It Started With A Proposition
IT STARTED WITH
COLLECTION
MIRANDA LEE is Australian, and lives near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding-school educated, and briefly pursued a career in classical music before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.
It Started with a Proposition
Blackmailed into the Italian’s Bed
Contract with Consequences
The Passion Price
Miranda Lee
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Blackmailed into the Italian’s Bed
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
Contract with Consequences
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Passion Price
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Endpage
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
GINO stood at the hotel room window, his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets, his dark gaze fixed on the city streets below.
The snarled traffic moved along at snail’s pace, and the pavements were filled with office workers spilling from their buildings, all eager to get home for the weekend. Wherever home might be.
He wondered where her home was. And if she was married.
His heart missed a beat at this last thought. As perverse as it was, he didn’t want her to be married.
But of course she would be. A girl like that. So beautiful and so intelligent. Some smart man would have snapped her up by now. It had been ten years, for pity’s sake. She probably had a couple of kids as well.
His cellphone ringing sent him spinning away from the window. He glanced at his watch as he hurried over to where he’d left his phone, by the bed. Five-thirty. Hopefully it would be the detective agency and not Claudia. He didn’t want to talk to Claudia right now.
‘Gino Bortelli,’ he answered, with only the faintest of Italian accents.
‘Mr Bortelli?’
Gino almost sighed with relief at hearing a crisp male voice on the other end.
‘Cliff Hanson here, from Confidential Investigations.’
‘Glad to hear from you,’ Gino returned, just as crisply. ‘What do you have for me?’
‘We believe we’ve located the Ms Jordan Gray you’re looking for, Mr Bortelli, although it’s not as uncommon a name as we’d hoped. But there’s only one Ms Jordan Gray currently living in Sydney who matches the age and physical description you gave us.’
‘She’s not married, then?’ Gino asked, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.
‘Nope. Still single. With no children. And you were right. She’s a lawyer. Works for Stedley & Parkinson. It’s an American-owned legal practice which has a branch here in the Sydney City Business District.’
‘I know it,’ Gino said, stunned by this news. He’d been in their offices this very afternoon, signing a contract. Hell, he might have walked right past her!
‘Word is she’s the up-and-coming star of their civil litigation section. Took on a big insurance company recently. And won.’
A wry smile spread over Gino’s face. ‘That’d be her.’
Jordan had absolutely hated insurance companies. Her parents had had an insurance claim rejected after their home had been virtually destroyed in a storm, with the insurance company hiding behind some loophole in the small print of their contract. Her father had tried to fight them through the legal system, and it had cost him every cent he had and some he didn’t. After he’d lost his final appeal he’d died of a coronary, brought on by stress, leaving behind a destitute wife and a daughter.
‘Do you have an address and home phone number for me?’ he asked.
‘An address. But no home phone number as yet. Lawyers like Ms Gray usually have unlisted numbers.’
‘Give me the address,’ Gino said, striding over to sit at the writing desk which contained everything a businessman away from home might require, including internet access.
He picked up the complimentary pen and jotted Jordan’s address down on the notepad. It was an apartment in Kirribilli, one of the swish harbourside suburbs on the north side of Sydney, not far from the bridge. He ripped off the page and slipped it into his wallet.
‘Does she live alone?’ came his next question, his throat tightening.
‘We don’t know that yet, Mr Bortelli. We’ve only been on the job a few hours. We need a little more time to fill in the details of the lady’s love-life. There’s only so much we can find out via the internet and phone calls.’
‘How much more time?’
‘Possibly only a few hours. I’m having one of my best field operatives tail Ms Gray when she leaves work this evening. We’ve been able to secure a recent photo, courtesy of her driver’s licence. He’s currently staking out the exit to her building.’
Gino winced at this invasion of Jordan’s privacy. ‘Is that really necessary?’
‘It is, if you want to know the lady’s personal status tonight. Which you said you did.’
Yes, he did. He was booked on an early morning flight to Melbourne.
When he’d flown in to Sydney yesterday Gino had had no intention of hiring a private eye to find Jordan. But during his taxi ride from the airport to the city the memories he’d been trying to bury for the last decade had resurfaced with a vengeance.
The need to know what had become of her had overridden common sense. He hadn’t been able to sleep last night with thinking about her.
By morning, his curiosity had become a compulsion. A call to a police friend in Melbourne had soon provided him with the number of a reputable Sydney investigative agency. By ten this morning he’d set in motion the search for the first-year law student he’d lived with for a few idyllic months, all those years ago.
And supposing you find out there’s no man in her life? What do you intend doing with that information?
Gino grimaced.
You were going to ask Claudia to marry you this weekend. You’ve even bought the ring. What in heaven’s name are you doing, chasing after an old flame who probably hasn’t given you a second thought in years?
He reassured himself. I just want to see her one more time. To make sure that she’s happy. Nothing more.
What could be the harm in that?
‘Keep me updated every hour,’ he said brusquely.
‘Will do, Mr Bortelli.’
CHAPTER TWO
JORDAN glanced up at the clock on the wall and willed the hands to get to ten to six, at which time she could reasonably excuse herself and go home.
She was attending the happy hour which the practice provided in the boardroom every Friday afternoon from five till six. It was a tradition at every branch of Stedley & Parkinson, introduced by the American partners when they’d begun their first practice in the United States forty years ago.
Employees who either didn’t come—or left early—were frowned upon by the powers-that-be.
Normally Jordan didn’t mind this end-of-week get-together.
But it had been a long and difficult week, both professionally and personally. Making small talk seemed beyond her today, which was why she’d taken her glass of white wine off into a corner by herself.
‘Hiding, are we?’
Jordan looked up as Kerry angled her way into the same corner, carrying a tray of finger-food.
Kerry was the big boss’s PA—the nicest girl in the place, and the closest Jordan had ever had to a best friend. A natural redhead, she had a pretty face, soft blue eyes, and fair skin which freckled in the Australian sun.
‘I didn’t feel like talking,’ Jordan said, and picked up a tiny quiche-style tart from the tray. ‘What’s in these?’
‘Spinach and mushroom. They’re very nice, and not too fattening.’
Jordan popped the tart into her mouth, devouring it within seconds. ‘Mmm, these are seriously yummy. I might have another.’
‘Feel free. So what’s the problem? Other than Loverboy having flown off home today, leaving you alone for two whole weeks?’
Jordan winced at Kerry calling Chad ‘Loverboy’. Yet it had been his office nickname from the first day he’d waltzed in, with his wide, all-American smile, film star looks and buckets of charm. There wasn’t a single girl in the place who wouldn’t have willingly gone out with Jack Stedley’s only son and heir—Kerry included. But it had been Jordan he’d zeroed in on, Jordan whom he’d been dating for the past few months.
‘Come on, you can tell me,’ Kerry added in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I’m not a gossip like some of the other girls around here.’
Jordan knew this was true. One of Kerry’s many good qualities was her discretion.
She’d also been round the block a few times, with one marriage and several boyfriends behind her—the last having broken up with her only recently. Yet she maintained a sense of optimism about life which Jordan admired and often envied.
Jordan looked into her friend’s kind blue eyes and decided to do what she very rarely did. Confide.
‘Chad asked me to marry him last night.’
‘Wow!’ Kerry exclaimed, before shooting Jordan a speculative look. ‘So what’s the problem? You should be over the moon.’
‘I turned him down.’
‘You what? Wait here,’ Kerry said, and hurried off to give the food tray to one of the other girls to distribute, sweeping up a glass of champagne before rejoining Jordan, a stern look on her pretty face. ‘I don’t believe this. The Golden Boy asked you to marry him and you said no?’
‘I didn’t exactly say no,’ Jordan hedged. ‘But I didn’t say yes, either. I said I wanted some time to think. I said I’d give him my answer when he gets back from the States.’
‘But why? I thought you were mad about the man. Or as mad as a girl like you is ever going to get.’
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Oh…you know. You’re super-intelligent, Jordan, and very self-contained. You’re never going to lose your head over a man, like I do.’
Jordan sighed. Kerry was right. She wasn’t the sort to lose her head over a man.
But she had once. And she’d never forgotten him.
‘What is it that’s bothering you?’ Kerry persisted. ‘It can’t be the sex. You told me Chad was good in bed.’
‘He is. Yes, he is,’ she repeated, as though trying to convince herself that there wasn’t anything missing in that department.
In truth, she wouldn’t have thought anything was missing if it hadn’t been for her relationship with Gino. Chad knew all the right moves in bed. But he simply could not make her feel what Gino had once made her feel.
No man could, Jordan suspected.
‘What is it that you’re not telling me?’ Kerry asked gently.
Jordan sighed a resigned sigh. That was the trouble with confiding. It was like throwing a stone in a pond, causing ever-widening circles. Kerry was not going to rest now till Jordan had told her the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Or at least a believable version.
‘There was this guy once,’ she began tentatively. ‘An Italian. Oh, it was years ago, during my first year at uni. We lived together for a few months.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he…he was a hard act to follow.’
‘I see. Obviously, you were madly in love with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what you feel for Chad doesn’t compare?’
‘No.’ Not Chad, or any other boyfriend she’d had since.
‘Was this Italian guy your first lover?’
‘Yes. He was.’ The first and by far the best.
‘That explains it, then,’ Kerry said, with satisfaction in her voice.
‘Explains what?’
‘It’s impossible for a girl to completely forget her first lover. Not if he was good in bed. Which I’m presuming he was.’
‘He was simply fantastic.’
‘You know, Jordan, he probably wasn’t as fantastic as you think he was. The memory can play tricks on us. For ages after my divorce I thought I was a fool for leaving my husband. But then I ran into him one night at a party and I realised he was nothing but a sleazebag and I was much better off without him. I’ll bet your Italian boyfriend dumped you, didn’t he?’
‘Not exactly. I came home from uni one day to find a note saying that his father was seriously ill. He said he was sorry, but he had to go home to his family, and he wished me well in the future.’
‘He didn’t promise to write or anything?’
‘No. And he didn’t leave me a forwarding address. I didn’t realise till he’d gone how little I knew about him. He never talked about his family. Or called them. At least not whilst I was around. I guessed later that he was probably out here from Italy on a temporary working visa and never meant to stay.’
‘That’s another reason why you find it hard to forget him,’ Kerry told her. ‘He’s unfinished business. Pity he had to return to Italy, otherwise you might have been able to look him up and see for yourself that he’s not nearly as fantastic as you thought. If truth be told, he’s probably fat and bald by now.’
‘It’s only been ten years, Kerry, not thirty. Besides, Italian men rarely go bald,’ Jordan pointed out, recalling Gino’s luxuriantly thick, wavy black hair. ‘And Gino would never let himself get fat. He was right into physical fitness. He worked on a construction site during the day, and went to the gym several nights a week. He’s the one who started me on the exercise kick.’ Jordan jogged a couple of kilometres most mornings, and did weights three times a week.
‘Worked as what on a construction site?’ Kerry asked.
‘A labourer.’
‘A labourer?’ Kerry repeated disbelievingly. ‘You prefer a labourer to Chad Stedley?’
‘Gino was very smart,’ Jordan defended, ‘and a darned good cook.’
‘Well, bully for him,’ Kerry said dismissively. ‘Marry Chad and you can go out to dinner every night. Or hire your own personal cordon bleu chef. Look, I don’t care if this Gino was Einstein and Casanova rolled into one! You have to move on, girl. You can’t let some old flame spoil your future. And your future is becoming Mrs Chad Stedley. If you want my advice, as soon as Chad rings you tell him you’ve thought about it and your answer is yes, yes and triple yes!’
Jordan scooped in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly. ‘I wish it were that easy.’
‘It is that easy.’
Was it?
Jordan could see the sense of Kerry’s arguments. Regardless of what she’d felt for Gino, he was past history. If you looked at things logically, to let her memory of him spoil what she could have with Chad was stupid.
Jordan was a lot of things. But stupid was not one of them.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m being silly. I’ll do exactly as you said,’ she decided, and felt instantly better.
Hadn’t she read somewhere that any decision was better than no decision at all?
That was right. It was.
Kerry rolled her eyes. ‘Thank goodness for small mercies. The girl has finally seen some sense. Look, everyone’s starting to leave now. It’s not my turn to help clean up, so how about we go have a celebratory drink together somewhere swanky? I don’t fancy going home to an empty place just yet.’
‘I’m not really dressed for swanky,’ Jordan said. Unlike Kerry, whose red woollen wrap-around dress would look just as good in a nightclub as it did in the office.
‘You can say that again,’ Kerry said drily, as she gave Jordan’s navy pin-striped trouser suit the once-over. ‘Next time we go clothes shopping together I’m not going to listen to any more of your “I’m a lawyer, I have to dress conservatively” excuses. Still, if you take down your hair and undo a couple of buttons of that schoolmarm blouse, you just might not stick out like a sore thumb. We’ll pop into the Ladies’ and fix you up when we get there.’
‘Get where?’
‘How about the Rendezvous Bar? That’s less swanky since they refurbished it.’
Jordan’s top lip curled. ‘It’s also gaining a reputation as a pick-up joint.’
Kerry grinned. ‘Yeah, I know.’
Jordan’s eyebrows lifted skywards. ‘You’re incorrigible, do you know that?’
‘Nah. More like desperate.’
‘Oh, go on with you,’ Jordan said. ‘A girl as pretty as you will never be desperate.’
Kerry beamed. ‘I do so love spending time with you, Jordan. You always make me feel good about myself. Want to go clothes shopping tomorrow?’
‘Sorry. No can do. I have to work.’
‘On a Saturday?’
‘More like all weekend.’ She still hadn’t finished her closing address for the Johnson case. Not to her satisfaction, anyway.
Kerry wagged a finger at her. ‘All work and no play makes Jordan a dull girl.’
‘Which is why I agreed to go for a drink with you,’ Jordan replied as she took her friend’s free arm. ‘So stop picking on me, woman, and let’s get the hell out of here.’
CHAPTER THREE
GINO clicked off the phone, amazed by what Cliff Hanson had just told him.
Apparently Jordan had left her office building at ten past six and walked with a female friend towards Wynyard Station. The man tailing her had presumed she was going to catch a train home. Instead, she and her companion had turned into the Regency Hotel and they were, at this very second, sitting in the bigger of the two hotel bars, having a drink.
The amazing part was that the Regency was where Gino himself was staying.
For the second time that day fate had placed Jordan on a path which could have crossed with his.
This time, however, he wasn’t in ignorance of the fact. Which was why he’d ordered Hanson to tell his operative to sit close to the door and keep an eye on Jordan till he could get down there.
Adrenaline coursed through Gino’s veins as he swept up his wallet from the bedside table and slipped it into the breast pocket of his leather jacket. For a split second he hesitated, worried over what would happen when he confronted her after all these years.
Would she be pleased to see him? Or not?
Impossible to gauge how she might react. She’d loved him and he’d hurt her, no doubt about that.
Jordan was not a girl to easily forgive and forget. That he did know.
At the same time, their love affair had been ten years ago—a long time to nurse a broken heart or bitterness.
Gino scowled as he whirled and headed for the hotel room door. He’d cross those bridges when he came to them, because nothing short of death was going to stop him from going down there right now and talking to her.
Still, he was glad he’d had time to shower and change from the sleek Italian business suit he’d been wearing earlier today. Casual clothes were more in keeping with the Gino Jordan had once known, not the Gino he had become.
Which is what, exactly? he asked himself during the lift ride down to the ground floor.
A man who’s forgotten what it’s like to have fun, that’s what.
A man weighed down by responsibility towards his family.
A man about to ask a girl he doesn’t love to marry him.
An Italian girl.
If only he hadn’t made that rash promise to his father on his deathbed.
But he had, and there was no going back.
Those last words echoed in Gino’s head as he stepped from the lift and headed for the bar in question.
No going back
What he’d once shared with Jordan was gone. If he was strictly honest, it had never been real. He’d been living a fantasy. A sexy Shangri-la which had disappeared the moment he’d received that call about his father’s illness.
All that was left was a guilty memory, plus the ghost of pleasures past.
Tonight he would face that guilty memory and hopefully lay its ghost to rest.
A bouncer stood at the door to the bar, giving Gino a sharp look as he approached, but not barring his way inside.
The room was huge, with a dark blue carpet underfoot, disco-style lighting overhead, and a glitzy central bar. There were several different sitting areas, but most of the bar’s patrons were clustered near the far left corner, where a three-piece combo was playing soul music.
Only a smattering of people were sitting at the tables in the area nearest the entrance, which was currently designated a no-smoking section.
Gino located the operative without any trouble—an innocuous-looking guy of around thirty, who’d blend into most crowds.
‘She’s over there,’ he said, as soon as Gino sat down, nodding towards a table located on the edge of the dance floor.
As Gino stared through the faint smoke haze at the girl who’d once captured his heart he realised he probably wouldn’t have recognised her if he’d walked right past her! Not with her glorious blonde hair scraped back up in that severe style, and certainly not dressed in that mannish trouser suit.
What had happened to the feminine girl he’d known?
She was thinner too, her face all angles.
Yet she was still beautiful. Beautiful and sad.
Both moved him: her beauty and her sadness.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ he said gruffly to the operative. ‘You can go home.’
‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
The man shrugged, swallowed the rest of his beer, and left.
Gino sat there for some time, watching Jordan. She glanced repeatedly at a redhead in a red dress, who was dancing cheek to cheek with a tall, good-looking guy. Clearly this was the female colleague she had come here with. Also clearly, Jordan wasn’t happy with being left to sit alone.