Taming the Notorious Sicilian

Melanie pointed at the dance floor, where a group of twenty-something men with more money than taste were strutting their stuff. ‘Nor can they.’

* * *

Francesco watched the images from the security cameras on a range of monitors on his office wall. Through them, he could see everything taking place in his club. The same feeds were piped into the office where his security guys sat holed up, watching the same live images—but the only eyes Francesco trusted were his own. Tomorrow he would head back to Palermo to spot-check his nightclub and casino there, and then he would fly on to Madrid for the same.

A couple of men he suspected of being drug dealers had been invited by a group of city money men into the VIP area. He watched them closely, debating whether to have them dealt with now or wait until he had actual proof of their nefarious dealings.

A sweep of thick blonde hair with pink bunny ears caught his attention in one of the central feeds. He watched Hannah get dragged onto the dance floor by another pink-tutued blonde he assumed was the hen of said hen party, Melanie.

Not for the first time, he asked himself what the hell Hannah was doing there.

She looked more than a little awkward. His lips curved upwards as he watched her try valiantly to move her body in time to the beat of the music. He’d seen more rhythm from the stray cats that congregated round the vast veranda of his Sicilian villa.

The half smile faded and compressed into a tight line when he read the slogan on her back: Horny Hannah.

That all the hen party had similar personalised slogans did nothing to break the compression of his lips.

It bothered him. Hannah was too...classy to have something so cheap written about her, even if it was in jest.

He downed his coffee and absently wiped away the residue on the corner of his lips with his thumb.

What was she doing here? And why did she keep craning her neck as if she was on the lookout for someone?

Since he’d dismissed her three days ago, he’d been unnerved to find her taking residence in his mind. Now was not the time for distractions of any sort, not when the casino in Mayfair was on the agenda. This particular casino was reputed to be one of the oldest—if not the oldest—in the whole of Europe. It had everything Francesco desired in a casino. Old-school glamour. Wealth. And credibility. This was a casino built by gentlemen for gentlemen, and while the old ‘no women’ rule had been relaxed in modern times, it retained its old-fashioned gentility. More than anything else, though, it was the one business his father had wanted and failed to get. This failure had been a thorn in Salvatore’s side until his dying day, when a life of overindulgence had finally caught up with him.

After almost forty years under the sole ownership of Sir Godfrey Renfrew, a member of the British aristocracy, the casino had been put up for sale.

Francesco wanted it. He coveted it, had spent two months charming Godfrey Renfrew into agreeing the sale of it to him. Such was Godfrey’s hatred of Francesco’s dead father, it had taken a month to even persuade him to meet.

What was more, if Francesco’s spies were correct, Luca Mastrangelo was sniffing around the casino, too.

This news meant he absolutely could not afford to lose focus on the deal, yet still he’d found himself, an hour before opening for the night, giving orders to his hospitality manager to reserve the best table in the club—for a hen party of all things. He’d only ever intended to have Melanie Chapman’s party on the guest list.

Under ordinary circumstances, free tables were given to the most VIP of all VIPs and only then because of the publicity it generated.

He hadn’t expected Hannah to be in attendance, but now she was here he couldn’t seem to stop his eyes from flickering to whichever monitor happened to be fixed on her.

* * *

Hannah tried heroically to get her feet moving in time with the music, aware her dancing was easily the least rhythmic of the whole club. Not that this seemed to put any of the men off. To her chagrin, a few seemed to be suffering from what her sister termed Wandering Hand Syndrome. One in particular kept ‘accidentally’ rubbing against her. When his hand brushed over her bottom the first time she’d been prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and had stepped away from him. The second time, when he’d been bolder and tried to cup her buttocks, she’d flashed him a smile and said in her politest voice, ‘Please don’t do that,’ he’d removed his hand. Which had worked for all of ten seconds. The third time he groped her, she’d ‘accidentally’ trod on his foot. And now the sleaze had ‘accidentally’ palmed her breast and was grinding into her back as if she were some kind of plaything.