At The Italian's Command
CATHY WILLIAMS
In the office…Millionaire businessman Rafael Loro dominates everyone around him. Until plain but determined Sophie Frey is assigned to work with him.After hours…Rafael is used to beautiful, well-groomed women who are eager to please him. Sophie's feistiness–and innocence–are driving him crazy!Who's in command?Rafael thinks bedding Sophie will end his torture, but soon this simple seduction turns into a real need to possess her–at any price….
A warm welcome to all our readers; it’s cold outside, but the books Harlequin Presents has got for you in January will leave you positively glowing!
Raise your temperature with two right royal reads! The Sheikh’s Innocent Bride, by top author Lynne Graham, whisks you away to the blazing dunes of the desert in a classic tale of a proud sheikh’s desire for the young woman employed to clean his castle. Meanwhile, Robyn Donald is back with another compelling Bagaton story in The Royal Baby Bargain, the latest installment in her immensely popular New Zealand-based BY ROYAL COMMAND miniseries.
Want the thermostat turned up? Then why not travel with us to the glorious Greek islands, where Bought by the Greek Tycoon, by favorite author Jacqueline Baird, promises searing emotional scenes and nights of blistering passion, and Susan Stephens’s Virgin for Sale—the first title in our steamy new miniseries UNCUT—sees an uptight businesswoman learning what it is to feel pleasure in the hands of a real man!
For Cathy Williams fans, there’s a new winter warmer: in At the Italian’s Command, the heart of a notoriously cool, workaholic tycoon is finally melted by a frumpy but feisty journalist. And try turning the pages of rising star Melanie Milburne’s latest release—Back in her Husband’s Bed, about a marriage rekindled in sunny Sydney, Australia, is almost too hot to handle!
For a full list of titles and book numbers, see inside the front cover (opposite)—and enjoy!
She’s his in the bedroom,
but he can’t buy her love…
Showered with diamonds, draped in exquisite
lingerie, whisked around the world…
The ultimate fantasy becomes a reality.
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At the Italian’s Command
Cathy Williams
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
All about the author…
Cathy Williams
Cathy was born in the West Indies and has been writing Harlequin romances for over fifteen years. She is a great believer in the power of perseverance as she had never written anything before and from the starting point of zero has now fulfilled her ambition to pursue this most enjoyable of careers. She would encourage any would-be writer to have faith and go for it!
She loves the beautiful Warwickshire countryside where she lives with her husband and three children, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma. When not writing she is hard-pressed to find a moment’s free time in between the millions of household chores, not to mention being a one-woman taxi service for her daughters’ never-ending social lives.
She derives inspiration from the hot, lazy, tropical island of Trinidad (where she was born), from the peaceful countryside of middle England and, of course, from her many friends, who are a rich source of plots and are particularly garrulous when it comes to describing her heroes. It would seem from their complaints that tall, dark and charismatic men are too few and far between! Her hope is to continue writing romance fiction and providing those eternal tales of love for which, she feels, we all strive.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
EIGHT-THIRTY on a Sunday evening. Rafe heard the phone ring next to where he was sitting, in the room that had once been a library and was now his office away from the office. Global deals had no respect for English working hours, and Sundays were never days of rest for him. They were simply time when he could catch up with whatever needed doing, make calls to Australia, make sure, in essence, that everything was ticking over nicely.
Furthermore, he knew who would be on the other end of the line.
With a little sigh of half pleasure, half frustration, he picked up the receiver and as he’d predicted heard his mother’s voice on the other end of the line.
‘You’re working, Rafael. Aren’t you? You’re in that office of yours working. You shouldn’t be working on a Sunday. How many times have I told you that?’
‘Hullo, Mother.’ He smiled into the telephone, pushed his leather chair away from the desk and swivelled round, bringing the phone with him, so that he could stare out of the window. In the depths of winter, there wasn’t much to see outside, just the vague shapes of his back garden, which was large for a London house but small in comparison to the acres of land on which he had grown up. ‘How are you?’
‘I, Rafael, am fine. You, on the other hand, are heading for high blood pressure and an early grave.’
‘Thank you for that.’ He grinned and ran his fingers through his short, dark hair. ‘Never let it be said that a businessman’s life isn’t fraught with danger.’
He listened abstractedly as Claudia Loro continued more or less in the same vein for a few minutes, lecturing to him about his lifestyle, asking him about his health and punctuating his answers with pointed clucking and elaborate sighs. It was a familiar routine and one that he accepted with good-natured tolerance. He would never have allowed any other woman to preach to him about his life, and some had made the mistake of trying in the past, but his mother was different. He listened, even if he chose to ignore most of her advice.
She had now moved on to the topic of her week, bringing him up to date with what she had been doing, filling him in on what was happening in the little village where she lived and which had been his home until he’d moved down to London fourteen years previously. Already his mind was drifting off to Paul Glebe on the other side of the world, whose phone call had raised one or two problems that needed sorting out if his latest acquisition was to go ahead.
‘Anyway,’ he heard his mother say in a rounding-up tone of voice, ‘I haven’t called to witter on about my social life…’
‘Exciting though it may be.’
‘Certainly a great deal jollier than yours, my darling.’
‘My life, dearest Mama, is deeply exciting.’ He stretched out his long legs, resting them on the broad ledge of the window, and thought fleetingly of the current piece of excitement in his life. Five foot ten, legs up to her armpits and hair down to her waist. Intellectually undemanding but physically stunning. Just the way he liked them. What man needed a high IQ in his woman when all he wanted to do when he wasn’t working was give his fiercely active brain a well-deserved rest? In short, she was just the sort of girl his mother would heartily disapprove of. He wondered whether to stoke the fire by mentioning this particular fun element of his life, and decided against it.
‘But lacking in challenge, Rafael. Which is why I have a little surprise up my sleeve for you…’
The pleasant image of Angela Street and her very long legs evaporated and he grunted discouragingly, frowning at the sudden change in his mother voice. A surprise from his mother usually heralded an invitation to some informal get-together involving as many of her local friends as she could rustle up, along with their assorted offspring, in one huge, unwelcome matchmaking fest.
‘I can’t come,’ he said bluntly. Claudia Loro ignored him.
‘Do you remember Grace Frey? My very dear friend?’
‘Hard not to,’ Rafe said dryly. The pleasing image of his long-haired beauty was replaced by that of a woman in her late forties, small, energetic and very post-hippie.
‘Then you’ll surely remember her daughter. Sophie.’
Rafe all but groaned. Like her mother, Sophie Frey stuck in a person’s head like a burr under the skin. She, too, was small and distinctly unfeminine. Undisciplined hair, freckles, clothes that looked as though they had been yanked out of a junk shop and then just thrown together in a random fashion with the sole objective of making their wearer as unappealing as possible. The last time he had seen her had been at his mother’s summer barbecue. Sandals of the sort worn by the determined rambler, long, flowing skirt clashing horribly with a cardigan that looked as though it had been borrowed from someone’s grandfather. He had studiously managed to avoid her.
‘Where is this leading, Mother?’
‘Straight to your office, as a matter of fact.’
While Rafe was trying to puzzle this one out, Claudia jumped into the breach to explain.
‘She’s just changed jobs, darling. Left that dreadful office place where she’s been working and managed to land herself a job at a publishing house. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she’s been thrown in at the deep end. One of their publications includes a business magazine, which isn’t, I gather, doing terribly well. They’re trying to revamp it into something more user friendly, which basically means incorporating more human interest stories with the usual boring financial news.’
‘You’re losing me here.’ He swivelled back round to face his desk and brought his computer back to life with a click of a mouse. The report he had been reading before the telephone had rung was once more flickering in front of him, waiting to be checked.
‘Am I, darling? And you with that sharp brain of yours?’ She laughed delightedly. ‘Let me explain, in that case. Sophie has to do a feature on someone big in the business world.’
‘Ah.’ A one-hour interview was distinctly better than an evening with the local gang. ‘If she phones my secretary, I’m sure I can squeeze her in for an interview.’
‘Not so much an interview, Rafael, as…’ Her voice trailed off into thoughtful silence and Rafe began scrolling down the report, scanning the important points raised and already calculating what needed to be done.
‘As what?’ he prompted.
‘As, well, something more detailed.’
‘What could be more detailed than an interview? She sits in my office for half an hour, she asks questions, she writes my answers down in her little notepad, she goes away and writes her article or whatever it is she has to do. Of course, I would have to proofread anything she’s written. Facts have a sinister way of becoming distorted when they’re in the hands of a journalist.’
‘When I say more detailed, darling, I mean it. Her brief is to shadow you for a fortnight, really absorb what you do and how you do it, and then write an article about the man behind the empire…’
Rafe’s attention shot away from the report and focused fully on what his mother had just said.
‘That’s out of the question.’
‘Naturally, it would be a huge scoop for their very first special feature to be about you,’ Claudia Loro said calmly. ‘You’re wealthy, you’re powerful and you lead a seemingly colourful life—’
‘I said no, Mother, and you can relay that simple message to her.’
‘She starts tomorrow. I’ve promised Grace that I would help Sophie out and you are not going to let me down, Rafael.’
With anyone else, Rafe Loro would have turned on that side of his personality that could make grown men quake in fear, that contemptuously cold side that brooked no argument and silenced all opposition.
Respect and love for his mother controlled the urge, but he was in no better frame of mind the following morning as he let himself into his office two hours before his secretary was due to arrive. In fact, as he settled behind his desk his mood was filthy. It wasn’t often that Rafael Loro was rendered impotent and it was a sensation he didn’t care for. He had no intention of resigning himself to the inevitable and making the best of it. He didn’t want the girl tagging around behind him like an annoying, yapping dog and he fully intended to tell her that. If she didn’t like his attitude, then she could find herself someone else to follow.
He also didn’t like the idea of someone traipsing along with him to his meetings. Did she expect him to hold her hand and make sure that she was all right? He sincerely hoped not because if she did, then her awakening to reality would be brutal. Unfortunate but inevitable.
He was still seething when the building began to come alive with people arriving at normal working hours.
Sophie, who had spent a long time working out what she should wear, was aware of his mood before she actually made it to his office.
It seemed to her that everyone on the director’s floor was somehow tuned into the big boss’s moods. His secretary, Patricia, who met her in Reception, warned her that she was in for a hard time.
‘Poor you,’ she said sympathetically. ‘He can be pretty scary anyway, but in a bad mood he’s positively terrifying. Especially when you’re not used to it.’
Patricia Clark looked as though she was used to it. She was small, in her fifties, neatly attired, but under the warm expression was a glint of steel. Sophie guessed that you would need that working with someone like Rafael Loro, and she shuddered.
This was a situation she had not wanted, had not courted, but had somehow found herself steered into by their respective parents and their joint good intentions. Yes, she had certainly scored a hit with her company, but the very thought of having to be in the man’s presence over a two-week period made her feel sick inside.
She glanced anxiously down at herself, wondering not for the first time whether she had worn the right clothes. Not a suit, but as close to it as she could manage without having to go out and spend her hard-earned cash on pointless clothing. Her long skirt was at least dark, as was the long-sleeved stretchy top and her coat. She had pinned back her unruly red hair as best she could, using about a thousand clips in the process, and her briefcase was small, neat and very businesslike.
‘Fantastic offices,’ she said politely, trying not to gape as she was led along the plushly carpeted corridor, which was buzzing on both sides with brisk-looking people. The open area was sensibly planned out, with partitions dividing certain sections, and all the furniture was of the same type—rich wood and chrome that looked wildly expensive.
Her fragile nerves took another giddy nosedive. She could picture Rafe Loro striding through this domain, his domain, giving orders and smiling with gratification as everyone scurried around him in a flurry of panic. At eight, she had followed him around whenever she had gone with her mother to visit their massive country house. At fourteen she had adored him from a distance, that compelling young man with his entourage of adoring friends, whom he had seemed to treat with languid amusement and a certain amount of detachment, never quite letting himself go. He had always had that kind of personality. The kind that attracted a following. Returning every holiday from his boarding-school, he had always been received like royalty by all the members of his peer group, the offspring of the rich and privileged, most of whom boarded as well before flying off to universities or finishing schools in exotic European capitals. Five years his junior, she had been in awe of him and very smitten by what she had glimpsed intermittently from a distance, because their mothers were so close to one another.
Only when he had politely told her that she was making a spectacle of herself staring at him in front of his friends, had she wised up to the fact that he really didn’t like her at all. Her background was grammar-school ordinary, her house was vicarage dull, her looks were crashingly nondescript and her infatuation was comically unwelcome.
She had avoided him ever since. When she had seen him, usually at one of his mother’s Christmas parties, which she was obliged to attend, she had made sure to keep out of his way. Not difficult, as Claudia Loro’s parties were not small affairs.
She couldn’t imagine what her mother had been thinking, getting her involved in this exercise, but then Grace had always seen him as a nice young man who had made something of himself and not rested on the laurels of that golden spoon that had been firmly wedged in his mouth the day he had been born.
She watched the busy hum of people working fade behind her as she followed Patricia towards the directors’ muted, tasteful offices. The building was short and squat, interestingly fashioned around a central courtyard. The sheer size of the place made it a goodish distance to where Rafe had his office, because the directors’ quarters were located on the same level but another wing.
‘Brought you the long way,’ Patricia was explaining. ‘I thought you might be interested in seeing other sides of the company. What we left behind is the financial department.’
Sophie nodded, dazed by the opulence and dreading her destination.
Her heart was thumping by the time they finally arrived at a closed door, with a simple gilded plaque on it bearing Rafael’s name.
‘At least you’re a family friend.’ Patricia smiled. ‘You’ll probably lift him out of his black mood.’
Sophie considered that a seriously misguided statement. She had a sinking feeling about what had instigated the black mood in the first place, and she wasn’t surprised, when she was at last ushered into his hallowed office, to be greeted with an atmosphere that could freeze fire.
‘I’ll take it from here, Patricia,’ he said, giving a fast-quailing Sophie the full brunt of his devastating stare.
He had amazing eyes. She had always thought so. A vivid memory of being a young teenager, and fantasising about those eyes being directed at her, filled her cheeks with a bloom of uncomfortable colour. Green eyes, dramatic against his swarthy colouring and black hair. His father’s eyes, because the rest of him was all his mother’s Italian ancestry. The dark hair, the olive complexion, the strong, aggressive, uniquely foreign features.
She gathered herself quickly, although she didn’t move any closer into the room, just remained where she was, hovering as the door was quietly shut behind her. Patricia had taken her coat from her and pegged it in the outside room. Without it, she felt inadequate and suddenly vulnerable under that intense, unflinching gaze.
‘Sit down, Sophie,’ he said finally, nodding to the chair in front of his desk.
As soon as she was sitting, he leaned forward, linking his fingers together, and spoke in a very soft, razor-sharp voice.
‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want you here and the only reason you’re sitting on that chair in front of this desk is because I was railroaded into it by my mother. I am an extremely busy man and I have no time to take care of someone walking in my shadow for a fortnight, but I had no choice.’
Sophie refused to shrink under those cool eyes, even though at this point she could think of nothing more enjoyable than being swallowed up by the ground.
‘I realise that it’s inconvenient for you, Rafe, but this whole thing was arranged without my consent either.’
He gave a short, disbelieving laugh, but let it drop.
‘My schedule is intense.’ He shoved a piece of paper over to her and Sophie’s eyes flicked over it. A timetable that seemed to leave little room to breathe. ‘You can follow me into my meetings, although I really can’t see what the point of the exercise is. I work hard, but that is information I could have provided for you in the space of a five-minute meeting.’ Rafe sat back and proceeded to look at her with an unreadable expression on his darkly handsome face.
Same old Sophie. Gauche, tongue-tied and dressed in the same unfortunate style as her mother. Still. He had made his position clear from the onset. He wasn’t going to babysit her simply because of the connection between their parents.
‘I already knew that you’re a workaholic, Rafe—’
‘I work hard. Quite different from being a workaholic.’
‘I’ll make a note of it.’ Her blue eyes clashed with his own and he was impressed to see that her gaze was as steady as his. Must be desperate for her job, he thought. Anyone with a semblance of pride would have ditched the venture by now.
‘How are you, anyway?’ he asked, changing the subject, and was irritated to see that her cool expression didn’t thaw even fractionally in the face of this attempt at pleasantries.
‘Is that a meaningful question? I mean, are you really interested in my well-being or are you just being polite now that you’ve told me how you feel about my presence here?’
‘I’ll get back to you on that one, shall I?’ He stood up, expecting her to follow suit, which she did. ‘Meetings call. First one is on the other side of London with a couple of directors from a company I’m planning on buying.’ He strode across to a cleverly concealed sliding walnut door, which she had barely noticed when she had entered his office, and extracted his coat, which he proceeded to shrug on. ‘I move fast,’ he said, briefly turning to her, ‘and I don’t intend to slow down so that you can catch up. If you insist on this ridiculous venture, then you either keep up or get left behind. I won’t come looking for you.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’ Well, things had got off to a predictable start. He found her irritating and she disliked him. Put the two together and you were hardly going to get an easy ride, but in a way she decided that that made her job simpler. She would be able to detach herself and write a completely honest report without having to think about treading on eggshells out of consideration for him.
With that in mind, she snatched her coat from the peg in the outside office, making sure to keep on the move while she put it on, and kept pace with him, asking no questions, letting her impressions take the driving seat.
He talked, walked and reacted like a man accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. This came as no surprise. He had been like that even as a young teenager. She watched the reactions of other people as he strode through the offices, the way they involuntarily altered their body language in his passing presence. His towering personality radiated outwards like a forcefield, inspiring respect and possibly fear.
‘Are your days normally so hectic?’ she asked, once they were in the lift down.
‘Where’s your notepad? Shouldn’t you be writing down all my answers?’ The cool, velvety voice sent little prickles racing down her spine.
‘That’s not how I intend to handle it. I’m going to write up a report at the end of every evening and then when it’s all over, I’ll compile the real thing and submit it to my editor.’
‘Which would be after you show it to me. Correct?’
‘Naturally, nothing would go to print that hadn’t been given the go-ahead by you.’ Frankly, she hadn’t really thought about that at all, and now that he had mentioned it she wondered how honest an account she would be able to give. No one liked themselves displayed, warts and all, for the world to examine. The lift juddered to a stop, they emerged and it was only when they were inside the chauffeur-driven Jaguar, that she had the chance to continue the conversation. She resolutely ploughed on in the face of him opening his briefcase and extracting a wad of papers that he clearly intended to peruse for the duration of the trip, never mind her questions.
‘But I intend to write quite a detailed and frank article. Would that frighten you?’
For a second, Rafe wondered whether he had heard correctly. He snapped shut the briefcase and turned very slowly to look at her. ‘Would that frighten me? Do I look like a man who scares easily?’
Sophie stuck her chin up, but her fingers were curled painfully around the handles of her executive briefcase. ‘Everyone has their own fear zones.’
‘According to…? Whom? Sophie Frey, psychologist?’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, Rafe.’
‘There’s every need to be sarcastic when you start trying to analyse me. You can follow me around and report factually on what you see. Wafting off into some airy-fairy land of speculation isn’t going to work.’
Sophie didn’t say anything and he frowned at her, fingers tapping restlessly on his leather briefcase, which was still shut.
‘Nor do I intend to allow your personal feelings for me to colour whatever you write.’
‘My personal feelings for you? I haven’t got personal feelings for you! I happen to know you…no, I take that back…I happen to know who you are because our mothers have been friends for ever, but that’s as far as it goes!’
‘Which doesn’t go a long way towards explaining that remark you made when you walked into my office this morning.’
‘What remark?’ There was wariness in her voice as she dredged her memory bank to try and recall what he could be talking about.
‘That this business was arranged without your consent. Implying that you didn’t want to be here any more than I wanted it. My reason is purely the nuisance factor of having you or anyone else around walking two paces behind me. What’s your excuse?’
Sophie felt patches of tell-tale colour flood her cheeks. Her fingers were now gripping the briefcase so tightly that she feared they might have to be forcibly unhooked by the end of the drive. It took effort to remember that she was a grown adult, a woman of twenty-seven, who had been to art college, had had boyfriends and had worked alongside other people for the better part of three years. Those eyes on her and that powerful, sexy, charismatic face were not going to reduce her to the nervous teenager she had once been in his presence.
‘My excuse is that I don’t believe in pulling strings. Sure, I’ve landed a coup in kicking off this new departure for the magazine by shadowing you, but I would have preferred to have done the groundwork myself, found someone who actually might not have minded having me around for two weeks!’ She glared at him.
So, he thought, the awkward mouse has teeth.
‘If that’s the truth, then fair enough. But whatever you write about me has to be unbiased.’
‘And when you read what I’ve written, you have to read it with a fair eye!’
‘I am a very fair man. Ask any of my employees.’
‘I take it that you’re giving me permission to talk to them about you?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you might not like everything they have to say.’
‘In which case I’ll have the little beggars hung, drawn, quartered and then fed to the tigers I keep at the bottom of my garden specifically for that purpose…’ He smiled slowly at her and Sophie felt her breath catch in her throat. She became acutely aware of exactly how small the back seat of a car was, even the back seat of a big car.
‘I guess it’s the only efficient way of dealing with detractors,’ she said lightly, voice normal even though her heart was beating thunderously inside her. ‘Tell me, does there ever come a time when you just feel you want to crash out? I mean, you seem to be on the go permanently.’ There, much better, get the conversation back to basics.
‘I enjoy what I do. Why would I want to take time out?’
‘Because it’s exhausting?’
‘I don’t tire easily.’
‘Can I ask you how you got involved in your business? I mean, I know you inherited quite a bit when your father died years ago, but you’ve expanded…’
On firmer footing now, she could actually relax and listen to him as he gave her a potted account of his rise to his virtually untouchable status.
By the time the car was pulling up in front of a small but prestigious-looking building south of the river, she had pretty much got the factual backbone of her story mapped out in her head. A tale of a boy born into privilege, with a brain that entitled him to strive for his own goals and the burning ambition to do it. A fair bit of the story she already knew, having grown up in the same village, but it was nevertheless interesting to see his take on his situation. While he admitted to his moneyed background, it was something he obviously simply took for granted. He had never been drawn towards an excessive lifestyle, although he had not spurned the doors his family wealth had initially opened. He had taken the reins of his father’s company when the time had come and from there had begun his process of branching out.
‘And what will you be doing here?’ Sophie asked, clambering out behind him, making sure to keep up with his long strides.
‘Discussing the possibility of buying a small IT company, which I might actually hang onto for longer than usual because I think it has potential.’
‘Meaning…?’
‘Meaning that you are now entering a silent zone. You’re to be seen and not heard. Got it?’
Any thaw in him had been brief. A salutary lesson in realising that information imparted would be solely on his terms. And the occasional smile was not an invitation to familiarity. Never had been. When she was a kid, he had viewed her as a pest. As an adult, she was far removed from his league and trawling around behind him, still a pest.
‘Of course,’ Sophie said neutrally.
She had planned on taking notes, but in the end was held captive by the force of his personality. A little over two hours and she felt drained by the driving energy he imparted. Points were raised and debated, columns of figures were looked at and picked over, until several of the directors were squirming in their seats. Alongside Rafe, two of his lawyers followed proceedings, interrupting when relevant but leaving the bulk of the business to be manoeuvred by him.
She wondered whether he was typical of any man in a position of power or whether this was his unique style.
Lunch turned out to be something grabbed en route to another meeting, and by the end of the day she felt as though she had been thoroughly put through the mill.
How on earth could anyone continue to function day after day on such high levels of adrenaline?
It was the question she put to him when, at a little after six, she was getting ready to leave. The last hour had been relatively restful, at least. She had had an opportunity to chat with Patricia and to begin writing up some of her report, escaping from him into one of the empty offices further along, which she had been allowed to use temporarily.
Rafe looked up from what he had been doing and frowned. ‘I thought you’d gone. What are you still doing here?’
‘I was on my way out. I was just curious to know if your energy levels ever run dry.’
‘You’ve asked me that one already. You should take notes of what I say, then you won’t run the risk of repeating yourself.’
Sophie felt like a child whose welcome had expired. She knew her image matched the feeling. Her hair had spent the day struggling to be freed from its clip-bound hell and had mostly managed to succeed. Whatever rudimentary make-up she had donned for the day had disappeared and she had done nothing to replenish her lipstick, which meant that that too would have vanished. Her clothes, at least, had been functional given the nature of her day, but she had been all too conscious of their lack of appropriateness. In fact, at two of the meetings, several of the younger men had looked at her curiously, as though bemused by her oddity. Rafe, in all fairness, had said nothing, but she knew that he was thinking the same. And now it was time for her to leave.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise how packed your timetable is. The reality just seems a lot more driven than some entries made on a sheet of paper.’
‘Like I said, I won’t be slowing my pace to accommodate you.’
‘And as I’ve said, I won’t be expecting it.’ She hovered irresolutely by the door, wondering how to take her line of questioning one step further without it backfiring onto her.
Watching her, Rafe sat back and folded his hands behind his head. She had proved less of an irritation to him during the course of the day than he had expected, but then again she had, apart from that fleeting conversation in the car, spoken very little. He assumed she had watched him, but most of the time he had forgotten her presence altogether.
She was beginning to irritate him now, however, because he could sense her eagerness to discover something more personal about him, more than just the nuts and bolts of how someone ran an empire. That sort of information was predictably easy to acquire. It usually boiled down to hard work and gritty determination in the face of possible setbacks.
But if she was fired up with a mission to get to a personal level, nuts and bolts of company running wasn’t going to be enough. He allowed her to squirm for a few more moments.
‘If you’re finished for the day, then I would really like to get back to work,’ Rafe said politely, masking his distaste behind a veneer of politeness. ‘Unless, of course, you want to watch me pouring over these reports in silence.’
‘No.’ Sophie flashed him an awkward smile. ‘Shall I come here at the same time tomorrow morning?’
‘You can if you want to, but I won’t be here.’ He flicked through a palm-held device. ‘I have a breakfast meeting at seven at the airport with some international bankers. More of the same as today, I’m afraid. Maybe you could utilise your time more efficiently by having a look at the company from the inside. I’ll tell Patricia to show you around.’
‘Oh, right. Yes. That sounds a good idea.’
‘Fine.’ On that note, he sat forward and devoted his attention to the papers in front of him. He was aware of her presence, still hovering like a spectre by the door. ‘Run along now, Sophie,’ he said, flicking her a brief glance. ‘I have a lot to get through before I go out tonight.’
‘More clients?’
Rafe made a point of looking at his watch. ‘And the time is…nearly six-thirty. I would say your day of shadowing is resoundingly at an end, wouldn’t you?’
‘I was just trying to formulate a picture in my head of someone whose work life never ceases. I know you probably think that I’m being nosy, but for me to get a complete picture—’
‘You mean as opposed to the one-dimensional cardboard cut-out one you’re currently nurturing? Workaholic with an addiction to money-making?’ Rafe sat back and gave her a long, lazy look. ‘Well, sorry to blow your preconceived notions, but no clients tonight. Would you like to come along and sit in on my dinner date? See how the power-obsessed tycoon enjoys his leisure time?’
He was actually smiling with satisfaction at her discomfort when she shut the door behind her.
Poor little Sophie. Might have been a bit different if he hadn’t known her from way back when, if he didn’t still see her as the awkward kid who had never been able to say boo to a goose. She was a bit more sparky now than he remembered, but it was hard to drop the preconceived impressions. With a little shrug, he returned to his papers and within five minutes any thoughts of Sophie Frey had been completely forgotten.
CHAPTER TWO
WINTER, as always, was living down to expectations. No one living in London reasonably expected snow, although it might have been nice, but neither did they expect a relentless deluge of freezing rain.
Rafe, more or less inured against the vagaries of bad weather thanks to the convenience of having his own private chauffeur, was absent-mindedly contemplating those less fortunate outside when he picked out a familiar figure struggling along the pavement, head downturned, hands stuck into the pockets of her coat.
For a few seconds he toyed with the idea of pretending that he hadn’t seen her, then with an impatient sigh he instructed his chauffeur to pull over to the kerb.
Sophie, bracing herself against the rain and wishing to God that she had had the sense to travel with her umbrella, almost crashed into the open car door before she realised that it was there.
‘Get in, Sophie.’ Rafe leaned across the seat and suppressed another little twinge of annoyance as she bent down and peered into the back seat. ‘What the hell are you doing out without an umbrella?’
‘Making my way home,’ Sophie retorted. ‘Along with the rest of London.’
‘Well, you might as well climb in.’ He drew back and was aware of her dripping her way into the back seat of the car.
‘I’m sorry. I’m soaking wet. Are you sure it’s all right? I mean, I wouldn’t want to damage the upholstery of your car.’
‘Close the door behind you. You’re letting the rain in.’
Sophie slammed the door shut with a feeling of exquisite relief. Anything to be out of that driving cold rain. She shrugged out of her coat, trying to ignore the cool green eyes on her, and then stuffed it on the floor well at her feet.
‘Thank you.’ She turned to him and tried a pleasant smile on for size. ‘I didn’t realise that you’d come back to the office. Patricia said that you would probably go straight home from your last meeting.’
‘One or two things to do.’ The rain had dampened down the curls and turned the copper-red colour to an odd sort of brown. Her face, devoid of make-up, was pale and damp. He wondered whether she ever looked in a mirror at all. ‘Where are you staying?’
Sophie gave him the address, which was on the outskirts of London, and Rafe frowned.
‘I haven’t got time to drop you there. You’ll have to drop me off first and then George will take you to where you live.’
Sophie opened her mouth to argue the point and then nodded her head. She had to get out of the habit of feeling awkward in Rafe’s presence, at least if she were to do her job with any level of competency. She had to will herself to talk to him so that she could find out what made him tick. He treated her like a kid because his mind was stuck in that groove, but that gambit only worked if she allowed herself to be treated that way.
‘That’s fine,’ she said coolly. ‘Did you have a productive day?’
‘The forecast is good on several fronts,’ Rafe said, sitting back and leaning against the door so that he could watch her more thoroughly. ‘What about you? Did you manage to make the rounds of the office and get hold of any juicy titbits about me?’
‘It seems you’re the perfect boss, Rafe. No one had a bad word to say about you, but then I don’t suppose they would have felt inclined to pour their hearts out to a virtual stranger.’
‘So, disappointment on that front, then.’
‘I admit my editor might have enjoyed some gossip,’ Sophie told him truthfully, ‘but it seems that you pay well and treat your employees fairly. Group meetings on a regular basis so that they can let off steam, pay reviews biannually, membership of a sports centre, bonus packages at the end of the year, the list goes on.’
‘What did you expect, Sophie? A tyrant who chained his workers to their desks and deprived them of everything but the basics?’
‘Of course not! But I’ve worked in an office. I know that there are always grumblings of discontent around if you look hard enough.’
‘Is that why you left your job? Because of the office politics?’ He realised that, although they had met socially off and on over the years, he knew very little about her. She had stuck in his head as someone who hovered on the sidelines, always standing out like a sore thumb but not for the right reasons. ‘You did a degree in Art,’ he remarked, remembering one piece of throwaway information his mother had given him at some point. He recalled thinking that that was exactly what he would have guessed she might have done, given her appearance.
‘How do you know that?’
‘My mother must have told me at some point. Why the jump from art to office work?’
‘Because finding a job that involved my art degree was impossible,’ Sophie informed him shortly. ‘Why do you think you weren’t content on simply taking over your father’s business? It was extremely profitable. Why did you feel compelled to expand it to the extent that you have?’
Rafe recognised the ploy. She was uncomfortable talking about herself and so made her answers as brief and monosyllabic as possible before changing the subject. He couldn’t blame her. When had he ever shown the slightest interest in her? But since they were cooped up with one another for two weeks, what normal human being wouldn’t show some level of interest?
‘Ah. The fascinating question of motivation,’ Rafe drawled. ‘What do you think?’
‘I can’t write an article on what I think about you. I have to write an article based on what I observe and what you tell me about yourself.’
‘No one likes to rest on inherited wealth. I branched out because I had to flex my own intellectual muscles.’
It was an answer within a non-answer. Yes, it provided facts in a nutshell, but that fascinating question of motivation that he had mentioned earlier remained unanswered. And Sophie got the feeling that he was all too aware of the fact and was not about to do anything about it. He was very private and any excavating of his character, which really was what her editor would want to see, would have to be done very carefully.
She would have to make him feel relaxed in her company and maybe then he might let slip the odd remark that would reveal something about himself.
It helped that he saw her as nothing more than an irritating kid who had grown up. Despite any surface interest he expressed in her and what she had been doing with her life, he honestly didn’t care.
She tried not to feel vaguely hurt and insulted by that. In a way, she almost preferred the dismissive hint of impatience, the glancing look that barely took her in, to the look he was giving her now. Green eyes coolly detached, as though she just happened to be something sexless and characterless that had happened to stray within his line of vision, thereby forcing him to react in one way or another.
In this case, pretending to show an interest in what she thought. Sophie decided that she didn’t much care. The object of the exercise was to get him to open up.
‘Well, it’s always good to set challenges for yourself,’ Sophie she said, hoping her voice had attained the right level of cosiness and warmth. ‘Actually, that’s what I told myself when I ended up working in an office.’
Rafe’s voice was polite and only mildly interested. ‘That your dreams of being the next Picasso were nothing compared to the challenges of mastering the filing system and coming to grips with PowerPoint?’
His wryly sarcastic response immediately had her hackles up. ‘Actually, I never had dreams of being the next Picasso. My degree wasn’t in fine art. I studied graphic design and illustration.’
‘And I take it the office where you worked had no available department that could make use of your skills?’
Sophie smiled reluctantly. ‘Not many legal offices do, although I did acquire a very sound knowledge of the basics of family law.’
Her face changed when she smiled. There was something graceful and cautious and very appealing about it.
‘We’ll be at my place in five minutes,’ he said abruptly. ‘I recommend you come inside and get into something dry. I don’t want the responsibility of sending you home in soaking wet clothes so that you can come down with pneumonia.’
‘In that case, I’ll take the responsibility away from you by telling you that I’m fine to make my way home and change when I get there. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t usually walk around with a spare set of clothes in my handbag.’
Rafe wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or amused by her. She certainly wasn’t the silent little thing he had expected. On the other hand, he was in a hell of a rush and in no mood to listen to someone trying to have a meaningful conversation with him on the subject of life choices.
‘We’re here.’ The car had pulled up outside an exquisite mews town house, and Rafe was already pushing open his door. ‘I don’t intend to have a debate on the subject. I have spare clothes that my mother leaves from time to time when she visits. Granted, they may not be the height of youthful style, but I’d say you would be better off in them than enduring another forty minutes in soaking splendour. I’m due out this evening, and I’m running late. George can drop me off to the theatre and then take you home. Make your choice.’
Common sense won over pride. She felt hideously uncomfortable. Her clothes were sticking to her like a layer of ice-cold cling film and Lord only knew what was happening to her coat on the ground by her feet. Probably developing a nice coating of mildew even as he spoke.
‘Thank you very much,’ Sophie said, quickly shifting out of the car while he strode ahead of her. The driving rain had become a fine, sharp drizzle and she flung her coat loosely over her as she ran to keep pace with him.
George, with whom Rafe clearly had a close rapport, took himself off in the direction of what she supposed was the kitchen and she was left dripping in the hallway.
‘Follow me,’ Rafe commanded, barely bothering to look around.
It hardly gave Sophie a chance to appreciate her surroundings, but what she glimpsed as she raced behind him was impressive and a little surprising. She had expected chrome and wood and the expensive furnishings of a bachelor living in the fast lane. Lots of leather everywhere, perhaps, and abstract paintings on the walls. Instead, she was surprised to see that his house was warm and lived in, without a hint of chrome anywhere. The floor was wood, certainly, but deep, rich wood with the patina of time showing in it.
She would have liked to have had a look around some of the rooms, but he had already reached a bedroom that his mother obviously used when she visited.
‘Clothes,’ he said, opening a wardrobe. ‘More in the drawers. Bathroom just there.’ He nodded to an en suite bathroom. ‘You’ll need to be ready in half an hour if I’m to make this appointment in time. And leave your clothes. I’ll get Anya to take care of them tomorrow when she comes.’
‘Anya?’
‘My housekeeper.’ He paused and gave her a quick once-over. ‘You didn’t really think that I looked after this place without help, did you?’
‘I didn’t really give it much thought at all,’ Sophie returned without batting an eye. ‘I’ll be quick.’
She was. Hardly any time to luxuriate in the bath, and it was a bathroom made for luxuriating. The bath was deep and someone had stocked up on some delightful miniature soaps and bottles of fragrant bath foam. Claudia, she suspected. Those little touches spoke of a woman and if she spent time regularly in London with her son, then she would have provided that feminine attention to detail that he would never have considered.
Unless, of course, some other woman had seen fit to domesticate the house.
Sophie dried quickly, her mind playing on that possibility. Her editor wanted human interest and that would be very interesting indeed. He was photographed often enough with some woman adorning his arm, not one but a succession of them. Small soaps in a glass jar and that porcelain jar of pot pourri spoke of someone a little more permanent than a passing notch on the bedpost.
And he would have no problem finding any woman he wanted, she thought, dressing quickly in the first thing she could find. He had the sex-appeal syndrome in buckets.
She thought back to the times she had seen him at his mother’s house or wandering through the town on an exeat or during the holidays. Even from the innocent perspective of a young teenager, she had been struck by his popularity with the opposite sex. In fact, they had danced attendance upon him. And the years had been unnaturally kind to him. He still had the athletic build, but now there was something more powerful about it, and his aggressive personality showed on his face. She, personally, found it off-putting, but not many women would.
From the half a dozen or so outfits, she picked something the least formal. A straight brown skirt, a blouse, a camel-coloured cashmere jumper. Any attempt to do something neat with her hair, she abandoned completely, leaving it to curl disastrously around her face and down her back. The overall effect wasn’t too much of a catastrophe, and she was on time. In fact, early.
Rafe got to the top of the stairs and paused, a little startled by the transformation.
‘Early,’ he said, descending the staircase and knotting his bow-tie at the same time. ‘Not a trait I’ve often found in a woman.’
Sophie swung round at the sound of his voice and watched him as he walked slowly down towards her. She opened her mouth to say something and nothing came out. Her throat felt dry and her stomach was doing funny things too. Weird little somersaults.
The logical voice in her head was telling her that, yes, he did look stunningly handsome. White shirt, black trousers, black bow-tie, black jacket, which he was casually slinging on as he descended the staircase. Her body, on the other hand, was reacting as though she were seeing him for the first time.
‘I’ll go and get George,’ Rafe said. ‘Don’t move. I’ll be back in two minutes.’
Move? Sophie wondered whether her legs were capable of managing that perfectly normal function.
It was only as he disappeared from the hallway that her common sense finally kicked in, and with a vengeance. If she couldn’t control some pathetic response to his masculinity, then she would have no choice but to admit defeat and hand the job over to someone else. The thought was tempting, but running away from the challenge of her first assignment would be signing her own death warrant as far as Noma Publishing was concerned, and she wanted the job. Badly.
It wasn’t, she thought feverishly, as though she even liked the man. The visible package was good, but the contents left her cold.
With that lodged firmly at the forefront of her mind, she was functioning a bit more normally when he appeared with George in tow.
Her voice sounded steady as she slipped into the passenger seat and asked him normal, polite questions about what he was going to see and whether, for him, the outing would be rated as business or pleasure. All the time, she had to stop herself from staring. In the dark back seat of the car, his lean face was all shadows and angles. She managed to contort herself so that she was physically as far away from him as possible, but she was still aware of the tiny distance that separated their knees from touching. If it weren’t so pathetic, she knew it would have been laughable.
‘Sometimes the lines between business and pleasure overlap,’ he was saying, his deep, velvety voice perfectly cool and controlled. ‘The play will be good, I’m sure, and the networking will be invaluable.’
‘And, of course, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’ Sophie remarked more acidly than she had meant. He was quick to pick up on the intonation in her voice.
‘It’s how big business works, Sophie. Does that surprise you? Maybe you disapprove of the fact that client dinners and trips to the theatre are all methods of oiling the wheels. When I’m being entertained by people, I’m almost always aware that there’s a subtext, that the expensive restaurants are ways of making sure that I keep them in mind should I ever find myself in a position where I can do them a favour.’
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
‘Why should it? On a smaller scale, it happens every day to all of us.’
‘I don’t make it a habit of buttering people up just in case I might find them useful at a later date.’
‘How heroic of you.’
‘There’s nothing heroic about it. I just don’t like the thought of using people.’
‘You mean,’ Rafe said thoughtfully, ‘you’re yourself whatever the situation…’ He looked at her earnest face and the cloud of wildly spiralling hair framing it and felt a surprising kick of interest. Her soft lips were drawn together in a tight line and disapproval radiated from her in waves. Not many women disapproved of him, he realised suddenly. In fact, most tripped over themselves to make sure that he noticed them in all the right ways. It made a change to be confronted with someone who didn’t slot easily into the box. Especially, he thought, since it was a temporary situation.
‘I like to think so.’
‘And if I told you that I don’t like women arguing with me, unless it’s in the boardroom, you wouldn’t edit your reactions at all? Not even if your assignment hung in the balance…?’
‘Are you saying that I have to agree with everything you say or else you refuse to let me shadow you?’ Anger bubbled in her and spilled over. ‘Is that some kind of threat? I think it’s very sad if you feel that you have to surround yourself with yes-people! Or maybe you’re just talking about the opposite sex! Is that it? You like women to be seen and not heard and if they’re heard, it’s only on the condition that they saying something to flatter you!’ She found that she was leaning towards him, trembling.
Looking at her, Rafe was torn between bursting out laughing and carrying on with his infuriating line of chauvinistic arrogance just to see how far he could go. There was something infinitely invigorating about her reaction. Whether she realised it or not, it was, in fact, proof that she refused to toe the line.
She also looked quite pretty, all worked up like that. Her cheeks were flushed and that riotous hair gave her the look of an angry child.
‘It was a hypothetical question,’ Rafe said, raising his eyebrows in amusement. ‘Of course I don’t surround myself with yes-people.’
‘But I bet you don’t have too many women disagree with what you say,’ Sophie shrewdly flung back at him. ‘Forgetting the ones you meet in the boardroom.’ She sat back, a delayed reaction to the fact that she was much too close to him for comfort. He had been winding her up, she could see that now. It was infuriating. How could she do her job properly if he didn’t even take her seriously? What Claudia and her mother had seen as an advantage, the fact that he wasn’t a stranger to her, was conversely actually working against her.
‘I’m not generally disagreeable when I’m in the company of a woman,’ Rafe drawled. His eyes followed the movements of her hands as they gathered her hair behind her, twisting it into a makeshift pony-tail. No good. As soon as she released the tousled mass, it tumbled back around her. For someone who had not a streak of vanity in her, or so it seemed, he wondered why she hadn’t long ago had the lot chopped off. But maybe—he toyed with the tantalising idea—his one-dimensional idea of her wasn’t quite as accurate as he had imagined.
‘But then again,’ he mused, his eyes still lingering on her face, ‘they don’t usually set out to have arguments.’
‘I wasn’t arguing with you,’ Sophie said stubbornly. ‘I was voicing my opinions.’
‘Ah, yes. Fine distinction.’ With regret, he saw the theatre lit up ahead of them. ‘An argumentative woman is only one step away from being a shrew and not many men like a shrew.’
Sophie’s mouth fell open. She decided that she wasn’t going to be caught again by him having a laugh at her expense. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said tartly. ‘Now, about tomorrow. What time would you like me to be there? Patricia’s printed off a list of your meetings over the next few days and I see that you have your first meeting in High Wycombe at nine-thirty. Shall I meet you there or would you like me to come to the office first?’
‘That’s a sensitive meeting.’ Rafe frowned. It occurred to him that he hadn’t given old Mr Beardsman a thought for some time.
‘What do you mean by sensitive?’
‘It means that I don’t want you around.’ The car pulled up gently to the kerb, which was teeming with people. The rain had subsided, but even so most of them carried umbrellas just in case, or else were wearing coats with hoods.
He began opening the door and she reached out and laid her hand on his arm. ‘Why not?’
‘Because…’ Rafe shook his head in exasperation. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sophie. Why don’t you do something useful? Have tea with my mother and the pair of you can talk about me till the cows come home.’
‘Why don’t you want me at this meeting? Is there something illegal going on?’
Rafe’s mouth twitched with unconcealed amusement. ‘Yes,’ he said gravely, ‘it’s all highly illegal goings-on and I don’t want you there in case you blow my cover.’
‘Very funny, Rafe. Why can’t you try and treat me like an adult?’
‘Okay. Meet me there at nine-fifteen. I’ll make my own way there and get George to collect you from your house. Satisfied?’
‘Very. Thank you.’ She sat back and gave him a smug smile. ‘Have a nice evening.’
She felt curiously alive for the remainder of the evening. The project was going well, she told herself, hence her high spirits. The image of Rafe, dressed to kill, floated in her head and she squashed the picture hurriedly. He wasn’t a man to her, he was an object of an exercise.
Still, she took care dressing the following morning. Instead of her normal attire of flowing skirt and jumper, she wore a pair of grey trousers and a slim-fitting woollen grey top with little pearl buttons halfway down the front, something she had worn a couple of times to functions at her previous office. As an afterthought, she did away with the assortment of useless clips and instead braided her hair into a French plait. Not quite as neat, but less severe than scraping the lot back and at least escaping tendrils wouldn’t look so inappropriate.
With her briefcase and her now dry coat, she arrived at the small, shabby building feeling the epitome of the career girl.
Her mother, she thought, would be startled and a little taken aback at the image. Grace had always wanted her daughter to work, somehow, in the field of art. Granted, the publishing job met with slightly more favour than the office one had, but anything that essentially lacked creativity would be a disappointing waste of her daughter’s talent as far as she was concerned.
Sophie resolved to live up to her image and make sure that there were no emotional outbursts of any kind. Hence the brisk smile on her face as she greeted Rafe, who nodded curtly at her. Next to him was an elderly man, short, plump, with anxious, kindly eyes and a shiny grey suit that looked clean but old. The small front room was empty and, with the exception of a young girl behind a desk manning two phones, there was no sign of activity anywhere. Not a place she would have associated with the thrusting Rafael Loro, although he looked not in the slightest ill at ease with his surroundings. If anything, he seemed impatient to be off, quickly introducing her and then cutting short pleasantries by glancing at his watch.
‘I want to get this wrapped up as soon as possible, Bob,’ he said, practically herding them towards a door at the side of the room. ‘We’ve chatted enough times and now I want your answer.’
Sophie trailed behind them, watching their body language from behind. The old man’s somehow defeated, Rafe’s eloquent of that restless energy that could be so unnerving.
‘It’s a big decision, Mr Loro,’ Bob said as soon as the door was closed behind them. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and rested both arms on the table separating them. Sitting just behind him, she couldn’t see the expression on his face, but from his voice she could tell that whatever transaction was being completed was not to the old man’s liking.
‘It’s not really that big, Bob.’ Rafe’s voice implied that he had gone over this ground many times before. ‘Your company is on the rocks without hope of salvation. You owe people left, right and centre. You have had to lay off the majority of your staff and those who remain do so without any certainty of payment. I am offering to take all those cares off your hands.’
‘It’s a family company, Mr Loro! My grandfather built this up from scratch.’
‘And would hate to have seen it in the hands of receivers, who can be very impersonal when they do their job.’
And so it went on over a painful hour and a half. Rafe, brutally realistic and determined, the old man looking for ways of making the sale less unpalatable.
Eventually, Rafe looked at his watch and stood up. No handshake this time. He merely looked dispassionately at Bob and said in a low, level voice, ‘We’ve run out of talk now. You either sell or you don’t, and I’m giving you precisely one week to put my offer to your family. If you agree, then I will fix up all the necessary meetings with lawyers. If you don’t…’ He shrugged, heading for the door. ‘The world is full of sharks and if you think that I am one of them, then let me tell you that there are many with far sharper teeth.’
‘How could you?’ Sophie accused as soon as they were once more in the car. George had stayed on the premises, obviously warned in advance that their meeting would not be an all-day event.
‘How could I what?’ Rafe’s voice was cold and silky.
‘That poor old man. He was utterly intimidated by you!’
‘You’re shadowing me, Sophie, not offering comments on how I run my business. My advice to you is to stick to what you know.’
‘I know basic decency!’
‘You know nothing,’ Rafe intoned coldly. He turned to her as soon as they were in the car. ‘Life isn’t about living in a cosy little cocoon. It’s about being one step ahead of the game. Take notes, Sophie, because this bit’s important. I’m where I am today because I stay ahead of the game. It’s not a crime and it’s not a sin, it’s just life.’
‘You mean you stay ahead of the game at the expense of other people!’
Rafe looked at her flushed face through narrowed eyes. Just about now, he should shrug and let her stew in her own blinkered misconceptions. After all, since when did he ever feel compelled to justify his behaviour to anyone? His mother, yes, perhaps, but even she knew that what he did in business was not her concern.
‘I’m saving Bob from a worse fate,’ he said finally. ‘His company has made furniture for decades and with each passing year the demand for expensive handmade furniture has become less and less. It can’t compete with the cheap imitations and that’s just a fact of life, whether you like it or not. So here’s the simple equation for you—either Bob sells to me, and my offer is about the most generous he’ll get, or he goes under, sees every small asset whipped away from under him and finds himself liable for his outstanding debts, which are not inconsiderable. There is no way he can sell the company as a going concern.’
‘Then why are you so interested in buying it?’
Rafe sighed irritably. ‘Why are you so interested in the outcome of a deal you will have long left behind you in a few days’ time?’
‘Because it’s a reflection of you!’ Sophie told him. ‘Which,’ she made sure to add quickly, ‘is what I’m here for. To find out about you.’ Her blue eyes tangled with his green ones and something inside her stirred uneasily. Was that the whole truth? The question fluttered inside her, just a shadowy thought that gently tugged at the foundations, nothing alarming, just…
She gave him a bright, conciliatory smile. ‘Hence the nosiness. I know you don’t like it, but you could say that it’s my job…’
‘Okay. Here’s a question for you, in that case—what did you notice about the building?’
Sophie frowned in puzzlement. ‘It seemed a little tired and very quiet…’
‘And also sitting in quite a bit of derelict land, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘You’re buying that poor man’s family business because of the land?’
Rafe flushed, annoyed with himself for offering an explanation that was essentially none of her business. What had possessed him? The girl was like a damned dog with a bone, a small, energetic, questioning and highly irritating dog. Furthermore that horrified, accusatory look in her eyes was getting on his nerves.
‘What exactly is your problem here?’
‘What are you going to do with the land? It’s in the middle of nowhere!’
‘I am going to sit on it for a while and then I intend to turn the place into an out-of-town shopping village.’
‘Right, so let me get this straight. That poor old man, who has probably spent his whole life working for his family business, is going to have the lot demolished by a greedy tycoon who wants to make a quick buck by building lots of unsightly shops!’
Rafe’s lips thinned with outrage. ‘No one speaks to me like that!’ His voice was like the crack of a whip, which Sophie steadfastly ignored. As she ignored, too, the forbidding expression on his face.
‘Is making money the only thing that motivates you?’
‘It’s the only thing that motivates the vast majority of the human race,’ Rafe growled, flushing darkly. ‘Deny it if you can.’
‘It’s not the only thing that motivates. There are other things in life as well! Having fun, for one!’
‘What did you do last night?’
‘Last night?’ Distracted, Sophie frowned. ‘Nothing, why?’
‘Night before?’
‘I think I watched some telly.’
‘What are you doing tonight?’
‘I get where you’re heading, Rafe! But at least my whole life doesn’t revolve around work!’
‘Nor does mine. In fact, it’s purely about fun. Dinner with friends at Romano’s in Fulham tomorrow night. Why don’t you join us? After all, you do want to get the complete picture, don’t you? Unless you’re busy? Unless someone important in your life you’re currently having fun with is taking you out?’
Sophie scowled at him and he shot her a glance of lazy amusement.
‘Well? Prepared to take up the challenge? In your quest to find out all about me, which is the point of the exercise…?’
‘Just tell me what time!’
CHAPTER THREE
PROVOKED into agreeing to join Rafe and friends for dinner, Sophie had found herself the following lunchtime taking time out to do something she very rarely did, namely clothes shopping.
Having grown up with a mother who had drummed into her from an early age that a fancy dress did not ‘maketh’ the girl, Sophie had spent her teenage years good-naturedly following her friends into shops, watching as they had tried on various outfits, which they had generally had little intention of buying, and resisting their persuasions to go down the same route.
‘I don’t honestly see the point,’ she had said on several occasions. ‘I’m comfortable in what I wear.’ It had become a mantra so deeply ingrained that she had never felt as though she stood out in her teenage crowd, even though she had. Now, older, she still refused to give in to the passing trends, some of which were ridiculous and uncomfortable, but she was very much aware that, in so doing, she set herself apart from the mainstream crowd of young twenty-somethings who flaunted as much as they could get away with just so long as they attracted attention.
Attracting attention had never been high on her agenda of must-do’s.
She had never had too much trouble making friends and having boyfriends and she had proudly told herself that her unwillingness to go with the fashion flow was a mark of her strength of character.
Until now.
Rafe’s jibe at her lack of social life was all wrapped up with the way he looked at her, the way his eyes skirted over her, dismissing her as a woman. Of course, that in itself didn’t matter, but still…it rankled.
Bad motive for clothes shopping, she thought now, gazing down at what she had impulsively bought five hours previously.
Turquoise was a very daring colour, especially considering they were in the depths of winter, although at the time Sophie had been persuaded by the salesgirl into thinking that it was vibrant. The description had appealed because it was the one word she would never have used to describe herself and the one thing she wanted to convey to Rafael Loro, arrogant, patronising bastard that he was.
So here I am now, she thought glumly, the proud possessor of a skin-tight turquoise dress in suspicious stretch material. She held it up by the tips of two fingers and glanced into the shoebox where a pair of high-heeled shoes were waiting to put in their appearance. Her fantasies of wiping that smug smile off Rafe’s face now seemed absurd. Who cared if he spent every second of the remainder of her assignment smiling smugly?
Before she had left the office, he had given her precise directions to the restaurant, as if he somehow didn’t trust her to have sufficient wit to communicate her destination to a cab driver. He had also, as an afterthought, informed her that she could bring along a companion if she liked. She would have to have been blind not to have seen the shadow of a snigger that had accompanied his apparently well-intentioned remark.
She decided to wear the overpriced turquoise nonsense she had bought, and very nearly managed to convince herself that she would feel good in it.
An hour and a half later she stared back at her reflection with a sinking heart.
She was no longer looking at Sophie Frey. Sophie Frey, of the comfortable, baggy clothes and no make-up, had gone into hiding. Here was someone else. Red hair tumbled down in riotous curls, mascara and eye liner emphasised huge blue eyes, and a figure normally scrupulously hidden away now flaunted curves that Sophie was only dimly aware of possessing. The shoes made her legs look longer and thinner than they possibly could be.
She decided that it was a blessing that she would not be having to conduct any sensible, work-oriented conversations because she certainly didn’t feel very sensible in what she was wearing.
Her parents had been wrong, she thought as she sat in the back seat of the taxi, clutching her impractical black purse. There was a lot to be said for uncomfortable clothes. They made no sense on an everyday basis, but, as a one-off, they certainly did some weird personality-altering things. She felt sexy!
The restaurant, where she was eventually deposited fifteen minutes late, was tucked away and cleverly pretending to be a house. Only a discreet sign heralded that it was a restaurant at all.
Sophie felt a slight flutter of panic as she entered. Then the manager removed her coat and scarf, and sexy Sophie was back in place, smiling confidently as she was shown to Rafe’s table.
She could not remember a time when conversation had stopped for her. At school, she had always been the girl next door, never a threat to any of her girlfriends, never one of those girls sought after by the boys because they promised things with their eyes and the way they moved. She had never minded. In fact, she had come to see that, as spectator sports went, watching the world go by was a pretty good one. Later, out of her teens, she had had boyfriends and they had been nice guys, the sort you could always introduce to the parents and know that they would like him as much as you did.
As she approached the full table she now felt like one of those girls and it was crazy, but she enjoyed the feeling.
Not knowing anyone there, she inadvertently sought out Rafe. Her heart thudded for the space of a couple of seconds as his green, shuttered eyes caught hers, then the silence was broken with a series of introductions.
‘You’re late,’ Rafe said as soon as she was seated next to him. ‘I thought you were one of those women who always ran to time…’
‘Blame the taxi driver,’ Sophie lied, lifting her wineglass to her lips and not quite meeting his eyes. In the daze of introductions, she had not only noticed how magnificent he looked, but had also taken in the cool blonde seated on the other side of him. Angela Street had not been introduced as a girlfriend, but she certainly fitted the description. Long, blonde, blue-eyed and leaning possessively into him, arm touching arm, her low silk top gaping just enough to provide him with a teasing promise of what lay in store for later that night.
‘Maybe he was in temporary shock at seeing you in that very…what is the word I’m looking for?…racy little number…’ Rafe allowed his eyes to drift downwards in purely masculine appreciation. When she had walked in, he had done a double take. Had it been his imagination or had the entire table fallen silent? He, certainly, had been rendered momentarily speechless at the sight of her. Speechless and a little taken aback, because the last thing he had been expecting had been a siren in a dress that looked as though it had been spray-painted on.
‘He didn’t actually see the racy little number, as I was wearing a very thick, very old-fashioned black coat.’ Rafe had turned his back on the blonde and, out of the corner of her eye, Sophie could see the curtain of white hair falling forward as Angela attempted to regain his attention.
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