One Night In…
He felt a cold pulse of adrenalin rush through him along with the realization that the group she belonged to may have some rich benefactor who was planning to put in a rival bid for the château. It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. There were plenty of stratospherically wealthy Hollywood celebs who would be only too willing to toss a few million in the direction of an environmental charity—especially if it meant acquiring such a gem of a property at the same time as making them feel they were doing their bit to save the planet. With the exception of the charity involved, it wasn’t so very different from what he planned to do with it. And the prospect of having those plans thwarted by a group of tree-huggers was unthinkable.
In the past he had bought properties out of boredom or for a challenge or simply to irritate the people who tried to stop him, but this one was different. Angelo Emiliani wasn’t in the habit of analyzing his feelings—in fact his entire purpose in life was to keep busy enough to avoid having to have them at all—but he was prepared to acknowledge how much this project mattered to him. For old times’ sake.
For Lucia.
‘…south facing, meaning the light is particularly lovely in here.’
There was something wistful in her tone that jerked him back to the present. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he took a steadying breath in before turning his attention back to her.
She was standing by the window, looking out across the treetops to where the sea lay in a glittering arc. And she was right about the light, he thought bitterly. The evening sun fell on to her face, outlining her profile in gold-dust, highlighting the sudden softness of her sulky mouth. Crushing down the anger that smouldered somewhere inside his chest, he managed a smile.
‘You’ve been very helpful, Felicity. Really. I appreciate you showing me round.’
She looked up at him and blinked, clearly taken by surprise by the softness of his tone. Walking slowly towards her, he could see that she was trembling slightly, but bravado flashed in her dark eyes. The combination caused an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach, which he recognized as lust spiked with something more complicated.
‘It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have been here really …’
He stopped a couple of feet away from her. ‘I’m very glad you were. I’ll be sure to tell your boss how impressed I am by your professional dedication.’
That shook her. He tried not to let the tiny leap of triumph in his chest show on his face as he watched the colour flood her cheeks.
‘Please don’t. I probably shouldn’t have—’
The bare room was bathed in softest apricot, turning the pink in her hair to gleaming copper.
‘OK—but let me make it up to you in some other way. You said you were staying in Cannes—please let me take you out for dinner tonight.’
‘I can’t,’ she said hastily. ‘I’m meeting a friend.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘In fact, I’m late. I really should go.’
He nodded. Her refusal didn’t surprise him in the slightest— he hadn’t expected anything else—but, looking at those slanting, wary, kohl-smudged eyes, he felt a sharp kick of disappointment which caught him completely unawares.
She was already walking to the door, casting a last look around the room before going out on to the landing.
He followed her. Her footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs as she ran down them.
‘Where are you staying? I’ll give you a lift.’
Smiling slightly, he wondered how she would get out of that one, but she tossed a nonchalant glance at him over her shoulder.
‘Thanks. Hotel Paradis, if that’s not out of your way?’
Watching her shut the front door of the château, Angelo felt himself frowning.
He was used to having all the answers, to being at least ten steps ahead of the game. But he had to admit it that right now this girl had him floundering in the dark.
Which was an intoxicating image. But a very disturbing feeling.
CHAPTER TWO
‘NICE car.’
Anna made an effort to mask her contempt behind a façade of admiration as she glanced around the white leather interior of the ridiculously flashy sports car. But she couldn’t quite stop herself from adding with a simper, ‘I always think that cars say so much about their owners.’
This one was shouting, I belong to a man with obscene amounts of cash and issues about his masculinity, she thought with some satisfaction. Maybe Angelo Emiliani wasn’t as cool as he came across.
‘Do you?’
Admittedly his voice was infuriatingly cool, as was the way he seemed to lounge in the driver’s seat, controlling the powerful car with one hand and easing it around hairpin bends on the narrow road at speeds which …
Anna swallowed and averted her eyes from the speedometer.
‘So you’ve no doubt come to the conclusion that I’m an insecure misogynist with more money than taste?’ She felt the colour leap to her cheeks at the accuracy of his guess. ‘Well, I hate to spoil the theory, but the car is only hired. I simply asked for the fastest model available—which should tell you that I’m very impatient and I like to get everything done in the shortest possible time.’
‘In that case, wouldn’t it make more sense to have a chauffeur? So you don’t need to lose a second of valuable working time?’
‘Yes. But my impatience is perhaps only outweighed by my desire for control.’ His mouth curved into the merest suggestion of an ironic smile, letting her know he’d picked up the minute sting of sarcasm in her tone, and his blue gaze flickered over her for a second. A blissful, spine-tingling second. ‘I do have a chauffeur, of course. But wherever practical I prefer to drive myself. What about you, signorina? What sort of car do you drive?’
‘I don’t. Cars are—’
She was about to spring automatically into the standard GreenPlanet sermon about the evils wrought on the planet by the internal combustion engine, but managed to stop herself just in time. Not, however, before she noticed the smirk of satisfaction on Angelo Emiliani’s face.
‘A nuisance where I live, in Central London,’ she finished lamely, looking out of the window. ‘I take the tube everywhere.’
He’d very nearly caught her out. And, dammit, he knew it. He didn’t reply, but his silence spoke more articulately than anything he could have said.
The traffic grew heavier as they came into Cannes, and Angelo guided the car effortlessly through the streams of expensive vehicles towards the hotel. He wondered what she would do when they got there. Wait until he had gone and hitch a lift back to the protesters’ camp, he guessed. There was no way she could possibly be telling the truth about staying at the Paradis.
Was there?
‘I don’t think I got your full name,’ he said casually. With this girl it was best not to take any chances.
‘Hanson-Brooks’
‘Felicity Hanson-Brooks,’ he repeated, echoing her clipped upper-class pronunciation with a slight curl of his lip. That accent, with its suggestion of effortless privilege and complacency, never failed to set his teeth on edge and make his hackles rise. ‘That’s a very smart name.’
She glanced across at him and shrugged slightly. Defensively?
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her stretch out her long legs and shift slightly in her seat, arching her back away from the hot leather upholstery with the lissom grace of a cat stretching.
Angelo Emiliani had slept with so many women—from cocktail waitresses to contessas. Novelty, the ruthless pursuit of the new, which was what drove him in his work, was something he no longer expected to experience in the bedroom.
But he’d never had an eco-warrior.
Idly he wondered what lay beneath that perfectly simple, perfectly demure black linen dress. There was something raw about her, something earthy. He had grown tired of the neat, waxed sterility that turned every woman he undressed into a conveyor-belt Barbie—perfect and plastic. This girl looked as if she was liberatingly, excitingly beyond all of that. He breathed in deeply, savouring the thought, and was suddenly aware of the scent of her.
She smelled of dark things—bitter chocolate, black coffee, overlaid with woodsmoke.
Strong. Exotic. Delicious.
Benedetto Gesù. The very things he didn’t trust about her were the things that turned him on.
He swung into the hotel’s VIP forecourt more recklessly than he had intended and brought the car to a halt in a screech of brakes. For a moment neither of them moved and the interior of the small car suddenly seemed thick with swirling undercurrents of meaning.
His hand, still on the handbrake, was inches from her bare thigh. He flexed his fingers around the brake, and then was instantly, uncomfortably aware of the phallic symbolism of the gesture.
And so was she.
Slowly her eyes travelled upwards, until she was looking at him from beneath her lashes as shaming colour rushed to her cheeks. He must have guessed what she was thinking, he must be mocking her, she thought in miserable humiliation. How amusingly predictable that she should end up falling under his spell like every other woman. Groping for the door handle, she mustered what she hoped was a cool smile, but her attempt at nonchalance was totally ruined by the fact that she couldn’t work out how to open the door.
He leaned across her and she flattened herself against the back of the seat to avoid coming into contact with the hard length of his body. But she could smell his cool, clean scent. He straightened up slowly and she scrambled out of the car.
‘Thanks for the lift, Signor Emiliani.’
He nodded curtly, suddenly finding that the acerbic retort he would usually have found eluded him. For a fraction of a second there he had been out of control—of the car and of his ruthlessly contained emotions—and the realisation had left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
He should follow her, he thought savagely as he watched her run lightly up the steps to the hotel, but the tell-tale evidence of her effect on him made movement temporarily inadvisable. Slamming his fist down on the steering wheel, he waited a moment, then got stiffly out of the low driving seat and leaned against the roof of the car, watching her all the time.
At the top of the steps she paused and turned her head towards the long rows of little metal tables that spilled out from the hotel’s ultra-fashionable bar on to a balcony overlooking the beach. At this hour of the early evening they were already crowded with those who were wealthy and well- connected enough to be able to afford to drink in one of the most exclusive watering holes on the Riviera, and beautiful enough to want to be seen there.
Angelo’s eyes narrowed as he watched her wave frantically before hurrying inside. He straightened up, searching the crowd on the outdoor terrace for the person she could have been greeting, but in the crush of lithe, designer-clad bodies perched at tables and standing in groups it was impossible to distinguish anyone in particular.
Which, he thought savagely, tossing the car keys to a uniformed concierge, was exactly what she had calculated. It was all part of the game she was playing to try to persuade him that she genuinely was some harmless, well-bred English girl, holidaying on the Riviera with a similarly respectable friend.
He didn’t intend to let her get away with it.
Ignoring the polite greeting of the doorman, he stalked angrily through the opulent lobby to the reception desk. While he waited his eyes roved restlessly over the shifting groups of people, but there was no sign of her.
The blonde receptionist batted thickly mascaraed eyelashes at him as he asked for Felicity Hanson-Brooks’s room number.
‘Well, monsieur, we’re really not supposed to … ‘
‘Please. She gave it to me last night and I arranged to pick her up, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.’ He gave her his most helpless smile and watched her melt. ‘I can’t stand her up.’
Blushing furiously under her heavy make-up, the girl gave it to him and was rewarded with a smile that would give her sleepless nights for the next month.
His face hardening as he turned away, Angelo took a seat on a Louis XIV-style sofa beneath a hideous golden palm tree and thoughtfully took out his phone. That hadn’t been the outcome he had expected. He checked his watch. It was too late now to catch any of his contacts in the London office of Arundel-Ducasse, and he was starting to get a nasty feeling that he might just be in for a surprise there too.
Was his instinct about this girl completely wrong?
With fresh determination he speed-dialled his PA and asked her to arrange for his chauffeur to bring his dinner suit down to the Paradis. He wasn’t leaving tonight until he’d got some answers. In the meantime, he had a deal to finalise.
‘OK, you have precisely thirty seconds to explain.’
Leaning over the little table, Anna gave Fliss a brief hug then sank down into one of the trendy aluminium chairs and took a long sip of the drink that was waiting for her.
‘’Splain wha'?’ she queried innocently around the ridiculous straw and cocktail olive with which the Hotel Paradis saw fit to furnish their Martinis. The ice in hers had melted long ago so it was warm and watery, but it still had a very welcome alcoholic kick.
Leaning back in her seat, Fliss tapped her foot and tried to look cross, but her eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘Let me think now … Who invented cellulite? Why men don’t have a shopping gene? Or maybe why you’ve turned up forty minutes late in the company of a gorgeous bloke?’
Sullenly Anna took a long suck of Martini. ‘Hmm, that’s actually quite interesting. You see “gorgeous bloke” and I see “ruthless, vulgar billionaire property developer.”’
Fliss’s eyes widened and she let out a long, low whistle.
‘That was Angelo Emiliani?’
As reactions went it was a pretty satisfying one, Anna reflected sulkily, so why did it irritate the life out of her?
Fliss’s eyes skimmed the terrace, as if hungry to see him again. ‘Now I understand why the girls in our office call him The Ice Prince and fight each other practically to the death to take his calls. He is quite amazingly lush …’
Anna affected extreme indifference and looked into the distance, to where the sun was dyeing the surface of the sea the same colour as her hair.
‘So the gossip was spot on,’ Fliss mused eagerly. ‘He’s the mystery buyer for the château.’
‘Correction,’ snapped Anna. ‘He’s the would-be mystery buyer for the château. The papers aren’t signed yet.’
Fliss glanced at her sharply. ‘But they will be, surely? As soon as his offer is made formally? I mean, the whole point is that you and your father need the money from the sale, isn’t it?’
Viciously Anna stabbed the olive with the cocktail stick. ‘Of course. But I don’t want to let Château Belle-Eden go to someone who’s going to rip it apart and turn it into some hideous showpiece of trendy architecture.’
Fliss was looking at her steadily. ‘And what about your father? What does he say about that?’
‘Why should he care? He hasn’t been near the place in years. He wouldn’t care if Emiliani wanted to paint it purple and turn it into a vice den, but luckily, thanks to French inheritance law, it’s half mine, so whatever he says the sale can’t go ahead until I’ve signed the papers.’
‘Right,’ said Fliss decisively. ‘I’ll come with you if you like. You can introduce me to the delicious Signor Emiliani.’
Anna paled at the thought. As far as Angelo Emiliani was concerned he’d already met Felicity Hanson-Brooks, but now wasn’t the time to confess about that. Not when Fliss had that scary look on her face.
‘You are going to sign them, aren’t you, Anna?’
Anna’s gaze swept over the packed terrace. The setting sun gave the beautiful tanned faces of the Riviera crowd a flattering rosy glow. The noise of excited conversation was underlaid by a faint but insistent bass beat as the nightclubs and parties swung into life. Edgy and restless, Anna felt its feverish pulse echoed inside her.
‘Eventually. I—that is, GreenPlanet too—just want to try to find out what he has in mind for it before the sale is completed. Gavin—one of the GreenPlanet guys—has heard something about a connection with a pharmaceutical company, and apparently Emiliani is intending to cut down most of the pine forest for a landing strip, which of course we’re very concerned about. If that’s the case—’
Fliss shook her glossy, well-groomed head. ‘You won’t stop him. The guy’s legendary for making things happen. It’s what he does. And hell, Anna, it’s what he does beautifully. He’ll make Belle-Eden into something wonderful.’
Seeing the stricken look on Anna’s face, she realised instantly that she’d said the wrong thing. ‘It’s wonderful as it is,’ Anna snapped. ‘He can only ruin it. And the environment. All those trees—’
Fliss was looking at her steadily, sadly. ‘Oh, Anna, that’s not really the issue here, is it? Look, honey, I know when you had to give up ballet it hit you hard. It was your life, and it’s left a big empty space which no one can blame you for trying to fill. But all this eco-stuff? Are you sure you really care about it enough to take on someone like Angelo Emiliani?’
Leaning her elbows on the table, Anna dropped her head into her hands. Suddenly she felt very tired. In the darkness behind her fingers the image of Angelo Emiliani standing at the window in her grandmother’s room came back to her—tall, broad-shouldered and utterly sure of the power he wielded. His confidence was daunting.
It was also horribly, irresistibly attractive.
She felt Fliss’s hand on her arm. ‘Are you sure you’re not just grasping at something to fill that empty space, and maybe—just maybe—get back at your father?’
Anna sat up abruptly and tugged out the band that held her hair back, letting it fall around her face with a flash of vivid pink.
‘Oh, God, Fliss. Maybe. I don’t know; I’m still so angry with him for not being honest with me for all those years. And with Mum, but that’s awful because she’s not here and I still miss her so much too. And that’s why I can’t just let go of the château. It’s my last … link with her. It meant everything to her. It was a part of her.’
‘I think you’re wrong. It’s just a place. She’d understand why it had to be sold. You meant everything to her. You were a part of her.’
Anna got stiffly to her feet and Fliss almost gasped at the pain in her eyes, still raw after all these years. ‘Ah, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? I wasn’t.’ Clumsily she hitched her bag over her shoulder and pushed her chair in, then looked at Fliss with a bright, false smile. ‘Anyway, you’d better go and get ready for Saskia’s gruesome party.’
‘Why don’t you come?’ Fliss was standing up too now, but beneath the red glow cast over the table by the umbrella her face was lined with concern. ‘I know you hate her, but the party’s in the nightclub downstairs; it’ll be pitch dark and she’ll have invited so many people you probably won’t even see her.’
Anna smiled ruefully and began making her way through the crowd back to the hotel lobby. ‘The GreenPlanet guys are having a party on the beach later on. I think I fit in better there somehow, don’t you?’
‘Who cares? You can fit in wherever you want to, Anna. Stop worrying about who you are or what you are and just relax.’ Fliss was almost having to run to keep up with her, but that just meant she talked louder, her exasperated voice rising above the general chatter. Anna clenched her teeth and walked faster.
In the lobby she stopped, leaning against the trunk of a giant golden ornamental palm tree while she waited for Fliss to catch up. But a voice behind her caught her attention.
She felt her throat constrict, her stomach tighten as she recognised that deep, smooth timbre with its faint Italian accent.
She didn’t even have to look round to know where he was. She could tell simply from seeing the direction in which the eyes of every woman in the room were drawn. But still she couldn’t resist.
He was leaning against one of the ornamental palm trees also, his mobile phone pressed to his ear, his broad shoulders stooped and his blond head bent. Utterly self-contained, he looked languid and somehow separate from the bustle of the busy hotel. Only the staccato tap of one long brown finger on the golden tree trunk hinted at the restless energy beneath the impassive exterior.
She darted back out of sight behind her own palm tree, biting her lip, wishing as she used to when she was a little girl that she could click her heels like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and find herself back at home. If she left now he’d see her, and then he’d know that her story about staying in the hotel was a big lie. He’d probably find out sooner or later, but she wasn’t ready to give him the satisfaction yet.
Fliss appeared and was just about to launch into reproach, but Anna pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Listen, I’ll come to the party,’ she hissed urgently as Fliss looked at her in bewilderment. ‘Can you lend me something to wear?’
Fliss nodded.
‘Great. Thanks, Fliss. Now, we’re going to walk quickly across this lobby to the lifts without looking round. Do you understand?’
Fliss nodded again, looking as if she thought there was a very real possibility that Anna was in fact seriously mentally disturbed. ‘Why?’
‘I’ll tell you later. Let’s go.’
Slowly, with admirable cool, she left the safety of her palm tree and sauntered past him, managing to keep her gaze firmly fixed ahead. Fliss, however, was much less disciplined and by the time she stepped into the lift her eyes were virtually out on stalks.
‘It was him, wasn’t it? Angelo Emiliani? He is glorious. I wonder if he’s staying here.’ She giggled. ‘I wonder if I could find out his room number.’
But Anna wasn’t listening. She was too busy thinking about the two words she’d just overheard Angelo Emiliani saying. Words that, it would seem, proved that GreenPlanet were on the right lines.
Grafton-Tarrant.
The name of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
CHAPTER THREE
‘BETTER?’ asked Fliss with a grin as Anna emerged, pink-cheeked and wrapped in a towel, from her en suite bathroom.
‘Much. The facilities in the Belle-Eden pinewoods aren’t exactly five star,’ Anna replied, vigorously towelling her hair. ‘I’ve spent the last week hallucinating about hot baths and scented oils.’
Fliss opened the mini-bar and took out a couple of tiny bottles of Chablis. ‘I’m so glad you decided to come tonight,’ she said, unscrewing the tops and handing one to Anna before raising hers and taking a swig. ‘Here’s to Angelo Emiliani and whatever he did to make you change your mind.’ Picking up a paperback and a bathrobe, she headed towards the bathroom and waved a hand airily around the room before she disappeared. ‘Help yourself. Make-up, clothes, whatever—although I do have a dress in mind for you. I bought it because it was so lovely I couldn’t leave it in the shop, but in all honesty it makes my boobs look like over-inflated balloons.’
‘That’s a bad thing?’
‘Yep. Believe me. On you it’ll look sensational.’ Blowing a kiss, she vanished into the steam and shut the door.
Left alone, Anna sank on to the enormous bed and thought about what Fliss had just said.
Here’s to Angelo Emiliani and whatever he did to make you change your mind.
But that was just it. He hadn’t had to do anything. Just his presence down there in the lobby had been enough, and she had to admit that even his absence was pretty potent too. Throwing herself backwards on to the bed with a hungry moan, she gave in to the thoughts that had flitted distractingly though her head all evening, conjuring his face in her mind’s eye, hearing the low rasp of his voice. Her body, still hot and damp from the bath, throbbed, reminding her of her forbidden feelings with devastating honesty. Trailing trembling, hesitant fingers down over her midriff, she imagined his touch …