Читать онлайн книгу «Body And Soul» автора CHARLOTTE LAMB
Body And Soul
CHARLOTTE LAMB
He Wanted All Of Her! Bruno Falcucci was nothing less than a nasty piece of work. Not only had he maneuvered himself into a position of power at the bank where Martine worked, but now he had set his eyes on conquering her, as well.But no matter how attractive Bruno was, there was no way that Martine was going to let him, with his big, black, Italian, come-to-bed eyes, get the better of her!
Body and Soul
Charlotte Lamb
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#udf800a94-3564-5a3f-a9a8-dac9711a4b58)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc4551be1-ca67-53f6-b8fb-84894ed0cce2)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
MARTINE was late, and in a hurry, so she leapt out of her taxi and ran across the pavement towards the Mayfair restaurant, too intent to notice the man in evening dress who got out of a parked car on the other side of the road and headed in the same direction.
There was a moment when either of them could have held back, but, although they glanced briefly at each other, neither of them stopped. Martine thought she was nearer and would get there first; but he moved faster.
They collided in the revolving door. Which promptly jammed—with them crushed together inside one section. Martine looked up, her eyes as stormily green as northern seas. The eyes that met hers were black, cold, irritated.
‘If you back out, that will free the door!’ said a deep, dark voice with a faint foreign accent which she couldn’t identify.
‘If you had had the manners to let me go first this wouldn’t have happened! You step back!’ she snapped.
It was all his fault, and Martine didn’t like his peremptory tone, or the fact that she had been forced so close to him. You couldn’t have got a sheet of paper between them, in fact—which meant that his body actually touched hers, making her very aware of his powerful build. He might be wearing civilised evening dress but underneath it was a distinctly primitive body: six feet of muscle and bone and smooth, tanned skin, a face that could have been carved out of granite.
‘There’s no point in arguing about whose fault it is!’ he bit out. ‘Just wriggle backwards.’
‘Any wriggling can be done by you,’ Martine informed him.
Just because she was almost a foot shorter than him, fine-boned and slender, he needn’t imagine that she was a helpless female and a pushover. She wasn’t backing down, even if it meant they stayed jammed in this door all night.
He stared down into her angry green eyes, and she bristled like a cat faced with danger, the hair standing up on the back of her neck.
Something about the arrogant tilt of his head, the sleek black hair, the cool eyes, reminded her of a man she had once loved, but who had walked out on her to marry a girl with rich parents. Three years had gone by since then, and Martine had dated other men, but never fallen in love like that again, and never meant to. She had been badly hurt once. She didn’t intend to repeat the experience.
‘Look, even an idiot should see that the easiest way of freeing the door would be for you to back out,’ he coldly pointed out.
‘Oh, very well,’ Martine said, shifting sideways to get into a better position for wriggling out. His foot was in the way. Her elegant little black shoes had thin, high heels, like stilettos. She felt one of them sink into the top of his polished shoe.
He started violently, took a sharp breath, and said something under that breath which she couldn’t quite hear but which sounded suspiciously like swearing.
‘Sorry,’ she said, and met glittering black eyes.
‘You did that deliberately!’ he accused.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! I was simply trying to get out. How was I to know you would put your foot in the way?’
He eyed her with dislike. His nostrils flared, a white line of rage around his mouth.
‘I suppose I’ll have to get us out of here or we’ll be here all night,’ he muttered. ‘Just stand still, will you?’
Turning sideways, he began to slide past her, his body pressing against hers in the process, his long thigh pushing past, his arm brushing her breast. Despite herself she felt a sharp needle of sexual awareness stab through her and tensed in shock.
‘Hey! Watch it!’ she hissed, guessing that he was inflicting his intimacy on her deliberately in male revenge because she hadn’t been the one to back out.
It was a mistake to say anything. It made him stop, dead, looking down at her with those dark, narrowed eyes barely inches above her own, their bodies still touching. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ he said through his teeth. ‘This isn’t giving me any thrill at all, I assure you.’
Martine reddened crossly. ‘Oh, just get a move on, will you?’ she muttered. ‘We’re attracting a crowd!’
There were people on the inside of the restaurant, trying to get out, and another couple on the pavement, trying to get in, all watching them and grinning. They were providing live entertainment and Martine felt very silly and very angry. She hid it, giving their audience helpless smiles and shrugs.
Her reluctant companion finally squeezed out backwards, and Martine immediately pushed the revolving door to emerge in the restaurant, murmured an apology to the people waiting, slid out of her silk evening jacket and handed it to a hovering waiter.
‘Is Mr Redmond here, yet?’
‘If he is, he’ll be in the bar, miss.’
Behind her she heard the revolving door turning and was aware of a looming presence emerging.
She ignored him.
As she walked into the circular, discreetly lit bar, she saw a faint reflection swimming in the black glass lining the wall behind the bar counter. First herself, slender, in black georgette, her face thrown into odd prominence, a pale, shimmering oval, her neck long and slim, a white magnolia pinned just above her breasts, at the edge of her deep neckline, her dark auburn hair coiled low on her nape; and, walking behind her, a head taller than her, the black-haired foreigner in his stiff white shirt front and black jacket.
She had to admit they made an interesting composition in black and white; the only colour visible was the dark flame of her red hair.
She halted to look around the room. There were a few people in the bar, but there was no sign of Charles, which didn’t surprise her. He was often unpunctual, but then he had so much on his mind. Since the death of his wife he had buried himself in work; sometimes he didn’t seem quite sure which day of the week it was! She only hoped he would remember that he had asked her to have dinner here tonight.
He had just flown back from New York that morning and hadn’t been in to the office since landing; had stayed at home, resting after the trip.
He had made their date for tonight from New York. No doubt he wanted to talk to her out of the office; there was always too much going on there for any possibility of a private conversation, and since much of the information he needed to give her was very confidential they chose their meeting-places carefully.
She sat down at one of the empty tables. Immediately a waiter came over. ‘What will you have to drink, madam?’
‘Oh...just a glass of sparkling mineral water, please,’ she said, crossed one slender, shapely leg over the other, her fine, filmy skirt riding up a little so that she had to stroke it down over her knee. Casually glancing around the bar, she found herself looking into black eyes on the other side of the room, eyes that had been watching her smoothing down her skirt, had coldly assessed her legs, risen to give the same unimpressed speculation to her figure and face.
Martine gave him a glacial stare back. She never liked getting looks like that—as if she were an object, not a human being. Some men used it as a silent insult. She had the feeling this one did, especially remembering the way he had spoken to her while they were jammed in the revolving door.
He calmly detached his gaze, looked down, shot his cuff back to allow a glimpse of his gold wristwatch and frowned, then got to his feet. Martine stiffened, thinking for a few seconds that he was coming over here to her table.
Instead he walked out of the bar without giving her another look. Several women in the room watched him avidly.
OK, he had his points, especially when you saw him in a good light, thought Martine. She liked tall men, especially when they moved like that. The tan was striking, too. He probably stripped well; his body had interesting proportions: broad shoulders, slim hips, long, long legs.
Catching herself up, she grimaced. What was she thinking about? Men like him were nothing but a disaster. She hadn’t had a man in her life for almost a year, that was the trouble, and however hard she worked, however many hours she put into her job, she still felt pretty blue at times. Frustration and loneliness must be having a dire effect on her brains for her to look twice at that guy, though!
She crossly took a couple of salted almonds from the bowl in the middle of the table and popped them into her mouth while she, too, consulted her watch.
Where was Charles?
She had no sooner thought the question than she saw him hurrying towards her, a thin, slight, fair man in a well-cut dark suit.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised, sliding into the seat next to her. ‘Am I late, or were you early?’
‘I’ve only been here a moment,’ she lied, smiling at him, her eyes faintly anxious as she absorbed the air of weariness he habitually wore. She hadn’t seen him for a week and was struck by the way he was ageing. He was only forty-five, but he looked older; there were lines around his mouth and eyes, his skin had a grey tinge.
The waiter brought her drink, looked at Charles expectantly.
‘My usual, Jimmy,’ Charles told him with a smile.
‘Yes, Mr Redmond,’ said the waiter, beaming, pleased because Charles had remembered his name.
Charles ate here frequently. He lived in a luxurious penthouse flat a short walk away; this was his nearest local restaurant and he liked the place. He had a married couple who ran his home. Mr Wright was his chauffeur and handyman, and looked after his clothes; Mrs Wright cleaned and cooked in the flat. But Charles let them have three evenings a week free, and came here to eat.
The waiter walked away and Charles turned back to smile at Martine.
‘That’s my favourite dress, you always look lovely in it,’ he said, and a faint flush crept into her face. She had put on the black georgette because whenever she wore it Charles told her how much he liked it.
Working for him meant a constant succession of important social gatherings for which she required a large and very expensive wardrobe, so she had plenty of clothes to choose from. She got a special allowance for clothes and Charles encouraged her to buy from good designers because as his personal assistant she was always representing the bank and Charles felt she should look expensive and elegant at all times. It was the image he wished the bank to convey: moneyed, sophisticated, cool.
‘Thank you, Charles, you look very elegant yourself tonight,’ she murmured, and he gave her a rueful little quirk of the mouth.
‘Why, thank you.’ He didn’t sound convinced. No doubt he knew his suit no longer fitted perfectly, revealed how thin he was getting, emphasised the fact that he had lost even more weight since she last saw him.
Charles had never been heavily built, but after his wife’s death two years ago he had lost weight as if his flesh was melting away. That hadn’t been the only change in him. His hair had been a lovely pale gold; the shock of Elizabeth’s death had left him with a sprinkling of silver hairs and a haunted look in his blue eyes.
He had been driving and had emerged unscathed himself with a few minor bruises and cuts and a slight head injury. Elizabeth had been killed instantly; Charles had never quite got over it. He blamed himself and was guilty because he had not died too. If they had had children it might have been easier for him to recover from the shock, but he and Elizabeth hadn’t yet got around to a family.
‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ he told the waiter as the man appeared with a double whisky and soda on a silver tray. ‘I’m expecting another guest to join us—would you keep an eye open for him? His name’s Falcucci, Bruno Falcucci.’
‘An Italian gentleman, would he be, sir? There’s a gentleman making a telephone call in the foyer who’s talking in Italian. I’ll check if it’s Mr Falcucci, shall I?’
‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ Charles said, smiling at him again.
Ice clinked in the glass as Charles took a swallow of whisky.
‘Who’s joining us?’ Martine asked, faintly disappointed because she had been looking forward to dinner alone with him, but not taken entirely by surprise because Charles often used social occasions to smooth a business deal, and she was frequently included in the party, whether it was lunch or dinner or a cocktail party.
‘A cousin of mine,’ Charles said with a glint of mischief in his blue eyes.
As startled as he had obviously expected her to be, Martine said, ‘You’ve never mentioned having any close relatives.’
Charles had, from time to time, told her something about himself and his background, and other members of staff at the bank had dropped the odd crumb of gossip. She had gained the impression that Charles had no near family, and very few close friends. He had always been so wrapped up in his work, even while his wife was alive, and since her death he had cut his social life almost to nil.
His friends were largely colleagues or business acquaintances, most of them married, with family commitments, making Charles an odd man out on most social occasions. That was why he had fallen into the habit lately of taking Martine along with him to any private gathering to which he was invited.
They weren’t romantically involved, simply very good friends as well as close colleagues; it suited them both to have an escort for an evening now and then, and they were both deeply involved in their work.
Charles had told her that he had been an afterthought by his parents, both of whom, apparently, had been in their late forties when he was born, their first and only child, a much loved and indulged one. Perhaps having old parents had made him so serious, so tied to duty and work?
They had died long ago, when he was a young man, leaving Charles an enormous fortune and the major interest in the family merchant bank. Charles had once said that he had begun to work as soon as he left university, and hadn’t noticed much about the world outside banking until he was nearly forty himself. That year he had been in Paris at an international conference and met a beautiful French model half his age, Elizabeth, raven-haired, tiny, exquisite. Charles fell like a ton of bricks, married her just weeks later, only to lose her again within two years, a tragedy which made him, for Martine, a deeply romantic, star-crossed figure.
She felt highly protective towards Charles, as well as liking him.
‘Bruno is the only close relative I have,’ Charles said now, giving her a smiling, rueful shrug. ‘And I’ve only met him a couple of times; he lives in Switzerland.’
‘Switzerland? And he’s in banking, of course,’ she said with a wry expression.
Charles looked amused suddenly. ‘You think that follows naturally? Well, you’re right, he is in banking, I suppose it was in his genes. Or perhaps his mother talked him into joining a bank? Anyway, he works for the Swiss Bank Corporation at the moment, but tonight I intend to ask him to join us.’
Martine’s green eyes widened. ‘Oh, I see.’ Now what did that mean? she wondered, startled.
Charles went on quietly, ‘I don’t want anyone else to know this, Martine; I’m telling you because I trust you completely. I want you to know, I’ve just made a new will, leaving my shares in the bank to him. There’s nobody else for me to leave them to.’
Martine felt cold suddenly. ‘You’re talking as if...good heavens, you’re only forty-odd. You’ll marry again, Charles. Oh, I know you still miss Elizabeth, and it isn’t easy to get over things like that, but you sound as if you’ve given up on life, and you mustn’t! There’s plenty of time to think about making wills!’
Charles gave a faint, wry smile. ‘After working in banking for years, Martine, I’d have thought you knew better than that! It is never wise to put off making a will.’
Frowning, she shrugged. ‘In principle, no, but...’
‘In practice, too. You should make one yourself. One never knows what’s around the next corner.’ His blue eyes had that haunted look again; he was thinking about Elizabeth and that crash.
Martine put a hand on his arm, comforting silently, and he gave her a quick, crooked smile, coming back to the present moment.
‘Anyway, I’ve made my will. Actually, Bruno should have had shares in the bank long ago; his mother was my father’s only sister! But my grandfather refused to leave anything at all to his daughter, Una, because she married against his will—a Swiss doctor she met on a holiday at Lake Como. Her parents disapproved violently. First, Frederick was a foreigner, and secondly he was not in banking. Worst of all, he had very little money, but he was apparently a delightful man, a good man and a good doctor. Una was very happy with him, but her father never forgave her for marrying him, so he left all his money to my father.’
‘That does seem unfair,’ Martine agreed. ‘It must have made your aunt very unhappy.’
‘I’m sure it did.’
‘And it led to a family feud!’ Martine murmured, and Charles laughed.
‘You have a disconcerting streak of romanticism!’
She blushed. She always tried to hide it; it didn’t go down well in banking circles, for one thing, and, for another, it had led her into a painful love-affair and left her with a broken heart and bitter disillusion.
‘I suppose it was something along those lines, though,’ Charles shrugged. ‘My parents exchanged Christmas cards with Aunt Una but they never visited Switzerland, and Aunt Una never came back to England. This big gulf opened up between them.’
‘How sad!’ It seemed pretty childish to Martine, but the things people did to each other often were, she thought.
Charles sighed. ‘It is really, isn’t it? Sad and very stupid. When my parents died I lost contact with Aunt Una altogether, but she died a few years ago, and Bruno wrote to tell me. I happened to be going to Switzerland on that banking commission tour so I looked him up while I was there, and I liked him.’
‘Does he know you’ve made him your main beneficiary?’ Martine shrewdly asked.
Charles gave her an amused look. ‘Not yet.’
Martine’s eyes narrowed speculatively. This Bruno Falcucci might not know yet that Charles had left the Redmond share of the bank to him, but he would know that Charles was unmarried and had no other heir, and, if he was shrewd, as he probably was if he was a senior bank executive, he would probably have worked out that he had a chance of persuading Charles to leave him some money.
‘Did you invite him to come to London, or is he here off his own bat?’
‘He rang me last week to say he had to come to London on business,’ Charles informed her, still looking amused. ‘What a suspicious little mind you’ve got!’
‘I didn’t say a word!’
‘You don’t need to! I can read your thoughts—after all, I know you very well, Martine.’ He looked down into her green eyes and they exchanged an intimate, laughing look.
At that instant somebody strolled up to the table and Charles glanced round, exclaimed, stood up, holding out his hand, his drawn and tired face lighting up.
‘Ah, there you are, Bruno! I was beginning to think you had forgotten all about tonight!’
‘I’ve been looking forward to the evening all week,’ a deep, cool voice drawled.
Martine sat there transfixed, her mouth open and her nerves in shreds. It would be him, wouldn’t it?
Of all the men in the world, she had had to pick on Bruno Falcucci to take an instant dislike to! It hadn’t occurred to her for an instant that the man she had got stuck in the revolving door with might be the man she and Charles were waiting for.
Charles was smiling, gesturing to include her in the circle. ‘Bruno, I want you to meet my right hand—Martine Archer, my personal assistant for the last four years.’
Martine numbly held out her hand.
Bruno Falcucci took it, his powerful tanned fingers swallowing up her small, pale ones.
She risked a glance upwards. His black eyes coldly mocked her. He said something polite and distant. She answered with equal remoteness. He released her hand.
‘Sit down, have a drink; their whisky is very good,’ Charles told him.
‘I don’t drink spirits.’ He looked at Martine’s glass. ‘Is that mineral water? I’ll have the same, thank you.’
‘I’d forgotten you don’t drink,’ Charles said, made a face.
‘Like your assistant here, I like to keep a cool head,’ Bruno Falcucci drawled, and Martine gave him a flicking glance. Oh, very funny! she thought.
Charles ordered the drink, adding, ‘And bring the menus, Jimmy, will you? Now, Bruno, what sort of business brings you to London?’
‘Banking,’ the answer smoothly came.
Charles laughed. ‘Of course. Is it confidential? Shall we change the subject?’
‘I can’t talk in detail about it, I’m afraid. You may read about it in the financial Press some time, but not yet.’
‘Well, how long do you plan to stay? Can you tell us that?’
‘A week, maybe two. Then I might take a holiday—fly on to Greece, perhaps, or even as far as the Caribbean. I want to relax for a while, unwind, get some sun before I go back to work.’
‘You have an amazing tan already!’ said Charles. ‘Don’t you think so, Martine?’
She gave another brief glance in Bruno Falcucci’s direction; let her lids droop indifferently over her eyes again. ‘Amazing,’ she said offhandedly.
She felt Bruno looking at her closely, considering her rich auburn hair, the fine-boned face with the warm, curved mouth and fierce green eyes, before running his gaze down over her body in arrogant appraisal.
Her flush deepened and she felt the back of her neck prickle.
‘Where do you go for a holiday?’ he asked her.
She shrugged, reluctant to answer.
‘Oh, Martine doesn’t like hot countries,’ Charles answered for her. ‘Like most redheads, her wonderful skin doesn’t like too much sun. But we had a terrific time in Sweden last summer, didn’t we, Martine? And Switzerland was fun a couple of years ago.’
‘Especially the après-ski, no doubt,’ Bruno drawled.
He was making no attempt to hide what he was thinking, his gaze flicking from her to Charles and back again, glinting with cynicism.
He suspected her of having an affair with Charles, she realised. He couldn’t be serious! Charles was almost old enough to be her father!
Oh, he was still very good-looking in a weary way, but he had no energy, his hair was thinning and turning silver, his elegant, fine-cut features had a distinct look of strain. She was deeply fond of Charles, she felt sorry for him; but that was all. She resented Bruno Falcucci’s speculative stare, the cool cynicism in his eyes.
The head waiter arrived. ‘Have you chosen yet, sir?’ he asked Charles, who looked at the others.
‘I’m ready to order—how about you two?’
Martine nodded. So did Bruno.
She chose melon and sole with a salad; Bruno chose melon, too, with prosciutto, followed by a steak, also with a salad; and Charles ordered melon followed by an omelette with a salad. He ate almost nothing these days. He would probably just pick at his food.
While they waited to be told their table was ready Charles and Bruno talked about the international banking situation. Martine listened intently, absorbing with a faint dismay the fact of Bruno Falcucci’s swift, hard intelligence. Charles knew what he was talking about, but he was like a machine running on half-power lately—he kept fading, losing interest, missing vital points. She began to suspect that Bruno could run rings around him.
There was no doubt about it. The man was potentially lethal. And she had a sinking feeling that Charles wouldn’t listen if she tried to warn him, would just laugh at her.
The head waiter came back, smiling. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Mr Redmond...’
‘Shall we go in?’ suggested Charles, rising. Martine got to her feet. He put a hand under her arm in a gallant gesture, to which she submitted, smiling at him, her eyes affectionate. He was always chivalrous, an old-fashioned man in many ways; she liked that.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Bruno Falcucci’s face: jet eyes watching her with sardonic amusement, mouth wry. Martine’s smile stiffened into anger. It was going to be an ordeal to sit through a meal with that man across the table. She wished she couldn’t read his mind so clearly, but it was as if his thoughts leapt across the table to her—or maybe he was actually allowing her, or willing her, to pick up what he was thinking!
Yet why should he? She frowned, letting Charles steer her into the dining-room. Her imagination was really working overtime, surely? She was building Bruno Falcucci up into some sort of bogeyman!
She was seated between the two men at the table, but from then on she turned all her attention, and her body, towards Charles, practically ignoring the other man except when she had no option.
Bruno Falcucci leaned back in his chair, a brooding presence, watching her out of narrowed eyes, physically dominating the circle they made: herself, Charles and him, around this table, with his wide black-clad shoulders, his deep chest and hard face.
Charles dominated the talking, though, and was too absorbed in his favourite subject, international finance, to be aware of the silent duel going on across the white-damask-covered table with its spray of dark red roses in the centre. The dining-room was shadowy, and a softly shaded lamp gave them exactly enough light in which the table glittered with crystal glass, silver cutlery and fine bone china and their faces glowed, now in shadow, now in light, like shifting masks.
It was towards the end of the meal that Charles finally asked Bruno Falcucci the question Martine knew he had been planning to put to him.
‘How would you feel about leaving your present job, Bruno, and coming to work for us in a rather more senior position?’
If Bruno was surprised he didn’t show it. There was a beat of time when he just sat there, as if absorbing the possibilities, then he calmly said, ‘That’s a very flattering offer, Charles. I would need to know precisely what you had in mind, of course, and I’d need time to think it over, but in principle I’m certainly interested.’
Charles beamed. ‘I hoped you would be. You wouldn’t regret the decision if you accepted, Bruno, I promise you that. You could have a splendid future with us, far more exciting than anything you have in prospect at the moment. Ours is a family bank and you are my only male relative.’
He shouldn’t be stating the situation quite so frankly. He was betraying the weakness of his position, Martine thought, watching Bruno Falcucci closely, her green eyes sharp and hostile.
He was watching Charles, and his face was a polite mask. Martine would have given a good deal to know what he was thinking, whether he was excited, triumphant, elated. He gave no clues.
‘I’ll get Martine to put together a proposition for you, setting out all the terms,’ Charles promised as he called for the bill. ‘And after you’ve had time to digest the contents, we can talk it over. I’m going to be frank with you—I think your mother should have been provided for in her father’s will; she should have had shares in the bank.’
Bruno nodded. ‘She should.’
There was a ruthless set to his jaw, the spark of anger in his black eyes. If Charles thought Bruno did not resent the way his mother had been treated, he was clearly wrong. Bruno resented it bitterly. Martine shivered. She hoped Charles hadn’t made a fatal mistake. Yet what threat could Bruno present to him? Charles owned a majority of the shares in the bank; Bruno couldn’t hurt him.
Charles smiled at him, apparently blithely unaware of the dark feeling in the younger man. ‘I want to make up for the past, Bruno. I want you in the family business, where you belong.’
Martine shifted restlessly, frowning. Haven’t you got eyes? she wanted to ask Charles. Can’t you see what he’s like under the good looks and the formal good manners?
Bruno flicked one of those brief, cold glances her way. Charles might not be picking up her agitation, but Bruno Falcucci was, and her dismay didn’t bother him. He looked into her eyes, then away, one black brow curling sardonically.
A hard spot of red burnt in her cheeks. She knew what that lifted eyebrow had said. She might oppose him but she wouldn’t be a problem, he could deal with her.
Well, that was what he thought! They would see about that.
Charles signed the bill, folded some notes into the leather wallet in which the bill had arrived, and stood up, yawning, looking suddenly drained and white.
‘I’m sorry, Martine,’ he said in a wearily apologetic voice. ‘I’d planned to drive you home myself, but I’m barely able to stay on my feet—will you be very cross if I just put you into a taxi back to Chelsea?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she began, but Bruno interrupted.
‘I have my car parked outside; I’ll drop her off.’
‘I thought you said you were staying at the Savoy? There’s no need to drive out to Chelsea, I can easily get a taxi.’ Martine certainly didn’t want him driving her home. The very idea of being alone with the man even for five minutes sent shivers down her spine.
‘It’s still early. I would enjoy a drive along the river,’ he shrugged.
Charles beamed. ‘And you can get to know each other! That’s a wonderful idea, I should have thought of it myself. Martine is indispensable to me, Bruno. She can tell you all you need to know about the way the bank runs.’
His car was parked across the street. As he began to walk towards it Martine caught Bruno Falcucci’s secret smile, and tensed. If she hadn’t known how it would upset Charles she would have slapped his face.
Turning away, she walked with Charles to his car, watching him with concern.
‘You look quite ill, Charles. You’ve been working too hard for far too long. I think you need a long holiday. Why don’t you take a few days off work and get away?’
‘I will, soon,’ he said quietly, bent and kissed her cheek. ‘You’re my guardian angel—don’t think I’m not aware of it. Now, be nice to Bruno. I want him to join us, Martine, sell the bank to him. I’ve done some quiet research on him and he has quite a record, he’s pulled off some brilliant deals. Even if he wasn’t family, I’d want him, but as he is a Redmond, even though his name is different, I’m determined to get him by hook or by crook.’
‘Well, in that case I’ll do what I can,’ she promised as Charles got behind the wheel of his silver Rolls. She meant what she said, despite her private reservations about the man. She would certainly sell the bank to Bruno Falcucci, but she doubted if it would be necessary. She had the feeling no persuasion would be required to get him to join them. He had always planned to do so.
Charles smiled at her through the window as he started the softly purring engine.
‘I know I can always trust you. Goodnight, Martine, see you tomorrow.’
He drove off and she turned to find Bruno Falcucci right behind her, lounging against a long, sleek, vintage black Rolls-Bentley. It was one of the loveliest cars she had ever seen; her mouth watered at the sight of it. She loved old cars.
He opened the passenger door, his body graceful as he held the door for her. ‘Where am I to take you?’
‘Do you know Chelsea?’ she curtly asked, having already discovered that he had been to London a number of times.
He nodded. ‘Vaguely. I make for Parliament Square and head off along the Embankment, right?’
She nodded. ‘I live a stone’s throw from the Tate Gallery, I’ll guide you after we get to Millbank.’
She slid into the Bentley’s interior, instinctively stroking the soft, pale cream leather seats, giving the dashboard an appreciative inspection.
‘Is this yours, or have you borrowed or hired it?’ she asked as Bruno got in beside her.
His tanned hands lightly holding the wheel he turned his black head and gave her a long, cool look.
‘It’s mine. I just bought it.’
It must have cost a fortune; she wondered how much he earned a year to be able to afford a toy like this. Well, she would find out soon, when he and Charles began negotiations.
‘You aren’t married, Mr Falcucci?’
He shook his head, that sardonic smile in evidence again.
‘Have you ever been?’ she asked.
‘No, have you?’
‘No,’ she said tersely.
‘You’re a devoted secretary, though,’ he drawled. ‘Lucky Charles.’
He turned his head again, deliberately, to meet her stare and Martine let all her dislike and distrust of him show in her face.
‘If you hurt Charles in any way I’ll kill you!’ she told him.
His brows shot up and he gave her that cool, sardonic smile, then took her breath away by what he said next.
‘If he was going to marry you, he’d have done so long ago, you know. You’re wasting your time waiting for him; which seems a pity, looking the way you do.’ His dark eyes flicked down over her body and a wave of heat flowed through her. Softly he added, ‘I’m sure a lot of men would be only too happy to help you forget Charles. I might even volunteer myself!’
Martine went dark red, her hands clenching, her teeth together, but she refused to play his game by answering or defending herself, explaining that he was wrong. Information was power, Charles had taught her long ago. Never give it away, use it for your own purposes and do so sparingly. So she let Bruno Falcucci imagine that he had hit on the truth, just gave him one icy glance, then said in a tight, brusque voice, ‘Take the next turn on the right, would you?’
The Bentley spun round the corner and began moving along the wide street of rather stately Victorian houses.
‘No comment, then?’ Bruno Falcucci asked her, watching her out of the corner of his eyes.
‘Stop here, please,’ was all Martine said.
He braked and turned towards her but she was already getting out of the car. She slammed the door then bent towards the window and he leaned over to wind it down to hear what she said.
Martine looked into his gleaming, dark eyes. ‘Remember, if you hurt Charles, I’ll make sure you pay for it,’ she said, then turned on her heel and walked away.
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU have to admit,’ said Annie, one of the share analysts, some months later, ‘he’s an asset to the bank!’
‘Oh, please, no puns this early in the morning!’ winced Martine.
‘You’ve got no sense of humour where he’s concerned, that’s the trouble,’ complained Annie, who was a year younger, and very pretty: small, fair, bubbly, and very popular with the men. ‘And you’ve dodged my question! He’s the hottest thing we’ve acquired in years. Look at that Ambleham-Tring merger—I hear we’ve picked up a lot more business from that, and his client list has doubled since he arrived.’
‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’ Martine was staring at her VDU, frowning over the string of figures coming up. ‘Because if you haven’t, I have. With Charles ringing in to say he’s working at home today, and our trip to Rome starting tomorrow, I’ve got so much to do I’ll be working until very late tonight, so get off my desk and go away, Annie!’
‘In a minute,’ Annie said, wriggling like a child on the edge of the desk, her small feet swinging back and forth. ‘I wanted to ask you something...’
‘Well, what?’ Martine irritably asked, wondering how Annie could be so thick-skinned. What did you have to do to get rid of her?
‘Has he got a woman tucked away somewhere? I mean, he hasn’t dated anyone since he joined us, he says he isn’t married, and I can’t believe he’s gay, so is there someone in the background?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t care, and will you please shut up about Bruno Falcucci, get off my desk and let me get on with my work?’ Martine frequently wished she had never heard the man’s name, let alone met him. He had been here nearly four months and she sometimes felt as if the whole place revolved around him. It certainly did as far as the female staff were concerned. They couldn’t stop talking about him; half of them were in love with him and the others were simply fascinated.
Except Martine, of course. If anything, she disliked him more now than she had the first day she’d met him.
She had watched grimly while he became a director and immediately began to dominate board meetings, making himself the centre of power on the board, a voice to be reckoned with, pushing Charles further and further out of the picture.
It was what she had feared from the beginning, but Charles would not listen even now. He had smiled gently when she pointed out that Bruno had taken over some of his own clients, some of the most lucrative, at that.
‘At my suggestion, my dear girl!’ he had insisted. ‘I’m trying to shed some of my workload. You told me I was working too hard, remember!’
‘I didn’t tell you to hand some of your best clients over to Bruno Falcucci! And you never told me that was what you were planning!’
He had given her a wry, apologetic look. ‘I knew you’d get agitated and lecture me on your favourite subject!’
Eyes startled, she’d asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Bruno,’ Charles had said, laughing softly as she flushed dark red. ‘Now, don’t deny it—you’re paranoid where he’s concerned. You think he has horns and a forked tail!’
‘Yes,’ she had said then, soberly. ‘I don’t trust him, and I only hope you aren’t making a serious mistake, letting him get into such a position of power at the bank.’
Her uneasiness had not lifted a few weeks after this discussion with Charles, on the cool autumn morning when Annie sat on her desk and would not stop talking about Bruno Falcucci.
‘Shoo,’ she told Annie, pushing her off her desk, and Annie turned a laughing face to her.
‘Oh, come on, I bet you’re secretly crazy about Bruno too—you just won’t admit it!’
‘I’d rather date Dracula!’ Martine snapped just as her office door opened.
She and Annie both looked round, both froze in confusion. Bruno stood in the doorway, his dark eyes hooded and unreadable, his powerful body briefly at rest, which she already knew was rare for him since he was perpetually in motion, a man with burning energy always racing against the clock, or himself, or the world, she wasn’t sure which.
‘What’s Dracula got that I haven’t?’ he drawled, and Annie began to giggle, half in relief because he didn’t seem angry, half with embarrassment because she didn’t know how much of the earlier conversation he had overheard.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Martine said, and Bruno looked into her eyes, his mouth twisting.
‘Could I?’
Annie’s eyes grew enormous, fascinated. She looked from one to the other and waited to hear more.
‘No,’ Martine said through her teeth.
Bruno held the door open. ‘Weren’t you just going, Annie?’ he asked in a bland voice. She hesitated, wanting to stay and eavesdrop, but Bruno’s eyes were hypnotic. Reluctantly she swayed her way across the room towards him. Martine watched Bruno watch Annie. There was a distinct gleam in the dark eyes. Annie was a pocket-sized blonde Venus—high breasts, tiny waist, rounded hips—and she knew how to move to make men stare. Bruno was staring now.
Annie paused to smile up at him; Martine couldn’t see her face but she saw the way Bruno smiled down at her.
‘Dracula hasn’t got anything you haven’t got,’ Annie said, and giggled.
‘Then why aren’t you scared?’ Bruno asked and bent towards her, lip curling to show his teeth, pretending to be about to sink his fangs into her throat.
Annie shrieked in delight and fled.
Bruno straightened and looked across the room. Martine coldly met his laughing gaze and the laughter stopped; his face tightened and turned cold. He walked towards her, letting the door slam behind him.
Her nerve-ends quivered in alarm at something in his stare. He stopped beside her desk, and for an instant of panic she was afraid he was going to touch her, kiss her.
She went crimson, then white, shrinking back from him.
He watched her inexorably.
‘One of these days I’m going to tell you why you can’t stand the sight of me,’ he said softly. ‘And then you’ll really hate me.’
‘I already do!’
It came out before she could stop it, and she bit her lip in shock. She hadn’t meant to be so up-front about her real feelings; she was horrified that she should have lost control like that. In her work she often came up against men she loathed and despised, but she knew better than to let her view of them show!
‘I’m sorry,’ she said edgily, not quite meeting his gaze. ‘I lost my temper, please forget I said that.’
If he told Charles she knew the reaction she would get. Charles would be appalled. He was aware she didn’t trust his cousin but he expected her to have a little self-control and to keep her private opinions to herself. And, in fact, so did she. She was angry with herself for losing her cool.
‘I never forget anything,’ Bruno murmured, and she believed him. She had already discovered what a fantastic memory he had; he seemed to know everything about every public company and many in private hands. The tiniest detail was retained in his mind and could be conjured up out of nowhere when he needed it. They used state-of-the-art computers to do work Bruno could do in his head and seemed to find child’s play.
‘That’s up to you,’ she said, trying to hide her faint dismay. No doubt one day she would pay for having lost her temper. She suspected him to be a man who took his revenge for past wounds. That was why it worried her that Charles seemed to trust him so implicitly. She was afraid that one day Bruno Falcucci would make Charles pay for the way the Redmond family had treated Bruno’s mother.
She swallowed, looked at the screen in front of her and changed the subject. ‘Have you seen the latest Japanese figures?’
‘More or less as I predicted,’ he shrugged.
‘Yes, right again, as usual!’ Martine said with saccharine sweetness.
He laughed. She couldn’t even make him angry. It was infuriating. She wished he would go away, he was ruining her morning.
‘I am rather busy,’ she told him coldly. ‘So unless you wanted to tell me something important...?’
‘Charles just rang me from his home,’ he said. ‘About the Rome conference...’
‘Yes?’ She was flying to Rome with Charles the following day for an international banking conference, and was rather looking forward to the trip. It was ages since she had been anywhere interesting, and it would mean getting away from the office and Bruno Falcucci for a little while.
‘His doctor has advised him to stay in bed for a week, so he won’t be able to go,’ Bruno coolly said.
‘What’s wrong? Is he ill?’ Martine anxiously asked but Bruno shook his head.
‘Just tired, I gather. A touch of flu, too, maybe. Nothing serious, but his doctor thinks he needs complete rest. He asked me to explain to you, and say how sorry he is to miss the Rome trip.’
‘Of course; I understand, though,’ Martine said, deeply disappointed, her face falling. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, he has looked quite exhausted the last few days. He really needs a long holiday, but a week in bed would be a good start. Well, I’d better cancel everything, but I don’t think we’ll be able to reclaim the price of the air tickets. The hotel can be cancelled without a problem, of course.’
She put out a hand to the phone but Bruno caught hold of her wrist, his fingers cool and light, yet making her aware of their potential strength.
‘No, don’t cancel anything. The trip is still on, it’s just that I’ll be taking Charles’s place.’
Martine stiffened. ‘You?’
His mouth curled. ‘Sorry, I know I’m no substitute for Charles in your eyes, but you’ll have to put up with my company for a few days, I’m afraid. Charles wants the bank represented. He was making a speech on the pros and cons of monetarist policy and he wants me to read it to the conference.’
Martine knew all about that speech; Charles had discussed it with her at great length. She could have delivered that speech for him, if he’d asked her, but Charles hadn’t even considered that, she realised, her mouth taut.
Bruno considered her expression, his brows crooked. ‘Charles has a rather old-fashioned view of women’s place in banking, doesn’t he?’
‘Which you share?’ she bitterly suggested.
‘You do enjoy thinking the worst of me, don’t you? No, as it happens, I don’t, but Charles was obviously ill and I couldn’t very well argue with him. Have you got all his documentation, by the way? Tickets, etcetera?’
She nodded and began to get up. Bruno moved back just enough to let her pass; she picked up the scent of his aftershave and decided she didn’t like it.
She found the folder containing all the travel documents for Charles, and handed it to Bruno.
‘The name on the tickets will have to be changed. I’ll do that.’
‘Don’t worry, my secretary will deal with it,’ he said, turning to walk out. ‘See you tomorrow, on the plane.’
She glared after him, half inclined not to turn up. Only her loyalty to Charles made her decide to go. Someone had to keep an eye on Bruno Falcucci.
They met at Heathrow, in fact, in a chaotic, overcrowded terminal building. All planes were delayed by fog in the London area. Bruno and Martine bought piles of newspapers and magazines, drank lots of bitter black coffee, tried to ignore screaming babies, restless children, the whine of the Tannoy, the discomfort of the seats they sat on.
At last the fog lifted and planes began to take off. They were two hours late in leaving for Rome, in the end.
The chauffeur-driven car they had ordered was not waiting to meet them when they arrived. They had to take a taxi, there were long queues and a black, relentless rain was falling. Rome sulked under sagging clouds and grey skies. Looking up, Martine felt very depressed.
By the time they got to their hotel, which sat near the top of the Spanish Steps, she was barely able to stand, and very fed up. She collected her key and went straight to her room, which turned out to be charming: beautifully furnished and with a magnificent view over the huddled roofs, towers and cupolas of the city.
The rain was still teeming down, lashing along streets, trickling down windows, spilling from the gargoyles on churches, splashing in gutters, forming rivers down the Spanish Steps.
Martine leaned on the window for a while, gazing out. There was a magnificent desolation about the scene spread out below her, and her eyes wandered from building to building, absorbing the atmosphere. Even in the rain Rome was noisy, bustling, over-full of people and vehicles. She heard the blare of horns, police whistles, people shouting to each other, people quarrelling loudly, the clatter of feet on old pavements.
Sitting there with the window open made her shiver after a while. She stood up, closed the window and went into her modern bathroom to take a long, warm, fragrant bath, pouring deliciously scented bath oils into the water before she climbed gratefully into it.
Bruno had suggested that they meet for dinner at eight o’clock in the bar. The first gathering of the conference was at nine o’clock the following day, and was scheduled to take place at another hotel, the Excelsior, which was a popular conference centre with efficient modern facilities, next door to the United States embassy and close to the via Veneto. Most of the delegates were also staying at the Excelsior, but Charles had wanted to have a peaceful bolthole to make for when conference politics grew too hectic. It often helped to be able to escape for a while. The lobbying began at breakfast and went on until well into the night, and if you could get away you had a better chance of preserving your sanity, Charles said.
After her bath, Martine went to sleep on her bed, wrapped in her thick white bathrobe, a quilt over her. Her dreams were as chaotic as the traffic in the Rome streets; she twisted and sighed in her sleep, her body restless, overheated.
She woke up with a start when someone knocked sharply on the door. For a second she was totally disorientated. While she had slept, night had fallen; the room was dark, only the flash of a neon light somewhere nearby in the city to show her the furniture, the high oblong of the window.
She lay on the bed, staring blankly; then somebody knocked on the door again, louder, peremptorily.
Stumbling off the bed, she went to the door and opened it on the chain, blinking in the light from the corridor.
It was Bruno, in evening dress, looking the way he had the night she first saw him—ultra-civilised, menacingly primitive. It was a very disturbing mix, added to which, just the sight of his smooth-skinned, closely shaven face and sleek black hair, his gleaming jet eyes, his powerful body, sent a strange quiver of weakness through her. Ever since she had met him she had been both alarmed by and hostile to him, working on instincts buried inside her, too deep for her to be quite sure what it was about the man that set all her alarm bells jangling.
‘Aren’t you dressed yet? We said eight o’clock,’ Bruno reminded her, his gleaming eyes roaming slowly over her dishevelled, damp coils of auburn hair, her flushed face, the short white robe which left her long legs bare and revealed the deep cleft between her breasts.
She instinctively put up a hand to pull her robe lapels together to hide her breasts, and saw Bruno’s mouth twist in wry comprehension.
‘I must have fallen asleep,’ she stammered. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a drink in the bar, and I’ll only be ten minutes, I promise!’
She shut the door quickly, afraid he would notice she was trembling. Switching on the light, she leaned on the elaborately carved oak bed for a moment, to steady her nerves. What on earth was wrong with her? Maybe she had picked up some bug? The same one Charles had got? She wouldn’t be surprised. That was how she felt—ill, feverish, weak-legged, shivery.
She didn’t want to get dressed, do her hair, have dinner alone with Bruno Falcucci; she didn’t feel strong enough.
But how could she get out of it? They were here representing the bank, standing in for Charles; she couldn’t simply duck out of her responsibilities, she would be letting Charles down. She must pull herself together.
Her hands cold and shaking, she began to get ready. She had picked out her dress before she had her bath: a dark green velvet, figure-hugging, with a deep scoop neckline along which ran a Greek key pattern in gold thread, a tight waist and very short skirt which left her long legs bare. It was formal and elegant, but once she had put it on Martine had second thoughts.
She stared at herself in the mirror, biting her lip. She had forgotten just how tight the dress was, and how short the skirt! It made her feel half-naked. Charles had always liked the dress, that was why she had packed it, but wearing it for Charles was one thing—wearing it when she was going to spend an evening alone with Bruno Falcucci was something else. The very thought of it made her hair stand up on the back of her neck.
She looked at her watch, and groaned. There was no time to change, either. If only she hadn’t fallen asleep on the bed! She still had to do her hair and her face. She picked up her brush and began to work hurriedly.
When she walked into the hotel bar she saw Bruno watching her from a table on the other side of the room and an atavistic shudder ran through her.
Déjà vu, she told herself hurriedly. That was what it was, déjà vu, because this was almost a re-run of the night they’d met—and she remembered with another shudder the way their reflections had shimmered in the dark glass behind the bar. It had seemed significant then; more so now.
He’s dangerous to me, she thought. Dangerous to Charles. To the bank.
Yet there was something darker involved, something she had never quite faced.
She did so now. I’m afraid of him, she admitted, ice trickling down her spine. He terrifies me.
She thought of Charles’s pale face and tired eyes, the sadness in his heart, and she hated Bruno Falcucci. Charles was helpless against him; he didn’t have the drive or the desire to fight back if he was attacked, but Bruno wasn’t going to destroy Charles if she could stop him, so she pushed her fear away and began to walk towards him through the crowded bar.
Her auburn hair glowed like dark flame in the light of chandeliers, her oval face a classical cameo, green-shadowed eyes, elegant nose, wide, full, generous red mouth. Her slender, rounded figure swayed under the tight dark green velvet, the low neckline drawing eyes to her high, white breasts, her pale legs moving gracefully, the skirt constantly sliding up to give glimpses of her slim thighs.
The lively hum of voices, the clink of glasses, the laughter, died away and people’s heads turned to watch her, although Martine herself was completely unaware of her effect on the others in the bar because she was too absorbed in staying cool, getting herself under control.
The only watching eyes of which she was aware were Bruno’s; she didn’t meet them but she felt them fixed on her, black, brilliant, intent, and the way they watched her made a pulse beat hard in her throat.
He stood up to greet her, she slid into the deep-upholstered seat beside him, and the noise in the bar broke out again.
‘That was quite an entrance!’ Bruno drily said. ‘What will you have to drink?’
She looked at his glass and wasn’t surprised to see that it was mineral water with a twist of lime in it. ‘The same as you, thanks.’
He ordered the drink and handed her a menu. ‘I’ve already decided what I want, but take your time to choose. The food is terrific here, and as it is a special occasion I thought we might try a glass or two of an excellent Italian wine they have on their list. You do drink wine, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes, not often,’ she agreed, looking at the menu and realising suddenly that she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten on the plane because she hated unreal food, and with surprise it dawned on her that her last meal had been breakfast at the airport. ‘What a huge menu! I don’t know what half these dishes are!’ Remembering suddenly that he was a Swiss of Italian extraction, she asked him, ‘Can you recommend something?’
He shifted along the seat and leaned over her shoulder. She felt his thigh touching hers, his arm against her, smelt his cologne.
‘This is probably good at this time of year,’ he suggested, pointing. ‘Autumn is the best time for wild mushrooms, and I love them served with seafood.’
Martine read the name of the dish falteringly: funghi e frutti di mare.
‘Mushrooms and seafood?’ she asked.
‘Exactly.’ Bruno’s deep voice had a husky tone, she felt his warm breathing on her bare shoulder.
‘OK, I’ll have that,’ she hurriedly said, nervously aware of his body somehow even closer. ‘And I suppose I’ll just have pasta for the main course.’ She would have moved away then but Bruno shook his head, pointing to the menu again.
‘Don’t be so predictable!’ he softly said, very close to her ear. ‘Try the saltimbocco...’
‘What’s that?’
‘It means...hmm..."jump in the mouth"...it’s veal escalope, rolled in ham, flavoured with sage, fried and then simmered in Marsala wine. Very rich, but it’s a Roman speciality, you must try it once, at least. While you’re in Italy, and especially in Rome, you must be more adventurous, take a few risks for once in your life!’
She tensed, picking up the undertone, the hidden meaning, and hedged instinctively. ‘Risks and banking don’t go together!’
‘Oh, but they do,’ he drawled. ‘Lending money is always a risk, but if you don’t gamble you don’t accumulate, as you know very well. You’ve been working for Charles for too long. Charles has the excuse of being middle-aged, but you’re not.’
‘Charles isn’t middle-aged!’ she threw back, flushed and angry now. ‘He’s only in his forties.’
Bruno laughed coldly. ‘That is middle-aged!’
‘Yes, well, Charles is still very...’ She broke off the sentence, not sure how she had been meaning to finish it, and Bruno finished it for her in a hard, sardonic voice.
‘Attractive? Was that what you were going to say? I know you worship the ground he walks on, and I’d be curious to know why you’re so fixated on a man who was at university before you were even born! Does he remind you of your father? Or didn’t you have a father? If I had a crude mind, I’d suspect it might be Charles’s money you were really interested in, and that thought did occur to me before I got to know you, but I’ve realised you aren’t that materialistic. No, it’s Charles himself, isn’t it?’ His dark eyes watched her tense profile closely. ‘You have a real problem, Martine. The gap’s too wide. You’d regret it bitterly sooner or later if Charles was crazy enough to take what you’re dying to give him.’
Her face was burning and a choking rage filled her throat. She turned on him furiously, her green eyes stormy with resentment.
‘How dare you...?’ She stopped as the waiter approached. Quivering, dark red, Martine had to swallow the words boiling to get out.
Bruno was as cool as the ice-cubes in their drinks. He smiled blandly at the waiter. ‘Ah, ready to take our order? Right.’ He ordered for them both, without consulting Martine again, which at any other time would have infuriated her, but which she accepted without comment then because she knew she couldn’t have said a word without her voice shaking.
By the time the waiter had gone Martine had had time to work out what she really wanted to say to Bruno, but, before she could start, someone else came up to their table.
Before she actually spoke, Martine picked up the heady, musky fragrance of her perfume. It enveloped them like a cloud.
‘Bruno, caro!’ a warm voice said, and Bruno got up, smiling. Martine watched coldly as he was engulfed in what looked like a very passionate embrace. The woman was in her thirties, her black hair wreathed at the back of her head in coils and pinned there with a huge black lace bow, her skin olive, but glowing with a golden tan she had not got in Italy at that time of year. She had a figure like a fairground switchback, curving in and out exaggeratedly: full, warm breasts, a tightly belted waist, with rounded hips giving a curved line to the black satin evening suit she wore. It glittered with diamanté on the neck and cuffs and hem. Diamonds shone in her ears, at her throat, at her wrists; her hands sparkled with rings, too.
She was certainly not a wallpaper person, thought Martine drily. In fact, she obviously dressed to be noticed, in every sense of the word.
The way she was kissing Bruno, they must surely have been lovers at one time. Good friends didn’t kiss on the mouth like that. So, that was the sort of woman he liked?
Martine’s green eyes chilled. Every little detail about him was important, told her new facts about him, might help her defeat whatever he had planned against Charles. But she wouldn’t have expected him to like a woman who looked like that.
A second later, Bruno turned her way to introduce her. ‘Angelina, this is a colleague from London, Martine Archer. Martine, this is the wife of an old friend of mine, Angelina Fabri.’
Martine smiled politely and coldly, offered her hand. The other woman took it, her own smile equally cool, studying her with shrewd, sophisticated eyes.
‘You are in banking?’ She spoke English with a strong Italian accent, her phrasing slightly off most of the time. ‘Yes, I can tell you are. A career woman, obviously. And if it gives you all you need, why not? For some women it is the answer; we don’t need to get married these days, after all!’
Martine kept her face cool, her teeth together, but she knew she had just been patronised and insulted.
Bruno smoothly intervened, openly amused by the instant hostility between the two women.
‘I think your friends are about to leave, Angelina.’
She turned to look across the room at a group near the door, and waved, nodding.
‘Yes, I must go, caro! Will we see you while you’re here? Now, promise we will!’
‘I’ll do my best. Give Carlo my best wishes, tell him I’ll ring, as soon as I can. Unfortunately, I have too many engagements during the conference, but my last day here is free, maybe we could meet then?’
‘You must come to dinner, caro
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CHARLOTTE LAMB
He Wanted All Of Her! Bruno Falcucci was nothing less than a nasty piece of work. Not only had he maneuvered himself into a position of power at the bank where Martine worked, but now he had set his eyes on conquering her, as well.But no matter how attractive Bruno was, there was no way that Martine was going to let him, with his big, black, Italian, come-to-bed eyes, get the better of her!
Body and Soul
Charlotte Lamb
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#udf800a94-3564-5a3f-a9a8-dac9711a4b58)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc4551be1-ca67-53f6-b8fb-84894ed0cce2)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
MARTINE was late, and in a hurry, so she leapt out of her taxi and ran across the pavement towards the Mayfair restaurant, too intent to notice the man in evening dress who got out of a parked car on the other side of the road and headed in the same direction.
There was a moment when either of them could have held back, but, although they glanced briefly at each other, neither of them stopped. Martine thought she was nearer and would get there first; but he moved faster.
They collided in the revolving door. Which promptly jammed—with them crushed together inside one section. Martine looked up, her eyes as stormily green as northern seas. The eyes that met hers were black, cold, irritated.
‘If you back out, that will free the door!’ said a deep, dark voice with a faint foreign accent which she couldn’t identify.
‘If you had had the manners to let me go first this wouldn’t have happened! You step back!’ she snapped.
It was all his fault, and Martine didn’t like his peremptory tone, or the fact that she had been forced so close to him. You couldn’t have got a sheet of paper between them, in fact—which meant that his body actually touched hers, making her very aware of his powerful build. He might be wearing civilised evening dress but underneath it was a distinctly primitive body: six feet of muscle and bone and smooth, tanned skin, a face that could have been carved out of granite.
‘There’s no point in arguing about whose fault it is!’ he bit out. ‘Just wriggle backwards.’
‘Any wriggling can be done by you,’ Martine informed him.
Just because she was almost a foot shorter than him, fine-boned and slender, he needn’t imagine that she was a helpless female and a pushover. She wasn’t backing down, even if it meant they stayed jammed in this door all night.
He stared down into her angry green eyes, and she bristled like a cat faced with danger, the hair standing up on the back of her neck.
Something about the arrogant tilt of his head, the sleek black hair, the cool eyes, reminded her of a man she had once loved, but who had walked out on her to marry a girl with rich parents. Three years had gone by since then, and Martine had dated other men, but never fallen in love like that again, and never meant to. She had been badly hurt once. She didn’t intend to repeat the experience.
‘Look, even an idiot should see that the easiest way of freeing the door would be for you to back out,’ he coldly pointed out.
‘Oh, very well,’ Martine said, shifting sideways to get into a better position for wriggling out. His foot was in the way. Her elegant little black shoes had thin, high heels, like stilettos. She felt one of them sink into the top of his polished shoe.
He started violently, took a sharp breath, and said something under that breath which she couldn’t quite hear but which sounded suspiciously like swearing.
‘Sorry,’ she said, and met glittering black eyes.
‘You did that deliberately!’ he accused.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! I was simply trying to get out. How was I to know you would put your foot in the way?’
He eyed her with dislike. His nostrils flared, a white line of rage around his mouth.
‘I suppose I’ll have to get us out of here or we’ll be here all night,’ he muttered. ‘Just stand still, will you?’
Turning sideways, he began to slide past her, his body pressing against hers in the process, his long thigh pushing past, his arm brushing her breast. Despite herself she felt a sharp needle of sexual awareness stab through her and tensed in shock.
‘Hey! Watch it!’ she hissed, guessing that he was inflicting his intimacy on her deliberately in male revenge because she hadn’t been the one to back out.
It was a mistake to say anything. It made him stop, dead, looking down at her with those dark, narrowed eyes barely inches above her own, their bodies still touching. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ he said through his teeth. ‘This isn’t giving me any thrill at all, I assure you.’
Martine reddened crossly. ‘Oh, just get a move on, will you?’ she muttered. ‘We’re attracting a crowd!’
There were people on the inside of the restaurant, trying to get out, and another couple on the pavement, trying to get in, all watching them and grinning. They were providing live entertainment and Martine felt very silly and very angry. She hid it, giving their audience helpless smiles and shrugs.
Her reluctant companion finally squeezed out backwards, and Martine immediately pushed the revolving door to emerge in the restaurant, murmured an apology to the people waiting, slid out of her silk evening jacket and handed it to a hovering waiter.
‘Is Mr Redmond here, yet?’
‘If he is, he’ll be in the bar, miss.’
Behind her she heard the revolving door turning and was aware of a looming presence emerging.
She ignored him.
As she walked into the circular, discreetly lit bar, she saw a faint reflection swimming in the black glass lining the wall behind the bar counter. First herself, slender, in black georgette, her face thrown into odd prominence, a pale, shimmering oval, her neck long and slim, a white magnolia pinned just above her breasts, at the edge of her deep neckline, her dark auburn hair coiled low on her nape; and, walking behind her, a head taller than her, the black-haired foreigner in his stiff white shirt front and black jacket.
She had to admit they made an interesting composition in black and white; the only colour visible was the dark flame of her red hair.
She halted to look around the room. There were a few people in the bar, but there was no sign of Charles, which didn’t surprise her. He was often unpunctual, but then he had so much on his mind. Since the death of his wife he had buried himself in work; sometimes he didn’t seem quite sure which day of the week it was! She only hoped he would remember that he had asked her to have dinner here tonight.
He had just flown back from New York that morning and hadn’t been in to the office since landing; had stayed at home, resting after the trip.
He had made their date for tonight from New York. No doubt he wanted to talk to her out of the office; there was always too much going on there for any possibility of a private conversation, and since much of the information he needed to give her was very confidential they chose their meeting-places carefully.
She sat down at one of the empty tables. Immediately a waiter came over. ‘What will you have to drink, madam?’
‘Oh...just a glass of sparkling mineral water, please,’ she said, crossed one slender, shapely leg over the other, her fine, filmy skirt riding up a little so that she had to stroke it down over her knee. Casually glancing around the bar, she found herself looking into black eyes on the other side of the room, eyes that had been watching her smoothing down her skirt, had coldly assessed her legs, risen to give the same unimpressed speculation to her figure and face.
Martine gave him a glacial stare back. She never liked getting looks like that—as if she were an object, not a human being. Some men used it as a silent insult. She had the feeling this one did, especially remembering the way he had spoken to her while they were jammed in the revolving door.
He calmly detached his gaze, looked down, shot his cuff back to allow a glimpse of his gold wristwatch and frowned, then got to his feet. Martine stiffened, thinking for a few seconds that he was coming over here to her table.
Instead he walked out of the bar without giving her another look. Several women in the room watched him avidly.
OK, he had his points, especially when you saw him in a good light, thought Martine. She liked tall men, especially when they moved like that. The tan was striking, too. He probably stripped well; his body had interesting proportions: broad shoulders, slim hips, long, long legs.
Catching herself up, she grimaced. What was she thinking about? Men like him were nothing but a disaster. She hadn’t had a man in her life for almost a year, that was the trouble, and however hard she worked, however many hours she put into her job, she still felt pretty blue at times. Frustration and loneliness must be having a dire effect on her brains for her to look twice at that guy, though!
She crossly took a couple of salted almonds from the bowl in the middle of the table and popped them into her mouth while she, too, consulted her watch.
Where was Charles?
She had no sooner thought the question than she saw him hurrying towards her, a thin, slight, fair man in a well-cut dark suit.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised, sliding into the seat next to her. ‘Am I late, or were you early?’
‘I’ve only been here a moment,’ she lied, smiling at him, her eyes faintly anxious as she absorbed the air of weariness he habitually wore. She hadn’t seen him for a week and was struck by the way he was ageing. He was only forty-five, but he looked older; there were lines around his mouth and eyes, his skin had a grey tinge.
The waiter brought her drink, looked at Charles expectantly.
‘My usual, Jimmy,’ Charles told him with a smile.
‘Yes, Mr Redmond,’ said the waiter, beaming, pleased because Charles had remembered his name.
Charles ate here frequently. He lived in a luxurious penthouse flat a short walk away; this was his nearest local restaurant and he liked the place. He had a married couple who ran his home. Mr Wright was his chauffeur and handyman, and looked after his clothes; Mrs Wright cleaned and cooked in the flat. But Charles let them have three evenings a week free, and came here to eat.
The waiter walked away and Charles turned back to smile at Martine.
‘That’s my favourite dress, you always look lovely in it,’ he said, and a faint flush crept into her face. She had put on the black georgette because whenever she wore it Charles told her how much he liked it.
Working for him meant a constant succession of important social gatherings for which she required a large and very expensive wardrobe, so she had plenty of clothes to choose from. She got a special allowance for clothes and Charles encouraged her to buy from good designers because as his personal assistant she was always representing the bank and Charles felt she should look expensive and elegant at all times. It was the image he wished the bank to convey: moneyed, sophisticated, cool.
‘Thank you, Charles, you look very elegant yourself tonight,’ she murmured, and he gave her a rueful little quirk of the mouth.
‘Why, thank you.’ He didn’t sound convinced. No doubt he knew his suit no longer fitted perfectly, revealed how thin he was getting, emphasised the fact that he had lost even more weight since she last saw him.
Charles had never been heavily built, but after his wife’s death two years ago he had lost weight as if his flesh was melting away. That hadn’t been the only change in him. His hair had been a lovely pale gold; the shock of Elizabeth’s death had left him with a sprinkling of silver hairs and a haunted look in his blue eyes.
He had been driving and had emerged unscathed himself with a few minor bruises and cuts and a slight head injury. Elizabeth had been killed instantly; Charles had never quite got over it. He blamed himself and was guilty because he had not died too. If they had had children it might have been easier for him to recover from the shock, but he and Elizabeth hadn’t yet got around to a family.
‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ he told the waiter as the man appeared with a double whisky and soda on a silver tray. ‘I’m expecting another guest to join us—would you keep an eye open for him? His name’s Falcucci, Bruno Falcucci.’
‘An Italian gentleman, would he be, sir? There’s a gentleman making a telephone call in the foyer who’s talking in Italian. I’ll check if it’s Mr Falcucci, shall I?’
‘Thanks, Jimmy,’ Charles said, smiling at him again.
Ice clinked in the glass as Charles took a swallow of whisky.
‘Who’s joining us?’ Martine asked, faintly disappointed because she had been looking forward to dinner alone with him, but not taken entirely by surprise because Charles often used social occasions to smooth a business deal, and she was frequently included in the party, whether it was lunch or dinner or a cocktail party.
‘A cousin of mine,’ Charles said with a glint of mischief in his blue eyes.
As startled as he had obviously expected her to be, Martine said, ‘You’ve never mentioned having any close relatives.’
Charles had, from time to time, told her something about himself and his background, and other members of staff at the bank had dropped the odd crumb of gossip. She had gained the impression that Charles had no near family, and very few close friends. He had always been so wrapped up in his work, even while his wife was alive, and since her death he had cut his social life almost to nil.
His friends were largely colleagues or business acquaintances, most of them married, with family commitments, making Charles an odd man out on most social occasions. That was why he had fallen into the habit lately of taking Martine along with him to any private gathering to which he was invited.
They weren’t romantically involved, simply very good friends as well as close colleagues; it suited them both to have an escort for an evening now and then, and they were both deeply involved in their work.
Charles had told her that he had been an afterthought by his parents, both of whom, apparently, had been in their late forties when he was born, their first and only child, a much loved and indulged one. Perhaps having old parents had made him so serious, so tied to duty and work?
They had died long ago, when he was a young man, leaving Charles an enormous fortune and the major interest in the family merchant bank. Charles had once said that he had begun to work as soon as he left university, and hadn’t noticed much about the world outside banking until he was nearly forty himself. That year he had been in Paris at an international conference and met a beautiful French model half his age, Elizabeth, raven-haired, tiny, exquisite. Charles fell like a ton of bricks, married her just weeks later, only to lose her again within two years, a tragedy which made him, for Martine, a deeply romantic, star-crossed figure.
She felt highly protective towards Charles, as well as liking him.
‘Bruno is the only close relative I have,’ Charles said now, giving her a smiling, rueful shrug. ‘And I’ve only met him a couple of times; he lives in Switzerland.’
‘Switzerland? And he’s in banking, of course,’ she said with a wry expression.
Charles looked amused suddenly. ‘You think that follows naturally? Well, you’re right, he is in banking, I suppose it was in his genes. Or perhaps his mother talked him into joining a bank? Anyway, he works for the Swiss Bank Corporation at the moment, but tonight I intend to ask him to join us.’
Martine’s green eyes widened. ‘Oh, I see.’ Now what did that mean? she wondered, startled.
Charles went on quietly, ‘I don’t want anyone else to know this, Martine; I’m telling you because I trust you completely. I want you to know, I’ve just made a new will, leaving my shares in the bank to him. There’s nobody else for me to leave them to.’
Martine felt cold suddenly. ‘You’re talking as if...good heavens, you’re only forty-odd. You’ll marry again, Charles. Oh, I know you still miss Elizabeth, and it isn’t easy to get over things like that, but you sound as if you’ve given up on life, and you mustn’t! There’s plenty of time to think about making wills!’
Charles gave a faint, wry smile. ‘After working in banking for years, Martine, I’d have thought you knew better than that! It is never wise to put off making a will.’
Frowning, she shrugged. ‘In principle, no, but...’
‘In practice, too. You should make one yourself. One never knows what’s around the next corner.’ His blue eyes had that haunted look again; he was thinking about Elizabeth and that crash.
Martine put a hand on his arm, comforting silently, and he gave her a quick, crooked smile, coming back to the present moment.
‘Anyway, I’ve made my will. Actually, Bruno should have had shares in the bank long ago; his mother was my father’s only sister! But my grandfather refused to leave anything at all to his daughter, Una, because she married against his will—a Swiss doctor she met on a holiday at Lake Como. Her parents disapproved violently. First, Frederick was a foreigner, and secondly he was not in banking. Worst of all, he had very little money, but he was apparently a delightful man, a good man and a good doctor. Una was very happy with him, but her father never forgave her for marrying him, so he left all his money to my father.’
‘That does seem unfair,’ Martine agreed. ‘It must have made your aunt very unhappy.’
‘I’m sure it did.’
‘And it led to a family feud!’ Martine murmured, and Charles laughed.
‘You have a disconcerting streak of romanticism!’
She blushed. She always tried to hide it; it didn’t go down well in banking circles, for one thing, and, for another, it had led her into a painful love-affair and left her with a broken heart and bitter disillusion.
‘I suppose it was something along those lines, though,’ Charles shrugged. ‘My parents exchanged Christmas cards with Aunt Una but they never visited Switzerland, and Aunt Una never came back to England. This big gulf opened up between them.’
‘How sad!’ It seemed pretty childish to Martine, but the things people did to each other often were, she thought.
Charles sighed. ‘It is really, isn’t it? Sad and very stupid. When my parents died I lost contact with Aunt Una altogether, but she died a few years ago, and Bruno wrote to tell me. I happened to be going to Switzerland on that banking commission tour so I looked him up while I was there, and I liked him.’
‘Does he know you’ve made him your main beneficiary?’ Martine shrewdly asked.
Charles gave her an amused look. ‘Not yet.’
Martine’s eyes narrowed speculatively. This Bruno Falcucci might not know yet that Charles had left the Redmond share of the bank to him, but he would know that Charles was unmarried and had no other heir, and, if he was shrewd, as he probably was if he was a senior bank executive, he would probably have worked out that he had a chance of persuading Charles to leave him some money.
‘Did you invite him to come to London, or is he here off his own bat?’
‘He rang me last week to say he had to come to London on business,’ Charles informed her, still looking amused. ‘What a suspicious little mind you’ve got!’
‘I didn’t say a word!’
‘You don’t need to! I can read your thoughts—after all, I know you very well, Martine.’ He looked down into her green eyes and they exchanged an intimate, laughing look.
At that instant somebody strolled up to the table and Charles glanced round, exclaimed, stood up, holding out his hand, his drawn and tired face lighting up.
‘Ah, there you are, Bruno! I was beginning to think you had forgotten all about tonight!’
‘I’ve been looking forward to the evening all week,’ a deep, cool voice drawled.
Martine sat there transfixed, her mouth open and her nerves in shreds. It would be him, wouldn’t it?
Of all the men in the world, she had had to pick on Bruno Falcucci to take an instant dislike to! It hadn’t occurred to her for an instant that the man she had got stuck in the revolving door with might be the man she and Charles were waiting for.
Charles was smiling, gesturing to include her in the circle. ‘Bruno, I want you to meet my right hand—Martine Archer, my personal assistant for the last four years.’
Martine numbly held out her hand.
Bruno Falcucci took it, his powerful tanned fingers swallowing up her small, pale ones.
She risked a glance upwards. His black eyes coldly mocked her. He said something polite and distant. She answered with equal remoteness. He released her hand.
‘Sit down, have a drink; their whisky is very good,’ Charles told him.
‘I don’t drink spirits.’ He looked at Martine’s glass. ‘Is that mineral water? I’ll have the same, thank you.’
‘I’d forgotten you don’t drink,’ Charles said, made a face.
‘Like your assistant here, I like to keep a cool head,’ Bruno Falcucci drawled, and Martine gave him a flicking glance. Oh, very funny! she thought.
Charles ordered the drink, adding, ‘And bring the menus, Jimmy, will you? Now, Bruno, what sort of business brings you to London?’
‘Banking,’ the answer smoothly came.
Charles laughed. ‘Of course. Is it confidential? Shall we change the subject?’
‘I can’t talk in detail about it, I’m afraid. You may read about it in the financial Press some time, but not yet.’
‘Well, how long do you plan to stay? Can you tell us that?’
‘A week, maybe two. Then I might take a holiday—fly on to Greece, perhaps, or even as far as the Caribbean. I want to relax for a while, unwind, get some sun before I go back to work.’
‘You have an amazing tan already!’ said Charles. ‘Don’t you think so, Martine?’
She gave another brief glance in Bruno Falcucci’s direction; let her lids droop indifferently over her eyes again. ‘Amazing,’ she said offhandedly.
She felt Bruno looking at her closely, considering her rich auburn hair, the fine-boned face with the warm, curved mouth and fierce green eyes, before running his gaze down over her body in arrogant appraisal.
Her flush deepened and she felt the back of her neck prickle.
‘Where do you go for a holiday?’ he asked her.
She shrugged, reluctant to answer.
‘Oh, Martine doesn’t like hot countries,’ Charles answered for her. ‘Like most redheads, her wonderful skin doesn’t like too much sun. But we had a terrific time in Sweden last summer, didn’t we, Martine? And Switzerland was fun a couple of years ago.’
‘Especially the après-ski, no doubt,’ Bruno drawled.
He was making no attempt to hide what he was thinking, his gaze flicking from her to Charles and back again, glinting with cynicism.
He suspected her of having an affair with Charles, she realised. He couldn’t be serious! Charles was almost old enough to be her father!
Oh, he was still very good-looking in a weary way, but he had no energy, his hair was thinning and turning silver, his elegant, fine-cut features had a distinct look of strain. She was deeply fond of Charles, she felt sorry for him; but that was all. She resented Bruno Falcucci’s speculative stare, the cool cynicism in his eyes.
The head waiter arrived. ‘Have you chosen yet, sir?’ he asked Charles, who looked at the others.
‘I’m ready to order—how about you two?’
Martine nodded. So did Bruno.
She chose melon and sole with a salad; Bruno chose melon, too, with prosciutto, followed by a steak, also with a salad; and Charles ordered melon followed by an omelette with a salad. He ate almost nothing these days. He would probably just pick at his food.
While they waited to be told their table was ready Charles and Bruno talked about the international banking situation. Martine listened intently, absorbing with a faint dismay the fact of Bruno Falcucci’s swift, hard intelligence. Charles knew what he was talking about, but he was like a machine running on half-power lately—he kept fading, losing interest, missing vital points. She began to suspect that Bruno could run rings around him.
There was no doubt about it. The man was potentially lethal. And she had a sinking feeling that Charles wouldn’t listen if she tried to warn him, would just laugh at her.
The head waiter came back, smiling. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Mr Redmond...’
‘Shall we go in?’ suggested Charles, rising. Martine got to her feet. He put a hand under her arm in a gallant gesture, to which she submitted, smiling at him, her eyes affectionate. He was always chivalrous, an old-fashioned man in many ways; she liked that.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Bruno Falcucci’s face: jet eyes watching her with sardonic amusement, mouth wry. Martine’s smile stiffened into anger. It was going to be an ordeal to sit through a meal with that man across the table. She wished she couldn’t read his mind so clearly, but it was as if his thoughts leapt across the table to her—or maybe he was actually allowing her, or willing her, to pick up what he was thinking!
Yet why should he? She frowned, letting Charles steer her into the dining-room. Her imagination was really working overtime, surely? She was building Bruno Falcucci up into some sort of bogeyman!
She was seated between the two men at the table, but from then on she turned all her attention, and her body, towards Charles, practically ignoring the other man except when she had no option.
Bruno Falcucci leaned back in his chair, a brooding presence, watching her out of narrowed eyes, physically dominating the circle they made: herself, Charles and him, around this table, with his wide black-clad shoulders, his deep chest and hard face.
Charles dominated the talking, though, and was too absorbed in his favourite subject, international finance, to be aware of the silent duel going on across the white-damask-covered table with its spray of dark red roses in the centre. The dining-room was shadowy, and a softly shaded lamp gave them exactly enough light in which the table glittered with crystal glass, silver cutlery and fine bone china and their faces glowed, now in shadow, now in light, like shifting masks.
It was towards the end of the meal that Charles finally asked Bruno Falcucci the question Martine knew he had been planning to put to him.
‘How would you feel about leaving your present job, Bruno, and coming to work for us in a rather more senior position?’
If Bruno was surprised he didn’t show it. There was a beat of time when he just sat there, as if absorbing the possibilities, then he calmly said, ‘That’s a very flattering offer, Charles. I would need to know precisely what you had in mind, of course, and I’d need time to think it over, but in principle I’m certainly interested.’
Charles beamed. ‘I hoped you would be. You wouldn’t regret the decision if you accepted, Bruno, I promise you that. You could have a splendid future with us, far more exciting than anything you have in prospect at the moment. Ours is a family bank and you are my only male relative.’
He shouldn’t be stating the situation quite so frankly. He was betraying the weakness of his position, Martine thought, watching Bruno Falcucci closely, her green eyes sharp and hostile.
He was watching Charles, and his face was a polite mask. Martine would have given a good deal to know what he was thinking, whether he was excited, triumphant, elated. He gave no clues.
‘I’ll get Martine to put together a proposition for you, setting out all the terms,’ Charles promised as he called for the bill. ‘And after you’ve had time to digest the contents, we can talk it over. I’m going to be frank with you—I think your mother should have been provided for in her father’s will; she should have had shares in the bank.’
Bruno nodded. ‘She should.’
There was a ruthless set to his jaw, the spark of anger in his black eyes. If Charles thought Bruno did not resent the way his mother had been treated, he was clearly wrong. Bruno resented it bitterly. Martine shivered. She hoped Charles hadn’t made a fatal mistake. Yet what threat could Bruno present to him? Charles owned a majority of the shares in the bank; Bruno couldn’t hurt him.
Charles smiled at him, apparently blithely unaware of the dark feeling in the younger man. ‘I want to make up for the past, Bruno. I want you in the family business, where you belong.’
Martine shifted restlessly, frowning. Haven’t you got eyes? she wanted to ask Charles. Can’t you see what he’s like under the good looks and the formal good manners?
Bruno flicked one of those brief, cold glances her way. Charles might not be picking up her agitation, but Bruno Falcucci was, and her dismay didn’t bother him. He looked into her eyes, then away, one black brow curling sardonically.
A hard spot of red burnt in her cheeks. She knew what that lifted eyebrow had said. She might oppose him but she wouldn’t be a problem, he could deal with her.
Well, that was what he thought! They would see about that.
Charles signed the bill, folded some notes into the leather wallet in which the bill had arrived, and stood up, yawning, looking suddenly drained and white.
‘I’m sorry, Martine,’ he said in a wearily apologetic voice. ‘I’d planned to drive you home myself, but I’m barely able to stay on my feet—will you be very cross if I just put you into a taxi back to Chelsea?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she began, but Bruno interrupted.
‘I have my car parked outside; I’ll drop her off.’
‘I thought you said you were staying at the Savoy? There’s no need to drive out to Chelsea, I can easily get a taxi.’ Martine certainly didn’t want him driving her home. The very idea of being alone with the man even for five minutes sent shivers down her spine.
‘It’s still early. I would enjoy a drive along the river,’ he shrugged.
Charles beamed. ‘And you can get to know each other! That’s a wonderful idea, I should have thought of it myself. Martine is indispensable to me, Bruno. She can tell you all you need to know about the way the bank runs.’
His car was parked across the street. As he began to walk towards it Martine caught Bruno Falcucci’s secret smile, and tensed. If she hadn’t known how it would upset Charles she would have slapped his face.
Turning away, she walked with Charles to his car, watching him with concern.
‘You look quite ill, Charles. You’ve been working too hard for far too long. I think you need a long holiday. Why don’t you take a few days off work and get away?’
‘I will, soon,’ he said quietly, bent and kissed her cheek. ‘You’re my guardian angel—don’t think I’m not aware of it. Now, be nice to Bruno. I want him to join us, Martine, sell the bank to him. I’ve done some quiet research on him and he has quite a record, he’s pulled off some brilliant deals. Even if he wasn’t family, I’d want him, but as he is a Redmond, even though his name is different, I’m determined to get him by hook or by crook.’
‘Well, in that case I’ll do what I can,’ she promised as Charles got behind the wheel of his silver Rolls. She meant what she said, despite her private reservations about the man. She would certainly sell the bank to Bruno Falcucci, but she doubted if it would be necessary. She had the feeling no persuasion would be required to get him to join them. He had always planned to do so.
Charles smiled at her through the window as he started the softly purring engine.
‘I know I can always trust you. Goodnight, Martine, see you tomorrow.’
He drove off and she turned to find Bruno Falcucci right behind her, lounging against a long, sleek, vintage black Rolls-Bentley. It was one of the loveliest cars she had ever seen; her mouth watered at the sight of it. She loved old cars.
He opened the passenger door, his body graceful as he held the door for her. ‘Where am I to take you?’
‘Do you know Chelsea?’ she curtly asked, having already discovered that he had been to London a number of times.
He nodded. ‘Vaguely. I make for Parliament Square and head off along the Embankment, right?’
She nodded. ‘I live a stone’s throw from the Tate Gallery, I’ll guide you after we get to Millbank.’
She slid into the Bentley’s interior, instinctively stroking the soft, pale cream leather seats, giving the dashboard an appreciative inspection.
‘Is this yours, or have you borrowed or hired it?’ she asked as Bruno got in beside her.
His tanned hands lightly holding the wheel he turned his black head and gave her a long, cool look.
‘It’s mine. I just bought it.’
It must have cost a fortune; she wondered how much he earned a year to be able to afford a toy like this. Well, she would find out soon, when he and Charles began negotiations.
‘You aren’t married, Mr Falcucci?’
He shook his head, that sardonic smile in evidence again.
‘Have you ever been?’ she asked.
‘No, have you?’
‘No,’ she said tersely.
‘You’re a devoted secretary, though,’ he drawled. ‘Lucky Charles.’
He turned his head again, deliberately, to meet her stare and Martine let all her dislike and distrust of him show in her face.
‘If you hurt Charles in any way I’ll kill you!’ she told him.
His brows shot up and he gave her that cool, sardonic smile, then took her breath away by what he said next.
‘If he was going to marry you, he’d have done so long ago, you know. You’re wasting your time waiting for him; which seems a pity, looking the way you do.’ His dark eyes flicked down over her body and a wave of heat flowed through her. Softly he added, ‘I’m sure a lot of men would be only too happy to help you forget Charles. I might even volunteer myself!’
Martine went dark red, her hands clenching, her teeth together, but she refused to play his game by answering or defending herself, explaining that he was wrong. Information was power, Charles had taught her long ago. Never give it away, use it for your own purposes and do so sparingly. So she let Bruno Falcucci imagine that he had hit on the truth, just gave him one icy glance, then said in a tight, brusque voice, ‘Take the next turn on the right, would you?’
The Bentley spun round the corner and began moving along the wide street of rather stately Victorian houses.
‘No comment, then?’ Bruno Falcucci asked her, watching her out of the corner of his eyes.
‘Stop here, please,’ was all Martine said.
He braked and turned towards her but she was already getting out of the car. She slammed the door then bent towards the window and he leaned over to wind it down to hear what she said.
Martine looked into his gleaming, dark eyes. ‘Remember, if you hurt Charles, I’ll make sure you pay for it,’ she said, then turned on her heel and walked away.
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU have to admit,’ said Annie, one of the share analysts, some months later, ‘he’s an asset to the bank!’
‘Oh, please, no puns this early in the morning!’ winced Martine.
‘You’ve got no sense of humour where he’s concerned, that’s the trouble,’ complained Annie, who was a year younger, and very pretty: small, fair, bubbly, and very popular with the men. ‘And you’ve dodged my question! He’s the hottest thing we’ve acquired in years. Look at that Ambleham-Tring merger—I hear we’ve picked up a lot more business from that, and his client list has doubled since he arrived.’
‘Haven’t you got any work to do?’ Martine was staring at her VDU, frowning over the string of figures coming up. ‘Because if you haven’t, I have. With Charles ringing in to say he’s working at home today, and our trip to Rome starting tomorrow, I’ve got so much to do I’ll be working until very late tonight, so get off my desk and go away, Annie!’
‘In a minute,’ Annie said, wriggling like a child on the edge of the desk, her small feet swinging back and forth. ‘I wanted to ask you something...’
‘Well, what?’ Martine irritably asked, wondering how Annie could be so thick-skinned. What did you have to do to get rid of her?
‘Has he got a woman tucked away somewhere? I mean, he hasn’t dated anyone since he joined us, he says he isn’t married, and I can’t believe he’s gay, so is there someone in the background?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t care, and will you please shut up about Bruno Falcucci, get off my desk and let me get on with my work?’ Martine frequently wished she had never heard the man’s name, let alone met him. He had been here nearly four months and she sometimes felt as if the whole place revolved around him. It certainly did as far as the female staff were concerned. They couldn’t stop talking about him; half of them were in love with him and the others were simply fascinated.
Except Martine, of course. If anything, she disliked him more now than she had the first day she’d met him.
She had watched grimly while he became a director and immediately began to dominate board meetings, making himself the centre of power on the board, a voice to be reckoned with, pushing Charles further and further out of the picture.
It was what she had feared from the beginning, but Charles would not listen even now. He had smiled gently when she pointed out that Bruno had taken over some of his own clients, some of the most lucrative, at that.
‘At my suggestion, my dear girl!’ he had insisted. ‘I’m trying to shed some of my workload. You told me I was working too hard, remember!’
‘I didn’t tell you to hand some of your best clients over to Bruno Falcucci! And you never told me that was what you were planning!’
He had given her a wry, apologetic look. ‘I knew you’d get agitated and lecture me on your favourite subject!’
Eyes startled, she’d asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Bruno,’ Charles had said, laughing softly as she flushed dark red. ‘Now, don’t deny it—you’re paranoid where he’s concerned. You think he has horns and a forked tail!’
‘Yes,’ she had said then, soberly. ‘I don’t trust him, and I only hope you aren’t making a serious mistake, letting him get into such a position of power at the bank.’
Her uneasiness had not lifted a few weeks after this discussion with Charles, on the cool autumn morning when Annie sat on her desk and would not stop talking about Bruno Falcucci.
‘Shoo,’ she told Annie, pushing her off her desk, and Annie turned a laughing face to her.
‘Oh, come on, I bet you’re secretly crazy about Bruno too—you just won’t admit it!’
‘I’d rather date Dracula!’ Martine snapped just as her office door opened.
She and Annie both looked round, both froze in confusion. Bruno stood in the doorway, his dark eyes hooded and unreadable, his powerful body briefly at rest, which she already knew was rare for him since he was perpetually in motion, a man with burning energy always racing against the clock, or himself, or the world, she wasn’t sure which.
‘What’s Dracula got that I haven’t?’ he drawled, and Annie began to giggle, half in relief because he didn’t seem angry, half with embarrassment because she didn’t know how much of the earlier conversation he had overheard.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Martine said, and Bruno looked into her eyes, his mouth twisting.
‘Could I?’
Annie’s eyes grew enormous, fascinated. She looked from one to the other and waited to hear more.
‘No,’ Martine said through her teeth.
Bruno held the door open. ‘Weren’t you just going, Annie?’ he asked in a bland voice. She hesitated, wanting to stay and eavesdrop, but Bruno’s eyes were hypnotic. Reluctantly she swayed her way across the room towards him. Martine watched Bruno watch Annie. There was a distinct gleam in the dark eyes. Annie was a pocket-sized blonde Venus—high breasts, tiny waist, rounded hips—and she knew how to move to make men stare. Bruno was staring now.
Annie paused to smile up at him; Martine couldn’t see her face but she saw the way Bruno smiled down at her.
‘Dracula hasn’t got anything you haven’t got,’ Annie said, and giggled.
‘Then why aren’t you scared?’ Bruno asked and bent towards her, lip curling to show his teeth, pretending to be about to sink his fangs into her throat.
Annie shrieked in delight and fled.
Bruno straightened and looked across the room. Martine coldly met his laughing gaze and the laughter stopped; his face tightened and turned cold. He walked towards her, letting the door slam behind him.
Her nerve-ends quivered in alarm at something in his stare. He stopped beside her desk, and for an instant of panic she was afraid he was going to touch her, kiss her.
She went crimson, then white, shrinking back from him.
He watched her inexorably.
‘One of these days I’m going to tell you why you can’t stand the sight of me,’ he said softly. ‘And then you’ll really hate me.’
‘I already do!’
It came out before she could stop it, and she bit her lip in shock. She hadn’t meant to be so up-front about her real feelings; she was horrified that she should have lost control like that. In her work she often came up against men she loathed and despised, but she knew better than to let her view of them show!
‘I’m sorry,’ she said edgily, not quite meeting his gaze. ‘I lost my temper, please forget I said that.’
If he told Charles she knew the reaction she would get. Charles would be appalled. He was aware she didn’t trust his cousin but he expected her to have a little self-control and to keep her private opinions to herself. And, in fact, so did she. She was angry with herself for losing her cool.
‘I never forget anything,’ Bruno murmured, and she believed him. She had already discovered what a fantastic memory he had; he seemed to know everything about every public company and many in private hands. The tiniest detail was retained in his mind and could be conjured up out of nowhere when he needed it. They used state-of-the-art computers to do work Bruno could do in his head and seemed to find child’s play.
‘That’s up to you,’ she said, trying to hide her faint dismay. No doubt one day she would pay for having lost her temper. She suspected him to be a man who took his revenge for past wounds. That was why it worried her that Charles seemed to trust him so implicitly. She was afraid that one day Bruno Falcucci would make Charles pay for the way the Redmond family had treated Bruno’s mother.
She swallowed, looked at the screen in front of her and changed the subject. ‘Have you seen the latest Japanese figures?’
‘More or less as I predicted,’ he shrugged.
‘Yes, right again, as usual!’ Martine said with saccharine sweetness.
He laughed. She couldn’t even make him angry. It was infuriating. She wished he would go away, he was ruining her morning.
‘I am rather busy,’ she told him coldly. ‘So unless you wanted to tell me something important...?’
‘Charles just rang me from his home,’ he said. ‘About the Rome conference...’
‘Yes?’ She was flying to Rome with Charles the following day for an international banking conference, and was rather looking forward to the trip. It was ages since she had been anywhere interesting, and it would mean getting away from the office and Bruno Falcucci for a little while.
‘His doctor has advised him to stay in bed for a week, so he won’t be able to go,’ Bruno coolly said.
‘What’s wrong? Is he ill?’ Martine anxiously asked but Bruno shook his head.
‘Just tired, I gather. A touch of flu, too, maybe. Nothing serious, but his doctor thinks he needs complete rest. He asked me to explain to you, and say how sorry he is to miss the Rome trip.’
‘Of course; I understand, though,’ Martine said, deeply disappointed, her face falling. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, he has looked quite exhausted the last few days. He really needs a long holiday, but a week in bed would be a good start. Well, I’d better cancel everything, but I don’t think we’ll be able to reclaim the price of the air tickets. The hotel can be cancelled without a problem, of course.’
She put out a hand to the phone but Bruno caught hold of her wrist, his fingers cool and light, yet making her aware of their potential strength.
‘No, don’t cancel anything. The trip is still on, it’s just that I’ll be taking Charles’s place.’
Martine stiffened. ‘You?’
His mouth curled. ‘Sorry, I know I’m no substitute for Charles in your eyes, but you’ll have to put up with my company for a few days, I’m afraid. Charles wants the bank represented. He was making a speech on the pros and cons of monetarist policy and he wants me to read it to the conference.’
Martine knew all about that speech; Charles had discussed it with her at great length. She could have delivered that speech for him, if he’d asked her, but Charles hadn’t even considered that, she realised, her mouth taut.
Bruno considered her expression, his brows crooked. ‘Charles has a rather old-fashioned view of women’s place in banking, doesn’t he?’
‘Which you share?’ she bitterly suggested.
‘You do enjoy thinking the worst of me, don’t you? No, as it happens, I don’t, but Charles was obviously ill and I couldn’t very well argue with him. Have you got all his documentation, by the way? Tickets, etcetera?’
She nodded and began to get up. Bruno moved back just enough to let her pass; she picked up the scent of his aftershave and decided she didn’t like it.
She found the folder containing all the travel documents for Charles, and handed it to Bruno.
‘The name on the tickets will have to be changed. I’ll do that.’
‘Don’t worry, my secretary will deal with it,’ he said, turning to walk out. ‘See you tomorrow, on the plane.’
She glared after him, half inclined not to turn up. Only her loyalty to Charles made her decide to go. Someone had to keep an eye on Bruno Falcucci.
They met at Heathrow, in fact, in a chaotic, overcrowded terminal building. All planes were delayed by fog in the London area. Bruno and Martine bought piles of newspapers and magazines, drank lots of bitter black coffee, tried to ignore screaming babies, restless children, the whine of the Tannoy, the discomfort of the seats they sat on.
At last the fog lifted and planes began to take off. They were two hours late in leaving for Rome, in the end.
The chauffeur-driven car they had ordered was not waiting to meet them when they arrived. They had to take a taxi, there were long queues and a black, relentless rain was falling. Rome sulked under sagging clouds and grey skies. Looking up, Martine felt very depressed.
By the time they got to their hotel, which sat near the top of the Spanish Steps, she was barely able to stand, and very fed up. She collected her key and went straight to her room, which turned out to be charming: beautifully furnished and with a magnificent view over the huddled roofs, towers and cupolas of the city.
The rain was still teeming down, lashing along streets, trickling down windows, spilling from the gargoyles on churches, splashing in gutters, forming rivers down the Spanish Steps.
Martine leaned on the window for a while, gazing out. There was a magnificent desolation about the scene spread out below her, and her eyes wandered from building to building, absorbing the atmosphere. Even in the rain Rome was noisy, bustling, over-full of people and vehicles. She heard the blare of horns, police whistles, people shouting to each other, people quarrelling loudly, the clatter of feet on old pavements.
Sitting there with the window open made her shiver after a while. She stood up, closed the window and went into her modern bathroom to take a long, warm, fragrant bath, pouring deliciously scented bath oils into the water before she climbed gratefully into it.
Bruno had suggested that they meet for dinner at eight o’clock in the bar. The first gathering of the conference was at nine o’clock the following day, and was scheduled to take place at another hotel, the Excelsior, which was a popular conference centre with efficient modern facilities, next door to the United States embassy and close to the via Veneto. Most of the delegates were also staying at the Excelsior, but Charles had wanted to have a peaceful bolthole to make for when conference politics grew too hectic. It often helped to be able to escape for a while. The lobbying began at breakfast and went on until well into the night, and if you could get away you had a better chance of preserving your sanity, Charles said.
After her bath, Martine went to sleep on her bed, wrapped in her thick white bathrobe, a quilt over her. Her dreams were as chaotic as the traffic in the Rome streets; she twisted and sighed in her sleep, her body restless, overheated.
She woke up with a start when someone knocked sharply on the door. For a second she was totally disorientated. While she had slept, night had fallen; the room was dark, only the flash of a neon light somewhere nearby in the city to show her the furniture, the high oblong of the window.
She lay on the bed, staring blankly; then somebody knocked on the door again, louder, peremptorily.
Stumbling off the bed, she went to the door and opened it on the chain, blinking in the light from the corridor.
It was Bruno, in evening dress, looking the way he had the night she first saw him—ultra-civilised, menacingly primitive. It was a very disturbing mix, added to which, just the sight of his smooth-skinned, closely shaven face and sleek black hair, his gleaming jet eyes, his powerful body, sent a strange quiver of weakness through her. Ever since she had met him she had been both alarmed by and hostile to him, working on instincts buried inside her, too deep for her to be quite sure what it was about the man that set all her alarm bells jangling.
‘Aren’t you dressed yet? We said eight o’clock,’ Bruno reminded her, his gleaming eyes roaming slowly over her dishevelled, damp coils of auburn hair, her flushed face, the short white robe which left her long legs bare and revealed the deep cleft between her breasts.
She instinctively put up a hand to pull her robe lapels together to hide her breasts, and saw Bruno’s mouth twist in wry comprehension.
‘I must have fallen asleep,’ she stammered. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a drink in the bar, and I’ll only be ten minutes, I promise!’
She shut the door quickly, afraid he would notice she was trembling. Switching on the light, she leaned on the elaborately carved oak bed for a moment, to steady her nerves. What on earth was wrong with her? Maybe she had picked up some bug? The same one Charles had got? She wouldn’t be surprised. That was how she felt—ill, feverish, weak-legged, shivery.
She didn’t want to get dressed, do her hair, have dinner alone with Bruno Falcucci; she didn’t feel strong enough.
But how could she get out of it? They were here representing the bank, standing in for Charles; she couldn’t simply duck out of her responsibilities, she would be letting Charles down. She must pull herself together.
Her hands cold and shaking, she began to get ready. She had picked out her dress before she had her bath: a dark green velvet, figure-hugging, with a deep scoop neckline along which ran a Greek key pattern in gold thread, a tight waist and very short skirt which left her long legs bare. It was formal and elegant, but once she had put it on Martine had second thoughts.
She stared at herself in the mirror, biting her lip. She had forgotten just how tight the dress was, and how short the skirt! It made her feel half-naked. Charles had always liked the dress, that was why she had packed it, but wearing it for Charles was one thing—wearing it when she was going to spend an evening alone with Bruno Falcucci was something else. The very thought of it made her hair stand up on the back of her neck.
She looked at her watch, and groaned. There was no time to change, either. If only she hadn’t fallen asleep on the bed! She still had to do her hair and her face. She picked up her brush and began to work hurriedly.
When she walked into the hotel bar she saw Bruno watching her from a table on the other side of the room and an atavistic shudder ran through her.
Déjà vu, she told herself hurriedly. That was what it was, déjà vu, because this was almost a re-run of the night they’d met—and she remembered with another shudder the way their reflections had shimmered in the dark glass behind the bar. It had seemed significant then; more so now.
He’s dangerous to me, she thought. Dangerous to Charles. To the bank.
Yet there was something darker involved, something she had never quite faced.
She did so now. I’m afraid of him, she admitted, ice trickling down her spine. He terrifies me.
She thought of Charles’s pale face and tired eyes, the sadness in his heart, and she hated Bruno Falcucci. Charles was helpless against him; he didn’t have the drive or the desire to fight back if he was attacked, but Bruno wasn’t going to destroy Charles if she could stop him, so she pushed her fear away and began to walk towards him through the crowded bar.
Her auburn hair glowed like dark flame in the light of chandeliers, her oval face a classical cameo, green-shadowed eyes, elegant nose, wide, full, generous red mouth. Her slender, rounded figure swayed under the tight dark green velvet, the low neckline drawing eyes to her high, white breasts, her pale legs moving gracefully, the skirt constantly sliding up to give glimpses of her slim thighs.
The lively hum of voices, the clink of glasses, the laughter, died away and people’s heads turned to watch her, although Martine herself was completely unaware of her effect on the others in the bar because she was too absorbed in staying cool, getting herself under control.
The only watching eyes of which she was aware were Bruno’s; she didn’t meet them but she felt them fixed on her, black, brilliant, intent, and the way they watched her made a pulse beat hard in her throat.
He stood up to greet her, she slid into the deep-upholstered seat beside him, and the noise in the bar broke out again.
‘That was quite an entrance!’ Bruno drily said. ‘What will you have to drink?’
She looked at his glass and wasn’t surprised to see that it was mineral water with a twist of lime in it. ‘The same as you, thanks.’
He ordered the drink and handed her a menu. ‘I’ve already decided what I want, but take your time to choose. The food is terrific here, and as it is a special occasion I thought we might try a glass or two of an excellent Italian wine they have on their list. You do drink wine, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes, not often,’ she agreed, looking at the menu and realising suddenly that she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten on the plane because she hated unreal food, and with surprise it dawned on her that her last meal had been breakfast at the airport. ‘What a huge menu! I don’t know what half these dishes are!’ Remembering suddenly that he was a Swiss of Italian extraction, she asked him, ‘Can you recommend something?’
He shifted along the seat and leaned over her shoulder. She felt his thigh touching hers, his arm against her, smelt his cologne.
‘This is probably good at this time of year,’ he suggested, pointing. ‘Autumn is the best time for wild mushrooms, and I love them served with seafood.’
Martine read the name of the dish falteringly: funghi e frutti di mare.
‘Mushrooms and seafood?’ she asked.
‘Exactly.’ Bruno’s deep voice had a husky tone, she felt his warm breathing on her bare shoulder.
‘OK, I’ll have that,’ she hurriedly said, nervously aware of his body somehow even closer. ‘And I suppose I’ll just have pasta for the main course.’ She would have moved away then but Bruno shook his head, pointing to the menu again.
‘Don’t be so predictable!’ he softly said, very close to her ear. ‘Try the saltimbocco...’
‘What’s that?’
‘It means...hmm..."jump in the mouth"...it’s veal escalope, rolled in ham, flavoured with sage, fried and then simmered in Marsala wine. Very rich, but it’s a Roman speciality, you must try it once, at least. While you’re in Italy, and especially in Rome, you must be more adventurous, take a few risks for once in your life!’
She tensed, picking up the undertone, the hidden meaning, and hedged instinctively. ‘Risks and banking don’t go together!’
‘Oh, but they do,’ he drawled. ‘Lending money is always a risk, but if you don’t gamble you don’t accumulate, as you know very well. You’ve been working for Charles for too long. Charles has the excuse of being middle-aged, but you’re not.’
‘Charles isn’t middle-aged!’ she threw back, flushed and angry now. ‘He’s only in his forties.’
Bruno laughed coldly. ‘That is middle-aged!’
‘Yes, well, Charles is still very...’ She broke off the sentence, not sure how she had been meaning to finish it, and Bruno finished it for her in a hard, sardonic voice.
‘Attractive? Was that what you were going to say? I know you worship the ground he walks on, and I’d be curious to know why you’re so fixated on a man who was at university before you were even born! Does he remind you of your father? Or didn’t you have a father? If I had a crude mind, I’d suspect it might be Charles’s money you were really interested in, and that thought did occur to me before I got to know you, but I’ve realised you aren’t that materialistic. No, it’s Charles himself, isn’t it?’ His dark eyes watched her tense profile closely. ‘You have a real problem, Martine. The gap’s too wide. You’d regret it bitterly sooner or later if Charles was crazy enough to take what you’re dying to give him.’
Her face was burning and a choking rage filled her throat. She turned on him furiously, her green eyes stormy with resentment.
‘How dare you...?’ She stopped as the waiter approached. Quivering, dark red, Martine had to swallow the words boiling to get out.
Bruno was as cool as the ice-cubes in their drinks. He smiled blandly at the waiter. ‘Ah, ready to take our order? Right.’ He ordered for them both, without consulting Martine again, which at any other time would have infuriated her, but which she accepted without comment then because she knew she couldn’t have said a word without her voice shaking.
By the time the waiter had gone Martine had had time to work out what she really wanted to say to Bruno, but, before she could start, someone else came up to their table.
Before she actually spoke, Martine picked up the heady, musky fragrance of her perfume. It enveloped them like a cloud.
‘Bruno, caro!’ a warm voice said, and Bruno got up, smiling. Martine watched coldly as he was engulfed in what looked like a very passionate embrace. The woman was in her thirties, her black hair wreathed at the back of her head in coils and pinned there with a huge black lace bow, her skin olive, but glowing with a golden tan she had not got in Italy at that time of year. She had a figure like a fairground switchback, curving in and out exaggeratedly: full, warm breasts, a tightly belted waist, with rounded hips giving a curved line to the black satin evening suit she wore. It glittered with diamanté on the neck and cuffs and hem. Diamonds shone in her ears, at her throat, at her wrists; her hands sparkled with rings, too.
She was certainly not a wallpaper person, thought Martine drily. In fact, she obviously dressed to be noticed, in every sense of the word.
The way she was kissing Bruno, they must surely have been lovers at one time. Good friends didn’t kiss on the mouth like that. So, that was the sort of woman he liked?
Martine’s green eyes chilled. Every little detail about him was important, told her new facts about him, might help her defeat whatever he had planned against Charles. But she wouldn’t have expected him to like a woman who looked like that.
A second later, Bruno turned her way to introduce her. ‘Angelina, this is a colleague from London, Martine Archer. Martine, this is the wife of an old friend of mine, Angelina Fabri.’
Martine smiled politely and coldly, offered her hand. The other woman took it, her own smile equally cool, studying her with shrewd, sophisticated eyes.
‘You are in banking?’ She spoke English with a strong Italian accent, her phrasing slightly off most of the time. ‘Yes, I can tell you are. A career woman, obviously. And if it gives you all you need, why not? For some women it is the answer; we don’t need to get married these days, after all!’
Martine kept her face cool, her teeth together, but she knew she had just been patronised and insulted.
Bruno smoothly intervened, openly amused by the instant hostility between the two women.
‘I think your friends are about to leave, Angelina.’
She turned to look across the room at a group near the door, and waved, nodding.
‘Yes, I must go, caro! Will we see you while you’re here? Now, promise we will!’
‘I’ll do my best. Give Carlo my best wishes, tell him I’ll ring, as soon as I can. Unfortunately, I have too many engagements during the conference, but my last day here is free, maybe we could meet then?’
‘You must come to dinner, caro
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