‘OK, OK, spare me the environmental lecture.’ The laughter died in Fliss’s voice, leaving her sounding suddenly subdued. ‘Talking of which, how’s life in the Green Planet camp? Have you finished saving the world for the rest of us yet?’
Anna wandered over to the forlorn stack of boxes and old trunks the men had left piled in the middle of the dusty attic. ‘We’re still working on it,’ she said stiffly, lifting the lid of a metal-banded trunk at her feet and finding herself looking down at a jumble of old clothes. ‘Saving Château Belle-Eden from this … this vile property developer would be a good start, though.’
‘Well, if word in our office is correct and the “vile property developer” in question is Angelo Emiliani you don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of saving it,’ Fliss retorted, then, hearing Anna’s soft gasp, said, ‘Anna? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I’ve just found my old dressing-up box. All my ballet stuff is in here—my first pointe shoes.’ Reverently she wound the trailing ribbons around the tattered slippers, then slowly pulled out a crushed tumble of heavy cream satin from the depths of the trunk. ‘The wedding dress!’
Anna held the dress out at arm’s length, gazing wonderingly at it. She’d thought it was so perfect, but now she could see how home-made it looked, how obvious that it had been inexpertly cut down from one of Grandmère’s gowns and trimmed with mismatched bits salvaged from other garments. The fabric had yellowed with age and was spotted with mildew in places. Wedging the phone against her shoulder, she held the dress up against her and twirled slowly around.
‘To think I truly believed this made me look like a real bride,’ she said vaguely. ‘A fairy princess … I must have been spectacularly naïve …’
That was an understatement.
Abruptly she tore the dress away from her body and dropped it back into the box. ‘Anyway,’ she continued briskly, ‘like I said, there’s nothing left for me to do here. I’m on my way.’
‘Great. I’ll be in the terrace bar, provided we can get a table. Don’t forget it’s Saskia Middleton’s twenty-first tonight too, so wear something suitable. You are wearing something suitable, aren’t you?’ Fliss added, sounding worried. ‘Only I haven’t quite got over the puffball-skirt-and-biker-boots combo from Lucinda’s party at Christmas. Her poor mother didn’t know what to say.’
Anna glanced down at the subdued black dress. ‘Don’t panic, I’m looking deeply respectable,’ she said ruefully. ‘And it’s entirely in your honour, as I have absolutely no intention of going to Saskia Middleton’s party. I’d rather spend an evening with Lucretia Borgia and Hannibal Lecter. But go and grab a table on the terrace and get those Martinis ordered. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
Hanging up before Fliss could argue about the party, Anna turned back to the wedding dress, stroking her hand over the slippery satin.
How much had changed since that long ago summer, when she had thought that life was simple.
Nothing was simple. Nothing was what she’d thought it was.
Herself included.
The château was just about all that was left of that old life. And that, she thought fiercely, standing up and walking quickly across the room and down the stairs, was why she had no intention of letting it go without a fight. It was nothing whatsoever to do with any lingering fantasies about white dresses and wedding bells, but her mother was dead, her dreams were broken, her own sense of who she was shaken to the core. That was why she had to hang on to the last shreds of the person she used to think she was.
A door slammed below.
Crossing the landing, Anna stopped dead. A little gust of air seemed to shiver through the building, then everything sank back into stillness. But the atmosphere had changed. There was a charge in the air, like electricity before a storm, and with a pulse of horrified certainty Anna knew she was no longer alone in the house.
She froze and then, with agonizing caution, tiptoed to the top of the stairs.
For a long moment there was no sound at all.
Then, with a mounting sense of panic, she heard footsteps moving across the hall. Instinctively she recognized them as male: slow, measured and sounding like the footsteps of the axe-murderer in every horror film she’d ever seen.
The footsteps stopped.
Forcing herself to lean forward, she tentatively peered over the banisters, then drew back with a sharp intake of breath.
She was right.
He was male. Very male. And very blond. Perhaps it was just because she was looking down on him from directly above that he seemed to have the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen.
‘Hello?’
His voice was deep and faintly accented. He didn’t sound like a murderer. He sounded gorgeous. Anna swallowed. The ability to speak had inexplicably deserted her, but the pounding of her heart seemed to echo through the whole building, declaring her presence with every beat.
‘Who’s there?’
She opened her mouth but the only sound that came out was a dry croak.
There was a muttered curse from below. ‘All right then, I’ll come up.’
Oh, God. She was being utterly ridiculous and in a moment he—whoever he was—was going to come up and see her cowering on the landing like some frightened animal. Drawing herself up to her full five foot three inches, she smoothed down the slightly creased linen of her dress. ‘Don’t bother,’ she called, clenching her fists into balls of determination and desperately trying to assume an air of insouciance. She moved to the top of the stairs and began to descend.
Halfway down she steeled herself to glance down at him and had to grip the banister to stop herself from falling. There was a roaring of blood in her ears and a dizzying surge of adrenalin flooded her body.
The man who stood at the foot of the stairs was her fantasy made flesh. For a moment time seemed to stand still and the years melt away, until she could have easily believed that she was ten years old again, a ragged bouquet of forget-me-nots and roses clasped in her hands, sweeping down the stairs to meet her hero. He was there, just as she had imagined him so many times.
Only his silver-blue eyes weren’t filled with adoration.
They were icy cold.
‘Gesù, who the hell are you?’
Angelo Emiliani was aware of the hostility in his tone and didn’t bother to try and disguise it.
Arundel-Ducasse may be one of the longest established estate agents in the business, with offices in all the major European cities, but in his dealings with them over the past couple of weeks they had hardly stunned him with their efficiency. Now it seemed they’d not only got the time of his appointment wrong, so thwarting his plan to look around the château on his own first, but they’d also sent some juvenile delinquent office girl.
And, unfortunately for her, patience was not his strong point.
She stopped on the third step from the bottom, where her eyes were just about level with his, looking both nervous and defiant. In spite of his irritation, Angelo felt a vague, instinctive stirring inside him.
‘Maybe I should ask you the same question,’ she snapped.
‘Oh, dear.’ His tone was languid and mocking as he turned and walked into the centre of the hallway, his eyes travelling speculatively around the room. ‘Am I to assume that the entire Nice office of Arundel-Ducasse have been struck down with the Black Death or something equally debilitating? I cannot imagine any other circumstances in which it would be necessary to send the girl who does the photocopying on a major viewing such as this.’
Behind him she gave a little gasp.
‘Angelo Emiliani.’
Something in her voice jolted him out of his preoccupied irritation and he glanced sharply at her, noticing her properly for the first time.
At first he had assumed that the rainbow streaks in her hair were caused by the light from the stained-glass dome above them, but now he could see that there were indeed jagged blazes of shocking pink beneath the dark silk that was drawn bac
k from her delicate heart-shaped face. His gaze travelled over her slowly, taking in the smoky kohl-rimmed eyes and the short black dress, the oddly defiant set of her small chin. Realization slotted into his brain like a well-oiled bolt sliding home. Of course. He’d spotted the protesters’ camp through the trees as he’d approached the château. He gave a slow smile.
‘Correct, signorina. And your name is…?’
Her hesitation was almost unnoticeable, then, with a little jangle of silver bracelets, she thrust out a slender hand and spoke in confident cut-glass tones.
‘Forgive me, Signor Emiliani, you caught me off guard. I’m Felicity from the London office of Arundel-Ducasse. I’ve been liaising with the Marquess of Ifford over the sale of the château. I’m on holiday in Cannes, so I thought I’d come and see it for myself.’
That was pretty quick thinking. He had to hand it to her—she was a vast improvement on the usual spotty, dreadlocked eco-warriors that picketed his development sites and protested outside his offices in Rome and London.
‘I see.’ He looked down at the grimy limestone floor and tried to suppress a smile. Protester-baiting was one of his favourite sports and this time there was an added piquancy thanks to the unprecedented lusciousness of the quarry. The urge to play along with her little charade was irresistible. ‘Well, I’m very glad that you did, Felicity.’ He took a step towards her and watched with satisfaction as a shadow passed across her extraordinary wide-set eyes. ‘Very glad indeed. As you’ll have gathered, your colleague from the far less efficient Nice office hasn’t appeared and due to unwelcome … developments … I’m very keen to get this deal sorted out today.’
‘Developments?’
He sighed. ‘Our little group of campers in the woods. I saw them as I came up the drive and the sooner my name is on the deeds for this property, the sooner I can send them on their way to spend their time doing something worthwhile. I hate to see idealistic young people wasting their time on a lost cause.’
Anna clenched her fists so that the fingernails dug painfully into her palms. Until this moment she wouldn’t honestly have been able to list ‘self-control’ as being one of her personal strong points, but it seemed she certainly had more of it than she thought. How else was she managing to restrain herself from throwing herself at Angelo hot-shot Emiliani and raking her nails down his arrogant, self-satisfied, obscenely handsome face?
He took a step towards her, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘So it’s your lucky day, Felicity. As you’ll be the one to show me the property, you’ll be the one who gets the commission on the sale.’
Anna felt the blood drain from her face. She felt like Judas taking his thirty pieces of silver. The thought of walking through each familiar room of her beloved château in the company of the man who intended to take it from her made her feel dizzy with horror.
He was still looking at her, his narrow blue eyes glittering with ice.
‘That won’t be a problem, will it, signorina? You are an employee of the estate agency that is supposed to be selling this property, are you not?’
‘Yes, of course, as I said I …’
‘Good. And you said you’ve been handling its marketing in the London office, in which case you should know your way around?’
She met his gaze with a steadiness that surprised him. ‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s not waste any more time.’ He smiled suddenly and it lit up his exquisite features and carved perfectly symmetrical brackets on each side of his generous mouth. ‘I’ve scheduled the first of my contractors to be on site here next week, so as you can see I can’t afford to hang around.’
‘Isn’t that a little presumptuous? Until the contracts are signed, nothing is certain.’
‘Not presumptuous. Realistic. I always get what I want. Now, are you going to show me around or do I have to phone the Nice office and get someone out here who knows what they’re doing?’
She looked up at him and gave him her sweetest smile.
‘Where would you like to start?’
His eyes flickered downwards for a second, causing her stomach to tighten convulsively and a gasp to rise in her throat.
‘How about the master bedroom?’
Breathe in … Hold … And out …
It was no good. The surge of white-hot tingling fury that was currently coursing through her veins wasn’t going to be calmed down with yoga. She needed tranquillisers at the very least. Or a general anaesthetic.
The trouble was, she admitted disgustedly to herself, it wasn’t just anger that was making her knees shake so much that she had to lean on the banisters for support. Waiting on the landing outside what used to be her grandmother’s room, Anna cursed her own stupidity and the pathetic weakness that had made her hormones sing in response to his blatant flirting.
How could she have told such a ridiculous lie? Fliss would kill her when she found out she had ‘borrowed’ her identity. Oh, God—supposing Emiliani complained to her boss and she got into terrible trouble? Anna felt panic surge through her.
She’d just have to be very, very nice to the obnoxious Signor Emiliani and make sure that he had no cause to complain, but jeez, that wasn’t going to be easy. How could he be so complacent—so sure of himself—to have already scheduled contractors to start destroying her beloved château when the sale was far from assured? She felt a fresh wave of indignation crash through her at the thought.
Thank goodness for GreenPlanet. It wasn’t over yet.
She turned. Through the open doorway she could see him standing at the window. He was leaning against the sill, his arms stretched out on either side and his broad shoulders blocking out an unreasonable amount of daylight. No doubt he was planning which parts of the formal parterre would have to be flattened to make way for the helipad and all-weather tennis courts, she thought bitterly, trying not to notice the way his unruly blond hair curled on to the collar of his dark linen suit, or the length of the suntanned fingers resting so lightly on the window sill. Even with his back to her there was something about his slim-hipped, elegant figure that screamed self-assurance and power.
I always get what I want.
GreenPlanet was no match for him, she acknowledged with a mixture of despair and awful, treacherous excitement. He had an aura of quiet, dangerous focus that made her shiver.
Levering himself upright, he turned to her and she experienced a momentary frisson of shock at the youthful beauty of his face. The skin over his elegant cheekbones was taut and bronzed, and his aura of restless energy was like that of an exotic animal in the absolute peak of physical condition. He couldn’t be that much older than she was and yet he seemed as hard and cold and jaded as a man twice his age. What the hell had happened to turn him to stone?
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ she stuttered, suddenly jolted out of her thoughts and aware that she’d been staring. Although he was no doubt used to that.
He leaned his narrow hips against the window sill and folded his arms. ‘Come on, Felicity, you can do better than that. This is the part where you’re supposed to talk about location and square footage and security. You’re an estate agent, remember?’
His voice was quiet, amused, slightly reproving. Anna gritted her teeth as she recognized that he was testing her, teasing her.
‘Of course. And you’re an internationally renowned property developer, signor,’ she retorted, trying to keep her tone light. ‘I wouldn’t presume to tell you anything about this building or any other, since of the two of us you are so clearly the expert.’
‘Wouldn’t or couldn’t?’
He spoke very softly, the words dropping into the silence like pebbles into a lake. Anna felt the ripples spreading through the still air between them and, despite the warmth of the afternoon, she shivered suddenly.
He was so on to her. And so enjoying it. For the sake of her own pride as well as Fliss’s professional reputation, she had to do a bit better than this.
‘What do you want to know?’
Squaring her shoulders, she walked slowly towards him, slipping again into that clipped upper-crust drawl. ‘As I’m sure you can see for yourself, Château Belle-Eden is a perfect example of the nineteenth century Anglo-Norman style, set in five acres of prime real estate in one of the world’s most desirable locations.’
‘Very impressive.’
‘That was the intention.’ She had reached the window now and stood beside him, unable to meet his eyes. ‘It was built in 1897 for the owner of one of Paris’s most exclusive department stores and no expense was spared on its construction or its furnishings. The walls were covered with silk from—’
‘I wasn’t actually talking about the property.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He was looking at her steadily. ‘I was referring to your in-depth knowledge of Château Belle-Eden.’
‘I told you, I’ve been responsible for the marketing of this property at the London end,’ she said abruptly, staring straight ahead of her to where the driveway snaked through the pine trees towards the road and the cliffs beyond. ‘As I was saying, this is one of the most sought after locations in the world. Cannes is a mere three kilometres away, the château has its own stretch of private beach, accessed through the pine forest—which you can see over there to your left.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Much to Anna’s relief, he shifted his smoky, searching gaze and looked out of the window to where the GreenPlanet tents and guy-ropes of washing were just about visible above the pine trees. His eyes were narrowed and slightly menacing.
‘Do you intend to keep the château as a private residence, Signor Emiliani?’ she asked, trying to keep her tone casual.
Slowly he turned back to face her with a mocking smile. ‘No. I thought I’d use it as a youth hostel. And maybe establish a permanent camp over there in the woods for hippies and drop-outs. That way maybe I’d be able to get on with my other projects at least without having them constantly on my case.’
One Night In Collection Page 37