The Innocent and the Playboy

by Sophie Weston

She immediately regretted it. How was she going to steer clear of dangerous subjects if she let him goad her into sniping at him? From his complacent expression, it seemed that Riccardo was thinking along the same lines.

  So she did not join in his laughter or let her eyes meet his. She did not get close enough for him to touch her either. She swung sharply on her heel and went to the long windows, well out of his reach. From the amused silence behind her, she was pretty sure he knew exactly what she was doing. For the moment, it seemed he was prepared to go along with it. But for how long?

  Rachel shivered, although the windows were closed. They gave onto a balcony with a fine view of the Thames. There was a marina below them. She remembered that nine years ago he had been in the West Indies on a sailing holiday.

  She struggled to sound polite, neutral, utterly indifferent. ‘Did you buy this place so you could moor your yacht?’ She only succeeded in sounding strained.

  He looked amused. ‘Not guilty.’

  She was so startled that she did look at him then. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve developed a fine curl of the lip since the last time we met,’ he explained. He strolled over to her side. ‘It comes into play every time you mention me.’ He folded his arms across his chest and surveyed her. ‘Tell me, Rachel, why do you disapprove of me?’

  She had no immediate response to this head-on attack.

  ‘I don’t...’ she began, floundering.

  ‘Yes, you do. It shows. Even my staff have noticed.’

  Rachel raised her eyebrows, returning gratefully to mockery. ‘Your staff? That’s bad.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  The admission almost made her laugh aloud. But she primmed her mouth and tried to look solicitous. ‘Image taking a beating, is it?’

  ‘I think my credibility will survive a little longer.’

  ‘Well, of course it will,’ she congratulated him. ‘It can’t make that much difference that one insignificant clerk doesn’t like working for you.’

  He chuckled. ‘Hardly insignificant. You pack quite a punch these days.’

  ‘You flatter me. But I still don’t think you or anyone else in your organisation gives a damn whether I’m happy in my work.’

  He was still looking as if he was enjoying himself, damn him.

  ‘You’re a hard woman, Rachel.’ He shook his head mournfully.

  She pretended sudden enlightenment. ‘Oh, that’s the trouble. It’s because I haven’t fallen prostrate at your feet in adoration.’

  ‘His brows twitched together. Not enjoying himself quite so much now, thought Rachel. Their eyes clashed. Then he smiled, slowly, outrageously.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly got them talking,’ he drawled.

  Rachel gasped. She recovered at once. She did not like the implications of what he said but she was not going to admit it.

  Instead she said with heavy irony, ‘That must be a first.’

  Riccardo sighed. ‘Here we go again. Any minute now you’re going to call me a playboy.’

  A playboy? It did not begin to cover what she thought of him. But she was not going to be tempted into revealing her real feelings. Rachel turned away with a dismissive gesture.

  Riccardo was not giving up. He turned her back to face him.

  ‘No? Not a playboy? Or are you more tolerant of playboys these days?’

  His hands on her made Rachel tense every muscle. You’re in control, she reminded herself. He only sees what you let him. Don’t give him a chance to see that he has any effect on you at all.

  With an enormous effort of will she stood quiet in his hands. She even shrugged.

  He shook her slightly.

  ‘Talk to me, Rachel.’

  Some of Rachel’s careful indifference slipped.

  ‘Take your hands off me,’ she flashed.

  His eyebrows rose, but he did not look exactly displeased. He stepped back and raised his hands comically, like a cowboy facing a toy gun.

  ‘OK. OK. No touching. Just talk.’

  She turned away, annoyed with herself. ‘We have already talked.’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think so.’ He hesitated. Then he said, as if he was choosing his words carefully, ‘You’re a key person in the team, Rachel. I can’t afford to have you muttering behind my back.’

  So that was it. She laughed angrily.

  ‘Don’t worry. I don’t discuss my private opinions with colleagues,’ she said curtly.

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’

  She swung back on him. ‘Nor do I lie about them.’ He frowned. ‘Have I asked you to?’

  Her chin came up. She braced herself for battle. ‘If you don’t like it—’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘—then you’ll just have to...’ Rachel ground to a halt. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t like your opinion of me,’ he said in his most reasonable voice. ‘I want to find out why you feel the way you do about me. And then I want to change it.’

  Rachel met his eyes and saw that he meant it. There was a short, shocked silence. Her burgeoning temper disappeared, to be replaced by something a lot more complicated.

  She said breathlessly at last, ‘You’re not going to stay in London. We won’t have to work closely. It can’t be important.’

  He just looked at her steadily, not speaking.

  She said in exasperation, ‘I don’t see why you should give a damn what I think of you.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Some people just don’t get on. It’s chemistry or something.’

  There was a pause.

  Then he said quietly, ‘Yes. I remember the chemistry.’

  Rachel jumped. Her spine seemed to turn to rubber and go into free fall. She could not think of a thing to say.

  ‘It was—quite something, as I recall.’

  Rachel swallowed. ‘Really.’

  He looked down at her, his face serious. ‘Are you saying you don’t remember?’

  Under that intense inspection, Rachel felt as if she could hardly breathe. She turned her face away. She managed a laugh. It sounded harsh. ‘One night? Nine years ago?’

  Riccardo’s expression darkened. He began to drawl. ‘Unlikely, I agree. But the circumstances alone made it memorable.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  His brows rose. ‘You mean you turned it into a habit? Now, that does surprise me.’

  Rachel did not trust herself to speak.

  He said reflectively, ‘I’d never done anything like that before.’

  She snorted.

  ‘You were an unknown quantity. A stranger. I’d always known all my girlfriends through and through. Just like they knew me.’

  Rachel gave a nasty smile. ‘You mean you both knew the limits of the deal. How convenient.’

  To her astonishment, Riccardo’s chin went up as if she had hit him. For a moment she thought she had penetrated that armour of his. But then the steep eyelids drooped to hide his expression.

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he agreed lazily. ‘I knew the terms of my deal. So tell me, what were yours?’

  ‘Mine!’ She was bitterly scornful. ‘You’re forgetting: I was too young to know about deals.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He was not showing a glimmer of conscience. His eyes were watchful. ‘So what happened was purely spontaneous? No calculations? No prior research into the di Stefano millions? Just overwhelming attraction you couldn’t run away from?’

  Damn, thought Rachel. He had been leading her towards that damaging admission from the moment she’d walked in and she had not had the wit to see it. The silence screamed.

  At last she said, ‘I don’t remember. I keep telling you, it’s a long time ago.’

  ‘You remembered enough to time your holidays from Bentley’s in order to avoid me,’ he pointed out.

  There was no answer to that.

  She tried to sound cool, logical. ‘Well, of course, I remember what happened. I’m just not
that certain what I felt.’

  ‘No?’ He was almost purring. ‘Yet you said last night it was a disaster. An adolescent disaster, if I remember correctly.’

  Rachel stared at him, hot-eyed. He was right, of course. Right and clever and utterly without compunction. She could have screamed. But under the anger a slow, horrifying sense of having been cornered by a master huntsman was seeping through her.

  She broke away from that mesmerising gaze.

  ‘I also told you last night I don’t like post-mortems. What happened between you and me is ancient history and should be forgotten.’

  ‘Have you forgotten?’

  ‘I told you—’

  ‘You told me a number of things,’ said Riccardo di Stefano. ‘Most of them contradictory. I don’t think you know yourself what’s true and what isn’t any more. Or,’ he added, suddenly grim, ‘how much you’ve forgotten. Let’s see, shall we?’

  Rachel knew he was going to touch her. She knew she ought to move. But her muscles seemed to have locked. All she could do was close her eyes, to shut out that towering figure.

  It was a mistake. A terrible mistake. With her eyes closed, she was back nine years in that quiet little room, listening to the old-fashioned fan, the cicadas outside, and their breathing.

  This time she was wearing layers of sober cloth and a blouse that buttoned to the neck, not a disastrously tangled sarong. When his practised fingers drifted up her arm in a cruel imitation of love, they no longer encountered bare flesh.

  It made no difference. The hurried sounds of their breathing were exactly the same. And she recognised in a flash of insight that Riccardo knew it too. He laughed under his breath.

  ‘Same old instincts, I see.’ His voice was not entirely steady.

  This time it was not longing which hit Rachel. It was fear, naked and shocking. Her eyes flew open.

  ‘Never again.’ She almost screamed it.

  The intensity of it shook both of them. He let her go. A blank look invaded his eyes. She stepped back, smoothing the dark sleeve of her jacket with fingers that shook.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She sounded as shaken as she felt. ‘I didn’t mean to sound like a fishwife. I just meant...’

  The blank look disappeared. It was replaced by cold anger. ‘It was perfectly clear what you meant,’ Riccardo said with bite.

  Rachel swallowed. The anger beat at her, making her feel vulnerable and unsure. She shook herself. She might not have chosen to lose her cool and yell at him like that but, now that she had, at least it had made her point, she thought.

  ‘Then perhaps you will accept that I mean what I say,’ she said quietly.

  He did not answer at once. His eyes flickered. His expression became an unreadable mask.

  Eventually he said, ‘I accept this is going to be...’ he hesitated ‘...a challenge.’

  It was, she could see, another piece of deliberate provocation. He was watching her clinically, like a scientist viewing an experiment, to see how she would respond. Rachel decided to surprise him.

  ‘A short-lived challenge,’ she said drily.

  Riccardo raised his eyebrows. ‘Because you’re going to give in gracefully?’

  ‘Because you’re going back to New York this Thursday,’ she pointed out sweetly.

  Suddenly his expression was no longer a mask. His imminent departure must have slipped his mind in the heat of battle, Rachel thought, pleased. For a moment he looked furious.

  ‘That is not—’ He caught himself, biting off whatever he was going to say.

  As if it had never been, the fury was gone. He lifted one shoulder in a negligent shrug that disclaimed any feeling at all. Rachel’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. He saw it. His mouth tilted in appreciation.

  He said solemnly, ‘So I am. I’m really glad you reminded me.’

  It was smoothly spoken but Rachel heard a threat in it. She backed off.

  He sighed. ‘No need to look like that. You’ve made your point. I concede.’

  She looked at him warily. She did not believe him for a moment. Riccardo di Stefano was not a man to concede a fight unless it was part of a wider battle plan. The same battle. With her defences weakening all the time.

  She almost jumped at the thought. Two days ago she would have said it was inconceivable that she could ever be tempted by Riccardo di Stefano again. Today she was honest enough to admit—to herself at least—that the temptation was still there. He looked at her, touched her—and she could feel her defences dissolving.

  I must be mad, she thought. The sooner he went back to New York the better.

  Unguarded, she said so. His lips twitched. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. But all he said was, ‘Come and eat. The directors’ kitchen has sent someone over. The food should be good.’

  It was. It was also served by a formally suited waiter. At a stroke it destroyed the atmosphere of dangerous intimacy.

  It was a relief. She told herself that it was an enormous relief. Unfortunately, a part of her was also disappointed. Because she had wanted to finish the fight, Rachel told herself. She did not quite believe it—and was furious with herself.

  Riccardo adjusted smoothly to the presence of a third party. He seated her, plied her solicitously with wine and set about a social conversation that felt like an inquisition.

  ‘Why banking?’

  Rachel was struggling to hide her uneaten pasta under her cutlery. ‘Bentley’s were the first to offer me a job after my MBA.’

  ‘All right, why a business degree? I know your father was a wheeler-dealer but I don’t remember you being interested in business.’

  ‘I don’t remember you noticing what I was interested in,’ flashed Rachel.

  It did not take his satisfied smile to tell her she had made a mistake. She pushed irritatedly at her spaghetti carbonara.

  He was too subtle to point it out, however.

  She bit her lip and said with constraint, ‘My father’s company collapsed. I got used to listening.’

  ‘Did you work with your father?’

  Rachel found she could not face the spaghetti after all. She put down the forkful.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because... It’s complicated.’

  He leaned back in his chair, one casual arm resting on the table. ‘I’m good at unravelling complications.’

  Rachel shuddered at the thought of his unravelling this particular one.

  ‘We had some difficulties,’ she said briefly.

  She saw him store away the information for future use.

  ‘When did you meet Brian Gray?’

  ‘I worked for him.’

  He frowned. ‘He was at Bentley’s?’

  Rachel hesitated. Did she want to tell him the truth? Would it lead him into further, more painful deductions? But in the end it seemed easier. She had not had enough practice to go on lying successfully if he asked further questions.

  So she shrugged and told him unemotionally, ‘No. Before my degree. After his first wife left, I worked for him as an au pair.’

  Riccardo was frankly incredulous. ‘An au pair?’

  ‘He needed someone to look after the children. I needed a job and somewhere to live while I did my degree. It was ideal for both of us.’

  He digested that. ‘Was that why you married him? Mutual convenience?’

  Rachel almost jumped. She looked round but the waiter had retired to the kitchen with their dirty plates.

  She said carefully, ‘We grew to know each other very well.’

  He brooded.

  ‘So when you married him you must have already known the children.’ He looked up suddenly, his eyes like lasers. ‘Fond of children, Rachel?’

  ‘Not all children,’ she said steadily.

  ‘But these children? Alexandra and whatever-his-name-is? Fond of them, are you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He nodded, as if that was what he’d expected. His voice was almost idle when he said
, ‘Fond enough to marry a man twenty years older than you so you could look after them?’

  Rachel stared at the glass in her hand. Oh, Riccardo di Stefano was too clever. Too clever and too damned determined. He had a battle plan all right. It was going to take all her skill to get out of this one.

  She put down her wine. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I haven’t much of an appetite and I really ought to be going. I need to pack.’

  His eyes flickered at the information. Rachel was too perturbed to notice.

  He said easily, ‘Well, at least have a coffee before you go. Tell me about your delightful stepdaughter. What is wrong with the boyfriend?’

  Rachel was relieved at the change of subject. This was one subject at least on which she could afford to tell the truth.

  ‘Well, he’s so much older—’

  His look mocked her. She flushed but said hotly, ‘At that age it’s a big deal. He has no job and too much money. He gives her things all the time—’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Very suspicious.’

  It sounded like an accusation. She was taken aback. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s not really your style, is it, Rachel? Real women don’t accept things from a man.’ He gave a soft laugh but he did not really sound amused. ‘Does it contaminate their independence irretrievably? You know, I think your stepdaughter has my sympathy.’

  She stared. She sought for the reason for this veiled attack. A few moments’ reflection gave it to her.

  ‘Is this because I didn’t say thank you for all those flowers this morning?’ She got up and said without expression, ‘Thank you. I was overwhelmed.’

  He stood up too. His face was quite unreadable but the force of the movement sent his chair tipping over backwards behind him.

  Rachel was suddenly afraid. It infuriated her. ‘They weren’t a gift. They were a message. You were telling the whole bank that you had the right to send me any damned thing you wanted. Well, now they know and my office looks like a jungle. Happy?’

  ‘You are as original in your gratitude as you are in everything else,’ he murmured.

  Rachel snorted. ‘I saw the florist you use as I was coming up. I suppose I should just be thankful you don’t happen to have a chocolatier in your building, or my office would be a candy warehouse by now.’

  This time the pause felt dangerous. Then, just as she was bracing herself to turn and run for the lift, Riccardo burst out laughing.