Penny Jordan - The Sicilian Boss's Mistress

The moment her impetuous words were out, Leonora’s mouth formed a self-conscious O whilst her face burned even more hotly as she realised just how her offer might be interpreted. However, before she had time to correct any possible misinterpretation, Alessandro Leopardi was speaking coolly.

‘I won’t sack your brother—little as he deserves to be kept on, in view of his stupidity and weakness in agreeing or allowing you to force him to agree to your illegal charade—provided you accompany me to a family function I am obliged to attend.’

Leonora stared at him, disbelief and distaste clearly visible in her expression. ‘There are escort agencies who provide women for that kind of thing. Why don’t you use one of them? After all, it isn’t as though you can’t afford to.’

She knew immediately that her blunt speaking had been a bad mistake. She could see the tinge of angry heat burning his face, moving into the high cheekbones and then flashing like a warning beacon in the darkness of his eyes.

‘I would remind you that whilst I could afford to pay a woman to accompany me, you cannot afford to refuse me. Unless, of course, you are prepared to see your brother lose his job?’

To her chagrin his attitude caused Leonora to do something she hadn’t done since she’d left her early teenage years behind her. She glowered at him and stuck out her bottom lip, with all the angry defiance of a rebellious teenager facing a resolute and immovable human obstacle to what they wanted to do. And then she compounded her regression to impotent resentment by saying crossly, ‘Well, I can’t think why you’d want to pick me to accompany you. After all, I’m not a model, or…or…a C-list starlet.’

Her face was burning again, but it wasn’t her fault if his penchant for glamorous airheads was regularly recorded in celebrity gossip magazines—not that she ever bothered reading such things. It was Leo who was constantly pointing out yet another paparazzi photograph of his boss with some leggy, pouting beauty on his arm.

‘The reason I’ve picked you, as you put it, has nothing whatsoever to do with your looks—or lack of them,’ Alessandro told her unkindly.

This time she wasn’t going to overreact, Leonora told herself. She was a mature woman, after all. A professional and fully qualified pilot. Someone who was not going to be tricked into behaving like an immature teenager because she couldn’t control her own emotions.

‘You are such a girl!’ her brothers had loved to tease her when they had been growing up, and she still hated being put in a position where her emotions might threaten to make her look vulnerable or betray her.

‘But you obviously want me to accompany you badly enough to blackmail me?’ Leonora couldn’t resist pointing out.

‘That’s right,’ Alessandro agreed, so pleasantly and with such an unexpectedly warm smile that for a handful of seconds Leonora was caught off guard. And she found that for some inexplicable reason she was curling her toes in her navy-blue loafers.

He exuded an air of male virility that aroused within her a raft of unfamiliar and complex emotions that undermined and weakened her. There was something about the way he turned his head, the look in the slate-grey eyes and the shape of his wholly male mouth that disrupted her ability to think logically and forced her to keep looking at him.

‘You see, this way I shall have complete control over both the situation and you, without having to face any future comebacks—or indeed the kickbacks your sex has a less than lovable habit of demanding.’

‘If you don’t like the demands your girlfriends make on you then I would suggest that the fault lies with you and your judgement, and not my sex as a whole. There are any number of heterosexual women who don’t ask for, or expect or even want anything from a man.’

‘You’re wrong about that. All women want something— either materially, emotionally or physically, and very often all three. Whereas all I want from you is your presence at my side in public as my partner, your recognition that in future there will be no relationship of any kind between us, and your complete silence on the whole subject—publicly and privately.’

‘Not much, then,’ Leonora muttered under her breath.

But he must have heard her, because he gave her a coldly arrogant look and told her, ‘Set against your brother’s future career, I would have said that it is not very much at all. Merely your absolute obedience to my will and to the instructions I shall give you for one single evening.’

‘Like I said—that’s blackmail,’ Lenora was objecting, before she could stop herself.

‘You may choose to see it as blackmail. I on the other hand see it as a justifiable claim for compensation from a person who has knowingly deprived me of something that is mine by right—in this case the skills of my employee, your brother.’

‘I’m just as qualified as Leo—in fact I’m more qualified.’

‘Maybe so, but you were not my choice of pilot. Now, as I was saying, if I am to refrain from sacking your brother then I shall require your complete obedience to my will.’

Her complete obedience to his will? Leonora opened her mouth in a furious hiss of disagreement, and then closed it again as she remembered Leo.

There was one thing she had to say, though—one stand she had to make.

Holding his gaze, she told him bluntly, ‘If this complete obedience to your instructions has anything to do with any kind of sexual activity then I’m afraid that Leo will have to lose his job.’

Alessandro looked at her in disbelief.

‘Are you seriously suggesting that you think I am sexually propositioning you?’ he demanded haughtily.

Leonora stood her ground.

‘Not necessarily. I’m simply letting you know what I won’t do.’

She had surprised him, Alessandro admitted. He was so used to women throwing themselves at him, practically begging him to take what they were offering, that it had simply never occurred to him that a woman like this one— so desperate to get a job with his airline that she was prepared to risk doing something that was both illegal and dangerous—would baulk at the thought of offering him sex. But patently that was exactly what she was doing, and he could see from the tension gripping her body that she meant what she had said.

Something—curiosity, male pride, his deep-rooted inherited Leopardi arrogance—Alessandro did not know which—spiked into life inside him, hard-edged and determined to make its presence felt. He shrugged it aside. Some ancient macho instinct had been aroused by her challenge— so what? He was mature enough, sophisticated enough, well supplied enough with all the sexual companionship he needed not to have to take any notice of it.

‘Good. And now I shall let you know that you will never be asked. My standards in that regard, as in everything else in my life, are very high. You do not come anywhere near meeting them.’ His smile was cruel and mocking as he went on coldly, ‘I may be a second son, but I never, ever accept second best, much less third-rate. Now, since we have both made our position clear, maybe we can discuss what I shall require of you rather than what I most certainly do not?’

He had insulted her, but he could not hurt her, Leonora assured herself as she glared dry-eyed at him. She didn’t care how third-rate he considered her to be sexually. In fact she was glad that he wasn’t interested in her.

Alessandro pushed back the cuff of his shirt and looked at his watch. Why had he made that comment to her about his position as a second son? He didn’t have to justify or explain himself in any way to anyone, never mind this irritatingly challenging woman who was the very last person he would have chosen to accompany him to the castello had he actually had any choice.