‘We’ll fly out tomorrow. You’ll need an evening gown to wear to the evening reception but you can shop for a dress and anything else you need when we arrive in Dubai. I’ll fill you in on everything you’ll need to know during the flight.’ His brows rose when Orla stared at him in stunned silence. ‘Any questions?’
‘Um...’ She wanted to ask why he had decided to give her a chance when he knew she had been fired from her previous job, but her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth. She could not shake off a feeling of foreboding that Torre had an ulterior motive.
‘I imagine you’ll want to know what I am prepared to pay you,’ he said drily. ‘You will receive the same salary as Renzo earns.’ He named a figure that made Orla want to do a dance of delight. The salary was more than she had ever earned, and even though it would only be for two months, it would allow her to pay some of Kimberly’s medical expenses.
Her relief was tempered by the knowledge that working as Torre’s assistant would undoubtedly mean they would spend a lot of time together. How on earth would she cope with seeing him on a daily basis? Somehow she would have to hide her awareness of him, she fretted, and only realised she had been biting her lower lip when she tasted blood in her mouth.
‘Where will Orla be based for work after she has been to Dubai with you?’ Jules’s terse voice caught her attention and she wondered why he was frowning.
‘Mainly at the Naples office.’ Torre kept his eyes fixed on Orla. ‘But I have several trips abroad planned before I officially take over as Chairman and CEO and I will require you to travel with me,’ he told her. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
Her problem was him, or rather her reaction to him, she thought grimly. Her heart was pounding simply because she was sitting near him, but she was determined to ignore her inconvenient attraction to him. His job offer was a lifeline and she would be a fool to turn it down, especially as there was a chance that it might lead to a permanent position if she could impress Torre with her professionalism and show him she had a good work ethic.
At her previous job she had taken sick leave so that she could go to Chicago to be with her mother when Kimberly’s life had been in the balance following the stroke. Orla’s boss at Mayall’s had been sympathetic at first, but her lengthy periods of absence had caused difficulties for the company and she had not been surprised when she’d been fired.
She met Torre’s steel-grey gaze. ‘I don’t have a problem,’ she said with a calmness she did not feel. ‘I appreciate your offer of a job and I assure you that I won’t let you down.’
‘You would be wise not to,’ he said softly, and she wondered if she had imagined an inherent threat in his words. She felt like she had thrown herself into the lion’s den, and for a few seconds she experienced a cowardly urge to retract her acceptance of his job offer.
She watched Torre help his father to his feet and the two men walked back to the house. Giuseppe was still frail after his recent illness and he leaned on his son for support. It was obvious that Torre cared about his father and was protective of him. Orla acknowledged that eight years ago her mother had married Giuseppe for his money and a few years later Kimberly had won a sizeable fortune in a divorce settlement that she had frittered away on a champagne lifestyle. But now Kimberly faced spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair without the specialist therapy that might enable her to walk again. In the past months Orla had grown closer to her mother and she had resolved to help her in any way that she could.
‘You don’t have to work for Torre,’ Jules said when they were alone again. His voice was strangely tense.
Orla gave a helpless shrug. ‘You know I need to earn money to pay for my mother’s care but I haven’t been able to find another job since I was sacked. What choice do I have but to take the temporary job Torre offered me?’
She was stunned when Jules moved closer to her and took her hand in his. ‘I know I’m probably rushing things—but you could marry me and you will never have to worry about money again.’
CHAPTER SIX
TORRE FOUND ORLA outside on the terrace where the music and the jangle of voices of the party guests drifting through the open patio doors were muted. She was standing alone by the balustrade, a slight figure in a silvery-grey dress made of a gauzy material—chiffon, he believed was the name for it—that emphasised her ethereal beauty. Her pale red hair streamed down her back like a river of silk, and in the moonlight her arms and shoulders—bare except for the narrow straps of her dress—looked as though they were made of porcelain.
She had driven him to distraction all evening while he’d hosted a party in honour of his father’s seventieth birthday. He’d dutifully chatted to his numerous relatives and other guests, but he could not recall any of his conversations because his attention had been on Orla. His temper had simmered as he’d watched her dancing with a steady stream of partners, and he’d barely managed to restrain himself from striding across the ballroom and dragging her away from his good-looking cousin Fabio. Every time the young man’s hand had strayed from the base of her spine and rested on her shapely derriere, a feeling that came dangerously close to possessiveness had surged through Torre.
Thankfully the party was winding down. The few guests who remained in the ballroom were staying at Villa Romano, and Giuseppe had retired for the night, leaving Torre free to follow Orla outside.
She looked cool and collected, in contrast to the violent tumult of emotions that surged through him as he walked over to her. His hand-stitched Italian leather shoes made no sound on the stone terrace but she turned her head as he drew nearer to her, as if a sixth sense had alerted her to his presence. Something kicked hard in his gut when he saw the glimmer of tears on her face.
‘Crying, Orla? That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?’ he drawled, angered by the inexplicable urge he felt to draw her into his arms and simply hold her. It had been easier to ignore his damnable hunger for her when he’d believed she was as mercenary as her mother. Now he wasn’t sure what to make of her, but recent events suggested he might have misjudged her. His conscience pricked uncomfortably and his voice was curt when he said, ‘You don’t want to marry Jules, so why the tears?’
She stiffened when he halted in front of her and her eyes flashed with angry fire that Torre preferred to her tragic expression, which he suspected was genuine.
‘How do you know that Jules asked me to marry him? Did he tell you?’
‘No. But something must have happened to make him miss Giuseppe’s birthday party and rush back to London, supposedly for an urgent but unspecified reason. Giuseppe had been hinting before you arrived that Jules had lost his head over you. I made a calculated guess that Jules would propose to you when I offered you a job as my assistant that would take you away from England and him.’
‘I feel awful.’ There was a catch in Orla’s voice. Torre did not know if her show of emotion was fake and she was the clever actress he had convinced himself for the past eight years that she was, or that she was genuinely upset over Jules. That thought stirred a corrosive feeling inside him that enraged him even further because jealousy was not an emotion he was familiar with.
‘I honestly had no idea that Jules had romantic feelings for me,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I believed he and I were simply friends. And before you make another of your nasty comments, I didn’t lead him on.’ Her flash of temper caused that fascinating colour change of her eyes from light hazel to glittering green.
He shrugged. ‘I admit that I expected you would accept Jules’s marriage proposal. If you had, I would have told him that you slept with me eight years ago and when we kissed earlier today it was obvious that there is still a strong chemistry between us.’
The moonlight was bright enough for him to see colour sweep along her high cheekbones. ‘Nothing exists between us except mutual loathing,’ she said grittily. ‘Why do you dislike
me so much, Torre? My only crime was to make love with you, and no one regrets it more than I do. But I was young and naïve, and you...’ She broke off and bit her lip, causing the smouldering embers inside Torre to blaze into fiery flames as he imagined covering her mouth with his and soothing her ravaged lip with his tongue. ‘You took my breath away,’ she whispered.
He shoved away the thought that she had done the same to him when he had seen her standing by his car earlier in the day. ‘I can’t deny that physically you were innocent,’ he said harshly. ‘But you knew what you were doing when you chose me as your first lover, although you took a risk by not telling me you were a virgin.’
‘A risk in what way?’
‘I regret that I was not as careful as I should have been when it was your first time. In my defence you allowed me to think you were sexually experienced. But you were as manipulative as your mother and you used your virginity as a bargaining chip.’ Torre had convinced himself that it was true for eight years and he did not want to accept the possibility that he had been wrong about Orla because it would make his behaviour towards her unforgiveable.
‘I was eighteen, for God’s sake. I went to bed with you because I was stupid, but I didn’t force you to have sex with me. You were not a victim any more than I was the scheming person you make me out to be.’ Her breasts rose and fell swiftly. ‘If I was a gold-digger, like you have accused me of being, I would have agreed to marry Jules. And, to be honest, marrying him would solve a lot of my problems,’ she muttered. ‘Surely the fact that I turned down his proposal is proof I don’t deserve your contempt?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps you rejected Jules because you have your sights on a richer prize. Me,’ he elaborated, when she looked puzzled.
‘Oh, no,’ she said in a cold, brittle voice that for some peculiar reason made Torre feel like his insides had been scoured. ‘I wouldn’t marry you if my life depended on it.’
She went to push past him but he stepped closer to her, trapping her against the stone balustrade. The voice of his sanity demanded to know what he was doing. Why was he acting in a way that was so alien to his character? He knew himself to be self-contained and he kept a tight hold over his emotions—a trait that he suspected stemmed from losing his mother, whom he had adored, when he was a young boy. To everyone he met he gave the impression of being charming and amusing, although many of his business adversaries had discovered to their cost that his laid-back air hid an implacable determination to win every deal.
In every situation Torre was always in control of himself. The exception was when he was with Orla. He couldn’t think straight when he was around her, and worse than that he did not care about anything other than his need to assuage his hunger for her that made him shake and made him less than the man he wanted to be.
His heart pounded as he inhaled the evocative scent of her perfume. ‘I imagine your ex-husband regrets the expensive mistake he made when he married you.’
She stiffened, and for a split second Torre glimpsed the anguished expression in her eyes that he’d seen when they had been in the library and she had mentioned her ex-husband. There had been fear in her voice, he remembered. But why would she be afraid of David Keegan? Torre was not a cricket fan but he was aware that Keegan was regarded as something of a sporting legend in England and he was also a hugely popular television personality who used his celebrity status to raise money for several charities.
Torre refused to move when Orla put her hand on his chest and tried to push him away. His eyes narrowed on her face. ‘What was that about in the library earlier? Obviously I didn’t appreciate being slapped by you, but you reacted as if you feared I would retaliate and strike you.’ He frowned as he remembered how she had cowered from him like a whipped puppy. ‘I can assure you I would never hit a woman, not even with extreme provocation,’ he added drily.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth once more, and this time Torre could not prevent himself from gently rubbing his thumb pad over the place where she had bitten the tender flesh. He felt the faint tremble of her mouth and heard her breath catch in her throat. The temptation he felt to kiss her was almost overwhelming, but he could not forget the look of terror that had crossed her face in the library.
He frowned. ‘Was your ex-husband ever violent to you?’ However improbable it seemed, Orla had clearly been afraid of something from her past. ‘You sounded like you were scared of him.’
‘I’m not prepared to discuss my marriage,’ she muttered. And then in a stronger voice that nevertheless shook betrayingly, ‘I don’t have to stand here and be interrogated by you.’
She made a frustrated sound when she tried to step past him and he used his body as a barricade to prevent her. ‘I knew you weren’t serious about employing me as your assistant,’ she said flatly. ‘You just admitted that you offered me the job in a deliberate attempt to force Jules to reveal that he wanted more than friendship with me. Poor Jules,’ she whispered. ‘He rushed off after I turned him down, but I feel that I should go and see him and explain that even though I’m not in love with him, I care about him as a friend.’
‘He doesn’t want to be your friend. And if you did decide to marry him to appease your guilt you’d only hurt him more in the long run. You won’t be able to hide the fact that you’re bored by him. And at some point in the future you and I will become lovers, and Jules will feel more wretched than he does now.’
In the dark her eyes flashed with green fire. ‘You are such an arrogant bastard,’ she hissed. ‘I’ve already told you I have no intention of accepting Jules’s proposal. And—believe me—hell will freeze over before I’d make love with you again.’
Torre was tempted to prove her wrong. Her eyes were wide, the pupils so dilated that barely any irises showed. She was breathing fast, as if she’d been running, or as if she’d been astride him and riding him hard. The image in his mind of her slender body arched above him, her silky red hair falling onto his chest, had a predictable effect on him. His erection was instant and painfully hard and he was infuriated by his weakness for her, only her.
He knew he was no angel. He’d had countless mistresses and one failed engagement to gentle Marisa, who fortunately was now married to a man a whole lot better than him. Torre’s guilt about his broken engagement was something else he preferred to blame Orla for, rather than himself.
‘I don’t know how to convince you that I am not like my mother,’ Orla said in a fierce voice that sounded sincere. ‘I value my independence, which is why I need to return to London so that I can continue to look for a job.’
‘My offer for you to be my temporary assistant was serious,’ he told her coolly. ‘I have already had someone from HR draw up a contract stating the terms of your employment. Come with me now and you can sign the contract before I drive you to Ravello. One of the staff took your luggage to my house after you’d changed your dress for Giuseppe’s party,’ he explained as escorted her back inside the villa and into the library.
He took out the contract from a drawer in the desk and watched her skim through it before she signed it. For the first time since Orla had arrived in Amalfi and exploded into his life once more, Torre felt that he had regained control of the situation, and he could not deny a sense of satisfaction that for the next two months she would be at his command.
* * *
Torre had opened the roof of the car, and a warm breeze rippled through Orla’s hair as they sped along the winding road that led up from the coast to Ravello. She had read in a travel guide that the picturesque town was situated more than three hundred metres above sea level, but even at this height she could smell the salty tang of the sea mingled with the scents of lemon and olive groves. Every time the car rounded a bend she glimpsed a view of the water with the silver moon reflected on its surface, and its tranquil beauty helped to soothe her jagged nerves.
Jules’s proposal had been like a bolt
from the blue and she felt guilty that she had misread their relationship. All she had wanted was friendship, but even Jules’s odd behaviour since they had arrived at Villa Romano had not prepared her for the shock of him asking her to marry him. She hated that she had hurt his feelings and it certainly had not crossed her mind to accept his proposal so that she could be financially secure.
Anger burned inside her when she remembered Torre’s outrageous taunt that they would be lovers at some time in the future. She glanced at him and her heart kicked against her ribs as she studied his far-too-handsome profile. No doubt he was used to having any woman he wanted simply by clicking his fingers. But not her, she vowed. She would not repeat the mistake she had made when she’d been eighteen and had fallen into his bed. Even though she wanted him, a little voice in her head taunted her.
Torre turned his head towards her and she flushed at being caught staring at him. His mouth curved into one of his killer, sexy smiles and when she jerked her head round to the front she heard him laugh softly, as if he knew of her confusion and the shameful longing that pooled hot and molten between her legs.
How could this be happening to her again? she wondered bleakly. Eight years ago she had made the exact same journey from Villa Romano to Torre’s house in Ravello. It had been her last night of innocence—not just because she had given her virginity to him that night but the following morning, when Torre had accused her of being a gold-digger like her mother, she had stopped believing in fairy-tales. She’d slunk out of his house in her creased dress and her tangled hair betraying her energetic night, and by some miracle she’d found herself by a bus stop just as a bus heading to Amalfi had appeared.
Sitting on the bus, conscious of the curious glances she’d received from the other passengers, had been a defining moment in her life. She’d learned a valuable lesson that the princess in storybooks needed to learn to take care of herself rather than rely on finding a prince. In truth, she had finally grown up, Orla acknowledged with a wistful sigh as she ran her fingers over the slender gold chain around her neck that had been a gift from her father. She had adored Liam Brogan and his death when she’d been a little girl had been devastating. In hindsight she realised that she had looked for a man to put on a pedestal in place of her father.
Hired for Romano's Pleasure Page 7