Vitale studied the envelope of what was obviously a begging letter with unconcealed distaste. More than ever he wanted to argue with his father’s attitude. In Vitale’s opinion, Charles owed his former employee and her daughter absolutely nothing. By the sound of it, Peggy Dickens had screwed up her life; however that was scarcely his father’s fault.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Vitale asked finally, recognising that how he felt about the situation meant nothing in the face of his father’s feelings.
Yet it amazed Vitale that his father could still be so incredibly emotional and sentimental and he often marvelled that two people as ridiculously dissimilar in character as his parents could ever have married.
‘I want you to be compassionate and kind, not judgemental, not cynical, not cold,’ Charles framed with anxious warning emphasis. ‘And I know that will be a huge challenge for you but I also know that acknowledging that side of your nature will make you a better and stronger man in the process. Don’t let your mother remake you in her image—never forget that you are my son too.’
Vitale almost flinched from the idea of being compassionate and kind. He didn’t do stuff like that. He supported leading charities and always contributed to good causes but he had never done anything hands-on in that area, nor had he ever felt the need to do so. He was what he was: a bred-in-the-bone royal, cocooned from the real world by incredible privilege, an exclusive education and great wealth.
‘I don’t care what it costs to buy Peggy and her daughter out of trouble either,’ his father added expansively. ‘With you in charge of my investments, I can well afford the gesture. You don’t need to save me money.’
‘I’m a banker. Saving money and making a profit comes naturally,’ Vitale said drily. ‘And by the way, my mother is not remaking me in her image.’
Charles vented a roughened laugh. ‘It may be graveyard humour but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you find yourself engaged by the end of that ball next month! Sofia is a hell of a wheeler dealer. You should’ve refused to attend.’
‘I may still do that. I’m no pushover,’ his son stated coldly. ‘So you want me to stage a rescue mission in your name?’
‘With tact and generosity,’ the older man added.
Exasperation leapt through Vitale, who used tact every day of his life because he could never be less than courteous in the face of the royal demands made of him. But no matter how onerous the demand Charles had made struck him, there was, nevertheless, a certain pride and satisfaction to the awareness that his father was trusting him to deal with a sensitive situation. He realised that he was also surprisingly eager to read Jazz’s letter.
Jazz, a skinny-as-a-rail redhead, who had developed a massive crush on him when she was fourteen and he was eighteen. He had been wildly disconcerted that he rather than the friendlier, flirtier Angel had become the object of her admiration and he had screwed up badly, he acknowledged reluctantly, cracking a wounding joke about her that she had sadly overheard. But then Vitale had never been the sensitive sort and back then he had also essentially known very little about women because he had stayed a virgin for many years longer than Angel. But, not surprisingly, Jazz had hated him after that episode and in many ways it had been a relief to no longer be the centre of her attention and the awful tongue-tied silences that had afflicted her in his presence. In the space of one awkward summer, the three of them had travelled from casual pseudo friendship to stroppy, strained discomfiture and then she and her mother had mercifully disappeared out of their lives.
Compassionate... Kind, Vitale reminded himself as he stood outside his father’s office reading Jazz’s letter, automatically rating it for use of English, spelling and conciseness. Of course it had been written on the computer because Jazz was severely dyslexic. Dyslexic and clumsy, he recalled helplessly, always tripping and bumping into things. The letter told a tale of woe that could have featured as a Greek tragedy and his sculpted mouth tightened, his momentary amusement dying away. She wanted help for her mother but only on her own terms. She wanted a job but only had experience of working as a checkout operator and a cleaner.
Per carita...for pity’s sake, what did she think his father was going to find for her to do on the back of such slender talents? Even so, the letter was pure Jazz, feisty and gauche and crackling with brick-wall obstinacy. An ordinary woman, he thought abstractedly, an ordinary woman with extraordinarily beautiful green eyes. Her eyes wouldn’t have changed, he reasoned. And you couldn’t get more ordinary than Jazz, who thought a soup spoon or a fish fork or a napkin was pure unnecessary aristocratic affectation. And she was, evidently, badly in need of money...
A faint smile tilted Vitale’s often grim mouth. He didn’t need a stunning beauty to act as his partner at the palace ball and he was quite sure that if he hired the right experts Jazz could be transformed into something reasonably presentable. Having a partner for the ball to fend off other women would make sense, he acknowledged reluctantly. But shooting Zac down in flames would undeniably be the most satisfying aspect of the whole affair. Jazz might be ordinary and dyslexic but she was also clever and a quick study.
Vitale strolled back to his younger brother’s side with a rare smile on his wide sensual mouth. ‘You’re up next but before you go...the bet,’ he specified in an undertone. ‘Remember that blonde waitress who wanted nothing to do with you last week and accused you of harassment?’
Zac frowned, disconcerted colour highlighting his high cheekbones at that reminder of his rare failure to impress a woman.
‘Bring her to the ball acting all lovelorn and clingy and suitably polished up and you have a deal on the bet,’ Vitale completed, throwing down the gauntlet of challenge with pleasure while recalling the very real hatred he had seen in that woman’s eyes. For once, Zac, the smooth-talking seducer, would have his work cut out for him...
* * *
Jazz straightened her aching back at the checkout because she had worked a very long day. Her schedule had kicked off at dawn with a cleaning shift at a nearby hotel and then she had got a call to step in for a sick workmate at the till in the supermarket where she earned extra cash on a casual basis. Both her jobs were casual, poorly paid and unreliable. But some work was better than no work, she reminded herself doggedly, better than living on welfare, which would have distressed her mother more even though that choice would have left mother and daughter somewhat better off.
But while Peggy Dickens had raised her daughter to be a worker rather than a whinger or a freeloader, Jazz still occasionally let her thoughts drift into a dream world where she had got to complete the education that would have equipped her with a degree that enabled her to chase better-paid jobs and climb an actual career ladder. Unfortunately, the chaos of her private life had prevented her from, what was that phrase...achieving her full potential? Her full pink mouth curled at the corners with easy amusement for who was to say that she was worth any more than the work she was currently doing? No point getting too big for her boots and imagining she might have been more, not when she came from such humble roots.
Her mother had been a housekeeper, who married a gardener and lived in accommodation provided by their employer. Nobody in Jazz’s family tree had ever owned a house or earned a university degree and Peggy had been bemused when her daughter had chosen to continue her education and aim so much higher than any of her ancestors, but her mother had been proud as well.
And then their lives had gone down the tubes again and Jazz had had to put practicality first yet again. Unfortunately, it was virtually impossible to regain lost ground. Jazz had almost had a nervous breakdown studying to overcome the drawbacks of changing schools three times over during her teen years. She had not wept when her parents’ unhappy marriage had finally broken down because her father had often beaten up her mother and had hurt Jazz as well when she had been foolish enough to try and intervene. She had grieved, though, when her father had died unexpectedly only a couple of years afterwards without having
once tried to see her again. Evidently her father had never much cared for his only child and that knowledge had hurt. She had been sincerely aghast, however, when her mother, Peggy fell in love with Jeff Starling, a much younger man.
Love could be the biggest risk out there for a woman, Jazz reflected with an inner shiver of repulsion, most especially the kind of love that could persuade an otherwise sensible woman into jumping straight out of the frying pan into the fire.
But there were other kinds of love as well, she reminded herself comfortingly, life-enriching family connections that soothed and warmed, no matter how bad life got. When Jeff’s bad debts had ensured that Peggy and her daughter couldn’t even get a lease on a rental property, Peggy’s kid sister, Clodagh, had given them a home in her tiny apartment. When Peggy had been diagnosed with breast cancer, Clodagh had stepped back from her little jewellery business to shepherd her sister to her appointments and treatments and nurse her tenderly while Jazz tried to keep on earning what little money she could.
Bolstered by those more positive thoughts, Jazz finished her shift and walked home in the dusk. Her phone pinged and she dug it out, green eyes widening when she read the text with difficulty. It was short and sweet, beginning, re: letter to Charles Russell.
Holy Moses, she thought in shock, Charles Russell was actually willing to meet her to discuss her mother’s plight! Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, not much notice, she conceded ruefully, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, could they be?
In desperation, she had written to her mother’s former employer pleading for help. Charles was a kind man and generous to a fault but almost ten years down the road from Peggy’s employment, Jazz had not even expected to receive a reply. That letter had been a long shot, the product of a particularly sleepless night when she was stressing about how she could best help her mother with the stable, stress-free existence she needed to recover from what had proved to be a gruelling treatment schedule. After all, they couldn’t live with Clodagh for ever. Clodagh had sacrificed a lot to take them in off the street, not least a boyfriend, who had vanished once the realities of Clodagh’s new caring role had sunk in. Ironically, Jazz had not thought that there was the remotest possibility that her letter to Charles Russell would even be acknowledged...
A hot feeling of shame crept up inside her, burning her pale porcelain skin with mortified heat because the instant she had posted that letter, she had squirmed with regret over the sacrifice of her pride. Hadn’t she been raised to stand on her own feet? Yet sometimes, no matter what you did and no matter how hard you worked, you needed a helping hand to climb up out of a ditch. And evidently, Charles Russell had taken pity on their plight and maybe, just maybe, he had recognised that he could offer his assistance in some way. With somewhere to live? With employment? Hope sprang high, dousing the shame of having written and posted a begging letter. Any help, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, would be welcome, she told herself sternly.
Stuffing her phone back in her pocket, Jazz unlocked the door of the apartment, suppressing a sigh when she saw the mess in the living and kitchen area. Clodagh wasn’t tidy and she wasn’t much for cleaning or doing dishes or laundry but Jazz did what she could to pick up the slack, always conscious that she lived in Clodagh’s home while remaining equally aware that her neat freak of a mother found it depressing to live in such messy surroundings. But there wasn’t much that could be done to make a one-bedroom apartment stretch to the occupation of three adults, one of whom was still struggling to regain her strength. The treatments might have concluded but Peggy was still in the recovery phase. Clodagh shared the bedroom with her sister but when Peggy had a restless night, Clodagh took the couch and Jazz slept in a sleeping bag on the floor.
‘I had a good day,’ Peggy announced chirpily from in front of the television, a thin-faced, pale and still-frail-looking woman in her forties. ‘I went for a walk in the park after mass.’
‘That’s brilliant,’ Jazz said, bending down to kiss the older woman’s cheek, the baby fine fuzz of her mother’s regrown hair brushing her brow and bringing tears to her tired eyes. The hair had grown again in white, rather then red, and Peggy had refused to consider dying it as Clodagh had suggested, confessing that as far as she was concerned any hair was better than no hair.
Jazz was intensely relieved that her mother was regaining her energy and had an excellent prognosis. Having initially faced the terrifying prospect that she might lose her mother, she was merely grateful to still have her and was keen to improve the older woman’s life as much as possible.
‘Hungry?’ Jazz prompted.
‘Not really,’ Peggy confessed guiltily.
‘I’ll make a lovely salad and you can do your best with it,’ Jazz declared, knowing it was imperative to encourage her mother to regain some of the weight she had lost.
‘Clodagh’s visiting her friend, Rose,’ Peggy told her. ‘She asked me to join them but I was too tired and I like to see you when you come in from work.’
Suppressing her exhaustion, Jazz began to clean up the kitchen, neatly stowing away her aunt’s jewellery-making supplies in their designated clear boxes and then embarking on the dishes before preparing the salad that was presently the only option that awakened her mother’s appetite. While she worked, she chattered, sharing a little gossip about co-workers, bringing her working day home with her to brighten her mother’s more restricted lifestyle and enjoy the sound of her occasional chuckle.
They sat down at the table to eat. Jazz was mentally running through her tiny wardrobe to select a suitable outfit for her morning appointment with Charles Russell. Giving up the luxury of their own home had entailed selling off almost all their belongings because there had been no money to spare to rent a storage facility and little room for anything extra in Clodagh’s home. Jazz had a worn black pencil skirt and jeans and shorts and a few tops and that was literally all. She had learned to be grateful for the uniform she wore at both her jobs because it meant that she could get by with very few garments. Formality insisted on her wearing the skirt, she conceded ruefully, and her only pair of high heels.
She had not mentioned her letter to either her mother or her aunt because she hadn’t expected anything to come of it and, in the same way, she could not quite accept that she had been given an appointment. Indeed, several times before she finally dropped off to sleep on the couch that evening, she had to dig out her phone and anxiously reread that text to persuade herself that it wasn’t a figment of her imagination.
Early the next morning, fearful of arriving late, Jazz crossed London by public transport and finally arrived outside a tall town house. She had been surprised not to be invited to the older man’s office where she had sent the letter, but perhaps he preferred a less formal and more discreet setting for their meeting. She was even more surprised by the size and exclusive location of the house. Charles Russell had once been married to a reigning queen, she reminded herself wryly. A queen who, on her only fleeting visit to her former husband’s country home, had treated Jazz’s mother like the dirt beneath her expensively shod feet.
But Charles had been infinitely kinder and more gracious with his staff, she recalled fondly, remembering the older man’s warm smiles and easy conversation with her even though she was only his housekeeper’s daughter. Unlike his royal ex-wife and second son, he was not a snob and had never rated people in importance solely according to their social or financial status. A kind man, she repeated doggedly to herself to quell her leaping nervous tension as she rang the doorbell.
A woman who spoke little English, and what she did speak was with an impenetrable accent, ushered her into an imposing hall furnished with gleaming antiques and mirrors. Scanning her intimidating surroundings and feeling very much like an interloper, Jazz began to revise up her estimate of Charles Russell’s wealth.
Another door was cast open into what looked like a home office and a man sprang up from behind the solid wooden desk.
Jazz was so a
ghast by the recognition that roared through her slender frame that she froze on the threshold of the room and stared in dismay, all her natural buoyance draining away as though someone very cruel had stabbed a pin into her tender flesh and deflated her like a balloon. It was Vitale, not his father, and that had to be... Her. Worst. Nightmare. Ever...
CHAPTER TWO
VITALE STARED, TAKEN aback by the woman in the doorway because she was a knockout, the kind of vibrant beauty who turned male heads in the street with her streaming red-gold curls and slender, supple body. About the only things that hadn’t changed about Jazz were her eyes, green as jade set in a triangular face, skin as translucent as the finest pale porcelain and a surprisingly full pink mouth, little white teeth currently plucking at her lower lip as she gazed at him in almost comical horror.
‘Come in and close the door,’ Vitale urged smoothly, wondering how on earth he was going to teach her to stop wearing her every thought on her face while also wondering why he found that candidness attractive.
Jazz made a valiant attempt to stage a recovery even though every ounce of her hard-won confidence had been blown out of the water. Shock waves were travelling through her slight body. One glimpse of Vitale and her brain was mush at best and at worst sending her back in time to a very vulnerable period she did not want to remember. But there Vitale was, as sleek and drop-dead gorgeous as he had ever been and so compelling in his undeniable masculine beauty that it took terrible effort to even look away from him.
What was it about Vitale, what crazy weakness in her made him seem so appealing? His brother, Angel Valtinos, had been too pretty and vain to draw her and she had never once looked at Angel in that way. But then, Vitale was a much more complex and fascinating creature, all simmering, smouldering intensity and conflicts below the smooth, sophisticated surface he wore for the world. Those perfect manners and that cool reserve of his couldn’t mask the intense emotion he held in restraint behind those stunning dark golden eyes. And he was so sexy. Every sinuous movement of his lean, muscular body, every downward dip of his gold-tipped, outrageously thick black lashes, and every quirk of his beautifully shaped sensual mouth contributed to his ferocious sex appeal. It was little wonder that when she had finally been of an age to crush on a man, her attention had immediately locked onto Vitale, even though Vitale had found it quite impossible to treat her like a friend.