet her?’

      ‘A couple of months before she got involved in the surrogacy agreement with you and she didn’t tell me about that until she turned up again with Nicky.’ Jemima dragged her attention from him to study her tightly linked hands. Time was flinging her back almost two years and reminding her of her excitement and joy when she had first discovered that she had a twin sister who wanted to meet up with her.

      Jemima had not tried to trace her birth parents because she had been fearful of hurting her adoptive family’s feelings. It had not, however, occurred to her that she might have a sibling to find and she had been overwhelmed by Julie’s first approach. It had hurt to learn that her birth father was unknown and that their birth mother had died from drug addiction, but it had hurt more to hear about her twin’s early health problems, her unsuccessful adoption and unhappy childhood.

      ‘I was so much more fortunate than Julie was. My parents loved me from the beginning,’ Jemima said tautly. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been a bit slow at school but Julie’s family—’

      ‘I’m not interested in Julie’s life story,’ Luciano cut in smoothly.

      ‘She’s Nicky’s mother!’ Jemima condemned.

      ‘And I’m grateful she’s not here to cause my son any more