How dared he? she thought as hurt and bewilderment fought with the anger inside her. How dared he say such things—make such insinuations about Jan?
Clearly he must know that she and Mario had been living together, at least on a casual basis, and this was the reason for his condemnation. That was the traditional viewpoint after all. The man could be as wild as he chose, but the girl must be pure, jealously guarding her virginity for her wedding day. And because Jan had transgressed this unwritten law with her future husband, she was regarded as an outcast. The colour rose faintly in her cheeks as she realised that Santino had probably recognised the bathrobe that she was wearing at that moment as Mario’s and drawn his own conclusions.
She remembered too Jan’s bitter remarks about his hypocrisy. It was the ultimate in male chauvinism, she thought angrily, to use women for his own cynical pleasure and then despise the woman who had been his partner in that pleasure. Besides, Jan and Mario loved each other. Didn’t that enter into the reckoning? She found her own resolution hardening. She and Santino Vallone would play a whole new game, and this time she would invent the rules.
She smiled at him, her long lashes brushing her cheeks. ‘Your argument should be with Mario, signore. After all, it was he who proposed marriage to me, not the other way round.’
‘But I only have your word for that, cara,’ he said softly, with a sting underlying every word.
She pretended to wince, laughing a little as she did so, controlling her own rage and contempt. ‘Ouch, you play dirty, signore, and that’s not in the rules either.’
‘I write my own,’ he said quite pleasantly, and she believed him. Quite inconsequentially she found herself wondering how he would react when he discovered the truth about her deception, but she comforted herself with the reflection that by the time that happened she would be safely back in England and Jan and Mario would have to bear the brunt of his wrath together. Besides, she reasoned, Jan could always say with perfect truth that she’d had no idea what her sister had been up to in her absence.
‘You seem nervous,’ he observed.
‘Is it any wonder?’ She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. She had not intended it to be provocative—her lips were genuinely dry—but she saw his slight reaction to it and her confidence grew. ‘You—you disturb me.’
‘I’m flattered, cara.’ He sounded amused. ‘And you, I need hardly say, would disturb any red-blooded male.’
‘Do you include yourself in that category?’ she asked impudently.
‘Need you ask?’ He was drawling again.
She shrugged. ‘I’m intrigued, that’s all. I understood that it was because blue blood flows exclusively in the veins of the Vallone family that my candidature was unwelcome.’
She’d drawn a bow at a venture, but she knew she’d hit the target. She sent him a demure glance and saw that he was laughing openly.
‘Poor Mario,’ he said. ‘He never stood a chance, did he? And where is he? Skulking in the bedroom perhaps, afraid to show himself?’
‘Oh, no.’ She was startled by the unexpectedness of the question and came close to faltering. Naturally he would expect her to know Mario’s whereabouts, but could she manage to stall him on that as well? ‘I—I haven’t seen him today.’
He was no longer laughing, his brows drawn together in a dark frown.
‘That is curious. I missed him at the office and was told that he was meeting you here.’
‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘perhaps he changed his mind.’ She walked away and began to fiddle aimlessly with the roses. ‘Perhaps he’s changed his mind about everything and you don’t have to worry anymore. Have you considered that, signore?’
‘I doubt it,’ he said drily. ‘For one thing, you don’t find the prospect nearly worrying enough, cara. No woman sees a potential meal-ticket vanishing without making at least some effort to recover it. If you had any fears of Mario’s deserting you, then you’d have come to terms with me long ago.’
She pretended to yawn. ‘Well, the meal-ticket is elsewhere just now, signore. Which is a pity really, because it’s past time for dinner, and I’m starving—so if you’d excuse me …’
He consulted his watch. It was platinum, she noticed, and so were the elegant links in the cuffs of his silk shirt.
‘Go and pretty yourself, cara,’ he said almost brusquely. ‘I’ll take you to dinner.’
Juliet was frankly taken aback. She hadn’t intended him to react like that. The strain of this play-acting was beginning to tell on her, and she had hoped he would take the hint and leave.
‘But you don’t want to dine with me,’ she said uncertainly. It was Juliet speaking now, all the assumed bravado dropping from her like a cloak.
‘I didn’t, it’s true, but I find it an idea that gains in appeal with each minute that passes.’ His lips curled in apparent self-derision. ‘Hurry and dress, bella mia, while I phone and book a table for us.’
She was about to protest again, but she hesitated. He was going to find it acutely suspicious, if, having led him on as she had to admit she had been doing, she now displayed a genuine reluctance to be in his company.
She groaned inwardly. She was hungry all right. She’d made do with a simple lunch of fruit, but the thought of another couple of hours in his company, this time in the secluded intimacy of a restaurant, was calculated to destroy her appetite. Jan would have carried the whole thing off without a tremor—she’d wanted after all to beard the lion in his den, but she—all she wanted was some peace. She had no real confidence that she would be able to continue with her self-imposed charade over the next few days. If she had to, she would leave the flat and trust to luck that she would find a cheap hotel somewhere, and that Santino Vallone wasn’t having her watched, a course of action she was certain would not be beyond him.
She gave him a cautious glance beneath her lashes. That terrifying anger she had glimpsed seemed to have subsided for the moment, but she sensed that it was still there just beneath the surface and she had no wish to unleash it again.
She managed a breathless little laugh. ‘Well, thank you, signore. But I wonder what the gossip columnists will make of you dining těte-à-těte with your future sister-in-law?’
He had the telephone receiver in his hand and was in the act of dialling, but he turned slightly and looked at her over his shoulder.
‘I imagine they’ll draw the appropriate conclusions,’ he said softly. ‘And allow me to remind you yet again, Janina mia, that you have no future as my sister-in-law.’
He turned his attention back to his telephone call and Juliet fled.
Once in the bedroom, she gave a swift glance along the brief line of clothes hanging in her section of the wardrobes, and shook her head. They were all strictly Juliet dresses, and none of them appropriate for the role she was playing. She gave a longing glance at one new dress she had brought for this holiday—white with bands of delicate Swiss embroidery, cut in an Empire style which showed off her slenderness and gave her an air of fragility.
But for an evening in
