The door opened and an older woman came in carrying a tray. Coffee was poured. Luciano took his black and without sugar. Jemima took hers milky and sweet, their differences as pronounced in coffee as in everything else.
Cradling his cup in one elegant, long-fingered hand, Luciano murmured, ‘I’ve decided that I want you to accompany us to Sicily as the nanny you offered to be...’
Shock made Jemima’s lower lip part from her upper and she breathed again and a little faster, her eyes widening at that bombshell of a suggestion.
‘It would ease the transition for my son but it would be on the strict understanding that you would begin stepping back from him while allowing others to step forward to take your place in his little world,’ Luciano spelt out coolly. ‘He must learn to do without you.’
Jemima tried and failed to swallow as he described the role. He had delivered the killing blow of truth by telling her what he ultimately expected and wanted from her. Sicily and the nanny job would be very temporary for her and would come at a high cost for a woman who loved the child she cared for. She lost colour, pain knotting inside her at the prospect of walking away from Nicky, but at the same time with every word Luciano Vitale spoke she saw that whether she liked it or not he was worthy of her respect as a father. He detested her yet he still recognised the strength of her bond with his son and he was keen to protect Nicky from getting hurt. How could she judge him badly for that? A more gradual process of parting Jemima from her nephew should work much better than a sudden break, she reasoned unhappily. Luciano was taking the sensible, cautious approach to the problem.
Her silence perturbed Luciano, who had expected instant eager agreement. Didn’t Jemima Barber worship money and the high life? Wasn’t she a fish out of water in her parents’ modest home? He had assumed that was why she had made the strange offer to take on the role of acting as her son’s nanny. After all, only that position would grant her entry into Luciano’s wealthy, exclusive and privileged world. She was also broke, in debt and had to be afraid of the police catching up with her, so a trip abroad should have all the appeal of an escape hatch.
‘Have you changed your mind about that offer?’ Luciano asked in surprise.
‘Well, it was an impulse of the moment offer,’ Jemima admitted ruefully. ‘I didn’t really think it through. It was provoked by the prospect of parting from Nicky—’
‘Sicily may make the process a little less traumatic,’ Luciano commented tongue-in-cheek, reckoning that a few little treats like shopping trips round the fashion houses would quickly improve her attitude. Of course, he knew she wanted more and he was prepared to give her more to oil the wheels of persuasion. ‘If you agree, I will naturally settle your debts here in the UK and compensate the men whose credit cards you stole so that they will drop the charges. That would remove the threat of arrest as well.’
In shock at that smoothly outlined proposition, Jemima snatched in a stark breath of astonishment and studied him with frowning eyes. ‘But it wouldn’t be right to let you pay those bills.’
Luciano raised a cynical brow. ‘Of course you will be happy for me to settle your debts,’ he countered forcefully. ‘That is the sort of woman you are. Why are you trying to pretend otherwise?’
At that direct and unsettling question, Jemima flushed and hurriedly dropped her eyes. Julie would never have argued against such a benefit. In that he was quite correct. Her twin had always happily taken money to settle her problems and fulfil her dreams and not once had she protested or done anything that would have worked against her own natural interests. So, if Jemima was still set on pretending to be Julie, she had to bite her lip and go with the flow. She tried to take a sensible overview of her situation. The debts Julie had acquired in Jemima’s name were a major source of worry to both her and her parents. To be free of that pressure would be wonderful, she acknowledged guiltily.
‘And quite naturally I don’t want my son’s mother dragged into court over debts or dishonesty,’ Luciano pointed out without hesitation.
But I’m not your son’s mother, she suddenly wanted to tell him, because the web of her deceit was getting thicker and harder to justify. And what would happen if she simply told him the truth now? Would he still take her with them to Sicily? Still offer her the chance to learn how to part gently from the baby she loved? Jemima thought not. She stole a glance at him from below her lashes. She had lied to him. If he found that out, he would be so angry he would snatch up his son and walk away. He wasn’t a forgiving or understanding or tolerant man. Furthermore the only thing she had to offer on his terms was that she was supposedly the mother of his son. Shorn of that borrowed status, she would have no standing whatsoever in his eyes.
‘Obviously not,’ Jemima conceded tightly before she could lose her nerve again. ‘I’ll come to Sicily with Nicky—’
‘Niccolò,’ Luciano corrected without hesitation.
‘He’ll always be Nicky to me,’ she fielded quietly, refusing to give ground.
Something bright flashed in his dark gaze, lighting his eyes gold like the dawn sky, and she stiffened, like a small animal suddenly faced with a predator.
‘Doing what I tell you to do would be a wise move now,’ Luciano spelt out softly, his intent gaze raking down over the fullness of her pink lips, the swell of her tantalising breasts and the slim legs on view. He had never lusted after a woman of her ilk before. What did that say about him? But lust was healthy and indifference was not, he reasoned fiercely, all too reluctant to banish the sexual energy infusing him when for the first time in much longer than he cared to recall he felt alive again.
Suddenly restless, Jemima uncoiled her legs and stood up. ‘You’re trying to intimidate me.’
The golden gaze grew ever more intense. ‘Am I?’
‘I’ll do everything that is reasonable but I won’t be intimidated and I won’t grovel,’ she framed tautly, extraordinarily aware of the darker, deeper note in his rich drawl and the warning flare of his brows.
‘You won’t?’ Luciano’s intonation was soft and slippery as silk brushing her skin as he stalked closer, all predator, all threat.
And she should have backed away, she knew that was what she should do, but a current of inexplicable excitement was quivering up through Jemima and working its own seduction. ‘I won’t,’ she confirmed shakily, her own voice dropping in volume and, to her annoyance, emerging breathily.
‘But the idea of you grovelling at my knees is appealing, piccolo mia,’ Luciano confided huskily, eyes golden and predatory as a raptor’s locked to her upturned face. ‘The image of you giving me pleasure while you’re doing it gives me a high...’
At first, Jemima just couldn’t credit that he had said that to her and then she told herself that he couldn’t possibly have meant that sexual innuendo. A surge of embarrassment and uncertainty caused a burst of colour to fly into her cheeks and she blinked, trying to close him out, trying to rescue her brain from the sudden erotic imagery he had filled it with. That wasn’t something that had ever happened to her before in a man’s presence. She didn’t imagine doing sexual things with men as a rule, but maybe if she had, a little voice whispered, Steven would not have been so stupefied by her infinitely bolder twin. Something about Luciano Vitale got to her on a primal level she had never experienced before.
‘Did