The moment he began speaking Natalia was aware of the difference in this call from all of the other calls, no matter what language he was speaking. This one was being carried out in Italian—a warm, soft, intimate Italian loaded down with so much sensual promise that she didn’t doubt for a moment just whom it was he was speaking to.
A lover. It had to be. And as she sank back onto her ankles feeling very odd suddenly, as if someone had just punched her in the stomach, she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t so much as considered the prospect of his having a lover in his life.
Well, that’s fine. It’s okay, she tried telling herself. In fact it suited her very well that he had someone else to concentrate his sexual interest upon! But inside she burned and squirmed with that nasty hot thing called jealous resentment, which only got worse the more ‘cara mia’s and ‘mia bella amore’s she caught interspersing his husky-toned conversation.
It seemed a good point for her to make her exit, she decided, slamming the last file back down on the stack with more violence than was necessary.
The sound it made had him glancing up, but his dark gaze was hazed by distraction, the kind of distraction that set her heart thudding on a burst of good old-fashioned anger. The kind of anger that had her coming to her feet and walking towards the door without bothering to announce her departure.
‘Going somewhere?’ his silken voice came sliding after her.
She glanced back, saw him leaning there against Edward’s desk, with a hand clamped over the telephone mouthpiece—and a glint in his eyes that she just didn’t like.
It came too close to sexual arousal for her fastidious sensitivities. Couldn’t the man wait until he had his privacy before indulging in that kind of conversation? He was even daring to peruse her figure as if it belonged to the woman who was arousing him, she noticed in affront.
‘It’s late,’ she bit out. ‘In case you haven’t noticed. We seem to have finished here, so I’ll leave you to it.’
With that she walked out, firmly closing the door behind her with absolutely no suspicion that the man she had left on the other side of it was now slowly replacing the phone on its rest, with a smile on his face that could only be described as—triumphant…
He was getting to her—really getting to her! It felt pretty good. He even gave the phone a light tap as if in thanks for its help. Then the smile cracked into a full-blooded grin when he thought of Serena, his best friend’s wife, who had just laughingly threatened to tell Fredo if Giancarlo didn’t stop speaking to her in that seductive tone of voice!
The phone rang again. He picked it up, knowing exactly who was going to be on the other end of it. ‘Fredo—all is fair in love and war,’ he announced before the other man could get a word in. ‘And before you ask, no, my war is not being waged against your beautiful wife…’
CHAPTER THREE
‘BUON GIORNO, Miss Deyton,’ Giancarlo greeted briskly as he strode in the next morning. ‘You had a pleasant evening, I hope, and are feeling rested enough to begin a whole new day?’
No, she hadn’t, and no, she wasn’t, but it was all too obvious that he’d had more than enough of both, she noted, viewing his irritatingly upbeat manner through heavily jaundiced eyes.
Everything about him appeared thoroughly revitalised from the brightness in his tone to the healthy sheen of his olive-toned skin. Clearly burning the candle at both ends had only an invigorating effect on him. Even his clothes looked sharp enough to draw blood if you touched them, she thought as she ran those same eyes over his steel-grey suit with its matching colour shirt and silk tie.
Whereas she felt wrecked because she had done nothing but wage war with herself right through the evening and into the night. Troubled by her lies, troubled by her attraction to him and more than troubled by the uncontrollable way her imagination had insisted on drawing lurid pictures of him locked in the arms of some gorgeous Italian who possessed all the sensual expertise a man like Giancarlo Cardinale would expect from the woman he allowed into his bed!
‘A Ms Delucca just called,’ she informed him frostily. ‘To complain about you leaving this morning, without saying thank you.’
‘Ah, Serena,’ he murmured smilingly—a smile that became a disgustingly rakish full-blooded grin, which showed no sign whatever of any embarrassment at having his private life put on show like this. ‘I will apologise later. But first we have some things to do that will—’
He stopped. Went still, seemed to stiffen slightly, then suddenly lost all of that rakish humour. ‘How long have you been in?’ he demanded suddenly.
‘About five minutes,’ she replied, suddenly very aware of how finely she’d timed getting Edward’s papers out of the safe before Giancarlo had arrived. The day did not officially start for another half an hour and she’d really thought she’d had plenty of time. As it was, the darned man had virtually caught her with her hand in the safe!
But as far as he was concerned, she might not have got around to removing her coat yet, but she had collected the post and checked for emails—plus taken a call from his current mistress!
‘Do you have a problem with that, Mr Cardinale?’ she demanded, having already come to the decision at some point in the early hours of the morning that she was not going to let him turn her inside out for two days on the run!
He didn’t answer, but he was frowning darkly. And if she could glean any consolation from that frown then it was in the knowledge that his irritatingly upbeat mood had so obviously collapsed.
‘Take your coat off and come into my office,’ he instructed, jumping into autocratic mode with a snap to his tone that sent her hackles up.
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, using frost to his bite.
He muttered something she didn’t catch, then strode through the connecting door before slamming it shut behind him.
She allowed herself an exaggerated wince, then began removing her camel-coloured full-length cashmere coat and soft lilac scarf at a speed that confirmed her determination not to be bullied. So she took her time settling it on its hanger, then took another few moments to smooth down the fabric of her calf-length black pinstriped suit. She had chosen to wear this particular suit because it showed less leg and the tailored jacket fastened right up to its mandarin collar. Her hair was up as usual, neatly secured by a black shell clasp, and her make-up was so underplayed it might not even be there.
If anyone could look at her and even vaguely suggest that she was asking for the kind of looks Signor Cardinale had treated her to yesterday, she would call them liars! But she was not seeing that all she had done with her severe cover-up was incite the imagination to wonder what was being hidden…
Which was exactly what Giancarlo began thinking about from the moment she stepped into his office. Natalia’s hair glistened like polished copper, her skin sheened like a pearl. Her body moved with the sensual grace of a born siren—and her eyes would be cutting him into two pieces if he were made of glass.
The woman was not of this world, he grimly decided. She was all fire and ice and dangerous witchery. She filled him with the primitive urge to go over there, pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless.
And she knew it. Look at her! he growled to himself. Standing there with her chin up, just daring him to try it!
‘We are changing location,’ he announced right off the top of his head and with no idea of what he was talking about. All he knew was that he wanted her out of this place before she found a way to get her sticky fingers into Edward’s safe. It had almost ruined his day to come in here this morning and find that she had got here before him. He seemed to have misplaced the piece of paper with the combination number that Edward had given him, and six long weeks of wondering when she was going to grab enough time away from him unseen to crack the darn safe were more than he was prepared to cope with. Though he was going to have his work cut out trying to come up with a valid excuse for making such an impulsive announcement, he admitted.
Still, it had been
worth it just to see that cold, haughty expression she was wearing this morning collapse into a flurry of confusion.
‘What?’ she choked out as if he’d spoken in a strange language.
If he could have any wish granted right now, it would be to have that sensational gasping mouth fixed permanently to his own hungry mouth.
‘I have decided I cannot work here,’ he continued, thinking on his feet and glad he was good at it. ‘It is too complicated trying to run this company as well as my own from here. You saw yourself how much time I spent on the telephone yesterday when I should have been devoting my energies to what is wrong right here.’
Wrong right here… Natalia stared at the hand he was using to punctuate the point with long fingertips stabbing into Edward’s desk, and felt a horrid little flutter of alarm slither down her backbone. ‘Wha-what’s wrong here?’ she stammered out warily.
‘Everything,’ he replied. And she wasn’t even wearing any lipstick, he noted. Did she know he couldn’t stand the taste of lipstick? ‘Even the little information I gleaned from the files yesterday was enough to tell me that this place is in deep trouble.’ She blinked, and he grimaced because that part at least was the ugly truth. ‘The premises may have been thoroughly modernised but its business practices are positively archaic, so I am about to do something about it.’
‘But—you can’t do that!’ she protested. ‘It isn’t your place to mess with Edward’s business!’
‘I can do anything I want, Miss Deyton,’ he corrected her with a haughty incision. ‘I own controlling stock here, in case you have forgotten. When I injected a large amount of cash into this place last year, Edward’s brief was to completely modernise. He seems to have gone as far as refurbishing the premises—and no damned farther.’
‘His son died…’
‘I am aware of that,’ Giancarlo clipped out. He felt his face harden when he recalled where Edward’s energies had gone to salve his grief for his dead son, when they could have been salved by continuing the job he had begun right here, where it mattered. But he hadn’t done that, and everything at Knight’s had simply stagnated while Edward indulged himself in a bit of womanly comfort.
This woman’s womanly comforts. Fire flared up from his heart, diverted to his eyes and spat sparks out over Natalia Deyton. ‘Grief is no excuse for tardy business practices,’ he proclaimed with what even he knew was a gross lack of sympathy.
‘So what is it you intend to do?’ she asked in a tone meant to slay him for his insensitivity.
‘Bring in my team of experts,’ he said, glancing down at his watch and wondering if he could pull this off in the time space he was gunning for. ‘They will arrive late this afternoon and set up a six-week re-educating programme that will haul the staff here into this century. Howard Fiske already knows about it,’ he added with what he now saw as a clever bit of unwitting pre-planning. ‘He is, as we speak, flying to my head office in Milan, to begin his own re-education on how I expect my executives to conduct themselves.’
‘I thought you were Sicilian,’ Natalia murmured, so out of context in his point of view that it stopped his train of thought completely.
‘What has that got to do with anything?’ he demanded.
‘You said Milan,’ she explained with a shrug meant to convey mild indifference. But in truth even she didn’t understand why she said such a stupid thing. ‘I just presumed you lived and worked in Sicily. Edward said…’
She faded out, seeing by his sudden narrowing expression that he didn’t like what was being said here.
‘Edward said—what?’ he prompted grittily.
Another shrug and she was beginning to feel just a little hunted. ‘I only remember him remarking once, about your home in—in Trápani, I think he said,’ she answered warily. ‘He m-made it sound very—beautiful.’
If she’d been looking for a diversion with that last remark, she didn’t achieve it. ‘Quite cosy little chats you two must have indulged in to reach the point where they included me,’ he remarked. ‘Maybe we should sit down and compare notes some time. See if his references to you were as—interesting…’
His tone was cold, and she’d gone quite pale. But the very thought of her having this kind of conversation about him with Edward set his teeth on edge…
Natalia, on the other hand, was kicking herself for starting this at all. She knew his comment about comparing notes was merely his way of getting back at her, because Edward would never have discussed her with Giancarlo. Not during this lifetime anyway.
But she was genuinely regretful for invading what Giancarlo clearly saw as his privacy. And despite knowing she should leave it alone, the words of explanation came anyway. ‘Edward was missing his son,’ she gently explained. ‘He seemed to need to talk about him so I let him. Your home in Sicily came up because I gained the impression that Marco used to spend a great deal of his time there with you. So it was perhaps natural for Edward to refer to that.’
He had stopped looking at her, his eyes becoming hidden beneath the long sweep of his lashes. Anxious because she was concerned that she’d only managed to upset him further, she took an impulsive couple of steps closer to the desk behind which he was standing. ‘Please don’t think he discussed you personally, because he didn’t,’ she assured.
To her surprise, he smiled, albeit grimly. ‘I was ten years old when Edward married Alegra. Two years later Marco arrived. We were more like brothers than uncle and nephew. When he died last year, we all—went to pieces a little. I have not been back to Sicily since he died there, for instance. Alegra sank deep inside herself, while Edward…’ he paused, seemed about to say something else, then, on a short sigh, changed his mind ‘…Edward found his own means of escape,’ he clipped out. ‘Which is why this place has been left to stagnate over the last year. But now it’s time to do something about it,’ he added on a firmer, brisker note. ‘So we will begin by getting in my team of experts to knock his staff into shape while Edward himself devotes some long-overdue time to patching up his ailing marriage.’
Why it seemed as though he had turned that last comment into a threat, Natalia didn’t understand. But as for the rest of it—oh, she understood it all far more than he would ever know. Marco had been visiting Giancarlo in Sicily when the tragic accident had happened. Young, reckless and with his whole life ahead of him, Marco had taken Giancarlo’s Ferrari out without permission, lost control of the powerful machine, and crashed it, killing himself as he’d done so.
Those of his family left behind were inconsolable. Directly after the funeral in Sicily, Giancarlo had flown off the island and disappeared for weeks somewhere no one could find him. Alegra had gone into deep mourning. No one had been able to get near her. She’d spent hours in Marco’s bedroom here in London. It had become a shrine, Edward told her once. A sad, torturous, sacred shrine.
And Edward? Well, Edward’s story was equally as sad though not quite as wretched as the others. Because he’d found her, Natalia admitted. In her he’d found a link with his son and someone into whom he could divert all that painful love he had festering inside him.
‘He doesn’t even have a picture of Marco in here,’ Giancarlo grated, with a contempt aimed at Edward that hid a lot of his own pain, Natalia suspected.
‘It’s in the safe,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t bear to look at it, so he put it away…’
The safe, Giancarlo repeated bitterly to himself. What else had Edward got hidden in his damned safe that he didn’t want him to look at? Pictures of his wife in happier times? Pictures of his lovely mistress who’d helped him to live again while the rest of them still floundered in guilt and misery?
The phone began to ring. It was a relief to have something to take his mind off the black anger suddenly consuming him. To hell with Natalia Deyton, he decided as he snatched up the receiver. To hell with his seduction plan! He’d had enough. She was out.
And as soon as this call was over. He never wanted to set eyes on Edward’s mistress
again if he could help it!
It was his second in command calling from Milan, wanting to know what he was supposed to do with Howard Fiske when he arrived. As he began biting out orders, Natalia turned as if to leave him to it.
‘Stay,’ he growled.
She stopped, then turned her head to look at him questioningly over her shoulder. The eyes were sad, the blue irises darkened mirrors that reflected the distress of what they had been discussing.
Had Edward received that same look when he’d opened up his grief to Natalia Deyton? If he had then it was no wonder he’d used her as his escape from misery, Giancarlo decided. Because he could feel himself being drawn towards the same exquisite means of escape.
For vengeance, he added, recalling why all of this had started. Vengeance for putting at risk what was left of his sister’s broken heart, by seducing her husband. Well, an eye for an eye—the Sicilian way, he reminded himself. Or, in this case, seduction for seduction. It was so very appropriate…
The game was back on. He suddenly felt better, and sat down in the chair to begin a more lazily sarcastic conversation with his caller, while casually waving Natalia into the other chair.
She didn’t comply. He wasn’t surprised. He had seen by her body language, from the moment he’d walked in this morning, that she had decided to take him on.
He liked the idea of that. It added spice to the chase and gave his mood another lift that did wonders for his testosterone levels. And he even set himself a rather titillating deadline, which involved him tasting her lovely mouth before the day was over.
‘Right, that’s it,’ he said, switching from Italian to English the moment he put down the phone. ‘All the arrangements are confirmed. My people will be here by late afternoon. What I need from you now is a tour of all departments, so I can make the initial assessment on what they are going to be required to do.’
A Sicilian Seduction Page 4