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at least answer his intercom, if only to tell her to go away?
    Resolutely, she turned away, made her way to her car, and drove into Bella Terra.

Chapter 6
    “W ho was that girl at the gate?”
    Joseph Bianchin sat in his leather club chair in the master bedroom and glared resentfully up at his kidnapper, that cruel, damned blond giantess—his jailer.
    He didn’t dare call her a giantess to her face. He called her that only in his mind, because like it or not, he was afraid of her.
    She called herself Liesbeth Smit. When they were both standing, she was tall enough to look him in the eyes, and although he’d lost two inches of height since he turned seventy-five, he was still six feet tall. Liesbeth played up her athletic figure, her long blond hair, and beautiful green eyes as part of her carefully cultivated Nordic aspect.
    After his confrontation with that little upstart Noah Di Luca, Joseph had decided it was best to revisit the European sights he’d enjoyed before. In Amsterdam,he met Liesbeth, but she wasn’t Nordic; he would swear to that. He didn’t for a minute believe her true hair color was blond. As old as she was, it was probably gray. Or white. But hell, he didn’t even believe her eyes were blue. Or that her name was Liesbeth Smit. Nothing about her was real. Nothing.
    He did believe she was athletic. When he’d gotten suspicious of her intentions—he’d thought she was a chance-met whore, then realized she had stalked him—and he refused to go with her to her hotel, she had taken him down as if he were a weak old man.
    He was not. He was in excellent health.
    “Who is she?” Liesbeth stood over him, asking questions. Always asking questions, interrogating him as if she had the right.
    He hated her. He resented her for overpowering him. “I don’t know.”
    “She rang the bell for ten minutes.”
    “I don’t know her.”
    “She wanted to see you badly.”
    Liesbeth was a woman, younger than him, but not young. He didn’t know her exact age, but he guessed she was at least sixty-five. Yet she controlled him with the use of some goddamn fancy karate moves that made him buckle from the pain. He was pretty sure she used pressure points. He needed to learn them ASAP.
    “She probably wanted a job as a maid.” He didn’t give a crap who the girl at the gate was. She couldn’t help him out of this mess, so she was useless to him.
    “She was dressed awfully nice for wanting a job as a maid.”
    When Joseph had met Liesbeth, her English had made him think she was from London. As soon as theprivate plane he’d hired had landed in the States, her accent changed, became purely American English.
    He didn’t know how she did it, but it was spooky to watch her move from one environment to another and adapt so smoothly that everyone in the vicinity thought she was a native.
    “Khakis and a button-down shirt?” He raked Liesbeth with his gaze. “You’ve got low standards.”
    Unfazed by his condemnation of her denim capris and tight T-shirt, Liesbeth asked, “Is she your current lover?”
    “No. I told you. I’ve never seen her before.” Although there was something vaguely familiar about her.…
    He stared into space, trying to remember. Whom did she look like? A business associate? One of the damned Di Lucas? Or some movie star he’d seen on the Internet?
    Liesbeth studied him, knew every nuance of his expressions. “You do know her.”
    “Let me use the phone, and I’ll call around and see what I can find out.”
    “If I did that, and you called the wrong person, I’d just have to kill you.” She smiled kindly and without an ounce of compassion.
    And he believed her. “Look. The trouble with being our age is, there aren’t that many different kinds of faces. Everyone looks like someone I’ve already met.”
    Liesbeth waggled her head as if admitting he had a point.
    “I don’t understand what you want with me. Why me?” he asked, not for the first time. “I’ve offered you