The Disobedient Mistress, page 12
‘You get to take off the rest…you’re so good at it.’ Misty reclined back against the pillows, confident that she was wanted, self-esteem restored.
Brilliant golden eyes set beneath spiky black lashes sought out hers. ‘I was just practising for you coming along.’
Involuntarily, Misty giggled. ‘I’ve heard some excuses in my time but that one is priceless!’
‘You’re so resilient.’ Leone studied her with flattering fascination. ‘I thought you’d still be coming apart at the seams over that tabloid story.’
He came down on the bed, all bronzed vibrant flesh, rippling muscles and magnificent arousal, and her mouth ran dry and she melted from inside out in response. No, she was not about to come apart at the seams while she had Leone in a supportive role, she conceded to herself without hesitation. She shivered as he released the catch on her bra, moaned out loud as he shaped the pouting swell of her breasts. She felt so sensitive there that the smallest touch on her taut nipples burned like fire through the rest of her and she blushed like mad.
‘I ought to get points for appreciating how beautiful you were when you were trying to hide your glory in shapeless suits the colour of concrete,’ Leone informed her thickly.
‘I never felt beautiful in my life until you looked at me,’ Misty confided with helpless honesty.
He spread her like a willing sacrifice on the bed and worked his sensual path down over her straining breasts to her quivering tummy and, disposing swiftly of her panties, to the very heart of her. Her body ached for him with such immediacy that anything less than instant fulfilment literally hurt. Within minutes, she was lost in a sensual daze of writhing, gasping abandonment. She clutched at his hair, his shoulders and then gave herself wholly up to the voluptuous pleasure of what he was doing to her. Her climax took her like a tidal wave sweeping her to an explosive peak of hot, shattering delight that seemed to last for ever.
‘I hope you don’t have to go away any time soon again,’ Misty mumbled in the aftermath.
‘I missed you too, amore…’ Leone drove into her with tender force and she closed her eyes again and let the wicked wanton pleasure take her by storm.
He pushed her to the heights again and it was wild and wonderful. Arching up to him, she matched his fluid thrusts and sobbed out loud when the frenzy of hunger controlled her afresh. But when that sweet, drowning passion of both body and senses engulfed her again, she came out of the experience with tears stinging her eyes, feeling that they had been closer than they had ever been and full of dreaming happiness.
Leone expelled his breath in a ragged hiss and kissed her and held her rather too tight for comfort. ‘Now we’re going to go and have breakfast and talk…and you’re going to promise me that you’ll reserve judgement until I’ve finished speaking.’
What on earth did he wish to talk about? His invitation for her to move in with him? What else could it be? Why the heck had she assumed that that was an impulsive suggestion? After all, Leone was not the impulsive type. Indeed, most of the time, Leone gave her the impression of being the sort of male who planned everything right down to the final full stop. Furthermore, as he had been referring to their need to have a serious talk since they’d arrived at his house, it was much more likely that the idea of her moving in with him had been on his mind while he’d been in New York…
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE imposing dining room on the ground floor, Misty made an exaggerated show of sugaring Leone’s coffee.
‘Do you think you could be serious for a few minutes?’
Misty focused on Leone with ruefully amused eyes. She reckoned he looked serious enough for both of them but she couldn’t concentrate. Only a couple of hours earlier she had believed that her world had fallen apart, but now, even though she knew she had still to deal with what she had learned about Oliver Sargent, her most overriding sensation was one of bubbling contentment.
The manservant whisked the metal cover from the breakfast fry she had cheerfully ordered. But as the familiar aroma of the bacon hit her nostrils, something quite unfamiliar happened to her digestive system. Attacked by an instant wave of nausea, Misty lurched out of her seat and bolted for the cloakroom.
Leone hammered on the door she had bolted behind her. ‘Are you all right?’
Clutching the vanity basin to stay upright, Misty surveyed her drawn face in the mirror and suppressed a groan. Her tummy was still rolling and she felt rather dizzy too. Grimacing, she freshened up, thinking that it was just typical that she should succumb to some nasty, embarrassing bug at the very moment when she wished to look and feel her best.
Emerging again to receive Leone’s questioning scrutiny, Misty said with determined brightness, ‘I’m really not that hungry.’
‘Are you feeling ill?’
‘Of course I’m not feeling ill.’ Misty was grateful that she had put some blusher on her cheeks and renewed her lipstick.
Back at the dining table, she sipped her cup of tea. ‘You were about to get serious,’ she reminded him cheerfully.
Leone had not touched his own breakfast and his strong bone structure was clenched hard. ‘First, I want to tell you about my sister, Battista…’
Instantly, Misty understood what was making him tense and she was touched and pleased that he had decided to confide in her.
‘Battista accepted a placement on Oliver Sargent’s research staff last summer,’ Leone advanced tight-mouthed. ‘She was nineteen and she developed quite a crush on him.’
‘Did she?’ Misty looked surprised.
‘He slept with her.’
Shocked by that statement, Misty frowned. ‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Certain. Her best friend was so distressed by her death that she told me the whole story. Sargent conducts his extramarital affairs with great discretion. He owns a country cottage that only his lovers know exists.’
Misty lowered her attention from Leone’s embittered gaze. So, the father who was a virtual stranger to her was still a womaniser, given to dishonesty and betrayal. No longer did she need to wonder what had caused the hostility between the two men, a hostility that Jenny Sargent had explained to her own satisfaction, ignorant as she had to be of the true facts.
‘The night Battista died, she was driving Sargent down to his cottage, but I was unable to prove that he was in the car with her,’ Leone admitted heavily. ‘The car went off the road. There were no witnesses. She was trapped in the wreckage. He left her there and fled…’
Misty surveyed him in horror. ‘Surely not?’
‘It was well over an hour before an anonymous call was made to the emergency services. I very much doubt that he even risked making that call personally and, in any case, by then it was too late for Battista. My only consolation is that the medics told me that she couldn’t have regained consciousness after the crash…’ Leone’s accented drawl had dropped low and roughened.
Misty was appalled at what he was telling her. ‘How do you know that Oliver Sargent was with your sister?’
‘I knew it the first time I saw him afterwards. I saw his guilt, his fear of exposure. He’s a slick operator but he was terrified that I might be able to prove that he was with her that night. Unfortunately he has loyal friends willing to protect him.’ His patent loathing for the man he blamed for his sister’s death made Misty pale. ‘One of those good friends let it be known that Oliver had spent that Friday evening driving down to Cornwall with him.’
‘Have you ever confronted him?’ she whispered sickly.
‘He could sue me for making such an allegation without proof. His whole political career was riding on that alibi. I soon realised that, if I wanted to avenge Battista’s death, I had to be even more devious than he is,’ Leone admitted, lean, powerful face set in hard lines. ‘Almost every public figure has something they want to conceal in their background. I had him investigated in great depth and that’s how I found out about you…’
How I found out about you? That admission sent an alarm bell ringing in Misty’s brain. She could see connections forming, the vague, horrendous outline of another dimension to their relationship that she could never have dreamt might exist. She sat there staring at him, willing him to tell her that her wild suspicions had no basis in fact.
‘Oliver Sargent leads a double life. He’s a corrupt politician and I wanted to expose him, but I also wanted him to suffer first.’ Leone settled dark-as-midnight eyes on her waxen face. ‘I chose you as my weapon.’
Misty parted bloodless lips. ‘No…’
Leone sprang out of his seat and spread emphatic hands. ‘I refused to see you as a person. I saw you purely as an extension of the man I hated beyond any other,’ he told her with raw clarity. ‘I had only the most cursory enquiries made about you and I was content to accept the rumours that you were far from being an angel. All that mattered to me was that your very existence was a threat to Oliver’s reputation as the guardian of other people’s morals.’
‘Please tell me that this isn’t true,’ Misty mumbled in stricken appeal. ‘Tell me I’ve woken up in a bad dream…’
‘Nobody wants that miracle more than I do, amore,’ Leone swore, studying her with fierce intensity. ‘Do you think I wanted to tell you the truth? But I had no choice. Today you’re in shock but by tomorrow you would’ve worked it all out for yourself. I hired you to pretend to be my mistress solely to get your face into the gossip columns and rouse the curiosity of the paparazzi…’
Leone was ten feet from her but that still felt too close. Sending her chair back in a sudden movement, Misty got up and backed away. A kind of fearful fascination held her attention to him, but really at that moment all she wanted to do was run and protect herself from hearing any more.
‘I laid a trail so that the press could discover the link between you and Sargent for themselves. I intended you to meet him at Castle Eyrie,’ Leone revealed with bitter regret. ‘I changed my mind that same weekend because I saw what my revenge was likely to do to you. But by then it was too late to stop it…’
‘Too late?’ Misty questioned, her mind a bewildered surge of incomplete thoughts, each one of which made her feel more betrayed than ever.
‘I tried to prevent you from meeting Oliver because I knew that the moment he heard your name, he would realise who you were. I only went fishing to keep an eye on him but he got on the other boat and I lost track of him,’ Leone reminded her, his strong jawline clenching hard. ‘That same morning, while you were still asleep, I gave instructions that the evidence that linked you to Oliver Sargent should be buried again. But I had opened Pandora’s box and I discovered I couldn’t control what I had unleashed.’
Her legs were shaking beneath her and she sank down into an armchair. He had thrown too much at her at once for her to absorb it all immediately. Far from being his last option as a fake mistress, she had been his only option and hand-picked for the role. Sicilian business? Sicilian revenge. Her blood chilled in her veins. What kind of mind did it take for someone to use another human being as though they were an inanimate object of neither importance nor feeling? A very cold, calculating mind, she acknowledged, and the plan had been clever and callous in its very simplicity.
‘No wonder you had to keep me in ignorance,’ Misty condemned.
‘Once I began to get to know you, I realised that what I was doing was wrong.’
But he had still got as far as taking her to Castle Eyrie to trail her in front of her father like a dumb fish lure there to hook a shark, so his regrets had only surfaced at the eleventh hour and only after he had slept with her. Up until that point she had simply been a thing, a cypher, a weapon and the very fact that he had paid her to take on that role of pretence must have made him feel even less compunction in using her to his own ends.
‘Did you really think that money was likely to compensate me for what you’ve done to me?’
Leone released his breath in an audible rush. ‘I’m ashamed to admit it…but at the beginning, yes, I did think that.’
‘At least be honest!’ Misty launched at him at sudden greater volume, colour beginning to fire over her cheekbones again. ‘You didn’t care.’
‘I didn’t want to consider that angle,’ Leone countered doggedly.
With every minute that passed, she was grasping new realities. ‘Was the idea of looking for a caterer to supply lunches for Brewsters all yours?’
Leone tensed. ‘Yes.’
‘And I got the contract because I was really the only applicant you wanted. It all went like clockwork, didn’t it? Tell me, did you also hire a bunch of thugs to trash my business premises, knowing that I couldn’t carry that loss and that Carlton Catering was that much more likely to go under?’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Leone raked at her in angry, startled disbelief. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’
‘Just after I began that contract with Brewsters my premises were vandalised and my insurers refused to cover the damage.’ Misty was impressed by the strength of his shaken rebuttal but impressed by nothing else, indeed far too deeply shaken to feel anything but alienation.
There was no more sobering or agonising discovery than the reality of learning that the man she had fallen in love with had been set on destroying her long before they had even exchanged a first kiss. He had planned her downfall, casting out the lure of that temporary contract and then sitting back to watch her take the bait and borrow on her prospects.
‘You can’t blame me for that misfortune or for the fact that you ran into financial trouble.’ His dark golden eyes were grim on hers. ‘But you can blame me for everything else that’s happened to you!’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Misty advised him unevenly. ‘I’m blaming you, all right. But if my business hadn’t got into trouble, how were you planning to persuade me to pretend to be your mistress?’
‘I expected money to provide a sufficient persuasion.’
‘And now I’m in debt to you to the tune of thousands and thousands of pounds and you are never going to see a penny of it back,’ Misty swore between gritted teeth, striving to still the tremors of shock stealing through her taut, slender frame.
‘I want nothing back. I rather hoped that we had moved beyond that point—’
‘I don’t think so. Before you went to New York, I asked you if I was still working for you and you said I was—’
Leone groaned out loud and flashed her a look of reproof. ‘If I’d told you that our agreement was history after our weekend in Scotland, you would have walked out on me out of pride,’ he breathed rawly. ‘I believed that I had dealt with the threat of the press exposing your relationship to Oliver Sargent. But I needed the time to establish a more normal relationship with you.’
‘So you phoned me twice from New York…you’re so attentive when you’re keen, Leone.’ Misty made that crack with her fingernails scoring welts into her palms.
His lean, strong face tensed. ‘I was angry with you when I left.’
‘After all that you have done, you were angry with me.’
‘I care a lot about you. I didn’t want to lose you.’
Misty dragged her pained gaze from the hard appeal in his and twisted her head away. ‘You don’t treat people you care about the way you’ve treated me. I could never forgive you for going to bed with me in the first place. Just because my supposed father had an affair with your sister…well, I’m sorry, but someone should have warned her not to mess around with a married man.’
There was a ghastly silence but she could not bring herself to look at him. She felt as if he had broken something precious inside her that she would never, ever be able to put together again. And maybe that something precious was faith, and she knew with a sinking heart that her own next step would be to blame herself for every wrong decision that she had made.
‘Misty…’
‘At that party at Castle Eyrie, Oliver Sargent came up to me. He told me not to trust you and to get out of your life because you were only using me,’ Misty confided in a tight, flat little voice.
‘You didn’t tell me that…’ Leone bit out in strong disconcertion.
‘I thought he was drunk and that he just didn’t like you.’ A laugh empty of amusement fell from her lips. ‘But now I’ll always wonder if he felt sorry for me, if some tiny kernel of paternal concern motivated him. Yes, he no doubt wanted me to perform a vanishing act so that he could breathe easy again, but what he told me about you was the complete truth.’
As Misty completed that statement she watched Leone flinch as though she had struck him. A knock sounded on the door and, when it was ignored, sounded again. Opening the door, Leone spoke to the manservant and she turned her head away, feeling empty and despising herself for that last weak, wanton hour she had spent in his bedroom.
‘Someone called Nancy has been trying to contact you at the apartment. She wants you to phone.’
In a split second, Misty had flown upright, galvanised by fear as she appreciated that Birdie might well have already received word of that dreadful newspaper article. ‘Oh, no…’
Leone settled a phone into her hand and she punched out the numbers. But what Nancy had to tell her was entirely unexpected. Birdie had gone into hospital two days earlier, had the operation on her heart only the day before and had come through the surgery successfully.
Misty was stunned. ‘But when was all that arranged?’
‘We’ve had the date for a couple of weeks but Birdie wouldn’t agree to tell you. She didn’t want you to worry or come back from London on her behalf. She insisted I keep quiet about it until after the operation,’ the older woman confided apologetically. ‘I did try to reason with her but I was scared of upsetting her.’
Misty breathed in deep and slow, perspiration dampening her short upper lip. ‘And she’s really all right?’
