Challenge Read online

  Challenge by Sophie Weston

  Most women — even most career women — would have jumped at the chance to spend time on a millionaire prince's yacht in Portofino. But Jessica Shelburne wasn't most women. She resented being dragged away from her all-absorbing work, and she detested the fact that the Prince's nephew, Leandro Volpi, was forever trying to persuade her to treat her stay as some sort of holiday. Most of all, Jessica loathed the fact that she found Leandro so attractive. After all, he was nothing but a lazy, uncaring playboy who was trying to tease her...wasn't he?

  Printed in Great Britain

  Books you will enjoy by SOPHIE WESTON

  SHADOW PRINCESS

  Matthew Saracen was the most outrageous man Katya had ever met. She didn't know how to handle him—especially when he made it clear he wanted her—yet seemed to hate her for it. . .

  YESTERDAY'S MIRROR

  Cressida was worried. If Lord Rupert Dear-ham had heard her father's words to her, he might just try and act on them. But, to do that, they would have to be alone together. And she had no intention of letting that happen. . .

  BEYOND RANSOM

  When Julia Lennox went on a business trip to a small Central American country she didn't expect to be caught up in the middle of a revolution. Nor did she expect to be forced to endure the company of the enigmatic Roberto Madariaga. But things really got out of hand when she had to pretend to be Roberto's woman, for her own protection. Protection from whom?

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same.name or names.They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form orby any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent or the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain 1987 by Mills & Boon Limited

  © Sophie Weston 1987

  This edition 1987

  ISBN 0 263 75693 9

  CHAPTER ONE

  `But what's he like?' Sue demanded impatiently.

  Jessica Shelburne negotiated the long low car carefully out of the approach road to Genoa airport before answering.

  `Prince Giorgio?' she asked, having accomplished this feat with the aristocratic paintwork unblemished, at which she expelled a sigh of relief. 'Oh, very charming, as you might expect. Though he wants his money's worth out of us, as you'll find.'

  Sue snorted. 'Giorgio di Stefano is sixty years old and highly unattractive into the bargain. What's more I've already met him—though you're pretending to have forgotten the fact. I mean the nephew.' She threw Jessica's profile a quick look and gave a mock-languorous sigh. 'The devastating Leandro.'

  `Oh, the Body Beautiful.' Jessica's answer was absentminded. She glanced in her wing mirror as she swung the borrowed car to the left on to the autostrada. Then, relaxing, she answered the question, her tones tinged with mischief. 'He's very much as advertised. Tall. Tanned. Gorgeous. Doesn't do a stroke of work. .

  Sue laughed. 'When you look like he does, who needs to do a stroke of work?'

  `When you live like Leandro Volpi, just about anyone,' Jessica said drily.

  `Oh, don't be sour, Jess,' protested Sue. 'Just because you're a workaholic, it doesn't mean the rest of the world has to be the same.'

  `You and Leandro are clearly soulmates,' observed Jessica. 'He's been telling me the same thing every day for the last fortnight.'

  Her assistant grinned. She knew her employer. 'Been lecturing him, Jess?'

  Jessica laughed aloud. 'I wouldn't even try. He's a man who knows what he wants and how to get it. Honest toil doesn't come into the equation.'

  `And what about lectures from his uncle's employees? Where do they figure?' murmured Sue.

  `On the list of occasional amusements.' There was a pause, then Jessica said with something of a snap, 'Leandro Volpi finds me highly entertaining.'

  `Ah,' said Sue, not entirely sure of the right response.

  She knew that Jessica had wanted the assignment. She had worked hard for it, harder even than her usual ten-hour day. Prince Giorgio had been impressed by her preliminary ideas; that was why he had asked her out to Italy to look at the site and meet some of the other people involved in the project. Andrew Lamont, her partner in architectural practice, had teased Jessica about her `holiday' on Prince Giorgio's luxury yacht, but in truth neither he nor anyone else in Shelburne and Lamont believed that Jessica would do anything other than work during her visit.

  `She'll get annoyed if they try to make her enjoy herself,' Andrew had said with relish to Sue. He was a bit afraid of Jessica, who was the driving force in their partnership.

  Sue had not agreed with him. For one thing, she was Jessica's secretary, not Andrew's, and loyalty kept her silent. For another, she had known Jessica long enough to realise that she only worked so hard because she genuinely enjoyed it. She was nothing like the killjoy that Andrew liked to pretend.

  So Sue had been more surprised than Andrew when Jessica had returned from that first visit to the boat

  clearly in two minds about whether to return. Andrew had laughed and said they had probably tried to take Jessica windsurfing, but Sue had detected a reluctance in her employer which she really did not think was due to the frivolity of shipboard life. She had waited for Jessica to tell her what was wrong, but Jessica had kept her own counsel and in the end had gone back to the yacht as planned.

  Now, looking at Jessica's set face, Sue began to wonder whether the reluctance had anything to do with the presence on board of Leandro Volpi.

  Unaware of Sue's speculation, Jessica was concentrating on her driving. She needed to concentrate; she was afraid of the great car that Leandro had insisted on lending her. Pride, of course, would not permit her to admit that to him, so she had accepted the loan gracefully.

  But it was not just the car. She was afraid of the road, which was a brilliant feat of engineering, alternately crossing gorges on stilts or plunging into tunnels through the hillsides. The adjustment every few mintues from blackness to glaring sunshine made Jessica stiff with tension. She realised she was hunching over the steering wheel and made a conscious effort to relax before Sue noticed.

  A car shot past. It was travelling fast, too fast, and Jessica jumped as it flickered across the corner of her vision. This was ridiculous, she told herself. She was travelling at a moderate speed herself; it was pointless to be frightened by the speed of those drivers whizzing past in her left wing-mirror.

  She set her teeth. Think about something else, she urged herself, think about work, think about an ordinary journey to the office.

  Her lips twitched involuntarily. Shelburne and Lamont had an exquisitely decorated but small set of

  offices in a Regency house behind the British Museum. Jessica seldom took her car to the office because of the traffic and the difficulty of parking, so the journey to work usually consisted of a short period of determined endurance on the underground and then a brisk walk.

  `I don't know how you can bear it,' Andrew Lamont said to her. He loved his car and was quite prepared to sit in traffic jams for over an hour in order to travel to work in that fashion.

  Jessica laughed at him. 'One of th
e reasons I live in Holland Park is so that I can use public transport,' she told him. 'If I were prepared to drive I'd live somewhere leafier and much cheaper.'

  Andrew doubted that. Jessica's flat was a stylish studio, very high, with skylights that captured light like a prism. It was elegantly decorated and very comfortable, but she was, as he pointed out, hardly ever there. Jessica had rapidly become the primary international specialist in the firm, and she spent much of her life in hotel rooms as a result.

  `But it's so inconvenient to have to go home to pick up the car if you're going to a party or something,' Andrew protested.

  Jessica gave a choke of laughter. 'Exactly, Andrew,' she said approvingly. 'An excellent excuse not to go.' He sniffed, unamused. 'You're unnatural!'

  `Because I do what I like?' she asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

  `Because you don't like anything but work!'

  Another car flared past, and Jessica winced. Her palms were damp on the steering wheel. She looked sideways to see whether Sue was nervous, but Sue, bless her, appeared to be asleep.

  Jessica bit her lip and tried to concentrate on her thoughts.

  Was it true that she liked nothing but work? She reviewed her life. When she was not travelling, she was

  usually in the office by eight o'clock, but that was only sensible. That way you avoided travelling with the crowds in the rush-hour tube trains.

  She recalled, sharply and unwillingly, her first encounter with Leandro Volpi. That had been one of the rare mornings when she was late and had arrived hot and dishevelled from her brush with London's commuters.

  The moment she hurried through the door, she had been aware of the tall man with Prince Giorgio. He was casually dressed, wearing an open-necked shirt and dark glasses, and patently amused. Jessica distrusted the amusement and she hated the glasses on sight.

  And Leandro, she was fairly sure, had taken the measure of her reaction at once. It had increased his amusement. In fact, that amusement was the only possible justification for all that had followed.

  Unconsciously, Jessica sighed. What was Sue going to make of it all? So far Jessica had not confessed to anyone that Leandro Volpi, for whatever dubious motives, had decided to entertain himself by pursuing her. Now, however, Sue would see it for herself. She could hardly avoid seeing it.

  Jessica sighed again, slowing into a curve. She did not, she acknowledged, know what Leandro was up to. She had not known, right from that first day.

  He had taken no part at all in her discussions with Prince Giorgio. He had sat there looking indifferent while they discussed outline specifications and when, on one occasion, his uncle had asked his opinion, he had shrugged comprehensively.

  When the visitors had left, Jessica had been oddly relieved. She had not liked the way Leandro Volpi kissed her hand with what she was perfectly aware was outdated ceremony. But she had not expected to see him again. . .

  To her astonishment he had materialised on her doorstep that evening. She returned from work to her quiet

  mews to discover him sitting cheerfully on a bollard at the mews entrance swinging his feet and still wearing his sunglasses, although it was nine o'clock at night.

  `Good evening,' Jessica said frostily. 'Are you staying in this area, Signor Volpi?'

  It was the first of many opportunities, she was to discover, which she gave him to tease her.

  He laughed. 'So far, I am not so fortunate.' And gave a theatrical Latin lover's sigh which made her glare at him, even while she blushed. He hopped off his bollard and took her portfolio case from her. 'No, I am dining here. With you.'

  Jessica was outraged. 'I am not cooking you dinner,' she said forthrightly, forgetting the man was the nephew of a valued prospective client.

  `Of course not,' he soothed with a kindness which set her teeth on edge. 'We will go out to dinner. I have booked a table at a restaurant run by a friend of mine just a few streets away.' He took her key, which she had just extracted from her handbag, and went to her front door. 'This house, is it not? Charming.'

  He stood back to allow her to precede him. In a daze—a state of affairs which he seemed to bring about all too easily, as she was to find out—Jessica did so.

  `You have time,' he told her graciously, 'for a shower before you change. I did not know when you would be home, so I gave no time. Carlo will hold our table for us.'

  Jessica stared at him for a moment, torn between annoyance and a sneaking amusement. She had intended to work on the project she was completing before Prince Giorgio's assignment, and had come home wanting a bath and a piece of toast before she went back to work. Now, however, she hesitated.

  There was no hesitation in Leandro. He was wandering round her studio looking with interest at the books and prints. He looked up.

  `Well, go on,' he said gently. 'I'm hungry, even if you aren't.'

  If he had tried to persuade her she would not have gone. At the slightly impatient rebuke, however, Jessica capitulated.

  `Do you know something? You're mad,' she informed him, going.

  She was to tell him much the same thing later.

  `What do you normally do in the evenings?' he asked,

  when she thanked him for the unexpected 'treat.

  Jessica shrugged. 'What does anyone do? I read. I listen to music quite often.

  Leandro flung up a hand. 'I know. Don't tell me. You work.'

  Jessica eyed him coldly. 'You disapprove?'

  He grinned. 'Naturally. Work is the only rival a man cannot compete with.'

  Jessica gave a choke of laughter, quickly suppressed, and primmed her mouth. 'In my case, you hardly need to compete.'

  `No?' He leaned forward, looking interested. 'You have already succumbed to my manly charm?'

  Jessica was horrified and it showed. 'Of course not. What on earth have I said?'

  Leandro sat back again in his chair, shaking his head.

  `You are too sensitive, cara,' he said. 'Too sensitive and too serious. There is more to life than work, you know.'

  He paused. There was a pregnant silence. Jessica held on to her temper and met his eyes levelly. They were, she found, dancing.

  It was irresistible. In spite of her annoyance at his teasing, she felt an unwilling laugh rise.

  `Oh, you're impossible,' she said at last, smiling. 'If I'm too serious, you're never serious at all. It makes you very irritating.'

  He flicked her cheek with long, careless fingers. `Alas, I know it. You are very charming when you are irritated, though.'

  Jessica sniffed. 'I think it most unchivalrous of you to bait me as you do. You may be surprised to hear it, but I'm normally held to be very even-tempered.'

  `I am not at all surprised,' Leandro said calmly. 'I have very little doubt that normally you get your own way all the time.'

  Just for an instant her eyes flashed, then she caught herself and flung up a hand in surrender.

  `All right, all right, I give in!' She lowered her hand and tried for a conciliatory tone. 'I'm a terrible managing woman and you don't know what to do with me.'

  Leandro gave a chuckle. 'I know exactly what to do with you, cara Jessica, as you will discover one day.' He eyed her expectantly. Jessica disappointed him, holding on to her blank expression with determination. He shrugged his shoulders, though his eyes twinkled. 'But for the moment we will not speak of it.'

  Jessica refused to be drawn. She gave him a bland smile, which totally belied her inner wariness. Leandro Volpi had a reputation with women which, she judged from her brief acquaintance with him, he fully deserved.

  Jessica half expected Leandro to make a heavy pass at her when he escorted her back to her apartment that night. If he had done so, she would not have seen him again. But he was too clever for her.

  As she stood looking at him cautiously, he gave her that devastating lopsided grin.

  `We will, I hope, see more of each other in the future,' he murmured, shaking her hand firmly. 'It has been very stimulating.'

&
nbsp; And he walked away without so much as kissing her goodnight, to Jessica's amazement and unconfessed disappointment. It was almost like a challenege.

  Sexual challenges were problems she needed like a hole in the head, she told him in exasperation when he rang her the next day. He laughed and soothed her.

  `Why so excited, cara? What can I do to you?' he asked, reasonably enough.

  And the trouble was that she did not know what he could do to her. She did not really doubt her own ability to keep things cool if he was bent on seducing her. The trouble was that she was not sure whether that was his object or not. Sometimes it seemed as if he was absolutely determined on it; sometimes it seemed as if it was all a game to him.

  The other trouble, Jessica admitted to herself, was her own lack of experience, particularly with the practised charmers of Leandro Volpi's type. For her own reasons she had avoided involvement with men. There had been one devastatingly hurtful but fortunately brief encounter, after which she had decided that work was more rewarding. So she was peculiarly unfitted to handle Leandro's sophisticated teasing.

  After her first sojourn on the yacht she had very nearly decided to turn the project down, so unfitted was she. After talks with Andrew, and at Sue's evident astonishment, however, she had decided that she owed it not only to the partnership, but also to her self-respect, to carry the thing through. But she had not wanted to return to the yacht, more than she would have believed possible.

  It was extraordinary. She had never been so conscious of a man—or so wary of one. Not even when she was young and in love for the first time had she felt so utterly helpless. None of it was made any easier, of course, by the dark suspicion that for Leandro the whole business was simply a way of whiling away otherwise boring hours while he lazed about his uncle's yacht.

  Jessica bit her lip in recollection. It had been there from the moment she had come on board, like a palpable

  presence. She had become aware of it from the moment the stewardess, sighing romantically, had told her that she would be dining a deux every night with the signor—who was, of course, so glamorous.