by Lynne Graham
‘No, you couldn’t, Mum, because you don’t own the house,’ Maya parried wearily. ‘And I’ll be keeping the appointment with Manzini Finance, not you and Dad.’
Rory squeezed his wife’s shoulder comfortingly. ‘Maya understands all this financial stuff better than us,’ he said with confident pride in his daughter’s abilities. ‘She’ll sort this out in a trice.’
Maya studied her parents with quivering lips, which she had to compress to stay in control of her tongue. There would be no sorting it out this time. It was a case of pay up and move out, but she supposed only the actual experience of being homeless would persuade her parents that their mindset of running away from their debts was no longer sustainable. And that was all very well, but what about Matt?
It was her kid brother that her heart bled for the most. The house had been specially adapted for his needs and he had a place in a special school nearby. It was unlikely that her family would be able to stay in the same area. He would lose his schooling and his little circle of mates, lose his home and the few freedoms he still had. Even for an able-bodied child that would be a tough proposition but for a disabled child, it was absolutely tragic.
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing Tommaso again,’ her mother sighed. ‘He was like my big brother. Honestly, he was the nicest, kindest man.’
‘I seriously doubt that someone as important in Manzini Finance as this Tommaso must be will be present at the meeting,’ Maya pointed out, striving not to add the reminder that a nice guy wouldn’t have allowed such a letter to be sent to his pseudo little sister. As usual, her mother’s expectations were far removed from the reality of what was likely to happen.
‘You’re probably right,’ Lucia conceded. ‘As a family member, Tommaso must be very senior now in his grandfather’s business.’
‘I need to dress for the appointment,’ Maya pointed out, escaping the small lounge to flee down the corridor of their semi-detached bungalow home into the bedroom she had grown up in with her twin. It still had bunk beds, there not being the space for any other option.
It was fortunate that she kept her interview suit at her parents’ home, although she doubted if it mattered what she wore in the circumstances. Short of selling her soul to the devil, there was no way anyone was going to extend further understanding to her financially incompetent parents, but it was equally fortunate that she had had the foresight to have her father sign a power of attorney in her name so that she was able to deal with their money problems on their behalf. At least that gave her the scope to try to find a resolution.
After all, now that her academic studies were complete, she had already accepted a high-earning position as a trader with a top city firm and would be starting work at the end of the month. She hadn’t yet mentioned that news to her family because she wasn’t exactly looking forward to the prospect. It was ironic that she didn’t revere money and the ability to earn lots of it when, right now, her family was in desperate need of cash. Was there the smallest chance that she could pledge most of that future salary towards her parents’ debt and gain her family a little breathing space to stay on in the house? It was a far-fetched idea and she knew it, but it was the only offer of repayment she had within her power to make. Maybe someone at Manzini Finance would prove to have a heart but she wasn’t her mother: she was a pessimist.
It was a simple fact of life that people who handled money took good care of it to make a profit, and people who didn’t or couldn’t pay up, like her parents, were a losing investment.
Maya donned her black interview suit and braided her long hair into a more restrained, adult style, her anxious strained green eyes meeting her in the mirror. Oh, please, God, she thought fearfully, thinking of her brother’s needs, let me be meeting with a man or a woman with a heart...
* * *
It was a very fancy office in the centre of the City of London at a prestigious address. Maya was trying not to be impressed but she was impressed, by the elegant receptionist clad in designer clothes, the contemporary architectural design of the building and the buzz of a busy city office space that screamed cutting edge and modern. She sat in the waiting area rigid as a stick of rock, reckoning that there was little chance of meeting with compassion in such a place as Manzini Finance.
All smiles, the receptionist approached her to usher her in for her meeting, her attitude almost fawning, which disconcerted Maya, who was good at reading body language. As the door opened she mustered her courage, her eloquence, her top-flight brain and then all of it fell away in a split second when she stared across the vast office at the very tall, well-built and denim-clad man standing there. And it was unnervingly impossible to hang onto her self-discipline when she saw the same guy she had first seen the night of the hen do at the club with her friends.
‘What...what are you doing here?’ she muttered in disbelief.
Raffaele was never petty, but he enjoyed the sight of Maya being knocked off her cool, self-contained perch, the widening of the witchy green eyes, the faint pink feathering across her cheeks and the surprised pout of her luscious pink lips. He shifted position, his big powerful frame tensing as the cut of his jeans tightened across the groin. He didn’t know what it was about her, certainly not the atrociously ugly suit she sported, but she aroused him. And that was fortunate in the circumstances, wasn’t it? he reasoned, but he knew he didn’t like that instinctive physical reaction to her. He didn’t like anything outside his control, didn’t want to be troubled by the suspicion that anything with her could mean anything beyond a business deal.
‘I am Raffaele Manzini. It was my father who gave your parents the original loan.’
‘Tommaso? My mother said he was a very nice man.’
‘He is. Unfortunately for you, however, he is no longer involved in Manzini business. He cut ties with his family around the same time as your mother ran away from hers.’
Maya was trying hard not to stare at him but, really, it was very difficult. In a dark nightclub he had been strikingly good-looking, in broad daylight, he was almost impossibly beautiful, sunlight glinting off his blue-black hair, lingering on cheekbones sharp as blades, a strong straight nose, a full wide mouth. And then those eyes, deeply densely dark, enhanced by lush black lashes yet disturbingly expressionless.
‘Why unfortunately for me?’ Maya queried.
‘My father was probably the only nice—’ he stressed the word with a sardonic twist of his mouth ‘—person in his family. I’m not nice and I have no ambition to be. You do, however, have something that I want, which I consider very providential for you in this scenario.’
‘P-Providential?’ she stammered, knocked off-balance by that unexpected statement because how could she possibly have anything that he could want?
‘I have the power to make all the bad stuff in your life vanish,’ Raffaele spelt out with blazing assurance. ‘I know about all the debts your family have, so don’t waste your time trying to bluff me. Now take a seat and we’ll talk.’
His attitude set her teeth on edge, but she fought the sensation because, whether she liked it or not, he was the guy with the power. She settled down in an armchair in the seating area in the corner while he rang for coffee. It arrived at supersonic speed, on a tray carried by the receptionist, who didn’t seem able to take her eyes off Raffaele. Like a mesmerised groupie she giggled when he spoke, and backed out again in a smiling daze as if she had touched liquid sunlight. Maya resisted the urge to roll her eyes, wondering if that was how women usually reacted to him, recalling how her own friends had behaved, and suppressed a sigh, wondering if she should ask what he had been doing in that club that night, wondering if it was wiser simply to leave the topic alone. But she didn’t believe in a coincidence that far-fetched.
‘So...tell me, why haven’t you ditched your family yet?’ Raffaele enquired as she took her first sip of coffee.
Maya almost choked and cleared her thr
oat in haste, scanning him for a clue as to whether or not he was joking. He didn’t look as if he was joking. ‘Why would you ask me that?’
‘It’s an obvious question. Your family are like an albatross round your neck dragging you down,’ Raffaele informed her. ‘With your brain and your prospects, I would have ditched them long ago and moved on to make my own life.’
He was deadly serious. ‘Your attitude tells me that you’re not particularly close to your own family, because if you were you wouldn’t need to be asking me that question,’ Maya countered. ‘I love them a great deal, even though they’re flawed. But then nobody’s perfect. I’m not either.’
‘Your fatal flaw is that you’re sentimental. I don’t get attached to people,’ Raffaele revealed, disconcerting her again.
‘Why are we having this weird conversation?’ she asked. ‘I mean, we’re strangers and this is supposed to be a business meeting.’
‘How can we have a business meeting when I already know that you and your family are broke and completely unable to settle their debts? In that field, there is nothing to discuss. I don’t waste time playing games for the sake of it.’
Maya sipped at her coffee, striving not to look at him, but somehow he commanded the room, drawing her attention continually back to his corner where he sat in a fluid sprawl of long limbs, a black tee stretched across his broad torso, faded, ripped and frayed designer denim clinging to long muscular thighs. Aware of where her gaze had strayed, she flushed, choosing in preference to focus on his lean bronzed face. ‘You were in that club I was in, you approached me...why?’ she asked starkly, wishing that steady but uninformative dark regard of his weren’t quite so unsettling.
‘I wanted to see you in the flesh. I was curious. How up to date are you on our respective families’ histories?’
‘I know nothing about your family and only that my mother’s family once wanted her to marry your father,’ she admitted.
‘Allow me to bring you up to speed,’ Raffaele murmured, his concentration shot when she crossed her legs, revealing for a split second a tiny slice of pale inner thigh that was inexplicably outrageously erotic.
Raffaele clenched his strong jaw, questioning his libido’s overreaction to such a tame glimpse of the female body. He didn’t like how she turned him on hard and fast. He didn’t like that he wanted to unbraid her hair to see it loose again and rip off that ugly suit and put her in clothing that would flatter her tall, slender figure. Such reactions didn’t come naturally to him—at least they never had before with any other woman.
‘You were saying,’ she prompted, irritating him more.
He gave her a potted history of their families’ marital misses and the news about her ancestor’s will and the company. Her eyes widened. ‘But that was really stupid of him... I mean, what if—?’
‘Exactly,’ Raffaele interposed. ‘And all sorts of complications have arisen since with the company, particularly now that they have a dearth of Parisi talent to run it. It’s going downhill and I want to acquire it.’
Maya glanced up, still mulling over the tangled tale he had spun. ‘But you can’t acquire it,’ she said. ‘Not without marrying and producing a child.’
‘The mathematician can put two and two together.’ Raffaele shifted his cup in a mocking congratulatory gesture. ‘That’s why you’re here. You’re my chance to buy.’
Maya was frowning, her incredulity rising in a great tide so that she set down her coffee cup and stood up, all flustered and defensive. ‘And that’s why you wanted to catch a look at me in the club,’ she realised out loud. ‘But I’m not your chance to buy the company... I couldn’t marry you and have a child with you!’
‘Never say never, Maya,’ Raffaele advised with inhuman calm. ‘Once you think it through, you’ll realise that I’m offering you an unbeatable deal. Sit down again.’
‘There’s no reason for me to sit down again when I wouldn’t even consider something so barbaric!’ she exclaimed. ‘And only a man very far removed from reality could label conceiving a child as an unbeatable deal!’
Raffaele angled his dark arrogant head back and smiled, startling her. ‘There’s the sentimental flaw coming out.’
‘Don’t you have any sense of decency?’ Maya hissed down at him.
‘Probably not but I do know that, while some women and men casually conceive kids on one-night stands, asking you to marry me first and have a child, whom I will fully support, is not that barbaric a request in today’s world,’ Raffaele maintained smoothly. ‘If I have a child with you, it will probably be the only child I ever have and my heir, so you would be raising a child with every possible advantage and privilege from birth.’
‘Money doesn’t come into this equation. Right and wrong do!’ Maya slammed back at him. ‘Where’s your conscience?’
‘Where this issue is concerned it is as quiet as the grave,’ Raffaele countered levelly. ‘Your family is one step away from being put out on the street with a disabled child.’
‘No, you really don’t have a conscience,’ Maya decided, shocked by that reminder and trembling with the force of her emotions.
‘Where has conscience got you dealing with your irresponsible father?’ Raffaele enquired silkily. ‘As a bonus, I would sort him out for you as well. He needs a job, not another business he can’t cope with. You need to be realistic about the future. You can’t save them from the consequences of their own stupidity all on your own. You need my money. I need a Parisi descendant as a wife and to have a child with.’
‘You really are the most hateful man!’ Maya slung at him wrathfully.
‘And there’s flaw number two,’ Raffaele enumerated coolly. ‘You’re an emotional drama queen. I’m not an emotional person.’
‘That’s good,’ Maya told him with a razor-edged smile as she snatched up the cream jug on the tray and doused him with what remained of the contents.
Raffaele vaulted upright, towering over her, his lean, devastatingly handsome features still calm and controlled as he shook himself as casually as a dog that had run through a puddle. ‘Did that make you feel better, Maya?’
‘Yes!’ she yelled back at him as she stalked towards the door.
‘But it hasn’t changed the situation you’re in, has it? So, you have some thinking to do,’ Raffaele told her with infuriating cool. ‘Walk round the block to dissipate the rage. Think sensibly about what I’m offering. I’m offering you your life back because I will free you from all responsibility for your family. All their debts will finally be settled. Their lives will only change for the better and so will yours because you won’t have to worry about them any more.’
‘Dear heaven, who did you take your lessons off? Svengali?’ Maya gasped, her heart hammering, her head awash with murderous impulses she had never experienced in her life before. She was so enraged that she was shaking all over.
‘I’m more Machiavellian in outlook,’ Raffaele paused to tell her gravely. ‘You need to take a deep breath and count to ten before you try to deal with me because losing your temper will back you into a corner and ensure that you lose every time.’
‘I would sooner die than be married to a monster like you!’ Maya shouted at him.
‘I don’t think so, Maya. I think you’ll be back here within the hour with a different attitude because I’m the only option you have right now,’ Raffaele forecast with a satisfaction that blazed like a neon sign in his scorching dark golden eyes.
Just when she had decided he was a sociopath he’d revealed an emotion, only not the right kind of emotion, while he had reduced her to a mindless state of rage. Had she ever pictured herself burying a knife in a man’s chest before? She didn’t think so. In a daze she stalked back out and into the lift. She couldn’t think straight.
Raffaele immediately got on the phone to Sal to instruct that one of his bodyguards should tail her.
&nb
sp; ‘Why?’ Sal asked baldly.
‘She’s in shock. I don’t want her stepping out in front of a bus...or something,’ Raffaele murmured. ‘Not when she’s going to be my wife.’
‘She agreed?’ Sal demanded.
‘She will,’ Raffaele confirmed with unblemished confidence.
* * *
Without any idea where she was going, Maya marched down the street as though she was on a mission. Her brain was awash with conflicting thoughts laced with a depth of anger she hadn’t known she had the ability to feel. He had asked her to conceive a baby as part of a business deal, apparently quite content to create his own flesh and blood purely in the name of profit, recognising nothing wrong in such behaviour. What a poor little mite that child would be! He was immoral, unscrupulous and totally free of normal civilised constraints, as if he had been reared in a jungle well away from the rest of the human race. She had never met anyone that avant-garde before and he had shocked her to her conservative core. When her feet began to ache in her cheap but presentable black medium-heel shoes she walked into a café and bought a cup of tea.
As the sheer shock value of meeting with Raffaele Manzini ebbed, realities began flocking back in to weigh her down. Just as he had forecast, which sent another spear of fury rattling through her slim body. It was pointless to have become so angry when she was powerless, she recognised, ready to kick herself for being so impressionable. She had been traumatised by his shamelessly insouciant suggestion that she go to bed with him to have a baby to allow him to acquire a company he wanted. Did he honestly believe that a wedding ring would take away the shock of that proposition? Could any guy be more cold-blooded?
Yet suddenly she was trapped in a corner with an offer of a rescue that had come out of left field at her when she had least expected it. He had spelt out what he would do for her family. He had been blunt. He would settle all the debts, an almost unimaginable concept to Maya, who had been struggling for so long and for so many years to keep those debts at bay and protect her family. And then Raffaele Manzini came along, evidently wealthy enough to the point where money could be flung around wastefully because her family was deep in debt and it would take an enormous amount to settle what they owed.