lips, sullenly eyeing her adversary over the rim. He had pulled loose the bow tie so that it lay flat against the crisp white of his shirt, which had the top buttons undone, the sleeves rolled up to reveal dark-skinned forearms. He looked as stunningly drop-dead gorgeous as ever but there was something about him, a sharpness that stiffened his posture, tempering his usual languid style.
Perhaps he was afraid she was going to leap on him. Forget her place once again and demand that he take her to bed, make love to her. That thought did very disturbing things to her insides and she hastily swallowed a mouthful of hot coffee to try and drown them. Vieri Romano need have no fear of that. She had learned her lesson. From now on she intended to show him just how much she didn’t care.
She watched as he refilled his cup. ‘Well, in that case there are a couple of things I would like to discuss with you.’
‘Go on.’ With studied indifference, Harper arranged the scarlet folds of her dress.
‘First, I thought you would like to know that your sister has turned up.’
‘Leah?’ Leaping to her feet, all pretence of coolness gone, Harper flew to his side, perching herself down on the sofa next to him. ‘Oh, thank God.’ She searched his face for information. ‘Is she okay?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ She repeated the words on a long exhalation of breath. ‘Where is she? How did you find her?’
‘She was tracked down to a casino in Atlantic City. She has been collected from those premises.’
‘Collected from those premises?’ Immediately alarm surged through her. It was always the same with Leah; she evoked this hugely protective instinct in Harper, as if she had been put on this earth solely to save her twin sister. Which in a way she had.
A sickly child, Leah had been diagnosed with kidney failure shortly after their mother’s death, compounding the family’s distress. They were told she would need a kidney transplant and Harper was found to be the perfect match but legally they still had to wait four long years until the girls were old enough before the transplant could go ahead. But finally it had happened and Harper was able to give her sister the precious gift of a healthy life. But it did mean that she still worried obsessively over Leah, probably far more than she should.
‘So what does that mean?’ She cross-examined Vieri. ‘You had your security guys go and pick her up?’
‘Correct.’
Harper remembered the two brutes who had grabbed her in Spectrum nightclub, the way they had manhandled her when they had thought she was Leah. And they had been obeying Vieri’s orders. Were they the same goons who had been sent to ‘collect’ Leah?
‘Well, I hope they didn’t hurt her. I’m telling you now, Vieri, if one of your bully-boy thugs has harmed so much as a hair on my sister’s head...’
Vieri let out a low scoff. ‘Forgive me if I don’t appear too terrified.’
‘I mean it. If any harm has come to Leah you will have me to answer to.’ His sarcasm only served to fire her temper more. ‘You can forget about this whole charade with your godfather. I will go right round there and tell him everything.’
‘Really?’ Vieri leant back into the sofa. ‘And will this everything include how your precious sister wilfully cheated me out of thirty thousand dollars?’
Harper paused, searching for a firmer footing. ‘If necessary, yes. Alfonso will understand. He is a good man. Maybe he deserves to know the truth.’
‘And maybe you should think very carefully before you continue this conversation. I am not going to be held to ransom over this, Harper. You knew the score when you agreed to take on your sister’s debt. Either you continue with our arrangement or you pack your bags and get the hell out of here. The choice is yours.’ Dark blue eyes flashed at her. ‘But rest assured, if that happens, the debt will still have to be paid.’
Harper glared at him, the blood pounding in her ears, fear and anger and frustration coursing through her body.
‘Is that a threat?’
‘Take it any way you want.’
‘And what do you think Alfonso would make of that? The fact that you are prepared to hound two young women for a sum of money that is nothing more than a pittance to you.’
‘You leave my godfather out of this.’ Danger tinged Vieri’s voice.
‘Maybe he needs to know just what a bully and a thug you really are.’
‘Chiedo scusa, I beg your pardon?’ With a flash of anger, Vieri leant in, so close that she could feel his hot breath on her cheeks. ‘What did you just call me?’
Harper swallowed hard. Perhaps she had gone too far. But stubborn pride refused to let her back down. She was too worried about Leah, and about what might happen to her if she did try and pull out of this hateful deception. She was trapped and, worse than that, trapped by a man who did the most terrible things to her. Who right now, despite everything, was firing her senses, making her body throb with need.
But if she was trapped she would fight, no matter how useless it might be, like a fox caught in one of her father’s snares. Because the alternative was to give in, surrender to this man, and she would never do that.
‘You heard,’ she obstinately fired back.
‘Indeed I did.’ His voice was terrifyingly soft.
Grimly Harper hung onto her defiance. ‘You don’t intimidate me, Vieri.’
‘No?’ His gaze deliberately burned into hers, the small space between them humming with threat. ‘You call me a bully and a thug and yet you are not intimidated by me. Doesn’t that make you rather stupid?’
‘Oh, you would love that, wouldn’t you?’ Still she pushed. ‘For me to be scared of you.’
‘On the contrary.’ Reaching forward, he brushed his fingers along her jawline, before curling his hand possessively under her chin. ‘What I would love would be for you to honour the clearly laid-out terms of our agreement and start behaving like my fiancée.’
‘But...’ His finger pressed against her lip to silence her.
‘What I would really love would be for you to start showing me some respect.’
Harper swallowed against her closing throat. The heat of his fingers was setting her face alight, hammering her heart wildly in her chest. In theory she only had to turn her head to release his grip but somehow she couldn’t do it. His punishing gaze was holding her captive and it was as much as she could do to drag in a ragged breath.
‘I will start showing you some respect when I think you have earned it.’ Somehow she managed to choke out some words.
‘Is that right?’ With a cold laugh Vieri moved his body fractionally closer. ‘So tell me, just for argument’s sake, what exactly do I have to do to earn your respect? Obviously letting you step in for your thief of a sister hasn’t done the trick, despite the fact that I could so easily have gone to the police and got her into serious trouble. And then there’s the time and effort I have put
