Jazz closed the door in a harried movement and walked towards the chair set in front of the desk. You’re a grown-up now. The embarrassing stuff you did as a kid no longer matters, her defences were instructing her at a frantic pitch, and so intent was she on listening to that face-saving voice that she didn’t notice the edge of the rug in front of her. Her spiky heel caught on the fringe and she pitched forward with a startled cry.
And Vitale was there at supersonic speed, catching her before she could fall and steadying her with a strong arm to her spine. The heat of his hand at her waist startled her almost as much as his sudden proximity. She jerked skittishly away from him to settle down heavily into the chair but her nostrils flared appreciatively. The dark sensual scent of his spicy cologne overlying warm earthy male plunged her senses into overdrive.
Vitale had finally touched her, Vitale, who avoided human contact as much as possible, she recalled abstractedly, striving not to look directly at him until she had got her stupid brain back on line. He would be smiling: she knew that. Her clumsiness had always amused him because he was as lithe and sure-footed as a cat. Now he unnerved her more by not returning to the other side of the desk and instead lounging back against it with unusual casualness, staying far too close for comfort, a long, muscular, powerful thigh within view that did nothing to restore her composure.
Her fingertips dug into her palms as she fought for calm. ‘I was expecting to meet with your father,’ she admitted thinly.
‘Charles asked me to handle this,’ Vitale confided, barely resisting the urge to touch the wild corkscrew mane of flaming ringlets tumbling across her shoulders with gleaming electric vigour. So, he liked the hair and the eyes, he reasoned, wondering why he had abandoned his usual formality to sit so close to her, wondering why the simple smell of soap that she emanated was so surpassingly sexy, wondering why that slender body with its delicate curves, tiny waist and shapely legs should suddenly seem so very tempting a package. Because she wasn’t his type, not even remotely his type, he told himself sternly. He had always gone for tall, curvy blondes, redheads being too bright and brash for his tastes.
On the other hand he had never wanted so badly to touch a woman’s hair and that weird prompting unnerved him into springing upright again and striding across the room. The dulled throb of awakening desire at his groin inspired him with another stab of incredulity because since adulthood he had always been fully in control of that particular bodily affliction.
‘I can’t think why,’ Jazz said, dry-mouthed, unbearably conscious of him looming over her for that split second before he moved away because he stood well over six feet tall and she barely made a couple of inches over five foot.
‘I assure you that the exchange will work out very much to your advantage,’ Vitale husked, deciding that his uncharacteristic interest had simply been stimulated by the challenge that he now saw lay ahead of him: the transformation of Jazz. Number one on the agenda would be persuading her to stop biting her nails. Number two would be ditching the giant fake gold hoop earrings. Number three would be avoiding any shoe that looked as if a stripper might wear it.
Jazz let slip a very rude startled word in response to that unlikely statement.
And number four would be cleaning up her vocabulary, Vitale reflected, glad to so clearly see her flaws so that he could concentrate on the practicalities of his challenge, rather than dwell on any aspect that could be deemed personal.
‘Don’t swear,’ Vitale told her.
Jazz reddened as high as her hairline because she could remember him saying the same thing to her when she was about twelve years old while warning her that once she became accustomed to using such words, using them would become an embarrassing habit. And being Vitale, he had been infuriatingly bang on target with that advice. Using curse words had made her seem a little cooler at school back then...well, as cool as you could be with bright red hair and a flat chest, puberty having passed her by for far longer than she cared to recall, making her an anomaly amongst her peers.
‘You need financial help,’ Vitale pointed out with undiplomatic bluntness, keen to get right to the heart of the matter and remind her of her situation. If he neglected to remind her of her boundaries, Jazz would be a stubborn, defiant baggage and hard to handle.
Living up to that assessment, Jazz flew upright, earrings swinging wildly in the torrent of her burnished hair, colour marking her cheekbones, highlighting eyes bright with angry defensiveness. ‘I did not ask for money from your father!’ she snapped back at him.
‘Employment, a home, the settlement of outstanding loans?’ Vitale reminded her with cruel precision. ‘How could any of those aspirations be achieved without someone laying out a considerable amount of money on your behalf?’
The angry colour drained from her disconcerted face, perspiration breaking out on her short upper lip as he threw her crash-bang up against hard reality, refusing to allow her to deny the obvious. She stared back at him, trapped like a rabbit in headlights and hating him for it. Mortification claimed her along with a healthy dose of shame that she should have put herself in such a position and with Vitale of all people. Vitale, who had never treated her like an equal as Angel had done, Vitale who had never for one moment forgotten that she was essentially a servant’s child, thrown into the brothers’ company only by proximity.
Vitale watched Jazz crash down from fury to bitter, embarrassed acceptance. Sì...yes, he told himself with satisfaction, that had been the right note to sound. She dropped back into the chair, sunset heat warming her cheeks and bowing her head on her slender neck.
‘And the good news is that I’m willing to provide that money if...in return, you are willing to do something for me.’
‘I can’t imagine anything that I could do for you,’ Jazz told him truthfully.
‘Then listen and learn,’ Vitale advised, poised by the window with the light glimmering over his luxuriant blue-black hair, the suave olive planes of his cheekbones taut. ‘At the end of next month my mother is throwing a ball at the palace. Her objective is to match me up with a future bride and the guest list will be awash with young women who have what the Queen deems to be the right pedigree and background.’
Jazz was staring at him now in wide-eyed wonderment. ‘Are you kidding me?’
His sculpted mouth quirked. ‘I wish I was.’
Her smooth brow furrowed as she collided with hot dark golden eyes and suddenly found it fatally difficult to breathe. ‘You’re angry about it.’
‘Oviamente...of course I am. I’m nowhere near the stage in life where I want to get married and settle down. But having considered the situation, it has occurred to me,’ Vitale murmured quietly, ‘that arriving at the ball with what appears to be a partner, whom I’m seriously involved with, would be my best defence. I want you to be that partner.’
‘Me?’ Jazz gaped at him in disbelief, green eyes a pool of verdant jade bemusement as she gazed up at him, soft full pink lips slightly parted. ‘How could I be your partner? I couldn’t go to a royal ball!’
‘Suitably gowned and refined, you could,’ Vitale disagreed, choosing his words with care because the throb below his belt went up tempo when he focused on that soft, oh, so inviting full lower lip of hers. ‘But you would have to be willing to work at the presentation required because you would have to both look like and act like the sort of woman I would bring to a royal ball.’
‘Impossible,’ Jazz told him. ‘It would take more than a fancy dress and not swearing.’
‘It would but, given that we have several weeks at our disposal in which to prepare, I think you could easily do it,’ Vitale declared, shocking her even more with that vote of apparent confidence. ‘And whether you successfully contrive the pretence or fail it, I will still pay you well for trying to make the grade.’
‘But why me?’ Jazz spluttered in a rush. ‘Why someone like me? Surely you have a friend who could pretend to be something more for the evening?’
‘Why
you? Because someone bet me that I couldn’t pass off an ordinary woman as a socialite at a royal ball,’ Vitale delivered, opting for the truth. ‘You fit the bill and I prefer to pay for the pretence rather than ask anyone to do me a favour. In addition, as it will be in your best interests to succeed, you will make more effort to meet the standard required.’
Jazz was transfixed by his admission. ‘A bet,’ she echoed weakly. ‘To go to all that effort and put out money simply to win a bet...it would be absurd.’
Vitale shrugged a wide shoulder, sheathed in the finest silk and wool blend, the jacket of his exquisitely well-tailored suit sliding open to reveal his torso, lean, strong muscles flexing below the thin cotton shirt. Her mouth ran dry because he was a work of art on a physical level, every silken, honed line of his lean, powerful physique hard and muscular and fit. ‘Does the absurdity of it have to concern you?’
‘I guess not...’ she said uncertainly, knowing that what was what he wanted her to say, playing it sensibly by ear and reluctant to argue while momentarily lost in the dark, exciting challenge of his hard, assessing gaze.
She had almost forgotten what that excitement felt like, had never felt it since in a man’s radius and had been much too young and naïve to feel its mortifying bite at the age of fourteen. She had experienced what felt like all the sensations of a grown woman while still trapped in the body of an undeveloped child. Unsurprisingly, struggling to deal with that adolescent flood of sexual awakening had made her so silent, so awkward and so wretched around Vitale that she had been filled with self-loathing and shame.
Now that same excitement was curling up hot in the pit of her stomach and spreading dangerous tendrils of awareness to more sensitive places. She felt her nipples pinch tight below her tee shirt and her small breasts swell with the shaken breath she snatched in as she willed the torture to stop. But her body’s reaction to Vitale had never been something she could control and the inexorable pulse of that heat between her thighs made her feel murderously uncomfortable and foolish.
A bet, she was still thinking with even greater incredulity, desperate to stop thinking about her physical reaction to him. Vitale was willing to invest good money in an attempt to win a bet. That was beyond her capacity to imagine and she thought it was very wrong. In her experience money was precious and should be reserved to cover the necessities of life: rent, heat and food. She had never lived in a world where money was easily obtained or where there was ever enough of it. Even when her parents had still been together, having sufficient money simply to live had been a constant source of concern, thanks to her father’s addiction to online betting.
But Vitale lived at a very different level, she reminded herself ruefully. He took money for granted, had never gone without and could probably never understand how bone-deep appalled she was by his light-hearted attitude and how even more hostile she was to any form of gambling.
‘I don’t approve of gambling,’ she admitted tightly, thinking of the families destroyed by the debts accrued and the addicts who could not break free of their dream of a big win.
‘It’s not—’
‘It is gambling,’ Jazz cut in with assurance. ‘You’re betting on the outcome of something that can’t be predicted and you may make a loss.’
‘That’s my problem, not yours,’ Vitale delivered without hesitation. ‘You need to think about how this arrangement would benefit you. I would settle those loans and find a place of your choosing for you and your mother to live. I don’t know what I could offer on the employment front but I’m sure I could provide some help. The decision is yours. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think it over.’
Her green eyes flared in anger again. ‘You haven’t even told me what would be involved if I accepted!’
‘Obviously you’d have to have a makeover and a certain amount of coaching before you could meet the demands of the role,’ Vitale imparted, marvelling that she hadn’t eagerly snatched at his offer straight away. ‘Right now you’re drowning in debt and you have no options. I can give you options.’
It was the bald truth and she hated him for spelling it out. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, she chanted inside her head. Being badly in debt meant that she and her mother had virtually no choices and little chance of improving their lot in life. She swallowed hard on that humiliating reality that put Vitale squarely in the driver’s seat. A makeover, coaching? Inwardly she cringed but it was no surprise to her that she would not do as she was. She would never be good enough for Vitale on any level. She didn’t have the right breeding or background and found it hard to credit that even a makeover would raise her to the standard required by a highly sophisticated royal prince, who couldn’t even drink beer out of a bottle without looking uncomfortable.
‘Yes, if I can trust you, you could give us options,’ she conceded flatly. ‘But how do I know that you will keep your promises if this doesn’t work?’
Vitale stiffened as though she had slapped him. ‘I give you my word,’ he bit out witheringly. ‘Surely that should be sufficient?’
‘There are very few people in this world that I trust,’ Jazz admitted apologetically.
‘I will have a legal agreement drawn up, then,’ Vitale breathed with icy cool. ‘Will that satisfy you?’
Jazz lifted her head high, barely able to credit that she was bargaining with Vitale. ‘We don’t need a legal agreement for something this crazy. You get rid of the loans first as a show of faith,’ she dared. ‘I’m fed up trying to protect my mother from debt collectors.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re even trying to repay loans that were fraudulently taken out in your mother’s name.’
‘It’s incredibly difficult to prove that it was fraud. Jeff died in an accident last year and he wasn’t prosecuted. A solicitor tried to sort it out for Mum but we didn’t have enough proof to clear her name and she won’t declare herself bankrupt because she sees that as the ultimate humiliation,’ she explained, wanting him to know that they had explored every possible avenue. ‘She was ill and going through chemo at the time and I didn’t want to put any more pressure on her.’
‘You give me all the paperwork for the loans and I will have them dealt with,’ Vitale asserted. ‘But if I do so, I will own you body and soul until the end of next month.’
‘Nobody will ever own me body and soul.’
‘Apart from me for the next couple of months,’ Vitale contradicted with lethal cool. ‘If I pay upfront, I call the shots and you do as you’re told, whether you like it or not.’
Jazz blinked in bewilderment, wondering how she had got herself into the situation she was in. He thought he had her agreement and why wouldn’t he when she had bargained the terms with him? Even the prospect of those dreadful loans being settled knocked her for six. A visit or a phone call from a debt collector upset her mother for days afterwards, depriving her of the peace of mind she needed to rebuild her life and her health. How could Jazz possibly turn her back on an offer like Vitale’s? Nobody else was going to give them the opportunity to make a fresh start.
‘You haven’t given me a chance to think this through,’ she argued shakily.
‘You were keen enough to set out your conditions,’ Vitale reminded her drily.
And her face flamed because she was in no position to protest that assumption. The offer of money had cut right through her fine principles and her aversion to gambling. The very idea that she could sort out her mother’s problems and give her a happier and more secure future had thoroughly seduced her.
‘You’ll move in here as soon as possible,’ Vitale decreed.
Her head flew up, corkscrew curls tumbling across her shoulders, green eyes huge. ‘Move in here? With you?’
‘How else can we achieve this? You must be readily available. How else can I supervise? And if I take you to the ball it will be assumed we are lovers, and should anyone do a check, it will be clear that you were already living here in my house,’ Vitale pointed out. ?
??If we are to succeed, you have to consider little supporting details of that nature.’
Jazz studied him, aghast. ‘I can’t move in with you!’ she gasped. ‘What am I supposed to tell my mother?’
Vitale shrugged with magnificent lack of interest. ‘Whatever suits. That I’ve given you a job? That we’re having an affair? I don’t care.’
Her feathery lashes fluttered rapidly, her animated face troubled as she pondered that problem. ‘Yes, I could admit I sent the letter to your father and say I’ve been offered a live-in job and my aunt would look after Mum, so I wouldn’t need to worry about her,’ she reasoned out loud. ‘Would I still be able to work? I have two part-time jobs.’
‘No. You won’t have the time. I’ll pay you a salary for the duration of your stay here,’ Vitale added, reading her expression to register the dismay etched there at the news that she would not be able to continue in paid employment.
‘This is beginning to sound like a very expensive undertaking for you,’ Jazz remarked uncomfortably, her face more flushed than ever.
‘My choice,’ Vitale parried dismissively while he wondered how far that flush extended beneath her clothing and whether that scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose was repeated anywhere else on her delicate body. He wondered dimly why such an imperfection should seem even marginally appealing and why he should suddenly be picturing her naked with all the eagerness of a sex-starved teenage boy. He tensed, thoroughly unsettled by his complete loss of concentration and detachment.
‘I’ll say you’ve offered me a job,’ Jazz said abruptly, her thoughts leaping ahead of her. ‘Are there many art works in this house?’