The Sicilian's Defiant Virgin. Susan Stephens
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Sicilian prepared to fork out ten thousand for a date with a waitress? Surely he could take his pick from a long line of society beauties? Or did he just have a big, charitable heart, and had happened to call in at the club by chance?
She was getting a bad feeling about this.
He reminded her of Raoul Tebaldi, a compulsive gambler Jen had come to know at the club. Everyone knew that Raoul was the son of a man who had been a notorious gangster in his day, but Jen had come to like the quiet Sicilian. She’d lost her sister, and Raoul was estranged from his family. The distance from his brother had hurt him most of all, because they had been close when they were young. This sense of loss had given them a bond, and they’d become close. Jen had looked forward to seeing Raoul each night at the club, but he hadn’t been around for quite some time. A pang of dread struck her now, at the thought that something might have happened to Raoul, but, seeing the maître d’ beckoning to her out of the corner of her eye, she knew she had to cut this short.
‘I promise we’ll have dinner another night,’ she assured the Sicilian stranger.
‘I can’t wait long,’ he said.
Jen’s heart leapt in her chest, though she told herself sensibly that what he meant was that he would be leaving London soon, and not that he was impatient to see her.
‘I won’t let you down,’ she promised.
His narrowed eyes suggested she’d better not. ‘Let’s make our dinner at a time and a place of my choosing,’ he suggested. ‘And then it will be a surprise.’
‘It should be here,’ she said. ‘That’s what you’ve paid for.’
‘So long as we make a date before I leave,’ he conceded, not wanting to put her off by appearing harsh.
‘I’m sure that will be possible,’ she said.
The girl was either as innocent as she looked, or she was a very good actress. Neither possibility could explain Raoul’s actions. Innocence had hardly been his younger brother’s area of expertise, and if she had somehow manipulated Raoul, she could be trouble. As his father had predicted, the tragedy hadn’t made the international news, so he doubted she knew his brother was dead. He couldn’t be certain if Raoul had shared the contents of his will with her, but he would find out.
‘You’ll enjoy the food here,’ she said. ‘And you’ll eat free.’
If ten thousand could be called free, he thought as the balance tipped in favour of her innocence. ‘Eat here?’ he said, frowning.
‘Why not?’ she said, turning her face up to him in a way that made his senses stir.
He had accompanied her to the fringes of the restaurant, but the casino was too strong a reminder of everything he’d got wrong where his brother was concerned. He wanted to leave so he couldn’t see Raoul drinking too much at the bar, or throwing his money away at the tables. He had loved his brother deeply, and had longed for them to be reunited, but Raoul had pushed him away. And now it was too late.
‘You won’t be disappointed,’ she said, misreading his expression. ‘The chefs are excellent.’
‘But you might like a change,’ he said. ‘You can go anywhere—and I do mean anywhere in the world.’
Jen was stunned. The man was wealthy enough to pay a fortune to have dinner with her for some reason, and now he was suggesting she should leap on board his billionaire bandwagon and go with him to places unknown. How stupid would she have to be to do that?
Her heart disagreed and raced with excitement. Her body wasn’t much help. It looked to casting off years of celibacy with unbounded enthusiasm. Thankfully, she had more sense. He could have any woman he wanted. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date. It was time to get real.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said politely, ‘but as we’ve never met before, I’m sure you’ll understand if I tell you that I’d feel safer here.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asked.
There was amusement in his eyes. ‘I don’t know you,’ she said.
And then, with the charity at the forefront of her mind, she suggested, ‘How about seven’ o clock tomorrow evening, here? Before the club gets busy,’ she explained. ‘Would that suit you?’ Whether it did or not, that was her best and final offer.
‘I’m looking forward to it already,’ he said.
There was another suspicious glow in his eyes. ‘Good. So am I—and now I really do have to go.’
‘Of course,’ he said, turning.
She still stared at him admiringly as he walked away, transfixed by his long, lean legs, and muscular back view. It was only when he had completely disappeared from sight she realised that they hadn’t even introduced themselves. So, was he related to Raoul Tebaldi, or not?
He must have put something down on paper when he bought the auction lot, Jen reasoned. No one parted with that type of money without attaching a name to it.
‘Something wrong?’
She turned to see Tess, the casino manager, staring at her with concern. Tess’s sixth sense where staff were concerned was unbeatable.
‘He wasn’t bothering you, was he?’ Tess demanded as she followed Jen’s stare to the door.
‘No. He wanted to have that dinner tonight, and as we’re short-handed I told him that I couldn’t do that. Did he remind you of someone?’ she added, frowning. ‘Do you remember Raoul, that lonely man who used to play the tables until he had no money left?’
Tess shrugged. ‘I see thousands of men come through here every year. None of them hold my attention for long, unless they complain about something. Why do you ask?’
Jen shrugged. ‘No reason. And I’m probably wrong. Anyway, I do feel better having laid down some ground rules.’
‘I would have done that for you,’ Tess insisted. ‘You only had to ask.’
‘I can handle men like him,’ Jen assured Tess with more confidence than she felt. ‘I wouldn’t deserve a job here if I couldn’t...’
‘But?’ Tess queried, picking up on Jen’s hesitation.
‘But he struck me as a man who doesn’t play by the rules,’ Jen said thoughtfully.
‘Unless he writes them?’ Tess suggested.
Jen hummed. She didn’t want to burden Tess with her concerns, and it was no use brooding on them. Work would take her mind off the mystery man—she hoped.
* * *
It was a relief to leave the club. He dragged on the chilly London air as if it were the purest oxygen. He felt as if his head had been under water for the past half-hour. He blamed himself for not stopping Raoul’s downslide sooner. He couldn’t believe he’d been so blind to his brother’s troubles, or that things had got so bad.
Raoul’s debts were eye-watering. He’d paid them off, dealing with an expressionless man behind a grill at the club, and then he made his donation to the charity. Next he had to unpick the story of a woman who’d just become an unlikely heiress to a fortune she knew nothing about. He had made no final decision about Jennifer Sanderson. She appealed to him with her bold challenges and her curvaceous body. It was all too easy to imagine her clinging to his arms in the throes of passion. That might not be what he was here for, but it was the thought he carried with him from the club.
‘DID THAT MAN I was talking to hand over the money for the auction lot?’ Jen asked Tess as casually as she could at the end of the night.
‘All ten thousand,’