Her father shook his head with a rueful smile. 'You're a very junior employee at Fulton and Greenbury and he's a tycoon. You don't even know how to use a computer, Jess. I don't think he's shipping you out to the Caribbean to stay with his family for your secretarial skills alone. At least, if he is, he's in for a very frustrating time of it!'
Jessica didn't know what to say but her father didn't seem to expect any response. He was an astute man and she should have known he would pick holes in so thin a cover story. Carlo in love with her? She couldn't even summon up any amusement at the idea. She hadn't seen or heard from Carlo since that night, three days earlier.
He had been gone when she breakfasted the next morning and she had been driven home to the cottage.
Spiros, Carlo's PA, had phoned her yesterday to tell her when she would be picked up to be taken to the airport tomorrow. He had also dropped the news that Carlo would only be meeting up with them in Miami for the final leg of the journey.
Now, as her father took his leave, eager to embark on the challenges ahead of him, Jessica was left to cope with her own confusion. Astonishingly, Carlo had gone to great lengths to help her father without hurting his pride. He had been far more generous than she could ever have expected. She had grossly underestimated Carlo. But then, she reflected ruefully, Carlo had not displayed an honourable or more appealing side to his character six years ago. Carlo had been ruthless, arrogant and aggressive. Feeling threatened, she had clung all the harder to her belief that she loved Simon.
She had loved Simon for a good half of her Me and had been too inhibited by her mother's promiscuous example to question Simon's lack of sexual interest in her before their marriage. She had been grateful for his restraint, for what she had seen as his respect for her. For the first time she openly acknowledged that Simon had cruelly betrayed her trust.
He should have told her the truth. He shouldn't have pretended. He had had no right to use her simply to silence his family's suspicions, plunging them both into deep unhappiness and endless pretences. Why had she blamed Carlo for the misery of her marriage? she now asked herself. The reality was that her marriage would have been a disaster even if she had never met Carlo...only, having met Carlo and confessed all to Simon, she had given Simon an excuse to hide behind. Simon had allowed her to believe that her moral lapse with Carlo was what kept him from her bed. It had been a very long time before he'd admitted the truth.
And in the interim of tortured guilt she had hated Carlo and kept on hating him with quite irrational
fervour. Carlo had become the focus for her bitter dissatisfaction with her life. But common sense told her that she could never have been that attracted to a man she truly hated. No, what she had really hated was the uncontrollable chemistry she experienced in Carlo's radius, a powerful sexual attraction that she couldn't handle and was deeply ashamed of feeling.
So where did that leave her now? She had scarcely slept the last few nights. She couldn't get Carlo out of her mind and that, frankly, terrified her.
Jessica boarded the luxurious jet at Miami and surveyed her superbly comfortable surroundings with a faint frown line between her brows. 'Nothing like travelling in style.'
Spiros laughed. 'Mr Philippides likes his guests to be comfortable.'
'Who is Mr Philippides?' Jessica enquired of the likeable young Greek, who had unbent from his strict formality with every hour of the travel they had shared.
Spiros sent her an incredulous glance. 'You are joking, yes?'
‘Why should I be joking?' Jessica dropped into her seat and wondered when Carlo intended to show. Her nervous tension was heightening by the second.
Spiros frowned and leant forward. 'Lukas Philippides
is Carlo's father, Miss Amory,’ he proffered awkwardly.
‘Of course, you knew... you are pulling my foot '
'Leg,' Jessica corrected, frozen to stillness by shock.
Spiros chuckled. 'Who has not heard of Lukas Philippides?'
'Who indeed?' she mumbled through a dry mouth. Lukas Philippides was one of the richest men in the world and in recent years he had lived like a recluse, encouraging the media to concoct wildly unlikely stories about him and compare him to the late Howard Hughes.
Spiros was studying her closely. 'You really didn't know,' he realised with unhidden astonishment. 'But the
relationship is widely known. Carlo dropped the Philippides name and took his mother's many years ago.'
Damn Car
lo for his refusal to fill her in on the most basic facts! That was her first thought. Her standing as his supposed fiancee might very easily have fallen at the first ditch had she betrayed her ignorance in the wrong company. Lukas Philippides was dying and the media had yet to stumble on that scoop. All that money, an amount of money beyond her comprehension, was shortly to be up for grabs. Carlo had been playing for far higher stakes than she could ever have imagined, she thought sickly. Wealth beyond avarice, the kind of inheritance many would kill for...never mind He and deceive.
Jessica was badly shaken. Carlo's fury that she had failed to tell him of her father's depression, his astonishing kindness towards her father from that point.. .both those things had demonstrated a new side to Carlo's volatile nature. But now she found her most recent assumptions being flung into chaos all over again.
Had Lukas Philippides demanded that his son marry before he could inherit? She could think of no other reason for Carlo's deception. And how likely was it that a man like Lukas Philippides would find a twenty-six-year-old widow without any assets an acceptable match for his only surviving son and heir? The plot thickens, she thought hysterically. What the hell had she got herself into?
The stewardess was speaking. Jessica lifted her head as Carlo appeared. He dropped down with fluid energy into the seat opposite her. His impact was incredibly physical. In a lightweight, exquisitely cut cream suit that threw his exotic darkness into prominence, he was shat-teringly sleek and beautiful in an entirely masculine way. Undoubtedly not a single female head had failed to turn on his passage here. This proximity to Carlo was like being struck by lightning.
Her body reacted involuntarily to the powerful sexuality he emanated. Beneath her silk camisole she could feel her nipples tighten into hard little points and a quiver ran through her as she attempted to remove her eyes from the magnetic gold allure of his. Her heartbeat thudded in her eardrums and it was suddenly impossible to breathe in the rushing silence.
‘You missed me,' Carlo positively purred, stretching out his long, lean thighs in an attitude of indolent relaxation as the jet engines whined up to take-off. He rested his dark head back and surveyed her from below a screen of lush black lashes, hooding his gaze to a sliver of gleaming awareness. 'I can feel the heat from here.'