The Italian's Summer Seduction. Karen Van Der Zee
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fiddling abstractedly with the stem of her wineglass. ‘How should I know? It would have given the game away if I’d asked his name, wouldn’t it! He thinks I’m Jilly, his grandmother’s companion. So I shouldn’t need to ask his name! And, as for where he’s staying, I didn’t get the chance to ask since he didn’t let me get a word in edgewise, and I was too shocked to even think of asking, even if he had. He just kept on threatening—’
‘Which is exactly why you should tell him who you really are,’ Cleo stressed. ‘Have nothing more to do with him, let him go find the real Jilly. Let her pay for what she’s done.’
Milly could understand her friend’s strong misgivings, but, she said, ‘I’m really worried about her. The guy who was here has a short fuse, that was glaringly obvious. If I tell him the truth and he has to go searching for Jilly all over again he’ll quickly run out of patience and get the law involved. He looked and acted like the kind of guy who would get Interpol jumping and she’d be hunted down and dragged in front of a judge.’ Her stomach twisted painfully at the thought and her voice shook as she repeated, ‘I’m worried about her. She’s always been headstrong but never dishonest. I’m as sure as I can be that there’s been some ghastly mistake.’
Which earned her a sharp reply, ‘You don’t call it dishonest to persuade your mother to mortgage her home to the hilt, cash in that bond your father set up for a rainy day just before he died, get her to go in as an equal partner in that crackpot beauty salon business then do a runner when it went bust, leaving your mother with a mountain of debts, no home to call her own, just this grotty rented flat.’
Put like that it did sound, well, a bit selfish. Milly’s clear green eyes clouded. But, to be fair to her twin, their mother had been only too glad to fall in with Jilly’s plans if only to have her favourite daughter permanently home again. Jilly, the outgoing bubbly twin, able to charm the birds out of the trees, had always been everyone’s favourite. She, Milly, had always been the quiet one, the home-body happy to be in the background, lacking her identical twin’s glamour and drive, so she hadn’t resented occupying second place. Not at all.
They’d been eighteen when Dad had died of a massive and totally unexpected heart attack, leaving his wife shattered and helpless.
Dear Arthur had always made all the decisions, handled all the finances, ruled his small family with a rod of iron. After his death Jilly had persuaded mum to finance a crash course to enable her to get her Beauty Specialists Diploma. It had meant living away from home and had taken almost every penny of mum’s liquid savings. ‘I’ll pay every penny back when I’m earning loads, I promise. Will you do that for me, Ma? For my glittering future?’
Who could resist Jilly in cajoling mood? So it had fallen to her, Milly, to go to work for Manda, to take her father’s place when it came to handling the family’s dwindling finances, to orchestrate the necessary move from the spacious five-bedroom detached in the leafy countryside surrounding Ashton Lacey to a three bed-roomed semi behind the cattle market.
When Jilly had briefly returned to the quiet market town with her diploma she had looked fantastic, lightly tanned courtesy of a sun-bed, her long blonde hair stylishly cut and glistening with subtle ash highlights, her make-up perfect, as was her figure encased in narrow white jeans and an emerald silk shirt that deepened the green of her eyes and made them look like glittering jewels.
She’d stayed two days, being waited on hand and foot by her captivated mother, until she’d left for London, imparting that she had a job interview lined up with a top flight beauty therapy clinic attached to a famous store and if Milly had felt envious she’d blanked out the unworthy emotion because her twin had what it took and she obviously didn’t.
Jilly had got the job. No one had doubted that she would, but Milly and her mother had both missed the fizz she brought to the staid household. Her mother had become in turn tetchy or morose and rarely smiled and Milly, although she’d done her best, hadn’t been able to take the place of the favourite missing daughter.
And then Jilly had returned and dropped her bombshell. ‘I’ve jacked it in. I want to open my own salon here in Ashton Lacey. Why should I be a wage slave when I could rake in all the profits!’
‘Where will the money come from?’ Milly had wanted to know. ‘It would cost a small fortune to set up.’
Jilly had turned her brittle smile on her. ‘Trust you to be a wet blanket, sis.’ Turning to her mother, her smile now honey-sweet, she said, ‘You know what they say, Ma, you’ve got to speculate to accumulate. So this is how I see it—you could mortgage this house and cash in that bond thing Dad set up and you and I could go into partnership, fifty-fifty, or sixty-forty in your favour if you prefer. You’d never regret it. I forecast great things! After two years working for someone else I know the business inside out. We’ll make money hand over fist—you’d never believe the profit margins! We could pay off the mortgage then sit back while the money rolls in. Say yes, Ma, and we’ll go hunting for suitable premises to rent tomorrow.’
Ma had agreed, of course she had, her happiness that darling Jilly would be around permanently blinding her to the very real risks, and Milly could remember feeling like a no-account misery when she’d pointed out all the possible pitfalls.
The business had gone bankrupt within a couple of years. As Milly had tried to point out, Ashton Lacey wasn’t ready for a glitzy state-of-the-art beauty salon. Drawing custom from a population mostly comprising the wives of small traders and scattered farmers had proved impossible and the few clients they’d had had rarely come a second time.
Everything had been sold to pay the creditors and Jilly hadn’t hung around long enough to help them find somewhere to live—the rented flat above the butcher’s—but had gone to Italy to seek her fortune.
To begin with there had been occasional postcards. She’d found work in Florence in an upmarket nightclub. Moved into a basement flat behind the Palazzo Vecchio, was meeting lots of interesting people, picking up the language and having loads of fun.
Sadly, she was not yet earning enough to be able to send money home to help pay off debts. She’d even given a phone number where she could be reached most late afternoons. Then, around eighteen months later, the final postcard,
‘Wow! I think I’ve made it! I’m moving on. If I play my cards right—and I’ll make sure I do—I’ll be able to pay back every penny, Ma darling. With interest! I’ll write again soon and give you a contact number.’
It had been the last they had heard of her.
‘Jilly always meant to make things right, pay back everything Ma had lost,’ Milly defended. ‘She’d get these wild ideas and truly believe in them at the time, though how she imagined she’d make a small fortune working as a paid companion beggars belief.’
‘Steal it, apparently,’ Cleo put in drily, making Milly want to smack her.
‘There’s been a mistake. I know it.’
Cleo shook her head. ‘It didn’t sound like it from what that guy told you. She’s obviously done another runner. I don’t know why you insist on defending her.’
For a moment Milly couldn’t speak. She was too angry. Her eyes flashed fire and the skin over her high cheekbones pinkened.
Then, reminding herself that Cleo was genuinely concerned for her, she took in a deep breath and offered, ‘You don’t understand the bond between twins. Why should you? But it goes deep, I promise. When we were growing up she always looked out for me. I got bullied at school, so she sorted them out. At home Dad could be…difficult. If I did something wrong like, oh, I don’t know—like breaking something or tramping mud all over the floor—she’d take the blame and just stand there while he came down on her like a ton of bricks, bawled her out and sent her to her room or stopped her pocket money for a month. I love her and I owe her.’
‘Sorry.’ Cleo reached over and patted Milly’s hand. ‘Me and my big mouth! I just don’t like the idea of you disappearing into the wilds of Tuscany with a man who obviously loathes you,