by Abby Green
She glared at him mutinously. ‘But I got sidetracked. Perhaps you knew who I was, Mr Chatsfield, and you were seeking to distract me?’
He shook his head, his face unreadable. ‘I didn’t know who you were. In fact, I was under the impression that your father was coming to this meeting, not his daughter.’
Fire racing up her spine, Orla said, ‘And no doubt you would have preferred to meet with him than a mere woman?’
Antonio’s eyes flashed. ‘I’m not a misogynist, Orla, so don’t pin that label on me. I don’t have a problem dealing with you over your father as long as you’re up to the task … and right now let’s just say that the information I have to go on is rather more weighted in the personally intimate department than business.’
Cheeks burning at that, Orla met Antonio’s gaze with as much froideur as she could muster when she felt as if she was on fire all over. ‘Well, I hate to have to remind you that the feeling is mutual. I’ve never had a one-night stand in my life, and believe me, as experiences go it’s right up there in the “never to be repeated” column.’
Orla took up her briefcase and turned to go but was caught by the arm.
She looked back to see Antonio’s face hard with displeasure. ‘Don’t think I didn’t get that impression when I woke up to find the mysterious Kate gone. But not for a second do I believe that last night wasn’t as pleasurable for you as it was for me. Our bodies didn’t lie, sweetheart, and if I kissed you right now I could have you flat on your back on that table in seconds.’
Orla’s blood got hot at the vivid image that invaded her mind of being splayed across the table. She wrenched her arm free. ‘Of all the egotistical arrogant jerks … This meeting is most definitely over, Mr Chatsfield. Last night was a huge mistake. I wouldn’t let you take over our business now if you offered triple what you’re offering to buy us out. And I wouldn’t sleep with you again if you begged me.’
Those last words were needless and childish but Orla felt sick inside to acknowledge just how far off her own rigid tracks she’d gone after last night. She’d wilfully jeopardised everything for a fleeting moment of pleasure.
Antonio stood back and Orla was once again struck by his sheer size compared to hers. She hated feeling so fragile. But you didn’t hate it last night, a small voice mocked. No. She’d revelled in it.
His gaze was disdainful as it swept her quickly up and down. ‘I’ve never begged for sex in my life and I don’t intend to start now. And I wouldn’t be so quick to cut off your nose to spite your face—you need us. I don’t see any other hotel chains rushing to your aid. Who else has the resources we have in these straitened times to dig you out of the hole you’re in?’
He wasn’t finished. ‘And I think you can give up Mr Chatsfield—that became redundant right about the first time I brought you to orgasm last night.’
Orla gasped at his crudeness even as a hot flush seemed to sweep her from head to toe. She was losing it. ‘You’re doing us no favours, Chatsfield. You’re interested in taking us over purely because it suits some purpose of yours. And I’m going to find out what that purpose is.’
Antonio’s eyes flashed at her continued use of Chatsfield and bit out acerbically, ‘Perhaps if you’d spent less time indulging that wickedly wanton siren you’re so desperately trying to hide underneath that virginal suit today, then you might be a little closer to figuring it out.’
Orla’s hand lifted and it had cracked across Antonio’s cheek before she’d even realised her intention. He didn’t even flinch. White with fury and shock at her unprecedented physical violence, Orla swung around and stalked out of the room, her entire being suffused with humiliation and anger.
Antonio looked at the door, the slam resounding in his ears. Damn the woman. He should never have allowed a part of his anatomy to dictate his actions last night, no matter how intense the attraction. His cheek burned after her slap but he welcomed it. He deserved it for being so reckless. So downright unthinking. And he knew he deserved it for what he’d just said. He’d lashed out because he was angry with himself. She was right; he’d pursued her. And he knew that she could have been wearing a sack last night, and today, and he’d still want her.
He swung around to the window again and cursed volubly. Because of this moment of supreme weakness on his part, he could fail his sister. This was the only thing she’d asked of him: to initiate a takeover of the Kennedy Group and prove to their newly installed autocratic CEO that they had it within them to expand, in spite of negative publicity and their badly dented reputation.
When he’d left to join the Legion, Cara, their baby sister, had been only ten. Little more than a child. Antonio couldn’t go back in time and rewrite history or suddenly reappear in his siblings’ lives as if nothing had changed. He may have kept an eye on them over the years, but that wasn’t the same as being there, being present.
But he was here now and his priority was to support his sister and, in so doing, his family also, no matter what. And if that included taking over Patrick Kennedy’s hotel business, which was ripe for the picking, then so be it. He could do this. This was easy compared to what he’d been through.
So he would not let some slip of a woman get in his way. No matter who she was or how much she turned him on. That was a purely physical and chemical anomaly. He could control it. He had to. Because as surely as night would follow day, Orla Kennedy would be back with her tail between her legs. Because she had no choice.
And when she came back, Antonio would be waiting.
‘Are you sure this is our only option?’ Orla tried to hide the panic she was feeling. She looked at their solicitor and he sighed volubly.
‘No matter how many times you ask the question, Orla, the answer stays the same. Yes. A takeover by the Chatsfields is our only option to avoid out-and-out bankruptcy right now.’
‘Right now.’ Orla seized on this glimmer of hope. ‘If we can hang on for a little longer—’
Tom cut her off. ‘You’ll have nothing to hang on to. Time is of the essence. If we don’t look at their offer seriously they could well take it off the table completely. And no one else has their resources.’
Orla paced back and forth in her office. It had been a week since her cataclysmic night and that disastrous meeting with Antonio Chatsfield. And all week she’d been trying to work out some way to avoid ever having to see him again. Which, she knew, was entirely selfish and resulting out of her own reckless behaviour which made it even worse.
Tom asked now, ‘You know the longer you drag this out, the more likely your father will hear of it? He thinks that negotiations are under way.’
Orla wrung her hands together and stopped pacing to face their solicitor. He looked stern. Her belly sank like a stone.
Tom went on. ‘Once he’s finished selling off your assets in South-East Asia he’ll be back and expecting to hear good news. You know how important it is to him that the Chatsfields agree to an integrated takeover and the stipulation that the UK and Ireland Kennedy Group hotels keep their name? Not to mention the last remaining New York Kennedy hotel.’
Orla nodded miserably. Tom didn’t have to spell it out. She was jeopardising everything she had worked so hard for. Her father was already sick with guilt at the bad business decisions he’d made—against Orla’s repeated entreaties to do otherwise.
Orla had done her best ever since she could remember to be there for her father, ensuring that he had the support he didn’t get from her mother. When she had been about nine years old she’d overheard her father talking with his business manager, late one night after a party. He’d said sadly, ‘Marianne can’t have any more children … so it’s just Orla. If we had a son to leave it all to, then there might be a chance … but I just don’t see how we can expect Orla to fulfil that role.’
Orla knew now that her father was innocently old-fashioned in his beliefs about women’s roles but she’d vowed since that day to work extra hard to prove to him that she could take on the burd
en. And she’d excelled at it. Working at their hotels at every opportunity—after school, weekends, school holidays. Sitting in on her father’s meetings, largely unnoticed but soaking everything in. Gaining a master’s degree in hotel management by the incredibly young age of twenty-three.
In the end her sex had made no difference. Her hypervigilance and diligence hadn’t been able to stop her father from being influenced by his need to keep his pleasure- and luxury-loving wife happy.
They’d been living beyond their means for so long now that this offer from the Chatsfields was their only option. The sick circling in Orla’s brain came to a halt. Their only option. The knowledge sank like a stone in her heart.
She looked at Tom and sighed heavily. ‘Very well. I’ll go back … but I’ll go and see him alone.’
Orla didn’t want witnesses to the potential humiliation Antonio Chatsfield was about to serve up to her.
‘Miss Orla Kennedy is here to see you.’
Antonio did not like the jump of his pulse to hear this annoucement or the anticipation that sizzled in his veins to think of her outside his office right now. Curtly he answered, ‘Send her in.’
Good manners prompted Antonio to stand up when he would have preferred to stay sitting, as much to disguise any bodily reactions he was afraid he might not be able to control as an effort to demonstrate a position of power. Not that he even agreed with pathetic games like that. That was more his father’s style.
He went and stood by the window and waited, forcing his blood to cool. The door opened. ‘Miss Kennedy, sir.’
Steeling himself, he finally turned around, but despite his best efforts his body reacted as if it was made of iron filings and a magnet had just walked into the room. It was that physical a sensation.
‘Thank you, Maggie,’ he managed to get out, and vaguely heard his secretary say something about bringing refreshments. Orla Kennedy looked pale. There were shadows under her eyes. Her hair was up in a bun at the back of her head and it reminded him forcibly of that first night he’d seen her. She was dressed today in a dark green knee-length shift dress and matching jacket, black heels. The green made her Celtic colouring look even more dramatic.
To his intense irritation he could feel the blood pooling in his groin, stiffening his flesh as he imagined pulling her into him, removing her jacket, pulling down the zip at the back of her dress….
Moving before he could embarrass himself, Antonio went back around his desk and indicated the high-backed seat on the other side. ‘Please, take a seat.’
Orla walked in, her face set and stern. Mouth compressed. Clearly as loath to be facing him again as he was to be facing her. She put down a briefcase and sat down primly on the chair.
Just then a knock came and Maggie reappeared with a tray holding tea and coffee. Antonio forced himself to smile at the woman and said, ‘We’ll take it from here, thank you. Please see to it that we’re not disturbed.’
When she’d left, Antonio looked at Orla, who had two flags of pink in her cheeks now. His groin throbbed. ‘Tea or coffee?’ he gritted out.
‘Tea, please.’
That husky voice. Just hearing it again brought back the X-rated dreams he’d had to endure every night for the past week. Reminded him of waking in damp sheets, his body painfully aroused and aching for fulfillment.
He poured the tea and handed her the cup and saucer which she took quickly, putting it down in front of her with a clatter of crockery. The pinkness in her cheeks intensified.
Antonio poured his own coffee and took a sip, willing his body to behave.
Orla ignored her tea. She looked so tense she might break in two. And then she blurted out, ‘Look, Mr Chatsfield, I regret what happened between us that night, as I’m sure you do too. I think we’re both agreed that if we’d known who each other was, it never would have happened. I just … I just want to put that night behind us and start again. Pretend it didn’t happen.’
There was such an earnest expression on her face and her eyes were so huge that Antonio almost felt sorry for her. Almost. But something wicked and hot inside him chafed at her insistence on calling him by his surname, and that she regretted it, or that they could put it behind them. Even though he’d been telling himself all week that he regretted it.
Faced with her now, separated by only a desk, with his body throbbing with need, Antonio couldn’t be anything less than completely honest.
He sat back and regarded her steadily. ‘I would have to disagree. And do I need to remind you why you should stop calling me Mr Chatsfield?’
Orla blanched. She looked at the man sitting behind the desk, supremely relaxed and confident, and struggled to hold in the rise of her temper. Especially when she thought about the sleepless nights she’d endured all week, because every time she closed her eyes all she could hear was her heartbeat and imagine his huge body, pressing hers down into the bed, filling her, stretching her….
‘I take it you received your belongings?’
Orla’s temper went up a notch. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said tightly, acknowledging receipt via courier of her missing belt and shoes, but not her panties. Face burning now, she refused to even ask the question.
But as if reading her mind, Antonio said, ‘There was one other item but I felt it might be the kind of thing you’d prefer was discarded rather than returned.’
Orla went puce and wanted to hit him all over again. Choking back the humiliation she’d fully expected but not thought would come from this direction, she got out, ‘A gentleman would not even bring that up.’
He smiled and it was so explicit it sent shock waves of sensation down to Orla’s pelvis.
‘Ah, but I never claimed to be a gentleman. I don’t think you were very interested in me being a gentleman that night, any more than you were interested in being a lady.’
Orla glared at him, incensed and insulted. ‘I came here, hoping to appeal to your professionalism, but it’s clear that this is just an exercise in futility.’
‘You came here,’ he pointed out silkily, ‘because you have no choice if you want to save your precious family brand name and a fraction of your fortune.’
Orla’s insides cramped at that reminder. Feeling sick, she said bitterly, ‘I am aware of that fact. I’m not here to discuss errors of judgement, so if we could just focus on the business at hand….’
Determined to maintain things on a business footing when it felt as if her grip on control was woefully shaky, Orla bent down to open her briefcase and removed a sheaf of papers.
She placed them on the table beside the tray of tea and coffee, avoiding Antonio’s black gaze.
‘Some of our terms have changed slightly. I’ve added in a requirement that you, or one of your staff, comes and sees how our business model works first-hand before anything is signed. Our name will live on and as such we want to be sure that our standards and reputation for excellence of service will be maintained.’
After a few seconds of silence Orla risked a look at Antonio. His face was hard, inscrutable.
‘That could be easily avoided by the removal of your name and replacing it with the Chatsfield one.’
Orla struggled to maintain her composure. He was just trying to unsettle her; this was one of the first things her father had stipulated before even agreeing to think about the takeover bid.
She tried to keep the panic out of her voice. ‘You know that’s one of the fundamental staples of this agreement. That our hotels keep their name. Which is why we need to ensure that excellence is maintained.’
Antonio stood up and Orla had to crane her head back he was so tall. He walked around the table and her heart thudded when she thought he was going to perch on the edge of it. Far too close for comfort. But then he went and stood at the window, hands in his pockets.
His back looked impossibly broad, tapering down to those lean hips, hard buttocks and long, powerful legs. Orla had a memory flash of the scars dotted all over his body and felt weak inside. Obv
iously they’d come from his time in the army…. She didn’t like the way she felt slightly sick to think of how they’d come about.
In a moment of weakness during the week, she’d delved further into her research of him and had discovered that he was a decorated war hero. It hadn’t made the general news because it had been as the result of a covert mission with the Legion.
He turned abruptly and Orla’s mouth dried.
‘If your father was so concerned with excellence, then how the hell did he let the business run through his fingers? Along with us and a few others, the Kennedy Group was one of the few predicted to withstand the recession. Now you’ll be lucky to keep the name.’
Orla felt sick. No way was she going to get into the sordid details of her father’s weakness for indulging his wife and her extravagant ways.
She stood up, not liking how intimidated he made her feel. Loath to blame her father, Orla said, ‘We made a series of bad decisions. And yes, we had a cushion to protect us for a while, but once the downturn hit, those decisions cost us … too much.’
Antonio was grim; he crossed his arms. ‘It was more than that. You know we’ve had your accounts to inspect as part of this deal. It was a veritable haemorrhaging of money and ludicrous decisions. How on earth could your father have ever believed it would be a good idea to expand into South-East Asia with a brand that was aimed primarily at this domestic market and America—which had very clear advantageous links due to the solid Irish/American connection?’
Orla looked away. That decision was the one that had put them over the edge. She’d begged her father to reconsider his South-East Asian plans but her mother had insisted that it was where they should be. She’d fancied the kudos of hotels in Hong Kong and Bangkok. Orla had known it was suicide.
Bravely, she lifted her chin. ‘My father … we,’ she quickly amended, ‘got the best advice at the time, projected earnings and we were assured that it was a good idea.’
Antonio shook his head. ‘I’ve been out of this game for some time, I’ll admit. But anyone with half a brain cell could have foreseen that disaster.’