Challenge Page 12

  been that. He had caught her utterly off guard and it

  showed in her face. Leandro watched her thoughtfully.

  `The reason you don't trust anyone but yourself, huh?'

  She said, 'How did you. .

  `You may have forgotten, but you once called me Chuck.' His mouth thinned. 'I've been wondering about the man ever since.'

  Jessica averted her eyes. Beyond the terrace the Mediterranean was slapping softly against unseen rocks. It was odd, she thought, how in all that darkness, when it was impossible to see things, it was nevertheless obvious that the great sea beast was moving. She shivered a little.

  `Was it a long time ago?' he prompted when she did not speak.

  She turned back to him with an effort. 'I wasn't a teenager, if that's what you mean. I was old enough to know better.'

  She was unprepared for the bitterness in her own voice. It slightly shocked her. Leandro, however, sounded completely unshocked.

  `Aren't we all?' he said drily. 'What happened?'

  She gave a slight shrug. 'Nothing very dramatic. Or very unusual, I imagine. You've probably done it yourself in your time.'

  He made a sharp movement, quickly stilled. 'Tell,' he urged softly.

  `Oh, it was a simple case of misunderstanding. He was in London working in the London office of his father's company. It was a temporary thing. What I believe is called a familiarisation visit.' She swallowed. 'I didn't know that.'

  `You thought he was there for good? With you?' Leandro's tone was neutral.

  Jessica smiled in the darkness. 'Well, maybe not for good. But for more than a few weeks, anyway.'

  `A few weeks?' It ripped out at her. 'What happened?'

  fell in love,' she said flatly. 'He was very charming. Life had been a bit grim, what with the money and my mother's broken engagement to Richard. Chuck was fun. He made me laugh. And he seemed—' she swallowed `—to care.'

  `And?'

  She shrugged again. 'He moved in. We were very happy.' She corrected it. 'I was very happy. I lived in a shared house. He simply took over half my room. He got on well with everyone else in the house. We. . .' She swallowed again. This time she had to clear her throat. `We used to travel to work together, even. And then we were on the tube one day in the morning. It was rush hour and we kept being thrown against each other. We were laughing like schoolchildren. And all of a sudden he said, "I'll miss this".'

  Leandro made an inarticulate noise.

  Jessica looked out to sea. 'He'd had a letter from his father—that morning, I suppose. He'd done well, and he was getting the promotion he wanted. He was going—I forget where. Somewhere in California, anyway. Where he wanted to go. Where he'd always wanted to go. He seemed quite surprised that I didn't know. He was sure he'd told me.'

  'Oh, love,' said Leandro softly, reaching for her. It was oddly comforting to lean against him.

  `I didn't have to pretend for very long. He only had a

  week to pack and go—these American companies move

  fast.'

  The hand about her shoulders was stroking her hair, very lightly.

  `Why did you have to pretend?'

  She gave a choked laugh. 'It had all been so public. Everyone was involved—people at work, the people I

  shared the house with. I couldn't just collapse.' 'Why not?'

  She sighed. 'Pride, I suppose.' She thought for a moment. 'And a certain amount of vicarious experience. Collapsing hadn't done my mother any good.'

  'And nor had trusting friends,' said Leandro, startling her with his perspicacity. 'I think I'm beginning to see. .

  'Fortunately I'd nearly finished my training. It was quite easy to move. And then, after I'd qualified, Andrew wanted me to go into partnership with him and I got away from that side of the business altogether. I've never seen Chuck again.'

  Leandro said, 'Are you still in love with him?' Jessica's laugh broke. 'I don't know. Sometimes I still

  hate him. That doesn't seem like indifference, does it?' 'No,' said Leandro heavily. 'No, it doesn't.'

  It was a temptation to continue leaning against that warm and friendly shoulder. Sternly Jessica resisted it.

  'So now you know the full horror story. I told you it wasn't very spectacular,' she said, straightening.

  'You also told me I'd probably done the same in my time,' he reminded her sharply. 'Let me clear that one up now. I have never in my life moved in with a girl. And I have never started a love affair on the basis of a field trip to a strange town. It's not my style.'

  'I'm sorry.' Jessica could sense that he was very angry and realised that maybe she had given him cause. 'I shouldn't have said that.'

  'No, you shouldn't. But it was probably just as well you did.' He leaned forward. 'Do you fall for the same man over and over again? Is that what you are afraid of? Have they all been carbon copies of Chuck?'

  'No.'

  'But they have all let you down?' he persisted.

  'There hasn't been anyone else,' said Jessica, goaded. 'Once was more than enough.'

  `What?' That really did seem to shock him as none of her earlier revelations had done. He sat staring at her.

  `I suppose I'm what they call a one-man woman,' she said trying to sound uncaring.

  `I don't believe that,' Leandro said almost violently. `Don't you? Well, that's where the evidence seems to come down at the moment.'

  `Why do you talk like that? As if it doesn't matter?' `Because I don't suppose it does. Not in the overall scheme of things,' Jessica told him.

  `Not even in the pattern of your own life?' Leandro asked swiftly.

  `I think that was set a long time ago,' she answered soberly. 'There's not much I can do about it.'

  `Oh, I have no patience with that defeatist attitude. You're as bad as Sandra. Of course there is something you can do about it.'

  `Sandra?' Jessica was intrigued at this careless reference, but her question was prompted as much by the desire to distract him from her own affairs as interest in Prince Giorgio's secretary.

  Leandro hesitated. 'Yes. She too has managed to convince herself that she is a one-man woman.'

  And was the man Leandro? thought Jessica, aware of a small pain in the region of her heart for which there was absolutely no excuse whatever.

  `You think she's wrong?'

  `I think she's making herself ill and worse than ill over a fantasy,' he said brutally.

  Jessica found that her sympathy for the woman spoken about in that dismissive tone overwhelmed the faint dislike she had been entertaining for Sandra.

  `Have you told her so?' she asked coldly.

  `Oh yes, many times, but she takes no notice.' He shrugged. 'It's her life. If she wants to mess it up, it's nothing to do with me.'

  Presumably Chuck Haverford would have said the same thing.

  He added acutely, 'And you don't approve of that either.'

  Jessica half turned away. It's none of my business.' `No,' he agreed. 'But. .

  She interrupted him. 'Look, I'm very tired. I've had a wonderful evening, but I've got to get up tomorrow. Shouldn't we be going?'

  Leandro was thoughtful. 'Midnight struck, did it, Cinderella? All right, I'll take you home. On one condition.'

  'Yes?' she said cautiously.

  'That you don't crawl back under your stone and stay there. I shall want to see you. Tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. And if you try and hide from me, I shall come and dig you out.' He grinned at her. 'There's no point, after all. You've told me all your dismal secrets now, haven't you?'

  'Yes,' agreed Jessica, aware of a little flare of panic, not at the extent of her revelation so much as at the realisation that he knew exactly how much she had given him in those last, reluctant confidences.

  'And no more nonsense about me being a drone and you being a worker. Enjoy the difference.' He pinched her chin impudently.

  He was irresistible. Jessica could not help laughing. 'You want to change my character completely,' sh
e complained.

  'No, I don't. I love your character--among other things,' he teased. 'I just want you to be a little less tidy sometimes.'

  Jessica gave a snort of real amusement. 'Tidy! You should hear my secretary on the subject. She says I can't work unless I've built myself a nest of paper first. And it's true.' She sighed suddenly. 'Except that your uncle's

  wonderful staff seem to think they ought to clear up after me.

  `Tell them not to,' said Leandro, beckoning a waiter. `The bill, please.'

  `I did. Enrico said he would leave it, but twice I've come back and found everything stacked up neatly.' She sounded despondent.

  `Have you?' He sounded alert. 'What did Enrico say?'

  `He couldn't account for it. He was very sorry. He offered,' she added with a chuckle, 'to untidy it for me again.'

  Leandro laughed. But in spite of the amusement, she had the impression that he had withdrawn from her and that a formidable brain was working behind the absent pleasantries he offered her as he paid the bill and led her back to the boat.

  When she was seated again in the speedboat, with the uniformed sailor at the helm, Leandro stood looking down at her for a moment, his hands in his pockets.

  `Jessica, I want you to do something for me,' he said abruptly, all laughter banished.

  `Yes?' she asked with all her former wariness.

  `I want you to lock your door. Both your doors. And if anything frightens you—anything at all, no matter how silly—I want you to come to me at once. Do you promise?'

  She did not understand his urgency, but she caught some of it herself. She shivered. Something was wrong, something much more than the vestigial passing attraction Leandro felt for his uncle's architect.

  But she was not going to ask him about it. She found she did not want to know.

  She said, 'I promise.'

  `Thank God for that, at least,' said Leandro harshly and, flinging himself down on the seat beside her, he began to kiss her with force.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE party was still clearly going strong when they climbed aboard the yacht. There were lights on all the decks and music came from the main cabin. Jessica hung back a little, not wanting to join the throng. She felt shaken and her lips stung—from the salt, she assured herself, not from the almost frantic pressure of his kisses.

  `It seems we still have the chance to dance,' remarked Leandro, apparently unmoved by their embraces. His voice was light, amused and just as she would always recognise it.

  `It's past my dancing hour,' she told him as coolly as she could. 'I need my rest. You go and enjoy yourself, though.'

  He laughed. `Carissima, you sound like the old nanny Giorgio once employed for me! She was English too, and she always sounded as if enjoying yourself was dangerous to the health.'

  She shrugged. 'It's your health.'

  `And my enjoyment. And I'd rather stay with you than go and dance in an overheated saloon,' he told her calmly. 'Your place or mine?'

  Jessica began to feel slightly alarmed. As always, she could not make out what he intended to do, if indeed he intended anything beyond throwing her into a flap. He was not only unpredictable, he was capricious, she thought, angry with herself and him.

  'I,' she said, 'am going to my cabin. Alone.'

  'No, you're not,' he contradicted. 'I'm coming too. I want to see if Enrico has done any more of his devastating tidying up.'

  She shrugged, not answering. It was not a loverlike reason and he made no attempt, now they were back on the yacht and in the full glare of electric light, to touch her. Though presumably the unfortunate Gianni could not have been under any illusion that he had piloted back to the yacht a lady who had spent most of the voyage locked unresisting in the arms of Leandro Volpi and being ruthlessly kissed. So Leandro's discretion was selective.

  Her colour faintly higher than normal, Jessica led the way to her cabin.

  Her companion, however, was quite unembarrassed. `It's about time they decorated this deck,' he observed chattily, drawing flaking paint from the walls on the tip of his forefinger.

  Her cabin was not locked, which he noted with a slight frown, and was in darkness. Leandro preceded her inside and flicked on the switch. Then he went through the sitting-room into her bedroom, and she heard him open the door and switch on the light in the shower-room. It was almost as if he was looking for someone, she thought, chilled.

  When he emerged, however, he was still very much at his ease.

  `I like your nightwear,' he told her, amused. 'Very Cinderella.'

  Jessica, to her fury, blushed. Sometimes the maid came in to turn down the sheets and lay out Jessica's cotton print nightdress. She must have done so this evening. Presumably Leandro's ladies did not entertain him in brief cotton shifts printed with bluebells. It was cool and comfortable, but it was not seductive. She glared at him.

  `Cinderella, as I recall, wore rags. Are you being rude about my wardrobe, Leandro?'

  He grinned. 'I wouldn't dare! I thought it looked very pretty, that's all.' He looked round the cabin. 'As does

  this room. Is it tidier than you left it?'

  Jessica jumped. She had forgotten the excuse he had made for accompanying her to her room. Or maybe it was not an excuse, after all.

  `No. We finished this afternoon,' she explained. 'We took the copies to Sandra and then Sue tidied up in here.'

  `So where is your copy of the blueprint?' he asked, idly turning over papers and books on her desk.

  `In the safe.' She nodded towards a rather fine watercolour of a Tuscan church on the wall. 'Where it will stay until your uncle tells me to get it out.'

  `Oh, still all secret, then?'

  `It's at the stage where it could be pirated,' she admitted. 'Secret is probably the wrong word. Confidential, maybe.'

  `Worth something on the open market?' he queried lightly.

  Jessica considered the possibility. 'Not really. Not unless there was some rival concern with an identical site. .

  `Or the same site?' Leandro asked softly.

  Jessica threw him a startled glance. 'But surely that's impossible. I understood Prince Giorgio had bought the land.'

  `Some of the land,' Leandro corrected her. 'Bought but not paid for. Or not paid for in full.' He was thoughtful. 'I can imagine a rival being very interested in your ideas, lovely Jessica.' He gave her his most dazzling smile. 'I should guard them with your life, ' he advised thrillingly.

  He won a reluctant smile from her, but she was worried. `Do you really think they're at risk? I haven't been particularly careful about security.'

  `I noticed,' he said with a nod at the door. 'Keep it locked from now on, will you, darling?'

  `To protect the plans?' queried Jessica, still not quite sure whether the threat was real or not.

  He strolled up to her, loose-limbed and graceful, and put a hand on either side of her face.

  `To protect you from ravening wolves,' he murmured against her mouth.

  It was terrible, she thought in despair, the way her mouth now knew his, responded to his as if they had been kissing each other all their lives. She pushed him away and smoothed her hair, trying to disguise her disturbance.

  `What do you think you're doing?'

  `Kissing you goodnight,' he said with a lurking smile. She gave him a dry look.

  `Well, you've already told me in no uncertain terms that I'm not welcome to spend the night,' he reminded her. He was clearly enjoying himself. 'So unless you've changed your mind. . . No? Ah, well then, goodnight it has to be.'

  Jessica evaded him by the not very subtle expedient of retreating behind a sofa.

  `Goodnight,' she said with emphasis. `I'll lock the door.'

  `The best thing in the circumstances,' he agreed with a chuckle, then went to the door and blew her a kiss before slipping quietly out.

  Jessica turned the key in the lock behind him with unnecessary force.

  He was impossible; he was deliberately provocative; he anno
yed her so much that she lost all sense of judgment. She could never tell when he was serious or when he was teasing her mercilessly. She was just too easy a target. Damn him!

  She went and showered in an angry mood. Afterwards, for all her professions of tiredness, she found she could not sleep, so she put on the bedside light and leafed her way absentmindedly through one of the paperbacks with which the cabin was provided.

  It was then that she heard the knock on the door. It was firm, not at all secretive. Without a second thought Jessica got up and went to open it; she was almost sure it was Leandro. She schooled her expression to one of indifference, though her heart was beating so hard she could barely breathe.

  It was not Leandro. Instead, dressed impeccably in scarlet silk and jewels, his mother stood on the threshold.

  `Signora Vopi!' exclaimed Jessica, amazed.

  The Signora swept past her as if she had been invited

  in.

  `I see you are dressed for bed, Miss Shelburne. Is my son with you?' asked the Signora in arctic tones.

  Before Jessica could recover from her dumbstruck state, the woman had moved to her bedroom and looked inside.

  `I see he is not. I assume you are expecting him.'

  Jessica gagged and then said with as much of her habitual calm as she could command, 'I have no idea where Signor Volpi may be and I, for my part, would like to go to sleep, signora. I would be grateful if you would go.'

  `Sleep?' The older woman was plainly unimpressed. `That is why you are awake with your light on at,' she consulted her watch, 'two o'clock in the morning? Do you think I am a fool, Miss Shelburne?'

  `I have no opinion on the subject,' Jessica said carefully, aware that her temper was beginning rise alarmingly.

  `You spent the evening with my son. Do not try to deny it.'

  Jessica shrugged. 'Why should I? It's the truth.'

  The Signora showed her teeth in a horrible parody of a smile.

  `Miss Shelburne, I do not know what my son may have told you. I know he can be very persuasive when he wants

  to be, but you should be aware that he is playing a very dangerous game at the moment. No doubt he thinks it amusing to involve you, but I assure you my brother will not be amused. And if Leandro thinks that he can remain Giorgio's heir and behave like a schoolboy in this fashion, then he is even more heedless than I thought him.'