‘You underhand swine!’ she accused.
‘Sorcha!’ choked her brother.
There wasn’t a flicker of reaction on Cesare’s face. ‘Rupert—would you mind going on ahead to the factory?’ he said evenly. ‘I’ll join you just as soon as I can.’
‘Sure thing,’ said Rupert, who seemed glad of the escape route.
‘Oh, and Rupert?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I may be a little time,’ Cesare murmured, his black eyes fixed unwavering on Sorcha.
‘Yeah.’
There was a pin-drop silence while Rupert left the room and closed the door behind him, and Cesare put his hands on his narrow hips and looked at her.
Way back he had vetoed mixing business with pleasure, and he wouldn’t usually have been turned on by a woman wearing severely cut office clothes, but in Sorcha’s case it was different. He felt a nerve flicker in his cheek.
Two top buttons of her plain silk shirt were unbuttoned, showing a sliver of a gold chain with a pearl attached which dipped invitingly towards the shadow of her cleavage. A classic pencil skirt clung to the pert line of her bottom and skated down over her thighs. Cesare wondered how he could have forgotten the slender curve of her hips, or how long and rangy her legs were—especially in those high heels.
She was like a very classy racehorse—all athletic power and stamina sheathed by sheer elegance. A woman in peak and very beautiful condition. Why the hell hadn’t he just had her when he’d had the opportunity, guaranteeing her nothing but a postscript in the catalogue of his sexual experience?
‘I think that you and I need to have a little talk, don’t you, cara?’ he questioned silkily.
Sorcha’s heart was pounding. Yesterday at the wedding, when he had told her that he had been brought in, it had been nothing more than a theoretical nightmare. Today, however, it was harsh reality, with him standing beside the shiny table her father had used to sit at as if he were born to stand there—arrogantly wielding all the power. But she was not going to let him intimidate her.
‘You’ve come up with a magic solution to all our problems, have you, Cesare?’
‘Soluzione magica?’ he mocked. ‘Aren’t you a little old to believe in fairytales? No. But I have a few ideas.’
I’ll bet you do. Sorcha stared at him stonily as he pulled out a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and flicked through them until he found the ones he was looking for. Then he leaned forward and spread them out on the table like a card-dealer, looking up at her with a question in his glittering ebony eyes. ‘You have studied all these figures which highlight the company’s decline with heartbreaking accuracy?’
‘Of course I have.’
‘Really?’ His eyes burned into her, his lips curving around his cold, judgemental words. ‘And what course of action do you propose we take to halt the downturn?’
He was enjoying this, Sorcha realised furiously. In the same way that a policeman might enjoy interrogating a guilty suspect or a sadist might enjoy pulling the wings off a butterfly. And he would enjoy it even more if she allowed him to see that he was getting to her. So she wouldn’t.
It was easier said than done. She moved her shoulders edgily. ‘I’m looking into sales movements, distribution patterns, rises and falls in trading—you know. The usual thing.’
‘Yes. Precisely. Hashing over the past. The usual thing,’ he agreed, leaping on her phrase and repeating it with icy sarcasm. ‘But innovation is everything in business—you must know that, Sorcha. Working for the family firm doesn’t mean you have to undergo a common sense bypass.’
‘You think you’re very clever, don’t you, Cesare?’
‘I think that’s a given,’ he retorted softly. ‘But this has nothing to do with ego or brains, and everything to do with achievement!’
His eyes were blazing now, and even though he was revelling in the mutinous expression on her lovely face it was by no means what motivated him. Because—no matter what unfinished business there was between him and Sorcha Whittaker—this was all about pride, and a very different kind of pride from the one she had wounded by her refusal to marry him.
He had taken on this task and it was a challenge—and Cesare was a man who always rose to a challenge and conquered it.
The Whittaker scheme interested him only in the way in which an overfed cat might be mildly interested in a small mouse which had foolishly strayed into its path. But the venture afforded him the delicious opportunity to seduce the only woman he’d ever asked to marry. Turning around the ailing company was a purely secondary consideration, and he knew that he could easily afford to fail. In fact, lesser men might have got some perverse kind of pleasure from seeing her made broke.
But even if he hadn’t been loyal to Rupert, Cesare’s nature and his need to succeed were such that he would not tolerate failure—of any kind—and didn’t his relationship with Sorcha represent just that? Surely the ultimate satisfaction would be to bed her, win the praise of her family by reviving their fortunes, and make a packet for himself into the bargain? Put her for ever in his debt before walking away—this time for good, giving her the rest of her life to reflect on what she could have had. Yes. A perfect plan.
Prendere due piccioni con una fava.
To kill two birds with one stone…
He sighed. Si.
His raised his eyes, enjoying the frustration which she was failing to hide. ‘Rupert has been trying to drum up more trade—but you’ve got a brain in your head, Sorcha. Didn’t it occur to you to put it to use to try and work out why the products aren’t selling?’
‘You think it’s that easy?’
He shook his dark head. ‘Not easy, no. Simple, yes. Sit down.’
She hesitated, and then perched on the edge of the boardroom table instead of pulling out one of the chairs which stood around it. His eyes mocked her.
‘Demonstrating your equality?’ he murmured.
‘You wouldn’t know equality if it reached out and bit you!’
Laughing softly, he sat down in one of the soft leather chairs and leaned back to look at her, wondering if she would have chosen such a highly visible vantage point if she had realised the view it gave him of her derrière. Or that the material of her skirt was stretched so tightly over her bottom that he could see the faint outline of a thong.
His resulting erection made him wince. Serves you right, he thought, as he reached down into his briefcase. ‘I’ve been going back through the Whittakers advertising budget over the past year—’
‘It would be madness to cut the budget,’ she interjected quickly.
‘I’m not suggesting we do—please don’t put words in my mouth,’ he snapped. Put your breast in my mouth instead. His erection grew even harder as he pulled out a copy of a popular women’s magazine. ‘Take a look at this.’
She did as he asked, glad to have the opportunity to look away from that hard and fascinating face and concentrate on something other than the soft, warm coil of desire which was slowly unfurling in the pit of her stomach.
Why couldn’t she just be impartial to him—good looks or no good looks? She’d met men who were almost as hunky as Cesare—though it was true that they didn’t seem to have his inbuilt arrogance, or the ability to be in charge of a situation wherever he happened to be at the time.
She didn’t want to feel anything other than maybe a vaguely grown-up sensation of There’s the man I thought I was in love with—the man who asked me to marry him. She wanted to feel that thing you were supposed to feel when you looked at someone from a past which seemed very dim and distant—that she was looking at a complete stranger. So why didn’t she?
Trying to quell the tremble in her fingers, she flicked through the magazine he had given her. There was a big spread on a former weathergirl’s latest attempt to conquer her weight problem, with a few tantalising insights as to why she was attracted to violent men, there were gossip items and recipes, a problem page and a fashion shoot, and—amongst the other adv
ertisements—an ad for Whittakers.
Sorcha had grown up seeing bottles of the family sauce plastered over various publications since the year dot, so it was no big deal—but she always felt a little glow of satisfaction when she saw one of their full-colour promotions.
‘You mean this?’ She looked up at him. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’
‘It’s good for what it is,’ he answered carefully.
‘Why are you talking in riddles, Cesare—am I supposed to be looking for anything in particular?’
He studied her lips and thought how he would like to wipe that nonchalant expression off her beautiful face with a long, hard kiss. ‘Does anything about it strike you as different?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really,’ he echoed, biting back his irritation. He leaned back further in his chair. ‘It’s the same advert you’ve been using for years.’
‘So what? It’s a good advert!’
‘I will tell you so what, cara,’ he said softly. ‘If companies do not change—then they die—that is a rule of life which applies to everything and everyone. And it shows a certain arrogance towards the general public if you treat them with contempt, not even wanting to bother to try and change.’
She stiffened. ‘You have the nerve to talk about arrogance?’
Cesare drew in a deep breath. He would have liked nothing better than to talk about arrogance, since it was the kind of subject which soon had women railing and then pouting and then sending out messages which would result in a silent little tussle, and then…then…But he couldn’t risk making love to her. Not yet.
‘We are going to be changing the campaign.’
‘Shouldn’t that be a question rather than a statement? Or have you been given carte blanche to do exactly what you want without running it past me first?’ she demanded.
He didn’t bother answering that, and the fact that she didn’t pick up on it meant that she was perceptive enough to realise that maybe she wouldn’t like the answer. ‘Granny cooking up home recipes on the kitchen table no longer strikes a chord,’ he said slowly.
‘But people relate to that! They think it really is great-granny! The whole family business thing is what defines us! It’s what makes us different to all the other brands!’
‘I know that.’ He paused. ‘And that is why we’re planning to upgrade the company with a brand-new image—spearheaded by one of its very own family members. A new generation to front the Whittaker campaign. Imagine the publicity.’
‘And just which member of the family did you have in mind to front this new advertising campaign?’ The question sounded mechanical, because even as she was asking it she knew that there was just her, her mother and Rupert. Unless Cesare meant Emma, and she was away on her honeymoon.
He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Oh, come on, Sorcha,’ he said softly. ‘You may not have impressed me with your business acumen so far, but there is only one person who can do it. You know that and I know that.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘And that person is you, bella donna.’
CHAPTER FIVE
SORCHA froze as she looked into Cesare’s dark, mocking face. ‘No.’
‘No?’ he echoed.
She clenched her fists. ‘If you want someone to front your new advertising campaign, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’
‘But we’ve already decided that it has to be a family member—your mother is the wrong age, your sister is the wrong marital status, and your brother is the wrong sex.’ His lips curved into a smile. ‘We want to reach out and capture the single person who is living on their own—to introduce a whole new market to a very traditional product.’
‘No, Cesare.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not a model!’
‘Ah, but that is the whole point—we don’t want a professional model,’ he murmured silkily, and he bent down to pick up a large black cardboard envelope from which he pulled a thick sheet of cartridge paper in the manner of a magician withdrawing a rabbit from a hat. He handed it to her.
Inside was a mock-up of an advertisement featuring a girl with bright strawberry blonde hair—drawn to look just like her, she realised with a sinking feeling. On the table in front of her were all the delicious ingredients of a sandwich in the making, with a bottle of Whittakers Hot n’ Spicy in the foreground.
The girl was sucking her finger, her eyes gazing wide and coquettish at the camera, and just one word was splashed across the top of the page. SAUCY!
‘Simple, but effective,’ said Cesare, and he felt weak with desire just imagining Sorcha sucking on his finger, and on…
‘Just imagine the publicity,’ he said huskily. ‘This could be big, Sorcha. Really big.’
‘And if demand increases—just how are you planning to meet it? Are you just going to magic up X amount of sauce from nowhere, Cesare?’
He gave her a narrow-eyed look of admiration. ‘Leave that to me.’
He spoke in a tone of voice which told her that nothing was going to be a problem—and, infuriatingly, she believed him. But he hadn’t taken into account the unpredictability of human nature had he? Or of women in particular? ‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ she breathed.
His smile was satisfied as he waited for the plaudits to come his way. ‘I’ve tried,’ he murmured.
‘Well, you should have consulted me, shouldn’t you?’ she questioned crisply. ‘Because I can’t do this.’
His smile vanished. ‘Why not?’
‘The rest of the family would never agree to me taking centre-stage.’
‘They already have.’
They already have.
‘Emma thinks it would be good for you.’
Emma thinks it would be good for you.
‘And your mother—’
‘Stop it!’ she screeched. ‘I don’t want to hear!’
It had taken a moment or two for her to register what had been niggling at her all along, but his words helped it to snap into crystal-clear focus.
Not only had he been brought in behind her back and then demanded that she be kept in the dark until it was too late to do anything to change it. But now—just as if they were engaged in some old-fashioned spy story—he had been briefing against her. It appeared that he had been masterminding a whole great scheme involving her—only she was the last person to know!
Sorcha glanced at the beautifully executed mock-up. This wasn’t something which he had just had an artist scribble up in a few minutes—this had all been carefully planned. She had been excluded, and the rest of the family had colluded with him. It felt like a betrayal in the most complete sense of the word.
‘You must have been working behind my back for weeks,’ she said in a stunned voice.
‘I thought it preferable if we presented it to you as a fait accompli.’
She looked at him, stunned. ‘You bastard,’ she said softly.
Cesare’s blood heated with an inevitable sense of triumph—because, in a way, wasn’t this exactly what he had wanted all along? For the precarious veneer of civility which had existed between them to be smashed by a simple word of contempt—leaving him free to give in to what he had wanted to do from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her again. And everyone knew that conflict made the best aphrodisiac in the world.
‘Is that what I am?’ he questioned as he walked towards her. Her eyes were filled with fury—and something else, too—or were they just mirroring what was in his? An unbearable hunger he had only just realised had been building away inside him all these years.
‘Then maybe I’d better start behaving like one.’ And with one unequivocal gesture he pulled her to her feet and into his arms.
She saw it coming—of course she did—but the pressure of his arms and the heat of his body drove everything from her mind—other than how much she had dreamed about this over the years, despite all her best efforts to suppress it. Sometimes in the middle of the cruel and indiscriminate night she had awoken to r
elive the achingly unfulfilled pleasure of his kiss—as someone stranded in the desert might remember how a glass of cool water tasted.
‘Bastard!’ she said again, but it came out on a shuddering breath of pleasure as he splayed his fingers possessively over her back. And this time something had changed. She was no longer eighteen years old, with a watchful mother lurking around in the house and a man who almost didn’t trust himself to touch her for fear that he would lose control. He was certainly trusting himself to touch her now.
She felt her knees weakening, so that instead of wrenching herself away from him she sank inexorably against him. It felt as if every taut muscle and sinew was imprinted against her. A body like rock and skin like silk—when had she learned to find that particular combination so utterly irresistible?
‘Damn you,’ she managed indistinctly. ‘Oh, damn you, Cesare di Arcangelo!’
‘But you don’t want to damn me,’ he taunted.
‘Yes, I do,’ she returned, and wondered how her voice could sound so reedy.
His gaze raked over her face and read the stark hunger in the emerald brilliance of her eyes. ‘You want this,’ he grated harshly. ‘We both want this.’
She told herself she would have denied it—but she would never know. Because the answer she had begun falteringly to frame was obliterated by the heady power of his kiss as he drove his mouth down hard on hers. And was this so very wrong? To give in to something it had nearly killed them to deny themselves in the past?
Hard and punishingly, he plundered her lips—and never had a kiss so overwhelmed him, leaving him weak and dizzy, like a man who had dragged himself out of the water after swimming too long.
Was that groan his? And that sigh—was that his too?
But even while his big body shuddered with unstoppable desire his response angered him. Which buttons did she always press which so weakened him—he, a man who neither needed nor wanted anyone? His anger transmuted itself into a desire to show her exactly that. To give her a coldly efficient demonstration of his sexual powers.
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