She didn’t flinch, he noticed. Not a flicker of emotion passed through those slanting, watchful eyes.
‘It was a genuine enquiry, signor.’
‘I’m sure it was. But if you think I’d be stupid enough to tell you honestly what I plan to do with this building then you’re obviously underestimating me.’
She looked steadily at him. ‘Have you finished here?’
There it was again. She was perfectly polite, perfectly correct, but he picked up that tiny spark of challenge which a man who was less in tune with his instincts would undoubtedly have missed. Angelo Emiliani had not come from an orphanage in Milan to take his place in the international rich lists by behaving as other men did. Instinct was his speciality.
‘For the time being, yes.’
‘Good. Follow me.’
‘My pleasure.’
And it certainly was a pleasure, he thought idly, watching the way the short linen dress cast undulating shadows on to the backs of her slim brown thighs as she sauntered down corridors, opening the doors on an endless succession of vast empty rooms. Despite the perfect respectability of the dress, there was something oddly rebellious about the way she wore it. Maybe it was the way she had teamed it with those slim bangles which made a soft, silvery, musical sound as she moved, or maybe it was the contrast of her long golden legs beneath the sober black.
There was something about this girl that whispered ‘toxic'. She gave the impression that the lightest brush against her would result in chemical burns.
The fact that she was lying to him didn’t disturb Angelo at all. The fact that she was doing it so convincingly bothered him a little more. Environmental protesters were a constant source of irritation and disruption in his business, but he had never considered them to be a serious threat to his plans before. But this girl knew more about this property than a hippy-dippy eco-warrior should do.
It didn’t cross his mind for a second that he might be wrong about her. So what if she had the diction of a minor royal and the lithe movements of a dancer? She was no more some posh airhead office girl than he was. It wasn’t just the pink streaks in her hair that gave her away, but the hostility that crackled around her like static. She might as well have had ‘REBEL’ tattooed on to her skin in inch-high letters.
Maybe she did. Somewhere.
Desire hit him like the lash of a whip, sudden and stinging.
‘In here is a slightly smaller bedroom, but the view of the sea more than makes up for the less sizable proportions …’ She spoke before she’d opened the door, he noticed, but, walking into the room, Angelo’s eyes narrowed as he ascertained that what she had just said was completely spot on.
He felt a cold pulse of adrenalin rush through him along with the realization that the group she belonged to may have some rich benefactor who was planning to put in a rival bid for the château. It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. There were plenty of stratospherically wealthy Hollywood celebs who would be only too willing to toss a few million in the direction of an environmental charity—especially if it meant acquiring such a gem of a property at the same time as making them feel they were doing their bit to save the planet. With the exception of the charity involved, it wasn’t so very different from what he planned to do with it. And the prospect of having those plans thwarted by a group of tree-huggers was unthinkable.
In the past he had bought properties out of boredom or for a challenge or simply to irritate the people who tried to stop him, but this one was different. Angelo Emiliani wasn’t in the habit of analyzing his feelings—in fact his entire purpose in life was to keep busy enough to avoid having to have them at all—but he was prepared to acknowledge how much this project mattered to him. For old times’ sake.
For Lucia.
‘…south facing, meaning the light is particularly lovely in here.’
There was something wistful in her tone that jerked him back to the present. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he took a steadying breath in before turning his attention back to her.
She was standing by the window, looking out across the treetops to where the sea lay in a glittering arc. And she was right about the light, he thought bitterly. The evening sun fell on to her face, outlining her profile in gold-dust, highlighting the sudden softness of her sulky mouth. Crushing down the anger that smouldered somewhere inside his chest, he managed a smile.
‘You’ve been very helpful, Felicity. Really. I appreciate you showing me round.’
She looked up at him and blinked, clearly taken by surprise by the softness of his tone. Walking slowly towards her, he could see that she was trembling slightly, but bravado flashed in her dark eyes. The combination caused an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach, which he recognized as lust spiked with something more complicated.
‘It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have been here really …’
He stopped a couple of feet away from her. ‘I’m very glad you were. I’ll be sure to tell your boss how impressed I am by your professional dedication.’
That shook her. He tried not to let the tiny leap of triumph in his chest show on his face as he watched the colour flood her cheeks.
‘Please don’t. I probably shouldn’t have—’
The bare room was bathed in softest apricot, turning the pink in her hair to gleaming copper.
‘OK—but let me make it up to you in some other way. You said you were staying in Cannes—please let me take you out for dinner tonight.’
‘I can’t,’ she said hastily. ‘I’m meeting a friend.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘In fact, I’m late. I really should go.’
He nodded. Her refusal didn’t surprise him in the slightest— he hadn’t expected anything else—but, looking at those slanting, wary, kohl-smudged eyes, he felt a sharp kick of disappointment which caught him completely unawares.
She was already walking to the door, casting a last look around the room before going out on to the landing.
He followed her. Her footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs as she ran down them.
‘Where are you staying? I’ll give you a lift.’
Smiling slightly, he wondered how she would get out of that one, but she tossed a nonchalant glance at him over her shoulder.
‘Thanks. Hotel Paradis, if that’s not out of your way?’
Watching her shut the front door of the château, Angelo felt himself frowning.
He was used to having all the answers, to being at least ten steps ahead of the game. But he had to admit it that right now this girl had him floundering in the dark.
Which was an intoxicating image. But a very disturbing feeling.
CHAPTER TWO
‘NICE car.’
Anna made an effort to mask her contempt behind a façade of admiration as she glanced around the white leather interior of the ridiculously flashy sports car. But she couldn’t quite stop herself from adding with a simper, ‘I always think that cars say so much about their owners.’
This one was shouting, I belong to a man with obscene amounts of cash and issues about his masculinity, she thought with some satisfaction. Maybe Angelo Emiliani wasn’t as cool as he came across.
‘Do you?’
Admittedly his voice was infuriatingly cool, as was the way he seemed to lounge in the driver’s seat, controlling the powerful car with one hand and easing it around hairpin bends on the narrow road at speeds which …
Anna swallowed and averted her eyes from the speedometer.
‘So you’ve no doubt come to the conclusion that I’m an insecure misogynist with more money than taste?’ She felt the colour leap to her cheeks at the accuracy of his guess. ‘Well, I hate to spoil the theory, but the car is only hired. I simply asked for the fastest model available—which should tell you that I’m very impatient and I like to get everything done in the shortest possible time.’
‘In that case, wouldn’t it make more sense to have a chauffeur? So you don’t need to lose a second of valuable working time?’
�
�Yes. But my impatience is perhaps only outweighed by my desire for control.’ His mouth curved into the merest suggestion of an ironic smile, letting her know he’d picked up the minute sting of sarcasm in her tone, and his blue gaze flickered over her for a second. A blissful, spine-tingling second. ‘I do have a chauffeur, of course. But wherever practical I prefer to drive myself. What about you, signorina? What sort of car do you drive?’
‘I don’t. Cars are—’
She was about to spring automatically into the standard GreenPlanet sermon about the evils wrought on the planet by the internal combustion engine, but managed to stop herself just in time. Not, however, before she noticed the smirk of satisfaction on Angelo Emiliani’s face.
‘A nuisance where I live, in Central London,’ she finished lamely, looking out of the window. ‘I take the tube everywhere.’
He’d very nearly caught her out. And, dammit, he knew it. He didn’t reply, but his silence spoke more articulately than anything he could have said.
The traffic grew heavier as they came into Cannes, and Angelo guided the car effortlessly through the streams of expensive vehicles towards the hotel. He wondered what she would do when they got there. Wait until he had gone and hitch a lift back to the protesters’ camp, he guessed. There was no way she could possibly be telling the truth about staying at the Paradis.
Was there?
‘I don’t think I got your full name,’ he said casually. With this girl it was best not to take any chances.
‘Hanson-Brooks’
‘Felicity Hanson-Brooks,’ he repeated, echoing her clipped upper-class pronunciation with a slight curl of his lip. That accent, with its suggestion of effortless privilege and complacency, never failed to set his teeth on edge and make his hackles rise. ‘That’s a very smart name.’
She glanced across at him and shrugged slightly. Defensively?
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her stretch out her long legs and shift slightly in her seat, arching her back away from the hot leather upholstery with the lissom grace of a cat stretching.
Angelo Emiliani had slept with so many women—from cocktail waitresses to contessas. Novelty, the ruthless pursuit of the new, which was what drove him in his work, was something he no longer expected to experience in the bedroom.
But he’d never had an eco-warrior.
Idly he wondered what lay beneath that perfectly simple, perfectly demure black linen dress. There was something raw about her, something earthy. He had grown tired of the neat, waxed sterility that turned every woman he undressed into a conveyor-belt Barbie—perfect and plastic. This girl looked as if she was liberatingly, excitingly beyond all of that. He breathed in deeply, savouring the thought, and was suddenly aware of the scent of her.
She smelled of dark things—bitter chocolate, black coffee, overlaid with woodsmoke.
Strong. Exotic. Delicious.
Benedetto Gesù. The very things he didn’t trust about her were the things that turned him on.
He swung into the hotel’s VIP forecourt more recklessly than he had intended and brought the car to a halt in a screech of brakes. For a moment neither of them moved and the interior of the small car suddenly seemed thick with swirling undercurrents of meaning.
His hand, still on the handbrake, was inches from her bare thigh. He flexed his fingers around the brake, and then was instantly, uncomfortably aware of the phallic symbolism of the gesture.
And so was she.
Slowly her eyes travelled upwards, until she was looking at him from beneath her lashes as shaming colour rushed to her cheeks. He must have guessed what she was thinking, he must be mocking her, she thought in miserable humiliation. How amusingly predictable that she should end up falling under his spell like every other woman. Groping for the door handle, she mustered what she hoped was a cool smile, but her attempt at nonchalance was totally ruined by the fact that she couldn’t work out how to open the door.
He leaned across her and she flattened herself against the back of the seat to avoid coming into contact with the hard length of his body. But she could smell his cool, clean scent. He straightened up slowly and she scrambled out of the car.
‘Thanks for the lift, Signor Emiliani.’
He nodded curtly, suddenly finding that the acerbic retort he would usually have found eluded him. For a fraction of a second there he had been out of control—of the car and of his ruthlessly contained emotions—and the realisation had left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
He should follow her, he thought savagely as he watched her run lightly up the steps to the hotel, but the tell-tale evidence of her effect on him made movement temporarily inadvisable. Slamming his fist down on the steering wheel, he waited a moment, then got stiffly out of the low driving seat and leaned against the roof of the car, watching her all the time.
At the top of the steps she paused and turned her head towards the long rows of little metal tables that spilled out from the hotel’s ultra-fashionable bar on to a balcony overlooking the beach. At this hour of the early evening they were already crowded with those who were wealthy and well- connected enough to be able to afford to drink in one of the most exclusive watering holes on the Riviera, and beautiful enough to want to be seen there.
Angelo’s eyes narrowed as he watched her wave frantically before hurrying inside. He straightened up, searching the crowd on the outdoor terrace for the person she could have been greeting, but in the crush of lithe, designer-clad bodies perched at tables and standing in groups it was impossible to distinguish anyone in particular.
Which, he thought savagely, tossing the car keys to a uniformed concierge, was exactly what she had calculated. It was all part of the game she was playing to try to persuade him that she genuinely was some harmless, well-bred English girl, holidaying on the Riviera with a similarly respectable friend.
He didn’t intend to let her get away with it.
Ignoring the polite greeting of the doorman, he stalked angrily through the opulent lobby to the reception desk. While he waited his eyes roved restlessly over the shifting groups of people, but there was no sign of her.
The blonde receptionist batted thickly mascaraed eyelashes at him as he asked for Felicity Hanson-Brooks’s room number.
‘Well, monsieur, we’re really not supposed to … ‘
‘Please. She gave it to me last night and I arranged to pick her up, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.’ He gave her his most helpless smile and watched her melt. ‘I can’t stand her up.’
Blushing furiously under her heavy make-up, the girl gave it to him and was rewarded with a smile that would give her sleepless nights for the next month.
His face hardening as he turned away, Angelo took a seat on a Louis XIV-style sofa beneath a hideous golden palm tree and thoughtfully took out his phone. That hadn’t been the outcome he had expected. He checked his watch. It was too late now to catch any of his contacts in the London office of Arundel-Ducasse, and he was starting to get a nasty feeling that he might just be in for a surprise there too.
Was his instinct about this girl completely wrong?
With fresh determination he speed-dialled his PA and asked her to arrange for his chauffeur to bring his dinner suit down to the Paradis. He wasn’t leaving tonight until he’d got some answers. In the meantime, he had a deal to finalise.
‘OK, you have precisely thirty seconds to explain.’
Leaning over the little table, Anna gave Fliss a brief hug then sank down into one of the trendy aluminium chairs and took a long sip of the drink that was waiting for her.
‘’Splain wha'?’ she queried innocently around the ridiculous straw and cocktail olive with which the Hotel Paradis saw fit to furnish their Martinis. The ice in hers had melted long ago so it was warm and watery, but it still had a very welcome alcoholic kick.
Leaning back in her seat, Fliss tapped her foot and tried to look cross, but her eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘Let me think now … Who invented cellulite? Why men do
n’t have a shopping gene? Or maybe why you’ve turned up forty minutes late in the company of a gorgeous bloke?’
Sullenly Anna took a long suck of Martini. ‘Hmm, that’s actually quite interesting. You see “gorgeous bloke” and I see “ruthless, vulgar billionaire property developer.”’
Fliss’s eyes widened and she let out a long, low whistle.
‘That was Angelo Emiliani?’
As reactions went it was a pretty satisfying one, Anna reflected sulkily, so why did it irritate the life out of her?
Fliss’s eyes skimmed the terrace, as if hungry to see him again. ‘Now I understand why the girls in our office call him The Ice Prince and fight each other practically to the death to take his calls. He is quite amazingly lush …’
Anna affected extreme indifference and looked into the distance, to where the sun was dyeing the surface of the sea the same colour as her hair.
‘So the gossip was spot on,’ Fliss mused eagerly. ‘He’s the mystery buyer for the château.’
‘Correction,’ snapped Anna. ‘He’s the would-be mystery buyer for the château. The papers aren’t signed yet.’
Fliss glanced at her sharply. ‘But they will be, surely? As soon as his offer is made formally? I mean, the whole point is that you and your father need the money from the sale, isn’t it?’
Viciously Anna stabbed the olive with the cocktail stick. ‘Of course. But I don’t want to let Château Belle-Eden go to someone who’s going to rip it apart and turn it into some hideous showpiece of trendy architecture.’
Fliss was looking at her steadily. ‘And what about your father? What does he say about that?’
‘Why should he care? He hasn’t been near the place in years. He wouldn’t care if Emiliani wanted to paint it purple and turn it into a vice den, but luckily, thanks to French inheritance law, it’s half mine, so whatever he says the sale can’t go ahead until I’ve signed the papers.’
‘Right,’ said Fliss decisively. ‘I’ll come with you if you like. You can introduce me to the delicious Signor Emiliani.’
Anna paled at the thought. As far as Angelo Emiliani was concerned he’d already met Felicity Hanson-Brooks, but now wasn’t the time to confess about that. Not when Fliss had that scary look on her face.
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