Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Ruthless Demands. Lynne Graham

parents but Julie had been tremendously impulsive and her plans had often leapt enthusiastically from one money-making scheme to the next within days. Her sister might have seemed to have good intentions and might have uttered very convincing sentiments but she had told lies. There was no denying that, Jemima reflected unhappily.

      Regardless, the Barbers’ financial safety net was now gone and her parents’ lifelong dream of buying their own home was no longer possible. In fact the only reason her parents still had a roof over their heads was Jemima’s decision to come back home to live and help to pay the rent and the household expenses, which were exceeding her father’s small pension. Faced with bills they couldn’t afford to pay, the older couple had begun to fret and their health had suffered.

      With quiet efficiency, Jemima changed Nicky and settled him down for a morning nap. Screening a yawn of her own, she decided to lie down too, having learned that napping when Nicky did was the only sure way to get her own rest. She peeled off her tunic top and winced when she caught an accidental glimpse of her liberally curved bottom in the wardrobe mirror.

      ‘Your backside’s far too big for leggings! Always wear a long top to cover your behind,’ Julie had urged her.

      But then Julie had been thin as a willow wand and tormented by bulimia, Jemima reminded herself ruefully. Her twin had had serious issues with food and self-image. On that unhappy reflection, Jemima fell straight to sleep, still clad in her leggings and vest top.

      When the shrilling doorbell wakened her, Jemima scrambled up in surprise because most visitors were family friends and aware that her mum and dad were currently staying in Devon with a former parishioner. That was the closest her parents could get to a holiday on their restricted income. She peered into the cot, relieved to see that her nephew was still peacefully asleep, his little face flushed, his rosebud mouth relaxed.

      From the hall she could see two male figures through the glass.

      ‘Yes?’ she asked enquiringly, opening the door only a fraction.

      An older man with greying hair dealt her a serious appraisal. ‘May we come in and speak to you, Miss Barber? My card...’ A business card was extended through the narrow gap and she glanced down at it.

      Charles Bennett, it read. Bennett & Bennett, Solicitors.

      Instantly fearing yet another problem linked to her twin’s premature death, Jemima lost colour and opened the door. Julie had left a lot of debts in her wake and Jemima just didn’t know how to deal with them. She shrank from the prospect of telling the police that her sister had stolen her identity to the extent of contracting debts in her name, travelling on her passport and even giving birth in Sicily as Jemima Barber. She was very much afraid that revealing that information would make her current custody of Nicky illegal and she was frightened that the minute she admitted that he was not her child he would be taken from her and placed in a foster home with strangers.

      ‘Luciano Vitale...’ the older man introduced as his companion stepped forward and Jemima took yet another step back from her visitors, all her senses now on full apprehensive alert.

      And when she focused on the taller, younger man by his side she froze, for he was a man like no other. His movements were fast, smooth and incredibly quiet as if he were a combat soldier slinking through the jungle. He was poetry in motion and pure fantasy in the flesh. Indeed he was very probably the most breathtakingly beautiful man Jemima had ever seen in her life. The shock of his sudden magnetic appearance was hard to withstand. Her chest tightened as she struggled to catch her breath and not stare as the compellingly handsome lineaments of his lean bronzed features urged her to do. It made her feel frighteningly schoolgirlish and she hurriedly turned her head away to invite them into the living room.

      Luciano couldn’t take his eyes off Jemima Barber because she was so very different from what he had expected. His very first sight of her had been her passport photo application in which she had looked blonde, blue-eyed and a little plump, indeed so ordinary he had rolled his eyes at the idea that such a commonplace woman could give him a child. His second view of her two months earlier on security-camera footage from a London hotel had been far more indicative of her true nature. Blonde hair cut short and choppy, she had sported a very low-necked top, a tiny silver skirt and sky-high hooker heels that had showed off her slim figure and the rounded curve of her breast implants. She had been acting like the slut she was, giggling and fondling the two men she was taking back to her hotel room that night.

      Now that image was being replaced by another, even more challenging one for evidently Jemima Barber had reinvented herself yet again. Possibly that big change in appearance was a deliberate element of her con tricks, he conceded. The short hair was gone, exchanged for hip-length extensions, which provided her with a glorious mane the colour of ripe wheat in sunlight. Her heart-shaped face seemed bare of make-up, his keen gaze resting suspiciously on the succulent pout of her pink mouth, the faint colour blossoming in her cheeks and the pale ice-blue eyes, an unusual shade that he had initially assumed was a mere accident of the photographic lighting. She wore a drab pair of black leggings and a tight vest top, which accentuated the sumptuous swell of her breasts.

      With difficulty he dragged his attention from that surprisingly luscious display, acknowledging that the camera shots of her chest must have been unflattering, because in the flesh she looked much more natural. Even so, she was distinctly curvier. Had she simply put on weight? The plain clothing was a surprise as well but, of course, she hadn’t been expecting visitors and it was possible that she dressed more circumspectly in her elderly parents’ radius. In fact at this moment she looked ridiculously wholesome and young. It made him wonder who Jemima Barber really was below the surface. And then he questioned why he was wondering about her at all when he already knew all that he needed to know. She was a liar, a cheat, a thief and a whore without boundaries. She sold her own body as easily as she planned to sell her son.

      Hugely self-conscious below the intensity of Luciano’s appraisal, Jemima could feel her face getting hotter and hotter but, because he unnerved her, she kept her attention on the older man and said, ‘How can I help you?’

      ‘We’re here to discuss the child’s future,’ Charles Bennett informed her.

      At that news her heart dropped to the soles of her canvas-clad feet and her head swivelled, eyes flying wide as she involuntarily looked back at Luciano. Looked and instantly saw what she had refused to recognise seconds earlier, finally making the terrifying connection that set a large question mark over her hopes and dreams for Nicky. Nicky was like a miniature carbon copy of Luciano Vitale. Luciano wore his hair a little longer than was conventional. It fell below his collar in glossy blue-black curls that flared luxuriantly across his skull. He had a straight nose, spectacular high cheekbones, winged brows and deep-set eyes the colour of tawny tiger’s eye stones—eyes as hard and unyielding as any crystal.

      Stray recollections of her late sister’s remarks on the topic of Nicky’s father echoed in the back of her head.

      ‘If he met me, he would want me... Men always do,’ Julie had trilled excitedly. ‘He’s exactly the sort of man I want to marry—rich and good-looking and madly successful. I’d make the perfect wife for a man like him.’

      And, of course, Luciano Vitale wouldn’t be too impressed right now when, instead of the slim, fashionable Julie, he got the fatter, plainer twin, a little voice whispered in Jemima’s shaken head. Was that why he was staring? But he didn’t know that she was Julie’s sister and he had never even met her sister. As far as she was aware he did not even know that Julie had an identical twin nor was he likely to know that Julie had stolen Jemima’s identity. Did he even know that her sister was dead?

      Jemima assumed not. Had he known, surely that would have fuelled the lawyer’s first words because Julie’s death now changed everything. A cold little shiver shimmied down Jemima’s spine at that awareness. As Nicky’s mother, Julie had had rights to her son even if those rights could be disputed in court. As Nicky’s aunt, Jemima had virtually no rights at all. The only thing that blurred those boundaries was the fact that Julie had given birth in her twin’s name and it was Jemima’s name on Nicky’s birth certificate and not his real birth mother’s. It was