Bedded by the Italian Playboy

Evernight Publishing

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2013 Emma Shortt

 
ISBN:
978-1-77130-302-6

Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor:
Cheryl Harper

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
 
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a
work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

This
book is to all my readers who emailed me their lovely thoughts about the first
in the series, Taken by the Greek Billionaire. Knowing you guys were waiting
for this one was a hell of an incentive. Just one more to go in this series
now, and I promise I have my nose to the grindstone...or at least my fingers to
the keys!

BEDDED BY THE ITALIAN PLAYBOY

Criminal
Seduction, 2

Emma
Shortt

Copyright
© 2013

Prologue

The three sisters sat around
the battered kitchen table each lost in their own thoughts. Apart from the
steady ticking of the clock and the occasional bleep of an aged appliance,
silence prevailed. Despite that, anyone who happened to look in on the scene
would have stopped for a longer look. If it was a man, he’d have stopped,
hoping for a damn sight more than that.

The first sister, Penny, sat
with her legs curled under her. There shouldn’t have been room on the chair for
her to sit in such a position, but Penny was the flexible one. The ways she
could curl her legs had impressed many a man over the years. She wore tight
black, slightly frayed jeans and an equally as tight tee. It should have been
black too, but it had been washed so many times it was almost grey. This was
made all the more obvious by the fact that Penny’s raven hair fanned her
shoulders, reaching to the small of her back. She sighed slightly, brushed her
hair over and behind her ears before fixing her emerald eyes on the picture in
front of her.

The second sister, Rachel, the
youngest by three weeks, had her legs crossed under the table, her flowered
sundress perfectly demure, just skimming her knees. She looked like sunshine
and happiness, the sort of girl you couldn’t help but like even as her
perfection grated. Her blonde hair was curled like a fifties movie star and her
limpid baby blue eyes were serene. Everything about her screamed innocence.

Rachel knew her job well and
she too had her gaze fixed on the picture laid below her.

The third sister, Lyra, oldest
by five months, had her legs sprawled over the side of the chair so that her
feet rested on the spare. She was barefoot, dressed in tiny denim shorts and a
scarlet red halter neck top. Her huge mane of copper hair—which should have
clashed with the top but somehow didn’t—was tousled into an untidy bun and her
slate blue eyes were pensive.

All three sisters had a lot to
think about.

“We’re good to go then?” It
was Penny who finally broke the silence and had her sisters lifting their gazes
to her.

“It seems so.” Rachel’s voice
was as soft as her curves. “There's nothing left to do. We've gone over the
plan a million times.”

“Not quite a million,” Penny
said. “Maybe a thousand.”

“Well I feel like it's burned
into my brain so I've lost count.”

Lyra snorted, swung her trim,
tanned legs down and picked up one of the three pictures off the table. “It
should be burned in there. It needs to be."

Rachel nodded. “I know.”

“Think of it like a battle
plan,” Lyra added, holding her picture in front of her. “You’d want to be clear
on the details before charging in wouldn’t you?”

“A battle plan?”

“Yep and I’ve definitely been
given the hardest mission.”

Penny shot Lyra a look,
tilting her head in a gesture that was characteristic to her. “You think? I’d
say Rachel has.”

Lyra laughed. “She can carry
off the innocent flower look to perfection. I on the other hand….”

“Have to play sex bomb,” Penny
said. “Not exactly a chore, sweetie.”

Lyra swatted her sister with
the picture, a wide grin creasing her face. “No you’re right, it’s not. But
he’s going to be a tough one. You aren’t even going to have to see yours.”

Penny shrugged and picked up
the picture in front of her. “A shame. Sebastian Demetrious is all kinds of
hot. I wouldn’t say no to a quick tumble.” She held up her hand as Rachel made
to speak. “I know! I know! But if you guys had my skills you could get away
with a quick in and out, too. And don’t forget the success of my mission is
crucial to both of yours. I fail and the whole project fails. The auction for
The Point closes on Sunday. If we don’t have the money by then….”

“We know,” Rachel said. “The
plan will fail.”

“The plan is not going to fail
because
no one
is going to fail,”
Lyra insisted. “Penny, you’ll get the money so we can buy the building and
Rachel and I will sort out the rest. Your mad skills have got this, as have
ours.” She stabbed a blood red fingernail at her picture. “As Andros
Casstellini will soon find out firsthand.”

“That he will, sweetie,” Penny
agreed, giving Lyra’s cleavage a nod. “I certainly wouldn’t bet against Lyra
‘the man eater’ Matthews.”

The two sisters laughed, but
Rachel did not join in. She twirled a length of blonde hair around her tiny
finger and bit down on her plump bottom lip. “I know we’re making light of all
of this, and I don’t doubt Lyra’s ability to get what she wants,” she said.
“But I still say yours is the most dangerous, Penny. If you get caught….”

Penny and Lyra both shot out
their hands to take Rachel’s, offering the comfort that was so natural between
them all, the laughter no more.

“No one is going to get
caught,” Lyra said. “Least of all Penny ‘the cat’ Matthews. She’s never even
come close. And we agreed this all months and months ago. We can’t do what we
need to unless Pen succeeds. Screwing this up is not an option.”

“She’s never done anything
this big before,” Rachel said.

“You haven’t either,” Penny
replied, giving Rachel’s dress a tug around the bosom before pointing to her
picture, that of the notorious Italian Playboy Dominic Rimeria. “But I don’t
doubt the skills of Rachel ‘the Madonna’ Matthews. So don’t you be doubting
mine.”

Rachel smiled, albeit a
strained kind of one, and pulled the dress back up. “Don’t mess with the
disguise!”

Penny rolled her eyes.
“Disguise my ass.”

“We’re all going to do this,”
Lyra said, standing up and looking back and forth between her sisters. She was
doing her oldest sister voice, though Penny had often said that five months
barely warranted the title. They were all in their twenty fifth year, each as
old as the other, in years and certainly in life experience. God knew they all
had plenty of that.

“And in a few weeks we’ll have
exactly what we’ve been planning ever since we escaped that God damn foster
home ten years ago,” Lyra continued, almost daring her sisters to disagree.
“We’ll be women of the world. Free to do as we please, and no one will be able
to tell us, or force us, to do things we don’t want ever again.”

“The power will be ours,”
Penny said.

“Ours,” Rachel agreed.

Lyra nodded. “Ours.”

She held out a hand to either
side of her and the two other women stood up. Penny’s pale hand took her left,
Rachel’s lightly bronzed one her right. Clenched tightly together, their arms
made a perfect, equilateral triangle, and there in the kitchen standing thus,
and as they looked from one to the other, resolve settled across them all.

Because danger or not, jokes
or not, the women who were bonded over a decade and a half ago by events that
counted for more than a blood connection ever could, each knew that in their
world only those with the power could call the shots. After twenty-five years
of none, all were determined they would have some. And they were realistic
women. They knew that in reality there was only one way for them to get it.

As if on cue they all looked
down at the table, at the pictures of Sebastian Demetrious, Andros Casstellini,
and Dominic Rimeria. Three billionaires, three playboys, all disgustingly rich
and ridiculously predictable.

Their marks. Each of them
handpicked.

And each sister thought it at
the same time, though none said it, because it barely needed saying.
These men have no idea what they have
coming….

Chapter One

The
three garment bags were clustered together, hanging from the rickety, single
door wardrobe. On the left was a dark blue one, scavenged somewhere by Lyra and
containing, no doubt, an outfit perfect for any sex bomb. On the right side was
a black bag that Penny had found in a local charity store. Inside it was what
she called her Catwoman-ninja suit. And in the very middle of the wardrobe, as
if protected by the others, was a grubby white bag with ‘
Wondrous Weddings’
printed on the breast. Hers.